SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1360 (24), Friday, March 28, 2008
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TITLE: Swimmers Poisoned At Aqua Park
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At least 75 visitors to the city’s Waterville aqua park were poisoned by chlorine in the water on Wednesday, the city’s Emergency Service said. Fifteen were hospitalized, and the attraction was temporarily closed.
Among the hospitalized were 13 children and two adults.  They felt burning in their eyes and throats, and itching of the skin.
By 3 p.m. on Thursday, 162 people, including 129 children, who had visited the swimming complex near the Pribaltiiskaya Park Inn on Vasilyevsky Island had sought medical attention, Interfax reported, referring to information provided by the city’s ambulance service. At least 38 of those people, including 27 children, were taken to a hospital.  
However, later Thursday only five of the children remained in hospitals, Interfax reported.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal case under Articles 236 and 238 of the criminal code (“Violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules” and “Providing a service that doesn’t correspond to safety norms”), Interfax reported.
The city’s Russian Consumers Watch or RCW have begun an inspection of the park. Samples of water for chemical and microbiological tests were taken. RCW also temporarily closed the aqua park before the results of the tests are known, RCW said on its website.
Artyom Bakonin, a laywer for one of the poisoned families, said that he would demand hundreds of thousands rubles in compensation.
Bakonin said that some of those effected vomited in the swimming pool, Interfax reported.
Meanwhile, the aquapark’s administration confirmed on its website that 25 visitors had sought medical attention on Wednesday and nine of them were hospitalized.  All of those people were in satisfactory condition, it said.
“The composition of the water completely met sanitary norms. The water was tested as normal, every three hours, and no violation of norms was registered,” the website said. 
The park’s doctor said that such symptoms could be the consequence of an allergic reaction to chlorine, and that only people with particular sensitivity to this chemical may have such a reaction, the website said.
The park’s administration said 2,270 people visited the park on Wednesday.
The administration also said it regretted the incident and said that it was making every possible effort to resolve the situation.  It said the park would be closed all through Thursday.
Waterville is the biggest park of its kind in St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Bush, Putin To Meet in Sochi for Missile Talks
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Love
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — President Bush said Wednesday he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Russia to try to break a logjam between the two nations over a proposed U.S. missile defense system.
“I think a lot of people in Europe would have a deep sigh of relief if we’re able to reach an accord on missile defense,” Bush said during a roundtable interview with foreign journalists. “And hopefully we can.”
Bush is accepting Putin’s invitation for a meeting in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on April 6, to come at the end of the president’s trip that starts Monday to Ukraine, the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, and Croatia. It will likely be the last meeting between Bush and the Russian leader before Putin leaves office. Putin’s successor as Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, takes office at the beginning of May.
Bush said he and Putin would discuss the missile defense system that the United States plans to base in Central Europe. It would involve 10 interceptor missiles based in Poland and a tracking radar system in the Czech Republic.
Moscow has been vehemently opposed to the idea, saying the intent is to weaken its nuclear deterrent. The United States denies that, saying the facilities are being designed to protect Europe against a potential missile attack — or even just nuclear blackmail — by Iran.
The dispute has become heated, with increasingly confrontational rhetoric coming from Moscow. But there have been signs of cooling recently and Bush told reporters that he saw an opportunity to build on that.
Talks in Moscow between high-level Russian officials and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates yielded some progress, said Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser. Since those talks, Russia has made some conciliatory statements.
A Russian delegation is in Washington this week for more discussions “and continues to have some progress,” Hadley said. He said the U.S. is trying hard to come up with “a formula of measures” that will ease Russia’s concerns, perhaps by making Moscow an equal partner in the system and increasing transparency.
But the meeting also could be viewed as an effort to firm up a crucial, though faltering, relationship for the United States before the two leaders who have worked together so long both leave office.
Though Putin has said he will switch roles to become prime minister, there are concerns in Washington about the direction Russian foreign policy might take under Medvedev at a time when Russia is a key factor in dicey issues such as containing nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
“This is an opportunity for the two leaders to meet, assess what progress has been made and see whether we can come together with a framework that can, as I said, consolidate areas where we’re cooperating together, maybe resolve some outstanding issues such as missile defense and provide a platform for the relationship between the two countries going forward,” Hadley said.
Other issues on the table, he said, include whether to extend the Moscow Treaty of 2002 with a new verification regime for strategic nuclear arms reductions and a replacement for the 1991 START accord that expires next year.
Bush declined to comment on what he thinks democracy will be like in Russia under Medvedev, Putin’s protege and hand-picked successor. U.S. concerns about democratic backsliding in Russia were already on the rise before the Kremlin’s power was enlisted to help smooth Medvedev’s election.
Bush first said he had not yet met Medvedev, though the White House has said the two met once four years ago when the Russian was a government minister. Bush quickly then said “I have yet to work with him.” He said he liked some things he’s heard Medvedev say, but he said he would be “listening very carefully” as time goes on and suggested he would withhold judgment on the new president’s leadership until after he has dealt with him.

TITLE: Human Rights Council Reports Widespread Abuses
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Violations of the right to life and other fundamental human rights have become a routine in St. Petersburg, argues the city’s Human Rights Council, in its first analytical report released this week.
“Recruits get beaten to death by senior conscripts in the army; inmates are tortured by the staff in prisons; antifascists and non-Slavs are stabbed to death in the streets of St. Petersburg,” said council member and human rights advocate Leonid Romankov. “The state is unable to protect its people, and the level of the state’s helplessness is as alarming as the ever-increasing scale of the abuses.”
The report challenges the results of the annual report prepared by St. Petersburg ombudsman Igor Mikhailov, a prominent member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. 
The alternative document arrived less than a week after Mikhailov presented his findings to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. According to Mikhailov’s paper, most violations of people’s rights in St. Petersburg are connected to housing. The city ombudsman’s conclusions were based on the statistics from the more than 7,000 complaints that he has received from locals since the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly elected him to the post in July.
“Conveniently for the authorities, the Mikhailov report skips over mention of violations of voters’ rights and abuse of electoral legislation; neither does the document highlight police violence against street protests by the political opposition,” Romankov said.
The non-governmental council was formed in July and currently has twenty members — ten individuals and ten human rights organizations, including human rights groups Citizens’ Watch, Soldiers’ Mothers, Memorial, the League of Voters and environmental organization Bellona.
Council members spoke with frustration at what they see as the ombudsman’s political bias.
“Dissenters’ Marches — that sparked international criticism for the colossal amounts of unjustified police violence against peaceful protesters — get a single mention in the Mikhailov report, when the author tells us he attended a discussion about the marches on Ekho Moskvy radio in St. Petersburg,” council member Natalya Yevdokimova, an advisor to Sergei Mironov, chairman of the Council of Federation, said. “The report also fails to mention the city authorities violating the right of people to gather in public — which has been an especially painful issue for human rights’ groups and the political opposition in the last year.”
Yevdokimova further criticized the content of Mikhailov’s report.
“While political and other sensitive issues are left ignored, many pages are devoted to lengthy quotations from the law on Russia’s ombudsman, the law on the St. Petersburg ombudsman, the governor’s addresses to the city parliament and the president’s addresses to the Council of Federation from various years.”
Romankov admitted what alarmed him most in Mikhailov’s report was the ombudsman admitting he was not able to define the term “human rights.”
“Mikhailov confesses that he is at a loss over the definition of what is supposed to be his field of expertise, which is a bit disturbing,” Romankov said. “To get the answer, one only needs to see the Russian Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Vladimir Schnitke, a member of the council and one of the leaders of the Memorial human rights group, said copies of the council’s report will be sent to City Hall, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, the police, the city prosecutor’s office, Russia’s ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and a number of human rights groups. The report is also available online on the websites of the council’s member organizations.
Yury Nesterov, Yabloko politician and a member of the council, said none of the letters sent to the City Hall, the city prosecutor’s office, law enforcement and other state authorities since the council began work in July have had a response.
“Frankly speaking, the pattern is clear to us: the authorities are demonstrating that they could not care less about what we do and what we say,” he said. 
“We have no illusions about the attitude of the authorities but in the end it is the people, not the bureaucrats that we are after. The council seeks to spread the word about human rights abuses — and what makes them happen — among the general public.”
Getting heard has become an additional challenge, the council’s members say. Restrictions on media freedom are a particular concern.
“The circle of independent media in the city has been shrinking,” reads the council’s report. “It has become extremely difficult for the city’s residents to get access to free, unbiased and unfiltered information. Television channels — the main source of information for most Russians — remain under strict state control.”

TITLE: ‘Normal’ Exit For Brenton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — British Ambassador Anthony Brenton will leave his post in September, when his four-year assignment is set to end, a British Embassy spokesman said Wednesday.
“Normal procedures dictate that when his term expires he will leave his post,” the spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.
It was unclear who might replace Brenton. 
“The identity will be announced several days before the handover,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman rejected suggestions made by a Foreign Ministry source, cited by Interfax, that the ambassador’s departure “should be seen in the context of the readiness of the British side to normalize Russian-British relations.”
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is thought to be seeking improved bilateral relations, which have been strained during Brenton’s tenure by spats over the poisoning murder of former Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko and the legal status of the British Council, among other issues.
In an interview published Monday in the Financial Times, President-elect Dimitry Medvedev, who is to take office in May, said Russia “can restore the entire volume of full bilateral cooperation” between the two countries and that the current situation is “not a tragedy.”

TITLE: Medvedev Unveils Steps 
To Counteract Corruption
AUTHOR: By Oleg Shchedrov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev ordered anti-corruption steps to protect small businesses on Thursday, a first sign he is serious about fighting the endemic graft economists say is hampering growth.
Arbitrary inspections by officials — from firemen to the police — are often an excuse to extort bribes from small firms and must halt, Medvedev told a State Council meeting in Tobolsk.
“This proposal might leave some officials from the fire, sanitary services and police ... close to a heart attack, because this is what they make money on — both officially and illegally,” Medvedev told the Kremlin’s advisory State Council.
“The proposal sounds as following: controlling bodies should be barred from entering small enterprises,” he added.
“They can only enter if there is an appropriate instruction from a court or prosecutor.”
Medvedev also ordered the government to review legislation to protect small companies from being forced to enter dubious contracts with officials.
“It is clear this is a legalized bribe, which was formerly passed on in an envelope and now dressed up in a perfectly respectable form,” he said.
Medvedev, who will take over from president Vladimir Putin on May 7, has declared corruption a key threat to his country’s modernization and social stability.
Firms employing less than 100 people account for 15 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. The government wants to increase that share by at least 50 percent as a way to diversify an economy currently over-dependent on the energy sector.
Kremlin leaders also believe that Russia’s future political stability should be supported by a new middle class, formed to a large extent by people running small businesses.
But businessmen complain that the development of small companies is hampered by high taxes, corruption and red tape.
It was not immediately clear whether Medvedev’s proposals would have any impact on corrupt officials, who have survived periodic campaigns of successive leaders, including Putin.
Putin is credited at home with forging radical economic reforms at the start of his rule which helped achieve eight years of growth after a decade of post-Soviet decline.
Medvedev has said his job is to ensure “decades of economic stability” for Russia. Most analysts expect his presidency to be marked by economic fine-tuning, rather than bold reforms.
Rory MacFarquhar, Executive Director of Goldman Sachs, said Medvedev’s announcement confirmed that “on the margin, relative to the current policy framework, (he) is somewhat more liberal.
“But there is no sense that there’s going to be some big push ... This is exactly the kind of incremental improvement that it is right to expect.”

