SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1364 (28), Friday, April 11, 2008
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Legislation Jeopardizes Foster 
System
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Osadchuk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma took a major step Wednesday toward preventing children from being placed in foster families by abandoning a system that encouraged the placements.
Ignoring two years of public opposition, the Duma passed in a crucial second reading legislation that redefines the functions of state social services and forbids other organizations from participating in the placement of orphaned and abandoned children in families.
“I am extremely disappointed with this bill,” said Sergei Koloskov, a member of the Public Chamber and head of a nongovernmental organization that assists children with Down syndrome. “Russia has voted for bureaucrats, not for children.”
Pavel Krasheninnikov, a co-author of the bill and head of the Duma’s Legislation Committee, said the changes would not affect existing foster families.
“We approved a good bill despite all the speculation about it,” he said by telephone.
The bill will eliminate one of two options for family placement. Under the 12-year system facing the ax, a child registered in an orphanage lives with foster parents who are considered part of the staff. The orphanage itself becomes a kind of social services agency for finding and training prospective parents as well as helping parents solve problems.
A total of 5,124 children currently live in these families in 42 regions, said Maria Ternovskaya, who developed the system.
“We will not be able to assist them any more, and we will not be allowed to find new parents,” said Ternovskaya, who heads Children’s Home No. 19 in Moscow, a model of this foster system in Russia. “All this supposedly will be done by local bureaucrats from the social services, who have already shown that they are not interested in this work at all.”
She said these families would have to sign new agreements with the social services that they might find unsatisfactory. 
“Some children might be brought back to orphanages,” she said.
Some foster families are worried about losing the support of professional case workers. “It is really hard to deal with all the problems you face by yourself,” said Tatyana Kulikova, who is raising two children. “I turn to our orphanage with any problem — medical, legal, psychological — and they are always there ready to help.”
In the other system, orphanages have nothing more to do with the children after they are placed with families. Under the law, social services are supposed to monitor the children. In practice, they have few trained social workers and worry more about paperwork than children, child welfare workers said.
In addition, social services do not actively promote foster care and reluctantly work with parents who want to take a child, said Boris Altshuler, head of The Right of a Child, an NGO.
Ternovskaya’s system costs the state 37 percent less than residential placement, because the government does not have to build more orphanages, Altshuler said.
He said officials from ministries down to orphanages opposed Ternovskaya’s system because it took children out of orphanages, threatening their livelihoods.
The bill must pass a third Duma reading before it is sent to the Federation Council and then to the president for his signature.

TITLE: Electricity Tsar Calls For Rosneft to Butt Out
AUTHOR: By Nadia Popova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Unified Energy System CEO Anatoly Chubais lashed out at state-controlled Rosneft on Wednesday, accusing the country’s largest oil company of “anti-government activities” and jeopardizing vital reforms to the country’s electricity sector.
The comments by Chubais were related to a lawsuit filed in February by Rosneft subsidiary Neft-Aktiv over the formation of an electricity generating company, TGK-11, in the Omsk and Tomsk regions. The creation of the company was decided on last year as part of a larger reorganization of the country’s electricity sector.
“This is the first time we have been unable to reach agreement with minority shareholders on the reforms,” Chubais said testily on the sidelines of a conference for electricity market reform Wednesday morning. “A state-run company is preventing the realization of our investment program. This is unprecedented.”
The lawsuit by Neft-Aktiv, a former minority shareholder in Tomskenergo, claims that the company did not receive an absentee ballot for an August shareholders’ meeting that voted to merge the local electricity and heating producer into TGK-11.
TGK-11 rejected the complaint, saying Neft-Aktiv received all the proper documents in time.
A Novosibirsk court then ruled that the auction of TGK-11 could not go ahead until the lawsuit was resolved. The next hearing is scheduled for May 7.
In the meantime, Chubais said, the oil company is holding up much-needed reform in the sector.
“Rosneft is acting against the decisions of the government,” Chubais said. “If Rosneft continues with this stance, the construction and modernization of TGK-11’s stations could be jeopardized because it will not raise enough money in time from the sale.”
The auction of the state’s 21.3 percent stake in TGK-11 and an additional share emission of 26 percent had been scheduled for the end of March. UES had expected to raise at least $340 million on the additional offering alone.
“Rosneft’s financial claims are ridiculous in monetary terms,” Chubais said. “They concern about 1 percent of the TGK-11 investment program.”
UES says delays in the TGK-11 program threaten to leave more than 300,000 people without heat and electricity in the Siberian city of Omsk if a new heating and power station is not built by 2012. The cost of the new station will be $735 million, and an estimated additional $259 million will be needed for the modernization of another station in Omsk.
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov was brief Wednesday in his reply to Chubais’ comments.
“We think the UES decision to reorganize some of its parts contravened our rights as a shareholder,” Manvelov said. “We were not notified of the date for the shareholders’ voting on the decision to form TGK-11. As a result, our stake in the company was diminished.”
Chubais said UES had received no answer from Rosneft to a “strong” compromise offer, an issue on which Manvelov refused to comment.
Neft-Aktiv last year represented Rosneft in a number of bankruptcy auctions of Yukos assets, which it bought at a discount.
Rosneft ended up with an interest in Tomskenergo through its purchase of a 50 percent stake in former Yukos unit Tomskneft.
Rosneft has been active in fighting parts of the electricity sector’s reorganization in court, filing a total of seven suits in the Moscow Arbitration Court related to companies in which it holds shares.
Neft-Aktiv has also contested the decision to offer a supplementary TGK-11 share issue, the merging of TGK-11 with TGK-11 Holding and the consolidation of four smaller companies in which it has a minority stake: Tomsk Distribution Company, Tomsk Trunk Network, Kubanenergo and the Kuban Trunk Network.
Such strong public criticism of Rosneft, which is chaired by the presidential administration’s deputy chief of staff, Igor Sechin, from a senior figure is rare. The most recent time the company drew this kind of fire was last year from Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Then the republic’s prime minister, Kadyrov accused Rosneft of not paying enough in taxes to local coffers.
Rosneft responded at the time that it was acting in compliance with the law.

N Chubais said Wednesday that he had not changed his mind and would still retire after UES ceases to exist on July 1.
“I am counting the days before I become a pensioner,” he said, smiling broadly.

Staff Writer Anatoly Medetsky contributed to this report.

