SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1337 (1), Wednesday, January 9, 2008
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TITLE: Clinton: Putin Has No Soul
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HAMPTON, New Hampshire — Senator Hillary Clinton, campaigning on Sunday ahead of New Hampshire’s critical presidential primary, declared in response to a voter’s question that Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t have a soul.”
“Bush really premised so much of our foreign policy on his personal relationships with leaders, and I just don’t think that’s the way a great country engages in diplomacy,” Clinton said to voters in Hampton, New Hampshire. The state held the nation’s first presidential nominating primary on Tuesday.
“This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin, and I could have told him, he was a KGB agent,” Clinton said. “By definition he doesn’t have a soul. I mean, this is a waste of time, right? This is nonsense, but this is the world we’re living in right now.”
Clinton’s comments, which drew laughs from the crowd, referred to a well-known remark Bush made upon first meeting Putin in 2001 when the U.S. president said, “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Critics have called the remark naive of Bush, to think the Russian leader was committed to democratic change. Aides have acknowledged Bush has grown more realistic about Putin, who has become increasingly harsh in his criticism of Washington.
Putin, named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2007, has promoted a big military build-up in Russia and verbal attacks on the West reminiscent of the Cold War. He was a former KGB spy in East Germany.
Clinton’s remark came in response to a question about foreign relations. In her answer, she talked about nations that offer safe havens to terrorists and about deterrents to so-called “loose nukes,” or unprotected and unaccounted-for nuclear material that could be used to make weapons.
Putin is a somewhat popular topic with U.S. presidential candidates. Republican Senator John McCain, in a newspaper interview last month, said: “I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B.”
New Hampshire’s primary is the next battleground in the state-by-state process of choosing Republican and Democratic candidates for November’s election to replace President George W. Bush.

TITLE: Georgian Leader: Country On Track
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — President Mikhail Saakashvili said Monday there were “an amazingly low number” of violations in a weekend election that returned him to office, while the opposition cited widespread fraud and vowed to take the outcome to the courts and even the streets.
The close U.S. ally won 51.94 percent of Saturday’s vote — narrowly clearing the 50 percent threshold for a first-round victory, the Central Elections Commission said Monday with more than 85 percent of precincts counted. His main challenger, Levan Gachechiladze, got 25.19 percent.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Saakashvili acknowledged Georgia’s path had not been smooth but said the election demonstrated that the former Soviet republic was on the road to becoming a European democracy.
“I believe there are many aspects that need to be criticized, this is still a country in transition, this is still not a full-fledged, very well-formed, crystalized society, we still have lots of things to do,” said Saakashvili, who has touches of gray hair at age 40 after four years in office, yet still exudes youthful energy.
“But I think we are on the right track and this election has just proven that,” he said.
International observers agreed. Although pointing to an array of violations, including cases of multiple voting, they said the balloting overall was in line with democratic standards.
Saakashvili said the balloting “went very smoothly.”
“We had almost 3,000 precincts, polling stations, and we have like 40 violations or so registered. This is an amazingly low number. That really shows that it went in a disciplined manner,” he said.
Gachechiladze said the opposition has proof Saakashvili did not win more than 50 percent of the vote. 
He said that the opposition would contest the election results in court but would return to the streets if their efforts failed.
The United States congratulated Georgia for holding what it said was the country’s first genuinely competitive presidential election.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, however, that monitors had “identified significant problems that must be corrected.” 
The U.S. urged Georgia to investigate those allegations of irregularities before parliamentary elections expected in spring.
“We encourage all political forces to work peacefully and responsibly for a democratic Georgia,” McCormack said.
Saakashvili has been under pressure to prove he remains committed to democracy after violently breaking up anti-government protests late last year, imposing a state of emergency and shutting down an independent television station.
His victory was announced late Sunday as Georgians headed to church for midnight services on Orthodox Christmas Eve. Both candidates attended a liturgy broadcast live on national television, and Saakashvili was shown offering his hand to Gachechiladze, who shook it.
Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer, came to power four years ago after leading street demonstrations that ousted a corrupt government led by former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Since then, he has displayed formidable energy and determination in transforming Georgia into a country with a growing economy and aspirations of joining the European Union and NATO.
But in a country with a history of upheaval, he may need to add compromise and consensus-building to his political skills.
In giving their assessment of the election, the international observers urged him to reach out to the opposition and direct his attention to easing tensions within the country.
Saakashvili told the AP he was ready to work with the opposition, but he said concerns over a sharp divide in society were exaggerated.
“I would not exaggerate the idea of a deep split,” Saakashvili said. “This election campaign went very well. In any normal European country, if somebody gets more than 50 percent outright in the first round, it is called a landslide, and I don’t see why Georgia should be otherwise.
“With regard to the political process — yes, we need to be consensus builders, yes we need to agree on many things. We can never agree on some of the things, because that is how every democratic nation is,” he added.
Saakashvili said he was not worried about the opposition’s plans to hold protests, saying that peaceful rallies are part of the democratic process.
“Everybody has the right to have peaceful rallies,” he said. “I think unruly behavior will not be tolerated, but peaceful rallies are one of the ways to do political campaigns.”
In the center of Tbilisi, which glistened with a fresh dusting of snow, Christmas music rang out from churches and children rode a toy train and ice skated at an amusement park set up in front of parliament.
Svetlana Malofeyeva, 32, who was watching the ice skaters with her two children, said she had badly wanted to see Saakashvili win and her friends all knew this.
“Everyone called me to congratulate me and we had a celebration at home,” added Malofeyeva, who is unemployed but just completed a three-month jobs program introduced by Saakashvili and has hopes of starting work soon.

TITLE: Alaska Old Believers Mourn Victims of Airplane Crash
AUTHOR: By Mary Pemberton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska’s Old Believers are accustomed to struggle. But even for them, these are the most trying of times.
Five followers of the Christian sect, which broke from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century and has been persecuted since, were killed along with their pilot when their small plane crashed Saturday as they returned to Homer to celebrate the Russian Orthodox Christmas.
Ivan Basargin, 38, a married father of five, lost two brothers and two cousins. Instead of celebrating the holiday Monday, he was preparing for the four funerals that were due to be held Tuesday in his village of Razdolna.
“We are getting coffins ready,” he said. “It is difficult, but what can we do? It is part of life.”
His brother Stefan, 36, was married with nine children, and the newly-married Pavel, 30, had one. His relatives were going from one side of the village to the other to visit and grieve the loss of Basargin’s brothers and his cousins, brothers Zahary Martushev, 25, and Iosif Martushev, 15.
The other two victims were passenger Andrian Reutov, 22, and pilot Robin Starrett, 50.
They were returning from fishing near Kodiak Island. Four people survived the crash Saturday, and one of them told investigators that the door to a baggage compartment in the nose of the small plane had popped open.
Alaska has between 1,500 and 3,000 Russian Orthodox Old Believers. Their sect broke from the Orthodox Church at a time when its patriarch wanted to standardize rituals and consolidate power within the church.
“The Old Believers are those believers who said no,” said Roy Robson, a professor of history at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, who grew up in an Old Believer family in Erie, Pennsylvania. “We want to make decisions about our religious lives ourselves.”
Alaska’s Old Believers live in several small communities on the Kenai Peninsula, about a four-hour drive from Anchorage. Most of them make a living by commercial fishing.
Basargin said when his father died in 1985 he took over the family fishing operation.
“My younger brothers were my skippers. They helped me to build my boat. When they were ready, I helped them,” he said. “We were all together until this tragedy happened. I still have three more brothers. We are kind of trying to hold together.”
Old Believers were persecuted in Russia for hundreds of years. They reacted by first moving to the outskirts of the Russian empire and then to points beyond, including Alaska.
“In doing so, they became famous for being sort of a tough guy ... being able to live through a lot,” Robson said. “They also became famous for their ability to work together.”
Old Believers initially either settled into big cities in Russia, where they could hide in plain sight, or went as far away as Lithuania, Siberia and China. Some even went to Brazil.
In the 1960s, they came to the United States, where some settled in New Jersey and New York. They eventually established themselves in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
The Old Believers that moved to Alaska near Homer represent the ones that chose to distance themselves from the outside world, Robson said.
Basargin said at least 15 Old Believers had arrived from Oregon and Washington to lend support and prepare for Tuesday’s funerals. Friends from Anchorage were arriving. Help was coming from Canada, too, he said.
Robson said Old Believers rely on rituals from the 17th century to bring real meaning to their lives. When his own father died, each of the children took part in the ritual washing of the body that included washing his hands and combing his hair. 
That helped the children understand the finality of death and the importance of it, Robson said.
Basargin said the Old Believer rituals that are part of the burial process will be a comfort.
“Our hopes are that they rest in heaven,” he said.

TITLE: Poland Calls for Talks On Contested Baltic Sea Pipe
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: WARSAW — Poland wants talks with Germany and Russia about a controversial Baltic Sea gas pipeline project steered by Russian giant Gazprom, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in an interview published Monday.
“I want to launch an in-depth discussion,” Tusk said in the Polish edition of the magazine Newsweek.
“We need to demystify the problem. We need to understand why the Russians are holding out for this project under the Baltic, which is three times more expensive than a gas pipeline crossing Poland, and what the conditions would be for changing it,” he said.
The Nord Stream consortium, of which Gazprom controls 51 percent, agreed in 2005 to build a 1,200-kilometre (740-mile) undersea pipeline from Vyborg in Russia to Greifswald in Germany.
Gazprom and its German partners BASF and EON, which each hold a 20-percent stake in the project, aim to use the pipeline to supply energy-hungry western Europe from 2011.
But the the project has raised hackles in Germany and Poland, as well as environmental fears in Baltic Sea neighbours Sweden and Finland.
Warsaw fears that opting for an underwater rather than a land route will enable Gazprom to cut off supplies to Poland without hurting its Western European customers.
Russia has regularly been accused of using Gazprom’s control of a hefty slice of Europe’s gas market for political ends, allegedly turning off the taps to punish governments that fail to toe Moscow’s line.
Warsaw’s previous conservative nationalist government, which lost power to Tusk’s liberals in an election last October, was fiercely opposed to the Nord Stream project.
Germany has also faced accusations of sidelining the interests of other members of the European Union in formerly Moscow-dominated Eastern Europe simply to secure gas supplies.