TITLE: Party Chief Charged for Blackmail
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The head of the liberal Yabloko party’s Penza region branch was charged with extortion Wednesday for purportedly trying to blackmail the governor.
Penza’s Leninsky District Court ordered Oleg Kochkin, Yabloko’s top official in the region and publisher of the independent weekly newspaper Lyubimaya Gazeta, to remain in custody during the investigation, regional court official Marina Shcheglova said by telephone Wednesday evening.
Yabloko officials said Kochkin was framed as revenge for numerous critical articles about Penza Governor Vasily Bochkaryov.
He is the third head of a regional Yabloko branch to face a criminal investigation this year.
Federal Security Service officers detained Kochkin in a sting operation Monday as he accepted 2 million rubles ($85,000) in exchange for not publishing compromising material about Bochkaryov, Shcheglova said.
Kochkin, 41, had also demanded that a senior regional official give him with an apartment worth 4.2 million rubles ($178,000) in exchange for not publishing the information, Shcheglova said.
If convicted of extortion, Kochkin faces up to 15 years in prison.
Olga Sorokina, deputy head of the regional Yabloko branch, said Kochkin had suspicions he was being set up when he received a phone call from a regional government official asking him to attend a 1 p.m. meeting at the government’s headquarters Monday.
Kochkin called a friend and said, “If I am not back by 2 p.m., start looking for me,” Sorokina said.
FSB officers detained Kochkin when he arrived at the government headquarters, Sorokina said.
Lyubimaya Gazeta’s offices in Penza and the city of Kuznetsk were subsequently searched, said Alexei Lomonov, the weekly’s editor-in-chief.
“Kochkin rarely entered journalistic spheres,” Lomonov said. “I don’t know how or why he would ever attempt to blackmail anyone.”
The regional branch of the FSB declined to comment Wednesday.
Kochkin was a deputy in the Penza regional legislature from 2002 to 2006. In May 2005, he was the only one of 43 deputies to vote against Bochkaryov’s reappointment as governor.
Senior Yabloko official Sergei Mitrokhin called the case politically motivated and said the allegations further convinced party members that “the actions against Yabloko will not stop until we get a lawful government.”

TITLE: Russian Tourists to U.K. Face Lengthy Visa Delays
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Changes to visa procedures for visitors to the U.K. have led to delays of up to two months and have begun to reduce the number of Russian tourists making the trip there, Moscow tour operators say, although The St. Petersburg Times has learned that visa applications made through the British Consulate in St. Petersburg tend to be dealt with more quickly than they are through the British Embassy in the capital.
The new rules mean that a tourist wishing to visit the U.K. needs to fill out an online visa application after which an appointment to attend a visa center is arranged where the applicant will give biometric data, operators say. The application is then considered by visa authorities.
“On March 21 we were only able to arrange tourists’ appointments for April 21 — that is, they’ll have to wait for a month just for the appointment,” the Russian Tourism Union or RTU quoted Valeria Krasilnikova, head of British direction at PAK group company in Moscow, as saying.
“Besides, the [visa authorities] will then need at least two weeks to consider the documents. As a result, in order to get a visa to Great Britain a tourist needs up to two months,” Krasilnikova said.
Tour operators say that it is not completely clear if the delay with British visas is due to technical problems with the new system or with strained diplomatic relations between the countries.  However, they say that the U.K. is losing Russian tourists.
“Tourists become interested in other European countries. For instance, getting a visa for Germany or Austria takes only four days. For a French visa, it officially takes two weeks but in reality one can do it in three or four days,” Tamara Guskova, manager at Moscow’s Alp Discovery travel company said. 
“We don’t send that many tourists to Great Britain, but we still have a constant flow. However, because of current problems we refuse to process tours with flights dated before May,” Guzkova said.
Yelena Zryanina, general director of Moscow’s Planeta Business Tour said that because of the impossibility of receiving the visas on time the company has had to make changes in presold tours. She said Thursday that the company can’t prepare documents for people who were planning to fly as late as May 1.
Anna Maslennikova, general director of Insight Lingua, said she is worried about the cost of the new procedures, and how long they take.
“About 70 percent of our clients are people living in the regions. It’s often children who go to England to study the language. So, now a child needs to personally come to the Embassy, bring documents, give biometric data, leave, then wait to receive the visa.  At the same time all those trips a child has to do with an adult. This way the trip becomes $500-$1000 more expensive,” Maslennikova said.
Maslennikova said the regional demand for U.K. trips has decreased. Instead, Russians are preferring to study in Ireland, Malta or even the United States, she said.
The press service of British Embassy in Moscow confirmed that delays with British visas currently exist.
“The delays at present are unfortunate but are due to a number of short term reasons and we are working to ensure that these problems are eliminated as soon as possible,” the press service said.
The Embassy refused to specify the “short term reasons” for the delays.
Meanwhile, the British Consulate in St. Petersburg said it is not experiencing any delays with visas.
Yelena Mishkenyuk, spokes-woman for the British Consulate in St. Petersburg, said that in St. Petersburg, those who fill out the on-line application form get an appointment for the visa center a day or two later.
Mishkenyuk said within three or four days of the appointment, if the documents are fine, a tourist can get a British visa.
“We haven’t come across this problem in St. Petersburg,” Mishkenyuk said on Wednesday.
Tatyana Demenyeva, spokes-woman for northwest office of the RTU, said St. Petersburg tour operators have not complained about problems with British visas.
Demenyeva suggested that more people in Moscow were interested in the visiting the U.K. than in St. Petersburg because it is expensive and Muscovites are wealthier than people in St. Petersburg.
Mishkenyuk said filling an on-line application form was a part of British visa strategy all over the world that was directed at the improvement of the procedure.
“In the new application form, a person needs to fill out only the parts needed for getting a particular visa type,” she said, adding that the system is directed at “lowering the percentage of refusals.”
Mishkenyuk said that although giving biometrical data causes some inconvenience to tourists it is a procedure that is becoming standard worldwide.
At the same time, Sergei Korneyev, head of the northwest branch of the RTU, said the process of getting a British visa “has indeed become longer and more complicated.”
“The new visa procedure is especially inconvenient for tourists living in Pskov, Novgorod or Murmansk if we are talking about the north west region. Residents of those cities now have to travel to St. Petersburg at least twice to get a British visa,” he said.
Korneyev said that the modernization of the visa system had clearly been the major reason for the complications in the process, but he said that he couldn’t exclude the idea that “the political situation between the countries could also play its role in that.”
“Great Britain is an interesting country for Russian tourists. However, this interest is easy to break and hard to build up again,” Korneyev said.
Beginning March 1, British visa centers accepted only electronic visa applications. At the same time, a personal visit to the visa center remains a necessity: an applicant needs to bring a passport, a printed and signed application form and other support documents, as well as to pay for the visa and give their biometrical data.
Russian citizens were obliged to give their biometrical data beginning November last year. 
U.K. visa centers operate in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.

TITLE: Anti-Fascists Chased by Police
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A large group of anti-Nazi youth activists walked down Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, in an unsanctioned march protesting neo-Nazi violence in memory of a murdered activist this week. Twenty six were detained by the police soon afterwards.
More than 150 young men and women belonging to unaffiliated the Antifa (militant “anti-fascism”) movement, most with faces covered with scarves and carrying flares and banners, marched 1.5 kilometers from Alexander Nevsky Ploshchad to Ploshchad Vosstaniya during a heavy snowstorm at around 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
The protesters carried two large red banners reading “Make Nazism History” and “Trash Nationalism” and chanted slogans, such as “Antifa,” “Go into the Street and Take the City Back,” “The World is Multi-Colored, Not Brown” and “No to Nazis of Any Kind — from the Street to the Authorities.”  
The march was held to mark nine days since the death of Alexei Krylov, a 21-year-old anti-Nazi activist who was stabbed to death by an estimated 15 neo-Nazis on March 16 as he was heading to a punk concert near the club Art Garbage in Moscow.
It was reported that the attack was planned using a website for fans of the Moscow Premier League soccer team Spartak. Three days later an anti-Nazi march that reportedly drew 300 activists was held in the center of Moscow.
Anti-Nazi activist and punk musician Timur Kacharava, 20, was killed in a similar attack in St. Petersburg in November 2005.
In St. Petersburg, the marchers distributed leaflets about Krylov’s murder and asking for financial help for his mother and two younger sisters. Another leaflet described the ideology of “Autonomous Antifascism” and called for street-level resistance against neo-Nazism.
“Antifascists went down to the demonstration to state that they are not going to tolerate neo-Nazi violence, which has become an acute problem in Russia. Reports about attacks on foreign students and killings of migrants have ceased to shock anyone. They have become routine,” said the Antifa group in a statement on website www.piter.indymedia.ru.
“Attacks are also committed on representatives of countercultural youths who try to resist neo-Nazis. Over the past 2 1/2 years, five anti-fascists from different cities were killed for their convictions, St. Petersburg musician Timur Kacharava among them.
“The whole history of the anti-fascist movement shows that it can only be a success if it uses all available tactics of resistance (not excluding direct physical counteraction).”
The police, which has disrupted most demonstrations with no official permission issued by the authorities in recent years — even though the Russian Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly — were not aware of the march, which had been organized in secret, and only reacted when the march was almost finished, as protesters reached Ploshchad Vosstaniya.
Apparently taken by surprise, several policemen tried to stop the marchers from crossing Ligovsky Prospekt, and when they failed, blocked the entrance to Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro, so the group went down Ulitsa Vosstaniya and then turned in the direction of Ulitsa Mayakovskogo.
Arrests started near the Novotel hotel where a policeman attacked a straggler, pushing him to the ground. The protesters’ leader, who gave commands through a megaphone during the march, was detained soon after, along with other activists who tried to run away through courtyards but found themselves trapped.
After reaching Ulitsa Zhukovskogo, the main group ran away in an organized fashion. The police failed to catch them.
“Twenty six citizens were detained, but five of them turned out to be minors and were immediately released and turned over to their parents,” said Vyacheslav Stepchenko, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry in St. Petersburg, by phone on Thursday. According to Antifa’s statement, the minors were only released after 11 p.m.
According to Stepchenko, the activists were detained according to two clauses of the Administrative Code, Article 19.3 Part I (“Failure to Follow a Policeman’s Lawful Orders”) and Article 20.2 (“Violation of the Regulations of Conducting Meetings, Marches, Demonstrations and Pickets”).
The rest of the detained activists were released on Wednesday afternoon, when the court ruled to send their cases to their local courts. Failure to follow a policeman’s lawful orders is the gravest offence of the two and can lead to up to 15 days in custody.
“We didn’t inform the authorities about the march because they wouldn’t have permitted it anyway,” said a participant, who asked that his name be withheld, by phone on Thursday.
“We also didn’t need to advertize it because we can gather that many people without any publicity.”
This year has seen a rise in racially-motivated violence in Russia, with St. Petersburg following Moscow in the rate of incidents reported. 
An Uzbek man and a woman either from Yakutia or Buryatiya, were reported to have been stabbed to death in St. Petersburg this week, in addition to three other racially-motivated killings and a number of beatings this month.

