SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1346 (10), Friday, February 8, 2008
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TITLE: OSCE To Boycott Election
AUTHOR: By Veronika Oleksyn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria — An international election monitoring organization said Thursday that it will not observe Russia’s presidential election next month because of the “severe restrictions” imposed by the Kremlin.
The head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s election monitoring arm said in a statement that the timeframe set by Russian authorities had already prevented monitors from observing many important parts of the election process.
“An election is more than what happens on election day,” said Christian Strohal, director of OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. The OSCE had accepted the limited number of its monitors — 70 — invited to observe the March 2 election. But the Kremlin and the organization still clashed on when to allow the monitors in.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow can’t accept the organization’s demands to let them in the country by Feb. 15. The Kremlin had proposed Feb. 20.
“Self-respecting countries don’t accept ultimatums,” Lavrov said.
Russia’s Central Election Commission on Wednesday denied visas to members of the monitoring group’s advance team, which had planned to arrive in Russia this week, Strohal said.
Contrary to standard practice, the Kremlin did not accept a planning mission scheduled for December to determine the scope of an observation mission, the statement said.
“While Russia eventually invited ODIHR on Jan. 28, it set severe restrictions on the composition and duration of the mission, also contrary to previous Russian elections observed,” Strohal said.
Lavrov made it clear that Russia wants observers to monitor elections but not campaigns.
“The mandate of [ODIHR] is observing elections, not observing the situation in a country over a period of a month or two [before elections],” he said.
In a separate statement, the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly said it had notified the chairman of the State Duma  that it was unable to accept an invitation to monitor the elections.

TITLE: Palace Square Skating Rink Ruled ‘Illegal’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Kuibyshevsky District Court on Tuesday upheld an appeal filed by a local business association and a pressure group against the installment of a temporary ice rink on Palace Square.
The construction was declared illegal, and the court ordered the rink’s operations to be halted and the rink to be dismantled. The rink — the property of the Bosconeva private enterprise — had been slated to operate until March 15.
The driving force behind the case was Living City, an informal movement of local residents united by the idea of preserving St. Petersburg’s historic center in its integrity, and the St. Petersburg Association of Small and Medium Business Entrepreneurs.
The verdict obliged City Hall’s Committee for the Preservation and Protection of Historical Monuments and the Russian Federal Mass Communication and Cultural Heritage Inspectorate to “take all necessary measures to remove the rink which is in the way of public access to one of the richest collections of cultural valuables in Russia.”
The ruling referred, in particular, to the world-renowned State Hermitage Museum, as well as to the famous Alexander Column, the focal point of Palace Square. The plaintiffs argued that the ice rink infringes public access to the monuments, despite the fact that its construction had been approved by City Hall’s Architecture and Construction Committee and the Committee for the Preservation and Protection of Historical Monuments.
Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky has been one of the most outspoken critics of the project since the idea was first voiced in late 2007.
“The opening of the venue on Palace Square is a sad event indeed as it proves yet again how the term ‘cultural capital’ no longer applies to the city of St. Petersburg,” Piotrovsky has said. 
The 5,000 square-meter rink was the brainchild of Moscow businessman Mikhail Kusnirovich, head of luxury retailer Bosco di Ciliegi, who first set up an ice rink on Moscow’s Red Square in 2006. The St. Petersburg rink is one-and-a-half times bigger than the Red Square facility.
Yulia Minutina, an activist with Living City, which threw its weight behind the case, spoke with amazement and enthusiasm about the verdict.
“I must admit we were extremely surprised by the court ruling in our favor,” Minutina said. “Our hopes had been low considering the staggering scale of violations of rules regulating construction in the historical center. When a big investor is involved, City Hall inks the deal without thinking twice.”
The rink welcomed its first skaters on Dec. 1. The opening ceremony was held with pomp, with Governor Valentina Matviyenko attending the event and even wearing skates herself.
The rink is used by approximately 5,000 people every day, and has become popular with families and young people. As of Thursday the ice rink was still open and is likely to remain so until the court verdict is officially handed down to the operators. 
In a controversial statement on Wednesday, Russia’s Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov branded the Palace Square rink a “manifestation of provincial spirit.”
“I would like to leave the judicial aspect aside and just offer my opinion as a person who was born in Leningrad and who feels very close to the city,” Sokolov told reporters at a news conference in St. Petersburg. “I feel insulted by this kind of provincialism that revealed itself in setting up a rink on the historic square. The only thing that makes it easier for me to tolerate is that the rink is a temporary construction and the ice is soon going to melt.”
Living City criticized the governor for what they called “a policy of squeezing pennies out of every single centimeter of the city.”
“When the administration stands to financially benefit, the bureaucrats easily sacrifice the city’s beauty,” Yelena Minchenok, another activist with Living City, said. “If it continues, views of historic St. Petersburg will only be found in old photographs.”

TITLE: Sporting World’s Oscars To Be Held in City, Stars to Attend
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The names of the world’s best sportsman and woman are to be announced at the ninth Laureus World Sports Awards Ceremony 2008 to be held in the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg on Feb.18.
The glamorous ceremony, the sporting world’s Oscars, is to be televised in more than 180 countries and will be attended by dozens of the world’s best sportsmen and women nominated for the awards, as well as the 43 legendary retired athletes who form the jury.
“An audience of two billion people from all around the world will watch the ceremony,” Sergei Tarasov, vice governor of St. Petersburg, said at a news conference in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Tarasov said it “was a big honor and responsibility for St. Petersburg to host such an event.”
The general director of Laureus, Guy Senan, said “it was tremendously important for Laureus to have its event in St. Petersburg.”
Among the nominees for the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year are Swiss tennis player Roger Federer, U.S. athlete Tyson Gay, Brazilian soccer player Kaka, Australian swimmer Michael Phelps, Finnish Formula 1 driver Kimi Raikkonen, and U.S. golfer Tiger Woods.
The candidates for the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year are Belgian tennis player Justine Henin, Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, Swedish heptathlete Carolina Kluft, Australian swimmer Libby Lenton, Brazilian soccer player Marta, and Mexican golfer Lorena Ochoa.
The Laureus World Team of the Year nominees include Italian soccer club AC Milan, the Australian national cricket team, the Italian car racing team Ferrari, the German national female soccer team, the Iraqi national soccer team, and the South African national rugby team.
Awards are also given out in the following categories: Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year, Laureus World Sportsman of the Year with a Disability, and Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year. 
Olympic legend Edwin Moses, Chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, is one of the 21 academy members already committed to attending the event in Russia. The jury will be joined by such sport legends as German tennis player Boris Becker, Russian pole-vaulter Sergei Bubka, Romania-born gymnast Nadia Comaneci and many others. 
Ukrainian boxer Vitaly Klichko and Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov will also attend the event. 
Laureus Award Ceremonies take place in a different city each year.

TITLE: Lavrov Slams America For ‘Imperial Thinking’
AUTHOR: By Ryan Lucas
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland — Russia’s foreign minister called U.S. plans to build a global missile defense shield an example of “imperial thinking,” and suggested in comments published Thursday that Washington was using the system to try to encircle Russia.
Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza that elements of the missile defense system “exist or will be built in Alaska, California, northeast Asia.”
“If we look at a map, it’s clear that all of it is concentrating around our borders,” he was quoted as saying. “Most likely in the near future, we are going to hear about hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of interceptors in various regions of the planet, including Europe.”
Washington wants to place 10 missile defense interceptors in Poland and a radar system in neighboring Czech Republic as part of a global system it says is necessary to protect against future attacks from Iran.
The U.S. and Poland have stressed that the system poses no threat to Russia and its vast nuclear arsenal, and is instead designed to protect the U.S. and Europe from Iran.
Lavrov brushed aside those assurances, saying “such a threat does not exist.” He said only one country in eastern Europe has strategic ballistic missiles: Russia.
“That’s why you would have to be very naive to assume that the American missile defense base in Europe is aimed against anything but Russia,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to interpret it as anything other than a manifestation of imperial thinking.”
Russia is incensed by the prospect of U.S. installations in a region that it controlled during the Cold War and has threatened to attack the bases, causing deep anxiety in Poland.
Lavrov called U.S. plans to build a missile defense base in Poland “only a trial balloon,” adding that “Russia does not fear 10 interceptors.”
“Much more dangerous for us is the trend of American infrastructure getting closer to our borders,” he told Gazeta Wyborcza. “We don’t see any justification for this step.”
“We are talking openly with the Americans about our fears. If the plan goes through, we are going to be forced to respond adequately, developing our strategic forces near our borders.”
Last week, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said during a visit to Washington that Poland had agreed in principle to hosting the base after Warsaw received assurances that the United States would help Poland strengthen its short- to medium-range air defenses.

TITLE: Politkovskaya Case Fur Clue
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The gun used to kill Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya contained fur from a dog owned by three Chechen suspects now in custody, the Tvoi Den newspaper reported Wednesday.
The finding would appear to further incriminate the Makhmudov brothers, three of 10 suspects that the Prosecutor General’s Office said it detained last year.
Prosecutors have not released any names, but several media outlets, including Tvoi Den, have published the list.
Politkovskaya, who wrote articles and books describing brutal actions of government troops in Chechnya, among other things, was gunned down in her apartment building in central Moscow in October 2006.
Colleagues at Novaya Gazeta, which is running a parallel investigation, have slammed the publication of the suspects’ identities as a deliberate attempt to sabotage it, and they viewed Wednesday’s news in a similar light.
“I’m not going to comment on any publications in that newspaper,” said Sergei Sokolov, Novaya Gazeta’s deputy editor.
The Tvoi Den report did not cite any sources for the information.
Sokolov said he expected the case to split in two when it goes to court, with one trial for those suspected of carrying out the killing and a second for the suspected mastermind.

TITLE: Deep Purple Plays For Gazprom
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Deep Purple is heading to Moscow as a farewell gift to First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the chairman of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom and a virtual lock to become the country’s next president.
Medvedev has said Deep Purple, known for hits such as “Smoke on the Water,” is his favorite band.
The rock group will perform at a show Gazprom is putting on at the Kremlin on Monday to mark the 15th anniversary of the firm’s creation, industry sources said.
Both Medvedev and President Vladimir Putin are expected at the party. The British band’s management declined to comment.
Medvedev and 70 other political figures and businessmen brought Deep Purple’s former lead singer, Joe Lynn Turner, to Moscow last year for a secret concert.
Putin has all but guaranteed Medvedev’s victory in the March 2 presidential election after publicly endorsing him.
Putin is known to enjoy patriotic Russian pop songs. It was not clear if the concert lineup would have anything to suit his tastes.
If Medvedev becomes president, he will resign as Gazprom chairman. Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov is expected to take over the job in June.
Gazprom, the country’s most valuable firm by market capitalization and one of the world’s top 10, is enjoying record profits because of high global energy prices.
Moscow is rated one of the most expensive cities in the world, and wealthy entrepreneurs spend millions annually flying in celebrities for celebrations.