TITLE: Scientist: Russia Leads Race to Mars
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia is leading the race to complete a manned mission to Mars and could land a Russian on the Red Planet by 2025, a leading scientist was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
“We have something of a head start in this race as we have the most experience in piloted space flight,” the director of the prestigious Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, told Interfax news agency on Tuesday.
The goal of becoming the first country to land a human on Mars is “technically and economically achievable” by 2025, he said.
Mars is the most prestigious prize for the Russian space industry if it wants to boost the country’s “scientific and political prestige” through manned space flight, he said.
“We lost the race to the moon,” Zelyony said.
The United States achieved that goal on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.
The last manned US mission to the moon was the December 1972 flight of Apollo 17.

TITLE: Beer Not Yet Piped In, But Zenit Triumphant
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Last year began with plans by Zenit, the St. Petersburg football club funded by gas giant Gazprom, to build a beer pipeline at its stadium to fuel fans and ended with cult followers holed up in a cave awaiting the end of the world.
What came in between in 2007 made about as much sense.
It was the last year of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, and celebrities of all stripe lined up to ask — no, beg — the man to stay on. 
He seems to have ignored their groveling, however, and opted to guide a new, shorter man by the name of Medvedev into office.
Medvedev’s name means “bear” in Russian if you remove the “ev,” and it was, indeed, the year of the bear. United Russia, whose symbol is a bear, won a crushing victory in the State Duma elections. But in a slight twist, 2007 also saw the arrival of Mishki, or Bear Cubs, a group of pubescent and prepubescent Putin admirers whose members are theoretically not old enough to stay up and watch the nightly news.
But most of the Mishki at the group’s inaugural rally this month looked considerably older than 15, the age limit for members. One of the kids even lit up a cigarette at the rally.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a former guerrilla fighter, was the odd voice of reason on firearms in 2007, calling for moderation when it comes to firearms at weddings.
“It won’t be right if I ban shooting at weddings,” Kadyrov said. “I am not against our traditions, but we need to limit shooting. Two or three times is enough, and not from large caliber machine guns.”
Another official who marked the year with cool logic was Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who gave a motivational speech to the Russian national football team in the locker room right before the crucial Euro 2008 qualifier against England at Luzhniki stadium in October.
“They have 11 people, we have 11 people,” Zubkov explained. “They have two hands, two feet. So do we. But we have the most important thing: We won the Great Patriotic War and were first to fly to space and, therefore, you must win today too. Russia won 2-1.
Sadly, Zubkov did not mention the year’s greatest space achievement: cockroach sex. Yes, the first tarakanavty, as they have been dubbed, combining the Russian words for cockroach and cosmonaut, were launched into space in September. 
The cockroaches copulated while hovering above the Earth, and the lucky mother, Nadezhda, gave birth after Voronezh scientists brought the pests home.
Fortunately, there have been no reports of mutant space cockroaches overrunning Voronezh region towns.
Zubkov also demonstrated an iron fist, sending a Finance Ministry official into temporary exile in Sakhalin for failing to deliver emergency funds following an earthquake on the island. The official should consider himself lucky: A deputy finance minister was sent to a detention facility a few months later and has yet to return.
The Family of the Year award goes to the Baturins, the estranged brother-and-sister Yelena and Viktor. The duo, whose fortunes have come largely from concrete, have built millions of square meters in Moscow — much during the tenure of Yelena Baturina’s husband, Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
Viktor Baturin accused singer Dima Bilan, whom he claims to have funded to the tune of $5 million, of going “black” on him with an album that could only be called Justin Timberlake lite.
“Why do we have to put out R&B, which was created in the brothels of New Orleans?” Baturin said.
Meanwhile, Baturina, who is more media shy, warned that new construction must continue lest Russian cities go the way of Venice, which she said “looks appalling,” Vedomosti reported.
“Honestly, I look in horror at Venice, at those terrible peeling buildings,” Baturina told Vedomosti. “It truly is a scary sight.”
As 2007 came to a close, more than 30 people fearing a dictatorship tried to run away from the world. 
No, they weren’t members of the liberal opposition, which doesn’t seem to have more than 30 people, judging by state-controlled television reports. 
They were members of a doomsday cult who holed themselves up in a Penza region cave to wait for the end of the world.
Their leader, meanwhile, decided to await the apocalypse outside the cave.
One can imagine a film version of the story in which cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov, having scoured the country for believers and masterminded the creation of an underground shelter, says to his disciples: “It’s time to go down into the hole and await the end of time and heavenly resurrection. On you go then. What, me? No, you know how claustrophobic I get. I’ll just stay here and, erm, wait in my hut. See you in heaven.”
They are still awaiting the end of the world, which they believe will come in May, when Putin’s second term ends.
The Penza cult members were not the only ones to be taken in by a smooth talker this year. Primorye region resident Rustam Dzhumaliyev, who had a federal warrant out for his arrest, wandered around the country pretending to be a DJ from Los Angeles called Lamar until he was arrested by the Federal Security Service in Samara in May. 
Back in Moscow, a 2-meter-tall Cameroonian was arrested after passing himself off not only as a U.S. diplomat, but also as the prospective owner of a basketball club.
Meanwhile, a secretive group — police say thieves — liberated nine luxury Bentleys from wealthy Moscow residents in 2007. Somehow, the Bentleys — cars bought to be noticed — have managed to remain out of sight, though there are rumors that they can be seen roaring through the sewers late at night.
As for Zenit, no beer pipeline was built to its stadium, alas. Fans of the club had to console themselves with the Russian championship.

TITLE: Russia Warns of Tension With U.K.
AUTHOR: By Grant Slater
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia warned Britain on Thursday that reopening two offices of a British cultural organization would inflame already tense relations between the countries.
Russia in December ordered offices of the British Council in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg to close as of Jan. 1. The offices are closed for Russia’s winter holidays, but British officials say they will defy the order and resume operations on Jan. 14.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement that Russia expects the operations to be permanently closed and “any other actions would be provocative and build up bilateral tensions.”
The order against the British Council comes amid high tensions stemming from the 2006 poisoning of former KGB officer and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.
Russia has refused Britain’s request to extradite the man it considers the main suspect; this summer, Britain expelled four Russian diplomats to protest Moscow’s stand, and Russia in turn kicked out four British diplomats.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last month that the British Council closure order was taken as a “countermeasure” to the diplomat expulsion.
Kamynin appeared to suggest Russia could also order the council’s main office in Moscow to close.
“The activity of the British Council in Moscow and Russian regions has no legal foundation,” he said. “We have not raised the question of the British Council’s office in Moscow thus far, and this is an act of goodwill.”
The British Council is technically a non-governmental organization, but it acts as the cultural department of the British Embassy. Russia contends it acts as a for-profit organization.
Kathryn Board, head of the British Council’s overseas network, said the organization complies with Russian law, a 1994 Britain-Russia agreement and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
“If there is a law we don’t comply with, the Russian government has yet to point it out,” she said by telephone from London.
British Council officials have been in contact with the Russian government, seeking an agreement that would allow the offices to open without incident, Board said.
“We still have a week or so to go and we very much hope this will be seen through to a proper conclusion,” she said.

TITLE: Poland Warms to Russian Missile Stance
AUTHOR: By Ryan Lucas
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s new prime minister broke from the staunchly pro-American stance of his predecessor, saying in comments published Monday he will not rush a decision on hosting a U.S. missile defense base.
The tough line suggests the Bush administration’s clout with allies is weakening.
With new leadership coming soon to Washington, Poland and the Czech Republic may be asking themselves if it is worth toeing President Bush’s line on missile defense when the next president may pull the plug on the program.
The two nations attracted the ire of Russia — an increasingly assertive and powerful neighbor — by supporting the bid to build the defense system on their soil. The calculation may be that the overriding diplomatic priority, for now, has become avoiding a further deterioration of relations with the Kremlin.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the Polish edition of Newsweek that Poland “definitely shouldn’t hurry on the missile defense issue. ... Remember, the shield is supposed to defend America, not Poland.”
The Bush administration put a positive spin on Tusk’s comments.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington that negotiations would continue, aiming “to address all of the government of Poland’s concerns.”
“This is in both of our interests,” he said. “It’s in the interests of Poland. It’s in the interest of the United States. It’s in the interest of other European countries.”
Tusk’s geopolitical vision is also starkly different from that of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whom he ousted as prime minister in October elections. Kaczynski, along with his twin brother, President Lech Kazcynski, base much of their political philosophy on suspicion of Moscow and a belief in Washington as the ultimate guarantor of security.
Bush’s lame duck status has made it easier for Tusk to strike a different diplomatic course.
“The new Polish administration believes there’s no point in pushing ahead with this now, there’s only things to lose,” said Robin Shepherd, a trans-Atlantic relations specialist at Britain’s Chatham House think tank. “Far better to wait and see what happens when there’s a new American president.”
Similar scenarios are playing out elsewhere in Europe.
European heavyweight France has recently dramatically improved the tenor of its trans-Atlantic relationship under new pro-American President Nicolas Sarkozy. But a look at the details of the diplomacy reveals a different picture.
A possible deal on France rejoining NATO’s military command and other crucial policy issues — including Middle East peace — are essentially on hold.
“People here in France are aware that making deals with Bush, well, it’s not the best time to do it,” said Marcin Zaborowski, a specialist in trans-Atlantic relations at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris. “They will be more willing to compromise or make deals with those who will replace him.”
Some experts, however, say it’s still too early for European powers to take a passive approach to ties with America.
Simon Serfaty, a senior adviser for the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said certain issues are too pressing to put on hold, and that Germany, France and Britain have “determined they should not wait for the next administration.”
“They understand there is some urgency at this moment,” he said. “They cannot afford for 2008 to go by and start anew on issues with regard to Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”
The U.S. says the missile system, which would include 10 interceptors in northern Poland as well as a radar in the Czech Republic, would counter future threats from so-called rogue states such as Iran.
Russia, however, fiercely opposes such an installation so close to its territory, and has threatened to target the base in Poland with missiles.
Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova insisted Monday that Poland’s tougher line “does not affect” her country’s position and that Prague expects to wrap up negotiations with the U.S. by spring.

