SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1350 (14), Friday, February 22, 2008
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TITLE: Gulyayev: Police Threw Man In River
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sergei Gulyayev, the leader of the Narod movement, said he is preparing a complaint to the prosecutor’s office about the beating by OMON riot police of a man in a police truck holding those detained during a rally against the closing of a market on Saturday. He said he would submit the complaint on Friday.
Speaking by phone this week, he said the man, businessman Dmitry Smekalov, was then thrown into the Neva River and was lucky to survive with just a broken rib and severe bruising.
Gulyayev was detained alongside Andrei Dmitriyev, the St. Petersburg leader of Eduard Limonov’s banned National-Bolshevik Party and Olga Kurnosova of Gary Kasparov’s United Civil Front. All three groups belong to pro-democracy coalition The Other Russia. The Legislative Assembly’s deputy Sergei Malkov was detained as well, despite his legal immunity as a deputy, although he was released early.
“It was all done in a crude form, unmotivated, and when we were dragged into a truck, there was another man there, whom I knew in fact. But when I saw him, I didn’t recognize him and didn’t realize that it was Dima Smekalov until the evening,” said Gulyayev.
“His face was so heavily beaten; he was bleeding, he had a swollen nose and lips and I didn’t recognize him, even though I’d seen him several times before. And then, when we were inside, they continued to beat him for another ten minutes.
“I thought that they were either high or drunk, because it was totally unmotivated cruelty toward an absolutely defenseless man who didn’t offer any resistance. He only asked, ‘Why are you beating me?’ 
“[They replied,] ‘We ain’t beating you - we haven’t started yet.’ It was like a pack of dogs attacking an unfamiliar, ailing dog. They were beating him, six of them, for 10 minutes in the presence of a deputy of the Legislative Assembly. With fists, feet, truncheons, whatever.”
According to Gulyayev, Smekalov was not accepted for processing at the police precinct since he was not among the rally’s organizers and had just happened to be walking near the location.
The OMON were called to deal with the man.
“In the evening I learnt that [the OMON police] were on their way to their base when they stopped by the Neva and, as [Smekalov] told me, dragged him by his arms and legs, swung him and threw him over the parapet into the Neva. He told me, ‘I was flying and thinking, “I hope there will be no water down there because I’ll in such a condition that I’m not able to swim.”’ But it turned out there was ice.”
Gulyayev said he himself was hit several times when in the truck. 
“When they dragged me through the truck, they hit me with a truncheon in the kidneys, on the head and back, but I’m leaving it out [of the complaint], because there’s nothing striking about it, it’s the normal way citizens are treated by law enforcement and the OMON police,” he said.
According to Gulyayev, Smekalov has refused to be hospitalized or to complain himself because he feels intimidated.
“It all happened in the daytime, in the center of the ‘cultural capital,’ the hometown of the president and the [Kremlin-backed] presidential candidate, not in Chechnya during a zachistka (cleansing operation),” he said. 
“It should be investigated; it is what they call an ‘attempted murder.’ [...] The man had every chance of dying because of meeting the OMON officers. We’ll find who these people are, they signed the detention reports, and moreover, I memorized their faces.”
“We haven’t received any report from this citizen [Smekalov],” said spokesman for the Interior Ministry in St. Petersburg Vyacheslav Stepchenko by phone on Wednesday. He admitted that he is aware of the case but did not elaborate.
The rally gathered the owners of small businesses and farmers who were protesting the planned closing of the agricultural marketplace near Metro Staraya Derevnya and the building of a gas station and a parking lot there.
The organizers officially applied about the meeting but the city’s administration changed the proposed location to a “neglected piece of ground on the edge of Primorsky district,” according to Gulyayev.
“The businessmen could not get there, because they all work near Staraya Derevnya Metro. Moreover, we learnt about the move a day before the rally, so naturally we could not warn anybody,” said Gulyayev. 
The activists then chose to conduct the gathering in the form of a deputy meeting with voters without the need for an administrative sanction. The gathering went on peacefully until the OMON police arrived and detained the organizers.
Last year, Gulyayev was detained during the first Dissenters’ March on March 3, despite the fact that he was then a deputy of the city’s Legislative Assembly, the status that guarantees immunity. He suffered a broken arm during his detention and said that a policeman was strangling him in a truck until he lost consciousness. Gulyayev said his complaint to the prosecutor about that fact yielded no result until now.
On Thursday, the city administration refused to sanction the Dissenters March without suggesting an alternative route as required by law, according to the United Civil Front. The opposition points out that the election campaign is being conducted with many violations, while oppositional candidates have not been allowed to take part, and it is calling for a boycott of the March 3 vote.

TITLE: Adamov Gets 5 1/2 for Stealing $30 Million
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Zamoskvoretsky District Court sentenced former Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov to 5 1/2 years in prison Wednesday, one day after it found him guilty of abuse of office and defrauding Russia and the United States out of millions of dollars.
The court ruled that Adamov and two colleagues had used their positions to steal more than $30 million from a Russian-U.S. uranium joint venture, causing “considerable damage” to the state.
The amount is more than triple the $9 million that the United States had accused Adamov of stealing. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher issued a statement late Tuesday “congratulating the General Procuracy for the successful conviction” of Adamov, according to Margaret Philbin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Two policemen burst into the stuffy and cramped courtroom seconds before Judge Irina Vasina and two colleagues ordered Adamov, 68, to be taken into custody to begin his sentence Wednesday.
“This is brutal,” Adamov said immediately after the sentence had been read.
But he remained motionless as he listened to the sentence and as a police officer came to handcuff him.
“I think it’s obvious to everyone what’s really going on. My coat. I have a coat,” Adamov added. The cuffs were briefly removed as a supporter handed him his coat.
As he was being escorted out of the courtroom, Adamov said that he considered the sentence “surprising” and that he would appeal. He was then whisked off down the back corridors of the court building.
Genri Reznik, Adamov’s lawyer, said the case against his client had been fabricated.
“There is no evidence that 1 cent, or 1 ruble was stolen by Adamov,” Reznik said. “He is the victim of cynical politics.”
Prosecutors, who estimated that the knock-on effects of Adamov’s illegal dealings had done $1 billion of damage to the economy, had asked for a longer term, but said Wednesday that they would accept the sentence handed down.
“I don’t think we will appeal,” said Victor Antopov, who headed the prosecution team in court.
Vasina ruled that Adamov and his co-defendants — Revmir Fraishtut and Vyacheslav Pismenny — had stolen 62 percent of the shares in the uranium joint venture. She said the total value of the shares was more than $30 million.
Adamov, Pismenny and Fraishtut operated as a “criminal group” when they embezzled the funds in 1998 and 1999, the ruling said. Adamov served as nuclear power minister from 1998 to 2001.
Pismenny is the former head of the Troitsky Institute of Innovation and Thermonuclear Research, and Fraishtut is the former director of Tekhsnabeksport, a state-owned firm that sells enriched uranium, among other things.
Adamov was arrested at the request of U.S. prosecutors while visiting his daughter in Switzerland in May 2005. He faces U.S. charges of embezzling $9 million provided by the United States to improve nuclear safety in Russia. Some of the money turned up in bank accounts in Pennsylvania, U.S. prosecutors said.
Russia objected to his extradition, saying the United States wanted to coerce Adamov into giving up Russian nuclear secrets. Switzerland extradited Adamov to Russia in December 2005 after Russian prosecutors charged him with fraud and abuse of office at home.
Adamov, who worked on nuclear technology sales to Iran during his tenure as minister, was dismissed in 2001 by President Vladimir Putin. At about the same time, an anti-corruption committee in the State Duma accused him of illegally setting up companies inside and outside Russia.
Antopov said Adamov’s age and otherwise good government service record were responsible for shortening what could have been a 10-year sentence.
“This is a fair sentence,” Antopov said, adding that Adamov would likely only have to serve “two or three years” of the term handed down by the court.
Around 100 people — mostly journalists — had packed into the small courtroom for the final part of the verdict. They watched in silence as the judges delivered the sentence.
The commotion stood in stark contrast to the day-long reading of the verdict, an ordeal that involved the three judges taking shifts at reading chunks of text, lulling many in the room to sleep.
As one judge read, the other two chatted. Adamov and Reznik indulged in whispers and synchronized head-shaking when the court’s version of Adamov’s history appeared to contradict theirs.
An indication that Adamov was resigned to his sentence even prior to it being read may have come in an interview before the hearing began Wednesday.
“What do I expect? I expect a sentence,” he said. “The rest is up to the powers that be.”

TITLE: Director of Human Rights Watch Denied an Entry Visa
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The head of international rights group Human Rights Watch has been denied a Russian visa, scuttling his plans to present a report accusing authorities of shackling nongovernmental organizations with burdensome regulations.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based group, had planned to present the report Wednesday in Moscow but said his visa application was rejected by consular officials.
“It is a good example of how the Russian government uses onerous regulations to harass and try to silence nongovernmental organizations that address sensitive issues,” Roth said by telephone from New York.
It was the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that a representative of the rights watchdog was denied a Russian visa, Roth said, adding that was only the second time he has been denied a visa anywhere during his tenure with the group. Nigeria denied him a visa in 1997, Roth said.
Staff from the group’s Moscow bureau on Wednesday presented the 72-page report, titled, “Choking on Bureaucracy: State Curbs on Independent Civil Society Activism.” The report criticizes recent legislation increasing government scrutiny of NGOs and broadening authorities’ power to shut down them down.
Roth accused the Foreign Ministry of manipulating his visa application.
He said he submitted his application to the Russian consulate in New York two weeks ago through a visa agency often used by him and his colleagues. The agency erroneously indicated that he was coming to Russia as a tourist, and the visa was denied, Roth said.
Roth said he immediately reapplied for a business visa but was again denied. Consular officials told him that the Foreign Ministry was behind the decision, Roth said.
The ministry’s press office declined to comment immediately, asking for a written inquiry. A faxed request went unanswered as of Wednesday evening.
“We had never had problems with visas for our foreign colleagues, and we never expected that the presentation of our report in Moscow would be surrounded by such a drama,” said Tatyana Lokshina, a researcher with Human Rights Watch’s local bureau.
Roth also had several meetings lined up with government officials, including Foreign Ministry officials, Lokshina said.
Alexander Cherkasov, deputy head of domestic human rights watchdog Memorial, said that, by denying Roth a visa, the government merely gave the critical report extra PR.
“Such an excessively nervous reaction toward rights activists is counterproductive, even by bureaucratic logic,” Cherkasov said.
Numerous businessmen, journalists and human rights activists have been barred from entering the country, dating back to the early years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. 
Like other countries, however, Russia is under no obligation to explain its rationale for refusing or revoking visas.

TITLE: Inspectors Cite 52 Violations As Cause Of University Closure
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Red tape is smothering civil rights and common sense in the dramatically escalating conflict between the European University and the city’s Fire Safety Inspectorate, critics say.
The Dzerzhinsky District Court on Monday has upheld its earlier decision to temporarily close down the university for fire code violations.
The management of the European University that was ordered to suspend its activities because of fire safety violations said they suspect the ruling came as a result of an organized campaign against the university. 
Inspectors found 52 violations of fire safety rules during a routine annual check that was completed on Jan.18 and prompted a rapid court ruling to suspend the school’s activities. Having corrected more than 20 of the violations the university filed an appeal asking for permission to resume teaching while gradually correcting other violations, but the court ruled against the university.
“One likely scenario is that someone is interested in moving into our building, a plum historical property in the heart of St. Petersburg,” said Nikolai Vakhtin, the rector of the university at a news conference organized by the Regional Press Institute on Tuesday.
 “Another possibility is that someone is looking to destabilize the political situation in St. Petersburg during the election campaign.”
Vakhtin declined to guess who could be behind the attack on the university but said such a move, if genuinely orchestrated, would be meant to target First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin’s protege.
The academics began to suspect a mastermind behind the case when they scrutinized the ruling and the list of violations in great detail and discovered what they saw as contradictions and lack of logic.
While fire inspectors complained about safety violations in a particular building, the court’s ruling has affected the teaching process itself.
The judgement calls for the “temporary suspension of activities” which makes it impossible for the management to rent out other premises as a temporary solution until the argument over the historic premises is resolved.