TITLE: Priests Face Moral Dilemma Over Conscription
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly has sent a petition to President Vladimir Putin asking the Russian leader to veto an amendment to a law that leaves young Russian priests torn between their duty as citizens and their religious beliefs. 
The measure, approved in February, removed the exemption from compulsory military service formerly given to Orthodox priests. 
“Breaking into churches and dragging priests off to the army would be shameful. As a political successor of the U.S.S.R., Russia is still greatly indebted to the priests who perished in Stalin’s purges,” said one of the authors of the appeal, Vitaly Milonov, who represents the Just Russia party in the city parliament.
The Kremlin has yet to respond to the petition, while the spring draft, which lasts until July 15, is in full swing. 
Young priests are faced with a dilemma as the Orthodox Church forbids them to carry guns or get involved in military activities. Failure to obey can result in them being expelled from the priesthood. On the other hand, draft-dodging and desertion are federal crimes which may result in imprisonment.
So far the Orthodox Church authorities have given no clear lead and have issued no guidance to their priests about how to respond to draft orders. 
Clerics across the country are campaigning for the new regulations to be dropped. They argue priests should only serve in the army as chaplains, but their protests have elicited no response from the Kremlin. 
The position of chaplain does not exist in the Russian armed forces. And if the role were to be introduced it could cause complications, since Russia has a number of religions, and representatives of several faiths may have to be appointed. 
Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, who is head of a department at the Moscow diocese that liaises with the armed forces, stressed that the Orthodox Church is not against the army or military service. 
“If priests are to be conscripted at all it must only be as chaplains.  They must be allowed to fulfill their duties without having to compromise and betray their beliefs,” he said.  “The amendment contradicts a direct ban that the Orthodox Church imposes on priests taking part in military activities or bearing weapons.” 
Army service would make it impossible for the clerics to observe these beliefs as well as rules on fasting (Orthodox believers should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays as well in lent and during other special fasting periods). 
In the meantime, Nikolai Pankov, the Deputy Defence Minister and one of those who instigated the changes in the conscription rules, has accused critics of a “lack of patriotism” and of failing to support state security and Russia’s defense requirements. 
He and other supporters of the new rules argue that serving the motherland does not conflict with any religious beliefs. And they claim that drafting priests will help to cut down the bullying and brutality for which the Russian army has become notorious. 
Defending the changes, Colonel Yury Klyonov of the Leningrad Military District, says the arrival of priests at army barracks is bound to improve the moral climate among recruits. 
“This new measure is going to be beneficial to both the church and the army,” Klyonov argues. “After all, the Orthodox Church has always supported the idea of serving the motherland.”
As a result of the new scheme it is believed some parishes, especially in isolated areas, may have to close down. 
According to the Moscow diocese, there are currently about 15,000 Orthodox priests in Russia. But the majority are older than call-up age (18-27). Even so it has been estimated the number of priests drafted each year could run into hundreds. Even the loss of a hundred a year could do great damage, says Dmitry Smirnov of the Moscow diocese.   
“Drafting a hundred priests is equal to wiping out a whole diocese - in other words, a catastrophe for the church, making no tangible difference to the Russian army, which has almost a million recruits and officers,” argues Smirnov. 
So why did the Russian parliament go to the trouble of passing an amendment which would supply at most only a few hundred extra recruits to the armed forces? According to Ella Polyakova of Soldiers’ Mothers the move is meant to send a tough message. 
“Russia has become a police state. True to its name, it has to constantly remind the citizens who is the boss,” she said. “The authorities openly show that they regard our citizens just as feudal lords regarded their serfs.”
Some are hoping cooler heads will prevail. 
“Nobody needs a scandal; the amendment was an obvious mistake, perhaps politically fuelled, so my guess is that each case will be decided locally,” St. Petersburg priest Artemy Skripkin, who preaches at the Kazan Cathedral, said. “Local archbishops are very respected now by the secular authorities in the regions, and I am sure they’ll be able to defuse potential conflicts. I refuse to believe that any priest in Russia will actually be forced to leave their parish or serve other than as a chaplain.”

TITLE: Soyuz Takes First Korean Into Space
AUTHOR: By Douglas Birch
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A Russian capsule carrying two cosmonauts and Korea’s first astronaut blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome Tuesday, en route to the international space station.
The Soyuz TMA-12 craft lifted off on time, roaring into the evening skies over Kazakhstan’s barren steppes before turning down range and entering its preliminary orbit about 10 minutes later.
South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon, 29, and cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Volkov will spend two days in the cramped capsule before docking at the orbiting station. It’s the first space flight for all three, including Volkov, the son of a decorated Soviet-era cosmonaut.
Live footage broadcast from inside the capsule showed Yi smiling, waving and giving the thumbs-up sign.
“Everything is in order,” Volkov said.
The U.S. space agency NASA said Yi was the world’s youngest-ever female astronaut.
Hundreds of Korean, Russian and U.S. officials, relatives and other onlookers watched, mostly in silence, as the rocket climbed slowly over the launch pad. Yi’s mother, Jung Kum-suk, screamed, then collapsed into the arms of her husband, and four medics in jumpsuits rushed to help her.
“I have no religion, but I pray for the success of the flight,” said Ko San, the Korean scientist who was Yi’s backup for the launch.
Colonel Ki Young Chung, a Korean air force flight surgeon monitoring Yi, said the launch was an amazing event for Korea.
“It’s our first step to get to space. I’m proud of my country and proud of my duty as a doctor for the Soyuz flight,” he said.
Ahead of the launch, Yi told cheering Russian and Korean well-wishers, including her family, that she felt great, as she was escorted to the launch facility. She has expressed hope that her historic journey will encourage the reunification of the divided Korean peninsula.
The South Korean government has a $20 million deal with Russia to co-sponsor the flight in exchange for Yi’s trip.

TITLE: EU Slams Russia Over Visas
AUTHOR: By Conor Sweeney
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian immigration red tape is so cumbersome that many Europeans are leaving rather than trying to comply, European Union embassies have told the government in the latest round in a visa dispute.
European diplomats said the visa dispute may be on the agenda when Dmitry Medvedev, who will be sworn in as president next month, attends the next Russia-EU summit in June.
One European diplomat said the numbers of people quitting Russia would increase if Moscow’s rules were not revisited, harming investment and damaging frayed relations even further.
Russia also has grievances about visas, accusing some EU countries of reneging on a deal to streamline procedures for issuing documents to Russian citizens and imposing surcharges.
In a joint letter, seen by Reuters, EU embassies complained to officials that many Europeans find it impossible to collect all the paperwork necessary to live in Russia.
Work, student visa and residence rules “are very cumbersome and difficult to comply with … we observe an increased outflow of EU nationals out of the Russian Federation due to an uncertainty regarding their legal status,” the letter said.
The letter, sent Monday, said many EU citizens were obliged to leave after a 90-day limit expires. Foreigners on multientry business visas can only stay in the country for 90 days at a time.
The letter said a change in immigration procedures last year needed to be reviewed.
“Many of our citizens have recently turned to us to inform us that this process unfortunately appears to be more difficult than was initially expected,” it said.
The letter was written by the European Commission and Slovenian presidency on behalf of all 27 states. It was sent to the Kremlin and senior government officials.
The EU was warned by Russian officials in October that it faced “retaliatory measures” if countries like France, Belgium and the Netherlands did not respect a deal to streamline the issuing of travel visas.
The European diplomat who participated in drafting the letter said some people had misused the Russian visa system by living in the country on the wrong type of permit.

TITLE: UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Makes Visit to Moscow
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and his successor Dmitry Medvedev told United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday that the UN was the only global body with the authority to resolve international disputes.
Ban, for his part, congratulated Medvedev on his presidential election win and complimented Putin on his role in “governing this country to success.”
The exchange of niceties could not, however, sugarcoat rifts between the Kremlin and the UN chief, analysts said.
Ban’s openly pro-U.S. position has irked Russia, which supported his candidacy, as has what even he admitted was a long wait for his first official visit to Moscow.
“I wanted to say that I, of course, should have come to Russia much earlier,” Ban told Medvedev in comments released by the president-elect’s office. He added, however, that Russia was among the first countries he visited immediately after being elected secretary-general in October 2006, although he had yet to take office.
The three-day visit is Ban’s first since assuming his duties in January 2007.
The situation in Kosovo, Russia’s plans to host a Middle East peace conference, and problems in the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur were expected to top the agenda of talks between Ban and the Kremlin, the UN said this week.
Moscow has been unhappy about Ban’s neutrality on Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in February. The United States, France and Britain are among the countries that have recognized Kosovo’s independence, while Russia has called the declaration illegitimate.
Yevgeny Volk, head of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said the Kremlin’s sentiments were understandable.
“But [Ban] is forced to align himself with those holding the trump cards,” he said, referring to the United States and other members of the NATO block.
At his meeting with Putin, Ban greeted him in Russian — “Thank you Mr. President” — and said he was grateful for the support Russia had given to the United Nations, expressing hope that it would continue to do so in the future.
In an earlier meeting with Medvedev, he said he agreed with him that attempts to resolve international disputes outside the global body were counterproductive.
“You are right that no nation, however powerful and resourceful it is, can resolve all problems of the modern world by itself,” Ban said.
Just over a month before his trip to Russia, Ban professed his admiration for the United States.
“The United Nations has no better friend than America,” Ban told former U.S. President George Bush during his first visit to Texas on Feb. 29.
Kommersant cited sources Wednesday who said Medvedev would tell Ban that Russia was willing to raise its annual UN contributions to roughly the same level as those of the United States, which would mean an enormous, 20-fold spike in the fees.