TITLE: Khodorkovsky Speaks Out From Siberian Jail
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon now jailed in Russia, said in an interview published Thursday that the rule of law in his country has suffered under President Vladimir Putin and is unlikely to improve under his successor.
But Khodorkovsky, ex-owner of the now-dismantled oil giant Yukos, told the Financial Times it is “not possible” for Russia to return to the darkest days of its Soviet past because even Putin’s government understands that businesses need access to technology and the outside world to thrive.
“People can leave freely; the Internet works,” the Financial Times quoted Khodorkovsky as saying Wednesday during a break in a court hearing in Siberia on new embezzlement charges brought against him last year.
Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion — allegations widely regarded as Kremlin revenge for his political ambitions and determination to challenge Putin.
The rare interview was Khodorkovsky’s first face-to-face session with a reporter since his 2003 arrest. It was conducted in Chita, 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow.
Khodorkovsky had been forbidden to speak with reporters during his Moscow trial and no interviews have been allowed in the Chita prisons.
During the interview, Khodorkovsky argued that Putin’s regime has used the law to target political enemies, especially business owners.
He said he doubted Putin’s chosen successor as president in March elections, Dmitry Medvedev, would be able to improve the rule of law.
“It will be so difficult for him,” he was quoted as saying. “Tradition, and the state of peoples’ minds, and the lack of forces able to [support] any movement toward the rule of law — everything’s against him. But Khodorkovsky was nonetheless hopeful about the country’s future.
“That’s a question of my personality,” he said. “I can’t provide a lot of arguments for and against, but on the whole I’m optimistic.”
The former Yukos chief said he does not share the concerns of civil rights activists and opposition leaders who suggest Russia could follow China’s model of acting as an authoritarian regime that promotes free-market economics.
“I’m convinced that Russia is a European country,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s a country with democratic traditions that more than once have been broken off during its history. But nonetheless, there are traditions.”
The newspaper described Khodorkovsky as gaunt and a little jaundiced after years in prison — but defiant. He was on his ninth day of a hunger strike in support of imprisoned ex-Yukos vice president Vasily Aleksanian, his former lawyer, now ailing from AIDS-related illnesses.
The two men had worked together since shortly after Khodorkovsky acquired Yukos in a controversial privatization in 1995, and Aleksanian helped him build it into Russia’s biggest oil company.
Aleksanian had been pushing to be released from prison for AIDS treatment. On Thursday, Russian prison authorities said Aleksanian would be transferred from jail to a civilian clinic for treatment.

TITLE: U.S. Pastor Detained After Ammo Found at Airport
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A U.S. pastor is being held in a detention cell in Sheremetyevo Airport after trying to bring a box of ammunition into the country.
A court was due to consider Friday whether to charge Phillip Miles, a pastor of the Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, with smuggling, the U.S. Embassy said.
If charged and convicted, Miles faces a possible fine or prison sentence.
Miles, 57, arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport on Jan. 29 with a single box of rifle rounds in his suitcase, said Dominic Starr, a friend and fellow church member.
Miles was headed for Perm, and the bullets were a gift for a pastor there who was a hunting enthusiast, Starr said by telephone from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Airport officials accused Miles of failing to declare the ammunition as required by law and confiscated the box, Starr said. He was allowed to continue on to Perm on condition he answer further questions when he returned for a flight to the United States.
Miles arrived back at Sheremetyevo on Sunday and was detained. He is being kept in a holding cell at the airport, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.
“We can confirm that Miles is under investigation by Russian authorities on suspicion of smuggling,” the spokesman said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
Embassy officials have visited him twice since Sunday.
The spokesman refused to provide further information, citing the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
Miles could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and it was unclear which law enforcement agency had detained him. Natalya Semeikina, a Federal Customs Service spokeswoman, said Miles had not been detained by customs officers. Repeated calls to the Federal Security Service and police at Sheremetyevo Airport went unanswered Wednesday.
Starr said the bullets were among many gifts that Miles was carrying to pastors of churches in and around Perm. “We are hoping that the relationship that Miles and our church have built with Russia will see him through this,” Starr said.
The trip was Miles’ ninth consecutive annual visit to Russia and the first time he has experienced trouble with authorities, Starr said.
Christ Community Church, a nondenominational church founded in 1981 and associated with Evangel Fellowship International, lists Russia as one of its short-term missions on its web site.
Smuggling carries punishments ranging from a fine to a prison sentence, the length of which depends on the severity of the offense.
In June, a Chilean student was charged at the Voronezh airport with trying to smuggle Soviet-era medals and currency out of the country. Four months later, a court convicted the student, Roxana Contreras, of a lesser charge of illegally purchasing the medals and fined her 15,000 rubles ($585). She had faced seven years in prison.
Contreras said she had bought the items as souvenirs from a street vendor.

TITLE: Rostelecom To Cut Long-Distance Rates
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rostelecom, the country’s dominant long-distance telephone company, announced plans Wednesday to reduce charges for long-distance calls in an effort to expand its client base and stay ahead of the competition. 
The rate cuts, effective Feb. 1, could be as much as 30 percent for daytime intercity calls, although actual rates would vary from region to region, said Anton Godovikov, the company’s commercial director for long-distance services. 
Godovikov said both regular clients and occasional users of Rostelecom services would benefit from the reduced calling rates. 
“The reduction in the rate was made possible because of structural changes in the cost of international calls,” Rostelecom chief executive Konstantin Solodukhin said in a statement. 
As part of the price cuts, Rostelecom’s Moscow subsidiary said a differential price would be introduced, in which regular clients in Moscow would get as much as a 50 percent rebate when making long-distance calls from Moscow to the regions. 
Rostelecom has to reduce its rates to compete with a myriad of formidable long-distance players that have appeared in the market since it lost its monopoly status, analysts said. 
“Rostelecom now has pretty strong competitors like MTT, Golden Telecom, Transtelecom and Synterra, some of which are also considering price reductions on long-distance calls,” said Anna Kurbatova, an analyst at Aton Capital. 
A decision last year by the government to abolish interconnection fees between local and long-distance operators might have helped bring about the price reductions, Kurbatova said. 
Igor Semyonov, a telecom analyst with ING Bank, said Rostelecom and other long-distance operators would need to reduce rates anyway because of the onslaught from popular software like Skype, which enables users to make free calls.

TITLE: Russia Seeks To Build Plant
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YEREVAN — Russia said on Wednesday it will bid in a tender to build a nuclear power station in Armenia to replace an ageing Chernobyl-style plant that has provoked safety concerns.
Armenia, which imports most of its energy, has said it will close down its Soviet-built Metzamor nuclear reactor, which supplies up 40 percent of the country’s power, only when it can add new generating capacity. The government said last year it would hold a tender to build a new 1,000 megawatt reactor at the site near Yerevan, which could be ready by 2016.
“The Armenian government will hold a tender for a new atomic station,” Sergei Kiriyenko, the general director of Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear holding company, said on a visit to Yerevan.
“We will take part and we have good chances of winning,” Kiriyenko said, according to a statement from his press office.
The Metzamor plant, about 25 km outside Yerevan, was closed in 1989 after a massive earthquake killed over 25,000 people in the former Soviet republic.
Reactor Number Two was recommissioned in 1995, to relieve acute energy shortages, while unit one remains out of action and there are no plans to restart it.
The reactor at the plant is similar to those at Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of an explosion in 1986.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Binbank Reports Gain</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Binbank reported a total gain of $366 million in international financing in 2007. Out of that funding, $206 million was attracted in long-term and short-term trade financing, the bank said Tuesday in a statement.
In April last year, Binbank’s syndicated loan increased from $40 million to $52 million. The bank operates over 100 branches and offices in Russia. On January 1, 2008, assets stood at 76.9 billion rubles and capital at seven billion rubles.

<b>Currency Exchange Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Currency Exchange doubled turnover last year compared to 2006, Interfax reported Tuesday.
In 2007, turnover increased to $450 billion, with the exemption of standard contracts. Dollar turnover increased by 3.8 times and accounted for $110.6 billion, euro turnover grew by 2.9 times up to 7.45 billion euros. The turnover of Russian state bonds decreased by 32 percent to $1.77 billion, and the turnover of corporate bonds decreased by 20.5 percent to $285.5 million.

<b>Minerals Up For Sale</b>
KHABAROVSK (Reuters) — Russia plans in 2008 to sell at least two of four large minerals deposits, including the Sukhoi Log gold and Udokan copper fields and the Sakhalin-3 oil and gas field, the Natural Resources Minister said on Thursday.
Yury Trutnev, addressing a meeting at which presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev was present, also named the South Yakutia coal deposit as a potential candidate for a government sell-off this year.
“In the course of 2008 we plan to hold contests for a minimum of two of the above mentioned,” Trutnev said. 

<b>Vodka Plant For City</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Image Holding, the Ukrainian producer of Khortytsa vodka, plans to build a plant in Russia to increase its local market share, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.
The distillery in St. Petersburg will be able to make 18 million decaliters (1.5 million barrels) a year when it beings operation in 2009, the newspaper reported, citing Sergei Velichko, marketing director at Image.
The company said it plans to have 7 percent of Russia’s vodka market in three years, he added. It had less than one percent of the “sub-premium” segment of the market in the first 10 months of 2007, the paper reported.
Image competes with Nemiroff Ukranian Vodka Co., Kommersant reported. Nemiroff also plans to open a distillery in Russia, possibly this year, the newspaper said, citing Nemiroff President Alexander Glus. 

<b>Budget Funds In Banks</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may allow banks to temporarily hold funds from the federal budget starting in March to boost liquidity, the Interfax agency reported on Thursday.
The central bank and the Finance Ministry will agree on the amount of money from the budget made available to banks at weekly auctions, which will depend on the level of liquidity in the system, the Moscow-based news agency cited Deputy Central Bank Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev as saying.
Ulyukayev expects banks’ daily demand for liquidity to peak in March or April this year at about 400 billion rubles ($16 billion) a day, the agency said.

TITLE: Sistema Denies Share Bid
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — AFK Sistema, holding company for Russian billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov, denied offering to buy shares in Bank UralSib.
“Russia’s financial regulator, the Federal Financial Markets Service, said on its web site early Thursday that Moscow-based Sistema was seeking to buy shares in Bank UralSib that it doesn’t already own. The watchdog pulled the statement at about 1:50 p.m. and issued a second statement around 3 p.m. saying it would probe a “technical glitch’’ and possible price manipulation.
“The information distributed by the Federal Financial Markets Service does not reflect the real state of affairs,’’ Sistema spokesman Kirill Semenov said in an interview from Moscow on Thursday. “We are trying to find out why the Federal Financial Markets Service published such information.’’
Uralsib is not planning “any deals with either AFK Sistema or any other Russian or foreign institution,’’ said Alexander Vikhrov, the bank’s executive director, in an interview Thursday.
Sistema controls Mobile TeleSystems, the country’s biggest cellular operator. It plans to borrow about $10 billion this year to fund expansion.

