SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1363 (27), Tuesday, April 8, 2008
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TITLE: City Hosts Olympic Torch
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Eighty Russian sportsmen, actors and other prominent people carried the Olympic torch through St. Petersburg on Saturday before the relay moved on to protest-hit events in London and Paris on Sunday and Monday.
Fyodor Yemelyanenko, four times mixed martial arts world champion, said he was “moved” to carry the torch.
“I was very happy to touch history in this way,” Yemelyanenko said.
Nikolai Drozdov, 70, a TV presenter, said he was overwhelmed to carry the torch.
“I felt as if I was a participant in the Olympic Games,” Drozdov said.
The torch bearers followed a 20 kilometer route starting at Ploshchad Pobedy in the south of the city and passing St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Bronze Horseman and the Peter and Paul Fortress before ending at the city’s central Palace Square next to the State Hermitage Museum.
Among the participants of the relay were Russian Olympic champions such as ice-skaters Yevgeny Plushchenko and Alexei Yagudin, speed skater Svetlana Zhurova and six-time Olympic ski champion Lyubov Yegorova.
Actress Alisa Freindlikh, 73, also carried the torch. The relay was greeted by crowds holding flags and balloons.
“I came here with my 11-year-old daughter because we probably have only one chance in our lives to see the Olympic flame in real life. It’s a real celebration,” said bank employee Olga Bogdanova, 35.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who greeted the Olympic flame on Palace Square, said that the city will bid to host the Olympic Games.
“We are planning to bid to host the 2020 Olympics Games,” Matviyenko said.
“The Olympic flame is a symbol of peace, collaboration, openness and aspiration. St. Petersburg has long held Olympic traditions. The first Russian Olympic champion, Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin, was a resident. The city’s athletes have won 135 gold medals at the Olympics. Today 81 Olympic champions live in St. Petersburg,” Matviyenko said.
St. Petersburg is the only Russian city to host the Olympic torch this year. At least 45 St. Petersburg sportsmen will take part in the Beijing Games in August.

TITLE: Anti-Torch Protests Thwarted by Massive Security
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the Bejing Olympic flame passed with pomp through St. Petersburg on Saturday, small protests against human rights abuses in China were curbed by the authorities despite having either been previously agreed with the administration or not requiring such agreement under Russian law.
Unlike in London and Paris, where the relay was overshadowed on Sunday and Monday by protests against the Chinese government’s ongoing brutal clampdown on demonstrations in Tibet, in which exiled Tibetan leaders claim up to 150 people have been killed, St. Petersburg authorities attempted to prevent or suppress even solitary protests. 
Security officials in Paris snuffed out the Olympic torch and carried it through Paris in the safety of a bus at least five times Monday as protests against China’s human rights record turned the relay into a chaotic series of stops and starts, The Associated Press reported.
However, St. Petersburg’s relay two days earlier saw thousands of police and OMON special forces deployed, as classes in schools were canceled with students dispatched, in a Soviet-style arrangement, to demonstrate enthusiasm along the torch’s route.
Police sources refused Monday to release the number of officers involved.
Yelena Kim, a pro-Tibet activist, who held a solitary picket with a self-made poster that showed Tibetan, Chinese and Russian flags and read “The Culture of Each Nation is Priceless” near the Park Inn Pribaltiiskaya Hotel was detained on the grounds that the hotel is private property, she said by phone on Sunday.
According to Kim, she was taken into a nearby police precinct where her photograph was taken and poster confiscated. 
Previously, the administration had agreed to a 10-member picket in defense of Tibet scheduled on Friday, having moved it from the planned site in front of the Chinese Consulate to Pionerskaya Ploshchad, but on the eve of the protest Kim and the other organizers were asked to go to Smolny, where the city administration resides, and were pressed by state security officers to postpone the rally, she said. 
“If the number of people present exceeds ten people, it will be considered an unsanctioned meeting and dispersed,” she quoted an officer as saying. Kim said she is now organizing a pro-Tibet meeting to be held later this month or in early May.
Alexander Gudimov, the deputy chairman of the local branch of Youth Yabloko, the youth section of the democratic party, was arrested as he was heading to the Chinese Consulate with a poster saying “Stop Killing,” both in Russian and English, with five Olympic rings made of barbed wire attached to it.
“As I was approaching the consulate, 50 or 100 meters from it, two policemen noticed me and stopped me, without introducing themselves, then a police truck came, men jumped out and thrust me into it without any explanation,” he said by phone on Sunday. 
Gudimov said Youth Yabloko had originally intended to hold a picket near the so-called “Chinese Garden,” a group of Chinese-style structures surrounding a Chinese restaurant on Liteiny Prospekt, but the administration demanded that the demonstration be rescheduled to another date — contradicting the law which allows the administration to suggest other locations for pickets but not dates.
“They said we must postpone it because of the Olympic Torch relay, even though in reality the site was far from the relay’s route,” he said.
“We’re opposed not to the Olympics, but to human rights violations in China,” said Gudimov.
“China has always been infamous for human rights violations, but in this case we’re protesting against what happens in Tibet, against killings of peaceful citizens at demonstrations. As we know from history, wars were stopped for the sake of the Olympics, but now China isn’t trying to do anything; it only suppresses any information.
“We are also indignant about the politics of our own authorities, who claim, as [speaker of the Federation Council Sergei] Mironov put it, that all this is an attempt to ‘tar’ China.”
“We’re addressing sportsmen, but politicians — to boycott the official Olympic events,” said Gudimov, adding that information about human rights violations in China is censored in the Russian media.
“People without access to the Internet don’t know about it because China is seen as our ‘comrade’ now, and you can’t hear anything about it on television or radio, except [on radio station] Ekho Moskvy.”
Local anarchists did not apply to the authorities for permission to demonstrate, but placed a banner showing the Olympic rings torn apart and reading “Freedom to Tibet” on the railroad bridge over a busy highway near Lesnaya metro, in the north of the city.
A St. Petersburg-based Vietnamese practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice, who stood on Palace Square, where festivities were held, with a small flag with the emblem of a Reporters without Borders’ campaign — showing the Olympic rings in the form of handcuffs — was arrested after he showed a pamphlet of the CIPFG (Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China) to two Russians, he said.
The activist, who asked to have his name withheld, said he spent 26 hours in a police precinct, accused of “swearing in public” and received a fine on Monday.
The pamphlet publicized the Global Human Rights Torch Relay, an alternative relay, launched on the initiative of the CIPFG in Athens, Greece last August to draw attention to human rights abuses in China. 
“The Olympic Games are incompatible with crimes against humanity in China,” said the pamphlet.
According to the director of a local Falun Gong school, Irina Oshirova, two other activists were detained on Palace Square.
“Wherever Chinese delegations go, a lot of pressure is put on local authorities not to have Falun Gong practitioners wearing yellow shirts or buttons in sight — but they know how to respond to this pressure with dignity in the other countries,” she said.
Since the crackdown on the spiritual practice began in 1999, estimates of the number of Falun Gong adherents who have died in custody due to torture, abuse, and neglect ranged from several hundred to a few thousand, according to a U.S. Department of State report in 2007 on human rights practices in China. The CIPFG estimates the number at 3,000.
Last year, Russia deported two St. Petersburg-based Falun Gong practitioners, in spite of their UN refugee status and the repression they faced in China.
The police denied that any anti-torch protesters were detained.
“Six people were detained for violating the law on meeting regulations on Saturday, but none in connection with the relay,” said Vyacheslav Stepchenko, spokesman for the Interior Ministry in St. Petersburg, by phone on Monday.
Ex-Soviet political prisoner, Cambridge-based Vladimir Bukovsky, who was in the city this week to take part in the New Agenda for Democratic Movement opposition conference on Saturday, campaigned against the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 after he had been exchanged for a Chilean communist leader and flown, hand-cuffed, to Zurich in 1976. He had spent 12 years in Soviet prison for opposing the government.
With Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, who spent 18 years in Chinese prison for his political activity, and German TV journalist Gerhard Loewenthal, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, Bukovsky addressed the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in an open letter called “Don’t Reward Beijing’s Tyranny,” when China’s candidacy was being considered in 2001.
“The three of us addressed the IOC asking it not to repeat historical mistakes; there were Olympic Games in Berlin under the Nazis and in Moscow under the Communists, and it only got worse for everybody, so don’t repeat it again,” he said last week.
“Holding the Olympics in an unfree, totalitarian state not only strengthens these regimes, giving them a certain respectability they haven’t deserved, but moreover, as a rule, serves as a cause for increasing repression. 
“Before the Olympic Games in Moscow, the city was cleansed of ‘undesirable elements;’ thousands were sent out of Moscow just because they were considered ‘undesirable.’ It means holding the Olympics is directly connected to repressions against people — and this cannot be allowed.”
Bukovsky described the IOC as a “non-democratic, private” organization, which is difficult to influence.
“I know about this, because I was campaigning for the boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow, and we did achieve something in the end; there was a partial boycott,” he said.
“We dealt a lot with the IOC, you just can’t influence them; they don’t listen to anybody, they don’t want to know anything — for them it’s a commercial activity. They make money out of it and that is all, they don’t want to discuss it.”
But while it is not possible to force the IOC to reconsider its decision, it is possible to prevent leading politicians from going to the opening, Bukovsky reasoned, referring to recent statements by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that they may not attend the Beijing Games in August.
“It’s already working,” Bukovsky said.
“It’s already a partial success. It’s not possible to halt the Olympic Games altogether, but at least the attitude of civilized countries to this regime should be demonstrated. And that’s possible.”

TITLE: Putin, Bush Find Nothing To Sign
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SOCHI, Krasnodar Region — Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush didn’t resolve their differences on missile defense but agreed to deepen cooperation, speaking warmly, almost nostalgically of each other during their farewell meeting on Sunday.
The U.S. president also met with Putin’s handpicked successor, whom he called “a smart fellow,” saying he liked that Dmitry Medvedev wasn’t rushing to assert himself as Russia’s new president.
Speaking to reporters at Putin’s official summer residence, he and Putin sought to convey the message that the lack of agreement on missile defense didn’t cast a shadow on their farewell summit.
“The best is the enemy of the good,” Putin said. “What is most important is the strategic choice by our countries in favor of a constructive dialog.”
Wearing almost identical blue suits and dark red ties, Bush and Putin were on a first-name basis and complimented each other heavily.
They conceded, however, that they made almost no movement toward hammering out a common approach to the U.S. missile-defense plan for Europe, while Putin said he would prefer cooperating with Washington on a global missile-defense plan.
Putin, who uncharacteristically sought to avoid any sharp or aggressive statements in his address and answers to reporters, hinted at the end of the news conference that the United States should try to be more flexible.
“An inability to change the subject is a sign of radicalism,” Putin said, paraphrasing a quote from Winston Churchill dealing with fanatics.
The document coming out of the meeting, the “U.S.-Russia Strategic Framework Declaration,” calls for the bilateral relationship to move from “one of strategic competition to one of strategic partnership.”
The 9-page document was presented as a short and medium-term road map for bilateral relations. Since it is not a formal, binding agreement, it does not bear the signatures of the two presidents.
Speaking of the agreement, Putin said he had “a cautious optimism.” He added, however, that, “The devil is, as usual, in the details.”
A Kremlin official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said the Russian and U.S. sides still could not agree on details of the U.S. missile plan, such as Russian access to inspect the sites.
While Bush stuck with his position that the sites in Central Europe were not planned to counter Russian rockets, Putin said he wanted the two sides to cooperate on a broader scale and build a global missile-defense system to which the United States, Europe and Russia would all have equal access. Bush said he supported the idea.
“I have no problem sharing technology and information,” Bush said.
The Bush administration wants to put 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar installation in the Czech Republic — components of a missile-defense shield that the Kremlin views as a threat to Russian security.
Bush defended the plan again Sunday, calling it “an opportunity to work together for the common good,” raising his voice a notch in an apparent attempt to drive the point home.
Putin also repeated his criticism of NATO’s eastward expansion, saying it should seek to mend fences with Russia instead of welcoming the former Soviet republics and only aggravating the situation. He called the block’s expansion a “policy based on the old logic.”
In the declaration, the leaders also agreed to work together to reduce nuclear stockpiles and develop a legally binding successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. U.S. and Russian officials have yet to agree on a successor to the pact, due to expire next year.
Speaking of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, they also agreed to analyze intermediate- and short-range missile threats. Last year, Putin said the INF no longer served Russia’s interests.
The declaration also said the two countries had agreed to develop a solution to restore “the viability of the CFE regime.”
Last year, Putin suspended cooperation on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which limited the number of conventional armed forces that may be deployed on the continent.
Both Kremlin and White House officials, meanwhile, sought to put a positive spin on Sunday’s meeting and the declaration.
U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said the declaration meant that the Russians were “prepared to participate in missile defense not only with the United States but as part of the NATO-Russia dialog.”
“So it has all come together, finally,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One going back to a U.S. base in comments released by the White House.
He praised Putin’s “temperate language” at the NATO meeting Friday and a similar tone in Sochi.
“This was a President Putin that wanted to be constructive, and a President Bush that wanted to be constructive,” Hadley said.
The comments from a Kremlin official speaking to Russian reporters off the record were much more reserved, but he also said building trust was important and that the countries had moved in the right direction.
“Trust measures are critically important,” he said. “There is an evolution going on. It’s a very complex process.”
While Bush and Putin have spent almost eight years talking up their friendship, a common criticism is that they have not been able to agree on anything of substance during that period. On Sunday, Bush took issue with the notion that he and Putin were putting off important decisions until later.
Asked whether the two presidents weren’t merely “kicking the can down the road,” Bush answered: “I don’t appreciate that, because this is an important part of my belief that it is necessary to protect ourselves.”
Speaking on economic themes, Bush said he favored the lifting of the Soviet-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, which denies Russia most-favored nation status, and would make this known to Congress.
The Kremlin official said, however, that Bush had yet to move beyond rhetoric because this was not the first time he had spoken of the need to lift the amendment. In the declaration, the two countries also agreed to strengthen their dialog on energy and the economy.
Strengthening business ties is especially important because they “have not yet become a cushion against political turbulence,” the Kremlin official said.
The Sunday summit was the 28th and final meeting between Putin and Bush in their current jobs.
On Sunday, the U.S. president also met for 20 minutes with Medvedev, who looked slightly uncomfortable and uncertain when he sat down for the talks with Bush, who tried to put him at ease, The Associated Press reported.
“You can write down I was impressed and looking forward to working with him,” Bush said. The two are scheduled to first meet as presidents at the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.
While Bush was complimenting Medvedev, however, he made sure that his highest praise went to Putin. When reminded by a reporter of his 2001 remarks on having looked into Putin’s soul, Bush said Putin was and remained trustworthy. He added that he liked Putin’s straightforward manner.
“A lot of times in politics you have people look you in the eye and tell you what’s not on their mind,” Bush said. “He looks you in the eye and tells you what’s on his mind.”
Putin reciprocated, saying, “It was always pleasant and interesting to work with the American president.”
“I always valued his high human qualities, his honesty, openness, ability to listen,” Putin said. “This is worth a lot.”
“It’s been a remarkable relationship,” Bush said before the two stepped out of the room for their last meal together.

TITLE: Leading Russian Bus Firm Suspends Tours to Britain
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s largest operator of bus tours to Europe has canceled all its tours to Britain after 21 out of 39 people on a tour had their visa applications refused in Moscow, the Russian Tour Industry Union said Friday.
Turtrans-Voyazh canceled a tour that was due to leave April 27 after more than half the group was refused visas, said Irina Tyurina, a spokeswoman for the tour industry union. One person had traveled from Novosibirsk to give fingerprints as part of the application procedure.
Turtrans-Voyazh is the largest bus tour operator in Russia, carrying out around 40 percent of such tours, Tyurina said.
She put the visa problems down to discrimination against bus tours, which are seen as more likely to attract illegal immigrants. “There exists a stereotype on the Russian market that they are cheaper,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Moscow said she had heard of the Turtrans-Voyazh case. “We are trying to investigate this case at the moment. We don’t have any official comment,” she said.
There have been no changes to the pattern of visa refusals, she said. “The operations are going as usual, nothing has changed.”
The travelers affected had all paid around 1,200 euros for an all-inclusive 15-day tour and had already received Schengen visas for the other countries visited, said Ivan Balanovsky, the head of the visa section at Turtrans-Voyazh.
The reason for most of the visa applications being turned down was given as the “unclear origin of the money in people’s bank accounts,” Balanovsky said. Travelers have to provide bank statements as part of their application.
Two tours planned for June have been canceled, Balanovsky said.
“Our management made the decision that for the moment we will not be doing tours to Britain until relations improve between our governments,” Balanovsky said.
The directors of several other tour agencies said that they had cut down or canceled tours to Britain due to visa refusals and the complex application procedure.
Tatyana Kozlovskaya, the general director of Inters tour agency, said her agency had not run any tours to Britain since May 2007, when around 40 percent of travelers in several groups were refused visas or received them too late to travel. The agency now advises travelers to choose France or Italy instead, she said.
Yelena Popova, the general director of Stary Gorod agency, said her agency also experienced visa refusals, although “not like in Turtrans-Voyazh, not half the group.” On average, out of 100 travelers to Britain around 25 eventually cancel, either because of visa refusals or because they don’t want to deal with this “absolutely humiliating system,” she said.
In the latest group, two elderly women planned to travel together, but only one received a visa, even though both had several Schengen visas in their passports, Popova said. The agency is not planning another tour to Britain until September, although last year it sent 50 people every 10 days.
Olga Sanayeva, the general director of Ankor tour agency, said the agency had organized tours to Britain since 1996 but is now planning to wind up the program both because of visa refusals and the “humiliating” application procedure.
“Unfortunately it looks as if we will remove those tours. We can’t go on torturing people like this,” Sanayeva said.