TITLE: Bout Asks Russia for Assistance
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Suspected international arms dealer Viktor Bout asked the Russian government for help in securing his release from a Thai prison where he faces trial on terror charges and possible extradition to the United States.
In an open letter quoted by RIA news agency, Bout said: “I request to take measures for my release because I was detained and continue to be held in custody on fabricated charges.
“I ask the Russian government to make steps and inquire of the government of Thailand ... why I continue to be illegally held in this country on U.S.-fabricated charges.”
There was no immediate reaction from Russian officials to Bout’s letter.
Bout, a Russian national born in then-Soviet Tajikistan, is dubbed the “Merchant of Death.”
He was arrested in Thailand last month as part of a U.S. sting operation hours after arriving from Moscow and immediately charged with seeking to buy weapons for Colombian rebels.
According to the United Nations and the U.S. Treasury Department, Bout ran a network of air cargo companies and had sold or brokered arms that have helped fuel wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
The United States, which has given billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia to fight Marxist rebels and drug cartels, has said it will seek Bout’s extradition.
He is charged in Thailand with “seeking or gathering assets for terrorism.” He is charged in New York with conspiring to sell weapons worth millions of dollars to Colombia’s FARC guerrillas.
Bout has strongly denied charges of aiding terrorism.
Thai police have said any extradition to the United States would have to await his trial in Thailand, where laws require that detained foreigner terror suspects be tried in the country.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Wine Cellar Upgrade</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Konstantinovsky Palace, the official presidential residence near St. Petersburg, is spending 8 million rubles ($325,000) on its wine cellar, Fontanka.ru reported.
Bottles of highly-priced vintage Chateau O’Brien, Chateau Angelus, Saint Emilion Grand Cru AOC, Chateau Figeac, and other wines will be purchased for the cellar.  A bottle of 1986 Chateau O’Brien costs 300,000 rubles ($12,000), Fontanka reported.
Meanwhile, more moderately priced drinks such as Sovietskoye Champagne and Putinka vodka will also be stocked.

<b>$300K Jewel Found</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Workers at a carwash in St. Petersburg found a diamond pendant worth as much as $300,000 when they were servicing the vacuum system used to clean car interiors, RIA Novosti reported. A jeweler appraised the pendant at between $200,000 and $300,000, RIA reported.

TITLE: Site Aims to Make Travel More Simple
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Reksoft software development company has completed a tourism web site, Tourgenius.ru, the company said Tuesday in a statement. The new web site aims to become a comprehensive source of information for tourists and service providers in the tourism and hospitality industry.
Tourgenius.ru contains information about traveling all over the world. The site’s administrators claim that as well as using the search engine, tourists can book trips online and the tickets and other documents will be delivered to them by agents.
“Since it began operating, the web site has become one of the largest sources of information about travel and leisure for Russian audiences. 5,000 people visit the site every day,” said Kirill Kuzmin, general manager of Tourgenius.ru.
The web site includes a news section, catalogue of flight tickets and package tours and a discussion forum. Information can be searched for according to country, region, city, hotel, airport, travel company or agent, price, trip duration and other criteria. As well as photographs and official information, visitors’ comments are also included.
The site’s founders expect that Tourgenius.ru will be popular with tourists, tour operators, hotels and airlines. They claim that the list of hotels on Tourgenius.ru is one of the largest on the Russian-language Internet.
The search engine also scans information sources on the Internet to find and compare tours.
In the future Tourgenius.ru will incorporate Google Maps, enabling tourists to see photographs of hotels and where they are situated.
The web site will also cooperate with the Global Distribution System and a number of popular tourism web sites, and in the near future users will be able to book plane and railway tickets on-line.
“This web site does not have any advantages over other tourism sites. It’s a prototype of an online booking system, but the main function of ordering and paying for a trip over the Internet is not available,” said Dmitry Yakovlev, software architect for travel solutions at DataArt.
Yakovlev indicated that most travel web sites simply provide descriptions of trips, while users then have to contact travel companies to check if the particular offer is available and to pay for it.
Among the most popular global web sites, Yakovlev listed Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz. “To create a web site on such a scale is difficult, because a number of strong brands already exist, and they spend tens of millions of dollars on marketing every year,” Yakovlev said.
He suggested that Tourgenius.ru could benefit from being “a niche product” focusing on Russian travelers. “A localized web site could provide Russian language content and accept credit cards issued by Russian banks and popular payment systems like Yandex Money and Web Money,” Yakovlev said. He estimated the expenses of a web site offering trips, plane and railway tickets and insurance policies at several million dollars.
“The pay-back period for such a project is a disputable issue. In Russia this market is just emerging, and in the near future it will grow dramatically with the expansion of the Internet, payment systems and growing incomes.” 
Yakovlev indicated that the project’s success would depend both on marketing and technical solutions.
“The main risk faced by this project would result from integration with other systems and their compatibility. The quality of information and need for manual and semi-automatic prior data-processing is also important,” he said.
The first businesses to enter this market are likely to gain the advantage, the expert said. “The idea of selling trips, hotel reservations and plane tickets via the Internet is flourishing right now. New companies are entering this market, and the company with the best team will win the market,” Yakovlev said.

TITLE: Sales of Foreign Cars Continue to Soar
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Foreign car sales in Russia surged 54 percent in the first quarter to 454,069 vehicles from the year before, the Association of European Businesses said Thursday.
Chevrolet cars manufactured by General Motors Corp. were the most popular, with 58,498 vehicles sold in the period, or 59 percent more than last year, the association said in an e-mailed press release Thursday.
The numbers include sales of the Chevy-Niva sports-utility vehicle, which is produced at GM’s venture with AvtoVAZ, Russia’s biggest carmaker.
Three of the top five selling brands are locally produced, the statement said. Sales grew 44 percent in March, compared with the same month a year ago, the statement said.
Renault SA Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn said on Jan. 30 that Russia will surpass Germany to become Europe’s biggest car market within two years. The Russian car market, spurred by an economy that has entered its 10th consecutive year of growth, had sales of more than 2.3 million vehicles last year, compared with 3.15 million in Germany.
“Russians love cars and it shows in statistics,” Ghosn said.
As demand increases, Renault, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor and Volkswagen AG have started production in Russia or are building plants.
Russians spent a record $53.4 billion on cars last year, 67 percent more than in 2006, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said in January.

TITLE: Eyes on Medvedev for Economic Forum
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — This year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum is drawing more attention than ever and will focus on creeping global economic isolationism and Russia’s long-term development, Economic Development and Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Wednesday. 
All eyes will be on Dmitry Medvedev as he meets international investors for the first time as president during the June 6-8 event. He is penciled in to make the opening speech on June 7, and a first deputy prime minister will make the main speech on June 8. 
As with last year, organizers have teamed up with the World Economic Forum to give 100 CEOs from around the world a chance to meet Medvedev and key ministers at an invitation-only roundtable, a World Economic Forum spokesman said. 
Among the confirmed speakers for the general forum are BP chief Tony Hayward, Chevron head David O’Reilly, Gazprom boss Alexei Miller and British environmentalist Nicholas Stern, according to a preliminary schedule published on the forum’s web site. 
The forum will be spilt into two themes: June 7 will be dedicated to the issue of how governments around the world are defending their economic interests and what international monetary bodies can do about it, while June 8 will focus on the ups and downs of Russia’s economy, Nabiullina, who heads the forum’s organizing committee, said at a news conference. 
In total, two plenary sessions, 13 roundtable sessions and 10 conferences will be held, she said. 
Nabiullina declined to elaborate on the extent of Medvedev’s participation or how prominent a role Vladimir Putin, who has promised to become prime minister, would play. Asked for details about Medvedev’s forum speech, she said: “We don’t want to ruin the intrigue. Why should I say what exactly will be discussed at the forum?” 
This year’s event, the 12th in the forum’s history, sees it growing from strength to strength. With almost two months left until the forum kicks off, Nabiullina said the number of registered participants was already 10 times higher now than at the same point last year. Some 8,000 people are expected in all. 
Last year, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, then touted as a presidential candidate, stole the limelight and oversaw a raft of mega-deals signed by Russian businesses at the forum. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore dropped out at the last minute, much to the consternation of then-Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref. 
Also speaking at the news conference Wednesday, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, wearing jewel-studded sunglasses and a lime green suit, promised an expansive round of entertainment from the city’s world-famous orchestras. Matviyenko would not say which international stars would be performing at the opening concert, however. Last year, it featured the Scorpions and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. 
Asked about the possibility of opposition marches being allowed in the city during the event, Matviyenko said they could go ahead as long as they were authorized and not too prominent. 
“If they submit their applications correctly and everything is done according to the law, then we will find them some space to protest in,” Matviyenko said. 
No special security will be introduced for the event, she said.