TITLE: Journalist In Trouble Over Putin Article
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Osadchuk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Perm journalist may face criminal charges after he penned an article identifying what he characterized as positive similarities between President Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler.
Igor Averkiyev, 47, editor of the newspaper Lichnoye Delo, was summoned to the city’s Leninsky District Prosecutor’s Office on Monday to answer questions about an article called “Putin Is Our Good Hitler,” published in the newspaper Za Cheloveka in December.
The story compares the eight years of Putin’s rule to the early years of Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany.
Prosecutors opened an investigation after receiving a complaint from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage. The service charged that the story contravened laws in place to battle extremism and demanded that Averkiyev and Sergei Isayev, the publisher of Za Cheloveka, be charged.
The Perm office of the federal body responsible for monitoring compliance with mass media legislation said it found evidence of calls “to change the present constitutional order” in the story.
Perm Prosecutor’s Office spokes-woman Tatyana Shuvayeva said Averkiyev had only been called in for preliminary questioning and declined to answer any questions about the case until experts had more opportunity to examine the article.
Averkiyev wrote “like Hitler, Putin is the savior of the Fatherland, the guardian of greatness, stability and order,” who also “safeguards the country from enemies, both foreign and domestic.”
During the campaign leading up to December’s State Duma elections, Averkiyev claimed, Putin “tried on the mantle of ‘national leader,’ thus practically making a claim to absolute power in Russia, unlimited by elections, parliaments or constitutions — limited only by the leader’s personal ambition and the people’s for him.”
Reached by telephone Wednesday, Averkiyev had no immediate comment on the case.
Averkiyev is not the first journalist to face prosecution for what were considered insulting portrayals of Putin.
Ivanovo journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov was convicted in October of publicly insulting a public official and fined 20,000 rubles ($750) for referring to Putin as “a phallic symbol.”

TITLE: Medvedev’s Teacher To Head University
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The head of St. Petersburg State University, Lyudmila Verbitskaya, retired early this week and will most probably be replaced by Nikolai Kropachyov, the head of the University’s Law Department.
The Scientific Council of the University accepted Verbitskaya’s request to retire from the position of University rector on Monday. Verbitskaya will be 72 years old in June, Izvestiya daily reported, and the normal retirement age for women in Russia is 55 years old. 
Upon her resignation Verbitskaya, a legendary figure to generations of students, was appointed to the honorary position of the University’s first president.
Nikolai Bulayev, head of Federal Agency of Russian Education, said the new position was created “to keep the life and professional experience of the older generation,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported. However, he said that the president’s duties will be mainly symbolic.
The University made changes in its charter to introduce the position of the president at a conference last April. The change follows a trend in St. Petersburg’s higher educational institutions of appointing younger rectors while retaining honorary positions for former administrators.
The former heads of the city’s Polytechnical University, Finance and Economics University and Technology and Design University occupy honorary presidential positions at these institutions.
Verbitskaya will also be involved in public and scientific work directed at the development of the Russian language, a cause that during last year’s Duma elections saw her pictured on posters promoting the correct use of grammar in the name of the ruling United Russia party. Verbitskaya is closely associated with United Russia and politically close to the regime of President Vladimir Putin. 
Vadim Tyulpanov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of United Russia, said Verbitskaya, who is a member of First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential election campaign team, will now be able to concentrate on party activities.
“I think, now [Verbitskaya] will have more time to participate in the party’s projects,” Tyulpanov said, Interfax reported.
Verbitskya has been rector of the University, which was attended by both Putin and Medvedev, as well as such historic figures as the scientist Dmitry Mendeleyev, the writer Nikolai Gogol and the Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, for the past 15 years.
In 2006, a criminal case was pursued against several of Verbitskaya’s subordinates who were subsequently charged with embezzlement of about 47 million rubles ($1.8 million), Moskovsky Komsmolets V Pitere weekly reported.
Verbitskaya was re-elected rector in 1994, 1999, and 2004. Her current term was to expire in 2009. 
Kropachyov, a law professor who taught Medvedev and is said to be a confidant of Putin, has been appointed acting head of the University and is almost certain to be confirmed as full-time rector at an election on May 21.

TITLE: Nationalist Leader Given Three Years for ‘Sieg Heil’
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The leader of an ultranationalist youth group has been sentenced to three years in prison for yelling “Sieg heil” and “Kill the liberals” during a political debate at a local club last year.
The Basmanny District Court on Monday convicted Maxim Martsinkevich, 23, of inciting ethnic hatred when he and 15 other ultranationalists interrupted the debate at the Bilingua cafe between political commentator Yulia Latynina and satirist Maxim Konenenko last February, RIA-Novosti reported.
Witnesses said Martsinkevich and several other young men flashed Nazi insignias and began yelling “Sieg Heil” and verbally assaulting participants at the political debate titled “Where are the Democrats?”
Martsinkevich, 23, goes by the nickname Tesak, or “Hatchet,” and is leader of the ultranationalist group Format 18.
Authorities believe that Martsinkevich is one of the leaders of the city’s skinhead circles, Gazeta.ru reported. In March, he began publicly calling for Russia to be cleansed of foreigners and promoting national socialism, the web site said.
Based on footage posted on his blog before it was abruptly shut down in June, Martsinkevich is believed to have participated in the June 22 clashes that broke out in central Moscow between ethnic Russians and people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, Gazeta.ru reported.

TITLE: Lavrov Lashes Out Over Kosovo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday sharply criticized the European Union’s decision to send a police and judiciary mission to Kosovo following the territory’s declaration of independence from Serbia.
The mission violates international law because the decision was made without approval from the UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
“The European Union unilaterally, without any approval from the UN Security Council, is ending a mission to Kosovo to provide for the rule of law,” Lavrov said. “There is bitter irony, to put it mildly, in this name, because the mission will be providing for the rule of law in violation of the highest law — in violation of international law.”
Lavrov, speaking at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart, also repeated Russia’s argument that existing Security Council resolutions say Kosovo is part of Serbia.
Lavrov’s remarks were Moscow’s latest verbal attack on Western countries that have supported Kosovo’s drive for independence.
Earlier in the day, the Foreign Ministry released a statement saying the EU’s approach to the independence declaration jeopardizes security in Europe and encourages separatism worldwide.
The EU itself does not officially recognize nations, but several EU countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence claim, and a majority have said they would formally launch diplomatic ties with the continent’s newest country.

TITLE: Rock Legend Dies Aged 43
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Punk rock icon Yegor Letov, who was once committed to a mental hospital by Soviet authorities angered by his profane and fiercely anti-Communist lyrics, has died of heart failure aged 43.
Letov died in his sleep Tuesday morning at his home in the Siberian city of Omsk, according to a brief statement on the official web site of his band, Grazhdanskaya Oborona.
Letov protested against the Soviet regime in the late 1980s and flirted with communism and nationalism in the early 1990s, but he avoided any politics in the past few years (see page ii, AAT).
The musician’s funeral and a public memorial service took place on Thursday in Omsk. 
Letov was scheduled to perform solo at Orlandina club on Sunday. Now the club’s management is planning to hold a memorial concert on that day instead.

TITLE: Economic Growth Will Continue, Report Says
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Despite the global economic crisis, the Russian economy is likely to keep growing in 2008, according to a report issued this week by the Institute for Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO). After the recent outflow of private capital from the banking industry experts expect a return wave.
According to IGSO, investors will be interested primarily in securities, industrial production and retail. Capital inflow will produce a short-term boom in the Russian economy. However in the long run it will increase the debt burden for Russian companies and banks, the report said.
“The credit bubble, which burst in January 2008, resulted in three crashes in the stock market and marked the beginning of the global economic crisis. The problems that emerged in the American market and the likely expansion of the crisis to Europe and Asia-Pacific region have increased the attraction of the Russian economy for investors,” said Boris Kagarlitskiy, director of IGSO.
He listed large corporations, new production enterprises, retail and service companies as the most attractive assets.
However, after the economic upsurge, the Russian market “will be inevitably exhausted, and capital flight will begin,” the report said. In the face of the global crisis, there is no way to avoid an economic depression and capital outflow, the expert concluded. Russia will only postpone these negative effects.
As a result of the falling production output all over the world, the price of oil will fall, which will undermine Russian raw material producers, the report said. Other experts said that the Russian economy will attract foreign investment in 2009 as well. “In 2008, slowing credit growth is likely to bring GDP growth down to seven percent. I still expect high growth and double-digit inflation in 2008,” said Alexander Morozov, chief economist at HSBC Bank for Russia and the CIS.
“A return to single-digit inflation is unlikely before 2009, when the recent deceleration in money supply growth should have helped to dampen price pressures. That creates an overall favorable growth environment for investment, complemented by other strong macroeconomic fundamentals (high reserves, low debt, a positive current account and a stable ruble),” Morozov said.
He saw weakening of capital inflows as a positive factor that might help restrain money supply growth. “However, any positive impact resulting from this factor would most likely be seen only in 2009,” he said.
Among the negative trends, Morozov indicated that the Russian economy is overheated. “As economic growth has accelerated, so has inflation,” he said.
Last year Russia’s GDP growth was  8.1 percent while the consumer price index increased by 11.9 percent.
“The clearest manifestation of overheating is in the construction sector, where output is rising fast, and construction materials are leading the price growth in the economy. Inflated input prices and the investment rush are leading to ill-considered investment decisions and undermining investment efficiency,” Morozov said.
Morozov forecasted the construction boom would continue “stoked by a strong supply of public infrastructure investment.”

TITLE: Mobile Computers Take Off
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Intel Corporation expects the use of mobile computers to proliferate during 2008, and the company hopes that computer producers will increasingly use its Centrino technology, which combines a high-speed processor with low power consumption.
According to preliminary data for 2007, mobile PCs including laptops and palmtops accounted for over 50 percent of the total volume of computer production. IDC Worldwide analytical agency forecasts that their share will keep increasing. Last year sales of mobile computers in the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) for the first time exceeded sales of desktop computers, according to IDC EMEA.
“Producers of mobile computers are fueling the demand for these devices by customizing new models for wider audiences including trend followers and students. In 2008, mobile computers will include new options and fine adjustment facilities. They will become multimedia devices with wider connection opportunities and lower power consumption,” Intel said in a statement.
In the EMEA region, the sale of notebooks increased by 45 percent last year, according to IDC EMEA. Intel specialists forecasted that, as a result of the growing demand, producers of mobile devices will use better technological solutions.
Mobile computers will get larger screens while the gadgets themselves will become smaller. Producers will equip the devices with higher-speed processors and increasingly use Wi-Fi and WiMAX technologies.
A network of WiMAX hotspots will be created in Moscow by the end of 2008 as the result of a project being implemented by Intel in cooperation with Komstar-OTS telecom provider.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, Intel announced that it would promote mobile Internet devices (MIDs) in cooperation with European telecom operator T-Mobile. A new smaller and faster processor for these devices will be introduced to the market this year, and the new MIDs will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G and WiMAX technologies.
“Mobile internet devices will strike a responsive chord with consumers, and by 2012, there will be 90 million MID-owners,” ABI Research marketing company said in a recent report.
ABI Research identified several groups of MID customers — Lifestyle Boomers, Gen Y Social Networkers, Young Gamers, Frugal Generalists and Multimedia Enthusiasts.
“Mobile Internet devices face serious competitive challenges from single-purpose devices, evolving smartphones, and some ultra mobile PCs (UMPCs). Wireless connectivity will be a key feature of MIDs — mobile WiMAX and WCDMA connectivity will be integral components,” ABI Research forecasted.
The agency expects UMPC markets to grow steadily and reach sales of 4.68 million units in 2012. The technological challenges facing UMPCs include the need for low power consumption processors that still can run Vista applications, lower-cost displays, longer-life batteries, lower-cost flash drives, and more user-friendly input devices, ABI Research said.
According to In-Stat research firm, the ultra mobile devices worldwide market will constitute more than eight million units in 2011, and 2008-2010 will be key years for the development of the market.
“The new paradigm requires specific market inflection points in the mass availability of anytime/anywhere wireless communications, as well as new business models for application programs for widespread adoption. Many of these requirements are already in the late stages of development or roll-out,” said Ian Lao, an In-Stat analyst.
According to In-Stat, ultra mobile devices will focus on running a full operating system, running any application as it was originally developed and compiled for PCs or notebooks, and full unmodified web pages. Thus, no one device will be able to support all of the different usages and applications.