TITLE: Private Property Law Passed
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian government has allowed the privatization of “architectural monuments of federal importance” after  new legislation came into force on Jan 1, Interfax reported last week.
The sale of buildings representing cultural and architectural heritage was banned in Russia in 2002. Under the new amendments to the law, a number of federal monuments have been transferred to the supervision of regional authorities. As a result, those buildings could be privatized, auctioned or sold.
According to the law, private owners and tenants of historical buildings will be obliged to maintain the buildings in a suitable condition and observe limits on exploitation and reconstruction.
The first candidates for privatization will be estates, private churches and chapels — buildings which were initially constructed as private properties.
Kremlins, buildings under the protection of UNESCO, and church ensembles will remain federal monuments under state ownership. There are approximately 2,000-3,000 such buildings in Russia. The total number of federal monuments amounts to 90,000.
According to the Ministry for Culture and Mass Communications, about five percent of federal monuments in Russia are not used, 30 percent are in urgent need of restoration and 10 percent are in ruins. State funding for the reconstruction or maintenance of the buildings covers up to 15 percent of the costs.

TITLE: Scottish Brewer Pursues Russian Venture
AUTHOR: By Amy Wilson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — Scottish & Newcastle Plc said gaining full control of its Russian joint venture with Carlsberg A/S, which is trying to buy the company along with Heineken NV, would cut costs by 100 million pounds ($198 million) a year. 
The savings would come mainly from economies of scale in buying raw materials for brewing and packaging, Edinburgh-based Scottish & Newcastle, the largest U.K. brewer, said Tuesday in a statement. Carlsberg “misused confidential information’’ regarding earnings forecasts for the venture, the company said. 
Surging beer sales at Russian venture Baltic Beverages Holding AB are spurring growth at Scottish & Newcastle and Valby, Denmark-based Carlsberg as western European markets stagnate or shrink. The Danish brewer wants to gain control of BBH, while Amsterdam-based Heineken would take over the U.K. business of Scottish & Newcastle, the maker of Kronenbourg lager. 
“Controlling BBH would make Scottish & Newcastle one of the most attractive international beverage businesses,’’ Chief Executive Officer John Dunsmore said in the statement. The brewer said it’s “confident’’ of succeeding in arbitration, which would enable it to buy Carlsberg’s 50 percent stake in the venture at “fair market value.’’ 
Carlsberg has not misused confidential information, spokesman Jens Peter Skaarup said Tuesday by telephone. Scottish & Newcastle has rejected a takeover proposal from the company and Heineken worth 750 pence a share, or 7.3 billion pounds, as too low. 
The spurned offer values the U.K. company’s half of BBH at 3.2 billion pounds, Dunsmore said. He also said Scottish & Newcastle would keep its investment-grade credit rating if it were to succeed in buying Carlsberg’s share at the same price. 
The suitors would have to offer a price “a lot higher’’ than 750 pence a share to convince Scottish & Newcastle to enter talks, Dunsmore said, without being more specific. 
“A bid at 800 pence ($15.8) a share remains the idea,’’ said Marcel Hooijmaijers, an analyst at Landsbanki Kepler in Amsterdam. “Carlsberg and Heineken may go as far as 770 pence to 775 pence, but it’s a step’’ to start talks with the U.K. brewer, he said. 
Scottish & Newcastle shares rose 6.5 pence ($0.13), or 0.9 percent, to 735 pence ($14.5) at 8:43 a.m. in London. Carlsberg stock climbed 10 kroner ($2), or 1.7 percent, to 606 kroner ($119.7) in Copenhagen, and Heineken shares fell 23 cents ($0.34), or 0.5 percent, to 43.19 euros ($63.52) in Amsterdam. 
The British company on Tuesday submitted detailed claims against Carlsberg to a Swedish arbitration tribunal, which it expects to reach a decision by July 3. The tribunal has been convened by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce because BBH is based nearby in Kista, Sweden.

TITLE: Commercial Oil Found Off Vietnamese Coast
AUTHOR: By Jason Folkmanis
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — A company with Russian and Japanese investment said it made a commercial oil discovery off the Vietnamese coast, and plans to begin production as soon as 2009.
VRJ Petroleum Co., which includes Russia’s Zarubezhneft, Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, and a unit of Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan Co., has drilled three exploration and appraisal wells on the Doi Moi structure, located on Block 9-3 about 135 kilometers (84 miles) off the coast of the port city of Vung Tau, according to a statement from the joint operating company.
The drilling proved the “availability of oil’’ in the area, located in water depths of about 50 meters, VRJ said. Production may start next year and may be sustained at a rate of between 15,000 barrels and 20,000 barrels per day, with the field operating for as long as 25 years, according to VRJ General Director Victor Anosov, who’s based in Vung Tau.
“We can’t say exactly yet about reserves, we have to prepare a development plan,” Anosov said Tuesday by phone. “We are optimistic, very optimistic about this field.’’ Vietnam is Southeast Asia’s third-biggest oil producer after Indonesia and Malaysia. Output fell for a third year in 2007, slipping 8 percent to about 15.5 million metric tons, the Vietnam News Agency reported Jan. 2, or about 318,000 barrels per day.
State-owned Zarubezhneft has a 50 percent stake in Block 9-3, with a unit of Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, known as PetroVietnam, taking 35 percent and a unit of Idemitsu Kosan holding 15 percent, according to a 2006 statement from the Japanese company.
Zarubezhneft is also a partner with PetroVietnam in Vietsovpetro, which operates the Bach Ho field that is Vietnam’s biggest and has been in operation for two decades. Vietsovpetro, which President Putin described in October as “one of the most economically effective oil-producing companies in the world,’’ also operates the Rong field, which is in block 9-1 and is adjacent to VRJ’s area.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry said in August that exploration was taking place in the area of the Rong field — which produced almost 18,000 barrels per day in the first half of 2007, according to Vietsovpetro — in an attempt to maintain national production as Bach Ho’s output slips.
The proximity to Rong means that “we can work together with Vietsovpetro and use their infrastructure,’’ said Anosov. The new field, to be named Nam Rong-Doi Moi, contains “pure oil, no gas,’’ he said. The partners began seismic surveys in the area in 2002, saying then that total investment in the event of a commercial discovery may reach $1 billion.
“We have to hold a management committee meeting in May to discuss further exploration of the block,’’ said Anosov. “But for now we are focused on starting development of what we have already found.’’

TITLE: More Incubators To Help Small Firms
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg budget will spend approximately 350 million rubles ($14.3 million) on the development of business incubators by 2011 to foster small enterprises in the city, according to a statement released by the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade.
One business incubator opened in April 2007 is already operating at 37 Ulitsa Sedova. The business incubator houses 40 small enterprises, including innovation, production and housing service companies.
Over the next four years, 11 new business incubators are due to open in the city, including production incubators. The second business incubator will open on the territory of the Optical and Mechanical Lyceum on Polyustrovsky Prospekt. This business incubator will occupy 8,000 square meters, offering office area and production facilities.
Business incubators will also open at the Bonch-Bruyevich University technopark and in the Noidorf special economic zone. The location of the other business incubators has not yet been announced.
Small companies can reside in a business incubator for three years. At the initial stage, in addition to low rent rates, small companies get technical, organizational and consulting assistance. Business incubators provide consulting services on accounting, taxation and legislation issues.

TITLE: Gazprom Negotiates to Enter Gas Projects in Nigeria
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural-gas monopoly, may help develop Nigerian deposits and pipelines as the African country builds its gas industry.
Gazprom is interested in securing gas projects in Nigeria, spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov confirmed on Monday. The Financial Times reported last week that company executives had visited the capital Abuja in December with proposals to revamp the nation’s underperforming gas industry.
“Negotiations are continuing,’’ Kupriyanov said by telephone from Moscow. Nigeria is a priority market for Gazprom in Africa, he said.
Gazprom and Lukoil, Russia’s largest non-state oil producer, previously discussed energy projects with Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. in 1998, Russian newspaper Vremya reported at the time. The two Russian companies already operate projects in Libya, Algeria and Egypt.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest crude oil producer, plans to develop its gas fields to supply power generators, domestic customers and overseas markets. The nation aims to increase gas extraction fourfold to 20 billion cubic feet a day by as early as 2012, Nigerian National Petroleum General Manager David Ige said in September.

TITLE: Hitachi May Team Up With Russian Construction Firm
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., the world’s biggest maker of giant excavators, said it may make excavator parts with a Russian company this year to tap the country’s oil-funded construction boom.
Hitachi Construction, based in Tokyo, and Techstroycontract Ltd. may start a unit to make buckets for excavators at a machinery plant owned by the Moscow-based partner, Akira Soga, a Hitachi Construction spokesman, said Tuesday. The Japanese manufacturer plans to take a majority stake in the venture, he said, confirming an earlier Nikkei newspaper report.
Hitachi Construction, which controls 35 percent of the excavator market in Russia, joins bigger Japanese rival Komatsu Ltd. in starting local production in Russia. Hitachi Construction plans to double annual sales in Russia in the next five years.
The plant, located about 300 kilometers (186 miles) northeast of Russia’s capital, may produce 3,000 buckets for excavators a year, Soga said.
Hitachi Construction will start making complete excavators by April 2012, the Nikkei reported Tuesday. The company hasn’t made any decision on the plan, Soga said.