TITLE: Temporary Constructions Get a Reprieve
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City Hall has amended a decree that could have eliminated a considerable number of small retail enterprises, had it been enacted in its initial wording. The decree limited the maximum size of temporary pavilions erected in the city, and stated that any premises located on municipal land that do not conform to these limits should be demolished as soon as the rent agreement for a land plot expires.
“Over 1,000 pavilions in the city do not meet the requirements defined in the city government’s decree no. 1398. It could put an end to the operation of small enterprises and reduce the quality of services for citizens,” Dmitry Bykov, deputy chairman of the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade, said Tuesday in a statement.
The decree, which was approved in October last year, limited the maximum height of temporary pavilions to four meters. A maximum area of 150 square meters was announced for shopping pavilions, a maximum of 18 square meters for kiosks, 400 square meters for catering pavilions, 300 square meters for warehouses, 150 square meters for car service centers and 18 square meters for box garages.
“According to the latest amendments to the decree, it would not apply to existing pavilions. It would only concern new premises that are being constructed at the moment,” Bykov said.
However, the local business community had criticized not only the retrospective application of the decree, but also the limits and requirements that were introduced.
“Pavilions with a height exceeding four meters are not permitted. This height restriction makes the use of popular light metal frames impossible. The only solution is heavy beams. However beams require foundations, which are prohibited in temporary pavilions,” Alexander Doronin, chairman of the St. Petersburg Union of Small Enterprises said, commenting on the decree at the 5th St. Petersburg Small Enterprises Forum.
“The four-meter height limit will eliminate small service centers and car-washes. A limit of 150 square meters on the total area renders such enterprises pointless. A four-meter tall warehouse is economically unprofitable and technically useless,” Doronin said.
Dorinin also criticized the inconsistency of the local legislature. “How can small businesses develop and trust the authorities, when every decree reverses the requirements of the previous one?” he asked.
“I agree that St. Petersburg should look like a European city. But how can entrepreneurs provide European standards, when they have to spend 30,000 rubles per square meter on construction and 15,000 rubles per square meter on interior, when they only have a short-term rental agreement and no guarantees, and they see the inconsistency of the actions of the city administration?”
Small business currently accounts for about 20 percent of retail turnover in the city. Doronin forecasted that its share would decrease over the next few years in favor of large retail chains and malls.

TITLE: Merrill: Ruble Will Rise
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Merrill Lynch & Co., the world’s biggest brokerage, advised clients to buy the Russian ruble against the dollar on speculation President Vladimir Putin’s government will let the currency strengthen to slow inflation.
The ruble will gain 6.4 percent to 23.21 rubles per U.S. dollar by the end of the first quarter, Merrill said in a research report. 
“The aggressive strengthening of the ruble is a necessary condition if the government wants to lower inflation to 9 or 10 percent,” Yulia Tsepliaeva, Merrill’s chief Russian economist, told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday.
Russia, the world’s largest energy exporter, is struggling to slow inflation in the run-up to the March 2 presidential election to succeed Putin. The inflation rate in the year through January was 12.6 percent, the highest in 30 months. Consumer prices rose 11.9 percent last year, exceeding the government’s target of 8 percent.
Russia’s inflation goal of 8.5 percent for this year is “unrealistic,” Tsepliaeva said. 
Merrill expects the ruble to rise to 20 per dollar in the third quarter of 2009, which would be a gain of 23 percent from Wednesday.

TITLE: Russians Connected to Fraud
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Societe Generale, the French banking giant hit by a $7.3 billion trading scandal, has alerted the French authorities to a case of suspected money-laundering through the bank involving two Russian businessmen, a French newspaper said Tuesday. 
The bank passed the French Finance Ministry its findings from an internal investigation last week, after it noticed suspicious transactions involving several accounts, which were being used to channel hundreds of millions of euros into real estate projects in and around Paris, Le Parisien reported. 
SocGen’s investigators found about 800 accounts held with the bank that were registered to front men or companies acting on behalf of two brothers, the paper said. 
The French authorities are currently reviewing the evidence, and will investigate whether the bank had adequate anti-fraud controls in place, the paper said. 
A spokeswoman for the French Finance Ministry confirmed Tuesday that an investigation was ongoing, but refused to provide further details, citing the confidentiality of the case. 
SocGen refused to comment on or confirm the report, citing bank policy. 
The paper did not name the two brothers in the case. It said they were of Russian nationality, lived in London, had amassed fortunes in the aluminum industry and had repeatedly rebuffed accusations of being connected to organized crime. 
Le Parisien said the two brothers had been informed of the claims, and had denied them. 
It was not immediately clear to which brothers the newspaper was referring. 
Among Russia’s most famous sibling duos are the Chyorny brothers, Lev and Mikhail, who came to prominence in the country’s aluminum industry with the Rueben brothers’ London-based TransWorld Group, and the Zhivilo brothers, who were major shareholders in the Novokuznetsk aluminum plant.

TITLE: Clinton Digs Deep to Fund Obama Fight
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton looked ahead on Wednesday to a long and bruising presidential battle, and Clinton said she loaned $5 million of her own money to the costly fight to keep pace.
Republican John McCain, still facing conservative opposition, promised to unite his party as his coast-to-coast “Super Tuesday” wins in key states put him on the verge of clinching the nomination and capping a stunning political comeback.
“I do hope that at some point we would calm down a little bit and see if there are areas that we can agree on for the good of the party,” the Arizona senator told reporters in Phoenix before a speech on Thursday to a conference of conservative activists in Washington.
Obama and Clinton battled to a draw on “Super Tuesday,” with Obama winning 13 states and Clinton eight, including the big prizes of California and New York. Their delegate tally was almost even, propelling the fight toward the next round of seven Democratic contests in the next six days.
Clinton tried to keep up with Obama’s growing fundraising prowess — he raised about $32 million in January to her less than $14 million — by loaning her campaign $5 million of her own money late last month.
“I loaned it because I believe very strongly in this campaign,” she told reporters at her headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, a state that votes next Tuesday.
“We had a great month fundraising in January, broke all records, but my opponent was able to raise more money and we intended to be competitive and we were and I think the results last night proved the wisdom of my investment,” she said.
As a show of solidarity some Clinton staff members have volunteered to go without pay, a Clinton spokesman said.
The Obama campaign urged its supporters to match Clinton’s injection of funds and had already raised some $5.6 million since the polls closed on Tuesday, according to the Obama web site.
Both candidates tried to lower expectations for the next contests as they looked toward a protracted Democratic fight. The Clinton camp said Obama was the party establishment favorite, and Obama said the same of her.
“We’ve got many more rounds to fight and you know I think that Senator Clinton remains the favorite because of the enormous familiarity people have with her and the institutional support she has,” Obama told reporters in Chicago.
“But you know we’re turning out to be a scrappy little team,” he said. “I think we are less of an underdog than we were two weeks ago.”
The Democrats will square off in Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington on Saturday, Maine on Sunday, and Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday — turf that could favor Obama.
The contests in Nebraska, Washington and Maine are caucuses, a format where he has performed well so far in the race. Caucuses are public gatherings of voters where his strong organization and grassroots backing can pay off.
Under Democratic Party rules, delegates are proportioned by results statewide and in individual congressional districts. This enables both candidates to roll up big delegate totals even in states they lose.
That increased the likelihood the hotly contested race could last well into March contests in Texas and Ohio, an April contest in Pennsylvania and perhaps all the way to the party convention in late August.
“As we go farther and farther into this, it is less and less likely that either side will be able to significantly amass a large delegate lead,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said.
Various estimates put the Democratic race for pledged delegates in an essential deadlock, with each campaign claiming a slight edge. Clinton leads among “super-delegates,” the elected officials and party insiders who can switch allegiance at will.
All three of the senators in the presidential race — Obama, Clinton and McCain — returned to Washington on Wednesday for a Senate vote on an economic stimulus package.
“We will unite the party behind our conservative principles and move forward to the general election in November,” McCain told reporters in Phoenix, acknowledging conservative concerns about his past stances on immigration, tax cuts and other issues.
McCain, whose campaign was all but dead last summer, won nine states on Tuesday, including California and New York, giving him a huge haul of the convention delegates who select the party’s presidential nominee.
Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee vowed to fight on but could face questions about their viability. Romney won seven states and Huckabee five.
McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who lost the Republican primary race in 2000 to George W. Bush, dropped plans for a possible trip to an international security conference in Germany so he could focus on his campaign.

TITLE: Romney Pulls Out After Vote
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign. “I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney told conservatives.
“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Romney's decision leaves McCain as the top man standing in the GOP race, with Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul far behind in the delegate hunt. It was a remarkable turnaround for McCain, who some seven months ago was barely viable, out of cash and losing staff. The four-term Arizona senator, denied his party’s nomination in 2000, was poised to succeed George W. Bush as the GOP standard-bearer.
Romney launched his campaign almost a year ago in his native Michigan. The former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist invested more than $40 million of his own money into the race, counted on early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire that never materialized and won just seven states on Super Tuesday, mostly small caucus states.
McCain took the big prizes of New York and California.
“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters ... many of you right here in this room ... have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming president. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America,” Romney said.
There were shouts of astonishment, with some moans and others yelling, “No, No.”
Romney responded, “You guys are great.”
McCain prevailed in most of the Super Tuesday states, moving closer to the numbers needed to officially win the nomination. Overall, McCain led with 707 delegates, to 294 for Romney and 195 for Huckabee. It takes 1,191 to win the nomination at this summer’s convention in Minnesota.
“I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating al-Qaida and terror,” Romney said.
The Huckabee campaign said the former Arkansas governor would push on.

TITLE: Right-Wing Radio Hosts Slam McCain as ‘Liberal’
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ATLANTA — Right-wing radio hosts who are influential in U.S. politics expressed alarm on Wednesday at the lead established by Senator John McCain in the race to become the Republican presidential candidate.
Leading host Rush Limbaugh warned that McCain spelled danger for the party on ideological grounds, and callers to his show deplored his “liberal” views, saying he lacks the bedrock convictions of former President Ronald Reagan, a Republican hero.
Their fears present a stiff challenge to McCain’s efforts to unify Republicans along conservative lines.
The Arizona senator won nine coast-to-coast primary races in states on “Super Tuesday” to become the most likely candidate to secure the party’s nomination ahead of November’s election to succeed U.S. President George W. Bush.
“We are trying to stop the wanton destruction of the party, the wanton dilution of the party,” said Limbaugh, whose daily show is syndicated on radio stations across the country.
“We are sick and tired of how the people who seem to be triumphing in our party are precisely the people who seem to be selling this party out in terms of its ideology,” said Limbaugh, who criticized McCain for reaching out to Democrats.
Conservatives say they disagree with McCain on issues including taxes, free political speech, immigration and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons.
In one indication of doubts about McCain, evangelical leader James Dobson said this week he would not vote for McCain if he became the nominee, raising the possibility that some Republicans would sit out the November election.
Limbaugh’s views on McCain reflect wider disquiet that Bush and Republicans have squandered years in power by failing to institute principles such as individual freedom and small government or to sufficiently write Christian values into law.
They say a McCain presidency would likely move the party further in the wrong direction.
At the same time, many conservatives are angry at what they see as a biased national media that applauds McCain for “moderate” views.

TITLE: Kenya Watches Obama’s Rise
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KOGELO, Kenya — The 2008 U.S. presidential election is being followed closely by millions around the world but in the Kenyan village of Kogelo, relatives of Democratic hopeful Barack Obama are watching every step of the race.
In Kogelo, Obama’s ancestral village in western Kenya, relatives and friends crowded around television sets on Wednesday to watch the results of nominating contests across 24 U.S. states thousands of miles away.
“No one can feel bad when something good happens,” said Obama’s grandmother Sarah Anyango Obama. “Obama is American but also Kenyan. If he wins I would want him to help Kenya as well, not just me and not just the village but the whole country and the entire world.”
Born in Hawaii to a white American mother and Kenyan father, Obama is revered by many Kenyans the way the Irish idolized U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s — as one of their own who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Barack Obama, 46, has worked as a civil rights lawyer and law professor. He has said he is “deeply troubled” by violence that has killed 1,000 people since Kenya’s disputed December 27 polls.
Obama’s Kenyan family hail from the Luo tribe of opposition leader Raila Odinga.