TITLE: Opposition Attempts to Unite
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Members of the liberal opposition have decided to join forces and form a broad nationwide democratic movement that is expected to hold its founding congress in November 2008.
At a groundbreaking conference titled “The New Agenda for Democratic Movement” in St. Petersburg on Saturday, more than 200 delegates from more than 30 regions in Russia voted to create a movement and passed a resolution to be distributed in the provinces. 
In the coming months opposition forces in the regions are expected to discuss the resolution and select delegates for the founding congress.
The conference, which attracted Russia’s most prominent democrats, began by establishing some ground rules aimed at preventing the divisions that have riven previous attempts to unify the opposition. 
Nikita Belykh, the leader of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) suggested that personal criticism of fellow democrats be met with censure, while liberal politician Boris Nemtsov — who recently left the SPS — proposed postponing leadership questions. Both ideas were voiced within minutes of the opening of the conference and reflected the two greatest concerns of the delegates.
Democrats have said that unfair political competition, a climate of fear and intimidation created by the state with the use of police violence against civil protests and political persecution of activists who challenge the government, and widespread media censorship are obstacles preventing the creation of a unified opposition.
In speeches at the conference, most politicians acknowledged that the liberal forces have hit bottom. Former Soviet dissident and human rights campaigner Vladimir Bukovsky said the situation is critical.
Belykh compared the liberals’ strategies for attracting public support to winking at a girl in a dark room. 
“It is hard indeed to expect a reaction from the girl when she has no clue that you are winking at her,” Belykh said. “The lion’s share of our compatriots have absolutely no idea about what the liberal opposition has to offer. Developing a mechanism of communication is a top priority.”
Discussions were not devoid of self-criticism. 
Ilya Yashin, one of the leaders of the youth wing of the democratic party Yabloko, accused liberals of what he saw as a “snobbish attitude.”
“References to the masses as ‘illicit,’ ‘backward’ and ‘dumb’ and generally condescending attitudes must be dropped immediately,” Yashin said. “The Russian people are not stupid. They do not trust us. We have to face it and change it.”
Delegates, however, were unable to reconcile political goals.
Belykh is convinced that liberals should strive to win elections as they stand now. Garry Kasparov, head of the United Civil Front and one of the leaders of anti-Kremlin coalition the Other Russia, however, said that the ultimate goal is to campaign for a fair election.
Most delegates supported Vladimir Bukovsky who argued that the opposition should refrain from trying to create a new political party or any other organization that requires registration. 
However, Belykh suggested that in the long run the foundation of a new strong party is essential in order to participate in legal political life.
“A movement is good for partisan methods but if you ultimately seek representation in the parliament then you have to have a party,” Belykh said.
The outsider status of Russia’s liberals makes it impossible for them to deliver many voters’ very basic demands.
“Ordinary people want someone in power who will guarantee them a decent living wage, and the liberal parties, although they make all the right noises, do not give that impression,” said Moscow-based human rights advocate Lev Ponomaryov in a report sent to the conference. 
Ponomaryov, who is currently under criminal investigation for highlighting cases of torture in the country’s prisons, was not permitted to leave Moscow by prosecutors. 
Ponomaryov pointed out that a core task is to make Russians aware of the connection between corruption, widespread violations of people’s rights and a political regime that most of them say they approve of. 
Ponomaryov also recommended closer contact between the politicians and human rights groups.
“Political parties should help even in individual cases of rights abuses: it may seem like a thankless task but it builds a positive reputation,” Ponomaryov said.
Getting the Russian people interested is a Herculean task, said Maria Matskevich, a senior analyst with the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences. 
She argued that most of those who once backed democratic parties and still share liberal values, now simply stay away from the polls. 
“There are millions of them but these people prefer to opt out of Russian politics altogether,” she said. “They are making a conscious choice by not taking part in street events and not voting. They want to stay out of it because they don’t see fair competition or open discussion. Whether this silent protest is a constructive method or not is another matter, but it means the potential market for what democrats have to offer is still significant.”

TITLE: Last Dance for Bush and Putin
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SOCHI, Krasnodar Region — President George W. Bush and his host, President Vladimir Putin, didn’t allow what have been strained relations and a host of unresolved issues between their countries to put a damper on their last dinner together.
Instead, they danced.
During a dinner on Bush’s arrival at Putin’s official summer home in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the two leaders not only enjoyed the fare but also even took part in the entertainment.
“An unbelievably good dinner,” was how Bush described it to reporters Sunday.
So good that Putin and Bush climbed up onstage to dance to the music of the Russian and Cossack folk ensembles that performed for them at the dinner.
Daniel Fried, U.S. assistant secretary of state for European affairs, was also called up and “seemed to know what he was doing,” Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
They did a “Russian version of the African move,” Perino told reporters, explaining later on the sidelines of the presidents’ Sunday meeting that Bush danced in a similar manner on a trip to Africa.
And it seems that it was the power of the moment that dragged them up on stage, not the more traditional Russian power of the drink. 
Perino said she couldn’t speak for Putin, who is known for drinking only in moderation, but that Bush didn’t drink anything except water and Diet Coke.
“Bush looked great. He not only danced on the stage but also did not leave it until he had shaken hands with just about every member of the big folk-dancing ensemble that performed for them, a Kremlin official who attended the dinner said, Reuters reported.
“I’m only happy that my press corps didn’t see me try to dance the dance I was asked to do,” The Associated Press quoted Bush as saying the next day.
“Too bad. They would have seen for themselves you are a good dancer,” Putin replied at the start of the talks.
There were six people at the presidents’ table for Saturday’s dinner, with the Bushes and Putin being joined by President-elect Dmitry Medvedev. Putin sat to Bush’s left, while Bush’s wife Laura took a seat to her husband’s right. Medvedev was seated next to the U.S. first lady.
Putin met Laura Bush with a big bouquet of pink roses when the Bush family arrived at the residence. No information that Putin’s wife Lyudmila or Medvedev’s wife Svetlana had attended was provided by either the Kremlin or the White House.
Friday’s dinner lasted for about 2 1/2 hours and the menu included venison fillet with vegetable salad and pickled wild mushrooms with raspberry sauce, blini with red caviar and trout, veal loin with baked potatoes and red currant sauce, kulebyaka with salmon and king crab meat, and berry pie with ice cream.
Perino said she didn’t think that the presidents talked a lot about business although she added that Bush did have a conversation with Medvedev.
While Bush and Putin relaxed, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat next to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, apparently preparing for Sunday’s talks, The Associated Press reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters later that the final version of the declaration the presidents adopted Sunday was agreed upon during the dinner.
Sochi earned the right last year to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, with Putin’s lobbying efforts playing a major part in that victory. Russian television carried tape of Putin showing Bush a model of the infrastructure to be put in place for the games. The briefing for the presidents on the Winter Olympics was delivered to the accompaniment of a string quartet.
Putin listened silently as Aleksander Tkachyov, governor of the Krasnodar region, and Dmitry Chernyshenko, president and chief executive of the organizing committee for the Sochi games, showed Bush and his wife around the exhibit.
He couldn’t resist cutting in with a joke, though.
“This is your yacht,” he told Bush, pointing to a tiny ship in a watery region of the model, Russian wires reported.
Speaking Sunday, Bush said the Sochi presentation was impressive, adding that Putin might even invite him for the games. Putin nodded.
After the presentation, Putin took Bush for a short walk across his residence to the sea, where the two watched the sunset, the Kremlin said.
Located inside city limits and surrounded by a yellow wall, the Bocharov Ruchei compound, which hosted the presidents’ meetings, was built after Stalin’s death for vacationing Communist Party leaders.
Scott Stanzel, deputy White House press secretary, said the number of assistants traveling with Bush was around 100. Russian news services put the total number of the Bush delegation at 700. Perino said that number was probably too high, while Stanzel added that the Bush security detail ran in the hundreds.

TITLE: Chlorine Poisoning Leads To Closure of Aqua Park
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Vasileostrovsky district court closed the city’s Waterville aqua park on Friday after a number of swimmers received medical attention last month when water in the pool was contaminated. 
The court ruled that pending further investigations, including an ongoing criminal case, the facility must remain shut for 34 days. 
Artyom Bakonin, a lawyer for one of the families treated for contamination at the aqua park, said the closure was ordered on the basis of the results of chemical analysis provided by the Russian Customers Watch (RCW), Interfax reported.
“The criminal case is still under investigation, and sanctions [against the aqua park] could be even more serious,” Bakonin said.
RCW also fined Hotel Pribaltiiskaya, the owner of the park, 37,000 rubles ($1,500).
During the inspection at Waterville RCW ascertained that on March 26 the aqua park’s swimming pools were overcrowded with people, and the water contained organic pollution.
Furthermore, maximum doses of active chlorine were used that day and a filter system was not working effectively, the inspection determined. The water in the swimming pools did not meet chemical and toxicological standards, it said.
Meanwhile, Waterville’s management said on Friday on its website that it was already correcting the defects found by the RCW inspection and was planning to re-open the facility on April 30.
“We are sorry about the situation and have put every effort into eliminating the problems found by the inspection, and will do everything possible to prevent similar situations in future,” the management said.
On March 26, visitors to Waterville, the biggest aqua park in St. Petersburg, reported irritation in the eyes and throat. By the evening of March 27 at least 224 people, including 181 children, had sought medical attention.

TITLE: Jury Acquits Alleged Assassins
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A jury at the St. Petersburg city court on Monday acquitted three men accused of planning to assassinate Governor Valentina Matviyenko, the court said. 
The three men — engineer Timur Saidgareyev, 29, computer specialist Ravil Muratov, 20, and college student Vladislav Baranov, 17 — were charged with the plot in May last year. Two other suspects in the case are still at large.
The St. Petersburg Federal Security Service or FSB claimed they had prevented the attempt to kill Matviyenko at its planning stage.
The FSB said it found two F-1 grenades and 500 grams of plastic explosives in the possession of Saidgariyev, Baranov and Muratov after a search. Prosecutors charged the men with planning to kill a state official, terrorism, the illegal possession of ammunition and the involvement of minors in terrorism.
Investigators found out that the accused studied together in the Islamic organization of Al Fatkh and were brought up in Islamic families.
However the charges were not proven and the accused were immediately freed.

TITLE: Extra Finnair Flights to Boost Russian Travel
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Next year Finnair will start operating four daily flights between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, a total of eight flights per week more than it currently operates, the company announced last week at a press conference. Russian passengers can already fly to over 40 destinations across Europe and Asia by using Helsinki’s Vantaa airport as a transfer hub.
Finnair will operate the new flights to St. Petersburg in cooperation with Rossiya Airlines. Starting this month, Finnair has doubled the number of flights between Moscow and Helsinki and now operates four flights a day in cooperation with Aeroflot.
Jukka Hienonen, president and executive director of Finnair, listed the Asian and Russian markets as top priorities for the airline.
“During recent years our company has been concentrating on flights between Europe and Asia. We have good networks both in Europe and Asia. We have one of the youngest fleets, a good quality of service, and solid financial resources which should facilitate our expansion,” Hienonen said.
Finnair’s fleet consists of 23 Embraer planes (76-100 seats), 29 Airbus  planes seating 105-196 passengers, and 15 larger Airbus planes seating 269-295. The company has also ordered a further 15 new Airbus planes.
“By 2016 we will have 25-30 planes for long-distance flights. The average age of our Embraers is six years old, and we will use them for the next 15 years. Modernization problems will not arise in the near future,” Hienonen said.
Last year Finnair’s turnover reached 2.2 billion euros ($3.45 billion). The airline served 8.6 million passengers on regular flights and transported 98.7 million kilograms of cargo.
European-Asian flights generated about half of Finnair’s profits — last year the company’s turnover in Asia increased by 32.6 percent. During the last eight years the number of flights to Asia offered by Finnair has increased by more than 600 hundred percent. The company currently operates flights to 11 destinations in Asia, and this year 1.3 million people are expected to use these routes.
“The number of long-distance flights has increased dramatically over recent years. In 2001 we operated flights to Tokyo, New York, Beijing, Bangkok and Singapore. Now we have far more long-distance flights,” Hienonen said.
“In Japan we have become the third largest airline, outpacing British Airways. We operate 70 flights a week to Asia,” he said.
Hienonen expects that the number of transit flights through Helsinki will increase.
“We plan to develop transit flights between North America and Asia. The most popular long-distance flights fly over Finland. Take flights from New York to Delhi. It takes 14 hours. Fuel expenditure on a direct flight is 20 percent higher compared to a transit flight, and landing in Helsinki also increases the occupancy of planes,” he said.
Helsinki-Vantaa airport could also become a substitute for other popular European transit hubs, Hienonen said.
“Passenger flows in Europe are growing, and large European airports are overloaded. We are sure that Vantaa airport in Helsinki will benefit from this. It will remain competitive, as it’s not overloaded, and there is room for development,” Hienonen said.
In view of the growing passenger flow and increasing share of business class travelers, Finnair plans to open a spa-center adjacent to Helsinki-Vantaa airport’s new terminal.
The 1,500-square meter spa will open in September next year, and the spa facilities will be available to business class travelers and privileged clients of Finnair and the Oneworld alliance, which accounts for 15 percent of passengers on long-haul flights, Hienonen said. Other passengers will be able to use the spa-center on a paid basis.
At the moment Russian passengers account for a tiny share of Finnair’s turnover — Hienonen estimated it at about two percent. “But Russia is a very important and rapidly developing market. It offers huge opportunities,” he said.
As well as flights to Moscow and St. Petersburg, from fall this year Finnair will operate flights from Helsinki to Yekaterinburg three times a week. Hienonen said that Finnair is also considering other destinations in Russia.
“We are interested in all the cities in European Russia with a population of more than one million. The choice of destinations will depend on our partners and the willingness of regional authorities,” he said.
“We have partnership agreements with Aeroflot and Rossiya Airlines, and through these partnerships we economize on purchases and other expenses. Our clients benefit from such partnership programs,” Hienonen said.
Finnair, in its turn, provides technical servicing of cargo planes and training for the personnel of its Russian partners.
“The bureaucracy here is enormous, but we can deal with this problem,” Hienonen said.
In Russia, foreign airlines are not allowed to operate internal flights. “Russian aviation officials told me in a private talk that if Russia allowed foreigners to operate internal flights, in 2-3 months half of the Russian airlines would go bust,” Hienonen said.
However, Hienonen expects that when Russia joins the WTO, the situation will change.
“Artificial barriers cannot last long. Twenty years ago the European market was just as closed as the Russian market. Now any European airline can operate internal flights in Finland. We saw how it affected the market, and I think Russia will reach that stage sooner or later,” Hienonen said.
“Many Russian airlines have not modernized their fleets, which is one of the reasons for high prices here. However, it’s a matter of time. In 3-5 years the situation will start to change,” Hienonen said.
Finnair is considering charter flights, but Hienonen could not specify when the flights would start.
“We face organizational and legal difficulties. It’s a seasonal business — we can operate charter flights for about half the year, but high customs taxes and VAT make this business unprofitable. This situation goes against the interests of Russian customers,” Hienonen said.
He indicated that about 40 percent of Finnair flights sold to Russian customers originate from Helsinki airport.
Commenting on general trends, Hienonen indicated that during the last five years the price of flights in Europe has decreased by 30 percent, while fuel prices have tripled or quadrupled.
“In Europe there are about 40 budget airlines, and about half of them operate flights to Finland. This has strongly affected the performance of all the airlines. We had to dismiss 2,000 people, decreasing our staff from 11,500 employees to 9,500 last year. At the same time we increased the number of flights, so that the efficiency of our employees has increased by 90 percent,” Hienonen said.
Finnair entered the Russian tourism market in an attempt to diversify its business. “We believe that the flow of tourists going abroad from Russia will grow. That’s a huge opportunity for us,” he said. Last year Finnair’s subsidiary, Suntours, acquired the St. Petersburg-based tourism company Kalipso.
“The opportunities for growth in Finland are limited. We liked Kalipso, its management team and clients. Through this acquisition we will acquire knowledge of the local tourism market, and if we are successful, we will expand our tourism activities here,” Hienonen said.
In Finland, Suntours holds 37 percent of the tourism market, selling 400,000 to 450,000 tours a year.
Hienonen indicated that in Russia the average price of tourism services is 30 percent higher than in Finland. “We are seeing weak competition in this market. There are not enough flights or packages deals and discounts here in this market,” he said.
“We want to sell package deals in Russia and reorganize Kalipso according to our business model. By selling package deals, we could decrease prices and during the next 10 years we could become a serious competitor in the tourism market,” Hienonen said.