TITLE: Milosevic’s Legacy in Kosovo
AUTHOR: By Anne Applebaum
TEXT: As not everybody now remembers, the wars of Yugoslavia began not in Bosnia, not in Croatia, but in Kosovo. The chain of events that led to the Srebrenica massacre and the bombing of Belgrade started there, in the late 1980s, when Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic launched a series of repressive measures against this mostly Albanian, semi-independent, autonomous province within Serbia. These culminated in 1990, when Milosevic ended the semi-in-dependence, revoked Kosovo’s autonomy, installed a new police force, shut down Albanian newspapers, fired university professors and generally inflicted economic and political chaos. 
Milosevic’s intention was to reassert Serbian and Orthodox dominance over Kosovo, the site of a historically significant battle between the Serbs and the Ottoman Empire in 1389 (the Serbs lost) and home to a genuinely substantial Serbian minority. And the result? This week, nearly two decades later, Kosovo — an Albanian-speaking, Muslim-majority state in which, it’s safe to guess, Serbs will be less than fully welcome and no Orthodox church will be safe from vandalism — has just declared independence from Serbia. A more eloquent demonstration of the law of unintended consequences would be hard to find. 
In fact, watching the crowds celebrate Saturday night in the streets of Pristina, I wondered whether there wasn’t a deeper lesson here for other would-be neighborhood bullies. Milosevic’s stated goal was, after all, the greater glory of Serbia, although he had other unstated goals as well, such as the perpetuation of a communist-era power structure. Spouting Serbian nationalism, he helped turned Serb minorities across Yugoslavia into mini-militias. They, in turn, inspired the creation of other mini-militias — Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian and others — which began fighting one another in a series of small, nasty wars. 
You can fairly accuse me here of oversimplifying this chronology, but I think that it is nevertheless correct to say that the result of this activity — discrimination, ethnic cleansing, warfare — was a complete disaster for Serbia. The Serbian economy went down the tubes, the Serb dominance of ex-Yugoslavia evaporated and Serb capital of Belgrade was bombed. Now Serbia looks set to be dismembered as well. Some European countries and the United States have recognized Kosovo’s independence, something that wouldn’t have happened two decades ago. Milosevic the supernationalist — the would-be leader of a revived, powerful, successful Serbia — damaged no country nearly so much as he damaged Serbia itself. 
Keep that lesson in mind over the next few months as others in Europe — and possibly elsewhere — attempt to use the Kosovo example as a precedent. After all, if the Albanians can be independent from Serbia, the Abkhazians and South Ossetians would like to be independent from Georgia, the Basques and the Catalonians don’t see why they shouldn’t be independent from Spain, and who knows what could happen in Cyprus. 
In some of these cases, there are other, larger neighbors that might be interested in facilitating the split, just as Serbia was keen to encourage ethnic Serbs in Bosnia or Croatia. Most notably, and most notoriously, the Kremlin has made ominous noises and dropped dark hints about those Georgian separatist groups, and one can certainly see their logic. What a perfect way to take revenge on those difficult, NATO-loving Georgians: encourage Georgia’s ethnic minorities to launch civil war. Besides, the timing could hardly be better. In the waning days of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, is Abkhazia anybody’s central concern? During the most interesting U.S. presidential campaign in decades, is anyone going to spare a thought for South Ossetia? 
Except that if Abkhazia and South Ossetia were to secede, and civil war in Georgia were to follow, the Russians would then have a failed state on their borders. And, as we know from Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Africa, ethnic and religious civil wars have a nasty way of spreading to their neighbors. Chaos in Georgia might be in the short-term interest of a small group of Putinites, desperate to raise the specter of warfare, annoy the West and cling to power — much like Milosevic, once upon a time — but it is most definitely not in the long-term interest of Russia. 
Russia’s policy toward these would-be separatists over the next few weeks will therefore reveal a great deal about the mentality of the Kremlin’s ruling clan. If the denizens of the Kremlin have a shred of concern about their compatriots’ future well-being, they’ll shut up and try to calm everyone down. If not, I hope they remember that the risks of the law of unintended consequences apply to them, too. 

Anne Applebaum is a columnist for The Washing- 
ton Post, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: The Senseless Rule of Law
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Last Thursday, Maksharip Aushev was arrested in Ingushetia. His arrest could become a political catastrophe — not only for Ingushetia, but for the Kremlin’s interests in the entire Caucasus region.
The whole story began on June 17, when security agents detained Aushev’s nephew, Magomed. They did not press any charges against him, but they allegedly tortured him and forced him to write a statement saying he had cooperated with the agents and had received money from them. After this, Magomed was released.
Rather than keep quiet, Magomed filed a complaint with Ingushetia’s prosecutor’s office. On Sept. 18, security agents again detained Magomed and this time took Aushev’s son as well, who had been riding in the car with him.
The cousins were allegedly tortured for several hours and questioned as to who had put Magomed up to writing the letter to the prosecutor’s office. The walls of the cell in which they were held were covered with blood and the signatures of people who had disappeared.
Agents allegedly broke the young men’s ribs, and drove them into the mountains to witness what is called “Snickers” in certain circles. This is where police tie explosives to a corpse and detonate it, blowing the body into little pieces, which are then eaten by wild animals so that the victim’s identity will never be established.
This torture had no practical value in gaining evidence; the henchmen were just having fun. But their sadism backfired when people in Nazran took to the streets demanding the release of the pair. As a result of this public outcry, the cousins were released.
After that, Aushev traveled to Chechnya, where he learned the details of the abduction of his son and nephew: They were held in a death camp in a village in the Urus-Martan district and had been abducted by the chief of the local police, whose last name was Dzhamalkhanov and who apparently was acting on the orders of Ingush authorities. Most amazing is how easy it was to establish the name of the abductor and exactly where the torture was conducted. The young men’s tormentors leaked information like a sieve.
When this information became widely known, Aushev turned into a local hero, at which point he was arrested. Federal agents first used a flamethrower to burn down the house of Aushev’s brother. When Aushev returned to the gutted building later that evening by himself, the local authorities grabbed him.
This incident shows very clearly that the attempt by the Ingush to seek justice from President Vladimir Putin would be like Jews turning to Hitler for protection. Russia has sent a clear signal to the people of Ingushetia: They should go up into the mountains instead of demonstrating in the streets.
With Aushev’s arrest, Russia has also made it clear that it is not Ingush President Murat Zyazikov who is a puppet of the Kremlin. Rather, it is the Kremlin that is hostage to every decision made by Zyazikov: While Zyazikov is unable to defeat the rebels in the republic, he is extremely capable of destroying those who are trying to fight for justice.
People like Aushev are Russia’s last hope. He conducted himself like a brave warrior. He did not adopt the terrorists’ methods but fought his battle within the boundaries of the law. I don’t think Putin likes these kinds of fighters.
The people in Nazran showed that they can make their voices heard, while their president has shown that he can sometimes make decisions independently of the Kremlin. Aushev has shown through his actions that the path chosen by terrorists is senseless, and Russia has shown that the “rule of law” — about which we have heard so much lately in the news — is equally senseless. History shows us that when the people of the Caucasus are faced with a choice between two senseless paths, they’ll choose the one that offers the greatest glory.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Lost but not forgotten
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It was the exhibition that almost did not happen. The large painting of dynamic, nude bodies holding hands and dancing in a circle against a bright blue and green background was a hair away from staying in the State Hermitage Museum, never to be seen in London.
But a last-minute decision and a quick amendment to British law meant that Henri Matisse’s “The Dance,” along with 119 other works from Russian state museums, was allowed to appear at the Royal Academy’s “From Russia” exhibition in January, to rave reviews from the British press.
This happened despite the fact that some of the works were looted from the collections of entrepreneurs Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin after the October Revolution. And despite the fact that the heirs came to London for the exhibition and are seeking compensation for the art that they could have inherited. Among the contested works is the Matisse painting, which was owned by Shchukin.
Since the end of World War II, the nuances of lost and stolen art have been a source of controversy in Russia. Russian state museums have kept looted art, some of it acquired after the revolution, some of it taken as reparations for World War II.
At the same time, Russia wants its art and valuables back from abroad. The 46,000 art works documented as missing from state museums since 1945 have been electronically catalogued by the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency on a web site called LostArt.ru, in the hope they will find their way back to the museums that owned them. There are over 1.1 million objects listed on the website as lost; these include rare books and archive files as well as works of art.
“The main point of the web site is to get a picture of the losses in Russian art, to see if it’s possible to get the lost works back and to see if these works exist in Russia or overseas. This has been very tedious work,” the head of the agency, Mikhail Shvydkoi, said at a recent news conference.
The online catalogue of lost art is an extension of a printed version that was published by the agency in 1998. A total of 160 museums and 4,000 libraries were damaged by German forces between 1941 and 1945. Some were all but destroyed, and some, such as the Peterhof estate in St. Petersburg, are missing a substantial number of works.
The Tretyakov Gallery is missing 37 paintings, which is odd because the German army never entered Moscow. Bloomberg reported that 38 works from the Tretyakov were on loan to Soviet embassies in Europe and disappeared when the war broke out. One of these is a painting by popular landscape artist Ivan Shishkin titled “Pine Trees Above the Gorge.”
Mark Stephens, a British art and cultural heritage lawyer, is supportive of Russia’s attempts to reclaim its art. “I think it is completely their right to get their art back, and I hope they succeed,” he said by telephone from London.
Stephens said that despite the complex issues involved, there is a simple principle behind the claims for lost art. “If I went to a pawnshop and saw something that previously belonged to me, I could take it home and not compensate the pawnshop.”
In the last 10 years, Russia has recovered many works from German state museums. “Mikhail Yefimovich [Shvydkoi] and I flew the last 10 that were recovered from a Berlin museum over in the presidential plane,” Anatoly Vilkov, the deputy head of the Federal Inspection Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, said at the Lost Art news conference.
Vilkov said works from German state museums have been returned to Russia “without any questions.” He said valuables that belonged to Russia before World War II have been recovered from 22 countries, and that he has information that the missing works are in private hands in Europe and the United States.
The Russian government is much more possessive of the valuables that it gained over the last 90 years. A law exists that prevents the reclamation of looted art that has been appropriated by the government. After 1917, almost everything of value belonged to the state. The only time that people of other nationalities have a slight chance of recovering it is when the art goes overseas.
It is perhaps for this reason that an exhibition of ancient art last year called “Era of the Merovingians: Europe without Borders,” which was a combined effort by four museums — the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Historical Museum, the State Hermitage Museum and Berlin’s Museum of Pre- and Early History — was shown in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but not in Berlin.
Stephens wrote an article in The Times of London expressing his outrage at the fact that the Royal Academy held the “From Russia” exhibition. “It is clear, then, why the Russians are so nervous about sending abroad stolen goods. It is much less clear why the Royal Academy should be content to knowingly receive and display stolen goods and furthermore why the [British] government would set about preventing the true owners from recovering them,” he wrote.
Like most art taken over by state institutions after 1917, the paintings belonging to Shchukin and Morozov were stolen and do not officially belong to the Russian state. In accordance with international law, the art can only be nationalized by compensating the heirs of the collectors for their loss. Today the paintings are worth millions of dollars.
In Britain, anti-seizure legislation was rushed into effect in December to prevent the works exhibited at “From Russia” from being reclaimed.
At the news conference, Vilkov spoke of the 250,000 works taken from Germany as reparations for World War II, which are kept in the archives of state museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg. “These will eventually be distributed amongst the regional museums that have suffered,” he said.
There are 2.5 million objects missing from Germany that are believed to be in the former Soviet Union, Gunter Schauerte the deputy general director of the state museums, in Berlin said in a telephone interview on Thursday. Of these, anywhere from 140,000 to 600,000 artworks come from museums in Berlin alone.
“I understand that the Germans destroyed a lot of Russian culture during the WWII. I understand that compensation is necessary, but to swap the destruction of one culture for the destruction of another culture — is that the right way to compensate?” Schauerte said.
“The most important thing at the moment is first to understand which museum has what. We don’t even know if some of these objects exist anymore. The only time we see them is when the museum decides to display some of them, but otherwise they are kept in storage,” he said. “Talks on restitution come much later.”
In 1954, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property made it illegal to use “cultural property” as war reparations, and Russia gave back 1.9 million objects in 1958 to East Germany. A festival will be held in Berlin, 50 years to the day, as a sign of gratitude.
Irina Antonova, the director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, attended the news conference to express her support for the LostArt.ru web site. Her museum is currently holding some of the aforementioned works from Germany and also sent some of the works that went to the Royal Academy this year.
Stephens said that Antonova is in a particularly difficult position. “She has to try and recover work for the Pushkin — that’s part of her job. And the UNIDROIT [International Institute for the Unification of Private Law] convention gives the right to reclaim and the obligation to hand over to the Pushkin anything stolen.”
At the same time, Russian laws prevent her from removing works from the Pushkin Museum even if it is to return them to previous owners. Stephens said that similar laws exist in Britain, but they are currently being reworked “to fall in line with modern international standards by which everyone agrees to return.”
“I don’t think her [Antonova] hypocritical — I think she is an advanced thinker,” he said. “As soon as the Russian government sees work returning and understands that its museums won’t be denuded, it will also change its laws.”