TITLE: Obama Says He’s ‘Best Hope’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO — Barack Obama predicted Wednesday that Republicans will have a dump truck full of dirt to unload on Hillary Rodham Clinton if the former first lady wins the Democratic presidential nomination, and he said he offers the party its best hope of winning the White House this fall. Clinton countered that she did.
At a news conference on the morning after Super Tuesday, Obama offered some pointed advice to members of Congress and other party leaders who will attend the national convention this summer as delegates not chosen in primaries or caucuses.
He said if he winds up winning more delegates in voting than Clinton, they “would have to think long and hard about how they approach the nomination when the people they claim to represent have said, ‘Obama’s our guy,’” he said.

TITLE: Stuck in the 19th Century
AUTHOR: By Robert Kagan
TEXT: Russia and the European Union are neighbors geographically. But geopolitically they live in different centuries. A 21st-century EU, with its noble ambition to transcend power politics and build an order based on laws and institutions, confronts a Russia that behaves like a traditional 19th-century power. Both are shaped by their histories. 
The supranational, legalistic EU spirit is a response to the conflicts of the 20th century, when nationalism and power politics twice destroyed the continent. But President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as political scientist Ivan Krastev has noted, is driven in part by the perceived failure of “postnational politics” after the Soviet collapse. Europe’s nightmares are the 1930s; Russia’s nightmares are the 1990s. Europe sees the answer to its problems in transcending the nation-state and power. For Russians, the solution is in restoring them.
So what happens when a 21st-century entity faces the challenge of a 19th-century power? The contours of the conflict are already emerging — in diplomatic standoffs over Kosovo, Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia; in conflicts over gas and oil pipelines; in nasty diplomatic exchanges between Russia and Britain; and in a return to military exercises of a kind not seen since the Cold War.
Europeans are apprehensive — and with good reason. They bet massively in the 1990s on the primacy of geoeconomics over geopolitics, a new era in which a huge and productive European economy would compete as an equal with the United States and China. They cut back on defense budgets, calculating that soft power was in and that hard power was out. They imagined that the world would come to replicate the EU, and that when it did, the EU would be a postmodern superpower.
For a while, it seemed to work. With Russia prostrate, the magnetic attraction of Europe, along with a U.S. security guarantee, pulled just about every nation in the east into the Western orbit. The appeal of what diplomat Robert Cooper called Europe’s “voluntary empire” seemed without limit.
Today, however, European expansion has slowed and perhaps halted, and not just because Europeans balk at taking in Turkey. They also fear a resurgent Russia. They realize that by enlarging eastward, Europe acquired a new Eastern problem. Or, rather, the old Eastern problem — the centuries-old contest between Russia and its near neighbors.
It wasn’t a problem when Russia was weak and poor and eager to integrate itself into the West. But the country is back on its feet, rich and resentful, seeking not to join Europe but to take a special path back to great-power status. Putin laments the collapse of the Soviet Union and seeks to regain predominant influence in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, as well as over Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and the rest of what Russians call their “near abroad.” But the former are now formally part of Europe, and the latter are what Europeans call their “new neighborhood.”
And so the nations of the European Union find themselves embroiled in a very 19th-century confrontation. After a decade of voluntary retreat, Russia now pushes back against Europe’s powerful attractive force, using traditional levers of power. It has episodically denied oil supplies to Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus; cut off gas supplies to Ukraine and Moldova; and punished Estonia with a suspension of rail traffic and a cyberattack on its government’s computer system in a dispute over a Soviet war memorial. It supports separatist movements in Georgia and keeps its own armed forces on Georgian territory and in Moldova. It has effectively pulled out of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, freeing it to deploy forces wherever necessary on its western flank.
Polls show Europeans increasingly take a dim view of their large neighbor. French President Nicolas Sarkozy observed last year that “Russia is imposing its return on the world scene by playing its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality.” Even the Finnish defense minister worries that “military force” has once again become a “key element” in how Russia “conducts its international relations.”
But Europe may be institutionally and temperamentally ill-equipped to respond. Can it bring a knife to a knife fight?
It is not hard to imagine the tremors along the European-Russian fault line erupting into confrontation. A crisis over Ukraine, which wants to join NATO, could bring about a confrontation with Russia. Conflict between the Georgian government and Russian-supported separatist forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia could spark a military conflict between Tbilisi and Moscow. What would Europe and the United States do if the Kremlin played hardball in Ukraine or Georgia? They might well do nothing. Postmodern Europe can scarcely bring itself to contemplate a return to confrontation with a great power and will go to great lengths to avoid it. In the United States, any fundamental shift in policy toward Russia will have to wait for the next administration. Nevertheless, a Russian confrontation with Ukraine or Georgia would usher in a brand-new world — or perhaps a very old world. 

Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund. This comment appeared in The Washington Post.

TITLE: A Primary Only the Kremlin Could Concoct
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: Since the outcome of next month’s presidential election is a foregone conclusion, we can move on and speculate instead about what will happen after the vote. 
Russians are taking a strong interest in the future president. But we should give credit to the Kremlin for having given voters plenty of time to warm up to him. In fact, President Vladimir Putin suggested more than a year ago that First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was under consideration as his possible successor. 
After that, we witnessed a strange kind of “primary” that only Russia could concoct. Watching Medvedev and the other first deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, vie for the chance to become Putin’s successor was no less entertaining than the current contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The only difference is that the U.S. primaries invite the media and ordinary citizens to participate in the democratic process, while the Russian primaries take place behind closed doors — primarily in the offices of Moscow’s political elite. 
The result of these differences is that, while U.S. presidential candidates make campaign promises long before the election and then don’t fulfill them once they get into the White House, a Russian candidate conceals his agenda from the public and reveals it only after becoming president. I don’t know which system is better, but I am firmly convinced that ours is more interesting. It gives us countless opportunities for guessing future events. It is true, however, that these predictions are invariably followed by surprises that are usually unpleasant.
We are constantly guessing and waiting. First, we tried to guess the name of the next president, and then we speculated as to what his program might be. Political analysts and journalists have tried to figure out what Medvedev’s future program will look like based on a few casual remarks and gestures. The future leader has fed our imaginations with vague references to possible political changes. And all of these hints and innuendos are very reminiscent of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Does this mean that we will see a new version of perestroika under Medvedev? 
It is amazing how quickly everyone has lost interest in Putin. He stills sits in the president’s chair and plans to step in as prime minister after the election, but all attention is focused elsewhere. Now everyone understands that “Putin’s Plan” was nothing more than a grand scheme to ensure that Medvedev would become his successor.
A clue to Medvedev’s future, however, can be found by looking at the stock market indexes, the price of oil and the consumer price index. While analysts attempt to read between the lines of Medvedev’s elliptic remarks, the government officials can’t figure out for the life of them the cause of the country’s persistently high inflation. The whole difference between Putin’s eight years in office and what we will see under President Medvedev can be summed up as follows: Putin ruled during a bull market, and Medvedev will be left trying to deal with a bearish economy. 
The stability under Putin was based on the fact that the country’s elite were able to compromise when necessary, but still get everything they wanted. Yukos was a good example. Russia’s largest oil company was torn to pieces, but the elite divvied up the spoils among themselves and enjoyed the huge feast together in peace.
A global economic crisis could change this peaceful co-existence among the feuding Kremlin clans. Competing groups would attempt to undermine each other through polemics and sharp accusations, and this, paradoxically, will carry a semblance of an active, pluralistic debate of political issues. 
The job of the new president will be to cast this struggle in a positive light. I think Medvedev is up to the task. In fact, I have no doubt that he will go down in history as a true democratic leader. 

Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

TITLE: Model behavior
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — When people think of clothes to wear at home, they think of tracksuits and pajamas, a T-shirt or slippers — the kind of loose clothes that are unobtrusive and disguise the body. In an exhibition of his avant-garde clothing, “100% Vanilla,” runway model and designer Danila Polyakov shows a breezy disregard for these kinds of conventions.
“This top here is for breastfeeding,” Polyakov said, pointing at a photograph of a model wearing a T-shirt with a heart-shaped hole that exposes her nipple and breast.
“These pants here have a shorter crotch and are tighter than a regular tracksuit. They are more homely,” he said, indicating a photo of him groping a girl wearing very little, with a strategically placed stain on the groin of his pants.
Tall, pale and fragile with long flowing red hair, Polyakov is Russia’s most famous male model, prized by designers for his ambiguous look and willingness to pose in high heels. His one-off designs, now on display at Moscow’s Art4.Ru museum and online, blur the line between art and fashion, and the images of him modeling them possibly cross the line between fashion photography and pornography.
Polyakov is represented by the British agency Storm Models, the same company that has Kate Moss on the books. He has been photographed in many ways, from nude to modeling women’s dresses and high heels; he also adopts a more masculine look and facial hair to walk the runway in sharp suits and leather jackets.
The nightlife blog Moscow Doesn’t Believe In Tears has helpfully pointed out that, “He’s not just Russia’s top male model; he’s Russia’s only male model.”
Polyakov is hardly the textbook example of masculine beauty, especially according to Slavic stereotypes of male machismo. But the editor of the Russian Harper’s Bazaar, Anzor Kankulov, thinks that may be the key to his success.
“When people hire Danila, they are hiring a personality, not just a face to wear their clothes,” Kankulov said. “He is not for every designer.”
Polyakov has modeled for Russian prankster Denis Simachev, futuristic designer Yohji Yamamoto and the sexy and feminine Jean Paul Gaultier. He has also appeared in photographs by the acclaimed contemporary art group AES+F.
“He isn’t Russia’s only male model, but the other models are all pretty boys who stand for the same thing. Yes, they exist, but in my head they blur into one. Danila is the one that stands out,” Kankulov said.
At an interview last week, Polyakov was dressed in a textured leather jacket and patterned sweatshirt, his silky mane tied back. He was striking and on the feminine side of androgynous, but looked far less intimidating than photographs of him wearing eye shadow, tattoos or corsets would suggest.
He was friendly and seemed older than his 25 years. He exposed his sharp canines and giggled when he lost his train of thought, which often happened mid-sentence. He repeatedly asked, “What were we talking about?” and put an end to ideas that he had only half expressed with a noncommital “anyway.”
Polyakov started modeling when he was 12. He was dancing in a trio with two other girls and a university student of fashion design wanted to use him for her graduation project.
“I still didn’t know what being a model was and had no idea that it was what I wanted to do,” he said, adding that, “People who know they want to be models from childhood are sick in the head.”
Before he was signed by Storm in 2002, Polyakov did a bit of modeling and performed as a go-go dancer; he was even in a pop group called Demo. “It was electric and kind of poppy, not electro-pop. Calling it electro-pop would make it sound much cooler than it actually was,” he said.
“It was the time when I learned I wanted to express myself,” he said. “It was also when I first wore high heels.”
Last year Bolshoi Gorod magazine listed the word Danila in its dictionary of slang as a synonym for freak. “I don’t have any problems with that word. I mean, when I use it I don’t use it to describe those that dress differently,” he said. “For me, it has a positive connotation.”
These days, Polyakov does not just model. “I am a stylist, model and designer. When I do just one thing, I can’t focus. I turn into a machine and I get angry,” he said, furrowing his brows.
Polyakov’s clothes are not at all wearable, but they are his pride and joy. “These pants are double-sided,” he said, pointing first to a topless girl wearing pale yellow pants with a hole near her crotch. “Look,” he said, walking to another photograph that showed him lying on a couch in the same pants, genitals protruding from a hole, with a naked model next to him.
Another photograph showed Polyakov balancing an object on his erection, while in another he was naked except for a T-shirt, but he didn’t flinch and continues talking about the clothing as if he were invisible in the photographs.
“This top here, you wear it to convince your loved one to propose,” he said about a T-shirt with metal rings in the place of fabric on the chest.
Getting more enthusiastic, he walked on. “This is a bag,” he said, pointing to a model clutching an elongated ashtray with a handle between her legs.
“At a party you can sit and smoke on it and then tip the ash on the floor, and no one would know,” he giggled.
The photographs in his exhibition are taken by his friend Alexei Kiselyov. “The way I behave in front of the camera all depends on who is photographing me.” Polyakov said.
“If I see they are burning with creativity, I will do anything,” he said, glancing around the room. “For some people, I will run through the forest, naked in the middle of winter, but for others I won’t move my knees apart.”