TITLE: Ernst & Young Face Tax Claim
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ernst & Young, one of the world’s largest auditors, said Wednesday that it was contesting a multimillion-dollar back tax claim. 
Tax authorities asked the company to pay $16.5 million in back taxes in December, accusing it of funneling undeclared profits from its Russian operations to its Cyprus-based parent company in 2004, Kommersant reported. 
Ernst & Young filed a court appeal over the claim Monday. 
Alexander Ivlev, a partner with Ernst & Young, confirmed the lawsuit Wednesday but said the company would not be able to comment on the details of the matter until the case was over. 
“Tax disputes between companies and tax authorities are not unusual, and we are cooperating with the investigation by the tax authorities,” Ivlev said in an e-mailed statement. “We trust in the ability of the arbitration court to resolve in a fair manner any differences we have with the tax authorities,” he said. 
Kommersant, citing court papers, said the authorities were seeking 390 million rubles, claiming 151.26 million in unpaid taxes on revenue, 116.6 million rubles in value-added tax and 128 million rubles in fines. 
In 2004 tax returns, Ernst & Young said it posted 10.5 million rubles in revenue, but tax inspectors claimed that the amount fell short by 630.3 million rubles. The company said the amount under dispute represented payments for services rendered by Ernst & Young Limited, its Cyprus-registered parent company.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Pulp Project Approved</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Ilim Group, Russia’s largest pulp and paper maker, received regional-government approval for a 9.9 billion-ruble ($423 million) project to boost production and upgrade facilities in Russia’s northwest.
The Arkangelsk regional government gave “priority” status to Ilim’s plans, the St. Petersburg-based company said Thursday in a statement posted on its web site. Ilim will seek approval from Russia’s Industry and Energy Ministry to gain preferential access to timber resources, according to the statement.
International Paper Co., the world’s largest forest-products maker, bought half of Ilim last year for $620 million.
 
<b>Gambling Faces Review</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Finance Ministry may review a law restricting gaming to four designated areas during the second half of this year, Kommersant reported Thursday.
Creating the zones may cost 727.5 billion rubles ($31 billion), with 101 billion rubles required from the government for infrastructure, the newspaper said, citing governors’ estimates.
The ministry may ask to amend the law if it can’t provide the state funding, Kommersant said, citing an unidentified government official. The amendments may undo the zones’ limits or define different areas for gambling, he added. 
 
<b>Comstar Plans Growth</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Comstar United Telesystems, the Russian telecommunications company controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov, forecast revenue from regional operations will grow as it expands in areas outside Moscow and buys assets.
Comstar will increase regional sales to $600 million in 2011 from $42 million in 2006, Comstar Chief Executive Officer Sergei Pridantsev said Thursday in a conference call.
Moscow-based Comstar, which controls Moscow City Telephone, the dominant fixed-line phone company in the Russian capital, wants about 30 percent of its revenue to come from the regions.
 
<b>Oil Firms to Get Tax Cuts</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will cut taxes on oil companies to overcome production “stagnation” following a decade of growth, Energy and Industry Minister Viktor Khristenko said Thursday.
Output may fall for the first time in a decade this year as producers struggle with soaring costs and aging fields. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last month that the government may cut its crude-extraction tax by 100 billion rubles ($4.3 billion) to spur development of harder-to-reach deposits.
Khristenko said he and Kudrin have agreed on draft tax legislation. The main question is how big the cut should be, he said.
 
<b>LUKoil Profits Increase</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — LUKoil, Russia’s biggest independent oil company, said fourth-quarter profit tripled, beating analysts’ estimates, because of higher prices for crude and refined products including diesel.
Net income climbed to a record $3.21 billion from $1.04 billion a year earlier, the Moscow-based company said Thursday in a statement. 
Oil prices surged globally in the period, topping $100 a barrel for the first time in January in New York. LUKoil also sold more expensive automobile fuels at home as consumers increased purchases of foreign cars.

TITLE: Is NATO Expansion Bad for Russia?
AUTHOR: By Uffe Ellemann-Jensen
TEXT: Russia’s main argument against NATO enlargement is that it would threaten its security. That is nonsense, and Russia knows it.
  But the Kremlin has found that behaving like a spoiled child gets results: the right to influence developments in former Soviet countries. In other words, Russia is being allowed to re-assert its sphere of influence — a concept that should have been superceded by that of “Europe Whole and Free,” which the entire European Union appeared to have embraced when communism collapsed.
But no: 1989 was not the end of history. History threatens to return.
European opponents of a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia argue that neither country is ready for NATO membership. Too many question marks about their national unity are said to exist, too many internal conflicts linger, and their records on political and judicial reforms are supposedly dubious.
But the membership process does not imply an automatic right to NATO membership. On the contrary, Membership Action Plans would put heavy demands on Ukraine and Georgia. Both would have to answer a lot of difficult questions and convince others that they are able to live up to NATO’s democratic requirements before being allowed to join.
Therefore, it would also be in Russia’s interest to see such a process started. Russia has valid concerns regarding the huge Russian-speaking minorities in both countries, and these concerns are best dealt with in the framework of the Membership Action Plan process, where the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s very strict rules on treatment of minorities provide the benchmark.
Indeed, the process of the Membership Action Plan ensured protection for Russian minorities in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — all former Soviet republics that are now members of NATO.
The crux of the matter is Europe’s lack of political will to forge a unified stand toward Russia. This has led the Kremlin to pursue a classic “divide-and-rule” strategy by tempting some big European countries into bilateral agreements — particularly on energy issues — that preclude a common EU position.
This is sad — both for Russia and Europeans — because it strengthens the hand of those in Moscow who want to pursue a policy of national pride rather than national interest, and it weakens the possibilities of establishing a real common European foreign and security policy.
But it is saddest for the countries that are once again being left out in the cold. NATO is supposed to be a beacon for countries struggling to establish democracy and freedom. The Bucharest summit suggests that the beacon has been switched off.