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: Musician <b>Yegor Letov</b> died this week, agencies reported. Letov emerged as an uncompromising punk rocker as the leader of Grazhdanskaya Oborona, seen as the Soviet Union’s premier punk band.
Their best-known song was “Everything Goes According to the Plan,” an outstanding protest anthem that spoofed the Communist ideology. 
Open to strange theories, Letov switched directions several years later when he united with extreme nationalists and communists to launch “Russian Breakthrough Rock Movement” in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. He still performed “Everything Goes According to the Plan,” but, in a weird way, turned it into a pro-Communist anthem.
He also became a member of the early version of the now-banned National Bolshevik Party, when it was headed by the duo of Eduard Limonov and Alexander Dugin, a self-styled “Euro-Asian philosopher.” Limonov and his supporters appear to have changed and now act as part of pro-democracy coalition The Other Russia struggling for civil freedoms, while Dugin turned into a Kremlin supporter, providing the Russian authorities with ideology.
While many rock fans turned away in disgust, Letov’s band continued to draw crowds to his show, though many fans were interested because his songs were easy to strum on the guitar rather than in his politics.
After his early political 1990s escapades, Letov avoided politics lately, putting out psychedelic versions of Soviet songs or more personal material while touring both solo and with Grazhdanskaya Oborona. 
Letov was scheduled to perform solo at Orlandina club on Sunday. Now the club’s management is planning to hold a memorial concert on that day instead.
Meanwhile, a protest concert called <b>“The Other Song Festival”</b> due to take place at ROKS club on Wednesday was cancelled, and the bands who were to take part say the reason was political while the venue denies it was caused by a call from the authorities.
<b>Mikhail Borzykin</b> of <b>Televizor</b> and <b>Mikhail Novitsky</b> of <b>SP Babai</b> have announced they will hold a press conference instead. However, Televizor will perform at Orlandina on Thursday.
<b>Tequilajazzz</b> will perform a pair of its “traditional winter concerts” at Zoccolo on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 29.
According to singer and bass player Yevgeny Fyodorov, the concerts will be entirely different — “a loud and a soft one, one for boys and one for girls.” 
The concerts were going to be part of the presentation of Tequilajazzz’s long-awaited new album but the band failed to finish it in time, Fyodorov admitted by phone this week.
This week’s concerts also include the U.K. band Red Snapper at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on Saturday.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Natalia Bessmertnova 1941-2008
AUTHOR: By Chris Pasles
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Natalia Bessmertnova, a legendary prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet for more than three decades, has died. She was 66.
Bessmertnova died Tuesday at a Moscow hospital after suffering from a long illness, company spokeswoman Yekaterina Novikova said. Russian media reported that Bessmertnova had kidney trouble.
Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov called her death “a huge loss for the Bolshoi Theater and to our whole culture,” the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The dancer was “the pride and glory of the company to which she devoted her entire life,” he was quoted as saying.
Bessmertnova danced with the Bolshoi from 1961 until 1995, when she and other performers staged a one-night strike after Yury Grigorovich, her husband and the company’s artistic director, quit after 30 years at the helm during a dispute with management amid plans for his replacement.
Their refusal to dance “Romeo and Juliet” reportedly caused the first cancellation in the company’s history of more than two centuries.
Grigorovich, a former Kirov Ballet character dancer, had become notorious for promoting the careers of his wife and other favorites, some said to the detriment of other dancers. But in Bessmertnova’s case, at least, her formidable talents justified her special position.
Critics noted how her sylph-like figure, long arms and legs and poetic expressivity made her ideal for such romantic roles as Giselle. At the same time, she possessed a nervous energy, impulsiveness and mercurial emotions that could be exploited in more contemporary works.
Reviewing a performance of Grigorovich’s “Spartacus” at the Shrine Auditorium in 1979, Los Angeles Times dance critic Lewis Segal wrote of Bessmertnova: “Only Maya Plisetskaya, in films of a previous version of ‘Spartacus,’ has shown us such interpretive individuality wedded to such technical power.
“No detail in her dancing seemed to be emphasized for mere effect, yet spectators all evening long found themselves applauding her shimmering bourrees, serene balances and brilliant leaps. With reason.”
Even Bessmertnova’s dancing in later years mesmerized audiences and critics.
Reviewing her performance in Mikhail Fokine’s “The Dying Swan” in 1993, Washington Post critic Alan M. Kriegsman wrote: “Bessmertnova, without mannerism or histrionics of any sort, danced it as a somberly reflective elegy, a song of the pain of morality. You were afraid to blink, to miss any of its nuance or telling simplicity.”
Bessmertnova was born July 19, 1941, in Moscow to a doctor and a homemaker. 
She showed an early interest in dance and soon displayed talent to match, joining the Bolshoi immediately after graduating from the theater’s school in 1961, one of the highest achievers in the school’s history.
Two years later, she made her solo debut as Giselle, creating the title role in Mikhail Lavrovsky’s production and launching herself as a truly romantic dancer.
She went on to dance all of the leading roles in the Russian classical repertoire - “Swan Lake,” “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,” “Don Quixote” and “Romeo and Juliet,” in particular. But she was equally adept in the more robust theatrical works choreographed for her by her husband, including “Legend of Love,” “Spartacus,” “Ivan the Terrible” and “The Golden Age.”
Bessmertnova was a gold medalist at the prestigious Varna International Ballet Competition in 1965 and was awarded France’s Pavlova Prize in 1970.
She was named a People’s Artist of the U.S.S.R. in 1976 and was a laureate of the Soviet Union’s Lenin Prize and Stage Prize. She was put on a company pension in 1989 and left the Bolshoi in 1995.
In recent years, she had worked with Grigorovich on such projects as the Benois de la Danse Prize, for which he served as chairman of the jury.
In addition to her husband, Bessmertnova is survived by a sister, Tatania, and a nephew, Mikhail, who were also dancers.
A public funeral is due to be held Friday at the Bolshoi, the theater said.

TITLE: Banned
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A protest rock concert scheduled to take place at ROKS club on Wednesday was cancelled earlier this week because routine maintenance at the venue has been planned for the same day. Meanwhile the bands that were due to take part say the authorities put pressure on the club not to hold the concert. The venue says it wants to stay out of politics, 
Called “The Other Song Festival,” the event was to feature Mikhail Borzykin of the band Televizor, Alexander Chernetsky of the band Razniye Lyudi, and Mikhail Novitsky of SP Babai, as well as some lesser known acts. Actor Alexander Devotchenko, a member of Garry Kasparov’s oppositional group United Civil Front (OGF), part of The Other Russia pro-democracy coalition, was due to present the concert.
Musician Borzykin was famous for his anti-totalitarian and social protest songs, while his band Televizor was repeatedly banned in the late 1980s.  Chernetsky, as the frontman of the Kharkov, Ukraine-based band GPD was responsible for such protest songs as the anti-Communist “Red Fascism” in the perestroika era. Both Borzykin and Novitsky were a frequent sight at pro-democracy Dissenters’ Marches last year, while Novitsky has often performed at opposition rallies.
The name “The Other Song Festival” echoes The Other Russia and “We Need the Other Russia,” one of the slogans at the Dissenters’ Marches. The concert was due to take place on Wed., Feb. 27, four days before the March 2 presidential election. However, in a phone interview on Wednesday, Novitsky said that ROKS club had no objections to the event, adding that the club had sold tickets for the concert and posters had been displayed around the city.
Conceived by SP Babai, the concert date was arranged with ROKS club two weeks ago, but the venue abruptly cancelled the gig on Wednesday, informing the band and putting the notice “The concert is not happening” on the schedule on the club’s website. 
“I learnt about it an hour ago, it’s very surprising and unpleasant news,” said Borzykin, who was to headline the concert, by phone later on Wednesday.
“Allegedly there was pressure and the threat of shutting down the club and ROKS’s administration got scared. If they have started bothering about such micro-events, it’s not at all good. For some reason, I thought that such a micro-event would cause no problem at all. We didn’t expect many people, anyway. Maybe they are so worried because of the elections, I don’t know…”
Borzykin said he was going to perform his new songs criticizing the realities of today’s Russia.
“I was going to select the songs that deal with the current situation, for instance ‘Stay Home,’ ‘Hammer the Basement Down,’ I was trying to sit and rehearse and then it turned out that it was  all for nothing. I was going to perform solo, playing the keyboard.
“And everybody was going to play some of their songs, perhaps their most critical ones, and maybe talk a little. There was no definite scenario. We were expecting the people who feel alarmed by the situation in the country to somehow share this anxiety with each other, with no political slogans. It should have been a gathering of like-minded people,  people who are stifled for air.”
“If they even stop events like this, then God forbid, there will be no concerts at all, by Televizor or anybody else who is not loyal.” 
Televizor has a concert of its own scheduled at Orlandina on Thursday.
“It’s incredible — a week before the event, when posters are up and tickets have been sold, the club says, ‘Guys, we have routine maintenance’!” said Novitsky.
“To that we answered, ‘We don’t care, we’ve got enough equipment to hold a concert without [electricity], we have generators, we can get accumulators and lanterns — it’s impossible to cheat the people who bought tickets. 
“Then, they thought it over for an hour and said, ‘No, we don’t want this event to take place, just because we don’t want it to. So you can get the money back for hiring the venue, we’ll cover your expenses, that’s all.’
“It turns out that the ‘other song’ is not needed, and it even bothers somebody — and who this somebody is, is unknown.”
“It’s obvious that it’s very unpleasant for the club to turn us down, because it doesn’t matter for them who does what there, when it’s rock and roll and punk rock, anything goes, and nobody ever objected. Anyway it’s not business as usual — the club should be open but it turns out that the club will not earn money and also has to pay compensation to us. And they don’t object. That’s not good for the club, everybody will lose out — the musicians, the public and the club.”
Speaking by phone on Wednesday, a spokesman for ROKS club declined to admit the reason for the cancellation was political.
“Some time ago we were approached by the organizers about holding a festival of singer-songwriters on Feb. 27, they informed us about the lineup, and there were many musicians whom we know and who are our good friends, who have performed at our club many times. Naturally we agreed because it’s a good, interesting event and everything was underway,” said art director Dmitry Ptyushkin.
“But today we found out that a certain [United] Civil Front that also organizes Dissenters’ Marches has something to do with the organization of the event and was going to use this event for some political goals. There is a rule in show business; when people negotiate about the concert, they should state in a direct way what it is about. Any omission is a violation of an agreement. 
“Plus there’s another important thing. Our club isn’t often open on weekdays, and since they are aware of this, the administration of the building decided to run a check of the power network and switch off the power, and because of these two factors we decided to cancel the event.”
Ptyuchkin added that ROKS club wants to stay out of politics.
“I want to stress that our club is outside of politics. We’re a club for musicians and people who like good music, and when any forces try to use it for political actions, it looks strange to say the least. Especially when we are not even informed about this by the organizers. If any other organization, non-governmental or governmental, acted like this, we would cancel the event in just the same way. We are cancelling it not for political reasons, but because our agreements were violated in the most impolite way.”
Ptyuchkin denied the club received any calls from the authorities.
“We’ve never positioned the concert as a political action. Has the word ‘other’ become political? I didn’t know about that. I think there was a call, that’s all,” said Novitsky.
“As to whether the concert corresponds to the club’s position or not, I don’t think that a club has any defined position. A club has a position to earn money: there is the rent and things like that.”
Rock historian Andrei Burlaka, who runs www.rock-n-roll.ru, also believes the club cancelled the concert under the pressure from the authorities.
“I think it’s a bluff. But if no one called them and they are just being over-cautious, then it’s even worse; why such a person works at a music club, I don’t know — in my view such a person should go to work at a cemetery. 
“The situation has no precedent; it’s outrageous when any power structures attempt to meddle with music clubs’ policies, no matter what kind of events are held there, it borders on a state crime. I would like to look in the eyes of an official who did that. 
“On the other hand, the club or its art director, I don’t know who, did not act corrrectly in this situation. What the hell is so rock and roll about people ducking down when they have their very first collision with reality? Sadly, the current authorities don’t like rock and roll; they don’t like anything that is beyond their control and not defined by them personally.”
Instead of the concert, the bands that were scheduled to take part in “The Other Music Festival” will hold a press conference on the day of the cancelled event, on Wednesday, SP Babai’s manager Alexander Kogtev said on Thursday. The time and place will be announced on SP Babai’s website, www.spbabai.ru.