TITLE: Golden Globes Called Off Due to Strike
AUTHOR: By Sue Zeidler
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Striking Hollywood writers won two battles on Monday by making a deal to work for Tom Cruise’s film company and wreaking havoc on the Golden Globe Awards, but their labor war against film and TV studios is far from over.
Some experts believe the writers’ strategy of making deals with independent producers like Cruise’s United Artists will not only fail to divide and conquer Hollywood’s big media companies, but serve to strengthen the industry’s resolve.
Indeed, immediately after United Artists — run by Cruise and Chief Executive Paula Wagner — announced their deal to let striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) members work on films during the strike, UA’s parent, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., issued a statement saying it disagreed with UA’s decision.
Other members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the major film and television studios in talks with the WGA, commented too.
Philippe Dauman, chief executive of Viacom Inc, said deals like United Artists’ would “have minimal impact.”
“This will only be resolved ultimately by an agreement between the guild and the larger producers collectively,” Dauman said.
The roughly 10,500 WGA members struck against the AMPTP in November over issues that included the amount of money writers would earn when their work appeared on the Internet.
Since then, TV shows have ended production, some films have been delayed and several Hollywood awards shows like the Golden Globes have been derailed.
The WGA has had some success with independent producers like United Artists in reaching “interim agreements,” which generally mean the parties agree to accept whatever terms are eventually decided upon by the AMPTP and WGA.
Talk show host David Letterman’s company, WorldWide Pants, reached an interim deal with the WGA, allowing “The Late Show with David Letterman” to return to the air. But the WGA refused such a deal with the producer of the Golden Globe Awards.
Capping days of speculation, General Electric Co’s NBC late on Monday said it would air the Golden Globes as a news conference instead of the traditional gala ceremony.
While the news conference is a far cry from an awards show, it was not seen as forcing the big media companies back to the bargaining table with the WGA.
“In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think the Globes (development) is going to knock down the Disneys, Foxes and NBCs,” said Shari Anne Brille, director of programming for media buying agency Carat USA.
Many industry insiders believe the AMPTP members have time on their side. “The strike will be settled eventually, but there’s no point in putting programming on air in the short term if it’s going to hurt them in the longer term,” said Mark Greenberg, portfolio manager with AIMInvestments.
Mark Toney, senior vice president of research firm SmithGeiger, agreed. “These deals will be watched closely by networks to make sure nobody else is going off the reservation, but I still think the Foxes and NBCs of the world are in control of the situation,” he said.
ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co, CBS is owned by CBS Corp, Fox is owned by News Corp and NBC is majority-owned by General Electric.

TITLE: Film Audiences Down in 2007
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Moviegoers were paying more in 2007, but that doesn’t mean they were going more often.
Box-office revenue in the U.S. and Canada climbed 4 percent to $9.7 billion, the second straight year of higher receipts after dismal results in 2005. But the rise came entirely from costlier ticket prices. Attendance was flat, according to research firm Media by Numbers.
Moviegoers bought 1.4 billion tickets last year, the same as in 2006, despite a string of marquee sequels extending such franchises as “Spider-Man,” “Shrek,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Harry Potter.”
Studio executives and theater owners are trying to paint a positive picture in the face of fierce competition from video games, pay per view telecasts and online entertainment.
Even so, attendance was down 12 percent from the modern-day peak of 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002.
Early in 2007, the high-profile summer lineup had spurred bullish industry analysts to predict the first $10-billion year at the U.S. box office.
Hits including the Spartan battle epic “300” and the paunchy biker farce “Wild Hogs” got the year off to a good start, and summer lived up to expectations despite a few flops such as the big-budget comedy “Evan Almighty.”
Business wilted in the fall, however, as fans showed scant interest in political fare such as the Tom Cruise-Meryl Streep drama “Lions for Lambs” and the Reese Witherspoon thriller “Rendition.”
The year was saved by a trio of escapist December releases: the science-fiction thriller “I Am Legend,” the action sequel “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” and the family-friendly comedy “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

TITLE: Gold Reaches Record High, Dollar Drops
AUTHOR: By Jeremy Gaunt
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Investors pushed stocks higher on Tuesday, seeking to reverse their poor start for the year, but economic worries remained deeply embedded and safe-haven gold jumped to another record high.
Oil rose around $1.50 a barrel after a three-day fall, renewing inflation concerns, while the dollar slipped.
Wall Street nonetheless looked set for a positive start, despite skittishness that followed weak U.S. data last week — including a poor jobs report — that rekindled worries that the U.S. economy is headed for recession.
Such worries battered stocks over the first few trading days of the year, knocking as much as 3.7 percent off MSCI’s main world stock index at one point.
Shares were recovering on Tuesday, however, with some resting their hopes on easier U.S. monetary policy.
“The market is torn between two factors: fears of a U.S. recession on both the earnings and the macroeconomic fronts, and hopes that the Fed will cut rates aggressively. The latter factor could underpin the market,” said Franz Wenzel, strategist at AXA Investment Managers, in Paris.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up 0.7 percent.
Earlier, Japan’s Nikkei closed up, but only after first touching an 18-month low. The benchmark gained 0.19 percent to 14,528.67, eking out a rise of 28.12 points. The broader TOPIX was up by 0.74 percent at 1,403.06.
Reflecting overall fears of economic trouble, meanwhile, gold hit a fresh record of $876.20 per ounce in European trading.
“Gold is going to play a more important role for asset managers than it has in the last couple of years because of geopolitical worries, because of currency movements, and because people want to fly to quality,” one European trader said.
Oil also rebounded. U.S. oil was up $1.59 to $996.68 a barrel, recouping some of its $2.82 drop on Monday, which was a third day of losses after prices hit the $100 mark for the first time last week.
The dollar was weaker against a basket of major currencies, although it gained against the Japanese yen.
The euro was up 0.3 percent at $1.4718 while the British pound gained 0.4 percent to $1.9765. The dollar was up 0.5 percent at 109.50 yen.
Many analysts continue to be bearish on the prospects for the dollar, though they think falls will be more muted than seen last year.
“In our view, the dollar will resume its downtrend, although the trend won’t be as linear as it had been during the last year: after having appreciated strongly, most currencies now show less upside potential than a couple of months ago,” Commerzbank Corporates & Markets said in a note to clients.
Euro zone government bonds were weaker.
The two-year Schatz yield was up 3.3 basis points at 3.809 percent. The 10-year Bund yield was up 2.6 basis points at 4.143 percent. Debt yields move inversely to prices.

TITLE: Wikia Search Engine Running
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Wikia, the Internet company started by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, opened its search engine to the public on Monday in a bid to challenge Google and Yahoo.
Wikia Search, which lets users edit and fine-tune its results, is now seeking contributors to help expand the service, according to a statement from the San Mateo, California-based company. The system is open-source, meaning its underlying programming code can be shared freely.
Wales, 41, helped turn encyclopedia site Wikipedia into one of the 10 most visited websites in the U.S. Now he plans to use that popularity to attract people to his search engine, saying the company aims to win as much as 5 percent of the market. Google accounted for almost two-thirds of U.S. search queries in November.
“I don’t think the big players in Internet search need to be worried about the likes of Wikia,” said Scott Kessler, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York. “But they need to pay close attention to what the upstarts are doing” to avoid missing new trends and innovations. Kessler recommends investors hang on to Google and Yahoo shares.
Wikia’s stance is that no one company or group should control the search market, Chief Executive Gil Penchina said in March. The Wikia search allows everyone access to its technology and lets users rank and discuss the search results.
Users also can create their own social networks through the Wikia.com site, making personal profiles, adding friends and sharing photos. Wikia, founded in 2004, has yet to turn a profit.
The company probably will start selling advertising to fuel sales growth, though it has no timetable for that because it’s focusing on building its service, Wales said.
Wikia’s backers include online retailer Amazon.com Inc., Netscape Communications Inc. co-founder Marc Andreessen and venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners.

TITLE: Nord Stream Still Optimistic
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nord Stream AG, the Russian-German joint venture behind plans to build a natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, is confident Sweden will give it the go-ahead and said costs are likely to be higher than expected.
“We are confident enough that we have ordered pipes already,” Dirk von Ameln, in charge of getting approval from countries affected by the pipeline, told reporters in Stockholm on Monday. Costs are likely to be higher than the at least 5 billion-euro ($7.3 billion) forecast Nord Stream initially gave, he said, adding the company will release a new estimate in coming months.
The pipeline will stretch 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from Vyborg in Russia to Greifswald in Germany and is scheduled to begin carrying natural gas in 2011. Critics, including Sweden’s opposition parties, argue it will harm the environment. A majority of Swedish politicians is opposed to the project, a survey showed last month.
Nord Stream, which expects to start building the pipeline in the middle of 2009, doesn’t have a back-up plan should Sweden reject the application to build it, von Ameln said. The company, of which Russia’s state-run natural-gas producer Gazprom owns 51 percent, will file applications with Finland, Russia, Germany and Denmark in the coming months, it said today. It sent its application to the Swedish government last month. E.ON AG and BASF AG of Germany own 20 percent each of Nord Stream, while Nederlandse Gasunie NV controls the rest.
There has been concern in Sweden that the pipeline will hurt fish stocks, pose a danger to shipping and damage the Baltic Sea, whose seabed is littered with mines from two world wars.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>New Pulkovo Runway </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg government announced a tender for the reconstruction of a runway at Pulkovo airport, Interfax reported.
State funding for the reconstruction is limited to 5.9 billion rubles ($241.6 million). Besides reconstructing the runway, the winner is expected to construct link-roads, provide new lighting equipment, power supply and communication systems. Applications from tender participants will be accepted from February this year.
In 2005-2006 the federal budget provided three billion rubles ($122.85 million) for the reconstruction of the other runway at Pulkovo. The work was carried out by Transstroi-Engineering.

<b>Capacity Tariffs To Rise </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Federal Tariff Service approved tariffs for power supply and capacity tariffs for 2008, Interfax reported.
From July 1, 2008 power generation companies will increase capacity tariffs by 12.6 percent on average. Power supply tariffs will not increase this year.

<b>Inflation Reaches 12% </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — According to prior estimations, inflation in Russia ran at 12 percent last year, Interfax reported.
Initially, the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade expected inflation to stand at eight percent. However, soaring consumer prices in the last months of 2007 increased the overall inflation figures.

<b>Budget Funds Deposited </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg authorities selected 12 banks to deposit budget funds, Interfax reported.
Twenty banks applied to participate in the tender. The winners are Soyuz, Vozrozhdeniye, AK Bars, VTB 24, Moskovsky Capital, Rossiya, Zenit, Uralsib, Svyaz-bank, Baltinvestbank, Gazprombank and Transcreditbank.
The funds will be transferred to the banks at the end of January.

<b>Express Train Tender </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg government announced a tender for the construction of Nadzemny Express train, Interfax reported.
By May this year the tender committee will select several applicants to present detailed projects. The winner will be announced in December 2008. Construction is due to start in 2009.
The express will run from Strelna to Obukhovo metro station. The project will cost 29 billion rubles ($1.2 billion). About four billion rubles ($163.8 million) will be spent on carriages and equipment.

<b>Airline Passengers Up </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — According to prior estimations, Rossia Airlines increased passenger turnover by 11 percent in 2007, Interfax reported.
The company transported 3.35 million passengers last year as opposed to about 3 million passengers in 2006.
From spring 2008, on the route between Moscow and St. Petersburg Rossia Airlines will replace outdated Tu-134s with Tu-154, Boeing-737-500 and Airbus A319 planes. The company operates 53 planes including five Boeing 737-500 and two Airbus A319-114.