TITLE: Finnish Supermarket Chain to Open Stores in City
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Finnish retailer SOK plans to open and develop its Prisma supermarkets in St. Petersburg until it occupies 15-17 percent of the local retail market by opening about 20 supermarkets over the next five years.
“We think there are still areas in St. Petersburg where supermarkets can be opened in the city center and hypermarkets in the suburbs,” Antti Sippola, vice-president of SOK Corporation, said Thursday at a press conference.
Last year Prisma sales stood at $3.73 billion. The company operates 51 Prisma stores in Finland, five in Tallinn and one in Riga. This year SOK will open its first supermarket in Vilnius as well as a new supermarket in Riga.
In St. Petersburg, the first Prisma will open this summer in the Hotel Moscow shopping center at the Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo end of Nevsky Prospekt.
“This central location offers good prospects — there are no other large food retail stores in this area,” said Vesa Punnonen, president of SOK Retail in Russia.
The space for the 2,500 square-meter supermarket was leased from Adamant, and investment totaled almost $8 million. By 2015, SOK expects to operate 15 to 20 supermarkets in St. Petersburg and its suburbs, investing 475-790 million dollars.
The supermarkets will occupy areas varying between 4,000 and 17,000 square meters, and their ranges will exceed 60,000 items, including food, consumer products, clothes and electronics. Initially, 80 percent of products will be supplied by Russian companies and the rest imported from Finland.
Kirill Akinshin, head of the assessment and consulting department at Maris Properties in association with CB Richard Ellis, indicated that in the city center large shopping areas could be created only in zones assigned for complex redevelopment.
“Considering the high concentration of shopping areas in St. Petersburg, Prisma’s project could be more profitable in the suburbs, such as the Primorsky, Kurortny, Pushkinsky, Petrodvortsovy and Lomonosovsky districts,” Akinshin said.
Igor Luchkov, director of assessment and analysis at Becar Commercial Property SPB, also recommended looking for large areas in the suburbs rather than in the city center.
“The most attractive premises along the city’s main roads are already occupied, and now basements and former air-raid shelters are being redeveloped. The company could take part in the St. Petersburg Property Fund tenders, but in that case they would have to buy whole buildings, open a supermarket on the ground floor and somehow manage the other areas,” Luchkov said.
Even in the suburbs, the most attractive central locations are often unavailable, he warned.
Akinshin estimated construction costs at $1,200 per square meter. Luchkov said that construction could cost $1,000-1,200 per square meter, but infrastructure and power network expenses would comprise up to 20 percent of the total cost.
Large retail areas are popular in St. Petersburg, Luchkov said, including hypermarkets.
Akinshin saw Perekryostok (whose stores occupy up to 10,000 sq. m.), Karusel and OKey (12,000-15,000 sq.m.) as Prisma’s likely main competitors.
Luchkov suggested that Prisma would focus on middle-class and upper-middle class shoppers, putting emphasis on its “Finnish quality.”
“We have many economy-class chains like Diksi and Pyatyorochka and a couple of elite brands, but the middle-class niche is unoccupied. Many consumers want something more than standard middle-class goods and expect higher quality, but are not prepared to pay for expensive products. SOK has good chances of winning these customers,” Luchkov said.
Mikhail Podushko, director for strategic development at WorkLine Research, indicated that as incomes increase and more city residents buy cars, people prefer supermarkets and hypermarkets to discount stores.
According to WorkLine, Pyatyorochka and Diksi are the most popular discount stores, while Lenta, OKey and Karusel are the most popular hypermarkets. The largest increase in monthly spending has been seen among customers of Karusel and OKey — seven percent over the last two years.
“Prisma’s plans are too optimistic. Of course, much will depend on the locations, range of goods and marketing, but it will be difficult to force out the leaders, as the recent attempt by Auchan to do so shows,” said Podushko.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>New Bukvoyed Store</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg bookstore chain Bukvoyed will open a new store Saturday, the company said Wednesday in a statement.
Bukvoyed already operates 27 bookstores. The new store will open in the “On” shopping center in the Nevsky district. The company has invested about $60,000 into the store, whose range will include over 10,000 items. This year Bukvoyed plans to open eight stores in St. Petersburg and four stores in other parts of the northwest region.

<b>Toyota to Sell Camry</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Toyota Motors will start selling Camry cars produced at its new St. Petersburg plant on March 31, the company said Wednesday in a statement.
As a result of the decrease in customs taxes, the company recommended that its authorized dealers and partners decrease the price for the Toyota Camry by nine percent to 790,000 rubles ($33,500). Last year the company sold 26,358 Camry cars in Russia — a 45.6 increase on 2006 figures.

<b>Baikal Waste to Stop</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — A pulp plant controlled by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska will stop dumping waste into Lake Baikal, which holds about a fifth of the world’s fresh surface water.
Baikalsk Paper and Pulp Mills, in which Deripaska’s company Basic Element has a majority stake, agreed to activate a closed, internal drainage system by Sept. 15, eliminating the flow of waste water into the lake, the Natural Resources Ministry said Thursday in an e-mailed statement.
The ministry also gave the plant until April 28 to present a plan for reducing its “negative impact” on groundwater quality. It also ordered Irkutsk regional authorities to turn on a water-filtering system in the city of Baikalsk by Aug. 15.
The plant was forced by the ministry to suspend operations for five days in December. Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the ministry’s environmental watchdog, said Dec. 17 that the mill was pumping an “unacceptable” amount of pollution into the lake. Baikal is the world’s oldest and deepest lake and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

<b>Sturgeon Fishing Out</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The head of Russia’s Fisheries Committee called for a five-year moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea, warning that the fish, whose eggs and meat are prized delicacies, faces extinction, Interfax reported.
Russia will ask the other Caspian Sea countries — Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan — to stop fishing for sturgeon, the Russian news service said, citing Andrei Krainy. The impact on these countries’ budgets “would not be large,” Krainy told reporters in Moscow on Thursday, Interfax said.
Russia is ready to stop sturgeon fishing in the Caspian entirely this year. Only 24 tons of Russia’s 50-ton annual quota allowed for scientific purposes is filled, because so few fish remain, Interfax said, citing Krainy.

TITLE: Poll Shows More Russians Saving Money
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More Russians are putting aside savings now than during the last few years, according to a poll conducted by the Russian Center for Public Opinion (VTsIOM). Half of the respondents stated that they spend their entire income on living expenses and save nothing, as opposed to 60 percent in 2005.
“During the last two years more Russians have found opportunities to put aside savings. People who do not have any spare money are mainly found among respondents over 60 years old (58 percent). The smallest number of such people is among respondents younger than 35 years old (38-41 percent),” VTsIOM said in a report Tuesday.
According to the report, the number of people saving money has increased from 37 percent in 2005 to 47 percent of the population. Only 15 percent of respondents stated that they save regularly and systematically, while 32 percent occasionally save some cash if they have managed not to spend their whole income on their day-to-day needs.
“About a quarter of respondents keep spare cash at home, 11 percent in current accounts and five percent in savings accounts. Some respondents stated that they invest their leftover money in business (two percent), buy foreign currency and precious metals (one percent), or use securities and non-governmental pension funds (less than one percent),” VTsIOM reported.
Half of the respondents claimed that they have no spare money, since family needs consume their income entirely. One out of ten respondents said that they do not see the point in saving money, and therefore spend all of their income.
Consumer attitudes are most popular among young people of 18-24 years old, of whom 15 percent consider saving pointless. The same opinion was stated by ten percent of 25-59 year-olds and by six percent of people over the age of 60.
“These statistics show that trust in financial institutions in Russia is increasing. Increased savings are a result of economic stability in the country,” said Lyudmila Khokhryakova, director for the retail department at Agropromcreditbank.
She was not concerned by the fact that 26 percent of the respondents prefer to keep cash at home. “They probably consider this cash to be not significant enough to deposit. It could be an ‘emergency resource’ that has to be readily available. According to foreign media, in Japan, Mexico, Germany and Argentina most of the population also keep cash stashed away at home,” Khokhryakova said.
If interest rates overtake inflation, the proportion of bank deposits will increase, she said. “We have seen an increasing demand for bank deposits over recent years. We attribute it mainly to various deposit terms and high interest rates. Unlike other financial tools, deposits guarantee profitability, and people willingly deposit their savings in banks,” Khokhryakova said.
Olga Kurganova, director for marketing, advertisement and PR at Uniastrum Bank, attributed the habit of keeping money at home — “under the mattress” — to the fact that people in Russia are poorly informed about bank services.
She indicated that a special federal program is being formulated that would focus on making financial services more popular. “Right now the banks need to promote their services and explain how they work,” Kurganova said.
For that purpose, Uniastrum Bank publishes a corporate newspaper. Last year the volume of deposits in the bank increased by 70 percent up to 25.8 billion rubles ($1.1 billion).
“Interest rates in many Russian banks are higher than inflation. At the same time, people should consider more profitable tools like unit investment trusts and bank managed funds,” Kurganova said.
The popularity of these services is also increasing. Over the last year funds managed by Uniastrum Bank tripled to a total worth of 2.5 billion rubles ($106 million).

TITLE: Billionaire Warns Of Credit Risk
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Lev Leviev, the Israeli diamond and property billionaire, said global credit markets “may get worse this year” and recommended holding cash.
“We expect that the market may get worse this year and do not exclude that Russia will be affected” by the global liquidity squeeze, Leviev told reporters in Moscow on Thursday after his local real estate company AFI Development Plc posted record earnings for 2007.
Leviev said Russian companies are paying annual interest of as much as 13 percent to borrow in rubles and 11 percent in dollars. “So we are sitting on our cash to buy sites cheaper when opportunities arise,” he said.
Banks are hoarding cash after about $208 billion of losses related to the U.S. subprime mortgage slump. That means Russian companies “may find their financial flexibility under threat,” Moody’s Investors Service said in a report Wednesday. Russian companies borrowed a record $82 billion from foreign banks last year, according to Bloomberg data.
Leviev said AFI has about $800 million in cash for acquisitions in Russia and other former Soviet states, giving it an advantage over developers who are forced to borrow at higher prices.
Moscow-based AFI doesn’t plan to borrow from foreign banks or sell bonds, Chief Financial Officer Avi Barzilay said. The company is in “advanced talks” to borrow $350 million from a Russian bank to finance construction in Moscow, Barzilay said, declining to disclose terms.

TITLE: Medvedev Attacks Graft For Hindering Small Businesses
AUTHOR: By Sebastian Alison
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW  — Russia’s small businesses are “defenseless” against rampant extortion and officials’ demands for bribes, and therefore have little incentive to launch new enterprises, President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev said.
Small businesses are subjected to “45 types of control” from about 30 different government agencies, “and that’s just at the federal level,” Medvedev told senior officials in the Siberian city of Tobolsk on Thursday in remarks broadcast on state television.
Even without corruption, legal checks such as sanitary and environmental inspections swallow about 10 percent of a small business’s revenue, Medvedev said.
Obstacles imposed on small businesses at the federal, regional and local levels “provoke bribe-taking and extortion” on an “absolutely criminal” scale, he said. “It’s simply not profitable now for people to open a new business, to launch a new product or to enter the market with a new service.”
Medvedev, 42, succeeds Vladimir Putin on May 7. A lawyer by training, the president-elect stressed the need to fight corruption in statements made before and after his March 2 election victory.
“Russia is a country where people don’t like to observe the law,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times, published on his web site on March 24. “The creation of a counter-corruption stimulus” is vital for Russia’s development, he said.
Russia’s $1 trillion economy is expanding for a 10th consecutive year. The weight of businesses with less than $12 million in revenue in the nation’s gross domestic product is expected to increase amid a continuing economic boom.
Small businesses now account for no more than 12 percent of Russia’s GDP, Andrei Ilyin, chief financial officer of MDM Bank, said in October.

TITLE: Firms Urged to Seek Funding
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian companies may have to find alternative sources of funding as the credit crisis triggered by the U.S. housing slump restricts access to international capital markets, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
The country’s metal and mining companies as well as telecommunication and energy firms require “significant capital injections” to make up for long periods of under-investment, Moody’s analysts led by Matthias Hellstern in Frankfurt wrote in the report.
“Some companies may find their financial flexibility under threat if the current global liquidity and credit crisis continues,” the report said.
Investors have shunned all but the safest government securities since the collapse of the U.S. housing market caused more than $200 billion of losses and writedowns by financial firms worldwide. Russian companies that might normally have sold bonds to international investors will have to rely on loans and ruble-denominated securities to raise funds, the Moody’s report said.