TITLE: Interregnum Hinders WTO Entry Procedure
AUTHOR: By Conor Sweeney
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Political paralysis as ministers wait for their new president to take over has dashed hopes of a quick deal with the European Union on Russian entry to the World Trade Organization, a senior Western diplomat said. 
Negotiators from Moscow and Brussels have held an intensive round of meetings and phone calls to try to reach an agreement and remove one of the biggest obstacles to the country’s WTO entry. 
But hopes of a swift deal appear to have been misplaced, the senior diplomat said. He estimated that the earliest the European Union-Russia series of talks could conclude is this summer, putting Moscow’s WTO membership back even further, to the year’s end. 
“As long as the new government is not in place, this will not happen,” the diplomat said. “In terms of a bilateral agreement, this will not be before the summer.” 
Russia is in an interregnum period before President-elect Dmitry Medvedev replaces outgoing President Vladimir Putin on May 7. 
The diplomat said Russia needed to make tough decisions on timber tariffs and other issues to close the deal but that ministers were ducking these decisions for fear of jeopardizing their prospects in the new government. 
The country’s negotiating team has been led by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who hopes to retain a powerful position in the new Cabinet. 
The diplomat said many Western countries had wrongly guessed that Putin was prepared to take the political heat for unpopular decisions before Medvedev is sworn in. 
“On the American side in particular, they hoped Putin would take decisions during this phase, but he’s not doing it.” 
Investors say membership will make doing business with Russia more predictable, while Russian officials see accession as a badge of their country’s transformation into a full-fledged market economy. 
The European team has been led by EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, who has repeatedly said that he wants Russia to join the WTO as soon as possible. 
“Mandelson keeps on pushing and shows he is really concerned, but for Russia there are difficult issues, like agriculture, which will be affected,” the diplomat said. Apart from the EU, Russia must still finalize bilateral deals with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Georgia. Russia will also face bilateral talks with Ukraine, as Kiev prepares to finalize its WTO entry. 
On April 1, Russia raised timber export duties from 20 percent to 25 percent, a step that has hurt pulp and paper producers in Finland and Sweden. 
The EU wants these duties scrapped and says they violate a broader 2004 deal with Russia that covers most WTO issues. 
The country has also not implemented a deal that would phase out by 2013 Siberian overflight charges for European carriers traveling to Asia. 
“They still have not signed it, which has upset the EU side. There is an agreement, but the signature is not there. Clearly, Aeroflot is not happy with this deal as they will lose out.”

TITLE: ‘Hang On,’ Kudrin Urges VTB Investors
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — It was a strangely personal moment. 
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin took time out at a conference on globalization last week to answer some handwritten questions. The most impassioned of these came from a group of minority shareholders in VTB, one of the country’s worst-performing stocks since the bank’s “people’s IPO” last May, on why the stock was in freefall. 
Leaning toward the audience, Kudrin first noted that the investors, many of whom had counted on the government’s pledge to support the stock, should be aware that stocks go down as well as up. Then, in what analysts suggested was talking up his own company, Kudrin, the chairman of VTB’s supervisory board, urged investors to “hang on.” 
“Do not sell your shares at the moment,” Kudrin said. “If you can wait, do wait, until the shares go back up.” 
The investors will be hoping that he is right. VTB shares have been languishing at rock bottom for weeks now as banking stocks fall out of favor. 
Russian markets failed to react after global stock markets rebounded strongly Tuesday to the news that UBS and Lehman Brothers had issued new shares to shore up their positions. 
“It was a combination of wishful thinking and a hope that the worst of the crisis is behind us,” said Erik DePoy, a strategist at Alfa Bank. “Here in Russia, investors were very much more skeptical that there was a fundamental reason for that gain — in the end, they were right.” 
After the surge, some investors were tentatively starting to call the bottom in global markets. Russia, despite its strong fundamentals and resilience to the global crisis, has closely tracked international markets since the beginning of the year. 
“Notwithstanding another major escalation in bad news flow concerning credit market losses or the global economy, many investors seem prepared to accept that we are now close to an asset price bottom,” UralSib said in a research note Friday. 
Yet the bottom might be harder to call here. 
Anton Khmelnitski, a director at Polar Capital in Kiev, said Russian oil stocks were trading at one-third of their valuations in comparison with their Western counterparts, making them extremely attractive. Steel, on the other hand, is becoming overvalued, he said. 
“The market will be quite selective,” he said, “and a safer bet would be oil and gas.” 
As the second quarter kicked off, trading on Russian markets was torpid at best. It was another week of inflows into Russian-focused funds, marking $1.2 billion of inflows in the year to date, but that was tempered by Central Bank figures that recorded a net capital outflow of $22.8 billion from the country in the first quarter. 
On the RTS and MICEX, there was little buying and selling, which analysts attributed to the tougher liquidity situation in April as companies make their tax payments, and to continued uncertainty about where the markets are headed. 
That uncertainty was further fueled by U.S. data Friday, showing that 80,000 jobs were slashed in March, the biggest cut in five years and the third straight month of losses.

TITLE: LUKoil Slashes 2008 Output Forecast
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LUKoil, the country’s second-biggest oil firm, has more than halved its oil output growth forecast for 2008, its chief executive said Friday, confirming analysts’ views that the country’s oil production is slowing. 
LUKoil plans to increase oil production by 1.8 percent to 2 percent this year without acquisitions, Vagit Alekperov told reporters. 
The oil major, in which U.S. ConocoPhillips holds 20 percent, had previously said its output would rise by around 5 percent this year. Alekperov also declined to comment on market rumors that the firm was close to buying a refinery in Italy. 
“The company is working on projects to acquire plants in Europe. I have never named any concrete plant. But it is a fact that we are working [on projects] in both southern and northern Europe,” he said. 
Last year, the LUKoil group’s overall output including its foreign assets was 96.65 million tons, or 1.94 million barrels per day. State statistics for the first three months of 2008 show crude production growth has moved into negative territory for the first time in several years, in what analysts say is a reaction to heavy tax burden, which slows investments in new fields. 
Last week, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said his ministry would propose a $4.2 billion cut in the oil mineral extraction tax from 2009. 
The tax, together with a hefty export duty, has acted as a drag on the country’s oil’s profitability over recent years, despite record prices. 
Despite the beginning of the year’s fall, the government is more optimistic. The Industry and Energy and Economic Development and Trade ministries still expect oil output to grow by about 1.7 percent this year.

TITLE: MTS Sales Increase 25%
AUTHOR: By Paul Abelsky
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Sales at Mobile TeleSystems, the country’s largest mobile-phone provider, rose about 25 percent in 2007, more than the company had previously expected, boosted by new subscribers, chief executive Leonid Melamed said Saturday. 
Revenue climbed to more than $8 billion last year, Melamed told reporters in St. Petersburg. In November, he had predicted sales would increase 22 percent for the year. 
The revenue figure compared with a median estimate of $8.17 billion from 23 analysts compiled by Bloomberg. 
MTS increased its number of subscribers about 17 percent to 85 million, Melamed said, as it added music and video content and greater Internet access. The company is seeking to expand in the nations of the former Soviet Union as there is now more than one cell phone for every Russian. 
“The Commonwealth of Independent States is our first priority, but we also are looking to Africa and Southeast Asia,” Melamed said. MTS is not interested in boosting its presence in Eastern and Western Europe, he said. 
MTS’s American Depositary Receipts rose 1.2 percent to $81.80 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday. The shares have dropped 20 percent this year, giving the company a market value of $32.6 billion. 
MTS, controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema, and smaller competitor VimpelCom are seeking to buy regional operators to strengthen their positions in the domestic market. 
Russia’s mobile operators had more than 166 million domestic subscribers at the end of February in a country with a population of 142 million people, according to Moscow-based researcher Advanced Communications & Media.

TITLE: Hediard Plans More Outlets
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Hediard, the French gourmet food chain that was bought last year by billionaire and Federation Council member Sergei Pugachyov, plans to open as many as seven stores in Russia. 
Hediard will add at least five boutiques in Moscow and St. Petersburg after sales at its store in the Russian capital rose 40 percent last year, Hediard said Friday in an e-mailed statement. The chain has bought out its franchise partner in Russia to operate the outlets itself, the statement shows. 
Pugachyov’s family-owned LuxAdvor acquired Hediard in October to add to its luxury goods holdings as demand for high-quality groceries increases worldwide. The country’s business leaders are investing some of their billions overseas in vineyards, castles, football clubs and cars. 
Hediard plans to expand in the fastest-growing markets of Asia, the Middle East and Russia and will open its first Chinese outlet this year, president Dominique Richard said Oct. 12. Sales may reach about 30 million euros ($47 million) in 2007, up from 27 million euros in 2006, he forecast at the time. 
Pugachyov’s other luxury assets include stakes in Designcapital, which invests in contemporary design-oriented retailers and furniture manufacturers, and David Linley, Queen Elizabeth II’s nephew’s furniture and interiors company, as well as a stake in Luxe.tv television channel, Friday’s statement said.

TITLE: Italy Eyes Credits
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — Italy appointed a venture between Dresdner Bank AG and Gazprom’s banking unit to seek emission credits in Russia and former Soviet states that will help meet the country’s target under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Italy’s ministry of environment will consider buying credits proposed by the venture, Dresdner Kleinwort, a London-based investment banking unit of Dresdner, said Friday in an e-mailed statement. Dresdner’s 50 percent partner in Carbon Trade & Finance is Moscow-based Gazprombank.
The venture will develop projects that reduce carbon emissions and generate credits under the so-called joint implementation mechanism of the protocol, the statement said. Italy has a target to cut emissions 6.5 percent in the five years through 2012, from 1990 levels, the statement said. Nations can buy credits if they are overshooting their targets.
Italy’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 7.4 percent to 469.5 million metric tons in 2005 from 1990, according to the latest figures on a United Nations Web site.
“This agreement is an important step for Italy in meeting its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol,” Corrado Clini, director general of the ministry, said in the statement.
Emissions trading can lead to greater investment in energy-efficient technology and equipment to curb greenhouse gases.

TITLE: Hermitage Complains of Identity Theft
AUTHOR: By Tom Cahill and Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Hermitage Capital Management, the $3 billion hedge fund run by William Browder, says it is a victim of corporate identity theft, according to legal filings sent to prosecutors in Russia and the Channel Islands. 
Hermitage says the attack began with an inquiry by Moscow tax officials into a Cyprus-based account it managed. Last June, Interior Ministry investigators raided the Moscow offices of Hermitage and its lawyers at Firestone & Duncan, according to court filings by a unit of HSBC Holdings, the trustee and administrator of the fund. They took Hermitage’s corporate seal, tax registration and charter, according to the filings. 
A month later, Hermitage, once the largest foreign owner of Russian stocks, was defended by lawyers it did not hire in a lawsuit in St. Petersburg that it did not know about, the complaints said. The court ordered Hermitage to pay $367 million, a ruling that has since been reversed, documents show. 
“None of these events or actions could have occurred, including the falsification of new corporate bylaws and the powers of attorney, without those responsible having gained access to the original corporate documentation and corporate seals seized by the Interior Ministry,” wrote Paul Wrench, a director at HSBC’s Guernsey branch, in a complaint to the Guernsey Financial Intelligence Service dated Feb. 13. 
Wrench filed similar complaints to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Interior Ministry’s internal affairs division in Moscow in December. The ministry’s investigative unit, the one Hermitage and HSBC says employs the people behind the campaign, said Feb. 5 that it would investigate the charges. 
Pierre Goad, a spokesman for HSBC in London, declined to comment Friday. 
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Kiselyova declined to comment, as did Browder, a U.S. native and British citizen who has campaigned against waste and mismanagement at some of the country’s largest companies, including Gazprom. Wrench did not respond to calls seeking comment. 
In all, at least six lawsuits against Hermitage funds and companies totaling $1.5 billion in claims have been filed since the Moscow raids, all but one of which have been reversed, a Hermitage spokesman said, declining to be identified because the cases are pending. 
Browder has campaigned to renew his visa since it was revoked without explanation in 2005. He petitioned First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev directly at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 28, 2007. 
Kommersant said Thursday that Browder had been charged in absentia with evading more than 4 billion rubles ($169 million) in taxes. Kiselyova, the Interior Ministry spokeswoman, denied Friday that Browder was charged and declined to comment on Hermitage’s accusations. 
A critic of corporate mismanagement in the country since 1996, Browder, has supported Putin and defended the Kremlin’s campaign against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was the county’s richest man before he was arrested in October 2003 and sentenced to eight years in a Siberian penal colony on fraud and tax-evasion charges.

TITLE: More Satellites Planned For Glonass
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia plans to expand its Glonass navigation network, a rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System, to 30 satellites to protect the grid from failure.
Glonass will have six spare satellites in case one or more of the 24 needed to make the system work malfunctions, Yury Urlichich, head of the Russian Research Institute of Space-Instrument Building, told reporters in Moscow on Monday.
Russia, which launched Sputnik 51 years ago, will have the 18 satellites needed to make Glonass operational domestically in place this year and the 24 needed for global coverage next year, said Viktor Kosenko, first deputy chief designer of state-run Information Satellite Systems. Glonass is a Soviet-era project that stalled after space funding collapsed along with communism in 1991. President Vladimir Putin in 2006 told the government, flushed with oil and gas revenue, to accelerate the program and start looking for commercial clients. 
The EU took control of the 4.5 billion euro ($7 billion) Galileo project last year after a private sector group abandoned it. Russia is seeking to have its system in place before the European Union does.

TITLE: RusAl Miners Stop Striking, Begin Payrise Negotiations
AUTHOR: By Nadia Popova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Miners at RusAl’s Little Red Riding Hood mine in the Sverdlovsk region on Friday ended their 10-day occupation after senior company executives spent a night negotiating with local trade union leaders. 
RusAl vice president Alexander Livshits and Anatoly Reshetnikov, a government-relations official for the company, guaranteed that the miners would not be fined or dismissed for taking part in the strike. 
The document signed by the local RusAl management was later distributed among the miners. 
Negotiations on a wage increase for the miners were planned to begin Monday morning. The talks were to be held by a special commission of 22 representatives from both sides of the dispute. 
Work at the mine and four others in the complex owned by North Ural Bauxite Mine, a RusAl subsidiary, was planned to resume soon, RusAl said in an e-mailed statement without elaborating on the date. Company officials could not be reached for further comment Friday. 
“After the top managers came, we understood that the company was treating our problem seriously,” said Alexander Kalugin, the mine’s technical inspector, who was one of three union representatives who talked to RusAl. 
“RusAl said it was ready to negotiate if we came back to the surface. We decided to make that move,” Kalugin said, yawning during a telephone conversation Friday afternoon. He apologized, saying he had not slept normally for the last week. 
The workers had demanded a 50 percent pay raise and the end of weekend shifts. RusAl dismissed the protest as illegal, saying the miners had not properly submitted their demands beforehand. 
“We feel that they are ready for a compromise,” Kalugin said. “As for us, we can make some concessions too. We would even agree to a 30 percent increase in salaries.”

TITLE: Shell Positive on Russian Opportunities
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: AMSTERDAM — Anglo-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell sees increasing opportunities in Russia despite growing state control of the energy sector, a Dutch paper quoted Shell’s head in Russia as saying on Monday. 
Russia will have to increasingly call on Western technology and expertise to fully exploit its oil fields and meet growing domestic and foreign demand, Het Financieele Dagblad cited Shell’s Chris Finlayson as saying. 
“In the coming 10 years, Russia must do a lot of catching up in offshore oil production in remote, environmentally sensitive and ice-covered areas the size of the North Sea,” Finlayson was quoted as saying. 
“This offers us new chances. Russia is striving for national control over the energy sector, but that doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for foreign oil companies.” 
Last year, after a long campaign of government pressure, Shell and its partners sold a 50 percent stake in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project off Russia’s east coast.

TITLE: Japan’s Isuzu Motors to Assemble Trucks in Russia
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: TOKYO — Isuzu Motors Ltd., Japan’s biggest maker of light-duty trucks, will assemble vehicles in Russia with Severstal-Avto beginning in August as the country’s demand for commercial vehicles rises. 
The venture will have an annual capacity of 25,000 units, Tokyo-based Isuzu said Monday in a statement. Japanese trading company Sojitz Corp. is also a partner in the venture, it said. 
Isuzu plans to more than triple truck sales in Russia to 8,000 vehicles this year, the company said. Economic growth in developing markets is boosting commercial vehicle sales as truck demand in Japan is forecast to decline, making Isuzu more reliant on overseas markets. 
Severstal holds a 66 percent stake in the venture, Isuzu owns 29 percent and Sojitz has five percent, Isuzu said. The venture will make Isuzu’s Elf model light-duty truck, which can haul payloads of as much as three tons. 
Moscow-based Severstal-Avto is Russia’s third-largest automaker and a subsidiary of Russia’s largest steelmaker. Isuzu sold 2,500 trucks in Russia last year.

TITLE: Consumer Prices Increase Steadily
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian consumer prices rose in March at the same pace as in the previous month, led by bread, vegetables and other food costs. 
Prices rose 1.2 percent from February, the Moscow-based Federal Statistics Office reported in an e-mailed statement Monday, confirming preliminary estimates released last week. The inflation rate rose 4.8 percent in the year through March. 
Russia, the world’s biggest energy exporter, is struggling to bring down the inflation rate to 9.5 percent this year from 11.9 percent in 2007 as money from oil and gas sales and rising global food prices fuel consumer price growth. Inflation reached 12.7 percent in February, the highest since July 2005. 
Food prices rose 2 percent in March, including a 4.3 percent increase in bread, according to the Statistics Service. The cost of the staple food basket reached a monthly average of 1,993.5 rubles ($84.52) in Russia and 2,231.7 in Moscow, the country’s biggest city. 
Central bank Chairman Sergei Ignatiev said on April 2 that it is “possible” to hold inflation below 10 percent this year. 
Global food prices, grain in particular, may decrease and curb consumer-price growth in Russia, Ignatiev said. Net capital inflows — a broad measure of money entering the country — will also be below last year’s record of $82.3 billion, which will also help damp inflation, he said. 
Ignatiev also said the bank “doesn’t exclude the possibility” of a further increase to its refinancing rate and to the mandatory reserve requirements as a means to combat inflation. The bank raised the refinancing rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Feb. 4 and increased reserve requirements for banks on March 1.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>LSR Begins Building</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — LSR Group, a Russian property developer and maker of building materials, has begun construction of a $12 million crushed granite plant near St. Petersburg to take advantage of “growing demand” for the material.
The plant will produce 660,000 cubic meters of crushed granite a year when it becomes operational at the end of April, St. Petersburg-based LSR said Monday in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service.