“100% Vanilla — Beware of Your Desires” runs through Thursday at Art4.Ru, at 4 Khlynovsky Tupik, Moscow. Metro Arbatskaya. Tel. 8 495 660 1158. www.art4.ru.

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: Opposition candidates have been eliminated from the presidential election under different pretexts, protests have largely been suppressed, international observers have been locked outside Russia, and the Kremlin is 100 percent sure that President Vladimir Putin’s candidate, <b>Dmitry Medvedev</b>, will win in the March 2 poll, so why not celebrate? And former rock heroes from the West are here to offer the entertainment.
Gazprom is throwing a farewell party to Medvedev, who’s is a chairman of Russia’s energy behemoth (as well as being a first deputy prime minister), Reuters reported. Putin and 70 other political figures and businessmen are expected to attend the party on Feb. 11.
While Putin is reported to like British veteran pop band Smokie and Russian “patriotic” macho band Lyube, Medvedev presents himself as a die-hard <b>Deep Purple</b> fan, boasting he owns the British hard-rock veterans’ complete vinyl collection, among other things.
Medvedev has already been seen enjoying his favorite band’s songs performed live at a party, when Joe Lynn Turner, a former member of the latter-day Deep Purple, was brought to Moscow to perform at a private concert for the “successor” and the other governmental officials.
In a phone interview to The Moscow Times journalist Kevin O’Flynn, Turner even admitted that he had to do some research to remember the songs he was asked to perform at a Russia Day party in Moscow last June. “I haven’t done any of this stuff for 17 years, so I had to go to the Internet to get the lyrics,” he said.
“Just say very well,” said Turner when asked about what he was paid. “I was not underpaid, and the presents and treatment far exceeded my expectation.”
In the interview with The Moscow Times, Turner sounded extremely happy about performing for such high-positioned crowd.
 “I am breaking bread with people who are in Putin’s cabinet, who are very high-up,” he was quoted as saying.
“Rock and roll and politics are finally coming together.”
Deep Purple, whose heyday was in the 1970s, are an object of jokes in most places — apart from Russia, where musical tastes are famously weird and unpredictable. “Smoke on the Water,” the band’s hit from 1972, has become a Beavis and Butthead favorite, thanks to its ultimately dumb riff.
But however much money the Kremlin has, some rockers still appear to be ashamed — just a little bit — when asked to perform for its denizens. At least they pretend they were somehow misinformed.
After entertaining KGB men with the perestroika anthem “Wind of Change” at the televised concert for the Soviet secret police’s anniversary in the Kremlin Palace late last year, Scorpions’ singer Klaus Meine told The Moscow Times that he did not know what the event was about. 
This time, Reuters reports, Deep Purple’s management declined to comment.
<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: When Anna met Erwin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria — Anna Netrebko says it is a high note of another kind: She is pregnant and she’s getting married. The 36-year-old star soprano and her fiance, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, are expecting a child this autumn, Netrebko’s management company said Monday.
“We are both very, very happy that soon there will be three of us,” Netrebko said in a statement.
It will be her first child. She and Schrott, 35, became engaged late last year in New York.
The Russian-born diva, who holds Austrian citizenship, has been making a film version of Puccini’s “La Boheme” in Vienna for German television.
She and Schrott have shared the stage several times over the past few years, singing Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and other works, and they performed together in December in Puerto Rico.
Her manager, Jeffrey Vanderveen, said Netrebko “will keep her engagements as long as her doctors permit it.”
She is scheduled to perform in Massenet’s “Manon,” which opens April 4 at the Vienna State Opera.
Austrian media said Netrebko was still scheduled to join Rolando Villazon and Placido Domingo in a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic on the grounds of Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Palace on June 27, two days before the capital hosts the final of the Euro 2008 soccer tournament.
She was to appear with Villazon in Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the Salzburg Festival in August, but pulled out because of the pregnancy, festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler said Monday.
“We are surprised, but we understand. The most beautiful reason for a cancellation is a child,” Rabl-Stadler was quoted as telling the Austria Press Agency.
“We’ll send her the most beautiful bouquet in the world” when the baby is born, Rabl-Stadler said.
Netrebko has withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” that begins Oct. 3, but performances in January 2009 are still on, Vanderveen said Monday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Her engagement at the Met for “Manon,” scheduled Dec. 15 through Jan. 10, 2009, is under discussion, Vanderveen said.
“Bottom line is: She will sing as long as her doctors say it is fine,” he said. “When she comes back is a life decision (and a vocal decision) that she is considering now.”

TITLE: Now we are fifteen
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Spitfire, Russia’s pioneering ska-punk band, has been on the scene for 15 years — a fact the band will celebrate with a concert and party at Achtung Baby next week. 
“We’re not little boys anymore, one has to try hard to perform in one style for that long,” said drummer Denis Kuptsov, speaking in Fidel indie bar on Wednesday. “Many famous bands didn’t even last that long.”
Last year, Spitfire survived an attempted bombing when it headlined the Music of the Streets event at Roks club in September. An explosive device was discovered on stage when the Swedish punk band Blisterhead performed, and the police arrived during Spitfire’s set. A month later, three suspects were arrested, who, the police said, belonged to an extreme nationalist group.
“It’s not that they wanted to blow us up, they wanted to blow up the music event, because it all was discovered during the Swedish band’s set, so if it exploded, the Swedes would be killed, which would’ve led to an international scandal,” said Kuptsov.
“But because we were the headlining act, it was us who had to say, ‘We’re sorry, guys, but it’s time to go.’” Kuptsov said the event was not political, but its promoters were somehow linked to Antifa, an anti-Nazi underground movement. 
“There was no political motive behind the event, it was simply the ‘Music of the Streets.’ It’s all clear, just street music, such as punk, ska-punk, ska — that is, the music that can be played on the street as much as in a club,” said Kuptsov.
“So it was not political, but you don’t need to be politically educated not to like fascism.”
When the band, which took its name from a type of British World War II fighter plane, made its stage debut on Feb. 10, 1993, its musical style was different. Spitfire started out as a garage rockabilly trio featuring Kuptsov, singer and guitarist Konstantin Limonov, and bassist Igor Popugai, while the first concert was during a psychobilly event at the now-defunct Indie club. 
“It was garage, rockabilly — we even had a double bass in the beginning,” said Kuptsov. “We got together just for the event, just to play there. But somehow we performed great, everybody liked it, so we went on and on.”
“We stepped aside from this rockabilly/psychobilly scene pretty quickly. It was the nasty crowd, the style itself was dying, it didn’t develop, and there were fights at concerts all the time. We got tired of all this... After a year, we got a new bassist and brass section and decided to play ska punk, more contemporary music.”
In the early 1990s, Spitfire mostly played at TaMtAm, the now-defunct pioneering alt-rock club. “I’m not saying that TaMtAm was better, it was a nightmare, but it still resembled [legendary 1970s New York punk club]  CBGB’s, or the St. Petersburg version of it,” said Kuptsov. 
“It was an outlet, it was the only place where you could be creative at that time. I went there every week, because there was nowhere else to go.” 
In 2000, Spitfire headlined the Punk Ska Festival Against the War in Chechnya, featuring St. Petersburg punk band PTVP (Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe), but there has hardly been any protest concerts in the city since then.
“The thing is that, we don’t organize them ourselves,” said Kuptsov.
“We don’t think of ourselves as a political band, but if somebody organizes a concert against violence, fascism, imperialism or whatever, we’ll always take part — just as other similarly-minded bands such as Fishbone, The Clash, The Specials or Bob Marley did. There’s nothing to explain, it’s all clear.” 
“When you play ska music, it’s your protest. Our weapon is our songs. Because we’re playing music professionally, we have no other jobs, so that is all we’re capable of.”
Spitfire has undergone some lineup changes lately. As frontman Limonov quit in 2006, trumpeter Roman Parygin, who joined the band in 1998, became the full-time vocalist, while new guitarist Dmitry Vatov was recruited. 
Kuptsov continues to write lyrics in English, while Russian-language material is written by Parygin. All members write the music, mostly Parygin and saxophone player Grigory Zontov, who joined Spitfire in 1994.
Originally, Spitfire wrote its songs almost entirely in English and was set to win over club audiences in Western Europe, rather than in Russia, but its Russian fandom has recently grown.
“We didn’t pay too much attention to Russia, because at that time it was either you perform [in the West] or vegetate here. It was hard here, but we were pleasantly surprised when people got to know us here,” said Kuptsov.
Since 2001, Spitfire also performs as part of Leningrad, the stadium ska-punk band led by Sergei Shnurov, and the St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review, with singer Jennifer Davis. 
“With Leningrad, I only play and arrange my parts as much as I can, [Shnurov] does all the rest,” Kupstsov said “With the Ska-Jazz Review, I do a lot, but it's still Spitfire’s spin-off project, it's not our main job.”

Spitfire performs on Feb. 16 at 10 p.m. at Achtung Baby. www.spitfire.spb.ru

TITLE: Petersbourg je t’aime
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The French Movie Festival 2008, organized by St. Petersburg’s French Institute, began Thursday and takes place nightly at 7 p.m. until Wednesday at the Rodina Cinema. With the subtitle “Seven Films About Love,” the festival is set to get Francophone film fans in the mood for St. Valentine’s Day, which follows on Thursday.
Actress Julie Depardieu — daughter of Gerard — stars in two of the films in the program and will be in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to introduce “You and Me,” the festival’s closing film, in person. 
The films in the program are presented in French with Russian subtitles.
The festival began Thursday with 2005’s “Qui m’aime me suive” (If You Love Me Follow Me), starring Mathieu Demy, Romane Bohringer and Julie Depardieu, a comedy about a doctor in his 30s who gives up a successful career to start a rock band. The other “six films about love” are as follows: 
Friday, Feb. 8: “Ma vie en l’air” (Love Is in the Air). Starring Vincent Elbaz, Marion Cotillard and Gilles Lellouche.
An aviation safety engineer with a lifelong fear of flying keeps missing the “plane” truth in his search for a soul mate in “Love Is in the Air.” This pleasant comedy peopled by game and attractive actors sometimes aims for the clouds — and sometimes ends up in a holding pattern — but marks an encouraging feature debut for writer-director Remi Bezancon.
— Variety, 2005
Saturday, Feb. 9: “Changement d’adresse” (Change of Address). Starring With Emmanuel Mouret, Frédérique Bel and Fanny Valette.
Eric Rohmer meets Woody Allen in “Change of Address,” a light comedy of emotional manners that’s Parisian to its fingertips. Though there’s nothing exactly new here, pic is played with such charm, good humor and a quietly wacky sense of the absurd that it should slip easily into festival mailboxes and delight upscale auds in the usual theatrical salons.
— Variety, 2006