Uffe Ellemann-Jensen is the former foreign minister of Denmark.© Project Syndicate.
By Andrei Liakhov

Until 1991, NATO’s primary goal was to contain the threat that was thought to originate from behind its Eastern borders. The goal now seems to be to move the eastern borders as far east as possible. This expansion enhances NATO’s strategic defense forces, of which the United States is the main beneficiary. Washington also has detected a major opportunity to prevent Moscow from re-emerging as its rival through Cold War-like containment policies. NATO expansion is viewed by the United States as a key component in this policy.
Any NATO enlargement to include Georgia and Ukraine would inevitably lead to a new arms race in which Russia would clearly be the underdog. Russia has been deprived of much of the clout it had with the Soviet defense industry, particularly the missile research and development facilities based in Ukraine and the ability to mobilize substantial human and financial resources. Making Russia the underdog seems precisely the game that the United States is trying to play at the moment by pushing for Membership Action Plans for Ukraine and Georgia.
Another goal of encircling Russia is to control the export routes of its natural resources. NATO has added energy security to the list of its missions, and it may be interested in controlling Moscow’s cash flows and influencing its economic development.
Having started to research the impact of energy supplies on national security much earlier than the West, Moscow has come to the conclusion that it must invest vast sums of money into diversifying export routes to maximize its earnings from hydrocarbon shipments. This became possible only after the meteoric rise in the price of hydrocarbons.
The policy of military and economic containment is ultimately directed at preventing Russia from emerging as a major international power.
Having experienced a history with lengthy periods of near isolation from the rest of the world, Russia could, in theory, survive a NATO encirclement. But the price that the Kremlin would pay to keep up with a new arms race and to safeguard its national interests would be very high.
The Kremlin might resort to former tried and true methods to counter a NATO expansion. The result would likely work against advancing democracy and civil society in the country. As during the Soviet period, a bloated defense budget probably would spark new social tensions. This would also mean that the Kremlin would take an even tougher stance toward the West, leading inevitably to a new Cold War.
We should be worried about NATO’s intent to pursue the Membership Action Plan for Georgia and Ukraine. This will deal a serious blow to plans by President-elect Dmitry Medvedev and President Vladimir Putin to turn Russia into a democratic, prosperous state.

Andrei Liakhov, an adviser to the president of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991, is a London-based consultant.

TITLE: Fair-Weather Generals
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The Kremlin has designed its power vertical in such a way that any public complaint against the government is considered a sign of disloyalty. Nonetheless, government authorities are complaining a lot these days. Most important, it is the members of the siloviki and the military who are complaining the loudest. This is striking because, according to their own code of honor, it is better to take a bullet in the head than to air dirty laundry in public.
In the ongoing war between rival siloviki clans, Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Cherkesov was the first to go public with his grievances. After the arrest of his deputy, General Alexander Bulbov, Cherkesov published an article in Kommersant stating that it was unacceptable for members of law enforcement agencies to betray their own people. In reading Cherkesov’s article, it seems that he turned to Kommersant in total despair after he fell out of favor with the Kremlin.
Next, generals began complaining about Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. It would not have been surprising if their differences were over the country’s nuclear policy. But the generals were complaining that Serdyukov had replaced their people with his own appointees. The generals failed to explain, however, why we should sympathize with the military personnel who lost their jobs.
When the military performed shamefully in Chechnya, when the Kursk submarine sank, and when soldiers brutally hazed Private Andrei Sychyov, the generals sailed blithely along, absolutely indifferent to the public outrage against them. The generals did not utter a single word of explanation to the public. It would seem that they were both deaf and mute during these troubled times, but the moment their own positions were in jeopardy, they suddenly found their voices again and began shouting, “Help! Our ranks are being decimated!”
But inspector Dmitry Dovgy, deputy to Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, has outdone them all. Dovgy was suspended last week pending an internal investigation over allegations that he had accepted almost 3 million euros in bribes. Dovgy did not waste a minute in raising a public outcry over the fact that he had been placed under surveillance. As it turns out, we live in a country governed by the rule of law; just look at the relentless surveillance of Dovgy.
Dovgy oversaw the dirtiest, highest-profile investigations in the country — all of which had nothing to do with fighting corruption but everything to do with the turf war between rival Kremlin clans. Which leads to the question: Why should I feel sorry for Dovgy, who has merely fallen victim to his fellow predators?
Two gangs are battling it out with each other. They unmask spies in TNK-BP, and they get involved not only in oil and gas deals, but in manipulating court decisions as well. If their victims refuse to pay protection money, they interpret it as incitement to overthrow the government’s power vertical. If their victims cave in and pay up, they perceive it as a sign of weakness to be exploited further. They are so devoid of conscience that they first take bribes to tip people off about criminal proceedings being initiated against them, and then — with the money in hand — they push the cases forward to extort even more money.
Now we see that, in addition to lacking a conscience, they are entirely deprived of self-respect. We know this because even a mafia hit man caught with a smoking gun in his hands would never complain to the newspapers about how he had been offended or short-changed.
What’s more, the generals completely lack common sense. How else can you explain their attempts to appeal to the public for support of their selfish interests — the same people they have scorned for so many years.

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

TITLE: One-man band
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Jim Avignon, a Munich-born, New York-based painter, became a musician when he spotted a keyboard in the sales bin at a hardware store, right next to the cash register, and bought it immediately. 
That was in 1994 and that is how Neoangin, Avignon’s “one-man band” originated. Introduced to Russian audiences by Badtaste, the Moscow-based indie label that releases his albums in Russia and has promoted his Russian shows and exhibitions since 2003, Avignon distributes his ideas between the two fields. “Simply speaking, I do art more with the brain and music more with the heart,” he said.
In June 2004 Neoangin, which often performs in Moscow, debuted in St. Petersburg at the Griboyedov bunker club and played a free concert at the then-newly opened indie bar Datscha. 
This week Avignon returns with his crazy show, complete with masks and paintings and tragi-comic songs, such as “A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World,” appearing at A2 club on Saturday. The Berlin-based one-man band Nova Huta, consisting of Gunter Reznicek, who describes his music as “Datschadelic music” or “fake gay disco,” and drummer Chris Imler will also perform. Avignon spoke to The St. Petersburg Times about his upcoming show. 
<i><b>Let’s talk about your most recent album, “The Happy Hobo & the Return of the Freaks.” What’s new about it?</b></i>
“The Happy Hobo” is the first album that I made almost completely in New York. I play ukulele on some of the tracks. I wanted the album to be like a variety show.
Every song is about a character: “The Eternal Nerd;” “The Starving Artist;” “The Lost Pilot.” The songs are like portraits of these characters, when I play them live, I become these people. It’s also about changing identity. Nowadays everybody is used to having different identities with different characters. On the Internet you find so many people that you know and that you don’t know.

<i><b>In the summer of 2004, when you performed in St. Petersburg, the city was almost empty... I remember that not many people came to Griboyedov, but there was a great free gig at Datscha. What are your memories about the city?</b></i>
I also have the best memories of the show in Datscha, but also of the show that I did in 2006 (it was a private party in a club). I remember we went to the Hermitage and all the Picassos were on the top floor and there was almost nobody there because you need an elevator to find them.

<i><b>You’re coming with another one-man band called Nova Huta and drummer Chris Imler — what makes you travel together? What do you have in common?</b></i>
We three are good friends when we travel, and although we are very different in character and music, we do some songs together. I sometimes consider us a “boy group” of old guys with young hearts. 
There’s a video on YouTube that shows us three together on stage.

<i><b>You’ve recently performed with Moscow-based off-beat klezmer singer Psoy Korolenko in New York, but when you first collaborated with him on Badtaste’s album “Gonki” a while ago, you did not sound very enthusiastic about the result. What’s changed?</b></i>
Psoy is a personality. You have to understand him. It took me a long time to understand what he’s about, but once I came to that point I like everything he’s doing.
The show we did together in New York was crazy. We both had no precise memory of the album we did together so we started improvising for the whole show.
I have no experience of doing 10-minute songs, I think I did stuff I never did before on stage... And also he has very good and warm [sense of] humor and I like that.
Finally I have to admit Badtaste were more than right to put us together on one album!

<i><b>How has your lifestyle changed since you’ve moved to New York? Do you miss Germany?</b></i>
I moved there three years ago, and no, I don’t regret it so far, but I still go back to Germany every two or three months to do shows and exhibitions. What I regret is all the flying. I don’t miss Germany, I miss some friends but luckily they all come to visit every now and then.