TITLE: Talking About Democracy Is Not Enough
AUTHOR: By Masha Lipman
TEXT: The next administration, with Dmitry Medvedev as president and Vladimir Putin remaining at the helm as prime minister, may evolve into something different from Putin’s current rule. But the expectations of liberalization that Medvedev’s rhetoric and non-KGB background might have raised in some circles are wishful thinking.
Medvedev’s campaign was hardly a demonstration of adherence to democratic principles. And his rhetoric, while somewhat softer than Putin’s, is barely an indicator of change. Throughout his presidency, Putin repeatedly spoke of the need for the rule of law, free media and other democratic virtues. Yet his policies were increasingly at variance with these principles, and by the end of his presidency the gap between the official rhetoric and reality reached almost Soviet proportions.
Although Medvedev has made several commendable statements, such as his preference for freedom over the lack of freedom, he speaks only in generalities. He has not touched on any of the many recent cases involving the issues of freedom or democracy, including repeated harassment and detention of liberal-leaning political activists.
Nor has Medvedev elaborated on the relationship between his mentor’s policies and the deplorable status of the rule of law and press freedom in the country. Those policies could also be seen as his own, given Medvedev’s status as a top official in Putin’s administration.
The system created during Putin’s presidency is based on the uncontested primacy of the top executive, with controlled politics and a growing intolerance toward public dissent, let alone political autonomy. In such a system, the judiciary is independent and the media free as long as they don’t interfere with what those in power see as the interests of the state. Genuine rule of law and a genuinely independent media would undermine the very foundations of this regime. Medvedev is not in a position to challenge the system or its creator — the man who ensured that Medvedev was elected president March 2. Just this week, Medvedev spoke of himself and Putin as a “tandem” and “team of two.”
Putin has consolidated the state and enfeebled the society, an arrangement that no ruler would shed unless strongly challenged by those seeking to reclaim and apply their political rights. In today’s Russia, however, there is no force laying such claims. And yet, an exact continuation of course under Putin is not a certainty.
But it is simply wrong at this point to regard Medvedev as a vehicle of change or to expect that Russian leadership would opt for political liberalization.
Should the good economic fortunes that accompanied Putin’s presidency recede, various domestic problems that until now have been subdued by generous infusions of oil money would be exacerbated. Observers of Russia’s economy warn that the successful development of recent years may not be sustainable. Critics have cited the unfavorable dynamics of oil and gas production, which accounts for about one-third of the nation’s budget revenue, and the looming prospect of a workforce shortage — the result of an implacable demographic trend. The shortage will weigh heavily on those men and women already working to provide their own safety net and to care for the older generation. Additionally, Russia may not be prepared to handle the repercussions of a global economic recession, which looks increasingly likely.
Putin may also be concerned about the sustainability of his economic achievement. Though he has repeatedly pledged to stay the course, in early February the president unveiled a plan for the country through 2020. After citing the successes of his administration, Putin spoke about the “extreme inefficiency” of the economy, the “unacceptably low productivity of labor” and the urgent need for modernization — lest Russia fall behind the world’s leading economies.
If the team of Putin and Medvedev really means modernization, it is sure to face tough challenges. First and foremost is the question of whether modernization is even possible in a deinstitutionalized system that has eliminated public participation, cultivated paternalism and opted for heavily centralized control over political competition. Another challenge is the inevitable infringement on the more conservative elites that have thrived under Putin’s system of empowered bureaucracy.
Attempts at modernization would further aggravate the tensions among those who control broad swaths of the country’s power and property. Their infighting is mostly kept behind the scenes these days, but if political struggles spill out into the open, they are likely to extend to the medium-tier elites, which are currently depoliticized, or the middle classes, which will be forced to align with one or another of the feuding camps.
Russia’s future is uncertain. The outcomes of struggles both likely and unexpected are far from clear — whether the forces of modernization would prevail or whether nationalists and conservatives could win the upper hand. If such shifts take place during Medvedev’s tenure, this might give him a chance to evolve as an independent decision-maker in Russian politics — something that he is not today.

Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Pro et Contra journal, writes a monthly column for The Washington Post, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: The Politics of Adoption
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: Whenever something bad happens to a Russian child who was adopted by parents from the United States, Russian television is bound to show it as the leading story. These media reports, however, rarely dig below the surface to find out what motivated foreigners to adopt these children in the first place and to explain why these adoptions ended so tragically.
In place of objective reporting, the Russian media are quick to pass judgment on the adoptive parents, leading viewers to conclude that Americans adopt Russian children to abuse them — and, in extreme cases, to kill them. After each incident, lawmakers toughen procedures for foreign adoptions and sometimes call for their outright prohibition.
The recent story of the Emelyantsev family from Utah is a typical example. The mother, Kimberly, is from the United States, and the father, Fyodor, is a Russian citizen. Their 14-month-old adopted Russian boy died on March 7. An autopsy determined that the child had died from a skull fracture that doctors said was the result of blunt-force trauma. Both parents were arrested, and Kimberly Emelyantsev was charged with first-degree murder.
The boy was one of three Russian children the family had adopted in addition to the two children they already had. Two of the adopted children suffered from serious illnesses, and the Emelyantsevs knowingly took them in. The boy who died had suffered from Down syndrome. The medical aspect of the Emelyantsev case is important, because it is nearly impossible for foreigners to adopt healthy Russian orphans. Instead, they adopt mostly handicapped children or those with serious hereditary illnesses.
After the Emelyantsev case was widely publicized, the public received another dose of anti-Americanism. In reality, such incidents in the United States occur in only one of every 15,000 adoption cases. U.S. and Canadian parents adopted around 15,000 Russian children in recent years, and there were 14 to 16 known deaths among all adopted children over the last 10 years. Two years ago, following a similar tragedy involving a Russian child adopted by American parents, U.S. authorities tried to organize a media tour to show how adopted children from Russia were faring in their new country and how the system for monitoring their living conditions was functioning. They invited a few members of the State Duma and the Federation Council, but there were no takers.
Russian laws governing adoptions by foreigners have gotten stricter in recent years. Even accredited adoption agencies are finding it difficult to manage — primarily because of the pervasive corruption among bureaucrats. Only in the last two years has the number of Russians adopting children — 7,000 — exceeded that of foreigners adopting Russian children — 6,000.
The Education and Science Ministry is now demanding tougher rules for overseas adoptive parents, suggesting that they be obligated to register with the state’s orphan database, undergo psychological testing and take a preparatory course for bringing adopted children into the home.
Such measures are worthwhile, but if we are so concerned about the fate of Russian children adopted by foreigners, why do we remain silent about the children adopted by Russians? There are no statistics available on domestic abuse cases of adopted children. We know only that 2,500 Russian children die at their parents’ hands every year, according to Interior Ministry statistics. We don’t know how many of those children were adopted because the country has no system for monitoring the progress of adopted children. But we do know that 1 million adoptive parents were deprived of their adoption rights because of child abuse. Another 2,500 families changed their minds and sent the children they had adopted back to the orphanages.
Unfortunately, you rarely see these stories on Russian television. Is it really more important for us to show that Americans are worse than Russians?

Georgy Bovt is a political analyst and hosts a radio program on City-FM.

TITLE: Punch, Judy and punk
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Punk-cabaret favorites The Tiger Lillies, who performed in Russia in June, return with two new albums. “Love and War,” an unlikely tribute to 16th century composer Claudio Monteverdi, was released last year, while “7 Deadly Sins,” the band’s 21st album, with each song devoted to one particular vice, came out earlier this month. The band’s entire career has been covered in The Tiger Lillies Book that contains the lyrics to 282 songs and 340 photographs, mostly previously unpublished. Formed in 1989, The Tiger Lillies feature Martyn Jacques, the band’s falsetto singer and squeeze box player, double bass player Adrian Stout and drummer Adrian Huge. Jacques spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by phone from his home in London.
<b><i>You are returning to Russia with two new albums, what kind of albums are they?</i></b>
The first one [“Love and War”] was recorded for the Edinburgh [International] Festival last summer, and was an album based on works of Monteverdi, who was the person who was meant to have written the first opera [ever]. He used to write quite hard lyrics, hardcore lyrics, and so on.
The organizer of the Edinburgh Festival thought it might be quite nice if The Tiger Lillies would do a night as a tribute to Monteverdi, because he saw, in some way, a link between Monteverdi and The Tiger Lillies. [Monteverdi] was actually quite a controversial figure in his time. So that was the idea.
It was an unusual project for us. I wrote the songs, and recorded them, and they were all written specifically just for one show, for one concert. It is something I’ve never done before, you know, to actually write a whole album just for one concert.

<b><i>How did the concert go?</i></b>
It was in a very large venue in Edinburgh with 2,000 people. It was a big show, but it was very difficult, because we are talking about the Edinburgh International Festival. There’s the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but this was actually for the International Festival. 
The International Festival is actually quite conservative. A lot of people would go to see events at the International Festival who are used to listening to Beethoven and Bach recitals, so there was basically a very large audience of people who were expecting something like Bach or Beethoven... Old people interested in classical music.
So it was quite a difficult show for us. It wasn’t actually much fun. The audience actually didn’t really like what we were doing, and quite a lot of them actually walked out. They didn’t even wait for the encore, they just walked out. It was quite a difficult concert.

<b><i>So you have mixed impressions?</i></b>
It was, I think, done on purpose by the artistic director of the festival, because he wanted to try to do something that was a bit more dangerous and a bit more avant-garde than the usual Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, that sort of thing. So he managed to cause a little bit of a shock by booking The Tiger Lillies, I guess. But it was a strange one, really. It was obviously not particularly nice to have people walking out of your show before you are finished.
That was “Love and War,” and it’s quite a violent album. It has a very strong anti-war sentiment running through it. It’s actually critical of the soldiers who go off to war and attacks them for fighting for these powers, they’re just pawns in the game and things like that.
It’s a very anti-war album, I guess.

<b><i>What about “7 Deadly Sins”?</i></b>
“7 Deadly Sins” is the newest album that is going to be performed in Soho [in London] in April. It is like a new theater show, which is going to tour and, who knows, will come to Russia one day.
It’s quite small, a cabaret show. It has a puppeteer, it has puppets — very famous puppets in England called Punch and Judy. Hand puppets, street puppet entertainment.
It’s been done for several hundred years now, and it was used quite a lot in the seaside resorts to entertain children. I’m quite obsessed with Punch and Judy. It’s very violent. The classical scene in the Punch and Judy show [is when] Punch kills his baby, then he kills his wife, then he kills several other puppets. He’s a kind of a psychopath who kills everybody, all the other puppets... He has a club and he beats them all to death with the club. 
It’s a strange, kind of ambiguous thing, as I said, these puppets are used to entertain children, and yet it actually has a very horrible character, who actually kills — a murderer!
I devised this show in which you have these two puppets and it tells of the seven deadly sins. [The album] “7 Deadly Sins” takes its inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch. He has a painting in Vienna, called “The Last Judgment,” which is a triptych, where you have a picture of the Garden of Eden, and then a picture of the seven deadly sins, and then the third part of the triptych is Hell, where all the sinners performing the seven deadly sins will go.
It’s a narrative story, if you think about it. It starts off in the Garden of Eden, we get cast out of the Garden of Eden, you commit these sins, these seven sins, and then you end up in Hell. I used this narrative story and had the puppets tell the story through the eyes of Punch and Judy, and then I’ve written a series of songs on the seven sins and Hell and about Heaven.

<b><i>Will you perform these new songs in Russia?</i></b>
We will be performing songs from the album. Probably all the songs from “7 Deadly Sins” album will be performed. So you’ll hear the songs, but obviously you won’t see the puppets, because the puppets won’t be there.

<b><i>Will you perform songs from “Love and War”?</i></b>
Not really, no. Because “Love and War” was just written and performed for that one show. We don’t really perform songs from that album anymore... 
The “7 Deadly Sins” songs are ones that we’re playing at the moment, and that’s actually a living show. 

<b><i>You have a great number of songs now collected in “The Tiger Lillies Book.”</i></b>
Yes, a beautiful book... The graphic designer’s name is bLUE, but his real name is Klaus Pelzer. He’s actually been a fan of The Tiger Lillies now for 15 years, I guess. He’s been following us around. I think he came with us and photographed us on our first tour to America. He’s a real fan. He’s taken a lot of photographs for us through the years. He also designed most of our albums.
Yes, he made this book, which is really a labor of love for him. Because he’s never going to get — he may, eventually — get the money back. It’s a very expensive book, beautifully put together, beautifully bound. It’s cost him a lot of money to do it. It’s his money that he’s spent on it.
It has all the songs from nineteen Tiger Lillies albums or however many, I’ve lost count, with all the photographs stretching back over the last 15 years. 
If you’re a real Tiger Lillies fan, it’s a nice present, a coffee-table book.