<b>VW Plans Budget Car</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloom-berg) — Volkswagen AG plans to build a sedan in Russia priced at less than $10,000, Vedomosti reported, citing Ulrich Hackenberg, the automaker’s head of brand development.
Volkswagen plans to start producing the new car, which is based on the Polo model, at its Kaluga factory south of Moscow by the end of 2009 and make 75,000 a year, the newspaper said.
Nissan Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. are also planning to build budget cars in Russia, according to Vedomosti.

<b>CEZ Says It Won’t Bid</b>
PRAGUE (Reuters) — Czech power firm CEZ will not bid for Russian power utility TGK-4, CEZ said on Monday. “We do not consider TGK-4 to be a suitable investment opportunity given the variety in its production portfolio and risks connected with expected short-term investments,” CEZ said in a statement. 
The deadline for bids was on Monday. 
TGK-4, which has a market capitalization of roughly $1.5 billion, is being sold as part of a sweeping reform of the power sector, under which its parent company, the former electricity monopoly UES, will be broken up by July 1.

<b>UniCredit To Expand</b>
CERNOBBIO (Bloomberg) — UniCredit SpA, Italy’s largest bank by assets, plans to expand in Russia by opening new branches, Chairman Dieter Rampl said Friday in an interview.
“We want to add branches in Russia, and there are plans to do so,” Rampl told reporters at a conference Friday in Cernobbio, Italy. “We aren’t planning acquisitions.”
UniCredit is expanding in eastern Europe and Russia to sustain revenue growth as its investment-banking unit is being hurt by the fallout from the U.S. subprime-mortgage-market collapse.

<b>Sberbank Ambitious</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, seeks to become one of the world’s 10 biggest within five years, RIA Novosti reported, citing Senior Vice President Denis Bugrov.
“Our goal is to become one of the world’s 10 biggest financial institutions by capitalization,” the state-run news service cited Bugrov as saying in Moscow Friday.
State-run Sberbank expects non-Russian operations to account for 20 percent of income within five years, versus less than 1 percent now, Bugrov said, according to RIA. Sberbank won’t be able to achieve that goal without a major “international presence,” the news service cited Bugrov as saying.

<b>GSM Licenses Extended</b>
LONDON (Bloomberg) — VimpelCom, Russia’s second-largest mobile-phone company, said its licenses for global system for mobile communications, or GSM, in 50 Russian regions, including Moscow, have been extended.
The new licenses also cover regions in Siberia, Central, Southern and Volga federal districts and will be valid for five years from April 28, 2008, to April 28, 2013, the Moscow-based company said Friday in an e-mailed statement.

<b>BasEl Turns to Cement</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element holding company will spend $83 million to turn its Pikalevsky alumina plant into a cement factory, Kommersant reported, citing Pikalevsky chief Dmitry Savenkov.
Basel Cement, a unit of Basic Element, is buying the facility from United Co. Rusal, the aluminum producer controlled by Deripaska, the newspaper said.
Pikalevsky will be able to produce 1.8 million tons of cement a year when the refitting is completed later this year, Kommersant said.

<b>Severstal Bank Loan</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Severstal, Russia’s biggest steelmaker, borrowed 600 million euros ($942 million) from banks led by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development to help fund a program to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Cherepovets, Russia-based company, increased the size of the loans by 100 million euros because of demand from lenders, the London-based EBRD said in a statement Monday. The loans are in two portions with maturities of seven and 10 years.
Severstal will pay interest of 1.4 percentage points over the euro interbank offered rate for the first five years on a seven-year, 300 million-euro portion of the loan, rising to 1.60 percentage points in the last two years. The steelmaker got the 10-year 300 million-euro portion in December.

<b>TPG Tipped to Invest</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — TPG Inc., the buyout firm started by David Bonderman and Jim Coulter, may soon make its first investment in Russia, two years after setting up a base in the country, said a person familiar with the plans.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based firm is close to buying a 50 percent stake in the closely held Russian pharmaceutical distributor SIA International for about $800 million, said the person, who declined to be identified because a final agreement is yet to be reached. 
A deal would be the biggest investment by a U.S. private equity firm in Russia and comes almost three years after Carlyle Group shut its base in Moscow, saying it was too risky to invest in the country. International investors have been deterred by President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to increase the state’s role in the economy, especially the energy industry.

TITLE: BoNY Hearing Delayed, Lawyer Says Case Illegal
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Moscow Arbitration Court postponed until May 13 a hearing in the Federal Customs Service’s $22.5 billion lawsuit against the Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
Ivan Marisin, a lawyer with the Clifford Chance law firm who is representing the bank, called for the case to be thrown out. He argued that because the customs service was basing its claim on U.S. antiracketeering law it shouldn’t be heard in Russia, let alone the Moscow Arbitration Court, which doesn’t handle criminal suits.
“No court in Russia has the right to apply this law because it’s the law of another country,’’ Marisin said.
The U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, enables a plaintiff to triple the damages begin sought.
Judge Lyudmila Pulova instructed the law team for the customs service to prepare a response to Marisin’s motion.
The service sued the Bank of New York Mellon, the world’s biggest custodian of financial assets, last May, accusing it of helping to transfer $7 billion out of the country illegally in the 1990s. In a U.S. investigation, the bank admitted in 2005 that it failed to report suspicious transactions and paid $14 million to end two criminal probes.
In 2000, Lucy Edwards, a former Bank of New York vice president in London, and her husband, Peter Berlin, who ran companies with accounts at the bank, admitted to U.S. officials that they conspired to use the bank to launder more than $7 billion from Russia. They were sentenced last year to five years probation after cooperating with federal prosecutors investigating international money laundering.
Today, the bank presented several files detailing $3.6 billion in money transfers for 1996 to 1999 as evidence. Of that amount, $985 million was transferred from Russia, Marisin said. Marisin demanded that the Customs Service provide documents to back up its claims.
The Customs Service “didn’t consider it necessary’’ to provide documentation because its claims were based on the U.S. investigation, Customs Service lawyer Yekaterina Dukhina said.
Robert Kelly, Bank of New York chief executive officer, and Matthew Biben, executive vice president and chief litigation counsel, were due to hold a conference call at 9 a.m. EDT Monday, according to a statement on PR Newswire. Jonathan Schiller, managing partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, was also due to participate, the statement said.
Last week the bank fell 4.8 percent on concerns that the government will succeed with its money-laundering suit against the company. 
In a March 27 report, Richard Bove, who covers the company for New York-based Punk Ziegel, said U.S. and European Union courts might enforce any ruling made in Russia. 
Lawyers representing Russia issued a statement last Monday citing Bove’s report as evidence that there is a “consensus building among analysts and legal experts” that the suit will stand up in courts outside the country. 
The lawyers said they were confident that “Russia will be able to obtain court orders seizing billions of dollars of the bank’s worldwide assets” to satisfy the suit’s claim of $22.5 billion in damages to the state, including unpaid customs duties.

TITLE: Thomas Cook May Enter Russia
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: DUSSELDORF — Thomas Cook Group Plc, Europe’s second-biggest travel company, aims to buy a Russian competitor as more vacationers in the country book package tours. 
“We are looking for opportunities in Russia,” Chief Executive Officer Manny Fontenla-Novoa said to reporters April 4 at the company’s headquarters in Peterborough, England. 
The travel operator also plans an acquisition in China. “We have a significant amount of money for a major acquisition,” the CEO added. 
Thomas Cook said last month it would buy back its Indian unit and purchase Egyptian retail outlets and Middle East brand rights for as much as 249 million euros ($390 million) to regain worldwide control of its trademark. 
Fontenla-Novoa reiterated the company’s forecast of earnings before interest and taxes of at least 620 million euros in the 2009-10 fiscal year and said earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization will be 800 million euros. 55 percent of ebit will come from the U.K. and 27 percent from continental Europe. 
The CEO also said analysts’ consensus estimate for full-year profit is 450 million euros, while Morgan Stanley analyst Jamie Rollo, who according to Fontenla-Novoa knows the company best, expects 474 million euros. 
Thomas Cook is controlled by German retailer Arcandor AG which holds 52 percent of the shares.

TITLE: Ukraine Denies Gas Market ‘In Chaos’
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ukraine’s natural-gas market is in “chaos” after the government issued a decree banning intermediaries from selling imports of the fuel, Vedomosti reported, citing an unidentified manager at trader UkrGazEnergo.
Ukraine is forcing industrial consumers to abandon UkrGazEnergo in favor of state-run energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy, the Moscow-based newspaper said Monday.
Naftogaz has cut supplies to three industrial consumers in which Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash holds stakes, Vedomosti said, citing the companies. Firtash also owns shares in UkrGazEnergo, a 50-50 venture between Naftogaz and Swiss-registered gas trader RosUkrEnergo AG.
Naftogaz denied any problems with gas supplies and said the announcements were a “provocation” before talks with Gazprom. The Russian company, which owns half of RosUkrEnergo, is settling a debt dispute with Naftogaz and seeking direct access to the Ukrainian domestic market.

TITLE: UES Bidding For TGK-7 Stake Open
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s former electricity monopoly UES said on Monday it will be accepting bids for the government’s 32 percent stake in regional power producer TGK-7 until April 21. 
TGK-7 is one of 20 major electricity producers being spun off by UES, amid a sweeping reform of the sector that is seeking to raise investment and introduce a competitive market. 
A source close to TGK-7 has said IES, an investment vehicle owned by metals tycoon Viktor Vekselberg, and gas export monopoly Gazprom, which is the most active investor in Russia’s liberalised power sector, will jointly bid for the government’s stake in TGK-7. 
Last month, TGK-7 held an additional share offering selling more than 10 percent of its enlarged share capital at 2.848 roubles ($0.121) per share, or $456 per kilowatt of TGK-7’s generating capacity. 
IES, also known by the Russian acronym KES, owned 23 percent of the firm before the new share sale. 
The price of the government’s stake is likely to be the same as the price of the additional share issue.

TITLE: Kazakh State Helps Construction Industry
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: ALMATY — The Kazakh government is spending 242.5 billion tenge ($2 billion) to prop up the construction industry, which is suffering from a shortage of financing amid the global credit crunch.
The credit situation in the country’s two biggest cities, Almaty and Astana, is the “most complicated,” Economy Minister Bakhyt Sultanov said Monday in an e-mailed report on the status of the government’s investment plan.
Kazakhstan’s economy grew more than 10 percent annually from 2000 through 2006 as the country exploited the biggest oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. Growth slowed to 8.5 percent last year after tight credit curtailed a national building boom.
Half of the money, 122 billion tenge, went to Kazyna, a state-run development holding based in the capital Astana. Of that total, Kazyna is to deposit 48.8 billion tenge in commercial banks for loans to finance residential construction and 24.4 billion tenge to finance “large projects,” Sultanov said. 
Of this amount, 23.3 billion tenge will be spent to complete 112 building projects in Astana.
The remaining 48.8 billion tenge will be deposited in commercial banks on the condition that it’s loaned to small and medium-sized companies.

TITLE: Smugglers Help Boost Popularity of iPhone
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Apple Inc. has gained unlikely allies in its bid to boost iPhone sales: Russian smugglers.
The device isn’t sold by Cupertino, California-based Apple in Russia and it can’t be used legally on local networks. Still, about 250,000 people own one, more than any other country except the U.S. and China, according to Eldar Murtazin, chief analyst at Moscow-based Mobile Research Group.
That popularity has turned into a bonanza for traders who sell the phones in kiosks and on the Internet for $1,000 each, more than twice the U.S. price. Hackers say they charge as much as 2,500 rubles ($105) to “unlock” them so they work locally.
“It’s an icon for Russians,” said Timofei Kulikov, a lawyer and buyer of electronic products for X5 Retail Group NV, Russia’s largest supermarket chain. “If you see two businessmen at lunch in Moscow, they’ll both have iPhones on the table.”
The evolution from web-surfing, touch-screen gadget to status symbol has been a boon for Peter Aloisson. The jeweler sold a diamond-studded iPhone encased in white gold to a Russian businessman in March for 120,000 euros and is working on a 500,000-euro ($783,000) version that may go to another Russian client.
“There is no doubt that Russia, when it comes to luxury items, is by far the best marketplace,” Aloission, 47, said last week from his studio in Vienna. “More and more Russian customers visit us here in Austria,” said Aloissen, who started customizing handsets 10 years ago.
Notable users include President-elect Dmitry Medvedev, billionaire Alexander Mamut and Boris Yeltsin Jr., grandson of the former president, according to the newspaper Kommersant. Medvedev’s spokeswoman declined to comment.
Murtazin says about 20,000 iPhones arrive in Russia each month.
“They arrive in suitcases,” Murtazin said. “Practically every flight from the U.S. brings new iPhones.”
Apple, the world’s biggest buyer of flash memory chips, hasn’t said how many of the 4 million iPhones sold through Jan. 15 were unlocked to work on unauthorized networks. Analysts including Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray & Co. put the figure at 1 million. About 400,000 of those are in China, CNET News reported in February, citing market research firm In-Stat.
Apple, which sells the 8-gigabyte version for $399, gets an undisclosed cut of monthly wireless fees for the device, released in June, and has deals with carriers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Ireland and Austria. Users have hacked the handset to modify its software so it works on other carriers’ networks, depriving Apple of fees.
Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook said in March that the number of unlocked iPhones used in countries where Apple hasn’t started selling them is a sign of “great demand.” Spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment on the use of the product in the former Soviet Union.
The iPhone’s popularity in Russia, home to 101 billionaires by Finans Magazine’s count, is an irritation for retailers including Yevroset, the country’s largest mobile-phone chain, whose sales are suffering because it can’t stock the product.
“The phones aren’t certified on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Yevroset co-owner and Chariman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, said in a telephone interview. “Import duties and value-added taxes aren’t paid.” Those taxes equal 24 percent of a phone’s retail price on average, said Murtazin of Mobile Research Group, which advises VimpelCom and MegaFon, two of Russia’s three national mobile operators.
Russia’s economy has expanded about 7 percent annually since President Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000, boosting average wages sixfold and spurring demand for mobile phones and other imported goods. Handset sales rose 10 percent last year to a record 32.5 million units, according to closely held Yevroset, which reported revenue of $5.6 billion in the period.
“In Russia, people want to stand out, even a person with a small income will find the money to buy expensive accessories,” said Sergei Savin, senior analyst at technology research firm J’son & Partners in Moscow.
The prevalence of the iPhone underscores Russia’s attitude toward licensed goods, which the U.S. has made a sticking point in approving the country’s 14-year quest to join the World Trade Organization. Hackers and sellers of contraband products openly advertise on the Internet.
“You can basically do whatever you like,” said Ivan, 21, after he unlocked an iPhone in a basement office he shares with two friends in one of the capital’s most expensive neighborhoods. “We’re not liable for anything because officially it’s not here,” said Ivan, who declined to give his last name.
That doesn’t worry Maxim Mokeyev, executive director at Evans Property Services, a real estate broker in Moscow.
“It’s radically different from anything else out there,” said Mokeyev, who taught himself how to unlock the phone with special software. “The one I bought in New York took me two hours,” Mokeyev said, pointing to his handset. “The second one I did, for a friend, took about 20 minutes.”
Meanwhile, the online technology journal CNews reported Monday that Apple intends to expand its presence in Russia in the near future.  The report said that the online shop iTunes Store would be available to Russian users from April 21st. Yevgeny Chichvarkin, Yevroset’s owner, was quoted as saying that “the given step proves Apple’s interest in legal iPhone sales in Russia.” 
According to CNews, billboard teasers designed in the iPhone colors appeared in Moscow on Friday. The billboards display the inscription ‘iSkoro 21.04.2008’ (iSoon 21.04.2008) against a black background, similar to the iPhone packaging.

TITLE: MTS Unveils Plans For 3G Network As Operators Focus on St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MTS (Mobile TeleSystems), one of the largest cellular operators in Russia, will invest $100 million into the development of its 3G (Third Generation Technology) network in St. Petersburg this year, the company’s top managers said Saturday at a press conference.
“Obviously, St. Petersburg will get a 3G network sooner than Moscow, and this network will be of a higher quality. By the time we launch our first 3G station in Moscow, in St. Petersburg we will cover practically 100 percent of the territory,” Interfax cited Leonid Melamed, president of MTS, as saying Saturday at the press briefing in St. Petersburg.
MTS has already begun constructing 3G stations in St. Petersburg. During 2008-2010, the company plans to invest about 10 billion rubles ($424 million) into development in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
In addition to 3G stations, the funds will be spent on improving the existing GSM network and quality of services. By the end of this year, the number of GSM stations operated by MTS in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast should increase by 16 percent.
MTS is licensed to provide 3G services in Russia, Uzbekistan and Armenia. Along with its subsidiaries, the company serves about 84 million subscribers in Russia and the CIS. The company operates GSM networks across 83 regions of Russia, as well as in Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
“The investment announced by MTS is comparable to investment from MegaFon and Beeline. Expenses on 3G networks will be the same for any operator, as they use the same technology,” said Eldar Murtazin, leading expert at Mobile Research Group.
“This investment does not indicate the desire of the operator to promote or speed up its project. It’s an objective necessity resulting from the geography of the city’s districts,” Murtazin said.
Other national cellular operators including Megafon and Vimpelcom’s Beeline also plan to develop 3G networks in St. Petersburg.
All the cellular operators are focusing on the St. Petersburg market, Murtazin explained, because in Moscow, the frequencies necessary for 3G technology are used by the military.
“In Moscow the frequencies are closed. The military bodies would not give them up, which makes 3G projects in Moscow very expensive,” Murtazin said.
Murtazin said that advanced technology and its benefits, including higher data transfer speeds, are not regarded as significant advantages by subscribers.
“There is no mobile technology that customers perceive as having any advantages over other technologies. There is a limited number of people who would subscribe to 3G specifically to use Internet traffic, but that’s all,” Murtazin said.
However, he suggested that investment into 3G could pay off in 5-6 years.
Despite the difficulties that 3G has encountered in Europe, the experts are optimistic on this technology.
Sergei Soldatenkov, general director of MegaFon, admitted when speaking about the 3G project that “in Europe such operators have not been particularly successful.”
“Voice transmission still accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of the profits of operators in Europe. But we are seeing a high demand for the Internet, high-speed data transmission and file downloading and mobile commerce,” Soldatenkov said.