TITLE: The Big Bang
AUTHOR: By Saul Austerlitz
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ‘We are keeping the rings in this bucket, here.” A shell-shocked civil defense officer gestures to a hefty metal bucket at his feet, stuffed with what appear to be thousands of wedding rings. The rings have been gathered from the dead in a small British city; their inscriptions are the only hope authorities have of identifying those incinerated by the deployment of a nuclear weapon. “This,” a narrator mournfully concludes, “is nuclear war.”
The scene is imagined, only one of the wealth of emotionally overwhelming moments that make up Peter Watkins’ 1965 Academy Award-winning fictional documentary “The War Game,” still the best film ever made on the subject. Nuclear war is not merely a matter of warheads and tactics, presidents and premiers; it is also a matter of the bucket of wedding rings.
This tension — between warheads and wedding rings, detached analysis and a deep-rooted understanding of the human fallout from technologically accelerated combat — forms the primary subject matter of P.D. Smith’s engaging, unsettling “Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon.” Scientifically and culturally adept, “Doomsday Men” tracks the pursuit of devastating weaponry in both laboratories and pulp magazines. Smith’s wide-ranging book also serves as a biography of sorts of the scientist, writer and thinker Leo Szilard, who emblematizes science’s growing awareness of the consequences of its own thirst for knowledge. Whether Szilard’s quest for more responsible science was a success or a failure remains an open question.
Taking its cues from the work of Richard Rhodes and Mike Davis, Smith’s book is simultaneously a careful study of a century of scientific research in the field of warfare, and a look at the cultural impact of novelists, poets and filmmakers imagining mass destruction. 
Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” provides the personalities; Davis’ “Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster” supplies the interest in metaphoric resonances. But the gap between science and literature is not quite as wide as it might initially seem. Literature often shared its bright ideas with science, with alchemical processes turning imagination into horrific reality.
It was writers who first dreamed of weapons so overwhelmingly powerful that they might paradoxically bring about peace. H.G. Wells coined the term “atomic bomb” in his 1914 novel “The World Set Free,” and as far back as 1871, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s “The Coming Race” envisioned scientifically advanced aliens whose energy source — known as vril — was so far superior to that of humans that it meant an end to all wars. Scientists, in their more reflective moments, also imagined a superweapon of peace — one so risky to deploy that it would prevent further combat. That their efforts ultimately contributed to greater, and not lesser, catastrophe managed to be ignored by the more hawkish physicists.
But the search for superweapons did not begin with physics. The outbreak of World War I jumpstarted a frantic worldwide search for better killing through chemistry, and it was German scientists — led by the resourceful patriot Fritz Haber — who first rendered gas deadly, employing chlorine gas against the British. Haber’s wife committed suicide in protest, but to no avail: Science had opened Pandora’s box (an image memorably utilized in one of the clammiest nightmares of the atomic era, Robert Aldrich’s 1955 noir classic “Kiss Me Deadly”) and could no longer close it. 
That some of Haber’s own relatives were later killed by other German soldiers in another war with a different kind of gas — Zyklon B — was a gruesomely ironic illustration of this precept. 
Scientists may plan, but politicians and generals only laughed, ignoring all warnings, throwing caution to the winds, and treating each advance as a further opportunity to make mass-death part of the national arsenal.
An American editorialist of the era accused scientists of kowtowing before military might in their pitiless pursuit of knowledge: “Chemistry, you stand indicted and shamed before the Bar of History! You have prostituted your genius to fell and ogrish devices... You have turned killer and run with the wolf-pack.” By the time Adolf Hitler (himself a victim of gassing during World War I) came to power in Germany, the effort had moved into the field of physics, and a secret race was on to unlock the power of the atom. 
Szilard, ever vigilant about the long-term consequences of scientific research, sought to put a lid on what he had discovered about the nature of chain reactions, and succeeded in doing so, for a time. 
Once the United States entered World War II and began work on the $2 billion Manhattan Project, such slow-down efforts were worse than useless, so Szilard dedicated himself to agitating for atomic power and against German efforts to develop similar weaponry.
Szilard — a Hungarian refugee and “inventor of all things” who wrote science fiction and sketched out plans for electrified barbers’ chairs and magnetized stockings in his spare time — stood in confrontational counterpoint to warrior-scientists like Edward Teller and Herman Kahn, who sought to weaponize atomic research. Szilard advocated fruitlessly for the United States to restrict itself to an atomic-bomb demonstration in order to frighten Japan into submission in 1945, and was suitably horrified by misleading pronouncements like that in the 1951 public-information film “Atomic Alert” that “the chance of your being hurt by an atomic bomb is slight.” 
Unchecked by the ramifications of their research, scientists pressed on to the next generations of superweaponry — the hydrogen bomb and the proposed cobalt bomb, which would create a radioactive cloud potentially powerful enough to end all human life. 
“Gentlemen: You are mad!” shouted the title of an incendiary essay by the historian Lewis Mumford, but at the time, the righteous outrage of a Mumford or a Bertrand Russell seemed positively feeble next to the careful, calculating sophistry of Kahn, who proclaimed that nuclear war was winnable, or of Teller, who argued that “radiological warfare could be used in a humane manner.”
As might be guessed from the book’s subtitle, “Doomsday Men” concludes with a nimble analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black-comic Armageddon film, “Dr. Strangelove.” Strangelove himself — the prototypical mad scientist updated for the atomic age — is equal parts Kahn, Teller and German rocketmaster Wernher von Braun. But after 400 pages on the subject of catastrophic destruction, with a chorus of scientists proclaiming each new weapon the potential savior of humanity, “Dr. Strangelove” no longer plays as a comedy; it has become a documentary of scientific hubris and human foolishness. 
Smith’s startling story chronicles the ways in which science divorced itself from humanity — how bombs became dissociated from the buckets of wedding rings they would unavoidably bring about. 
Watkins’ “The War Game” (strangely unmentioned in “Doomsday Men”) is an imaginary recreation of what might occur, but the details are only too real: After the firebombing of Dresden in 1945, German officials collected rings in a desperate attempt to identify the dead. Without care and diligence in combating the nuclear menace, such tactics might be necessary once again.

Saul Austerlitz is a critic in New York.

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, Rossia channel started its own version of the British dieting show “You Are What You Eat.” In Britain, many people had problems with that show: The qualifications of its presenter, Gillian McKeith, and the validity of her methods — tongue examining and obsession with bowel movements — were all questioned by experts. Although that shouldn’t cause any controversy in Russia, where Channel One happily airs a show hosted by “healer” Gennady Malakhov, who offers folksy tips on poultices and phases of the moon.
I was intrigued to hear that the Russian “You Are What You Eat” is hosted by Fyokla Tolstaya, a television presenter who happens to be a descendant of Leo Tolstoy. Now there’s a man who would have taken a grim satisfaction from telling people they needed to buckle down to oatmeal and buckwheat gruel. But, disappointingly, Tolstaya only does the fluffy stuff: meeting the participants in the studio and discussing their transformation with celebrity guests.
The woman in charge of the dieting itself is one Marianna Trifonova. I looked her up on the Internet and found that she is the head dietician at a “center of aesthetic medicine.” Unlike McKeith, she is at least a medical doctor. The center also offers liposuction, so participants always have another option if they can’t face the buckwheat.
In the first show, a musical producer called Alexander weighed 160 kilograms. He had a shwarma habit and a fridge full of rotting vegetables. Dr. Trifonova put him on the buckwheat and cottage cheese, and he slimmed down enough to propose to his girlfriend — on camera, naturally. 
It was all a bit dull: Either he found the diet quite easy, or else they didn’t film his tearful kebab cravings. The next participant, Galina, offered more potential for schadenfreude. She had the mother from hell, a thin one to boot, who lamented her daughter’s excess curves while frying her up a lovely schnitzel.
Trifonova looked at tongues and forced her patients to undergo bizarre massage procedures “to get rid of toxins,” but the setup didn’t seem too bogus, which is more than can be said of TV3’s show, “Selling Fear,” which I watched on Sunday.
TV3 calls itself “the real mystical channel.” The best thing about it is the logo that appears before commercial breaks. It shows a hand, which is sometimes a green alien claw, sometimes a skeletal hand with rotting flesh and sometimes a silver robot hand. Sadly, the channel’s creative potential was drained by that clip, forcing it to fill the airtime with U.S. imports. But it does have the odd original show, including “Selling Fear,” which started in December.
The idea of the show is that you nominate loved ones to be scared out of their wits, for their own good. “Strong fear can make a person change for the better,” the introduction promised. The show claims that its makers used to work for the special forces, and they are shown driving around in a huge black juggernaut with “Selling Fear” written on the side — a bit of a giveaway for the victims, you might think.
In the first setup, a lady-killer was fooled into thinking he had drunkenly propositioned his boss’ wife — and the boss was coming round with a sledgehammer. In the second, a woman paranoid about germs was persuaded that her husband had contracted a flesh-eating bug from rented shoes in a bowling alley. 
It got to the stage where he was lying on the floor being defibrillated and the doctors told her, “We’re very sorry.”
Irresponsible? Perhaps a tad, but no one was hurt, because it was obvious that the participants were all actors — and not very good ones.