<b><i>So what are the Seven Deadly Sins, according to The Tiger Lillies? </i></b>
The Seven Deadly Sins according to The Tiger Lillies are the same as those suggested in the Fifth Century by a Catholic Pope. Basically I have written, one for each sin plus a prologue set in the Garden of Eden and several songs dealing with Hell. For me it’s a very interesting subject. I think we all experience the so-called seven sins in our day-to-day lives. I like becoming more aware of these so-called sins in my life. You can take it very metaphorically. Many of these sins do lead to “Hell” even if only just in the sense of feeling discomfort or unpleasantness.

<b><i>There are some other people taking part in the “7 Deadly Sins” show in London. Who are they? What are they doing for the show?</i></b>
There are only two, one is called Nathan Evans and he is a puppeteer who runs a gay cabaret club called Vauxhall Vile in a well-known gay pub in London called the Vauxhall Tavern. The other is a burlesque performer who has performed in his club, Ophelia Bitz. 

<b><i>What’s the band’s idea as applied to “7 Deadly Sins” (and maybe “Love and War”) — do you approach serious, complex issues with some kind of humor and simplicity to reveal the simple truth behind it? Or what could be your own definition?</i></b>
Well, I think there is a basic simplicity in most of what The Tiger Lillies do so when I approach a subject usually a simplification process takes place. I’m not a particularly well-read or intellectual person. I am more an entertainer and artist.


<i>The Tiger Lillies, perform at 7 p.m. Port on Friday. www.tigerlillies.com</i>

TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: A local anti-fascist movement marched against neo-Nazi violence this week, marking the ninth day since the death of an anti-fascist in Moscow. 
<b>Alexei Krylov</b>, who lived in Noginsk, a town near Moscow, was attacked and stabbed by 15 neo-Nazis when he was walking with three other young men and a young woman, to a punk concert at Art Garbage club. Krylov, who was 21, died of multiple knife wounds on the spot.
One of the leaflets that anti-fascists gave away to passers-by as they were marching on Nevsky Prospekt on Tuesday was headlined “They Killed Lyosha” and asked for a financial help for Krylov’s family.
“Alexei’s family really needs help, he has been survived by his mother and two younger sisters,” the leaflet said. “The family is underprivileged.” 
A WebMoney account for funds to support Krylov’s family has been listed as R321197368781, while Russian equivalent Yandex.Dengi’s account as 4100164493592.
Krylov’s murder was committed in the center of Moscow as he was leaving Kitai-Gorod Metro on March 16. It appears identical to the murder of Timur Kacharava, a local musician and anti-Nazi activist who was stabbed to death in the center of St. Petersburg outside the entrance to Bukvoyed bookstore on Ligovsky Prospekt, opposite Metro Ploshchad Vosstaniya. 
Kacharava, who was 20, played guitar with his political hardcore punk band Sandinista! and also performed with another punk band, Distress.
Meanwhile, 26 marchers detained soon after the march had taken place (of over 150 who took part) began to receive visits by the police on Thursday. The offenses they are charged with are punishable by up to 15 days in custody, but some activists are wary that the charges might be changed under the law on “extremism” introduced under President Vladimir Putin.
Activists claim that Russian policemen are themselves frequently “nationalist.”
“People are showing indifference toward racist attacks because they think that the police should deal with them,” said a local member of anti-fascist movement in an interview with “Basta,” a recent special issue of newspaper “Chto Delat?” (What to Be Done?).
“But the policemen are mostly xenophobic themselves. I was beaten in police precincts many times specifically for being an anti-fascist. Several times when a policeman rolled up his sleeves, there was a swastika there. 
“An ex-Nazi (or an actual Nazi) and he works in the police!”
For the details about Tuesday’s march, see News in this issue.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: One for the ladies?
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Solovyov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Igor Volodin believes vodka is no more harmful than chocolate. He is proud to be the first Russian to produce the spirit in a special women’s version, designed to be sipped with salad after a workout in the gym.
Touted as a glamour product for upwardly mobile women in booming Russia, Damskaya or “Ladies” vodka worries doctors, who fear a fresh wave of female alcoholics in a country already suffering one of the world’s worst drink problems.
The Moscow Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry says Russia has 2.5 million registered alcoholics, but adds the real figure is seven times higher — more than 10 percent of Russia’s population of 142 million.
Yury Sorokin, a psychologist running a Moscow rehabilitation center for drug addicts and alcoholics, said 60 percent of those he treats for alcoholism are women, including the wives of Russian millionaires.
“I believe that female alcoholism is a huge problem in Russia. I believe it is as huge and hidden as the underwater part of an iceberg,” he said.
Adverts for the new “Ladies” vodka show the elegant, violet-tinted bottle wearing a pleated white skirt which is blown upwards to reveal the label.
The images confront commuters on Moscow’s metro, grab the eye on the street and leap from the pages of women’s magazines.
“Between us, girls...” runs the slogan on the adverts, which tout the product as an ideal tipple for hearty hen parties.
“Women need a drink of their own,” said Volodin, sitting next to an array of his “Ladies” vodkas, which comes in lime, vanilla and almond flavors, or just straight for cocktails.
“In Moscow, there are pink taxis for ladies, there are light cigarettes,” he said. “But there was no vodka, and we asked ourselves: ‘Why?’ ... More people suffer from diabetes in Russia than from alcoholism, but no one bans chocolate advertisements.”
Sales on Russia’s vodka market are estimated to be worth around $15 billion a year, with a total annual volume of some 2.2 billion liters, Volodin said.
Annual market growth in value is seen at 15 percent, he said, thanks to rising incomes and higher sales of premium vodkas like “Ladies.”
Volodin heads the Deyros company, which has been selling strong spirits on the Russian market for more than 10 years.
“Ladies,” launched in December, is produced at a distillery in St Petersburg and retails at around 300 roubles ($12.50) in upmarket shops in big cities. Volodin is targeting successful, well-educated, married women with money.
“Of course, $12 per bottle is too expensive for a village woman,” Volodin said, forecasting March sales of “Ladies” at 115,000 bottles and putting the 2008 full-year figure at over 2 million. “But we can’t make bad vodka for women.”
Volodin says his vodka is pure and free of by-products, like fusel oils, which can cause a heavy hangover. He says because of its mellow taste, it can be taken with salads and other light meals, even by those regularly working out in gyms.
Russia, buoyed by windfall revenues for oil, gas and metals exports, has enjoyed its biggest economic boom in a generation. Wages in the cash-laden economy have rocketed.
But high salaries and growing consumption of expensive alcohol have not led to moderation in drinking, said psychologist Sorokin.
The joblessness and despair of Russia’s wild capitalism of the 1990s have now been replaced by the psychological vacuum of the newly-rich, he said.
Olga, a woman in her 20s, was buying a bottle of “Ladies” in an expensive supermarket in Moscow for a party with her friends.
“I saw the ad in the metro and decided to taste it,” she said. “I just loved the design.”
Sorokin said he expected an influx of new patients in about six months.
“When such strong marketing experts are involved, I will never be jobless,” he sighed.

TITLE: The tusk in hand
AUTHOR: By Andrew E. Kramer
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: NOVY URENGOI, Russia — As Viktor Seliverstov works in his makeshift studio in this Siberian town, he is enveloped in a cloud of ivory dust. His electric carving tool whirs over the milky surface of the teeth and tusks, as he whittles them into key fobs, knife handles and scrimshaw figurines.
But these are not whale bones or walrus tusks he is working on. The ivory in this part of the world comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as their remains emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business that had all but gone extinct itself during the Soviet period, but is flourishing now.
“A lot of people find ivory and don’t know what to do with it,” Seliverstov said of the residents of this town, where more than a few closets and old barns have a tusk or two in them.
Seliverstov recently paid $500 for about 16 pounds of mammoth ivory from a family that had stashed it in a barn for years before realizing its value.
The trade, given a lift recently by global warming, which has melted away the tundra and exposed more frozen remains, is not only legal but actually endorsed by conservationists. They note somewhat grudgingly that while the survival of elephants may be in question, it is already too late for mammoths. Mammoth ivory from Siberia, they say, meets some of the Asian demand for illegal elephant ivory, and its trade should be encouraged.
The business of ice age ivory, a mainstay in Siberia since the 17th century, was further helped by the international ban imposed on the elephant ivory trade in 1989. Russian exports of mammoth ivory — the only type of ivory legally imported into the United States — reached 40 tons last year, up from just 2 tons in 1989, said Aleksei Tikhonov, the director of St. Petersburg’s Zoological Museum and an expert on mammoths.
While prices vary, leading dealers in Moscow usually ask $150 to $200 a pound for average-grade ivory. By the time it reaches Western markets, the same ivory can sell for as much as $800 a pound, dealers say.
The sources are varied, though reindeer herders, oil and gas workers and professional ivory hunters provide the bulk of the supply.
“They gather tusks like mushrooms after the rain, literally,” Tikhonov said.
While mammoth tusks may not be as valuable as Russia’s deposits of oil and natural gas, they are plentiful. The Siberian permafrost blankets millions of square miles, ranging in depth from a few feet to more than a mile and resembling frozen spinach.
Hidden in one of the upper layers of this mass, corresponding to the Pleistocene Epoch, are the remains of an estimated 150 million mammoths. Some are frozen whole, as if in suspended animation, others in bits and pieces of bone, tusk, tissue and wool.
Woolly mammoths are actually the last of three extinct elephantine species that inhabited Siberia. They appeared about 400,000 years ago and lasted at least until 3,600 years ago — the age of some mammoth remains found on an island off the northern coast of the Russian region of Chukotka in 1993.
The tusks emerge with the spring thaw or after heavy rains, or along the eroding banks of rivers. A boom in gas and oil investment has added another source, as crews dig wells and pipeline ditches. Fresh from the permafrost, mammoth ivory is nearly pristine, though with a characteristic green patina. But if left outside and exposed to the elements, it will disintegrate within three years into worthless splinters.
That is another point in favor of the mammoth ivory trade, said Tikhonov. It encourages the gathering of tusks that would otherwise be lost. In fact, he said, vastly more mammoth ivory is destroyed in this natural cycle in Russia than is ever found and sold, perhaps hundreds of tons of ivory per year.
Gary Haynes, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Nevada at Reno in the U.S., said he could not help cringing at seeing the tusks destroyed. In their growth rings and possible prehistoric human butcher marks, they hold a wealth of data on the ancient climate and peoples of Siberia that could shed light on, among other things, the debate about whether climate change or overhunting, or both, felled the mammoths.
“There’s a kind of discomfort when you’re a scientist and you see something that could have scientific value being carved up and destroyed,” Haynes said in a telephone interview. “But this is the trade-off. I see the businessman’s arguments, too. Mammoths are already extinct, and people need an economy.”
In addition, the Russian government examines the tusks to make sure none bearing signs of ancient disease, prehistoric human markings or other scientifically valuable elements are exported.
About 90 percent of the Siberian ivory that is recovered is exported to Asia, where it is principally used in the manufacture of personal seals that in Japan, China and South Korea are used in place of signatures for business transactions. These seals support much of the Siberian industry.
Seliverstov said he had no compunctions about working with a prehistoric resource. “People will treasure my art for generations,” he said. “I give the mammoths a second life.”