TITLE: Microsoft Proposes Discount For Media
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Microsoft has announced that it will sell its software to less wealthy media outlets at discount prices in an effort to help them avoid pressure from the authorities based on the possession and use of pirated programs. 
The move is part of a joint project between Microsoft Rus and the Russian Union of Journalists to achieve greater transparency and prevent persecution of the media. 
“The special offer price is for a limited time only and applies to products most used by the media,” Microsoft Rus spokesman Yevgeny Danilov said in an e-mailed statement Friday. 
Beginning April 2, around 15,000 Russian media outlets, out of a total of about 20,000, have been able to buy the software at a 40 percent discount, union general secretary Igor Yakovenko said Friday. 
Danilov called this a “nonprofit project” for Microsoft, which he said had its own reasons for trying to help the media. 
“Our main interest with the project is to see that the newspapers that are published today be still published tomorrow, because we read them,” Danilov said. 
Yakovenko said his union had spent eight months negotiating the project and the price with the company. 
Nineteen criminal cases have been opened against journalists in Russia on charges of using unlicensed software in the last nine months, according to the union’s data. 
“Today we have to secure journalists to the maximum degree from all possible shadow schemes,” Yakovenko said Friday, in a reference to the use of pirated software by the media. 
Activists for the defense of journalists’ rights said the use of pirated software by Russian mass media was widespread because the media outlets couldn’t afford to buy licensed programs. As a result, it is a convenient pretext on which the authorities can persecute news outlets offering critical coverage. 
“I am sure that over a half of all Russian mass media offices use pirated software,” Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. 
One journalist familiar with the problems this can cause is Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, the former editor of Novaya Gazeta in Samara who is currently on trial for using pirated software in his newspaper’s office. 
“We are slowly starting to make attempts to live in a civilized country,” Kurt-Adzhiyev said of the Microsoft project. 
But he voiced concerns that law enforcement agencies might conduct a wave of raids on media offices to try to catch them before they were able to stop using the pirated software. 
Police raided the Nizhny Novgorod and Samara editions of Novaya Gazeta, an outspoken opposition newspaper, in search of pirated software last year, confiscating office computers and paralyzing the papers’ work. 
Unlicensed copies of programs such as Microsoft Office are on sale at outdoor markets and kiosks throughout the country, at a fraction of the price of authentic copies. 
The International Intellectual Property Alliance, a coalition of seven industry groups, estimated in August 2007 that piracy rates in Russia ranged from 65 percent to 80 percent — figures that some industry specialists say may be on the conservative side.

TITLE: BlackBerry Available For First Time in Russia
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — VimpelCom became the first operator to introduce the BlackBerry service to the country, selling a contract to the Russian unit of the world’s second-largest cigarette maker, British American Tobacco. 
VimpelCom said Friday that its customers would use the 8700g model, a wireless handheld device produced and sold worldwide by Canada’s Research In Motion. VimpelCom, the country’s No. 2 mobile operator, is in talks with 40 more potential corporate clients, spokeswoman Yekaterina Osadchaya said. 
Its main rival, Mobile Telesystems, is about to start offering the service to 30 corporate clients working in Russia, spokeswoman Yelena Kokhanovskaya said. 
In October 2007, MTS launched the BlackBerry in Ukraine, first among the twelve members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. 
The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device available on about 300 networks in 120 countries. It supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, messaging, web browsing and other wireless communication services. 
Russian operators received approval from regulators, including the Federal Security Service, to begin shipping and operating the BlackBerry smartphones in November. 
Previously, corporate clients in Russia had been able to use the BlackBerry devices only with foreign SIM cards via roaming.

TITLE: NATO Closes Ranks
AUTHOR: Financial Times
TEXT: President George W. Bush did not get everything he wanted from NATO’s summit that ended Friday in Bucharest, but he got quite a bit. Washington secured alliance support for U.S. missile-defense plans in Europe — implying agreement that there is a threat from Iran that warrants the scheme. He did not win an immediate offer for Ukraine and Georgia of Membership Action Plans — the final stage before alliance membership — but got a pledge that the two countries’ destinies lie with NATO and a promise to look again at the question before the year is out. 
He also won some kudos for supporting independent European Union defense capabilities. This softening of long-standing U.S. resistance to the concept was a welcome gesture in response to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s symbolic pledge to return France to the heart of NATO’s military structures. 
The old worry about duplication of military effort between the EU and NATO is hardly relevant when Europe’s forces are so stretched anyway. 
Moscow is deeply hostile to any idea that Ukraine and Georgia become NATO members. The question is whether this anger, likely to be softened only somewhat by the postponement of the membership action invitations, will outweigh in President Vladimir Putin’s mind the considerable benefits of a security deal with the United States. 
It should not. 
Russia can at the very least win a right to consultation over every stage of the allies’ plans for missile defense. At the most, it can take up what appears to be a serious offer from Washington to become a part of the system. 
It can also lock in negotiations over a legally binding treaty commitment from the United States for further cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both powers to replace the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that runs out at the end of next year. And it can do this with the devil it knows — George W. Bush. 
Putin’s successor, Dmitry Medvedev, may also want to ponder whether bellicose threats to Russia’s neighbors — as well as members of the alliance — have really redounded to Moscow’s strategic benefit. 
Headlines aside, this posture has unified NATO around U.S. plans for missile defense and eventual membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Worries about Russian belligerence also make Poles and Czechs more willing to have missile-defense sites on their territory: They want to lock the United States into the defense of Europe. As Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary-general, has remarked, the more belligerent Moscow becomes, the easier his job is to keep the alliance united. 
So NATO has ended its summit more united than might have been expected even a few days ago. For that the alliance members have to thank, more than anyone else, Vladimir Putin. 

This comment appeared as an editorial in the Financial Times.

The Washington Post 
The NATO alliance has a way of patching its internal quarrels by doing just enough to avoid schism or collapse. Last week’s summit meeting in Bucharest was no exception. Faced with a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan — and a threat by Canada to withdraw its forces from a southern battle front — the alliance scraped together a bare minimum of fresh troops, including a battalion from France. The deal allows NATO to tell itself that it is rising to the Afghan challenge, despite the continued unwillingness of many of its members to commit soldiers to combat and the growing skepticism of some about the mission as a whole. 
This lowest-common-denominator solution, while understandable from an association of 26 democracies, falls well short of what is needed to win — as opposed to forestall defeat — in Afghanistan. Even with the additional troops, and 3,500 more Marines being sent on what is supposed to be a temporary assignment, U.S. and NATO commanders will still be short of the forces they say they need to defeat the Taliban. A growing part of the force doing the actual fighting will be American; the fresh French troops, for example, will deploy to more tranquil eastern Afghanistan so that American units there can head to the south. The risk is that a few months from now, the Taliban, as well as NATO, will have grown incrementally stronger. 
Debate over the alliance’s second major mission — expansion to the formerly Communist countries of Europe — produced a similarly muddled result. Invitations for membership were issued to Croatia and Albania, but Macedonia was blocked by Greece’s unreasonable demand that it first change its name. Meanwhile, requests by the newly democratic states of Ukraine and Georgia for Membership Action Plans, bureaucratic vehicles for guiding countries into the Western fold, were deferred at the insistence of Germany and France. The Europeans were intimidated by the bluster of President Vladimir Putin, who has sought to turn Ukraine and Georgia into Kremlin colonies and who declared that their NATO membership would cross a “red line.” Yet a strong if belated push by U.S. President George W. Bush produced at least a rhetorical crossing of that line: NATO’s communique said, “We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” 
With luck that statement will become a mandate that will bolster Bush’s legacy as a president who oversaw, and pushed for, the democratization of southeastern Europe. But it’s unfortunate that the president chose to prioritize that cause behind winning NATO’s support for missile defense — which was the main concession made by allied governments to the outgoing president. It may be that some time in the next decade Iran will deploy nuclear missiles capable of reaching Europe or the United States, and that the interceptor system proposed for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic will have advanced beyond its current technical status as unfinished and unproven. For now, it looks like a premature and possibly unnecessary expenditure of financial and diplomatic capital. 

This comment appeared as an editorial in The Washington Post.

TITLE: Lessons for Bush in the Afghan War
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: War, runs a Russian joke, is a means by which Americans learn geography. Funny — but also very much on target. Having discovered the location of Afghanistan and Iraq, President George W. Bush seems eager to learn more about Iran.
Actually, it is a rehashing of an old joke that made the rounds after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The joke featured a young Russian soldier writing home from Prague and proudly informing his mother that he would soon get to see other European capitals. At the time of the Iron Curtain, war was the only way for thousands of young Russian men to travel anywhere beyond the Soviet border.
Soviet leaders chose to forego further military aggression in Europe but got themselves embroiled in a nasty guerrilla war in Afghanistan — with disastrous consequences both for that long-suffering nation and for communism. Afghanistan provided an important contribution to the demise of the Soviet Union. It exacerbated the moral blight that was eating Soviet society from within and undermined the already-shaky Soviet economy. A decade after Soviet paratroopers took Kabul, Russia’s East European empire disintegrated and soon thereafter the Soviet giant itself collapsed.
Bush’s war in Iraq may become the means by which Americans will learn economics, too. True, the U.S. economy is far steadier than the Soviet economy ever was. It is, in fact, a formidable machine built on solid principles, one that nimbly adapts to changing circumstances, channeling and rewarding the energies and talents of the country’s population.
The Iraq war probably was not directly responsible for the current economic crisis. Various bubbles starting to pop in financial markets around world — including the housing bubble in the United States that served as the lightning rod for the crisis — don’t have much to do with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, the war exacerbated global economic problems. Chaos and radicalization in Iraq, and the threat of contagion elsewhere in the Middle East, boosted oil prices. Washington’s aggressive stance, its hubristic foolishness in trying to remake the world in its own image and the extraordinary incompetence its leaders demonstrated in conducting the war added to the weakness of the dollar in currency markets.
The money to wage the war, totaling $700 billion over the past five years, was mainly borrowed from China, Russia and other countries running current account surpluses. The federal budget deficit, meanwhile, added to the already massive global credit overhang.
Foreign military adventures inevitably stir nationalism and jingoism at home. U.S. authorities are becoming serious about expelling some 12 million illegal aliens working in the United States. Since this portion of the work force is both large and vital for the health of the economy, the anti-immigrant backlash, even if implemented piecemeal, could prove disastrous. Because of the war in Iraq, the United States is entering a potentially nasty recession with a weakened economy saddled with federal debt and with its flexibility severely constrained. The country may prove almost as susceptible to economic turmoil as the Soviet Union was in the mid-1980s.
War may become the means by which Americans will learn history too. The seeds of economic problems are being sown by the Bush administration, but their bitter harvest will be reaped by Bush’s successor, whoever he or she may be. The next president may no longer be able to right the situation, just as Mikhail Gorbachev couldn’t avert an economic debacle, despite cutting and running in Afghanistan and bringing all troops home by 1989.
There is something else the next occupant of the White House should bear in mind. Gorbachev, not his predecessors and their foolish policies, ended up getting the blame for the Soviet Union’s demise and all the attendant economic woes.

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

TITLE: Putin’s Mixed Signals Sidelining Medvedev
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Frolov
TEXT: Many in the West believe that Vladimir Putin has become a dictator and has found in Dmitry Medvedev a convenient seat holder while he himself will rule as prime minister once he steps down. I do not think this is Putin’s intention. But appearances matter, and they might be misleading. Indeed, some of Putin’s recent actions could be viewed as proof of his desire to remain not only influential but dominant after he formally transfers power to Medvedev on May 7.
Apart from turning both the State Duma and the presidential elections into a referendum on Putin’s Plan, Putin has acted and spoken publicly in ways that have reinforced the impression that he intends to remain the country’s ultimate decision maker.
At a news conference in February, Putin outlined a much more sweeping portfolio for the prime minister than for the president, and he hinted at his intention to serve as prime minister as long as Medvedev is president, ignoring the constitutional provision that the prime minister serves at the pleasure of the president.
Putin’s latest spurt of activity in foreign policy — attending the NATO summit in Bucharest and inviting U.S. President George W. Bush to Sochi — also creates the impression that Medvedev is being consulted and informed but some key foreign policy decisions are not being entrusted to him as they should be.
The feeling of Putin’s continued dominance was only reinforced by last week’s decision to rush his confirmation as prime minister through the Duma on May 8, a day the Duma was not even planning to meet.
But is it really Putin’s intention to perpetuate his dominance?
Tom Graham, a former top Russia adviser to Bush and now a senior director for Kissinger & Associates, argues otherwise. In a speech last week at Johns Hopkins University, Graham said Russia’s future was open and pointed to Putin and Medvedev’s publicly stated goal of building “a stable form of dual power in Russia, with both a strong president and a strong prime minister, each with a more or less defined sphere of competence, each as a kind of a check on the power of the other.”
“Were it to succeed,” Graham said, “it would mark a watershed in Russian political tradition, and it would pave the way for a more open, pluralistic system, one that could eventually produce a more transparent and less restrictive, but not destabilizing, competition for power. It might serve to depersonalize and institutionalize power in Russia and thereby create a genuinely new configuration of power.”
We will be able to better judge that when we see Medvedev’s first appointments on May 7.

Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and public relations company.

TITLE: Working to Clear the Air
AUTHOR: By Risto Penttila
TEXT: These are the best of times; these are the worst of times. Charles Dickens’ famous words describe the present state of European Union-Russia relations perfectly. There has never been as much trade and business between Europe and Russia. Yet political tension has not been this intense since the days of the Soviet Union. 
At present, the EU and Russia are engaged in a waiting game. Brussels hopes that President-elect Dmitry Medvedev will turn out to be a pragmatic liberal with a soft spot for Europe. Moscow knows that it is not Brussels it needs to worry about. It is much more profitable to deal with Germany, France and other EU member states on an individual basis. Neither side is doing anything for fear of showing its cards. 
If Russia and Europe want to take their relations to a new level, they must look beyond the potential membership of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. They must turn their geopolitical proximity into an advantage. There is no better way to do it than concentrating on climate. 
Moscow and Brussels should launch a European-Russian Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Europe wants to be a global leader on climate. Russia’s status as a born-again great power rests on the sensible use of its energy resources. The new partnership should be modeled on the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, launched in 2005. Australia, China, Japan, India, South Korea and the United States were founding members, with Canada joining last year. At first, the partnership was met with skepticism. Now, most experts admit that it is a crucially important complement to the United Nations-sponsored negotiations on climate. A binding treaty at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009 is a must, but it is not enough. Other innovative models should also be used. 
Adopting the Asia-Pacific Partnership as a model would solve three huge problems. First, it would move energy from the area of high politics and prestige into the realm of concrete results. At present, European and Russian approaches to climate and energy questions are dominated by vision statements, declarations and summits. The Asia-Pacific model is based on a bottom-up approach. Work is divided among task forces dealing with questions such as production of aluminum and cement and cleaner fossil energy. 
Second, the new European-Russian partnership would engage business in a new way. At present, business leaders from Russia and Europe meet in the context of the EU-Russian Round Table of Industrialists. They draft policy recommendations and lobby politicians. A more business-oriented approach with emphasis on best practices would help to circumvent bureaucratic and political obstacles. 
Third, a European-Russian partnership would be an informal complement to the existing strategic one, which produces tons of paper and ever more frustration. It is a typical example of process over substance. The new partnership would not be based on a treaty. It would have no binding targets but would concentrate on pragmatic solutions. The emphasis would be on developing, deploying and transferring cleaner and more efficient technologies. It would provide a gush of fresh air to the current stale arrangement. 
Would this prevent Russia cutting the gas supply? There is no guarantee against Moscow turning off the taps for political reasons — even if it has not to date used the gas weapon against the EU. The plan will not remove the danger. But it will facilitate integration of European and Russian energy markets. One can but hope that the more integration there is, the less likely Russia is to use gas as a political tool. 
The EU’s common energy policy has until now been a pipedream. The proposed partnership will not stop member states from pursuing bilateral policies such as the Baltic pipeline from Russia to Germany. But it will create a strong incentive for companies and countries to link their policies to the common framework. If they work within the framework, they will have access to political leaders in Europe and Russia. If they work outside it, political leaders are less likely to listen. In energy, giving up political access is not a smart way to operate. 
Trusting Medvedev to do the right thing is ill-advised. “Trust is good, control is better,” as Josef Stalin used to say. It is clear that Europe cannot control Russia’s development. But it can try to influence it by creating a proper framework for action. 

Risto Penttila is director of EVA, the Finnish business and policy forum. He contributed this comment to the Financial Times.