TITLE: Straight no chaser
AUTHOR: By Charles Perry
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Not long ago, Stolichnaya was the only Russian vodka Americans seemed to know about. But if you look around the U.S. today, you can find up to 35 brands — and the pace of new arrivals is picking up.
“It seems like a new brand is coming on every day,” says John Nigoghosian, vodka buyer at Mission Liquor in Pasadena, California. This could keep going for a while, because there are about 300 vodka distilleries in Russia.
The collapse of the Soviet government and its monopoly on distilling is perhaps the ultimate reason for this surge. Add to that the recent American craze for premium vodkas from all sorts of places — France (Grey Goose), Scandinavia (Finlandia), even Alameda, California (Hangar One). Why not go to the source?
Another important reason for the boom in Russian imports has to be that more Americans are looking at vodka the Russian way — not as a mixer but as something to take neat, freezer-cold, with snacks, or zakuski. Drinking vodka this way can reveal subtle, fascinating distinctions between brands. How can you ever be satisfied with a single brand again?
Such is the mystique of Russian vodka (and so high are the marketing stakes) that there was recently a legal squabble in the U.S. courts over ads and statements by Russky Standart (Russian Standard) — the best-selling brand in Russia — claiming that Stolichnaya is actually a Latvian vodka and not “authentically Russian.”
In the end, the court deferred to the opinion of the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (NAD). Division director Andrea Levine notes, “Because Stolichnaya is distilled in Russia from Russian wheat and Russian yeast, it is inaccurate to deny its Russian origin,” although it’s filtered and bottled in Latvia.
Vodka is distilled at a high proof then redistilled at least twice more to make it smoother on the palate. “Now there’s a competition for who can distill the vodka more times,” Nigoghosian says. “Imperia is boasting that it’s distilled eight times. Or distillers may say they filter it so and so many times — one vodka is filtered 14 times.”
Add to vodka’s extreme purity the fact that it’s not aged, and you have what some might consider a flavorless beverage — at least compared with wine or whiskey. It has no “nose” except for a general alcohol aroma. Appreciating vodka calls for a different approach to tasting. Forget about sipping and swirling.
“I always tell people, you don’t taste vodka the way you taste wine,” says Larry Nicola, whose Nic’s Beverly Hills features vodka tastings in a refrigerated room called the Vodbox. “You don’t taste it on the nose and the top of the tongue, but at the back of the tongue and the throat, so you almost have to shoot it.
“And it’s meant to be tasted cold. We keep the Vodbox at 28 degrees Fahrenheit [-2 deg Celsius].”
Al Meymarian at Mission Liquor agrees. “The colder vodka is, the better it tastes,” he says. “Even cheap vodka can taste good when it’s really cold. I’ve served vodka so cold it was almost slush.” Well chilled, vodka develops sweetness and a luxurious, almost oily smoothness.
“I look for a smooth taste, with a little sweetness in the throat,” Nicola says. “The good ones have structure, they have shoulders — like wine, though not as dramatically. And then I look for the flavors: creamy, silky, maybe cinnamon. Jewel of Russia Ultra tastes a little like vanilla custard.”
Russians prefer small, narrow, cylindrical glasses, chilled as cold as the vodka. Etiquette demands that you maintain eye contact with your friends (it’s a little disreputable to drink vodka alone) while you throw back a shot.
“We always drink with a toast,” says Mikayel Israyelyan, owner of Romanov restaurant in Studio City. “It’s a camaraderie thing. People open their hearts and tell each other how they feel. And you know, you can’t toast somebody with a glass of water. Not to have a glass of vodka with people is disrespectful.”
The zakuski served with vodka tend to be rich and/or salty things, such as caviar, smoked fish, cold cuts and pickles.
“Smoked fish is always complementary with vodka,” Israyelyan says. “And since it’s rich, like caviar, it coats your stomach and keeps you from getting drunk too fast.
“The best zakuski with vodka, though, is pickles. That’s traditional. Yes, vodka is great with caviar, but ordinary people have always drunk vodka with pickles. They’re like the ginger in sushi, they refresh your palate. Russians also like to sniff some rye bread after a shot.”
With this explosion in the number of vodkas available, how do you choose the right one? Many brands are marketed with all sorts of gimmicks and come-ons.
Vodka is usually filtered through birch charcoal, but would you like yours filtered through gold, silver and gemstones such as topaz and opal, the way SV Silk is? (It’s a marvelously smooth vodka, but what on Earth could topaz have added?) Or would you like it filtered through cremia, a Belarussian mineral said to “make water molecules expand, forcing out all unwanted bacteria and contaminants,” like Charodei? Would you like it stored in vats made of white gold “to gain nobility and acquire rejuvenating properties”? Regalia does that.
Pick your vodka’s ingredients. Do you want glacial water, artesian well water or water from Lake Ladoga, said to have been preferred by the tsars? Nearly all Russian vodka is made from wheat, but would you prefer some rye or barley in there too? (Unusually for a Russian vodka, Magadanskaya even throws in potatoes.)
The owners of Nic’s, Romanov and Mission Liquor agree that Russian Standard and its premium line Imperia are good buys, around $25 to $35. “To me, Standard actually has a somewhat creamier taste,” Nicola says. And they all have good things to say about Nemiroff, a premium Ukrainian brand in the same general price range that’s making inroads on the market in Russia.
But Russians love opulence, and you can certainly pay more. “Beluga is the hottest brand in Russia right now,” Israyelyan says. “It’s $150 to $200 a bottle, and we run out of it all the time.”
If you want to pay still more, you might find a bottle of the surpassingly plush Kauffman vodka, made in Russia by an American; it’s $250 at Wally’s in Westwood. At Nic’s, Kauffman is wheeled around the restaurant on a special ice cart (the Vodcart, of course).
Maybe you’d just like your vodka to come in a fancy bottle? Imperial Collection has a super-premium line sold in glittering containers that resemble Fabergé eggs — with prices starting at $1,200. (The good part is, when you’ve finished the bottle inside the “egg,” a refill is only $250.)
“Only in Russia,” Israyelyan says, “will people pay $1,500 for a bottle of vodka.”

TITLE: Orlando blooms
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ORLANDO, Florida — The General Motors’ Test Ride lasts just more than five minutes but it makes for an intense and high-adrenaline experience. The quintessential car-testing ride incorporates driving through high temperatures and a refrigerated hall, passing through traffic cones, climbing a hill, hitting a barrier and accelerating to maximum speed.
The Test Ride — sometimes nicknamed the passenger nerve durability test — is one of the many thrilling adventures to be found at the world-renowned Epcot Center, a futuristic theme park with a scientific bent at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Epcot’s name is an abbreviation of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The park welcomed its first visitors in 1982, although Walt Disney, the father of the wonderful world of Disney, had been thinking about it before his death in 1966. 
Disney’s original concept for the park was to “take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American  industry.” This vision is embodied by the park’s challenging rides, that include the General Motors-sponsored Test Track, a “Soaring” ride simulating a bird’s-eye-view flight on a deltaplane or paraplane, and “Mission Space” that simulates a launch into space as you and your dedicated crew pilot your capsule to Mars.
An evening spent on the shore of the park’s lagoon culminates with a tremendous firework display, complete with music, laser projections and light show.
Epcot consists of two themed areas, Future World and World Showcase. Future World features attractions that focus on energy, communication, the environment, transport and space exploration, while Epcot’s World Showcase, spread around the picturesque lagoon, takes you on a journey through eleven countries — Italy, Canada, Germany, Morocco, China, Japan, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Norway and Mexico — juxtaposing cultural insights with entertainment. Each of the sample villages gives a glimpse of a country’s architectural heritage, music traditions, gastronomy and art.
Until Disney set eyes upon a little town where most residents earned their living by growing citrus fruits, Orlando was unknown to travelers even from the United States, let alone any foreign guests.
But in 1971, the area became home to Walt Disney World and has since become synonymous with thrilling rides and Disney entertainment, with Orlando turning into a Mecca for international tourists.
Orlando is the fifth most popular U.S. destination for overseas travelers, and has the second highest number of hotel rooms, second only to Las Vegas.
The German airline Lufthansa, the world’s second largest business traveler carrier that serves 188 destinations in 79 countries, has recently opened a new route connecting Frankfurt and Orlando. The airline already operates daily flights to Miami.
“We currently fly to Orlando six days a week and the flights are full; if customers continue to show the same level of interest we will consider switching to daily flights,” said Wolfgang Schmidt, Lufthansa’s regional Director for Russia and the CIS.
With the introduction of the new route, Lufthansa now provides 208 flights a week to 20 destinations in the U.S. and Canada. In April, Europe’s largest carrier will also launch a new route to Seattle and commence services to Calgary from Frankfurt.
“The new flights enable us to further expand our leading position in North America. Orlando is not only one of the most popular destinations for holidaymakers — the region welcomes more than 50 million tourists annually — but also one of the key economic growth regions in the U.S.,” Dr. Karl-Rudolf Rupprecht, head of the Hub Management Frankfurt, Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, points out. 
Orlando’s trademark attraction is its world-renowned theme parks, which along with Disney World (with Epcot and Animal Kingdom, among others), includes Universal Studios and Sea World. The rides allow tourists to get up close and personal with nature, animals, technology, science and their beloved Disney characters.
Unless travelers plan ahead carefully, they are bound to be confused by the endless choice, as myriads of rides will spoil them rotten.
Most of the major entertainment parks are actually located outside of Orlando in the adjacent towns of Lake Buena Vista and Kissimmee, but are easily accessible by motorway. Most hotels offer shuttles to the parks.
Disney’s newest offering is Animal Kingdom, focusing on animals, geography and the environment. Built on a grand scale, the park, which cost $760 million to complete, occupies a staggering 500 acres of land, so visitors should be prepared for a lot of walking. 
Predictably, the area is densely populated with Disney characters, although the park is different in character from the company’s other ventures. Disney’s ambition in creating the park was much more than to provide exciting top-class entertainment.  He sought to raise environmental awareness in visitors.
Animal Kingdom’s beating heart is the Safari Village with a 14-floor, 145-feet high Tree of Life, a man-made structure that houses a 3-D theater with a seating capacity of over 400. The tree, which has become the park’s icon, is covered with carved images of 325 animals. It also has a tale behind it. The park’s guides tell visitors that work on the tree was started by an ant, but eventually involved the willful efforts of hundreds of other insects and species whose carved images adorn the tree’s gigantic body. “Good teamwork makes everything possible,” the guides declare. This simple story is designed to capture the essence of the American spirit, with its cult of self-made men.
The Kilimanjaro Safari, which is closely reminiscent of an authentic African safari and stretches over 100 acres, is the park’s trademark attraction. Open-air safari wagons navigate winding bumpy roads in the savannah as cameras constantly click to capture a crowd of graceful flamingos huddling together, a hippo lazing in the sun or a cheetah gazing intensely from a high tree branch. The Disney safari is by no means small. The park boasts more than 1,000 animals representing 200 species. Some visitors complain that the trucks go too fast and the journey itself is too short — the ride lasts just twenty minutes — and the driver does not make stops to allow for much filming time, so be prepared for snappy work with your camera.
One of the most challenging rollercoasters in Animal Kingdom is Expedition Everest. The intimidating-looking 200-feet high mountain looming over a little village at the heart of the Himalayas is made from 1,800 tons of steel rather than rock. The journey starts out as an innocent scenic rail trip, but within a minute the excursion turns sinister and gets disrupted by a Yeti, who then chases the expedition for the rest of the time. The carriages fly backwards and forwards in breathtaking, twisting attempts to escape. By the end, less prepared tourists will feel like they are inside a washing machine, with a complete loss of direction. 

The St. Petersburg Times traveled to Orlando as a guest of Lufthansa and the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Ten things to do in Orlando:
1. Meet a fairytale princess
2. Swim with a beluga whale
3. Take the ultimate car test drive
4. Go on a rollercoaster marathon 
5. Fish for dinner
6. Battle evildoers along your favorite 
superhero
7. Take a safari
8. Pick an orange from a tree
9. Try real key lime pie
10. Visit eleven countries in one day without hopping on and off the plane

How to get there:
Lufthansa offers a nonstop service from Frankfurt to Orlando six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday. The journey takes just under ten hours. Lufthansa is the only airline that offers a First Class service on this route. The company operates three flights daily from St. Petersburg to Frankfurt.