<i><b>Can we expect all your masks and paintings as backdrops in your show in St. Petersburg? You had a great term for using them in concert. Was it “analog reality”?</b></i>
The term was analog multimedia, so you were close. I tried other ways of doing shows, there’s a set with self-made movies to every song and another set with computer animations but I still prefer the good old masks and backdrops. Somehow it fits me best. I promise that they are not the same ones I had last time.

<i><b>What have you done recently as a painter?</b></i>
I just had two exhibitions in New York. Also I am about to release a book with paintings soon. I think all these mixed cultures that I find here in New York have some influence on me. As a painter I am more in a phase with complex and larger paintings that take more time. I am about to prepare an exhibition that I will have in Munich in two weeks that is called “Unreal Estates.” It’s about buildings.

<i><b>The photo I saw looked like a wall in a spooky apartment.</b></i>
The exhibition was in New York and the title was “I Looked in the Mirror and I Saw a Ghost.” It’s because my neighbor, an old Italian lady, died and they put all their furniture on the streets. I took part of the furniture back and used it in the exhibition, so that it has a new use. Maybe because of that I had the feeling we had a ghost in our flat for that time so many of the pictures were about ghosts. And the exhibition in Munich is called “Unreal Estate,” it’s about people putting so much money in investments that are not real...

<i><b>I’ve just heard that Badtaste is releasing an album called “Hallo Jim Avignon!” complete with a puzzle based on your painting “Return of the Freaks” for your upcoming concerts in Russia. What’s this?</b></i>
The album is a compilation of my last four CDs combined with some unreleased material and some different versions. It was Sergei’s [Sergei Korsakov of Badtaste] idea to publish it together with a puzzle. About everything else, the cover, the title, the look I know as much as you and I think it’s meant as a surprise to me, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it.
<i>Neoangin performs, with Nova Huta and Chris Imler, at A2 at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday. www.jimavignon.com</i>

TITLE: WORD’S
         WORTH
TEXT: Ah, spring. The sound of birds chirping in the morn —
What? What did you say? Can you speak a little louder? I can’t hear you! Hello?! Huh? Please speak up! Say what? Louder!
This is life in my apartment these days. Tragically, a 19-story mixed-use building will be constructed about four inches from my bedroom window. Right now, the boys are digging the foundation pit. Or that’s what they say they are doing. When I look out the window at 3 a.m. on Sunday, all I see is a very large vehicle roaring back and forth under my apartment, doing nothing but sending up gas fumes and a racket just to keep me and my neighbors awake.
When I tried to describe the din, I discovered that my Russian lexicon of noise was somewhat lacking. I have since rectified this and would like to share my findings with my fellow expats so that you, too, will know the right words to scream at various officials who are entrusted by the public to enforce noise and construction regulations.
ÉÐÂÏÂÚ¸. This is a great verb for describing any deafening, booming, thundering, clanking noise. ÉÐÓÏ „ÐÂÏÂÎ (There was a crack of thunder). äÓÎÓÍÓ· „ÐÂÏ¾Ú (The bells are pealing). If pealing bells doesn’t suggest a loud noise to you, imagine all 21 bells of the Ivan the Great bell tower Kremlin ringing at the same time. Now imagine that sound two inches from your bedroom window. Got it? This verb can be used with ·Ûθ‰ÓÁÂÐÞ (bulldozers), ýÍÒ͇‚‡ÚÓÐÞ (excavators) and ÓÚ·ÓÈÌÞ ÏÓÎÓÚÍË (jackhammers).
ÉÐÓ¦ÓÚ‡Ú¸. Another excellent verb for describing thundering, roaring, clattering and crashing. çÓ˜¸þ „ÐÓ¦Ó˜ÛÚ „ÐÛÁÓ‚ËÍË (Trucks roar during the night).
CÚÛ˜‡Ú¸. This is the verb for pounding and hammering. If „ÐÓ¦ÓÚ‡Ú¸ is the sound of a kettle drum roll, ÒÚÛ˜‡Ú¸ is the snare drum counterpoint. ꇷӘË ÒÚÛ˜‡Ú ÏÓÎÓÚ͇ÏË (Workers are pounding hammers).
The best noun to use is „ÐÓ¦ÓÚ (din, crash, roar, thunder), which can be applied to virtually any loud and disturbing noise. In Russian, noise ÒÚÓËÚ (“stands”). ÇÒþ ÌÓ˜¸ ÒÚÓËÚ ÒÚЇ¯ÌÞÈ „ÐÓ¦ÓÚ ÒÚÐÓÈÍË (All night there is the terrible din of construction).
But all this, my neighbors tell me, is mere ÎËÐË͇ (sentiment). These are words you use for emotional coloring. When you call the cops or the noise hotline, it’s good to use a few of these vivid verbs, mention sleepless infants and elderly folks, and ask for a commission to investigate those new floor to ceiling cracks in your apartment. Then you get down to business. éÌË ÔЂޯ‡þÚ ‰ÓÔÛÒÚËÏÛþ ÌÓÐÏÛ ¯Ûχ (They are above the permitted noise level). òÛÏ ‰Ó¦Ó‰ËÚ ‰Ó 100 ‰ÂˆË·ÂÎÓ‚ (The noise is up to 100 decibels). If the beleaguered bureaucrat on the line is skeptical, say: èÐËÂÁʇÈÚÂ Ë ËÁÏÂоÈÚÂ! (Come and measure it!)
Sometimes, my neighbors say, you get results. Sometimes, they warn, you do not. If the worst comes to the worst, you have one other option: Á‡ÚÞ˜ÍË ‰Î¾ Û¯ÂÈ (earplugs).

<i>Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based interpreter and translator.</i>

TITLE: Deutschland uber alles
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The German Week in St. Petersburg, an annual program of events designed to highlight many aspects of German life, takes place this year from Monday through April 20. 
During the week, more than 70 events focused on economics, politics and culture will be held in the city. Among them are fashion shows and concerts of classical and modern pop music, photographic and architecture exhibitions, round tables and theater performances, presentations by German companies and a trade fair for young specialists, and even a football match between the young German and Russian teams. More than 52 companies and institutions support the German Week in St. Petersburg as its partners or sponsors this year.
Bernd Braun, German consul general in St. Petersburg, said that the German Week is aimed mainly at young people with a professional interest in Germany, such as students, researchers, entrepreneurs, businessmen, and scientists. However, there are also many events covering three topics — economics, politics and culture — that are of interest to a wider audience.
The economic events of the week open with Architectural Axis Russia-Germany, an exhibition that will present the results of successful German-Russian teamwork in architecture and construction. Among them are projects by two practices, Yevgeny Gerasimov and Partners from St. Petersburg and nps tchoban voss from Berlin. Leading German engineers will discuss the innovations implemented in these projects, while Dr. Sebastian Storz will give a lecture about the reconstruction of Dresden in 1945 after it had been destroyed during World War II.
Energy security, one of the main aspects of Russian-German relations, will be discussed during a two-day conference titled Photoelectric Transformation of Solar Energy: The Way Forward, launched by DAAD (the German Academic Exchange Service) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Russian and German scientists, such as Nobel Prize winner Zhores Alfyorov, chairman of the World Council of Renewable Energy Professor Wolfgang Palz, and others will take part.
A conference called Business Dialogue will be held at the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry and present three large German companies; Deutsche Boerse AG (The German Stock Exchange), Deutsche Bahn International (The International German Railway) and DEG (The German Society of Investment and Development). DEG is a part of KfW Bankengruppe, a financial group which contributes to the development of the private sector of the economy in countries with transitional economies. Deutsche Bahn International is a potential investor in big city, regional, and interregional railway projects, the St. Petersburg metro and the field of logistics. Deutsche Boerse AG is one of the leading world stock market operators which leads companies to global capital markets. 
Such topics as the image of Russia in the German media and the relations between Russia, Germany and Europe after the presidential elections will be on the agenda during the discussions at Herzen University, the European University and St. Petersburg State University.
Among the highlights of the cultural part of German Week is a concert by Culcha Candela, a hip hop band from Berlin at Port Club on Sunday. Founded in 2002, the group consists of seven young multinational musicians. It has already released three albums. 
Meanwhile, fashion project Garderobe 2008: Fashion With Room to Grow from Germany and Russia will present the work of young designers from the leading ESMOD Design School in Berlin and the new collections by their young counterparts from the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design, Moscow State University of Design and Technologies and other design schools in Russia. 
Throughout the week, Cafe D at the Goethe Institute at 58 Naberezhnaya Reki Moiki will be the venue for roundtables, presentations of films and art videos, and music performances as well as meetings with guests of the German Week in St. Petersburg, although it will also continue to operate as a cafe for visitors who simply want to have a cup of coffee and read Russian and German newspapers.
“Although Germany is traditionally one of the main commercial partners of St. Petersburg, the official data of statistics can hardly help our citizens get a full impression of the country,” said Andrei Petruk, the first deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg External Relations Committee. “Modern Germany is more associated with the high-quality car industry, than its huge cultural heritage, leading universities, and unique socially-oriented economy. That is why the German Week is a very special and successful attempt to bring Germany to St. Petersburg, revealing the country’s past, present and future at the same time.”