TITLE: Relative truths
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Santana
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: The use of the Russian word for truth as the title for Edward Docx’s novel, “Pravda,” is interesting considering the family at the center of the saga has been living without truth for decades.
Parents keep secrets from their children. Siblings lie and hide the truth from each other. Rarely are the characters even honest with themselves.
Possibly Docx was thinking more about how “Pravda” was also the title of a Soviet-era newspaper that regularly printed propaganda and lies.
Docx’s book, the second by the British writer, opens with Gabriel Clarke hurrying to post-Soviet St. Petersburg to find that his ailing mother, who defected during Soviet times and has only recently been allowed back into the country, has died. He and his twin sister Isabella, who are both estranged from their father, bury their mother, and attempt to go back to their lives in London and New York.
But their mother’s death, and a subsequent visit by a Russian son they never knew she had who was raised in a Soviet orphanage, push them to question how much they knew either of their parents and make changes to their own lives.
Docx, 35, drew on his own family history in writing the book. When he was 13, his mother discovered that the man she believed to be her grandfather was actually her father. He’d had an affair with a Russian woman and then asked his grown son to raise the resulting child.
Like Gabriel Clarke who says in the opening line of the novel that he’s “relieved to be again among the Russians,” Docx’s writing is at its most engaging and authentic when he’s writing about St. Petersburg and its residents.
Through his descriptions of his mother’s abandoned child, piano protege Arkady, and his heroin addict English friend, Docx shows readers a city long famous for art, music and culture being marred by the darker forces of drugs and mafia.
Docx’s descriptions of Russia and her customs ring true. People do rush from the plane to get to the front of the passport control lines of which there are never enough. Russian drivers, invariably behind the wheel of a rusty Lada with bald tires, do pick up people alongside the road to make an extra buck.
But outside of Russia, the family saga often loses its appeal. Perhaps Docx finds life in post-Soviet Russia to be so chaotic and engaging that everything else is boring and annoying in comparison because his characters outside of Russia are often exactly that.
Gabriel Clarke, who is disgusted with the way his philandering hurt his mother and who failed at most jobs, secretly juggles two women and a lowly editing job where he despises his co-workers. His sister Isabella flits from one career to the next, her “unforgiving mind” judging everyone in its path and finding them lacking.
Some of the plot points Docx uses to create the story and move it along are unrealistic. Arkady hunts down his family to coerce them to finish paying for his music education, but how many orphans raised in rundown, neglected Russian orphanages really learn the finer points of Chopin or Bach?
And it’s hard to believe that a father so evil as to write a review in a newspaper deliberately slamming his own son’s play or who tells his daughter, “I’m sick — sick to the back teeth — of you and your bloody brother,” would ever be eager for a reconciliation with his children.
Overall, Docx does a strong job of describing a country in flux and a family trying to come to grips with past betrayals in their lives. Sometimes, the family is messy and annoying, but maybe that’s the pravda or truth about any family.

TITLE: Monumental moments
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Alexander Sokurov’s “Alexandra” — a film of startling originality and beauty — feels like a communiqué from another time, another place, anywhere but here. Sokurov, a Russian director best known in America for “Russian Ark” (2002), a film about the Hermitage Museum in his native St. Petersburg, makes films so far removed from the usual commercial blather that it sometimes seems as if he’s working in a different medium. His work is serious, intense, at times opaque and so feverishly personal that it also feels as if you’re being invited into his head, not just another reality.
The head that Sokurov invites you into here ostensibly belongs to his title character, an elderly woman visiting her grandson at the Chechen front. The name Alexandra scarcely seems coincidental, and neither does the unusual casting. Alexandra is played by the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, the widow of the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, about whom Sokurov recently made a documentary. In 1978 the Soviet government stripped the dissident couple (Alexander Solzhenitsyn lived at their dacha) of their citizenship. Rostropovich gave an impromptu cello concert next to the Berlin Wall after it fell and, with his wife, returned home after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Vishnevskaya, now 81, enters this film she carries with her the weight of history.
She looks as if she can handle it. Invested with unmistakable hauteur — her intense, flashing eyes lock on their targets like tracking beams — Vishnevskaya reminds me of nothing so much as one of those well-seasoned, time-toughened divas for whom the word no is never an option, even in the middle of a war zone.
When the film opens, Alexandra has just come from her home elsewhere in Russia, an elliptically rendered trip that ends with her literally waddling into the Chechen front towing a small wheeled shopping cart. She’s a dumpling of a woman, and with her cart and headscarf she looks as if she’s going to the market, but she’s actually visiting her grandson, Denis (Vasily Shevtsov), an unmarried 27-year-old captain who’s been at war too long.
Much of “Alexandra” unfolds at the military base where Denis is stationed, a ramshackle warren of wooden barracks and walkways often clouded with swirling dust. The purpose of her visit remains vague. Recently widowed, she misses Denis, but she’s also curious about his life and the war. Over the next few days and nights, she roams about the base, talking with Denis and the other soldiers, climbing in and out of military vehicles while emitting a stream of murmurs, mutters and “oy, oy, oy.” At one point she ventures off base, where she meets a Chechen woman, Malika (Raisa Gichaeva), who says the Russian soldiers always look so small to her. And, she adds with a rueful smile, there are so many of them.
Vishnevskaya is a small woman, at least vertically, or maybe she just looks tiny next to all those soldiers. Yet she’s also monumental, a formidable, almost epic presence even when she’s wearily sinking onto a bench or shrinking down to a speck against the vast, dusty landscape. But Alexandra is never lost, even in this strange land that she barrels into with such confidence — poise that at times borders on swagger. “Alexandra” has been called an antiwar film by some, but I’m not so sure that it is, even if it’s by no means pro-war. The tenderness with which Sokurov films these young soldiers with their downy necks and diffident smiles — they look at Alexandra with crushing yearning — seems proof enough of that.
Sokurov has said that “Alexandra” is about the eternal life of Russia, a sentiment that might sound mawkish or obscene coming from another filmmaker. But “Alexandra” strikes me as an enormously honest work, not just because there is palpable truth in its very location (it was shot in Chechnya, including in and around the capital, Grozny) but also because of the contradictions it lays open like a wound. There’s a stunning moment early in the film when Denis invites his grandmother into an armored vehicle. Squeezed into this metal tomblike space, she sniffs the air and remarks on the bad smell. It’s the odor of men and metal, says Denis, who then passes her a Kalashnikov. She grips the rifle easily, her eyes narrowing.
The terror in this moment is unmistakable, and then, in an instant, it’s gone. Much like the film itself, which offers lovely images amid horrifying devastation, the character of Alexandra contains multitudes that invest the film with a peculiar tension. With his roving camera, Sokurov follows Alexandra around faithfully, but he also makes time and space for the world she inhabits, a world partly made by war: ruined buildings with their fronts torn away, rows upon rows of military boots and uniforms (almost all that’s for sale at the market), the haunted, haunting eyes of unsmiling young Chechen men. Sokurov’s images speak so eloquently he doesn’t need many words.
I’ve seen “Alexandra” twice, and there are things in this remarkable film — bits of dialogue, one or two references and certainly the great heaviness of Russian identity — that remain out of my grasp. This may seem like a surprising confession, but art, including that created in Hollywood, rarely if ever reveals itself instantaneously. That may sound self-evident, though given the diminished appetite in America for serious films it bears repeating. “Alexandra” isn’t a difficult film, but neither is it obvious. It’s a beautiful, eerie work of art about life and death and the love a grandson expresses when he plaits his grandmother’s hair. It has revealed some of its mysteries, and I’m sure it will reveal more when I return to it again.

“Alexandra” is showing in New York this week and is available in St. Petersburg on DVD.

TITLE: Through Western eyes
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When Rebecca Roberts, a 26-year-old Australian lawyer, moved to Moscow for work, she did not know what to expect. Like many new arrivals, she was both amused and confused by the nightclubs, the girls, the money and the haircuts. But then she saw an article in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper recommending a blog about Russia’s nightlife, “Moscow Doesn’t Believe In Tears.”
“I find that the international papers are all focused on taking a superficial look at Russian politics and guide books are often outdated and boring when you are trying to live as a local,” said Roberts. “Blogs like ‘Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears’ are hilarious as they are written with a familiar Western view on things that are part of my daily experiences.”
The popularity of blogging in Russia is evident from the sheer number of blogs that crop up on the Yandex search engine. But there are also countless blogs about Russia that are run by Westerners, many of whom live abroad. Their focuses range from nightlife, like “Moscow Doesn’t Believe In Tears,” to politics, like “La Russophobe.”
“Originally, I was going to do a Moscow food blog (or rather, an anti-food blog, as I have a pretty dim view of the restaurant scene),” said the writer of “Moscow Doesn’t Believe In Tears” in an interview. Her identity is an open secret in the expatriate community, but one that she prefers to keep in the real world because she does not want her name attached to anything she says online.
“A good deal of the visitors arrive at my blog looking for where to pick up prostitutes in Moscow. Unfortunately, they come away empty-handed because that’s a topic that has been extensively, depressingly covered in other publications,” she said.
One of her blog entries, titled “I hate Moscow” reads, “Everyone hates Moscow. Everyone except the people who just got here, with a degree in Russian history and a fresh copy of Dostoevsky in their back pocket. And even they are beginning to realize that the waitresses are mean and it’s hard to cross the street.”
Now living abroad, she said she did not intend her blog to be anti-Moscow. “Unfortunately, the longer the blog went on, it began to reflect my deepening personal feelings about the city, which is that it’s a depressing, overpriced [expletive] that should be fumigated.”
Another blog notorious for its anti-Russian slant is “La Russophobe.” One image on the web site depicting Vladimir Putin’s face morphing into a skull embodies the blog’s stance on Russia.
“I started blogging to warn the world about what I felt was a coming neo-Soviet style crackdown on civil society in Russia and an aggressively imperialistic foreign policy leading to a new Cold War,” said Kim Zigfield, the blog’s writer, in an interview.
Zigfield lives in New York and writes for Russia! magazine as well as Pajamas Media, an association of 90 worldwide bloggers, where she is a Russia correspondent.
“The main reason I started my blog was that I didn’t find what I wanted to read on other blogs, and I saw those who wrote about Russia making some fairly serious mistakes and misleading statements that I thought should be corrected,” she said.
Zigfield said only 10 percent of the blog’s readers are from Russia, and only half of those are Russians — the audience is mainly international.
“They are people who are concerned about the threats they see being posed by Russia and want more information, and there are others who are what I call ‘Russophiles,’ or apologists for the Kremlin, who come to criticize me.”
She took inspiration from a blog by Edward Lucas, the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist magazine. She read it shortly after starting to write and felt that the focus of his writing was too broad.
Not long after she started her blog in 2006, jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s attorney Robert Amsterdam also began a web site. “I feel I broke the ground for him and helped him become the formidable force he is today in the blogosphere, and I’m now a regular reader and great admirer. His is the only Russia blog on which I regularly post comments. It’s very comforting to have him around, as well.”
Other blogs start out with different aims. “Initially, I started it [the blog] as a way to keep in touch with family and friends in a general way. I didn’t even put much thought into it. You can see this in the name, which I don’t like, but now it’s difficult to change because it is a bit of a brand,” said Sean Guillory, who runs “Sean’s Russia Blog.”
Guillory, who now lives in Los Angeles, started his blog in the autumn of 2004 just before he came to Russia on a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship. Originally it was intended to be a blog leaning toward Russia’s historical past rather than its political present. But Guillory became interested in certain contemporary themes and found that they took over his writing. “Anyone who looks through the blog’s archives, which include 563 posts, sees that my interests tend to focus on Russian youth politics, particularly Nashi, high politics and bit of what people call Kremlinology, nationalism, racism, and extremism, Russian-Western relations, and Western representations of Russia in the media.”
“Overall, I try not to fall under the typical binary of pro-Russia and anti-Russia,” Guillory said. “I’m more interested in how Russia actually exists. For example, I think the constant pointing out that Russia is authoritarian, not democratic, and Putin is a former KGB agent is rather trite and doesn’t say much except that Russia is not like us. Okay, fine, it’s not. But then what is it?”
A post about the Dissenters’ March in December of last year is typical of Guillory’s style: “The ‘March of Dissent’ has certainly come and gone. The demonstration was modest and certainly ineffective on a political level. And while I don’t think the event should be overblown, I do think the march does raise some interesting questions about the Russian state: how it deals with opposition and, perhaps, how it understands its power.”
One-third of the visitors to the web site are from the United States, but Guillory is less interested in numbers than he is in the amount of time that people spend browsing his blog. For example, the 12 percent of people that spend over an hour on his web site use it for interaction, whether for comments, research or links.
Despite being recognized at parties and quoted in the press, Guillory is a little uncomfortable about his success. “On the one hand blogging is a very egotistical, even narcissistic endeavor. You do it with the assumption that not only might people want to read what you have to say, but that you should actually say it,” an act that he describes is a cry for recognition.
“When I do get recognition, it still freaks me out no matter how much I enjoy it. When I find out people I know and respect are readers, it makes me uneasy, like someone is watching me without my knowing. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. I’m still amazed that people read it at all.”