Where to stay:
Caribe Cove Resort Hotel. 9000 Treasure Trove Lane, FL 34747 Kissimmee (Florida). 
www.orlando-caribe-cove-resort.com
Holiday Inn Main Gate East. 5711 W.Irlo Bronson Memorial Hwy., FL 34746 Kissimmee (Florida).
www.holidayinn.com
Lake Buena Vista Resort Village. 8113 Resort Village Drive, Orlando (Florida). www.LakeBuenaVistaResortOrlando.com
Villas At Seven Dwarfs Lane Resort. 2600 Jonagold Boulevard, Kissimmee (Florida). www.sevendwarfslane.com

TITLE: Down Mexico way
AUTHOR: By Gareth Arnison
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mekhiko // 1 Nekrasova Ulitsa // Tel: 273 5643 // www.mexico-bar.ru // Open daily from 9 a.m. until 12 a.m. // Menu in Russian (Dish names in Spanish) // Dinner for two with alcohol 2,900 rubles ($118)

Entering the warmth of Mekhiko from the snow lined streets of St. Petersburg, the authenticity of a Mexican tavern comes somewhat as a surprise. Hanging my thick coat next to a poncho, with the sound of traditional guitar music in the background, makes me think that there is something surreal about this new restaurant in the middle of Russia’s northern capital. 
Everything about this restaurant pours out images of bushy moustached Mexicans strumming their guitars and singing out enchanting folk songs on a warm summer’s evening: from the wooden saloon style furniture and colorful place mats, to the folk paintings and map of Mexico. 
Just be careful not to prick your finger on the mini cactus that stands next to the serviette holder. Sombreros hang from the walls and the waiter wearing flares looks ready to salsa at any moment. He even puts on the poncho that hangs on the clothes rail as the night wears on.
The warmth of the restaurant’s interior is reflected in the wide choice of food on the menu. All the traditional dishes are on offer here: ceviche (160 rubles, $7), a form of citrus marinated seafood salad originating in Peru, and various nachos for starters, but try the house special meat salad Ensalada de la Casa Mexico for 250 rubles ($10), which comes topped with a tortilla in the shape of a sombrero.
Salsa, guacamole, and every sauce you can think of accompany the majority of main courses. You are spoilt for choice with the extensive menu that includes all the classics such as tacos, burritos and chili con carne. 
But it’s not just a menu for those with a hot palate: the fajitas at 330 rubles ($13) come with a choice of either a hot sauce or a mild cheese sauce. You can also pick the meat filling from a choice of chicken, lamb and beef. 
Vegetarians will also be happy to know that there is a fair selection of non-meat dishes available, including vegetable fajitas.
Be warned — the steaks (480 rubles, $20) come flambé: a shot of tequila set alight creates an impressive display that you would be well advised to stand back from. For those wishing to express their manhood (or just the plain foolhardy), this dish is accompanied with several colorful chili peppers to be tried at your own discretion.
The dessert menu is certainly small and limited in choice, but the fried ice cream at 170 rubles ($7) is a good choice to cool you down. In any case, why not finish off this exotic meal in style, with tequila shots (170 rubles, $7) and cigars (490 rubles, $10), or one of the many cocktails available (190 rubles, $4) that you can see being made at the bar. 
Imported beers are also available; Corona, Sol, but most importantly the tequila-flavored Desperados (160 rubles, $3). 
It is a shame that the meal and ambience are overshadowed by the expensive flat-screen television that is found so often in Russian restaurants. Showing a music channel that relates in no way to the music playing through the speakers is not only a distraction from your meal and your company, but detracts from what is such an authentic Latin American setting.

TITLE: Clooney’s conscience
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Dark in color, mood and outraged worldview, “Michael Clayton” is a film that speaks to the way we live now. Or at least, the way certain masters of the universe do, as they prowl the jungle in their sleek rides, armed with killer instincts and the will to power. It’s a story about ethics and their absence, a slow-to-boil requiem for American decency in which George Clooney, the ultimate in luxury brands and playboy of the Western world, raises the sword in the name of truth and justice and good. Well, someone’s got to do it.
And Clooney, who smartly moved away from star-making nonsense like “The Peacemaker” as soon as he could, has in recent years proved that it’s possible to play outwardly different, seemingly contradictory roles (glamorous, righteous) while hopscotching from Hollywood to Darfur and back. You have to be clever to pull this off, and you have to have clever friends like Steven Soderbergh, with whom Clooney created the production company Section Eight. Now defunct, Section Eight dropped bombs, uncorked bubbles, supported independent voices and mucked about in television (“K Street”). With “Syriana,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Good German” and now “Michael Clayton,” it also helped Clooney create a singularly contemporary screen identity as a man of unquiet conscience.
In “Michael Clayton,” written and directed by Tony Gilroy, that conscience seems to have gone M.I.A., lost amid the dirty wheeling and dealing of a powerful New York law firm. Michael (Clooney) is the firm’s designated fixer, though he likes to call himself its janitor. He works in that rarefied gray zone where the barely legal meets the almost criminal and takes lunch at the private club. Michael isn’t a member of that club; he just mops up its mess, soothes its Botoxed brow and slips a fat envelope of thank you to inconvenient witnesses. There’s a dirty kind of glamour to this world, with its rich trappings and its Ivy League smilers with their gutting knives. Its ugliness seduces as much as it repels and entertains.
Gilroy’s previous writing credits include the “Bourne” franchise and the goofily entertaining legal thriller “The Devil’s Advocate.” (Keanu Reeves is the advocate; Al Pacino, the other guy.) “Michael Clayton” marks his debut as a director, a gig that seems to have inspired him to watch (rewatch) old Sidney Lumet films. Though Michael is more upscale, smoother around the edges (he probably doesn’t own white tube socks), he’s a variation on those soulfully alone Lumet cops and lawyers who fight the system and struggle to do the right thing, though not necessarily because they want to. The world Michael wanders is so darkly sinister, as perilous as that in Lumet’s “Q & A,” that his black coat and suit melt into shadows as depthless as an abyss.
It is an abyss, Gilroy suggests, largely of our own making. There are a few obvious, almost too obvious villains in “Michael Clayton,” notably the chief counsel for an agrichemical giant, Karen Crowder, played with twitches and rolls of gut fat by a mesmerizing Tilda Swinton. A Lady Macbeth in pumps and discreet pearls, Karen has pledged her troth to her corporate masters instead of a murderous husband. She’s a cliché — brittle, sexless, friendless, cheerless and all the rest - but what makes her work is her unnerving banality, visible in the blank canvas of a face that looks untouched by gentleness or empathy. This is a pitiful creature, as unloved by her writer-director creator as by the genius actress who plays her.
Karen embodies evil, but Michael serves it. His law firm is helping the agrichemical company settle a multibillion-dollar suit. It seems the company with the smoothly reassuring television commercials (cue the green fields and smiling children) doesn’t bring good things to life but death by the hundreds. While working to settle the case, Michael’s friend, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), the firm’s star litigator, has an epic meltdown. There’s blood on Arthur’s manicured hands, though not only his, as Michael discovers through a series of fairly predictable twists and turns. Gilroy hasn’t reinvented the legal thriller here, but I doubt that was his intention; at its best and most ambitious, the film plays less like a variation on a Hollywood standard than a reappraisal.
It’s a modest reappraisal, adult, sincere, intelligent, absorbing; it entertains without shame. Gilroy directs with a steady hand and a steady eye, too, with none of the visual frenzy that characterizes the “Bourne” thrillers. His movie moves rather than races. There’s a little narrative tricky business (a sizable portion of the story occurs in extended flashback) and an unexpectedly tender moment when Michael stares into a new morning in a country field without uttering a single word. Gilroy’s characters talk a lot (they’re lawyers, after all), but he knows when to shut them up, an exception being a disappointingly tidy climactic encounter that seems designed to give Clooney the last, rousing word, or maybe just a shot at an Oscar.
That’s too bad because the film feels truest when Michael is grappling with his contradictions. His struggle, as well as the film’s moody thoughtfulness, the Lumet touches and the agreeable presence of Sydney Pollack in a small role, overtly invokes 1970s American cinema. But Lumet and Pollack didn’t give Hollywood its social conscience, which comes and goes and depends on the audience to sustain it. 
In some ways, Michael is a grimmer, compromised version of Erin Brockovich in Soderbergh’s populist 2000 drama.

TITLE: Castro Relinquishes Power To Brother
AUTHOR: By Anita Snow
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HAVANA — Now that Fidel Castro has retired, many Cubans are looking to his brother to let more people open businesses, own homes and even travel abroad. But it will probably fall to a new generation of leaders to ultimately fulfill or frustrate their dreams of prosperity.
During his 1 1/2 years as acting president, 76-year-old Raul Castro has hinted at reform but made few major changes — a reticence many see as a sign of respect for his beloved, more doctrinaire older brother, who survived despite the efforts of 10 U.S. presidents to bring him down.
And while hoping that Raul and his likely No. 2, Carlos Lage, will advocate for change, they wonder how that will fly with Fidel, who stepped down but isn’t going away.
“There has to be some change, more freedom with Raul,” said Andres, 63, who like many Cubans wouldn’t give his last name for fear of reprisal when talking about the Castro brothers. “The other one always nipped that off at the bud.”
The resignation, announced Tuesday, should give Raul Castro the autonomy he lacked as the government’s caretaker since Fidel was sidelined by intestinal surgery in July 2006.
The younger Castro raised expectations of openings in the state-controlled economy with his reported fascination with Chinese-style capitalism, calls for unspecified “structural changes,” and acknowledgment that government wages averaging $19 a month do not satisfy basic needs. He also encouraged Cubans to open a fearless and critical debate, as long as they remember that the final decisions will be made by the island’s Communist leaders.
Many Cubans want to hear more such talk from their next leader. Inspired by Raul, some leading Cuban cultural figures have called recently for dropping onerous visa requirements and other limits on their freedoms, a message that resonates with ordinary Cubans.
“This is what we needed. I hope to God people have more freedom — the freedom to have opinions and always speak their minds,” 37-year-old Lydis Perez said after dropping her son off at school. “People talk in the hallways or the back rooms. ... There’s a lot of fear.”
Fidel Castro, however, insisted in his resignation letter Tuesday that he won’t disappear — or stay quiet if he sees his revolution going astray.
“This is not my farewell to you,” he wrote. “My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the title, “Reflections of Comrade Fidel.” It will be another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard.”
As the Council of State’s first vice president, Raul Castro has been his brother’s constitutionally designated successor for decades, so the big question is who will take his place as No. 2 on Sunday when the National Assembly selects Cuba’s new leadership.
A leading candidate is Lage, the de-facto prime minister, who at 56 is a full generation younger than the Castros. He’s among the most experienced leaders in a power structure dominated by septuagenarian former rebels, and he has built a reputation as a reformer.
A less likely possibility could emerge from a handful of leaders in their 30s and 40s, such as Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.
While no less loyal to the elder Castro, Lage was the architect of reforms that saved the island from economic collapse in the early 1990s. His moves allowed foreign investment in state enterprises, a measure of self-employment, and legal use of the U.S. dollar.
Raul Castro appears to get along with Lage, who is a quiet, pragmatic organizer like himself. Raul backed Lage’s earlier reform proposals, especially farmers markets where excess crops are sold at market prices.
But both Lage and Raul Castro say any change will not be at the expense of socialism. And Lage has dampened hopes that Cuba would follow China and Vietnam in allowing capitalist markets to thrive.
Raul also has championed the concept of closer ties to the United States, offering again and again to discuss normalizing relations with Washington. But the Bush administration ruled that out Tuesday, deriding Raul Castro as “Fidel Lite.”

TITLE: Kuznetsova Knocked Out of Qatar Open
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DOHA — Top-seeded Serb Ana Ivanovic withdrew from the Qatar Open on Thursday after injuring her left ankle beating Olga Govortsova of Belarus the previous day.
The $2.5 million tournament then lost second seed Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia, who was beaten 6-3 7-6 by Austrian left-hander Sybille Bammer.
Ivanovic, runner-up to Maria Sharapova at last month’s Australian Open, slipped on the baseline when leading Govortsova 6-3 5-1 and struggled to finish her second-round match on Wednesday.
“It’s still pretty painful and hard for me to step on. I’m very disappointed the way I had to end this tournament,” Ivanovic told reporters.
“I was icing my foot all night. I had to wake up every hour so I didn’t get much sleep but hopefully the team around me can help me to recover as fast as I can.”
Ivanovic said she had not suffered a major tear.
“It’s a strain, an overstretch of the ligaments,” she said. “There’s not any major tear, which is definitely good, but there are a few micro-tears there.
“I still get a lot of pain and have to keep icing my foot and keep it compressed and elevated to try to keep the inflammation down.”
Ivanovic hopes to compete at the Dubai Tennis Championships next week where, because of a first-round bye, she would not have to play until Wednesday.
Kuznetsova had struggled to overcome windy conditions on Wednesday, and the weather again proved to be as much of a challenge as her opponent.
Bammer put Kuznetsova under pressure from the start, breaking in the opening game, and went on to take the set.
Kuznetsova then served for the second set at 5-4, and after holding four set points surrendered the match on Bammer’s fourth match point when she netted a backhand.
In the windy conditions, play was interrupted three times during the final point by paper blowing across the court.
“I started to play better in the end, but in these conditions it was pretty impossible to play a normal game,” Kuznetsova said. “Playing bad I still had chances, so this is disappointing.”
The Russian considered that play should not have taken place in such conditions.
“I think so, yes,” she said. “It was a few times in my head, “Will they cancel this because this is a disaster?” I couldn’t play the ball and it was embarrassing to stay there, but I was still fighting to try and get this match somehow.”