TITLE: Tracing Fault Lines Through the Caucasus Mountains
AUTHOR: By Hugh Barnes
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The snowcapped mountains of the Caucasus, which stretch for more than 1,000 kilometers between the Caspian and the Black Sea, owe their existence to a geological collision. Twenty-five million years ago, the landmasses of Europe and Asia crashed into each other, pushing the edges skyward. In “The Ghost of Freedom,” a new history of the region, Georgetown University professor Charles King describes a recurring pattern of upheaval and confrontation. He begins with that prehistoric clash of continents and ends with Russia’s recent military adventures in Chechnya, which have left more than 75,000 people dead and several times that number homeless.
Journalists have a variety of explanations for the apparently senseless violence. Some accuse the Russians of racism or corruption. Others blame the ungovernable culture of mountain tribes. The merit of King’s approach is to see the Caucasus and its history as a whole. In scholarly but readable prose, he shows how the mountainous landscape and its strategic location at the crossroads of East and West led to a multiplicity of political, cultural and economic influences. Invaders and traders came from all points of the compass: the Sarmatians, Khazars and Mongols from the north; the Sassanids, Arabs and Seljuks from the south.
The result was an extraordinary mixture of peoples and languages. Even in ancient times, the region was known as one of unparalleled human diversity. Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Strabo spoke of the bewildering number of interpreters required to do business in its markets. Arab geographers simply labeled the Caucasus the jabal al-alsun or “mountain of tongues,” while the American explorer George Kennan marveled in the 1870s that “the Caucasian mountaineers [were] made up of fragments of almost every race and people in Europe and Western Asia, from the flat-faced Mongol to the regular-featured Greek.”
Kennan’s language may seem quaint, but its racism highlights one of the more delicious semantic ironies of our times. The 18th-century German anthropologist Johann Blumenbach, who was responsible for naming the white race “Caucasian,” did so at least partly because he thought that the Caucasus region produced “a most beautiful race of men,” and that they were, so to speak, the ideal of the white race. Nowadays, of course, most ordinary Russians take a xenophobic view of the dark-complexioned Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus republics. Indeed they are known disparagingly as the chyorniye, or blacks, of Russia. The war in Chechnya and the hostage-takings at a Moscow theater and a Beslan school have deepened a centuries-old dislike that precedes the days when the local mafia in the Caucasus was run by a Georgian called Dzhugashvili (or Stalin) who would struggle to make it past today’s stop-and-search patrols.
Russia has claimed dominion over the Caucasus since the days of its imperial expansion southward, which began in 1552 with Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of the khanate of Astrakhan, a relic of Genghis Khan’s empire. But it wasn’t until the annexation of Georgia at the turn of the 19th century that the tsars obtained a foothold south of the mountains. In 1818, the Russian general Alexei Yermolov founded Grozny (meaning “terrible” or “awe-inspiring”) as a fortress to subdue the Chechens. His brutal campaign was hailed as the “drumbeat Enlightenment” by the playwright Alexander Griboyedov, one of many writers to serve in this alien land. “We have just crossed the Terek River,” wrote the wife of another Russian official, “and we are now out of Europe.”
Her map of the Caucasus was very different from the one we know today. No such place as Armenia had existed since antiquity. The word “Azerbaijan” referred to a northwestern corner of Iran. The exotic nomenclature of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan was largely a preserve of Russia’s imperial strategists for whom the conquest of the Caucasus was merely a stepping-stone to the riches of Persia and India beyond.
It was Alexander Pushkin who reinvented the Caucasus as a domain of Alpine vistas and romantic ennui. King takes his title from the poet’s 1822 imitation of Byron, “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” the story of a young aristocrat who had, ironically, abandoned St. Petersburg in search of the “ghost of freedom.” The poem bestowed upon the Caucasus the status of a Russian tourist attraction. It was as if Yermolov’s harsh repression had secured Chechnya and Dagestan as a new realm for pleasure trips. The traveler Ilya Radozhitsky even went so far as to proclaim Georgia an “Italy” of peace and tranquility, despite the predatory tribes.
Nevertheless, King writes informatively about Russia’s failure to quell a series of mid-19th century rebellions, notably by the Circassians — who refer to themselves as Adyghe — and by the legendary warrior Islam Shamil, who fought the Murid Wars against Russia for almost quarter of a century until he was undone by the defection, in 1851, of his second-in-command, Hadji Murat, a figure immortalized by Leo Tolstoy. Four years earlier, the hill folk of Dagestan — the word means “mountain country” — moved down onto the steppe after tsarist forces burned their villages to the ground. On the banks of the Terek they built a new settlement called Tulatovo after its founder Beslan Tulatov. A century later, Tulatovo was renamed Beslan. The uprisings continued into the Soviet period, the last in 1942 prompting Stalin to deport the entire Chechen nation, together with the neighboring Ingush, to Kazakhstan.
King has written books about the Black Sea and the former Soviet republic of Moldova, the latter certainly a neglected subject. The finest chapter in “The Ghost of Freedom” deals with the armed conflicts in the late 1980s over Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, over South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, and over Chechnya in Russia, that helped to bring an end to Soviet power. Unfortunately, as Tony Wood recently observed in his polemical study, “Chechnya: The Case for Independence,” the fall of communism heralded the return of an old struggle. In the perception of Islamist radicals, the real Iron Curtain was not the one that separated Eastern and Western Europe but rather the one that cut off Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia from their co-religionists in the Muslim heartlands. To them, in other words, the fall of the Soviet Union did not mark the end of the Cold War so much as the beginning of a potential Muslim reconquest.
The latest conflict in Chechnya is best seen as two very different wars. The first, dubbed “Yeltsin’s Vietnam,” forced Russia the nuclear superpower into a humiliating withdrawal in 1996, in the face of sustained guerrilla attacks. Timely explosions in several Russian cities three years later, and rebel skirmishes in Dagestan led President Vladimir Putin to declare an all-out second war on Chechnya. But where Boris Yeltsin’s blundering was at least motivated by a wish to avert Chechen independence, Putin’s strategy was to manipulate the fears and prejudices of ordinary Russians. Prejudice thrives on a lack of information. Yet unflinching coverage by Anna Politkovskaya and a few other brave journalists in the North Caucasus exposed the horrors of war, which King places in a wider geographical and historical context.

Hugh Barnes is the Russia editor of openDemocracy.

TITLE: Caucasus Skiing Idyll the Olympics Forgot
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: DOMBAI, Karachayevo-Cherkessia — High up on the slopes of this idyllic mountain retreat, it is easy to forget that the ski resort of Dombai lies at the heart of the volatile North Caucasus.
The resort is struggling to throw off the association with the troubles of neighboring republics, and foreign and Moscow-based investors are still wary of committing to the predominantly Muslim Caucasus republic.
Much of the investment now coming into Dombai, therefore, comes from local investors and local residents, analysts say. Last fall, the village was engulfed by construction, as investors sought to get new hotels ready for the approaching ski season.
Yet Dombai is still a long way away from a modern ski resort, as was shown during a recent visit to its slopes when construction cranes stood silently in the center of the village.
At the bottom of the slopes, the new gondola lift — the centerpiece of the resort’s facelift — shuddered to a halt. Ten minutes later, it started again, and a few more skiers boarded. Again, it ground to a halt.
By 10:30 a.m., the gondola lift had ferried people to the next stage, but the new six-seater chairlift that takes skiers to the top of the mountain stood idle.
“Half an hour ago, they said they would open in half an hour,” one skier muttered. “And now they are saying they will open in another half an hour.”
By 11 a.m., the lift had still not opened.
“When are you opening?” one skier asked.
Today,” came the nonchalant reply from one of the lift attendants.
This is skiing, Dombai-style. The slopes are largely unpisted, run markers nonexistent, yet skiers from all over Russia flock to the resort year after year.
“This place is like a magnet. It draws you back time after time,” said Zhenya, a Muscovite in his 40s who is a regular visitor to Dombai.
Dombai, which attracts about 5,000 skiers per day during peak season, first emerged as a draw for Soviet tourists in the early 1970s. It has since staked its claim as the country’s top ski resort.
Tucked in a valley just a few miles from the border with the Georgian breakaway republic of Abkhazia, Dombai is framed by the towering peaks of the Caucasus range. These are some of the highest mountains in Europe, with Mount Elbrus over the valley to the east standing at 5,642 meters, while more than 10 other peaks in this range outstrip Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s highest mountain.
The local residents, who call themselves gortsy, or mountain people, are charming and hospitable. This is a community where shopkeepers will give customers too much change rather than too little, where tourists and locals will exchange tall tales over cognac on the slopes, and cafe proprietors will serve up drinks on the house after a brief exchange of pleasantries.
But it is also an area on which Moscow trains a watchful eye, thanks in part to its proximity to Abkhazia, and the North Caucasus republics of Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya and North Ossetia to the east. In the summer, hikers are required to obtain border permits to walk in the mountains beyond the village, while Federal Security Service officials are overtly suspicious of foreigners who make the trip.
By North Caucasus standards, Karachayevo-Cherkessia is considered relatively stable, but it has not always been so. It is home to the so-called Karachai jamaat, members of which were implicated by the Russian courts in the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk.
The republic has also seen major riots. The first outbreak of protests came in 1999 after a disputed local election. Then, in 2004 protesters ransacked the headquarters of the republic’s president, Mustafa Batdiyev, over allegations that his son-in-law had murdered seven business rivals. A year later, more protests erupted over a controversial land transfer away from the republic’s tiny Abazin minority.
Given the clan allegiances that still dominate all walks of life here, it is the regional elite who pour in the bulk of investment, residents and analysts said.
“There is a certain instability connected with the [republic’s] ruling political elites,” said Nikolai Petrov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “The whole republic is a concern, because all of these ethnic groups are related.”
Added to the mix is the potential for the instability in neighboring Abkhazia to spill over the border, where many of the republic’s citizens have family.
“Compared with three years ago, of course the business climate has changed,” said Natalya Borisova, deputy head of the National Agency for Direct Investment, which works closely with government and business to attract investment into the North Caucasus.
“There is the feeling now that you can travel here without danger, and that you can work more effectively. There is a real feeling that a lot has changed in this republic,” Borisova said Friday by telephone from Cherkessk, the republic’s capital, where a meeting of senior officials and business leaders was taking place to discuss projects in the Southern Federal District.
“It’s absolutely safe, in my view, and particularly so in Dombai,” she added.
President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the Southern Federal District, Grigory Rapota, said at Friday’s meeting that there was “a serious lack of investment” in the area and called for efforts to tackle poor infrastructure, transport links and energy supply as the government gears up for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Interfax reported.
Putin, a skiing enthusiast, is often photographed on Russian ski slopes, but it rankles with some Dombai residents that he has not visited the resort during his time in office.
“You know how many times Putin has been here to visit in eight years? Not once!” said Hassan, a ski instructor in his 60s, who declined to give his last name.
Instead, Moscow has chosen the greenfield site of Krasnaya Polyana nearer Sochi to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, a development which will see billions of dollars of investment. The government has earmarked 8.5 billion rubles ($356 million) for investment into transportation infrastructure in the Sochi area this year alone.
Some Dombai residents feel passed over, arguing that the village could host some of the Olympic events as it already has some of the ski facilities in place.
But it is not only a question of pride. By choosing the Krasnaya Polyana site, the government has denied the North Caucasus resort a chunk of the huge investment expected to flood into the area around Sochi.
Some residents are sanguine about the decision, however.
“Dombai is great for mountain skiing,” said Hassan, as he sipped a cognac at the Snow White cafe, situated halfway up the slopes. “but it doesn’t have the space for the other events, such as a marathon and biathlon.”
Three years ago, Paul Mathews, president of Canadian mountain resort planning firm Ecosign, helped to work out an ambitious redevelopment for Dombai. That plan envisioned a village area with 6,200 beds, a pedestrian street and underground parking.
According to Mathews, the republic’s government was able to obtain supplemental federal funds to upgrade the resort’s aging ski lifts. He proposed at the time that the local authorities give developers an ultimatum over unfinished projects — complete them within a year, or give up on them, he said.
While hotels here have sprung up at alarming speed, the development plan has barely gone further, and the village is a long way from its more established European and Western ski areas.
“[President Batdiyev] said that’s what they [were] going to do, but the republic really needed to take control of what was going on,” Mathews said by telephone from Canada. “Nobody owns any land, they can build wherever they want.”
Some villagers resent the rapid development, arguing that it has affected the feel of the place, particularly with the influx of outside laborers. Some Dombai residents have accused the migrant workers of petty thefts, alcoholism and a slovenly approach to work.
Foreign investors are starting to arrive, however.
Exim Development Corporation, a company headed by Florida-based businessman Miroslav Aleksic that has invested extensively in Russia and Eastern Europe, is to pump $200 million to $240 million into the development of a five-star hotel complex in the village.
The planners behind the grandiose schemes in Sochi hope that it will put Russia on the ski map, and Putin has already made clear his intentions to introduce an array of initiatives to attract overseas skiers, not least the move to ease visa restrictions by 2014.
“We’re on the cusp of a ski boom,” said James Brooke, who coordinates Sochi Olympics consulting work for real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. “From time to time, skiing really sweeps a country. In Russia, you have the combination of a nation with a long tradition of winter sports and now they have money.”
The hope is some of this investment will spill over into Russia’s other ski resorts, which are scattered over the Caucasus and the Ural mountains.
The development of Sochi will “be a shot in the arm for Dombai,” Brooke said.
But regardless of how much Olympic cash it receives, Hassan, the local ski instructor, has no doubts that the village will continue to thrive.
“Dombai needs no advertisement,” said Hassan, “The wealthy will go to Krasnaya Polyana, the middle class will continue to come here.”

TITLE: Davydenko Finds Fame for Right Reason
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KEY BISCAYNE, Florida — Nikolai Davydenko began the Sony Ericsson Open in a supporting role, competing on smaller courts while the likes of Roger Federer and Andy Roddick slugged it out in the stadium.
But on Sunday, it was Davydenko holding the championship trophy to cheers from a sellout crowd. He beat Rafael Nadal 6-4, 6-2 and became the first Russian man to win Key Biscayne.
“For me it’s mostly crazy,” he said.
In recent months, Davydenko has been best known for an ATP investigation into heavy wagering on a match he lost last August at an obscure tournament in Poland. He retired in the third set, citing a foot injury, and says he did nothing wrong.
He has accused the ATP of dragging out the investigation, but it proved not to be a distraction at Key Biscayne.
“It’s not every day in my mind,” he said. “It’s in my mind if you ask me about this... I don’t think about the investigation. It should be my lawyer thinking, and my manager.”
There was no question about his effort against Nadal. Davydenko broke at love to take the lead for good at 4-3 in the first set, and in the second set he lost only two of 19 points on his serve to pull away.
When the No. 4-seeded Davydenko belted one final forehand winner on championship point, he grinned and shook his fists, then punched the air.
Davydenko overcame a match point in the second round against Ernests Gulbis and became the fourth ATP player in 2008 to win a title after facing match point. He beat Roddick in the semifinals.
“He’s playing unbelievable tennis,” the No. 2-seeded Nadal said. “People like to write more about Roger, about me, about Andy. People outside tennis can think different about Nikolai, but we know he’s a very, very good player.”
Davydenko is ranked fourth and has finished each of the past three years in the top five. But he has yet to reach a Grand Slam final, and the Key Biscayne title was only his second in a Masters Series event.
He also won a U.S. tournament for only the second time, and he laughed when asked if the accomplishment will make him famous.
“Famous? Here? Yes, I would say if I would like to be famous, I need to win tournaments here,” he said. “For beginning of tournaments I don’t want to play on center court. It was good for me to play on court one or grandstand, and to feeling little a bit more confidence.”
Davydenko quickly became comfortable with a new racket model he tried for the first time at Key Biscayne. He used the same racket in all six matches.
“I have only one,” he said. “Surprising I didn’t break a string. Warm up and play match, warm up and play match, every match, and I finish with the racket. I’m going to keep forever this racket.”
In the final, that racket delivered serves at up to 132 miles per hour (212 kilometers per hour), allowing the 5-foot-10 (1.55 meter)-tall Davydenko to win five service games at love. He totaled 19 winners and had only 12 unforced errors, and his penetrating groundstrokes to the corners repeatedly made Nadal hit shots late and wide.
The speedy Davydenko also came forward to win 17 points at the net.
“I can’t play better today, because he played at an unbelievable level,” Nadal said.
Nadal has yet to win a title this year as the tour switches to clay, his favorite surface. He’ll try for his fourth consecutive French Open title beginning next month.
“I think soon I am going to win a title,” Nadal said. “I hope so.”
Davydenko should be a factor on clay, too, as the race tightens atop the men’s rankings.
“Maybe something changes with my tennis here in Miami,” he said. “The clay court season’s coming now, and for me it should be different tennis. Maybe I feel more confidence, because I beat very good guys here.”