Sunday, Feb. 10: “Oublier Cheyenne” (Looking for Cheyenne). With Mila Dekker, Aurélia Petit and Malik Zidi.
An utterly refreshing look at work, love and politics centered on two attractive young women who are nuts about each other, “Looking For Cheyenne” is suspenseful, funny, touching, sexy and painlessly pertinent. Rich distillation of romances both sour and sweet manages to breathe new life into the question of whether one should play along with “the system” or drop out of consumer society for a life of self-reliance.
— Variety, 2006

Monday, Feb. 11: “Douches froides” (Cold Showers). With Johan Libéreau, Salomé Stévenin and Jean-Philippe Ecoffey.
Watchable but rather slight, “Cold Showers” marks the feature debut for French short documentary filmmaker Antony Cordier. The movie is in essence three different movies layered on top of each other: They all involve a 17-year-old working-class kid who competes at judo, gets into an emotionally awkward menage a trois with his girlfriend, and deals with his neurotic mom and booze-hound dad.
— Variety, 2005

Tuesday, Feb. 12: “Ca brûle” (On Fire). With Camille Varenne, Gilbert Melki, Kader Mohamed, Morgane Moré and Jean-Quentin Chatelain.
The intense feelings, reckless experimentation and sheer obliviousness of adolescence are convincingly portrayed in slightly overlong “On Fire.” A portrait of the boredom, thrill-seeking and sexual confusion of youth unfolds in the workaday tedium of a village in Provence during the last week in June. Director Claire Simon’s documentary background lends the film an immediacy that can’t be faked, although the fire footage impresses more than most of the fictional elements. 
— Variety, 2006

Wednesday, Feb. 13: “Toi et Moi” (You and Me). Starring Marion Cotillard, Julie Depardieu and Jonathan Zaccaï.
The romantic contretemps of a lovelorn woman (who writes the thought-balloons for photo-novellas) and her shy musician sister are explored with a light touch and bittersweet undercurrent in “You and Me.” The second film from 2002 Camera d’Or-winner Julie Lopes Curval (“Seaside”) uses the retro tableaux of illustrated romance magazines to echo and embellish her characters’ feelings and aspirations, to sharp comic effect. The director has found a way to examine the doubts of thirtysomething professionals that feels fresh, while questioning the vestiges of the “some day my prince will come” mindset.
— Variety, 2006 

Tickets are available at Rodina,  12 Karavannaya Ulitsa (120 rubles). Tel: 571 6131. www.ifspb.com

TITLE: Capital gains
AUTHOR: By Lesley Chamberlain
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This “biography” of “Das Kapital,” “a book that changed the world,” is Marx for the age of choice. There’s no compulsion to read the bible of anti-capitalism anymore, but you might want to. British writer Francis Wheen, author of a prize-winning biography of Marx that stressed the theorist’s carbuncles as much as his communism, sets out the attraction of a new Marx for the 21st century in this engaging essay. Effectively an introduction detached from the main text, it is in its way an important read, providing a shortcut into the ongoing story of modern times.
The man who fused German philosophy, French politics and English economics into a new materialist vision of progress left as his main work a book no one wanted to read. I recently picked up a secondhand copy in the Oxford World’s Classics edition for 50 pence. That it was abridged and introduced by Marx’s foremost contemporary editor, David McLellan, suggested I might finally master it. Like the history of the Latin-speaking church, full of priests who never mastered Latin, the history of Marxism is littered with Marxists, and historians, defeated by the text.
In its three ill-organized and unfinished volumes, “Capital” was the original loose-and-baggy monster of 19th-century political economy. It shared with the great Russian novels, to which the writer Henry James applied that phrase, vastness and emotional power. Still, Marx shouldn’t be allowed, even posthumously, to call “Capital” a work of art. The imagery is rich, the author highly educated, and there is a fabulous vision of relentless production lines, of the kind that would inform Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” 50 years later. Yet even Engels railed against its unreadability.
Marx’s own advice to those daunted by the arid opening section on commodities was to read the chapters on “The Working-Day,” “Machinery and Modern Industry” and “Capitalist Accumulation” first. Wheen follows McLellan in taking this recommendation and much else. His book is original in manner, not content. But the strategy is right because it plunges us straight into what the good Marx was about: exploitation.
The ruthless labor conditions in industrial England on which Marx notoriously based his universal economic theory reduced men, women and children to slavery, despite the efforts of state-authorized Factory Inspectors to reduce hours and protect those under the age of 13. Even doctors supplied false reports that were favorable to the employers, according to material provided by Engels, the factory-owner’s son who acted as a mole. Far from liberating labor, complex machinery actually worsened conditions by creating a fluctuating demand for low-paid robotic shift-work. The capitalist employer kept vast armies of would-be workers in suspense and penury while he adapted his output to market conditions. He mortgaged his own soul for increased profit.
Marxist economics used to detail this injustice by measuring the amount of labor required to keep a worker and his family alive against the surplus value of labor squeezed out of him for the capitalist’s benefit. But, with the economics long modified and outmoded, it is exploitation that we can more easily hang on to as the viable Marxian legacy, together with its social product, alienation. A man alienated from the product of his own labor is a man uprooted from the world where he once belonged. The theme of alienation, Wheen argues, shows us not only what Marx took from Hegel but also how the author of “Capital” qualifies to be spoken of in the same breath as the early modernist writers T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka. Postmodern analyses of rampant consumerism are built on these complex literary and Marxian fundaments. Still, all this does not make Marx an artist. The lack of psychological subtlety in “Capital,” with its fat capitalists pitched against the abused honest people, is as ridiculous as the high age of the Soviet cartoons it inspired. What Marx does begin to describe is the harm of a world in which our every last word and breath is commodified, as now.
Wheen is right to stress that by the “immiseration” of the people Marx meant the crushing of the human spirit, not just material poverty. In doing so, he reclaims the alienation story for Marx to the same extent that hard-line Marxists used to dismiss it as an early aberration. By claiming Marx for early modernism he repeats what the New Left tried to do in the 1960s when they, too, rediscovered in the project to overcome alienation a way of accentuating communism’s human side. Without Marx, will all the millions now practicing an exhausting post-Marxist religion of work ever wake up to the fact that earning money is not the point of life? Let’s hope so. It’s only not clear to me that Wheen — who is a cool, emotionally spare, intellectually agile postmodern writer, more impresario than critic — actually wants this, or anything else. Meanwhile, is Marx, the quintessential materialist, a good enough philosopher of alienation? These days, materialism has two meanings: one philosophical and the other consumerist, and many philosophers must, like me, feel anguish at their deliberate confusion to create market “reality.” Marx distinguishes between appearance and reality out of Hegelian habit, but as a materialist he can’t help us explain the spiritual reality he wants to rescue.
“Capital” illuminated a Western malaise caused, Marx believed, by a passing economic system whose internal contradictions would eventually destroy it. That would be the moment for political and economic revolution. In practice, Marxian revolution was foiled in the West when social democracy stepped in. The impact of Marx remained intellectual and circumstantial, helping to bring those milder forces about and leading so many of us to equate well-being with material provision. Wheen quotes the English writer James Buchan saying in 1997 that “Marx is so embedded in our Western cast of thought that few people are even aware of their debt to him.” We live, post-Marx, in a well-intentioned, if naively unspiritual world.
The tragic effect “Capital” had in Soviet Russia and perforce in its satellites was quite a different story. ‘“Isn’t it an irony of fate,’ Marx wrote to Engels, ‘that the Russians, whom I have fought for 25 years, always want to be my patrons? They run after the most extreme ideas the West has to offer, out of pure gluttony.’” The world’s first translation of “Capital,” in 1872, was from German into Russian, and in sharp contrast to later English sales, its 3,000 copies immediately sold out. Russia was greedy for Marx, but an aging, sick Marx, hungry for success, was also keen to tell the Russian Populists what they wanted to hear: namely, that Russia’s different conditions need not be an obstacle to communism. Wheen says Marx “agonized” over his reply to activist Vera Zasulich, who demanded an authoritative opinion on Russia, but he also quotes a letter to Marx’s daughter Jenny praising the terrorists who had just assassinated Alexander II for their “historically inevitable mode of action.” Marx’s readiness to manipulate his theory to suit the case — his “dialectical dalliances,” as Wheen calls them — also cropped up earlier in his career.
This is not a book written for those who lived through Marxism and suffered its consequences. The issues raised by that false historical inevitability still have the quality of an open sore, not to mention the horrors of class war. “Marx’s Das Kapital” is rather a smooth repackaging exercise born of an Anglo-Saxon world terrified of big ideas but keen to snap up a publishing opportunity. It remains the West talking to the West.

Lesley Chamberlain is the author of “Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia” and “The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia.”

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Last week, MTV promised to delve into the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of pop star Dima Bilan, uncovering the depraved secrets that he hides so well under a baseball cap and a dubious mullet. The new season of the reality show “Bilan Live” was announced as taking the viewers into Bilan’s apartment, introducing us to his girlfriend, Lena Kuletskaya, and feeding us “curious details of backstage life.” And what a wild ride it turned out to be: I can exclusively reveal that Bilan’s body is more tanned than his face, that there were a lot of Finns in the audience at the Eurovision Song Contest held in Helsinki and that the pop singer’s hobby is photography.
Yes, the first episode of “Bilan Live” covered the Eurovision Song Contest in May last year, stretching the concept of “Live” to its most elastic limit. It was a controversial contest with Verka Serdyuchka possibly singing “Russia Goodbye” and an androgynous Serbian winner, but the 2006 runner-up Bilan was short on acid-tongued bons mots. He was filmed at a preliminary round in Helsinki, where he commented that, “you can see right away that there are a lot of Finns in the audience.” He seems a lovely boy, but I’m not sure there’s a lot going on behind those big brown eyes.
Bilan was in Turkey during the main contest, which he watched on television. “I don’t know what movement she belongs to,” he said of the Serbian contestant, adding that Serdyuchka made him laugh so much, “I thought I would lose consciousness.” He didn’t even have a bad word to say about the lip-glossed Russian entry, Serebro. “It’s all high-quality,” he said.
Aside from that, there was a chance to revel in Bilan’s naked torso as he took seaside snapshots. Strangely, his baseball cap must even accompany him to the tanning salon, as his all-over tan didn’t reach his face. But that was it: not a hint of apartment, girlfriend or curious backstage incidents.
Luckily, the tabloids have reported this week on some very curious backstage incidents involving Bilan’s manager, Yana Rudkovskaya. The glamorous blonde has been leaking details of her acrimonious marriage breakup, complete with photographs of her climbing over the fence of her house. Her husband is businessman Viktor Baturin, who also happens to be the brother-in-law of Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
Last year, Baturin criticized Bilan as “Russia’s chief black man” after the singer teamed up with pop producer Timbaland to record an English-language album. Rudkovskaya told Komsomolskaya Pravda that she asked her husband for a divorce after he refused to fund Bilan’s career, thinking he would back down. But he told KP that “I’m not a little boy to get divorced and then make it up.”
The tabloids wrote of a dramatic attempt by Rudkovskaya to visit her 6-year-old sons at the family home. Tvoi Den said she had to climb a fence to get in – and printed photographs to prove it. KP reported that she recorded a conversation with one of her sons, presumably for legal reasons. With a complete lack of ethics, the paper has posted the tape on its web site. Rudkovskaya asks her son whether their father has forbidden them to see her. Sounding upset, he answers “yes.”
The next day, however, KP printed a statement from Baturin saying Rudkovskaya arrived to see the children as late as 11 p.m. – although the Tvoi Den photographs appear to show a daytime visit – and was accompanied by guards and cameramen.
Both Tvoi Den and KP wrote that Baturin later visited his wife’s office and damaged computers with the help of several assistants, one of whom hit a staff member on the head. Baturin, however, denies that any violence took place. He told police that a video camera fell on the injured man.
Somehow, I don’t think any of this will be included in the next episode of “Bilan Live.”