TITLE: Serbs Take To Streets To Show Anger
AUTHOR: By Ellie Tzortzi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BELGRADE — More than 150,000 Serbs massed Thursday evening at a state protest against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, showing their anger at the loss of their religious heartland.
“As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd from a stage in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade, to cheers and applause. “Kosovo belongs to the Serbian people.”
“We’ll never give up Kosovo, never!” protesters chanted back, as they waved national flags. A huge banner reading “Kosovo is Serbia” draped the front of the old parliament.
Police estimated 150,000 people packed the square, with columns of at least 10,000 more demonstrators filling up nearby boulevards as night fell.
The “people’s rally” was Serbia’s biggest demonstration since protesters filled the streets in 1999 to protest at NATO bombing and then in 2000 to oust nationalist autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.
The atmosphere was calm as Serbs of all ages listened to melancholic patriotic songs and poems and joined in songs about Kosovo, seen as the birthplace of a glorious medieval kingdom.
Before the rally Belgrader Milan Vukosavljevic said it was important to show the strength of Serbian felling against Kosovo’s independence, which most see as an illegal move despite Western backing.
“It’s an invented state, shame on Europe and on the whole world,” he said.
Serbs from across the republic and from Kosovo had poured into Belgrade on hundreds of free buses and trains. Schoolchildren were given the day off.
Far to the south, at a border post between Kosovo and Serbia, several hundred Serb army veterans stoned Kosovo riot police who, backed by Czech troops in riot gear, stood their ground until the protesters dispersed. No one was hurt.
NATO peacekeepers said they were determined to stop a repeat of Tuesday’s destruction of two other border posts by Serbs.
In Banja Luka in the Bosnian Serb Republic, several people were injured when protesters holding aloft portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Serbia’s chief ally in its opposition to Kosovo, clashed with police in front of the U.S. consulate.
Analysts said the motivation for the mass march in Belgrade was more bitterness and frustration than the virulent nationalism harnessed by Milosevic to lead Serbia into disastrous wars with its fellow Yugoslav republics in the 1990s.
The government has condemned hooded rioters who stoned the US and EU embassies right after Kosovo said it was seceding on Sunday, but is firmly behind Thursday’s march.
The rally was due to march to the city’s biggest Orthodox cathedral for prayers for the salvation of Serbs in Kosovo. Some 120,000 Serbs live there among 2 million Albanians, half in the north next to Serbia, the rest in southern enclaves. Belgrade wants them to stay, to keep alive its claim on the region.
“We must have a rally, but I don’t think it will change anything,” passer-by Vera Popovic told Reuters television. 
Serbia has protested in world forums and recalled envoys from Washington and European states recognising Kosovo, most recently from Italy on Thursday. There is little else it can really do, but Russia will ensure Kosovo never gets a U.N. seat. 
The government has said it will not resort to violence to try to regain the province it lost to UN control when a NATO air war forced its troops out in 1999. 
A tenth of Serbia’s territory, its Albanian majority rejects Serbian rule, pointing to its crackdown on a 1998-99 insurgency that killed some 10,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes, prompting NATO to act.

TITLE: Arsenal Faces Challenge
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Arsenal must become the first English club to beat AC Milan in European competition at San Siro or else force a score draw to qualify directly for the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
They could, of course, draw 0-0 again and take their chances on penalties but, whatever the outcome, the European champions will start the second leg of their first knockout round tie on March 4 as the favorites to reach the last eight.
Milan have played 11 home matches against English clubs in European competition since 1958, winning seven and drawing four.
Arsenal have never been eliminated from Europe by an Italian club and won 5-1 on their last visit to San Siro in November 2003 against Inter Milan who share the ground.
No knockout round tie has ended goalless since the Champions League format was introduced in 1992-93 and on Wednesday’s evidence goals are likely in the second leg. Arsenal played some excellent football but failed to capitalize on their home advantage at The Emirates.
Arsenal created most of the chances in an entertaining game and almost stole victory in the fourth minute of stoppage time when Emmanuel Adebayor headed against the bar.
Milan skipper Paolo Maldini, 39, said the result was an excellent one for his side who are seeking a sixth successive appearance in the quarter-finals.
“In my experience a 0-0 draw away from home is a good result in Europe,” he told reporters after the game.
“The fact they went for broke in the last five minutes to get a goal suggests to me they thought a 0-0 draw was not the best result for them. We now have the big advantage of playing at home.”
However, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger claimed he was not entirely dissatisfied with the outcome either.
“0-0 is not a bad result at home in the first leg. I didn’t dream of 0-0 but not conceding a goal means it is not a bad result,” the Frenchman  said.

TITLE: 1000s of Armenians Protest Election Results
AUTHOR: By Margarita Antidze and Hasmik Mkrtchyan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YEREVAN — Thousands protested in Armenia’s capital Wednesday against a presidential election they said was rigged in favor of Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan, but Western observers called it broadly fair.
Sarksyan has promised to pursue the policies of outgoing President Robert Kocharyan, his close ally. The new leader’s biggest challenges will be a simmering territorial conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan and frozen ties with Turkey.
Sarksyan took 52.86 percent of the votes, the Central Election Committee said, giving him enough to win outright in the first round.
Nearest rival Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia’s first president after independence from the Soviet Union, had 21.5 percent. Armenia is squeezed between Turkey and Azerbaijan in a region that is emerging as an important transit route for oil exports from the Caspian Sea to world markets, though Armenia has no pipelines of its own.
“Yesterday’s presidential election in Armenia was conducted mostly in line with the country’s international commitments,” observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in a statement.
“Further improvements are necessary to address remaining challenges,” it added.
Earlier, Kocharyan congratulated 53-year-old Sarksyan on his victory in what he called free and fair elections.
Ter-Petrosyan’s supporters refused to recognize the result and said they would protest until Sarksyan’s victory was overturned. They said Tuesday’s vote was marred by ballot-stuffing and intimidation of the opposition. Between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters gathered at a rally in central Yerevan, chanting “Levon! Levon!” and “Serzh: leave!”
They marched to the Central Election Commission building. Police kept their distance from the protesters.
“We will not take even a single step back, we can’t give up,” Ter-Petrosyan told the crowd.
“We will continue our fight and protect our vote. I’m confident we’ll reach our goal,” he said.
Previous elections in Armenia have been followed by days of opposition protests alleging ballot fraud. A new round of protests will be a test for stability in a country which, in the 1990s, was rocked by political convulsions.
Analysts say the unresolved conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh could flare again into violence, possibly threatening a BP-led oil pipeline that runs next to the conflict zone.

TITLE: St. Petersburg No Closer To Hosting Grand Prix As Talks Fail
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — St. Petersburg is unlikely to host Russia’s first Grand Prix after high-level talks with Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone were unsuccessful, Delovoi Peterburg reported Wednesday. 
Ecclestone met with President Vladimir Putin and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko on Monday to discuss building a track and holding an annual event from 2010, in place of the Australian city of Melbourne, the newspaper said. 
Formula One’s conditions are unacceptable, Delovoi said, citing Vyacheslav Chazov, head of the city’s sports committee. City authorities would have to pay to build and maintain the track, getting revenue only from ticket sales, the newspaper reported, citing Chazov.
Formula One would collect all revenues accruing from advertising. 
The Hungarian Grand Prix remains the sport’s only race in Eastern Europe, despite Ecclestone’s long courtship of Russia.
“My theory is, ‘Go East, young man, not go West,’” Ecclestone said in 2005. “So countries like Russia and places like Moscow are important to us.”
Russia’s growing audience for motor racing makes Ecclestone’s original idea of staging a race in Moscow seem more overdue than farfetched. In 2002, a deal was agreed on for Moscow to host a Grand Prix from 2004, but Mayor Yury Luzhkov backed out, saying Ecclestone wanted too much control of ticketing, television rights and advertising. The agreement, Luzhkov said, “would leave us with only engine smoke.”

(Bloomberg, NYT)

TITLE: Woods Puts On Final Spurt For Victory
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MARANA, Arizona — In his 50th meaningful match as a pro, Tiger Woods found himself in strange territory.
He had never faced an opponent who consistently blasted it so far past him off the tee, but playing against J.B. Holmes in the first round of the Accenture Match Play Championship, Woods was first to hit from all but one fairway.
More troublesome was that Woods had never been down by more than three holes in match play and come back to win.
Woods was 4-down through seven holes last year to Nick O’Hern, but wound up missing a winning putt from 4 feet on the 19th hole and losing on the next one. His greatest rally was being 2-down with three holes against Ian Woosnam in the first round of the World Match Play Championship at Wentworth in 1998, and beating him on the first extra hole.
“I just kept saying I could win in regulation,” Woods said. “That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve been in that situation a lot of times. It doesn’t mean that you do, but you have to believe that you can.”
He made a believer out of Holmes.
Woods was 3 down with five holes to play when he holed a 15-foot birdie putt on the 14th. Then came Holmes’ lone mistake down the stretch, a three-putt from behind the 15th that allowed Woods to lag his 18-footer for birdie, and he was walking to the hole when it dropped, charging up the gallery.
Then came a 20-foot birdie on the 16th to square the match, followed by a 35-foot eagle to complete his amazing rally.
And when Holmes missed an 8-foot birdie on the final hole, Woods had escaped with a 1-up victory.
“You’re playing the best player in the world, 3 up with five to play,” Holmes said. “I just said, ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Make him beat you.’ And he did. What do you do?”
The only thing left was to remove his cap and shake hands with the world’s No. 1 player, and on Wednesday, a survivor.
Woods exhaled, more relieved than thrilled to still be playing.
“I wish I was playing better,” he said. “Obviously, I need to go do some work and get everything straightened out.”
“For some reason, momentum just goes your way,” Woods said. “You just get on a run. Sometimes the run is early in the round, sometimes middle or late. It just so happened the last two rounds, it was late. But at least it happened today. At least I had a run. I wasn’t playing good enough to win the match unless I had a run.”
Next up for Woods is an old friend, but unfamiliar foe.
He plays Arron Oberholser, whom he has known since their junior golf days in California. Oberholser has a shoulder injury and made his 2008 debut by beating Mike Weir of Canada, 3 and 1.
He has never played Woods in match play, and said the last time they played in any competition was at a college tournament hosted by USC when Woods was a sophomore at Stanford.

TITLE: Solution Hoped For In Kenya
AUTHOR: By Tom Maliti
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya — A political deal to end Kenya’s postelection crisis is expected by Friday, with the two sides having “largely agreed” on a new government structure, officials said Thursday.
“I am beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel,” former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is mediating the talks, said in a statement.
The Dec. 27 election, which foreign and local observers say was rigged, returned President Mwai Kibaki to power for a second five-year term after opposition leader Raila Odinga’s lead evaporated overnight. The controversy has stirred up grievances over land and poverty that have bedeviled Kenya since independence in 1963.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in weeks of violence.
Mutula Kilonzo, a top government negotiator, said the two sides will “finish work, particularly on Agenda 3, by tomorrow.” Agenda 3 refers to resolving the political crisis caused by the election.
According to a statement from Annan’s office, the two sides “outlined a joint proposal, that had been largely agreed, on the governance structure.”
The two sides did not release details about the proposed government structure. But Odinga and his backers have indicated they want the president to share power, possibly through the creation of a prime minister’s position.
Meanwhile, a think tank said Thursday that armed groups on opposite sides of the political and ethnic strife are mobilizing for new attacks and serious violence could erupt again if peace talks fail.
“Calm has partly returned but the situation remains highly volatile,” the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a report. “Armed groups are still mobilizing on both sides.”
On Wednesday, the opposition threatened mass protests unless serious work to put power-sharing into the constitution starts within a week, a sign the country remains on the edge of violence.