<i>Moscow Doesn’t Believe In Tears http://moscowdoesntbelieveintears.blogspot.com
La Russophobe http://russophobe.blogspot.com
Sean’s Russia Blog www.seansrussiablog.org
Other Blogs on Russia:
English Russia www.englishrussia.com
Moscow Through Brown Eyes http://moscowthroughbrowneyes.blogspot.com
De Rebus Antiquis et Novis http://minaev.blogspot.com
Song to Woody http://songtowoody.blogspot.com
Scraps of Moscow http://scrapsofmoscow.blogspot.com</i>

TITLE: High gloss
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Glyanets (Gloss) // 17 Nevsky Prospekt. Tel: 315 2315 // Open daily from 12 p.m. until 2 a.m. // Menu in English and Russian // Dinner for two without alcohol: 2,280 rubles ($90)

Glyanets (Gloss) is the new and suitably swanky inhabitant of the courtyard of the stunning Stroganoff Palace on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Moika River.
Diners are reminded of the restaurant’s historic location both by the candy-floss pink walls of the baroque-style palace situated mere yards from the window seats, and by three large statues of classical figures, which in the days of the palace’s original noble owners stood outside in the courtyard’s garden, but are now sheltered by the large glass structure that houses the restaurant.
However, visitors expecting to find traditional fare to match the location would be better advised to visit Russky Ampir (Russian Empire), which is housed in the palace itself and also managed by Concord, the brains behind Glyanets. 
Glyanets, as well as a collection of more than 500 fine wines, offers a more modern menu featuring Vietamese, Italian and French dishes, along with sushi, seafood and more exotic options such as Morocco Briwat of lamb and cumin served with yoghurt and cucumber sauce (180 rubles, $7), two crispy spring rolls that whet the appetite nicely.
The French dishes include tartlet of goats cheese and tomato served with balsamic vinegar and pesto (230 rubles, $9) — a flaky and flavorsome delight in which the tang of the pesto and vinegar superbly offset the creamy cheese. It could however have been served a little less chilled. From the same part of the world was the monkfish wrapped in bacon with red wine and orange sauce (480 rubles, $19), which like every dish at Glyanets was exquisitely presented, but would not have been enough to satisfy even a hardened dieter on its own. It tasted divine however, and the crispy green garnish strewn over the plate (we came to the conclusion it was seaweed) was unusual and very pleasant.
Hungry diners may resort to filling up on the complimentary bread, which is one of the restaurant’s specialties, according to our obliging waitress, who was attentive and most eager to advise us on our order. While the bread rolls certainly filled a hole, they were neither as warm nor as fresh as we had anticipated at the sight of the basket, which was covered with a napkin.
Glyanets’ interior is as glamorous as its name suggests. The sloping roof of the building is cushioned with gold draping, while the rest of the restaurant is mostly decorated in black and red tones. The centerpiece of the room is a square bar, on which seafood, fruit and spirits are displayed and behind which the restaurant’s Asian chefs prepare their specialties. A glass lift leads to a second story of the kitchen, where the French and Italian chefs can be seen at work.
Around this focal point of the restaurant, the room is filled with black tables and red and black leather armchairs. More tempting however are the window sofas lining two sides of the building. They are lent a particularly charming air of intimacy by the hanging black beads that separate them from the rest of the restaurant, and through which the waitresses glide, trays in hand, with astonishing skill.
Inspired by the immense, ornate red chandeliers, reminiscent of the roof of an ancient Chinese temple, from the Asian options on the menu we chose Ben-bao with duck and honey sauce, 190 rubles or $7.60, which resembled a gourmet variant of deep-fried pelmeni, and were imaginatively served wrapped in a banana leaf. At 260 rubles ($10.40), Cantonese-style rice with egg, green peas, chicken and shrimps was, like the monkfish, a very small portion, but the chef demonstrated both the freshness of the dish and the restaurant’s willingness to cater to the needs of its diners by making it vegetarian-friendly.
One benefit of Glyanets’ small portions is that they leave room for the pleasure of dessert. Crepes Suzette in a Grand Marnier and orange sauce (170 rubles, $6.80) were warm, satisfying and zesty, while “Sabayon of fresh fruits perfumed with a sauterne wine” at 210 rubles ($8.40) will prove a delight for lovers of Zabaglione.
The most glamorous aspect of Glyanets however, despite the efficiency of its wait staff and luxurious surroundings, must surely be its throne-like toilets. Hungry diners curious to know more will simply have to hurry along to the Stroganoff Palace and see for themselves.

TITLE: Time to Live
TEXT: <b>About a dozen political and social organizations have joined the arts establishment in organizing the 10-day Third International “Time to Live” Film Forum of Social Films to be held in St. Petersburg starting Friday.</b>
It will include contests and retrospective shows of films from such directors as Jean Roche of France, Michael Lee of the U.K., Sharunas Bartas of Lithuania and Teo Angelopulos of Greece.
“Monkeys in Winter,” winner of the 2006 East of the West Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and several awards at the Bulgarian Golden Rose National Film Festival, is about a generation gap in a Roma family. A Roma girl of 1960s dreams of a prince, but only for ultimately to be abandoned with a bunch of kids to take care of, unlike her daughter who adopts a different perception of happiness, a sense of freedom and progress. 
Simon Keller’s “Sunday,” Switzerland (2006) is about a nurse in a mental hospital who helps a female patient on the verge of committing suicide not only to escape, but to join her in a quest for a taste of freedom as a farewell to life. 
“Time to Live” screenings — for which tickets are free — take place at a number of venues including Dom Kino, Troitsky Cultural Center, Khudozhestvenny and Druzhba cinemas. More than 80 films from 25 countries including Russia, CIS, Europe, Japan and Israel, will be screened and stage exhibitions, concerts and round table discussions with film directors and experts, will take place.
The opening ceremony will be held at Dom Kino with a showing of Enrico Verra’s “Under the Black Sun” (Italy, 2005).
Organizers have stressed that the content of the films and related events chosen for the “Time to Live” festival tackle important social themes. 
“The movie screen can portray social problems better than statistics, although it still leaves a lot to be desired,” actress Olga Korol-Borodyuk, vice-president of the festival, said.
“But never mind! ‘We are Together’ is one of the festival’s slogans,” she said, adding, “the diversified nature of the organizers of the events sends us a clear message of the need of society to stand united if we are really determined in working out solutions to the prevailing social problems outlined in the films.”
Korol-Borodyuk was speaking about drugs and alcohol, suicides, poverty, pedophile pornography, human trafficking, modern-day slavery and basic human rights violations depicted mostly in foreign productions and about mainly Russian problems ranging from bullying in the army, torture and ill-treatment in prisons to chronic alcoholism in rural areas, AIDS, lack of sex education, xenophobia and social integration of the desperate members of the community portrayed in both Russian and foreign films. 
“We believe that these films will provide the means for self-assessment for the public in general and help equip disabled people and those otherwise discriminated against with ways to become part of society,” she said. 
<i>— Ali Nassor</i>

For more information: www.time-to-live.ru

TITLE: Mugabe Blames The West
AUTHOR: By Fanuel Jongwe
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: HARARE — President Robert Mugabe accused the West of driving Zimbabwe towards misery as a result of sanctions as the contest to rule the ailing former British colony entered the final stretch.
In his most outspoken attack to date on the former colonial power and the United States, Mugabe said they were responsible for the chronic problems which are now afflicting the health service in a country where even bandages and painkillers are scarce and where from where most doctors have emigrated.
As one of his two challengers said the country needed a period of healing and reconciliation, Mugabe insisted it “will never die.”
“Our detractors have tried to derail our efforts, but the unity and resourcefulness of our people have always triumphed,” Mugabe said on a tour of Harare’s main hospital.
“The British, the Americans and those who think like them, would rather see our children, the old and the infirm suffer under the weight of their evil sanctions they have imposed as part of their desire to effect the regime change in our country. As a country, we march on unfettered.”
The European Union and United States both imposed a package of sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle after he allegedly rigged his re-election in 2002.
While the sanctions, which include measures such as a freezing of bank accounts and a ban on travel, are designed not to affect the population as a whole, Mugabe has often blamed them for the country’s economic woes.
Saturday’s joint parliamentary and presidential elections, when Mugabe is hoping to secure a sixth term in office, are being held against a backdrop of an economic meltdown characterised by an inflation rate of more than 100,000 and an unemployment rate of over 80 percent.
Even the most basic foodstuffs such as cooking oil and sugar are now scarce in what was once the region’s breadbasket.
The collapse of the country is amply illustrated in the health sector where the average life expectancy has now dropped to 37, one of the lowest in the world.
According to a report by the Nurses Council of Zimbabwe (NCZ) obtained on Thursday, the health sector has vacancy rates of up to 70 percent as a result of a massive brain drain.
Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted since independence, said his country could no longer afford vital equipment such as drugs as a result of the “inhuman and insenstive, declared and undeclared sanctions.”
With relations at an all-time low, Mugabe has banned Western countries from sending teams to monitor Saturday’s polls.

TITLE: Russia Crushed 3-0 by Romania in Friendly
AUTHOR: By Krystyna Rudzki
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: France spoiled David Beckham’s 100th appearance for England and Spain beat World Cup champion Italy in friendly games Wednesday.
The Netherlands rallied from a three-goal hole to beat Austria 4-3 as the 16 European Championship teams saw action. One of those nations, Poland, was routed 3-0 by the United States.
In an Asian World Cup qualifier, South Korea tied North Korea 0-0.
With England failing to qualify for Euros, the team hoped for a win to mark Beckham’s momentous appearance for his national team. But Franck Ribery scored from the penalty spot in the 32nd minute after England goalkeeper David James raced off his line and fouled Nicolas Anelka.
“I was happy to start the game, but it was more about getting on the pitch, getting that 100th cap,” Beckham said.
While France readies for Euro 2008, England coach Fabio Capello is trying to build a team capable of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. But his team did little to worry France goalkeeper Gregory Coupet.
“We were able to stop them playing their game. It was more of an intelligent match than a spectacular one,” France coach Raymond Domenech said. “We have a solid platform to build on. You don’t go far in a major competition unless you are well organized.”
Which is exactly what the Spaniards were in their 1-0 victory over Italy, scoring on a 78th-minute volley from David Villa. The Valencia striker met Fabio Cannavaro’s headed clearance just inside the area and curled his shot past outstretched goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon into the top left of the goal.
“It was a difficult match … but we executed nearly perfectly,” Spain coach Luis Aragones said. “There’s still a lot of time until the Euro, though.”
Spain, which beat World Cup finalist France 1-0 last month, extended its unbeaten run to 14 games—a stretch of more than 16 months.
Defending Euro champion Greece, Germany, and Romania also won, while the Czech Republic, Croatia and Turkey played to ties. Sweden, Russia, Portugal and Switzerland lost.
In the Netherland’s impressive comeback at Vienna, site of the Euros title game in June, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored two goals, including the winner in the 86th minute. Austria was leading 3-0 on two goals from Sebastian Prodl and another from Andreas Ivanschitz. But Huntelaar started the comeback in the 38th minute, with John Heitinga and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink also scoring to make it 3-3.
“We got 3-0 behind due to personal errors by our defenders, not because we were outplayed by Austria,” Netherlands coach Marco van Basten said. “But I was a bit surprised by their attacking and quick play in the opening 30 minutes.”
Poland lost badly to the United States, which got goals from Carlos Bocanegra, Oguchi Onyewu and Eddie Lewis. The three-goal margin of victory was the largest for the Americans in Europe since 1998.
At London in a rematch of the 1958 World Cup final, Sweden lost to Brazil 1-0 when 18-year-old Alexandre Pato scored in the 72nd minute, helped by a major blunder from substitute Sweden goalkeeper Rami Shaaban.
Mario Gomez helped his chances of making the German squad for Euro 2008 with two goals and an assist in a 4-0 win over Switzerland.
Defending European champion Greece maintained its 12-year unbeaten streak over Portugal with a 2-1 win in Duesseldorf, Germany. It was the first time the two countries played since the final of the 2004 European Championship, which Greece won 1-0.
Georgios Karagounis scored both goals against Portugal, which was missing star playmakers Cristiano Ronaldo and Deco.
Romania showed its potential when it beat Russia 3-0 in Bucharest on goals from Ciprian Marica, Daniel Niculae and Marius Niculae.
Croatia was held to a 1-1 draw by Scotland. Turkey drew 2-2 at Belarus. Jan Koller scored to salvage a 1-1 draw for the Czech Republic against Denmark.
Argentina beat Egypt 2-0 in Cairo on goals from Sergio Aguero and Nicolas Burdisso, and Mexico rallied to beat Ghana 2-1 in London.