TITLE: Warm and fuzzy
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Teplo // 45 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 570 1974 // Breakfast from 9 a.m.; full menu from 1 p.m. through midnight // Menu in Russian // Dinner for two with alcohol 2,370 ($96)
Crisp iceberg lettuce leaves and spicy fronds of ruccola, hot herby croutons, sweet and chewy sun-blushed tomatoes glistening with olive oil. Large, warm mounds of crumbly chicken livers and strips of bacon in a tart balsamic sauce. Compose on a white plate and serve.
Tyoply Salat (Warm Salad) is the signature dish at Teplo and it embodies everything that is good about this new restaurant in the House of Composers on Bolshaya Morskaya. At 170 rubles ($7) it is great value and a perfect overture to a long and cozy evening with excellent food, fine drinks and warm company.
Warmth is the theme at Teplo — in Russian “teplo” means warmth — from the graphic flame in its logo to the real flames in the fireplace that forms the centerpiece of its central hall. Arranged very much like a smart but lived-in house, with a light conservatory-like space seating about 30 to the left of the entrance and a darker “living room” to the right, seating 20, Teplo revels in its welcoming details: slippers (if you want them), stuffed toys scattered about, a large fireside sofa and bookshelves with art books. 
There’s also a bar that represents the “kitchen” of the “house” (not the real kitchen where the food is prepared) and even a playroom with toys for kids. The waitresses are dressed, somewhat bizarrely, as French maids — tight black dresses with white cuffs and collars — and they are very obliging without being annoying.
Teplo has a dozen more salads, including Greek, Caesar, Olivier, tuna, tiger shrimp, and a Mozzarella Salad (230 rubles, $9.30). Cold starters range from a plate of Italian cold cuts (420 rubles, $17) to Parmesan cheese straws (60 rubles, $2.45). The menu at Teplo leans toward Italian cuisine, and, while the pasta selection is small, it is well thought-out. For example, green tagliatelli with zucchini, and tomatoes in a blue cheese sauce (240 rubles, $9.75) makes a good light lunch option. However, the size of the portion might disappoint if it were ordered for dinner alone.
More suited for grown-ups is the fish menu, featuring such unusual choices as roast grey mullet with cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, Mozzarella and curry sauce (150 rubles, $6), halibut with asparagus in a Pistachio sauce (410 rubles, $16.60) and a classic salmon steak (290 rubles, $11.70) prepared to perfection — peppered lightly with a seared underside. A choice of sauces is available. 
Fowl and meat dishes include a duck leg with mashed potatoes and roast vegetables (410 rubles, $16.60), Beef Stroganoff (310 rubles, $12.60), veal shank stewed in red wine and herbs (590 rubles, $24) and gammon (390 rubles, $15.80).
It is a classy selection for a restaurant in a classy neighborhood. The Nabokov House is next door and the Astoria and Renaissance hotels are nearby. Reached through a clean and quiet courtyard — there are plans to have outdoor seating in summer which looks set to be a surefire hit — Teplo feels like a homely hideaway that diners will want to return to over and over again. 
In keeping with its cozy ambience, Teplo offers a tempting range of still-warm pies and tarts made on site, including vatrushka (a curd tart) and berry pie (both 70 rubles, $2.85). Served with coffee (60 rubles, $2.45) and cognac (Old City: 130 rubles for 50 centiliters), these delicious desserts complete the warm and fuzzy feeling that will stay with you after dining out at Teplo, like the heat on your cheek after sitting too long next to an open fire.

TITLE: The last man on earth
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scott
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: “Not if you were the last man on earth!” Plenty of guys have heard that line at some point in their lives, but it’s unlikely that Will Smith is one. His irresistible charm has been proved, above all, by his ability to attract audiences to bad movies like “Hitch” and “Wild Wild West,” as well as to better ones like “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness.” In spite of its third-act collapse into obviousness and sentimentality, “I Am Legend” — in which Smith plays somebody with every reason to believe that he really is the last man on earth — is among the better ones.
And this star, whose amiability makes him easy to underestimate as an actor, deserves his share of the credit. There are not many performers who can make themselves interesting in isolation, without human supporting players. Tom Hanks did it in “Cast Away,” with only a volleyball as his buddy, foil and straight man. Smith has a few more companions, including an expressive German shepherd, some department store mannequins and a high-powered rifle. (There are also some flesh-eating, virus-crazed zombies, about which more in a moment.) But it is the charismatic force of his personality that makes his character’s radical solitude scary and fascinating, as well as strangely appealing.
In this Smith is helped, and to some degree upstaged, by the island of Manhattan, which the movie’s director, Francis Lawrence, has turned into a post-apocalyptic wilderness. Three years after an epidemic has caused the evacuation and quarantine of New York City, Robert Neville (Smith) is its sole diurnal human resident, and he spends his days roaming its desolate neighborhoods, at once wary and carefree. The streetscapes he wanders through will be familiar to any visitor or resident, but the way Lawrence and his team of digital-effects artists have distressed and depopulated New York is downright uncanny. Weeds poke up through the streets, which are piled with abandoned cars, and a slow, visible process of decay has set in.
A nightmare, of course, but not without its enchantments. In some ways Neville, dwelling in a highly developed urban space that is also a wilderness, experiences the best of both worlds. From his home base in the elegant Washington Square town house he was lucky enough to own (on a government employee’s salary) before the big die-off, he makes daylight forays that are like an adventure-tourist fantasy. He does a little deer hunting on Park Avenue and some indoor fishing at the Temple of Dendur, picks fresh corn in Central Park and smacks golf balls across the Hudson from the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid.
Lawrence, who previously directed the hectic, obnoxious “Constantine” and many music videos, uses elaborate, computer-assisted means to create simple, striking effects. While “I Am Legend,” the latest in a series of film versions of a novel by Richard Matheson, fits comfortably within the conventions of the sci-fi horror genre — here come those zombies! — it mixes dread and suspense with contemplative, almost pastoral moods. And without taking itself too seriously, the movie, written by Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich, does ponder some pretty deep questions about the collapse and persistence of human civilization.
Neville, a scientist and a soldier, constitutes a civilization of one. His daily routines are at once practical — he wants to find a cure for the virus that wiped everyone else out, and he needs to be home before sundown — and spiritual. Under the streets of the city and in its empty buildings are the infected, transformed by the virus into pale, hairless, light-allergic cannibals. “Social de-evolution appears to be complete,” Neville observes as he makes notes in his basement lab. And his habits are a way not only of protecting himself from the zombies, but also of maintaining the distinction between them and him.
The zombies, like the rabid dogs that are their companions, nonetheless display rudimentary pack behavior and are even able to set traps and make plans. Once they begin swarming, “I Am Legend” inevitably loses some of its haunting originality, since they look a lot like the monsters in “28 Days Later” (and its sequel, “28 Weeks Later”). They also represent a less compelling application of computer-generated imagery than all those empty avenues and silent buildings.
And in its last section “I Am Legend” reverts to generic type, with chases and explosions and a redemptive softening of its bleak premise. The presence of the lovely Brazilian actress Alice Braga does seem promising; if she and Smith were to reboot the species together, Humanity 2.0 would be quite a bit sexier than the present version, as well as friendlier. But really the movie is best when its hero is on his own, and Smith, walking in the footsteps of Vincent Price and Charlton Heston, who played earlier versions of the Robert Neville character, outdoes both of them. There is something graceful and effortless about this performance, which not only shows what it might feel like to be the last man on earth, but also demonstrates what it is to be a movie star.

TITLE: England Begins Its Recovery With Victory Over Swiss
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — England improved dramatically as the match progressed to give Italian Fabio Capello a winning start as coach with a 2-1 victory over Switzerland in a friendly international at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday. 
Midfielder Jermaine Jenas scored his first England goal and the first of the Capello era with a first-time left foot shot after superb work down the left from Joe Cole after 40 minutes. 
Switzerland, co-hosts of the European Championship in June which England failed to qualify for, equalised when debutant Eren Derdiyok, a halftime substitute for Blaise N’Fuko, scored with a well struck left-foot shot on the turn after 58 minutes. 
That goal came one minute after Capello substituted Cole and Jenas for Peter Crouch and Shaun Wright-Phillips, but England regained the lead four minutes later with a move started and finished by Crouch and Wright-Phillips. 
Crouch won a midfield heading duel to set the impressive Wayne Rooney away and he found skipper Steven Gerrard whose cross left Wright-Phillips with an easy chance in front of an empty net. 
Capello told a news conference: “I must say we were quite nervous at the start, worried obviously. 
“We still have in the back of our minds the failure to qualify for Euro 2008, but in the second half we created a lot of scoring chances but didn’t take them because the Swiss had a good goalkeeper. We didn’t let them have many scoring chances though.” 
Swiss manager Koebi Kuhn added: “We are not proud of losing but I was pleased with the way we played and faced up to the English.” 

DESERVED LEAD 
Switzerland, who had only beaten England once in 16 meetings in the last 50 years, started well and looked more comfortable on the ball with some early swift counter-attacking. 
However, the home side improved as the match wore on and went close to adding at least three more goals early in the second half. 
Hakan Yakin and Gelson Fernandes were not entirely overshadowed in the Swiss midfield but the visitors looked more dangerous before the break. 
Tranquillo Barnetta and Daniel Gygax tested 37-year-old David James on his first start in England’s goal since May 2005, while the visitors also threatened when Yakin’s freekick flew narrowly wide. 
England, with eight changes to the side that lost 3-2 to Croatia in Steve McClaren’s last match in charge in November, took control of midfield with Rooney coming back to battle for every ball and almost scoring three times. 
Crouch also went close to a goal with a well-struck volley that goalkeeper Diego Benaglio saved well. 
But the Swiss defense was twice punished for lapses that must be eliminated for them to make any impression in Euro 2008. 
Cole, who minutes earlier had a shot from the edge of the box saved by Benaglio, jinked past defender Stephan Lichsteiner and pulled back a perfect pass for Jenas to sweep in with his left-foot for his first goal in his 18th appearance for England. 
England then scythed open the Swiss defense after 62 minutes for Wright-Phillips to produce what proved to be the winner to leave Capello smiling at the end. 
Asked why Michael Owen, who has scored 40 times for England in his 80 appearances, was left on the bench, Capello replied: “He is part of the squad and part of my plans, and I made the changes because of what I could see happening on the pitch.”