TITLE: Zimbabwe Court Delays Poll Ruling Again
AUTHOR: By MacDonald Dzirutwe
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HARARE — Zimbabwe’s High Court said on Monday it has jurisdiction to decide on an opposition bid to force the release of presidential election results, but delayed the case until Tuesday, an opposition lawyer said.
 The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has been trying since Saturday to accelerate release of the results, saying its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai won the election and should be declared president, ending the 28-year rule of Robert Mugabe.
MDC lawyer Alec Muchadehama told reporters the court would rule on Tuesday on whether the case should be heard urgently. “I think ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) just wants to delay this whole thing,” he said.
The court had adjourned the case on Sunday to decide on a ZEC argument that it did not have jurisdiction.
The ZEC is resisting the MDC’s attempt to force the release of the result and Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party wants an announcement of the outcome to be delayed pending a recount.
The opposition says Mugabe is trying to delay the result to give him more time to organize a fight-back after his first electoral defeat, when ZANU-PF lost a parallel parliamentary election.
As the court case continued, Tsvangirai went to South Africa after saying Zimbabwe was on a razor’s edge and appealing for intervention by Pretoria, the United States and Britain.
“Major powers here, such as South Africa, the U.S. and Britain, must act to remove the white-knuckle grip of Mugabe’s suicidal reign and oblige him and his minions to retire,” Tsvangirai wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
But South African President Thabo Mbeki, who failed last year to mediate an end to the Zimbabwe crisis, said at the weekend the post-election situation there was “manageable” and it was not the time for international intervention.
No results have emerged from the presidential vote nine days ago.
ZANU-PF and independent monitors’ projections show Tsvangirai has won the presidential election but will be forced into a runoff vote after failing to win an absolute majority.
ZANU-PF’s strategy to stay in power includes legal challenges to some of the parliamentary results and the mobilization of pro-government militias before any runoff.
The re-emergence of liberation war veterans, often used as political shock troops by Mugabe, has increased concern that he plans a violent response to his election setback.
On Saturday, Tsvangirai accused the 84-year-old former guerrilla leader of “preparing a war on the people.”
The veterans led a wave of violent occupations of white farms as part of a government land redistribution program.
Critics say the land reforms, in which inexperienced farmers and Mugabe cronies took over many farms, is at the centre of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown. It now suffers the world’s worst hyper-inflation at over 100,000 percent.
Responding to reports of fresh farm invasions by the war veterans, Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) chief executive Hendrick Olivier said police had dispersed groups of people “claiming to be war veterans ordering farmers to vacate their farms” in Masvingo province.
“We have also received similar reports from two farms in Centenary. Reports have also been made to the police and we hope they will act as swiftly as they did in Masvingo,” he said.
Agricultural officials say a majority of Zimbabwe’s 4,500 or so white commercial farmers have been forced off their properties since 2000 when Mugabe launched his land reforms.
The state-run Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as saying Zimbabweans should protect their land from former colonizers. It said he made the plea at the funeral of a relative.
Electoral rules say a runoff must be held three weeks after the release of results, meaning the longer the delay the more time Mugabe has to regroup.
Mugabe’s government is widely accused in the West of stealing previous presidential and parliamentary elections, and his removal is regarded by Washington and London as necessary to rebuilding Zimbabwe’s shattered economy.

TITLE: Iraq PM: Militia Must Disband
AUTHOR: By Bushra Juhi
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: BAGHDAD — The prime minister issued his strongest warning yet to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or face political isolation. The Sadrists said Monday a move to ban them from elections would be unconstitutional.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, said two more soldiers died in roadside bombings Sunday, raising the day’s American death toll to at least five. The announcement comes a day before the two top U.S. officials in Iraq are scheduled to brief Congress on prospects for the eventual withdrawal of American troops.
Gunbattles also continued Monday in Baghdad’s main Shiite district of Sadr City, a day after fierce clashes broke out when some 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops began an operation to push deeper into the Mahdi Army’s largest stronghold.
Al-Sadr plans to hold a “million-strong” anti-U.S. demonstration on Wednesday in Baghdad to protest the fifth anniversary of the capture of the Iraqi capital by invading U.S. troops.
With tensions rising, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, told CNN Sunday that al-Sadr’s followers would not be allowed “to participate in the political process or take part in upcoming elections unless they end the Mahdi Army.”
He was referring to provincial elections expected in the fall that are likely to redistribute power in Iraq. The Sadrists have accused al-Maliki’s government and rival parties of trying to diminish their standing ahead of the vote.
The prime minister, who took office in May 2006 with al-Sadr’s support but later broke with the powerful cleric, had in the past repeatedly promised to disband militias but his comments on CNN were the first time he publicly singled out the Mahdi Army.
Senior Sadrist lawmaker Baha al-Aaraji called for calm but said the prime minister had no constitutional right to interfere with the elections.
“The Supreme Electoral Commission is the one to decide, not the prime minister, so the prime minister should not interfere in the work of this commission,” al-Aaraji said Monday at a news conference.
He also called for a restructuring of government security institutions, saying any move to disband militias had to be applied to all political parties as well — a reference to the Badr Brigade of the Sadrists’ main rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which dominates the Iraqi security forces.
“We say that we are with the law, but it has to be applied to all,” al-Aaraji said during a news conference.
Lawmakers and officials involved in the effort to isolate the Sadrists politically have told The Associated Press that the first step would be adding language to a draft election bill banning parties that operate militias from fielding candidates in the provincial balloting due this fall. The government intends to send the draft to parliament within days and hopes to win approval within weeks, they said Sunday.
Such a move risks a violent backlash by the Mahdi Army. But if it succeeds, it could cause a major realignment of Iraq’s political landscape.
The fighting in Sadr City has been the fiercest since al-Sadr ordered a cease-fire a week ago Sunday in a bid to restore calm amid growing anger over a government crackdown against militias in the southern Shiite city of Basra.

TITLE: Millionaire Indulges His Hoop Dream
AUTHOR: By Megan K. Stack
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: VIDNOYE, Moscow Oblast — He can’t keep his backside on the bench, not when the clock is running and one of his stars is dribbling down the lane. He bounds to his feet, frizzy mullet springing crazily around his ears, eyes locked on his girls, Diana, Tina, Sue, the players he lured from the U.S. to catapult his team to greatness.
At the start of the quarter, he sends them onto the court with his ritual, lingering embrace and a pat on the lower back. Like so many of the rich, powerful and shadowy men living large in today’s Russia, Shabtai von Kalmanovic is a man with a colorful, sometimes mysterious past.
He has been linked romantically to Liza Minnelli. He did prison time in Israel, accused of being a Soviet spy. He has amassed what he says is the largest collection of Judaica in Eastern Europe. This is a man who can do just about anything that catches his fancy.
As it turns out, he’s got a thing for basketball, a sport he played growing up in Lithuania. He has dumped millions of dollars into rebuilding Spartak, the franchise he owns, into what is now one of Europe’s best women’s basketball teams.
Kalmanovic cherry-picks the brightest stars from the Women’s National Basketball Association, pays them as much as 10 times more than they earn in the United States, and brings them to Moscow in the WNBA off-season, where they live in luxury and play before halfhearted audiences.
It’s an extreme measure, he acknowledges, but he insists that drastic steps are necessary to awaken a taste for women’s basketball in Russia.
“If they win a game, I feel like a winner,” he says. “To make basketball popular, you need victories. You cannot make a sport popular without winning.”
To spend a night in Kalmanovic’s gym in suburban Moscow is to learn a little something about America, about the miles and time zones that young basketball stars are willing to cross to supplement their incomes and secure their futures beyond the rocky, relatively unglamorous world of the WNBA.
But it’s also a surreal sketch of a booming Russia, where the rich can’t find enough ways to blow their cash. The 60-year-old Kalmanovic is part of a growing band of Russian millionaires investing in sports franchises as vanity projects, jostling to outspend and outplay one another with a patriotic, high-rolling fervor.
Many team owners split the cost with the government. Kalmanovic says he’ll pour at least $7 million into the program this season, roughly half of the team’s budget. The rest will come from the Moscow regional government.
The Russian government seems eager to restore its slumping athletic programs to their Soviet splendor. In recent years, the government has bestowed sports facilities like medals upon Moscow’s suburbs; one outlying town is the home of ice hockey, another is dedicated to soccer, and so on. And like so much else in post-Soviet Russia, athletics has gotten entangled with the massive wealth streaming through the oil- and gas-rich country.
“It’s great when the government is in love with sport,” Kalmanovic says. “But you need, still, some crazy people to do some crazy things that are difficult for journalists and readers to understand. Misunderstanding is the price you pay. So what? So what if people think you’re doing it to show off?”
Besides, he says, what else is he going to do with his money? Invest in oil? Hang out at casinos? He considers his basketball team proof that he’s now matured.
As with much else about Kalmanovic, the origin of his fortune is murky. He says he made his money in construction, putting up buildings in apartheid South Africa’s Bantustans, or black homelands. Published reports that he was tangled up in the diamond industry are false, he insists.
He held on to his fortune through the 5 1/2 years he was imprisoned in Israel, where he was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. Kalmanovic refuses to discuss the case; he claims silence was a condition of his early release. “Before I went to prison, I was too much crazy already,” he says. “Maybe God saved me.”
Twenty years after becoming wealthy through his African venture, Kalmanovic no longer considers himself nouveau riche, and he bridles at the word “oligarch,” with its connotations of corruption and lack of culture.
“I had already years of craziness when I didn’t know which tie to buy and didn’t know which wine to order — I was ordering by price,” he says indignantly. “I was buying a house in the south of France without understanding the location.”
Now he’s using his money to indulge his basketball obsession. Along with the professional team, Kalmanovic has opened a basketball school for youths, which he hopes will churn out top Russian players. His second wife, a onetime Russian basketball star, trains the children.
Nobody is making money off Spartak. On the contrary, it’s better described as an extravagance than a business: Kalmanovic has to pay Russian television to air the games, and they often end up being broadcast in the middle of the night. Nobody even bothers to sell tickets to the games. Too much bureaucracy, Kalmanovic says. The spectators are mostly schoolchildren, soldiers and locals looking for a free night of entertainment.
On this point, the players are defensive. Basketball is different in Russia and the United States, they say, but that doesn’t mean the interest in it is lower.
“You can’t compare the two,” Diana Taurasi, one of the team’s stars, says firmly.
Meanwhile, Kalmanovic says his players are on par with George Michael and Madonna, and he spoils them rotten. A staff of 25 assistants, not counting drivers and housekeepers, caters to their whims. They are chauffeured in Mercedes-Benzes, put up at Europe’s finest hotels and greeted with bouquets at every airport, whether they’ve won or lost. They aren’t allowed to carry their own luggage — they’re women after all, Kalmanovic says.
“If [the players] will go to the game and think, where’s her child or is the TV working at home and where will she eat after and is the flight home booked and will the money arrive on time — if she has any concern other than basketball, I cannot demand the maximum from her,” he says. “I have to take away each and every concern.
“They should be treated like people of art, like stars.”
The women bask in the attention, but it’s the money that lures them to these frigid winters year after year. In Russia there are no salary caps, no rules about perks, no limits to the bonuses the women can collect from their ever-magnanimous owner.
Taurasi, a 25-year-old Chino native and WNBA star, doesn’t like to talk about the money. But she allows that she makes 10 times more than her WNBA salary, which Sports Illustrated last year reported was $49,000.
She and the other women play the WNBA season in the U.S. during the summer and early fall, then travel to Russia for the winter, locking themselves into a grueling cycle of year-round professional ball.
Taurasi and two other WNBA players, Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson, both of whom play for the Seattle Storm, share a gated house with an indoor pool and sauna. Kalmanovic spirits them off to dine at the best restaurants in town, and hands out cash bonuses and impromptu vacations for good play.
“This is our window of opportunity to make money,” says Taurasi, a guard for the Phoenix Mercury, the 2007 WNBA champions. “You look at the other side, when your body starts breaking down . . . you have to look at what you did over the last 12 years, your portfolio.”
“I come here and work every single day. Every penny I take, I earn. I don’t feel bad at all,” Taurasi says.
Sure, she’s heard all the stories about Kalmanovic. About spying for the Soviet Union. About jail. So what, she says.
“I know a lot of people who’ve gone to jail,” Taurasi says with a shrug. She loves Kalmanovic, she says. She calls him Papa.
“We’ve heard a lot of stories. He’s this, he’s that,” she says. 
“Everywhere you go with Shabtai, it’s either going to be a gracious welcome or boos. It’s kind of like Donald Trump in America. How many people like him? Nobody, because he’s got all the money, he’s got everything everybody wants.”
On a recent wintry night, Spartak hosts a team from France in its facility, which is not much bigger than a high school gym. Russian troops, who say they have been ordered to attend, line the stands, hardly bothering to applaud when players sink a basket. Schoolchildren have been bused in too, and leap up and down, hollering for their favorite Spartak players.
When play halts, cheerleaders in knee boots prance onto the floor. Dolled up like strippers, they are bursting out of their tiny strappy tops and wearing sparkly pink miniskirts that don’t cover their bottoms.
After the game, Kalmanovic sits in his private lounge with the mayor of Vidnoye before a spread of fancy food and liquor. Tina Thompson slips into the room, prettied up in a green hoodie, a Chanel bracelet and long, gold necklace.
“My girlfriend!” Kalmanovic exclaims happily, grabbing at Thompson.
“A smart Russian Jew should have a Russian wife and an American girlfriend,” he adds, grinning.
Thompson rolls her eyes a little, smiling with closed lips. “He’s not serious,” she says.
A 33-year-old single mother and player for the Houston Comets, Thompson has come to Russia with her 2-year-old son and mother in tow. She doesn’t even know the name of the town where she’s living, but she knows that she makes more money playing in Russia for a month than she can earn in an entire WNBA season.
“He knew that my comfort level was based on the comfort of my family,” she says of Kalmanovic. 
“They get to travel with us the way we travel. We travel business class, and my mom and Dylan do too. They get the same treatment I do. He understands how much my family means to me.”
Like her teammates, Thompson speaks glowingly of the owner, shrugging off questions about his shady past.
“I don’t know those things to be true or not,” she says. 
“I think if you sit and listen to Shabtai, his stories, you can’t take them to be true or not. I think a lot of them are embellished.”

TITLE: Rebel’s Death Hinders Rescue of Betancourt
AUTHOR: By Andrew Selsky
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOGOTA, Colombia — A French-led mission to free hostage Ingrid Betancourt in Colombia may fail because officials cannot find any rebels to talk to about her release. The insurgents are in hiding, their main contact with the outside world is dead and Interpol has an arrest notice out for a top guerrilla leader.
Only a few years ago, Colombian rebel leaders were easily found in the towns and fields of southern Colombia as they talked peace with the government.
After peace talks with rebels collapsed in 2002, commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, disappeared into the jungle, leaving a bearded, diminutive rebel known as Raul Reyes as their public face.
Reyes was killed on March 1 in a Colombian military raid on a FARC camp across the border in Ecuador that triggered a regional crisis, with Ecuador, backed by Venezuela and Nicaragua, complaining the attack violated its sovereignty.
The raid is now having additional repercussions. By eliminating the channel of contact with the reclusive rebel leadership, it has hamstrung the international mission to save Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who also holds French citizenship and is gravely ill.
The mission mounted by France, Spain and Switzerland is on hold, with a jet sent to help her still sitting in the Colombian capital four days after it arrived.
Reyes had been engaged in hostage talks with Venezuela, France and other countries.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who received rebel-held hostages earlier this year because of his previous efforts at mediation, says he now has no way of reaching the rebel group.
Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba, a Chavez collaborator who this year twice escorted a total of six hostages freed by the FARC into freedom, says she wants to help the French-led mission but lacks contacts.
“All I can say is, as soon as we have a chance to resume contact with someone ... we can work on this subject,” she said Friday.
A new complication arose Friday when Interpol issued a “red notice” for the capture of Rodrigo Granda, known as the FARC’s “foreign minister,” in connection with a kidnapping and killing in Paraguay. As a wanted man, Granda would be unable to travel freely to participate in any prisoner-hostage swap.
Juan Carlos Lecompte, Betancourt’s husband, said the humanitarian mission has had no contact with the FARC.
One possible solution might be the International Committee of the Red Cross, which maintains contacts with the rebels. But Barbara Hintermann, the chief Red Cross delegate in Colombia, told The Associated Press on Saturday her group would consider getting involved only if the FARC and the Colombian government request its assistance.
So far, the rebels have not reached out, Hintermann said.
“We are not involved in that mission from France,” Hintermann said. She declined to say if her group has asked the FARC if it needs its assistance as an intermediary, but indicated that initiating contact would be beyond the scope of the Red Cross’ mission.
“We have a principle of independence,” Hintermann said.
Meanwhile, the French government jet that brought two diplomats and two doctors to Colombia on Wednesday to whisk Betancourt to freedom or at least bring her medical aid sat idle in Bogota, the capital.
In Madrid, a Spanish official said privately that Spain’s contacts with the FARC collapsed some months ago. The Swiss Foreign Ministry said Switzerland had been in touch with the FARC “in the past” but would not say when the last contact was.
Diplomats from France, Spain and Switzerland had dealt with the FARC before as observers to peace talks held by then-President Andres Pastrana in a huge safe haven. During the four-year life span of the peace process, diplomats trekked to the steamy hamlet of Los Pozos for talks.

TITLE: Champions League Semis Dominated by English Teams
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — The English Premier League is odds-on to provide three of the four Champions League semifinalists for the second successive season this week, with Barcelona on course to complete the quartet.
Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool made it through a year ago and all are well-placed to return, with Arsenal also hoping to have a say.
United’s hugely impressive 2-0 win at AS Roma had left the Italians with a mountain to climb as, in 67 Champions League home games, the English champions have never lost by two goals and as they are currently in hot form, look extremely unlikely to buck that trend on Wednesday.
Liverpool, beaten in the final by AC Milan last season, have earned the advantage in the all-English quarterfinal after their 1-1 draw at Arsenal — a result the two repeated on Saturday in a Premier League game when both sides made several changes. Chelsea should also go through despite their unexpected 2-1 defeat by Fenerbahce in Istanbul.
The Turks, in the last eight for the first time, celebrated that victory as if they had won the trophy but though they need only a goalless draw to progress the cold reality of their away form, where they have lost 11 of their 16 away games in the Champions League, still means the tie is weighted strongly in Chelsea’s favor.
Schalke 04 will not be totally without hope when they travel to Barcelona having created a series of chances in their first-leg 1-0 home defeat but the experienced Spaniards, unbeaten in their last 10 Champions League games, will expect to advance to a mouth-watering last-four meeting with United.
Barcelona and United both drew their weekend league games, the Spaniards held goalless at home by Getafe and the English champions drawing 2-2 at Middlesbrough, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring his 37th goal of the season and Wayne Rooney also on target.
Barcelona’s Ronaldinho will definitely miss Wednesday’s game and could be out for the rest of the season with a hamstring strain while Lionel Messi and Deco still look doubtful.