<i>The full progam for the German Week in St. Petersburg can be found at www.deutsche-woche.ru</i>

TITLE: Netrebko in Vienna
AUTHOR: By George Jahn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria — Yes, Anna Netrebko is pregnant. No, you can’t see it.
The Russian diva returned to the opera stage Sunday for the first time since her pregnancy was announced Feb. 4 and she was spry during the revival of Massenet’s “Manon” at the Vienna State Opera.
Netrebko’s management company did not announce a due date beyond saying she and her fiance, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, were expecting their child this autumn.
Netrebko was all over the stage from the opening minutes, which saw her hopping up and down a waiting room bench to the literally “dying” moments, where she expires in the arms of her love — but only after one last desperately madcap pirouette recalling her high-octane life of pleasure that ends in remorse come too late.
About the only physical sign that the diva is expecting was in the cut of her costumes — a baby doll in the bedroom scene that appeared a bit roomier than the sparse pajamas she wore in last year’s premiere of the Andrei Serban production, a bodice that seemed less tight fitting and a bell-skirt dress that ever-so-slightly looked to be de-emphasizing the waist.
Aurally though, there was a difference.
Netrebko was in her usual effortless control of the full range this opera demands — including the famous Gavotte that calls for hitting notes sandwiching high C. But her warm voice acquired an extra coating of honey, giving it an almost mezzo-like quality in the middle register.
Not that any of that hurt her in her depiction of a 16-year-old on her way to a convent until love catches up with her. Just like in previous performances, her voice fit the occasion — childlike, tender, passionate and supple in pitch, phrasing and expression.
And not only her voice reflected a transition from prim but flirtatious teenager, to young lover, to woman of the world and finally to a woman broken and dying in the arms of the man she truly loved. Even if she spoke instead of singing, Netrebko’s acting qualities would be able to amply capture Manon’s voyage from innocence through self-absorption to the final stop, introspection and death.
Massimo Giordano was a more than serviceable Des Grieux, a role filled by Roberto Alagna when the production premiered in March 2007. Giordano’s tenor was powerful and expressive, and his acting was OK too.
But for those used to the sizzling intensity generated by Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, her frequent partner, the sparks were lacking. Still, Netrebko and Giordano looked good together and went through all the right motions whether in bed, clutching in church in the scene where she reclaims him from his life as a priest, or engaging in a final embrace as the stage turns dark, and the curtain prepares to fall.
With no such constraints on the other principals, their performances were admirable. Worth special mentions were Adrian Eroed as Lescaut and Dan Paul Dumitrescu as Des Grieux’s father.
Also good were Alexander Kaimbacher as Guillot de Morfontaine; Clemens Unterreiner as Bretigny; Ileana Tonca as Poussette; Sophie Marilley as Javotte and Zoryana Kusphler as Rosette.
Conductor Claude Schnitzler and his orchestra delivered power when called for — as in the bustling opening scene where all stops were opened with their boisterous musical underpinning — and alternated string-quartet-like pathos where needed.
Serban and stage manager Peter Pabst transform the action from the 19th century into the Paris of the Roaring ’20s — a good move, resulting in scenes staged with light projections and cardboard cutout figures and onstage visuals that complemented the principals, without upstaging them.
Netrebko is slated to perform in Bellini’s “I Capuleti e I Montecchi” at Paris Opera from May 24 to June 15 — probably her last appearance on the opera stage before the happy day.

TITLE: Troubled tour
AUTHOR: By Alastair Macauley
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: During most of the third program in the Kirov Ballet’s season at City Center — a quadruple bill of excerpts from late-19th-century ballets by Marius Petipa — an alarming question kept flashing into my mind: “Maybe I don’t like ballet after all?” Here were virtuoso episodes from “Le Corsaire” and “Don Quixote”; here was the “Diana and Acteon” pas de deux; here came salvo after salvo of audience applause. And almost all of it left me cold.
Fortunately, friends admitted at intermission that they felt the same way. More fortunately yet, the evening ended with the Shades scene from “La Bayadère,” which — despite my enduring reservations about the Kirov’s current way of performing it — at least provided the much-needed proof that ballet can be an art of substantial dance architecture and eloquence. Elsewhere, however, this feeling of indifference was disquieting.
There is more than one problem here. For one thing, whose choreography are we really watching? For another, to whose music are we actually listening? Above all, is there any kind of coherence to be found here? In the program alone, the introductory essay, the central list of credits and the detailed series of notes on individual ballets all have divergent accounts of who made what.
The “Corsaire” episode, listed as Petipa’s choreography and Adolphe Adam’s music, is actually a nutty conflation. You no sooner start to watch — and listen to — its women-only garland-waving “Jardin Animé” scene than one confusion arises. This music (the “Naila” waltz) isn’t by Adam but by Leo Delibes. (Many New Yorkers will recognize it from Balanchine’s ballet “La Source.”) The program notes establish that by the time of Petipa’s final 1899 staging, the complete “Corsaire” had music by 11 composers; in these excerpts we hear work by at least four.
And what we’re watching has been considerably overhauled by successive post-Petipa hands. This staging doesn’t make it clear that the setting is a harem or that the three women who dance a virtuoso pas de trois are odalisques. In the middle comes a grand pas de trois from another part of the ballet: the ballerina Medora dances with her Byronic partner, Conrad, and his slave, Ali. Then Medora and the harem girls resume their horticultural scene as if the male intruders had been irrelevant anyway.
Similar problems surround both the “Diana and Acteon” and “Don Quixote” excerpts. Nomenclature: This should be “Diana and Endymion.” Accreditation: Its music is at least partly by Riccardo Drigo, whereas the center-program billing lists it as by Cesare Pugni. But not even the program notes explain why the “Don Quixote” excerpt is performed with the same backdrop of an imperial-theater curtain that also accompanies the Kirov’s “Paquita” grand pas, or why one soloist contributes a solo variation that more usually turns up in that divertissement (as it did last week).
This litany of textual collage and corruption only begins to explain my problems with the first three excerpts. In “Corsaire” the introductory “Naila” waltz looks woefully underchoreographed. Yet even so, the Kirov has moments when dance and music suddenly split apart. When a bell rings at the end of a musical phrase, no corresponding dance image occurs; a second or so later, however, six women lift their feet into a retiré position that has no corresponding musical cue.
I don’t actually care if what we’re shown isn’t authentic Petipa; I just want to see dancing that feels like dancing — musical, spontaneous, connected. But the Kirov has spent decades honing these chunks into material that makes ballet feel like a graduation exercise or professional competition.
The emphasis becomes so point-scoring and prize-oriented that there’s far less difference than there should be between the first three ballerinas. The sheer beauty of Diana Vishneva (sometimes glowing in Tuesday’s “Corsaire” but still capable of ending a dance well after the music has stopped); the dramatic-theatrical gifts of Victoria Tereshkina (seen in “Diana and Acteon” on Tuesday); and the stunt-laden, toneless effects of Alina Somova (Tuesday’s Kitri in “Don Quixote”): these should be worlds apart, but all seem to have acquired the same glaze. Some kind of prize for lurid sex appeal should go to Mikhail Lobukhin for the bare-limbed flash he brought to “Diana and Acteon”: it scarcely matters here that he seems devoid of classical finesse.
Meanwhile, some technique prize should go to Leonid Sarafanov. In his “Don Quixote” solo he knocked off a single sequence of alternating double air turns and double pirouettes. Why is it that such rare feats, which I have cherished with a few other artists, still don’t quite feel fully dimensional with him? I like his boyishness and his buoyancy, but not his dancing’s lack of weight or contrast.
In the famous entry of the Shades in “La Bayadère,” the corps women enter in a long succession of arabesques, showing several different conceptions of what the front arm should be doing. But who can forget how, formerly, each one aimed her arm ahead into space like a search beam? Still, when these 24 women end that opening dance and stand there, each with one leg stretched behind her and resting on point, it’s still one of the great images of ballet: all those calves and feet seem to have been specially shaped and trained to this one end.