<b>Chrysler Plans Growth </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Chrysler LLC aims to double sales of cars and trucks in overseas markets during the next four years, as part of its plan to return to profit, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Mike Manley, the company’s international sales chief.
The Michigan-based automaker plans to add to its dealer network in Russia and China this year, the newspaper said, adding that Chrysler currently makes 90 percent of its sales in North America.
Last year, Chrysler’s sales outside North America rose 15 percent, to 238,218 cars and trucks, the Journal added.

<b>Kazakh Growth Down </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Kazakhstan’s economy expanded by a preliminary 8.7 percent last year, below its average for the decade, as the liquidity squeeze in international financial markets led banks to cut lending, the government said.
“The instability in international financial markets affected the Kazakh economy,” Prime Minister Karim Masimov said in a statement on the government’s web site Tuesday.
The country’s $80 billion economy has grown at an average pace of 10 percent a year since 2000 as the price of oil has surged, sparking a construction boom. Kazakhstan has 3.3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and about 2 percent of the natural gas.
Some of the central Asian nation’s banks, struggling to borrow from overseas financial sources after the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market, stopped lending to homebuyers and builders in September.

<b>Severstal Explosion </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Severstal, the steelmaker owned by Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov, cut production at a plant in Dearborn, Michigan, after an accident over the weekend.
Severstal closed the ‘B’ blast furnace, which can produce about 1,800 tons of steel a day, after a Jan. 5 explosion injured an on-site contractor, the Cherepovets, Russia-based company said Monday in a statement. Severstal said it may shut its ‘C’ blast furnace temporarily as part of an investigation at the plant, which supplies steel to the U.S. auto industry.
The length of the closure and likely impact on production will be reported later, the company said in the statement. 
Severstal has halted the ‘B’ furnace pending “a comprehensive damage assessment and company investigation into the cause” of the accident, the company said in the statement.

<b>Port Resumes Loading</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s largest Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, and an oil terminal operated by Chevron Corp.’s Caspian Pipeline Consortium, resumed cargo loading Monday after weather conditions improved.
Evridiki, the so-called suezmax tanker that usually hauls about 1 million barrels of crude oil, left the Novorossiysk port harbor after completing cargo loading, a port dispatcher who declined to be identified said by telephone today. Four tankers are loading crude oil now and one is loading diesel, he said.
The Otoman Nobility tanker completed loading at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s Yuzhnaya Ozereyka-2 terminal. Another tanker, Star Lady, is being loaded now. The Forward Pioneer tanker is waiting for its turn, the port dispatcher said.
The Tuapse Trading Sea Port, controlled by Russian billionaire Vladimir Lisin’s Novolipetsk Steel, has been operating normally since last week, according to an unidentified dispatcher.

TITLE: The Art of Reading Russia’s Future
AUTHOR: By Andrew C. Kuchins
TEXT: With Vladimir Putin’s presidency winding down, this is a good time to think about his legacy and the future of Russia. The Putin presidency will be remembered for the country’s economic resurgence, political stabilization and increasingly assertive foreign policy. These trends all go back to the very beginning of his presidency, and the economic recovery that was set into motion by the currency devaluation in 1998, in fact, predated his rise to power by a year. Nevertheless, as this year began with Putin’s succession increasingly imminent, my colleagues and I seemed to have more questions than answers about the durability of these trends.
When it comes to Russia, prediction has proven to be a particularly perilous endeavor. For the last 20 years, not only have we failed to predict what happened, but we also have failed to seriously consider the possibility that what did happen could have happened. If we go back to 1999, the year after the financial crash, nobody anywhere suggested the possibility of Russia’s nominal-dollar gross domestic product growing by more than sixfold, or incomes increasing by a factor of four in less than 10 years, or the stock market becoming the world’s hottest. But it happened. And if we had engaged in this exercise in 1987, anybody who suggested that the Soviet Union was on the verge of being consigned to the dustbin of history and that there would be tanks firing on the parliament building in Moscow within 10 years would have been exiled to the lunatic fringe. One needs a broad imagination to suggest Russia’s future 10 years forward and the potential for discontinuities in its trajectory — a trajectory that for the last few decades has been extraordinarily nonlinear.
The challenge is even greater today because there seems to be so little agreement about present-day Russia. In fact, Western views on Moscow have never been so polarized as they are now. Broadly speaking, the key divide is between those in the business and investment community, who are quite bullish on Russia, and those in the policy and the nongovernmental communities, who view the Putin period with much more skepticism.
In order to put together a mosaic of possible Russian futures, I organized in Washington a working group of leading experts with diverse perspectives and expertise on the most salient drivers of Russian futures. We met a number of times over a period of several months, and everyone’s input to the discussions contributed to the report released last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Alternative Futures of Russia to 2017.”
Unfortunately, this report was seriously distorted and mischaracterized in an article in Kommersant on Dec. 13, resulting in headlines about predictions that, in fact, the report does not make. It is unfortunate that the sensationalistic misrepresentation resulted in such an uproar in the Russian public, but I hope this will help clarify what the report is really about.
The following are the main highlights of the report. Some will seem banal, some will seem controversial, yet all are essential for anticipating how the country may develop.
• Russia will not be a failed state. While there was one significant dissenter from this view, who emphasized that we should not discount this possibility, overall we thought this scenario so unlikely that we discarded it.
• Russia will not be a mature democracy in 10 years. We agreed that Russia could possibly become a more plural political system, but that it was extremely unlikely that 10 years was adequate time for democracy to emerge, especially as the current trends are going in the opposite direction.
• While stable economic growth is not guaranteed, the country’s economic future in the near term looks relatively bright. By comparison, Russia’s political future is far more uncertain. State capacity and institutions generally remain weak, and the current political stability has a fragile foundation. Its weakly institutionalized system, personalities and personal interests play an unusually large role in policymaking.
• Russia’s economy is too diversified to describe it as a “petrostate.” But we agreed that the oil price is the most important driver of the country’s future.
• Russia’s territorial integrity over the next ten years is secure. Social, economic, political and security challenges for Moscow will be greatest in the North Caucasus, but secession appears unlikely.
• Demographic challenges remain significant, but they should be manageable. The shrinking population, however, will put additional strain on an already tight labor market, increasing the likelihood of labor unrest. Increasing migration of Asian and Muslim workers will also add to social tensions.
• Nationalism and xenophobia are growing. There were differing views within the group about the extent to which this presents a threat to ethnic minorities within the country as well as its likely impact on the Kremlin’s foreign policy.
• Russian foreign policy is growing more assertive as economic recovery gathers momentum. There were differing views in the group, however, about the extent to which the country was becoming a revisionist power, while at least one group member saw Russia increasingly playing the role of multilateral spoiler.
• There was also consensus about the danger of excessively linear thinking about Russia’s future. The current stability is more fragile than it appears.
There are many insights that emerge in projecting change and stability in Russia’s future, as well as the various hypothetical scenarios in the second half of the report. There are two scenarios that deserve particular attention — one about the country’s foreign policy and another about its domestic development. First, foreign policy is not likely to take a deeply anti-Western turn that results in a repeat of the Cold War. In fact, the more likely outcome is that Washington and Moscow will find greater common interests in the security area that will drive them closer to cooperation in the coming decade. There are two main reasons for this: The Kremlin learned some tough lessons about overextending and overmilitarizing itself during the Cold War and it is unlikely to repeat these mistakes. In addition, instability on its southern border will continue to be the country’s greatest security challenge in the next decade, and striking an anti-U.S. position will not help address that problem.
Finally, when pressed about what I think Russia will look like in 10 years, I empathize with my older colleagues. When they were asked this question 25 years ago, they typically responded with status-quo and continuity scenarios that turned out to be dead wrong. In their defense, however, it is very hard to predict discontinuity. My Sovietologist mentors identified tensions and vulnerabilities in the Soviet system, but in the early 1980s, nobody in the mainstream or the “establishment” predicted imminent collapse. The consensus was that the Soviet Union would somehow “muddle through.”
At the risk of making a similar mistake, I think that for the next 10 years, a fairly stable scenario that ends in a relatively positive place is the most likely outcome. In support of this conclusion is the fact that most Russian people desire a future that is far more stable and predictable than the last 20 years they have experienced. As Putin told us nearly eight years ago in the “Millennium Statement,” which spelled out his vision of where the country should be headed, Russia has had more than enough revolutions.

Andrew C. Kuchins is director and senior fellow of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

TITLE: Cutting the Jibberish in the Cabinet
AUTHOR: By Michael Bohm
TEXT: <i>Áîäÿãà: sponge; (sl.) empty chatter, jibberish, BS</i>