TITLE: Tibet Monks Disrupt Tour by Journalists
AUTHOR: By Charles Hutzler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LHASA, China — A group of monks shouting there was no religious freedom disrupted a carefully orchestrated visit for foreign reporters to Tibet’s capital Thursday, an embarrassment for China as it tried to show Lhasa was calm following deadly anti-government riots.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman later insisted that Tibetans had full rights and warned Europe not to interfere. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama, the region’s exiled spiritual leader, said he was in touch with “friends” about pursuing a dialogue with China, adding that Chinese authorities “must accept reality.”
Officials arranged the trip for the reporters to showcase that Lhasa was at peace after the mid-March violence and a subsequent government crackdown shattered China’s plans for a smooth run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
The outburst by a group of 30 monks in red robes came as the journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, were being shown around the Jokhang Temple — one of Tibet’s holiest shrines — by government handlers in Lhasa.
“Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” yelled one young Buddhist monk, who started to cry.
They also said the Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the riots by Tibetans in which buildings were torched and looted and ethnic Han Chinese were attacked. The government has said the March 14 riots were masterminded by “the Dalai clique,” Beijing’s term for the Dalai Lama and his supporters.
Government handlers shouted for the journalists to leave and tried to pull them away during the protest.
“They want us to crush the Dalai Lama and that is not right,” one monk said during the 15-minute outburst.
“This had nothing to do with the Dalai Lama,” said another. The Chinese government says 22 people died, while Tibetan exiles say the violence plus the harsh crackdown afterward have left nearly 140 people dead.
The rioting and four days of protests that preceded it were the worst anti-Chinese demonstrations in Lhasa in nearly two decades and they sparked protests in Tibetan areas across a vast portion of western China. The Chinese government has maintained its response was measured and comparable to what any responsible government would do when faced with civil unrest.
The outburst by the monks came amid a morning of stage-managed events. Reporters already had been taken to a Tibet medical clinic that had been attacked nearby the Jokhang, and shown a clothing store where five girls had been trapped and burned to death.
The monks, who first spoke Tibetan and then switched to Mandarin so the reporters could understand them, said they knew they would probably be arrested for their actions but were willing to accept that.
They had rushed over to stop the reporters from being taken into an inner sanctum of the temple, saying they were upset that a government administrator was telling the reporters that Tibet had been part of China for centuries.
They said troops who had been guarding the temple since March 14 were removed the night before the visit by the reporters. One monk said they were upset by what he said were some monks planted in the monastery to talk to the journalists, calling them “not true believers but ... Communist Party members.”
“They are all officials, they (the government) arranged for them to come in. And we aren’t allowed to go out because they say we could destroy things but we never did anything,” another monk said.
The protesting monks appeared to go back to their living quarters. There was no way of knowing immediately what happened to them.
China rarely lets foreign reporters into Tibet under normal circumstances, so the media tour was meant to underscore the communist leadership’s determination to contain any damage ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August that was supposed to celebrate China as a modern, rising power.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday on the action by the monks, but did not say what the monks yelled out.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang said at a news conference Thursday that various ethnic groups in Tibet are “safeguarding the national unity and oppose separatist activities.”

TITLE: Sarkozy Considers Boycott
AUTHOR: By Angela Doland
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that he cannot rule out the possibility he might boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics if China continues its crackdown in Tibet.
An official from France’s state television company said the broadcaster would likely boycott the games if coverage was censored, and the European Union, United States, Australia and Canada urged China to show restraint as it tries to quell continuing unrest in its Tibetan areas.
Asked whether he supported a boycott, Sarkozy said he could “not close the door to any possibility.” A spokesman for the president said Sarkozy was referring to a possible snub of the Aug. 8 opening ceremony.
“Our Chinese friends must understand the worldwide concern that there is about the question of Tibet, and I will adapt my response to the evolutions in the situation that will come, I hope, as rapidly as possible,” the president said during a visit with a military regiment in southwest France.
Sarkozy also said he had told Chinese President Hu Jintao of his concern, asking for restraint, dialogue and the end of violence in Tibet.
Sarkozy also disclosed contacts between his office and that of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.
“I have an envoy who spoke to the authorities who are closest to the Dalai Lama,” Sarkozy said. 
“I want dialogue to begin, and I will gauge my response on the response that the Chinese authorities give,” Sarkozy said.
A Paris-based media freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, last week appealed for an opening ceremony boycott by heads of state and government, as well as royalty — an idea that has gained the support of many French.
Reporters Without Borders made headlines again Monday when three high-ranking members were arrested at the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony after unfurling a black banner showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs. Jean-Francois Julliard, the group’s research director, welcomed Sarkozy’s comments.
“We feel that things are starting to get moving, that political leaders are starting to change their attitudes,” Julliard said in a telephone interview Tuesday. He was one of the three arrested in Greece and charged with “insulting national symbols.”
He said that to his knowledge, Sarkozy was the first world leader to go so far in the boycott discussion. Prince Charles has said he will skip the Olympics.
At the White House, press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush still plans to attend the Olympics.
“We want everyone to refrain from violence. We believe that China should respect minority cultures, in particular in this case, the Tibetan culture,” she said.
“Because [Bush] has a good relationship with President Hu, he then is also able to speak very frankly about our concerns about human rights and democracy,” Perino added.

TITLE: England Cricketers Hammer New Zealand by 121 Runs
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: NAPIER, New Zealand — Monty Panesar spun England to a crushing 121-run victory as New Zealand went down despite a late flourish by teenager Tim Southee in the third and deciding cricket Test on Wednesday.
The win, to give England the series 2-1 and their first away series win in three years, cemented a determined fightback after they were three wickets down for four runs early in their first innings before reaching 253.
When they destroyed New Zealand’s first innings for 168, taking the last nine wickets for 65 in 25 overs, and followed with centuries by Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell to set a 553-run target, the outcome was never in doubt.
After losing the first Test in Hamilton by 189 runs, England won by 126 runs in Wellington before wrapping up the series at McLean Park in Napier, although captain Michael Vaughan noted both victories came from poor starts.
“In the two games we won we had to get ourselves out of some tricky positions,” Vaughan said.
“In Wellington we were 120-odd for five before Tim Ambrose and Paul Collingwood put together a 164-run partnership.
“When we were four for three here everyone was writing us off. Kevin Pietersen (129) goes and gets us to 250, no one thought that was going to be enough and Ryan Sidebottom comes out, gets seven for 67.
“I guess we played the better cricket.”
New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori believed his bowlers were capable of winning the Tests but the side was let down by poor batting.
“I guess it’s symptomatic of where we are as a Test team that we’re unfortunately not up to scratch with the bat.
“It’s been really hard and really disappointing these last two Tests thinking that we could compete and win a series and then to let it slip.”
Southee went on a rampage scoring an unbeaten 77 off 40 balls, including four fours and nine sixes, and providing the bulk of the 84-run last-wicket stand.
His 50 off 29 balls was the sixth fastest in Test-match history and capped an impressive debut after the opening bowler took five wickets in England’s first innings.

TITLE: French  ‘Virgin Hunter’ Couple Goes on Trial
AUTHOR: By Rory Mulholland
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: CHARLEVILLE-MEZIERES, France — A French husband and wife who have confessed to hunting for virgins in a 15-year killing spree went on trial Thursday for the kidnap, rape and murder of seven young women and girls.
Michel Fourniret, 65, initially refused to confirm his identity and held up for the presiding judge a piece of paper that said “My lips are sealed if there is no closed-door hearing.”
The bespectacled former electrician, wearing a blue jumper and an open-necked shirt, sat behind bullet-proof glass with Monique Olivier, 59, who spoke only to confirm her identity and name her defence lawyers.
Their two-month trial will hear accusations that Fourniret raped and murdered six young women or teenage girls in France and one in Belgium between 1987 and 2001.
The victims, aged between 12 and 21, were strangled, shot or stabbed with a screwdriver.
Olivier is on trial for one of the same murders and complicity in four of his other crimes.
Hundreds of locals from Charleville-Mezieres queued in pouring rain for a seat in the court which will hear how Fourniret, dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes,” made a deadly pact with Olivier while in jail for sexual assault.
The couple agreed she would find him virgins after his release if he killed her ex-husband, the court will hear in this dreary town near the Belgian border which is the birthplace of the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Investigators believe that in addition to the seven murders the couple have already admitted committing, Fourniret may have killed several other women, including British student Joanna Parrish in 1990.
Fourniret, who eventually nodded in agreement when Judge Gilles Latapie again asked him to confirm his name, handed the judge a document rolled up and tied with a red ribbon and asked him to read it.
Latapie commented that the document was “very prettily made” and that he would read it in due course.
Fourniret and Olivier, dressed in a purple jacket and a white polo neck jumper, then sat stoney faced as the judge called out the names of the five women and four men on the jury and listed the dozens of witnesses who will testify.
Among them will be Fourniret’s first two wives as well as a son he had with Olivier. Mark Wilson, an American who was Olivier’s second husband, will also testify in the trial set to last two months. Fourniret, a lover of literature and a keen chess player, has admitted to investigators that he needed to go hunting for a virgin at least twice a year, prosecutors have said, adding that he was obsessed with virginity.
They said the couple began their killing spree in 1987 and that it only came to an end in 2003 when a 13-year-old girl Fourniret tried to abduct in Belgium managed to escape and raise the alarm.
The girl told Belgian investigators that Fourniret had boasted to her that he was “worse than” Marc Dutroux, Belgium’s most notorious criminal sentenced to life in jail in 2004 for child kidnappings, rapes and murders.
Fourniret was arrested after the girl’s escape and confessed to several murders after Olivier spilled the beans to Belgian police.
It was while in prison in the 1980s that Fourniret met Olivier when she responded to an ad he put in a newspaper for a pen pal.
According to letters seized, the couple made a pact: if he killed her first husband, whom she said had abused her, she would help him find young virgins so he could fulfill his fantasies.
Olivier was waiting for him when he was freed in 1987, but he never kept his side of the promise.

TITLE: Obama Tries To Quell Pastor Flap
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: GREENSBORO, N.C. — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday sought to quell concerns over anti-American remarks by his former pastor, saying people are paying too much attention to a small number of “stupid” comments.
Obama gave a sweeping speech on race last week in which he condemned incendiary remarks by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but the words of the former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago continue to dog the candidate. Reflecting the campaign’s concern about the fallout, Obama used a question about religion at a town hall forum as an opportunity to address the issue.
“This is somebody that was preaching three sermons at least a week for 30 years and it got boiled down ... into a half-minute sound clip and just played it over and over and over again, partly because it spoke to some of the racial divisions we have in this country,” Obama told an audience in this central North Carolina city.
On Tuesday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, weighed in directly, saying: “I think that given all we have heard and seen, he would not have been my pastor.”