TITLE: Rice, Miliband Make Surprise Visit to Kabul
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: KABUL — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied here Thursday the allied strategy to stabilise Afghanistan was failing, saying it was incomplete and needed innovation to crush “determined enemies.”
Rice made her case during a press conference in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband who accompanied her on a surprise visit here amid growing fears for Afghanistan’s future. 
“You have determined enemies. We know that. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda continue to make life difficult” for ordinary Afghans, the top US diplomat told Karzai in the highly fortified and snow-covered presidential palace.
She said the NATO-led force and Afghan security forces had to focus much more on fighting new Taliban tactics such as suicide bombings and kidnappings after large-scale offensives mounted by the militants had failed.
“They’ve tried to adopt other tactics, like going after innocent people. We’ll have to adapt too. The Afghan government, the Afghan forces will have to adapt,” Rice said. 
“But to say it’s not working, I think, I would say it’s not complete, but the strategy is one, I believe, that is having a good effect,” she said.
Miliband said the response of key allies to the new Taliban tactics amounted to a “new phase” in the six-year war.
Rice and Karzai hailed the building of road networks since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda allies at the end of 2001 — something the U.S. diplomat said helped boost the economy as well as find the militants.
They also cited improvements in health and education, other signs Rice said showed the country had made a “remarkable difference for the better” over the many decades it had spent as a failed state.
Rice and Miliband were also here as part of a joint bid to urge NATO allies to share the burden in Afghanistan by sending more combat troops, helicopters and other military equipment to defeat a resurgent Taliban in its southern strongholds.
Germany rebuffed U.S. appeals last week to send such troops in a public tiff that fuelled fears voiced in Washington and London that the international community may fragment and abandon Afghanistan.
Canada has meanwhile threatened not to extend its mission beyond next year unless it gets more support.
Domestic support among some NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) nations for the mission has plummeted as more troops are killed and as the violence has escalated along with the country’s opium production.
Karzai said, however, he was confident that NATO would remain united in its commitment to helping Afghanistan.
“Different views among donor countries to Afghanistan and on how to provide assistance to Afghanistan and military and financial issues is pretty natural,” he said at the media briefing.
“But these different views will not make them separate or lessen their assistance to Afghanistan.”
While en route to Afghanistan with Miliband, Rice was also confident NATO would eventually pass “the test” of finding adequate troops to do the job.
Rice and Miliband met around 200 soldiers at a major NATO airbase in southern Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, before their talks with Karzai.
“As the debate hots up in our countries about what you’re doing and the difference you’re making, we’ll be defending you heart and soul,” Miliband told troops at Kandahar Air Field.
US forces led the invasion of Afghanistan that removed the hardline Taliban from government weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by the Al-Qaeda network, which then had bases in the country.
Despite the efforts of nearly 60,000 international troops in ISAF and the separate US-led coalition working alongside Afghan forces, the Taliban’s insurgency was its most deadly last year, with more than 6,000 people killed, including nearly 220 international soldiers.
ISAF commanders have been calling for around 7,500 extra troops to fight the Taliban threat.

TITLE: Hiddink Trusts Players To Abstain
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BELEK, Turkey — Russia coach Guus Hiddink has raised a few eyebrows by holding the national team’s training camp this week at a five-star Mediterranean resort hotel offering free drinks all day.
But the catch is that none of his players are allowed to take advantage of it.
All guests at the all-inclusive Cornelia De Luxe Resort can order unlimited alcohol, including vodka and whisky, and some officials feared that the abundance of free booze might distract the players.
“It certainly wouldn’t have been possible under Hiddink’s predecessors in the national team, and in the old Soviet days, it would be unthinkable to do such a thing,” a source within the Russian FA, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.
“Then we would lose a few of the players for sure. Also some of the coaches would find themselves incapable of holding any kind of training.”
Times, however, have changed.
Hiddink said he fully trusted his players.
“It’s not a problem for me,” the Dutchman told Reuters in an interview in the hotel lobby.
“I think the players in this team are all professionals, not only when they play but also in how they prepare themselves.
“In any case, when it comes to drinking, certain stereotypes don’t work, not for me anyway,” he said.
“In British football, for example, there was a drinking culture in the old days when it was normal for players to spend a lot of time in bars and pubs.
“But nowadays I think a great majority of players have learned to take good care of themselves in terms of pre-game preparations.”
Still, the hotel management took no chances.
“All our waiters and waitresses as well as bar attendants were told not to serve players any drinks under any circumstances,” said a hotel employee. “Not even if they offered us money for a drink.”
No exception was even made for Yury Zhirkov when he took time from training to get married in Turkey.
The newlywed couple were served only a customary glass of champagne.
“In Moscow you have a long wait, up to several months, before they register you. Here the whole thing took about five minutes,” said the CSKA Moscow winger, explaining why he got married in Turkey.
Unfortunately for Zhirkov, the honeymoon must wait.
“I got to spend one day with Inna before she went back to Moscow,” the 24-year-old said with a deep sigh.
“It’s pre-season training, so everything else must wait. Inna knew beforehand she was marrying a football player.”

TITLE: Palestinian Teacher Killed In Gaza by Israeli Missile
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli ground forces backed by warplanes exchanged fire with Hamas gunmen in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing a teacher and six militants in escalating violence that is hobbling peace efforts.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed harsher military action should Gaza militants persist with their rocket fire at southern Israel.
“If the Qassam (rocket) fire continues, we will intensify our activity, and the other side’s losses, until we resolve the Qassam rocket problem,” he said.
The surge in violence began Monday with a Hamas suicide bombing in southern Israel and heated up with Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza and militant rocket barrages. A 73-year-old Israeli woman was killed in the suicide bombing, and 16 Palestinians, all but one of them militants, have died in the Israeli attacks.
The 38-year-old Palestinian teacher was killed Thursday when an Israeli surface-to-surface missile struck an agricultural school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, Hamas security forces said. Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry said the man was killed outside the school gate.
The Israeli military said it opened fire in the area at a group of rocket launchers. It denied firing at a school.
The fighting erupted earlier in the day after Israeli tanks drove several hundred yards into northern Gaza. Hamas militants and Israel troops traded automatic fire, as Israeli aircraft fired missiles and Hamas lobbed mortar shells.
Five Hamas men were killed, three by missiles and two by gunfire, said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ military wing. The Islamic Jihad faction said one of its militants also died in the clash.
Seven rockets were fired at southern Israel on Thursday morning, the military said. One landed in the yard of a home in the rocket-scarred town of Sderot, slightly wounding one person, it said.
The spike in fighting has threatened to overwhelm peacemaking efforts. It is unlikely that Hamas’ rival, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, could press ahead with serious peace talks with Israel during intense conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas, which rules Gaza after expelling forces loyal to Abbas last June, is not a party to peace talks renewed at a U.S.-sponsored conference in November.
Heavy Palestinian casualties could put pressure on Abbas to halt peace talks. While hoping to reach a peace deal with Abbas this year, Israel has said it will not carry out any agreement until he regains control of Gaza.
Israel, meanwhile, planned to keep up its economic pressure on Gaza. On Thursday, the Defense Ministry ordered the reduction of electricity to the Gaza Strip, a small but symbolic cut in supply meant to deter militant rocket fire, according to security officials.

TITLE: President of Chad Appeals For Help
AUTHOR: By Alistair Thomson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: N’DJAMENA — Chad’s President Idriss Deby called on the European Union on Thursday to deploy a peacekeeping force urgently to the east, as his government sought to tighten security after a weekend rebel assault.
Prime Minister Nouradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew across the capital N’Djamena and swathes of east and central Chad after the remnants of the rebel column which attacked the city withdrew halfway to the Sudan border.
A spokesman for the rebels, Ali Ordjo Hemchi, said they had taken the town of Mongo, 600 km (375 miles) east of N’Djamena, and were being bombed by French warplanes and helicopters.
There was no independent confirmation of this. Former colonial power France, which has over 1,000 troops stationed in the central African oil producer, has denied rebel allegations it is supporting Deby militarily.
As calm returned to the dusty riverside capital, hundreds of refugees, who fled to Cameroon after the weekend clashes that killed at least 160 civilians, returned over the river border.
Emergency workers in N’Djamena scooped up bodies with an earthmover on Thursday, as people cleared up debris from damaged buildings. Army pick-ups packed with turbaned soldiers sped around streets littered with burned out vehicles.
The renewed conflict has delayed the deployment of a 3,700-strong EU peacekeeping force to eastern Chad to protect half a million Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians who have fled violence spilling over from Sudan’s Darfur region.
Relief officials said the unrest threatened to provoke a humanitarian crisis by blocking aid flights. The European Union had started deployment of its force last week but suspended it almost immediately due to the rebel attack.
“We want to launch a solemn appeal to the European Union, and France ... to make sure that this force is put in place as quickly as possible to lighten the load we are carrying,” Deby said in an interview broadcast on France’s Europe 1 radio.
Deby, who accuses Sudan of backing the rebels, said the international community had given Khartoum “the green light to destabilize Chad” by not condemning its role. The UN Security Council issued a non-binding statement on Monday urging members to support Deby, but spurned France’s request to mention Sudan.
Khartoum, which denies backing the rebels, said on Thursday it had joined Libyan-led mediation efforts and had been behind the insurgents’ decision to withdraw from N’Djamena.
“Sudan called for evacuation of the opposition from N’Djamena and the opposition agreed,” the powerful head of the intelligence forces Salah Gosh told state Sudan Vision daily.
The rebels, who fought their way into N’Djamena on Saturday with a column of 300 pick-ups mounted with cannon and machine guns, have long accused Paris of propping up Deby’s 18-year-old government, which they call corrupt and dictatorial.
France initially said it was “neutral” as fighting raged at the weekend, but has since thrown its full weight behind Deby. President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday his country would intervene if needed against the insurgents.
In an apparent gesture of gratitude, Deby, a former French-trained helicopter pilot, said he could pardon six members of French charity Zoe’s Ark sentenced to eight years in prison by Chad for abducting children, if France requested it. 
A spokesman for Sarkozy said on Thursday that France would not initiate a request itself but would pass on any request for a pardon from members of Zoe’s Ark, who are serving their sentence in France under a legal cooperation agreement.
“The French presence in Chad is a major handicap for peace and for the creation of a truly democratic regime,” the alliance of three anti-Deby rebel groups said in a joint statement, branding France’s intervention as “neo-colonialist”.
Aid workers said at least 160 corpses lay in N’Djamena’s three main hospitals and as many as 850 more people were being treated for bullet wounds and injuries from mortar fire.
Residents said security forces rounded up leading members of Chad’s political opposition on Sunday night, as the fighting in the capital subsided. Human rights groups said on Wednesday soldiers were also trying to arrest civil rights campaigners.

TITLE: Gazprom, Russia To Form New International League
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas exporter, will help fund and form an international hockey league to rival North America’s National Hockey League.
Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom’s deputy chief executive officer, and Russian Hockey Federation President Vladislav Tretiak signed an accord in Moscow to create the Continental Hockey League by April 15, the federation said on its web site Wednesday.
Medvedev is a member of the organizational committee of the Open Hockey League, which is working with the Russian Hockey Federation to form the new league.
“This is the evolution of the Russian Super League,” Russian Hockey Federation spokesman Vladimir Gerasimov said in a telephone interview after the signing. “We need to take another step and secure investment from state corporations.”
The NHL in the U.S. and Canada lure the best players from Russia and other countries with salaries that local clubs can’t afford. The NHL, based in New York, was formed by five Canadian clubs in 1917 and now has 30 teams. Gazprom, with a market value of $304 billion, is the world’s sixth-biggest listed company.
Medvedev, who is also president of the SKA St. Petersburg professional hockey club, told the Sovietsky Sport newspaper last month that Gazprom and six other state-run companies, including billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Ingosstrakh insurer, would invest an initial $6 million each in the new league.