A couple of years ago during a Cabinet meeting, President Vladimir Putin asked several ministers to explain why health care reforms were going so slowly. The ministers clearly had nothing concrete that they could deliver to the president and tried to óâèëèâàòü (weasel their way out) with various îòãîâîðêè (excuses) and other useless áîëòîâíÿ (chatter). They tried to ïóäðèòü ìîçãè (to fool; literally, to powder his brain) by talking up a storm, but Putin saw right through it. The president was not happy at all with the ãîâîðèëüíÿ (talking shop), and in the middle of the Cabinet meeting, Putin scolded his ministers with the phrase “Çàêàí÷èâàéòå ýòó áîäÿãó!” (“Cut the BS!”)
The literal meaning of áîäÿãà is a freshwater sponge from which an alcohol-based medicinal solvent is manufactured. The áîäÿãà solvent was popular in the Soviet period to diminish the swelling if you fell or banged into something. Traditionally, after a ïüÿíêà (drinking bout) and subsequent ìîðäîáîé (fight involving a sock to the ìîðäà, a derogatory word for face) with one’s drinking buddies, áîäÿãà was a convenient way to cover up the resulting bumps and bruises. This solvent was particularly useful for women if they received a ôîíàðü ïîä ãëàçîì (a shiner) from their husbands, who after a burst of passion — and a few drinks — decided to put into practice the centuries-old Russian saying: Áü¸ò, çíà÷èò ëþáèò (If a husband beats his wife, it means he loves her.) Thanks to a timely application of áîäÿãà, women were able to go to work the next day with a more or less respectable appearance. As Russian men are beginning to appreciate the concept of women’s rights, this expression is slowly but surely losing its direct relevance.
Since the áîäÿãà solvent contained alcohol and was sold for kopeks in every Soviet pharmacy, it was also a favorite cheap standby for áîäÿæíèêè and àëêàøè (inveterate drunkards). This is why áîäÿãà is also used to describe any low-quality alcohol, such as ñàìîãîí (moonshine) or “ïàë¸íûé” (tampered, fake; literally, scorched) alcohol that causes an inordinately high number of poisonings and deaths each year.
Instead of saying “Çàêàí÷èâàéòå ýòó áîäÿãó!” Putin could have easily chosen from a dozen expressions that also mean “Cut the BS!” Some of my favorites include:
• Õâàòèò òîëî÷ü âîäó â ñòóïå! (literally, Enough of pounding water in a mortar!)
• Õâàòèò ïåðåëèâàòü èç ïóñòîãî â ïîðîæíåå! (literally, Stop pouring [empty words] from one empty glass into another!)
• Or the slangy Ñëèâàéòå âîäó! (literally, Pour off some of your water! Âîäà in this case means empty or filler words.)
To be sure, most Russians adore Putin’s ability to express himself ïî íàøåìó (like the common person speaks). But there are some, however, who criticize Putin’s use of colloquialisms in official settings on the grounds that it is not fit for a president of a great power. In my opinion, these linguistic purists are ÷èñòîïëþè (overly fastidious people). Putin’s Russian is far from the “ñèâîëàïûé” (crude, clumsy; literally, having dirty paws) style that often distinguished Yeltsin’s or Khrushchev’s language, and he is much more colorful than the êàç¸ííûé (stiff and overly bureaucratic) style of Brezhnev, who was infamous for always speaking ïî áóìàæêå (strictly by reading prepared notes).
In contrast to other Russian and Soviet leaders, Putin’s language is refined and educated. At the same time, the president is able to artfully adorn his speech with colloquial phrases, and he is able to pull this off so nicely because he reverts to slang in an official capacity only on relatively rare occasions — about a dozen times over the past eight years. Thus, the key to Putin’s linguistic mastery can be found in the principle: ðåäêî, íî ìåòêî! (rarely, but right on target!)

Michael Bohm is the opinion page editor of The Moscow Times. Michele Berdy will return to this spot in January.

TITLE: ICC Drops Umpire, India Set to Play On
AUTHOR: By Julian Linden
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — India’s troubled tour of Australia is expected to proceed as planned after the International Cricket Council (ICC) bowed to pressure on Tuesday and sacked umpire Steve Bucknor.
The ICC caved in to India’s demands to axe Bucknor from next week’s third test in Perth as well as appointing match referee Ranjan Madugalle as a mediator to resolve the bitter dispute between the teams following last week’s ill-tempered match in Sydney.
The Indian cricket board (BCCI) immediately welcomed the moves and said it was likely the tour would resume after it was suspended on Monday.
“Definitely I’m happy,” BCCI president Sharad Pawar told reporters in New Delhi.
“Particularly I’m grateful to the Australian board for taking a very positive approach in the matter.”
The BCCI had told their players to remain in Sydney rather than travel to Canberra for their next practice game, until Harbhajan Singh’s appeal against a three-match suspension was heard.
Harbhajan was banned for calling Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds a “monkey” but has denied the charges and appealed against the ruling.
ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed confirmed that Harbhajan would be allowed to resume playing until the case was decided but there was no guarantee it would be heard before the third test starts in Perth next Wednesday.
However, a separate case into allegations of abusive language by Australian all-rounder Brad Hogg would be heard before the next match started, the ICC said.
Speed is hopeful the game will go ahead as planned after the ICC appointed New Zealand umpire Billy Bowden to officiate alongside Pakistan’s Asad Rauf.
India wanted Bucknor sacked as punishment for a series of blunders the 61-year-old West Indian made in the Sydney test that contributed to their defeat.
Speed said the ICC did not normally allow member nations to interfere with the umpires but the change was necessary to ensure the tour continued.
“Steve accepts that his presence was a problem and in the best interests of the game he accepted the decision,” Speed said.
“It is an extraordinary set of circumstances and we want to take some of the tension out of the situation.”
Speed said Madugalle would fly to Perth to speak to Australia captain Ricky Ponting and Indian skipper Anil Kumble before the match.
Relations between the two teams have hit rock bottom since last week’s drama-charged match in Sydney which ended with Kumble accusing the Australians of breaching the spirit of cricket.
“We are bringing Ranjan in as a facilitator in an effort to prevent any ill-feeling that may have been present at the Sydney test from rolling over to Perth,” Speed said.
“I believe the captains need to sit with Rajan Madugalle and listen to what he has to say and express to him what their problems are, resolve those issues and move forward.”
Australia lead the four-match series 2-0 after wins in Melbourne and Sydney.

TITLE: Bush to Push For Peace on Mideast Trip
AUTHOR: By Amy Teibel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — President Bush heads to Israel and the West Bank this week, hoping his first visit as U.S. leader will open the throttle on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. 
But in the six weeks since Bush declared at an international gathering in Annapolis, Maryland, that “the time is right” to make peace, two perennial obstacles to Mideast peacemaking have already reared up: Israeli settlements and violence.
Even before formal talks began on Dec. 12, Israel announced plans to build homes in areas claimed by the Palestinians. Two Israeli hikers were killed later by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, and Israeli attacks have killed dozens of militants in the Gaza Strip in response to ongoing rocket fire. Israeli troops also kept the West Bank militant hotbed of Nablus under siege for several days.
Bush’s three-day visit, which begins Wednesday, is part of his stepped-up effort to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement before he leaves office in January 2009.
“When an American president comes and tries to encourage the sides to overcome the obstacles and try to solve them ... that always helps the Palestinians and helps us move forward with the process,” Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said recently.
In an interview broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV on Sunday, Bush said he’s a known quantity, while his successor might not agree with his approach. Still, he did not predict a full peace accord before he leaves office.
“There’ll be an agreement on what a state would look like, in my judgment,” he said. “I am not going to try to force the issue because of my own timetable, but I do believe that Prime Minister (Ehud) Olmert and President (Mahmoud) Abbas do want to get this done.”
During the trip, Bush is to meet with Olmert and other top Israeli officials in Jerusalem, and with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Bush also is expected to visit Christian holy sites and Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.
Al-Qaida’s American spokesman called on the terror network’s fighters to greet Bush with “bombs and booby-trapped vehicles,” according to a video posted Sunday.
In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush said he would encourage Israelis and Palestinians to make “tough decisions on complex questions” and pronounced himself “optimistic about the prospects.” But Bush aides indicated they didn’t expect any major breakthroughs.
“Just his going there is going to advance the prospects,” said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. “We’re not looking for headline announcements.”
What have been making headlines are the deadly clashes and tussles over Israeli construction in disputed territory.
Palestinian officials said they would press Bush to support their demand for a total Israeli construction freeze in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War, as part of their future state. They have complained bitterly about plans to build new housing for Israelis there.
The standoff has sidetracked negotiating teams from tackling the core issues of their conflict — final borders between Israel and a future Palestine, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem, and a solution for Palestinian refugees.
Although the Palestinians have agreed to get on with the talks, they will focus on Israeli settlements during the Bush visit, said Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian official.
Hoping to defuse tensions, Olmert has said Israel will not build any new settlements, and he ordered Cabinet ministers to seek his approval before authorizing new West Bank construction. He did not halt projects in progress, however, and his order did not extend to east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed shortly after capturing it.
But Olmert did take the extraordinary step of acknowledging that West Bank construction was a breach of the “road map” — the U.S.-backed peace plan that is the foundation for the newly resumed talks.
“There is a certain contradiction in this between what we’re actually seeing and what we ourselves promised,” Olmert told The Jerusalem Post daily. 
The road map, first introduced in June 2003, requires Israel to halt all settlement construction and the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups. 
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians said they expected any diplomatic breakthroughs from the visit. Instead, they hope to get high-power backing for their often conflicting claims. 
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians expect Bush to reiterate his commitment to ending the Israeli occupation, to call for a total freeze on settlement activity, and to identify Jerusalem as the capital of two states. 
What’s more, he said, “We expect him to say if Israel and the Palestinians reach a treaty, the world will stand shoulder to shoulder with them to implement it.” 
Olmert has warned repeatedly that he wouldn’t implement any treaty until the Palestinians reined in militants, including armed groups in Gaza that fire rockets and mortars at Israel each day. 
Abbas controls only the West Bank, after losing Gaza in June to the militant Islamic Hamas.

TITLE: Slovenia Backs Fast Track EU Role For Serbia
AUTHOR: By William Schomberg
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — New European Union President Slovenia said on Tuesday it aimed to sign an accord with Serbia that is a first step towards EU membership soon, possibly by the end of this month. 
But EU enlargement chief Olli Rehn insisted that Belgrade must first meet a condition of full cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal on the former Yugoslavia.
“I am one of those who believe the SAA should be signed as soon as possible, possibly by the end of this month, but some of our colleagues have to be persuaded this is a good idea,” Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel told reporters.
Signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement has been held up by Belgrade’s failure to arrest and transfer Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic to a U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague on genocide charges.
The decision requires unanimous agreement of the 27 EU member states and Rupel acknowledged some capitals had problems.
However, there is growing pressure in the EU to take the key step with Belgrade to help pro-European reformist President Boris Tadic.
Tadic is seeking re-election in a vote scheduled for Jan. 20  with a second round expected on Feb. 3.
Former chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, whose term of office ended last month, repeatedly urged the EU against signing the SAA before Mladic was captured, saying that was the strongest leverage to make Serbia comply.
Rehn said full cooperation with the Hague tribunal “has been, and this is still and will be the essential condition for the signature of the SAA agreement with Serbia.”
However, Rupel said it was the EU that would have the final say on what constituted full cooperation with the tribunal.