TITLE: Abbas, Olmert Resume Talks
AUTHOR: By Josef Federman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resumed face-to-face peace negotiations Monday after nearly two months marred by heavy Gaza Strip violence and new Israeli plans to expand settlements.
Abbas planned to push for a halt in Israeli settlement activity, seek an easing of roadblocks and other travel restrictions on West Bank Palestinians, and urge Israel to reach a cease-fire with Hamas, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
“We hope that the meeting will be businesslike,” he said.
Israeli officials declined to discuss their agenda ahead of the meeting but said they hoped to push forward with substantive talks during the meeting at Olmert’s official residence in Jerusalem.
With U.S. backing, the two men have pledged to reach a final peace deal by the end of the year, although it remains unclear how much progress they have made.

TITLE: Not So Hot in Domestic League, Zenit Blazes a Trail in UEFA Cup
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Champions Zenit St. Petersburg continued a patchy opening to the season with a 2-2 draw at struggling Shinnik Yaroslavl on Sunday that left them in the bottom half of the table.
It was a downbeat conclusion to a busy week for the team that saw a 4-1 rout over Bayer Leverkusen that puts it to the brink of a place in the UEFA Cup semi-finals for the first time. 
Striker Andrei Arshavin, who scored the opening goal in Germany on Thursday, also ran in the Olympic Torch relay through St. Petersburg on Saturday and celebrated the birth of a baby daughter earlier in the week. 
In other weekend matches in the Premier League, Rubin Kazan stretched their perfect start to four matches after goals from defender Dato Kvirkvelia and Sergei Semak helped them to a 2-1 home win over Tomsk.
Dynamo Moscow stayed second, two points behind Rubin, after second-half goals from Aleksandr Dimitko and Argentinian Lenadro Fernandez gave them a 2-0 win at Spartak Nalchik.
Zenit, who have already knocked out Villarreal and Olympique Marseille in the UEFA Cup, gave Bayer a taste of things to come in their quarterfinal first leg at the BayArena.
Stefan Kiessling grabbed an equalizer for Bayer, the 1988 UEFA Cup winners, when he struck on the rebound later in the first half but the Germans lost the plot entirely after the break.
Pavel Pogrebnyak made it 2-1 in the 52nd minute and two goals in the space of three minutes from Aleksandr Anyukov and Igor Denisov helped Zenit to a memorable win.
The second leg takes place in St Petersburg on Thursday.
Anyukov and Pogrebnyak both missed good chances before Arshavin put Zenit ahead with a wonderful goal, cutting in from the right and blasting into the roof of the net from a tight angle. Bayer were generally short of inspiration in attack but they grabbed a slightly fortunate equaliser when Bernd Schneider’s weak header was cleared straight to Kiessling.
(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Cardiff Surge to FA Cup Final
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Cardiff City will play Portsmouth in this season’s FA Cup final after a stunning goal from midfielder Joe Ledley gave them a 1-0 win over Barnsley in Sunday’s semi-final at Wembley Stadium.
The 21-year-old Welsh international, who was born in Cardiff and developed through their youth ranks, scored with an unstoppable left-foot volley after only nine minutes.
His majestic strike was enough to put Cardiff into the final for the first time since they famously became the only non-English club to win the Cup in 1927.
Barnsley, trying for their first final since 1912, should have leveled this all-Championship (second division) semi-final midway through the second half but Kayode Odejayi fired wide with only goalkeeper Peter Enckelman to beat after 66 minutes.
The striker, Barnsley’s hero in the last round when he scored the winner in a 1-0 victory over holders Chelsea, held his head in his hands in utter disbelief.
Portsmouth, who beat West Bromwich Albion 1-0 in Saturday’s other semi-final, will meet Cardiff back at Wembley on May 17.
Ledley, voted man of the match, said: I thought we played really well and can go to the final with confidence.”
Of his goal he added: “I just hit and hoped for the best and it went in. The fans are buzzing.”
Cardiff have been beset by financial problems this season and manager Dave Jones told Sky Sports: “For our football club, after what happened this year, it’s great for the club.
“I’ve had promotions, been in finals but I’ve never been in an FA Cup final it’s a great feeling.”
The goal came when Barnsley defender Rob Kozluk, heading clear from a long Cardiff throw-in, only managed to find Ledley who sent a left-foot hooked volley flying past Luke Steele from 18 meters.
Barnsley, who also knocked out Liverpool as well as Chelsea on their way to the last four, responded with a header from Dennis Souza that went narrowly wide of Enckelman’s post.
Odejayi’s misery, though, was not confined to his awful miss. He had a good chance after 19 minutes and should have done better instead of just firing weakly at Enckelman.
The striker also found himself with a possible chance after 30 minutes but failed to control the ball properly and allowed it to run over the goal line.
Worse was to come after 66 minutes. Played clean through, onside and in space with only Enckleman to beat and with time to pick his spot, Odejayi’s wayward shot went wide.
Peter Whittingham went close for Cardiff with a 25-metre shot that flew just over the bar and they then had another opportunity but Steele thwarted Gavin Rae at close range.
Rae earlier had a fine chance to score but headed a Ledley cross straight at Steele with the goal at his mercy.
Although most of the approach work was scrappy and clearly short of Premier League class, the action moved from end to end as Barnsley continued searching for an equaliser and Cardiff attempted to kill the opposition off.
Cardiff, whose season has been overshadowed by financial worries, deserved their victory, leaving Barnsley to try to salvage their season by climbing out of the relegation zone and avoiding the drop into League One (third division).

TITLE: French Yacht Hijacked By Gun-Toting Pirates
AUTHOR: By Abdiqani Hassan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BOSASSO, Somalia — Pirates who hijacked a luxury French yacht off Somalia last week have opened fire at local gunmen who stopped them from coming ashore in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation, witnesses said on Monday.
The Ponant was seized on Friday with its 30-strong crew as it sailed through the Gulf of Aden. Of the ship’s 30-strong crew, 22 are French, and most of the others are Ukrainian or Korean. Six are women.
France, which says officials are in contact with the pirates, has sent a police team to help deal with the pirates.
The group of roughly 10 members of the GIGN, a police force trained to deal with hijackings and hostage situations, was due to arrive in neighbouring Djibouti on Monday.
Residents said late on Sunday the hijackers tried to land at Garaad, a fishing village in central Somalia, but gunmen working for the local authorities made it clear they were not welcome.
“The pirates opened fire, killing two men after the local militia told them to go away,” radio operator Mohamed Ibrahim told Reuters. The men onshore did not return fire, he said.
The yacht was now moored at Garacade, near the town of Eyl in the northern region of Puntland, French officials said.
Piracy is lucrative off lawless Somalia and most kidnappers treat their captives well in anticipation of a good ransom.
“The pirates have made no terrorist demands. The act of piracy is motivated solely by financial reasons,” a French diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
“The preferred option is negotiation and preserving the hostages’ lives,” the diplomat added.
Sources close to the pirates said the hijackers had yet to state any demands and thought they were seeking a safe haven before opening negotiations with the vessel’s owners.
“We spoke to them last night. They said they’re fine and that the crew are safe and in good health,” an elder who is related to some of the pirates told Reuters by telephone from the northern town of Garowe.
A small French warship is tracking the yacht and planes are regularly flying over to film its progress.
Asked by French radio on Sunday whether Paris was ready to pay a ransom to secure the release of the crew, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said: “We’ll see.”
The boat’s owner, the Compagnie des Iles du Ponant, has told anxious relatives that they were all well.

TITLE: Father-Daughter Parents At Center of Media Attention
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CANBERRA — An Australian man and his adult daughter went public about their relationship after having a baby together, as new revelations emerged on Monday that a previous child of the couple died a few days after birth.
John Deaves, 61, and his daughter Jenny, 39, have a 9-month-old daughter but have been banned from having sex after a court convicted the pair on two counts of incest, placing them both on a three-year good behavior bond.
“The couple are being monitored by the relevant authorities,” a South Australia state police spokesman told Reuters on Monday.
The incest case sparked national media attention when the couple went on the Nine television network’s 60 Minutes program to publicly explain their relationship, which began when the two were re-united about eight years ago.
John Deaves left the family home when Jenny Deaves was 1 year old and did not see his daughter for 30 years. She had married and had two children by the time she met up with her father again.
But within weeks of reuniting, the couple started a sexual relationship, in a case psychologists label as “genetic sexual attraction.”
“We’re normal intellectual adults who have had careers, had a normal life like everybody else but fallen in love with each other when we are biologically related, when we’ve discovered each other later in life,” Jenny Deaves told the Nine network.

TITLE: Bahrain Grand Prix Taken by Massa
AUTHOR: By Alan Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MANAMA — Felipe Massa won the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday as the desert circuit kick-started his Formula One championship challenge for the second year in a row.
The Brazilian had failed to score a point in the first two races of the year, an even worse performance than last season’s disappointing start, but the track again delivered the result he needed.
Massa took the lead from BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica going into the first corner and stayed ahead of world champion team mate Kimi Raikkonen to steer Ferrari to their first one-two since last year’s Brazilian season-ender.
The 10 points lifted him to sixth in the standings, nine points behind leader Raikkonen with 15 races remaining.
His relief was palpable, even if he played down the pressure.
“Finally, after a start to the championship under dark clouds, I can see the sunshine again,” he said.
The clouds were caused by retirements in Australia and Malaysia, with the Brazilian again coming under fire in Italy with the media speculating on the likelihood of him seeing out his contract to 2010.
“I have not had very easy weeks but that’s life,” he told a news conference.
“It’s not the first time and won’t be the last one as well. You have some bad days in your life. I had two bad days in the first two races but I know that we are quick.”
Massa followed up his win in Bahrain last year with another victory in Spain and Turkey’s Istanbul circuit later in the season.
The calendar has changed this year and Spain and Turkey are now the next two races, leaving the Brazilian looking forward to the weeks ahead.
“I think Barcelona is a nice circuit and one that I like, Turkey as well, so I think that we have very good circuits in front of us at which our car always behaves very well,” he said.
The Brazilian was never truly challenged for the lead but he said it had not been an easy afternoon, with oil on the track making conditions hazardous.
“The race was pretty difficult because I didn’t want to make any mistakes, just didn’t push so much and tried to bring the car home, controlling the pace...for sure I had all the time in my mind what happened in the last race,” he said.
“I love the circuit, it’s the second victory in a row and I always went very strongly here.”

TITLE: Hair-Raising Service in Salon
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — A Chinese hair salon has been shut down and fined 500,000 yuan ($69,000) for holding two customers hostage and charging wildly excessive fees for haircuts, a newspaper reported on Monday.
College students Zhang Yi and Yuan Sha Sha went for a haircut at Baolou International Beauty Salon in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, expecting to pay the 38 yuan ($5.25) advertized on the window.
But when the barbers were done, they produced a joint bill for 12,000 yuan ($1,650) enough to make anyone’s hair curl, the Beijing News reported.
“After borrowing from 16 people, the two were only able to come up with 9,800 yuan and it wasn’t until after 10 p.m. were they allowed to leave the hair salon,” it reported.
The shop was eventually shut down with nearly 100 local residents applauding outside, the newspaper said.

TITLE: Hedgehog Is Used as Weapon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand man has been accused of assault with a prickly weapon — a hedgehog.
Police allege that William Singalargh picked up the hedgehog and threw it several yards to hit a 15-year-old boy in the North Island east coast town of Whakatane on Feb. 9.
“It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks,” police Senior Sergeant Bruce Jenkins said Monday. The teen did not need medical treatment, he added.
The Herald on Sunday newspaper reported that it was not known whether the hedgehog was dead or alive at the time of the attack, but that it was dead when collected as evidence.
Jenkins said Singalargh, 27, was arrested shortly after the incident on a charge of assault with a weapon.

TITLE: Charlton Heston Dies Aged 84
AUTHOR: By David Germain
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES, California — Nancy Reagan was heartbroken over Charlton Heston’s death. President Bush hailed him as a “strong advocate for liberty,” while John McCain called Heston a devotee for civil and constitutional rights.
Even Michael Moore, who mocked Heston in his gun-control documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” posted the actor’s picture on his web site to mark his passing.
Heston, who died Saturday night at 84, was a towering figure both in his politics and on screen, where his characters had the ear of God (Moses in “The Ten Commandments”), survived apocalyptic plagues (“The Omega Man”) and endured one of Hollywood’s most-grueling action sequences (the chariot race in “Ben-Hur,” which earned him the best-actor Academy Award).
Better known in recent years as a fierce gun-rights advocate who headed the National Rifle Association, Heston played legendary leaders and ordinary men hurled into heroic struggles.
“In taking on epic and commanding roles, he showed himself to be one of our nation’s most gifted actors, and his legacy will forever be a part of our cinema,” Republican presidential candidate McCain said in a statement that also noted Heston’s involvement in the civil-rights movement and his stand against gun control.
Heston’s jutting jaw, regal bearing and booming voice served him well as Marc Antony in “Julius Caesar” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” Michelangelo in “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” John the Baptist in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and an astronaut on a topsy-turvy world where simians rule in “Planet of the Apes.”
“Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life,” Heston’s family said in a statement. “We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father, and a gentle grandfather with an infectious sense of humor. He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity.”
The actor died at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife, Lydia, at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said. He declined to comment on the cause of death or provide further details Sunday.
One of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Heston’s work dwindled largely to small parts and narration and other voice roles from the 1980s on, including an uncredited cameo as an ape in Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of “Planet of the Apes.”
Shirley Jones, who co-starred with Heston in one of his last leading roles in the 1999 drama “Gideon,” said his talent as an actor sometimes is forgotten because of the epic characters he played.
“To me, he was the consummate leading man. He was tall, he was handsome, he was sensitive, he was gruff when he had to be. He was a great cowboy, he was perfect for those historical roles,” Jones said. “He could do everything, and there aren’t many actors around today who could.”
In 2002, near the end of his five years as president of the NRA, Heston disclosed he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.
The disclosure was soon followed by an unflattering appearance in Moore’s 2003 best documentary winner “Bowling for Columbine,” which took America to task for its gun laws.
Moore used a clip of Heston holding aloft a rifle at an NRA rally and proclaiming “from my cold, dead hands.” The director flustered the actor in an interview later in the film by pressing him on his gun-control stance. Heston eventually walked out on Moore.
Moore’s web site, http://www.michaelmoore.com, on Sunday featured a photo of Heston, the date of his birth and death and a note from the actor’s family requesting that donations be made to the Motion Picture and Television Fund in lieu of flowers.
There was no other reaction on the site from Moore about Heston’s death. Moore did not immediately respond to e-mail and phone requests seeking comment.
Jones, who worked with Heston on “Gideon” near the beginning of his tenure as NRA president, said she discussed gun control with him and came to respect his stand, even though she disagreed with it. She said he told her his family grew up poor in the country and “had to go out and kill a deer if we wanted meat.”
“He was a caring, sweet gentleman who believed in his country,” Jones said. “He believed the Constitution said it’s OK, we have to defend ourselves.”
Like fellow conservative Ronald Reagan, Heston served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement that she was heartbroken to hear of his death.
“He was one of Ronnie’s and my dearest friends,” she said. “I will never forget Chuck as a hero on the big screen in the roles he played, but more importantly I considered him a hero in life for the many times that he stepped up to support Ronnie in whatever he was doing.”
Current Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg called Heston “a capable and visionary union leader” in a Sunday statement.
Bush — who in 2003 presented Heston the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor — called Heston a “man of character and integrity, with a big heart.”
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had Heston as a co-star in 1994’s “True Lies,” said in a statement that Heston “entertained millions of people around the world during his legendary film career.”
“He cared deeply about his craft and he loved his family, his work and his country with all his heart,” Schwarzenegger said.
Decades before his NRA leadership, Heston was a strong advocate for civil rights in the 1960s, joining marches and offering financial assistance.
Civil-rights leaders in Los Angeles held a moment of silence in Heston’s memory Sunday after an unrelated news conference.
Heston had contributed and raised thousands of dollars in Hollywood for Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement, said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Round Table.
“We certainly disagree with his position as NRA head and also his firm, firm, unwavering support of the unlimited right to bear arms,” Hutchinson said. But, he added, “Charlton Heston was a complex individual. He lived a long time, and certainly, there were many phases. The phases we prefer to remember were certainly his contributions to Dr. King and civil rights.”
Fans remember Heston for some of the most epic moments on film: Parting the Red Sea as Moses in “The Ten Commandments,” cursing his self-destructive species as he stumbles on the remnants of the Statue of Liberty in “Planet of the Apes,” tearing hell-bent through the chariot race in “Ben-Hur.”
“Ben-Hur” earned 11 Oscars, the most ever until 1997’s “Titanic” and 2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” tied it.
Born Charles Carter in a Chicago suburb on Oct. 4, 1923, Heston grew up in the Michigan wilderness, where his father operated a lumber mill.
Heston took up acting after serving in the Army during World War II. He took his professional name from his mother’s maiden name, Charlton, and the last name of his stepfather, Chester Heston, whom she married after his parents’ divorce.
In recent years, Heston drew as much publicity for his crusades as for his performances. In addition to his NRA work, he campaigned for Republican presidential and congressional candidates and against affirmative action.