TITLE: Hingis Banned For Cocaine Abuse
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Former world number one Martina Hingis, who retired from tennis in November after testing positive for cocaine, was banned for two years on Friday after an independent tribunal confirmed the doping offence.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) said in a statement that the 27-year-old Swiss would also forfeit the ranking points resulting from last year’s Wimbledon championships and $129,481 in prize money.
Hingis, a five-time grand slam champion, has denied taking cocaine but said in November she had “no desire to spend the next several years of my life reduced to fighting against the doping officials.”
The ITF statement said the anti-doping tribunal had ruled after a two-day hearing last month that samples produced by Hingis at Wimbledon last June had tested positive for a metabolite of cocaine.
It rejected the suggestion made on behalf of the player that there were doubts about the identity or integrity of the sample attributed to her.
“The Tribunal also rejected Ms Hingis’ plea of No (or No Significant) Fault or Negligence, on the basis that no mitigation was possible as it had not been shown how the cocaine entered her system,” it added.
Larry Scott, chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), said in a separate statement: “We are saddened by this news as Martina has meant so much to fans the world over and made many positive contributions to the sport.”
He added, however, that the WTA Tour fully supported the tribunal.
“We support and will enforce the ruling of this independent tribunal under the Tennis Anti-Doping Program,” he said.

TITLE: Capello Gets On With It
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Fabio Capello was at his desk Monday on his first day of work as England’s soccer coach, and Sepp Blatter already was upset.
Capello wasn’t griping about the crowded international calendar or complaining to the FIFA president about clubs exerting too much influence on national teams. Blatter’s problem was far more fundamental: Capello wasn’t English.
“I would say it is a little surprising that the motherland of football has ignored a sacrosanct law or belief that the national team manager should be from the same country as the players,” Blatter told the BBC. “I have never seen Italy, Germany, Brazil or Argentina with a coach from another country. In fact, most of the best teams have a coach from their own country.”
While Blatter is correct so far as those four nations are concerned, he is wrong about others.
Veteran German coach Otto Rehhagel played a major role in Greece’s surprise triumph at the 2004 European Championship. In the final, it beat a Portugal team guided by a Brazilian, Luiz Felipe Scolari.
Dutch coach Guus Hiddink led South Korea to the semifinals of the 2002 World Cup and managers from France, Germany and the Netherlands have been behind the emergence of several African teams at Blatter’s biggest competition.
He should also look at the achievements of Serbian coach Bora Milutinovic. He is the only person to have coached five different teams at the World Cup — Mexico, Costa Rico, United States, Nigeria and China.
On that basis, Blatter has no real reason to bleat that England has appointed another foreign coach six years after taking on a Swede, Sven-Goran Eriksson.
A procession of homegrown coaches failed to bring success to the team since Alf Ramsey’s World Cup triumph in 1966. The latest, Steve McClaren, was fired when England lost to Croatia 3-2 at Wembley and failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
That opened the door for Capello. The Football Association looked at the other Englishmen available and decided they weren’t capable of such a big job.
The man who led AC Milan, AS Roma, Juventus and Real Madrid to top finishes in their domestic league championships is brushing up his limited command of English and started work ahead of schedule by watching the weekend’s FA Cup games.
“It is a huge honor for me to today begin my work as England manager,” Capello told the FA Web site Monday. “I have wanted this job for a long time. I have had the privilege of managing some of the most successful clubs in the world, but the England job is as big as any.
“I have always followed English football closely and admired the passion and intensity of both the games and the crowds.”

TITLE: Suharto’s Health Worsens
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JAKARTA, Indonesia — Former Indonesian dictator Suharto’s health deteriorated Tuesday, with signs of internal bleeding, fluid building up in his lungs and heart complications, doctors said.
Suharto, 86, whose regime was widely regarded as one of most corrupt and brutal of the 20th century, was suffering from anemia, a dangerously low heart rate and swollen internal organs when he was admitted to Pertamina Hospital in critical condition Friday. He initially responded well to a blood transfusion and dialysis, but his condition worsened Tuesday.
“We are looking for the cause of the bleeding,” said Subiandono, the chief presidential doctor, noting that traces of blood had been found in his urine and feces. Excess liquid in Suharto’s lungs could lead to respiratory problems, and there has also been a drop in his red cell blood count, Subiandono added.
Suharto, who was ousted amid massive student protests and nationwide riots at the height of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, has been accused of overseeing a purge of more than a half million left-wing opponents soon after seizing power in a 1965 coup. Hundreds of thousands more were killed or imprisoned in the decades that followed — crimes for which no one has ever been punished.
Suharto has also been accused of squandering billions of dollars in state assets while in power — an allegation he has repeatedly dismissed as “empty talk.”
The former strongman has received a steady stream of visits by high-profile officials in recent days, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, Cabinet ministers and Muslim clerics, a sign of his continuing influence over the ruling elite.
Some have prayed for his rapid recovery, while others asked that multimillion dollar embezzlement charges be dropped. Years of poor health, including brain damage and some speech loss, have so far kept him from court.
“For the time being, he can receive no more visitors,” Subiandono said. “He will need to remain in intensive care so he can be closely monitored.”
Doctors said earlier that Suharto would need a second pacemaker, he suffered low-level cardiac failure after muscles in one section of his heart stopped working, but that the procedure could not be performed until his condition stabilized.

TITLE: U.S. Says Kenyan Poll Was Rigged
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth A. Kennedy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya — Under U.S. pressure, Kenya’s president and his chief rival agreed to talks and made other concessions to end their deadly election dispute. The opposition, meanwhile, claimed violence, much of it fueled by tribal rivalries, has killed up to 1,000 people, but the government put the toll at nearly 500.
The top American envoy to Africa said the vote count at the heart of the dispute was tampered with but that both sides could have been involved. The Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power for another five-year term. Fiery opponent Raila Odinga came in a close second.
“Yes, there was rigging,” the U.S. envoy, Jendayi Frazer, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday in Nairobi, where she has been meeting with Kibaki and Odinga for the past three days.
“I mean there were problems with the vote counting process.” She added: “Both the parties could have rigged.” She said she did not want to blame either Kibaki or Odinga.
Kenya’s electoral commission chairman Samuel Kivuiti has himself said he is not sure Kibaki won, though the chairman officially declared Kibaki the winner in the closest presidential election in Kenya’s history.
Both sides softened their tones amid the U.S. intervention. Kenya is crucial to the war on terrorism, having turned over dozens of people to the U.S. and Ethiopia as suspected terrorists. It also allows American forces to operate from Kenyan bases and conducts joint exercises with U.S. troops in the region.
The U.S. also is a major donor to Kenya, long seen as a stable democracy in a region that includes war-ravaged Somalia and Sudan. Aid amounts to roughly $1 billion a year, said embassy spokesman T.J. Dowling.
Frazer said the violence “hasn’t shaken our confidence in Kenya as a regional hub.”
Three former African heads of state also arrived in Nairobi. Mozambique’s Joachim Chissano said they would tour troubled slum areas Tuesday but would not say whether he, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania intended to try to mediate.
“It’s like seeing a neighbor’s house on fire,” Chissano said. “We are shocked by the events.”
The violence has marked some of the darkest times since Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1963, with much of the fighting degenerating into riots pitting other tribes against Kibaki’s Kikuyu, long dominant in politics and the economy.
An official in neighboring Uganda said 30 fleeing Kenyans were thrown into the border river by Kenyan attackers, and were presumed drowned. Two Ugandan truck drivers carrying the group said they were stopped Saturday at a roadblock mounted by vigilantes who identified the refugees as Kikuyus and threw them into the deep, swift-flowing Kipkaren River, said Himbaza Hashaka, a Ugandan border official. The drivers said none survived, Hashaka said.
A statement Monday from the Ministry of Special Programs put the death toll at 486 with some 255,000 people displaced from their homes. The toll, which did not include the drownings at the border, was compiled by a special committee of humanitarian services set up by the government which extensively toured areas most affected by riots.
But Odinga’s party said nearly 1,000 people had died, saying its figure came from supporters who had called in from all over the country.

TITLE: Chicago Readies Itself For 2016 Olympic Bid, Wins Bush’s Backing
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO, Illinois — As Chicago vies for a chance to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, it can count one thing in its favor: George W. Bush won’t be president when the International Olympic Committee picks the winning city.
“If George Bush were eligible to win a third term, no chance with respect to the bid,” sports economist Allen Sanderson said, citing American foreign policy that isn’t favorable around the world.
But Chicago officials say they aren’t worried an endorsement from an unpopular leader might hurt the city’s chances.
“I don’t think it’s a factor,” businessman Patrick Ryan said Monday after meeting with Bush, who enthusiastically, and publicly, supported the city’s bid.
The Bush administration’s unpopularity outside the United States didn’t help New York when it pursued the 2012 Summer Games. Those games were eventually awarded to London, which got a big boost when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair spent two days lobbying IOC members in person before the decisive vote.
During Monday’s meeting with Olympic organizers in Chicago, Bush learned about some of the details in the city’s bid. Chicago organizers must present a more detailed explanation of their bid to the IOC by next Monday.
“You got a good bid,” Bush told an audience. “The United States of America stands squarely behind Chicago’s bid.”
Along with Ryan, leader of Chicago 2016, Bush met with Mayor Richard Daley, city organizers and U.S. Olympic Committee members. His visit also included a speech on the economy at a downtown civic club and a visit to an elementary school.
While Ryan downplayed any impact on the city’s bid by an unpopular president both here and abroad, he has said previously that the international status of the U.S. government and its policies “will always be a factor.”
“We’ll have a change of administration. Even if people are critical of the U.S. government administration and its policies, I believe Americans are respected and well-liked as a people. I don’t get any anti-Americanism,” Ryan said during a visit to China in April for a gathering of international sports industry leaders.
USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said what matters to IOC members is a government’s support of its nation’s Olympic bid, such as providing financial support for transportation and security at the games. For example, he said the federal government provided a critical level of security for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.
“Support from the federal government is very important,” Seibel said. “We appreciate the president taking the time to learn more about the bid.”

TITLE: Liverpool Buy Up Skrtel For $13M
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Zenit St Petersburg’s Slovakian defender Martin Skrtel is set to be sold to Liverpool for $13 million, the BBC reported Tuesday, as Liverpool coach Rafael Benitez takes advantage of the January transfer window.
The 23-year-old, capped 15 times by his country, reportedly arrived in Liverpool on Sunday for medical tests and is completing contractual arrangements.
Skrtel, who joined Zenit in 2004 and has made more than 100 appearances in the Russian league, will be the most expensive defender in Liverpool's history.
ITV.com reported that Liverpool’s chief executive Rick Parry was in Russia last weekend concluding negotiations for Skrtel, who was last in Liverpool in early December to play for Zenit against Everton in the UEFA Cup.

TITLE: Malaysia Bans Workers From India After Unrest
AUTHOR: By Eileen Ng
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia, which relies heavily on foreigners for menial work, has frozen the recruitment of workers from India, an official said Tuesday, in a move apparently linked to unrest among the country’s ethnic Indian citizens. 
The decision, reportedly made by the Cabinet on Dec. 18, became public the day India’s Defense Minister A.K. Antony ended a three-day visit, which both sides hailed as a boost to rapidly growing bilateral relations, including military links. Antony was not informed of the decision during his talks with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and other senior officials.
About 140,000 Indian migrants work in Malaysia, constituting the third largest group of foreign workers. Most take low-paying jobs as waiters, barbers and gardeners. However, some hold top professional posts in banks and information technology industries.
About 8 percent of the country’s population is ethnic Indian, some of whose families have lived in Malaysia for at least two generations.
Malaysia had barred employers from recruiting any more Bangladeshi workers in October following problems sparked by labor agents who leave the migrants stranded on arrival. There are some 200,000 Bangladeshi workers now in Malaysia.
An official from the Home Ministry confirmed the latest decision — which has not been officially announced — when reporters called for comment on a statement by a religious group that Indian temple workers were being denied permission to work in Malaysia.
The Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism said it was shocked by the policy change and urged the government to reconsider its decision, warning this was a sensitive issue to non-Muslims in the country.
An official at the Indian Embassy said the mission is in touch with the “authorities concerned on the reported circular.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing protocol, did not elaborate.
The Home Ministry official said Indian workers who are already in the country will be allowed to stay until their permits expire, but they will not be renewed.
He said the ban is related to recent unrest among the country’s minority ethnic Indians, who are demanding racial equality in the Muslim majority country. Another ministry official also confirmed the ban order. Both spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.
In November, about 20,000 ethnic Indians, most of whom are Hindus, demonstrated on the streets, complaining of discrimination, in a rare and open challenge to the government. They say an affirmative action program that favors the majority Malay Muslims denies them equal access to jobs and education. The Indians also say their religious rights are being trampled by Islamic officials.
Subsequently, the government arrested the top five leaders of the group that organized the protest, the Hindu Rights Action Force. They are currently being held under a law that allows indefinite detention without trial.
Malays form about 60 percent of Malaysia’s 27 million people. Ethnic Chinese account for a quarter.
One of the Home Ministry officials said three categories of Hindu temple workers — priests, sculptors and musicians — were specifically mentioned in the order because some of them were believed to have fanned emotional anger in the local Indian community through their sermons and support.
The order did not specify whether other categories of workers, like professionals, would be included, but it is believed to cover all workers from India, the two officials said.
Malaysia is one of Southeast Asia’s top labor markets, with 2.2 million registered migrant workers out of its 11 million work force. Hundreds of thousands more work illegally in the country.

TITLE: Obama’s Star Rises in U.S. Poll
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Only five days after the Iowa caucuses opened the presidential race, New Hampshire took its turn Tuesday shaping an electric Democratic contest and a mystifying Republican one. Bidding for victory were a surging Barack Obama and a field full of would-be “comeback kids.”
In a sign of these fast-moving times, the nation’s first primary offered Obama a chance to become the clear favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination while John McCain and Mitt Romney competed head to head in a Republican race that could sink the aspirations of one of them.
Paradoxically, the struggle for primacy in the Democratic and Republican campaigns was, to an outsized degree, in the hands of independents who make up a large share of the voters here and by definition are not loyal to either party.
That was an opportunity for McCain, a GOP iconoclast who won New Hampshire against establishment pick George W. Bush in 2000, and for Obama, pressing hard to build a constituency broader than his party. But it also was a complication because they were dipping into the same nonaligned pool.
Even so, polls indicated Obama had pulled ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton as she fought to write a “comeback kid” story to rival that of her husband, Bill, in 1992. The difference: His second-place finish in New Hampshire sparked his revival. As the presumptive national favorite until she finished third in Iowa, Hillary Clinton needed a win to get her equilibrium back.
In a northern New Hampshire hamlet tradition, voters of Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location cast the first 46 ballots of the primary season, half for Democrats and half for Republicans, at midnight, hours before the 6 a.m. local time opening of polling stations statewide. Polls were due to close at 8 p.m.
Combined results from the two spots showed Obama with 16 votes, Clinton 3, John Edwards 3 and Bill Richardson 1. On the Republican side, McCain received 10 votes, Mike Huckabee 5, Ron Paul 4, Romney 3 and Rudy Giuliani 1.
Campaigns spared no effort to get out the vote. Clinton’ campaign was mobilizing more than 6,000 volunteers to knock on doors and nearly 300 drivers. Romney said his state headquarters, his “machine shop,” had made 100,000 phone calls.
About 45 percent of the state’s 828,000 registered voters were unaffiliated, more than double the percentage in Iowa, and they can vote in either party primary.
Oddly, it was the 71-year-old McCain who seemed to gather more energy as a brutal day of campaigning unfolded Monday. Obama, ignoring medical advice to rest his ragged voice, flubbed a line to comical effect (“The time for come has change!”) while Clinton let her emotions nearly spill over.
Conceding the rhetorical advantage to the first-term Illinois senator, the second-term New York senator and former first lady said her opponent was untested in times that require her firm grasp of policy. “What is the substance here?” she demanded. “You know, where is the reality?”
Aides have urged her to show more passion and emotion, and, coincidentally or not, she did so by nearly breaking down during a restaurant appearance. Eyes welling up and voice quavering, she declared the campaign “is very personal for me. It’s not just political.”
At Jack’s coffee shop in New London, which has separate bathrooms for men, women and politicians, Obama said he didn’t see the video of his opponent tearing up. “I know that this process is a grind, so that’s not something I would care to comment on,” he said.
Clinton later told Fox News Channel, “We have gone through years of male political figures who have done everything from cry to scream,” and people know she is cool under fire. “But I also want them to know I’m a real person.”
McCain fed off his crowd’s energy — flat in the morning, buzzing and boisterous as the day wore on. The Arizona senator’s seven-rally bus tour was called “Mac is Back,” meaning he was back looking for victory in the state that supported him eight years ago, and his campaign was back from the near-dead.
“No, no, no,” he said when AP asked if long days like these wear him out. “When you see that kind of crowd, it pumps you up. ... It’s a certain excitement that will never happen again in my life.”
Lest anyone take that to mean this was his swan song, he added: “If I’m a president running for re-election, it wouldn’t be the same as this.”
Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, hoped Clinton would be sufficiently weakened Tuesday to give him an opening and, to that end, he aimed his barbs at her instead of the front-runner. He again portrayed her as an agent of the status quo.
“The candidate, Democrat or Republican, who has taken the most money from drug companies is not a Republican,” he told a crowd in Lakeport. “It’s a Democrat, and she’s in this race.”
Romney rallied at a packed school hall in Bedford and sought advantage by predicting a repeat Obama blowout on the Democratic side.
The former Massachusetts governor cast himself as the Republican best able to take on Obama, tying the Illinois senator to the sort of European socialism he once said Clinton embodied.
“He’ll be talking about taking it in a sharp left turn, following in the path of the Europe of old with big brother and big government and big taxing and that won’t sell,” Romney said. “And I’ll be talking about following in the footsteps that Ronald Reagan did.”
McCain held a statistically insignificant lead over Romney in late polls. Obama had a clear advantage over Clinton in surveys and Edwards trailed both, with Richardson, the New Mexico governor, in the rear.
Iowa GOP winner Huckabee campaigned vigorously in New Hampshire in the final days but without expectations of victory. He, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and one-time national poll leader Giuliani looked to later contests.

TITLE: Sarkozy Says Love Affair is Serious
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy says his relationship with model-turned-singer Carla Bruni is serious, and he suggested Tuesday that wedding plans are in the works.
“There is a strong chance that you will learn about it after it’s already done,” he said at a wide-ranging news conference.
The Journal du Dimanche newspaper reported this weekend that a wedding is expected for early February, prompting Sarkozy to joke: “It isn’t the [newspaper] that will set the date.”
Sarkozy’s romance with Bruni reportedly started shortly after the French leader and his second wife, Cecilia Sarkozy, divorced three months ago.
Sarkozy and Bruni, an Italian-born former model with a successful folk music career, have since been photographed together in recent weeks in locations from Disneyland Paris to the pyramids in Egypt, often entwined arm-in-arm, looking happy.
Sarkozy said he wanted to break with a long tradition of French leaders keeping their love lives secret, with the media’s tacit accord. He alluded to late former French President Francois Mitterrand, who kept the existence of a mistress and illegitimate daughter a secret for most of his presidency.

TITLE: Beijing ’08 Volunteers Step Forward
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — Beijing organizers have chosen more than 80 percent of the 100,000 volunteers required for this year’s Olympics and Paralympics from the biggest candidate pool in Games history, officials said on Tuesday.
More than 800,000 applied to be volunteers for the Games while another 920,000 applicants are chasing 400,000 positions as “city volunteers,” according to Liu Jian, head of the Volunteer department at the Beijing organizing committee (BOCOG).
“Mencius says a just cause enjoys abundant support,” Liu told reporters, quoting an ancient Chinese philosopher. “We should sincerely thank those people who are voluntarily offering help.”
An army of volunteers has become a standard feature of the Olympics over the past few decades, helping to keep the cost of the Games down by working without pay and not charging travel and accommodation expenses.
The 80,000 recruited volunteers, nearly half of whom are university students in Beijing, had passed exams, interviews and background checks, received general training and been tried out during a series of test events, Liu said.
More than 50,000 applications came from outside mainland China but Liu would not say how many overseas volunteers would be recruited.
“If a volunteer knows nothing about Beijing we would have to let another volunteer work for him, which is a waste of human resources,” said Liu, who also heads Beijing’s Communist Youth League.
Liu said all the city’s people could demonstrate their enthusiasm for the Olympics through social and community service.
“The youngest ‘volunteer’ I’ve ever seen was a two-year-old child picking up leaves with the help of his mother,” said Liu.