TITLE: The small print
AUTHOR: By Benjamin Paloff
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Reading Russian poetry and aesthetic theory of the early Soviet period against the backdrop of the American poetry produced since then, one easily gets the feeling that a great deal of American paper could have been spared if these Russian texts had been available in English earlier. Such backhanded praise for the innovations of the Russian literary avant-garde does not diminish the originality of American originals, such as the prose-poet Russell Edson or the poetic prose-writer Lydia Davis, both of whom intersect engagingly with the work of Daniil Kharms, and both of whom are duly noted in Matvei Yankelevich’s introduction to this collection of Kharms’ poems, mini plays, anecdotes and mixed genres. But for the sizeable army of inadvertent imitators and the would-be trendsetters who enter American creative writing programs each year intending to reshape modernity, there is a growing catalog of what should be required reading before pen is set to manifesto. And “Today I Wrote Nothing” might well find itself near the top of that list.
Born Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachyov in 1905, Kharms spent most of his life in St. Petersburg, witnessing his native city’s many transformations and name changes. He adopted his own artistic nom de guerre, following the almost conventional unconventionality of the time, in 1924. For the rest of that extraordinary decade, Kharms aggressively played the buffoon of the Leningrad art scene, staging one-page plays and recitations with his friends — including the writers Nikolai Zabolotsky, Alexander Vvedensky and Konstantin Vaginov, with whom Kharms formed the Association for Real Art, or OBERIU, in 1927. Kharms’ texts from this period, designed specifically to offend readers’ and audiences’ expectations about how people are supposed to behave and what literature is supposed to do, might strike today’s reader as the products of a smarmy teenager, too cool for school, aggressively scandalous and self-indulgent.
Kharms has been slow to break into English, and the same confrontational attitude that offended the tastes of the Leningrad literati may be partly to blame. Inherently anti-establishmentarian and himself a political prisoner who died of starvation in 1942, Kharms nevertheless fails to fit American images of the oppressed Soviet poet who broadcasts important historical truths to a prosperous but morally bankrupt West. Instead, Kharms tends to write about people hitting each other in the face — a dominant theme in his work — or becoming enmeshed in complex, ultimately meaningless tasks, as in “The Meeting”:
Now, one day a man went to work
and on the way he met another man,
who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread,
was heading back home where he came from.
And that’s it, more or less.
This is the entire story, and Kharms, in a typical closing line, tells us as much. Literary convention tells the reader that the first sentence should blossom into a network of actions and associated themes, as plausible as they are contrived, which we might otherwise call a “story.” Kharms, however, refers to these narratives as “events” or “incidents,” not as stories per se. The reader will either have to learn to live with disappointment or find some other critical rubric in which seemingly pointless texts can be accommodated.
In recent years, American publishers have accomplished this by filing Kharms under the general heading of absurdism. George Gibian’s 1997 anthology, “The Man in the Black Coat: Russia’s Literature of the Absurd,” follows this line, as does Eugene Ostashevsky’s more recent “OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism.” While these collections provide worthwhile introductions to Kharms’ art, they may be a bit misleading, since Kharms has little in common with the absurdism that would become a staple of postwar European literature and philosophy. Though occasionally reminiscent of a graduate seminar paper, Yankelevich’s extremely astute and detailed introduction cuts through the American penchant for reducing Kharms and similar writers to peddlers of the meaningless: “The claim that there is an ‘Absurdist tradition’ in Russia runs close to revisionism and at best is an attempt to apply a generic label to that which is unfamiliar or hard to pin down.” At the same time, the translator properly cautions us not to read Kharms as a voice of political protest, perhaps the most common and restrictive mold into which Westerners press authors from the Soviet Union. As Yankelevich notes, “We stumble on (or over) this kind of oversimplification again and again in our culture’s popularization of difficult writers in difficult times.” That past readers have tended to read Kharms either through absurdism or political allegory — framing devices that offer opposing verdicts about whether a literary text should mean anything at all — gives some sense of his enormous, largely untapped interpretive potential.
If the reader is willing to look beyond these reductions, Kharms’ poetry and prose suggest the much more unsettling truth that his writing is about real life, often observed in terms so direct and frightening that readers mistake it for whimsy. The violence that permeates these brief texts is no less plausible for being random, as we see in the opening sentence of “An Incident on the Street”: “A man once jumped off a tram, but he did it so badly that a car hit him.” The author then fills a page with a list of similar incidents following each other in a loose causal chain, until: “Later everything was alright again, and Ivan Semyonovich Karpov even dropped into a self-service cafeteria.” It does not matter that this closing sentence is the first mention of Karpov. In fact, Kharms seems to suggest that nothing matters, whether in a literary text or in our own daily existences, except insofar as we are willing to ascribe it meaning. Or, as Kharms declares in one of the numbered, aphoristic entries in “The Blue Notebook,” “While traveling, do not give yourself over to daydreams, but fantasize and pay attention to everything, even the insignificant details.”
Kharms practices an almost religious devotion to these “insignificant details.” In small doses, such devotion can be hilarious or horrifying by turns. At longer stretches, it can be downright numbing. Ultimately, Kharms’ attention to the banal is worthwhile because his prose sounds like a deflated fairytale, his poems like deconstructed nursery rhymes. With accumulation, the details of his world lose their luster and become merely endless repetitions of the quotidian. While this effect may fall well within Kharms’ philosophy of art, it also makes for a slow and sometimes stultifying experience of the prose. Similarly, the English renderings of the poems are not nearly as jaunty as their Russian originals, which may be ascribed in part to the erratic punctuation of Kharms’ manuscripts and the decision, however admirable from a scholarly standpoint, to preserve it here.

Benjamin Paloff is a poetry editor at Boston Review. His poems have recently appeared in The Literary Review.

TITLE: Status symbols
AUTHOR: By Amie Ferris-Rotman
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Interest in Russian art and Russian interest in fine art around the world is booming.
Russia’s new super-rich want to re-connect to a pre-Soviet cultural heritage and have been using their vast fortunes to bring native art and the best of the rest of the world to the mother country for ownership or display.
Russian oligarchs have made headlines bidding millions of dollars to bring cultural icons back home, Russians are in the majority at foreign auctions of their countrymen’s art, and big auction houses are setting up shop in Moscow.
“Art and cultural symbols are the best way for Russians to identify with their cultural heritage, which is considered imperial and splendid,” Mikhail Kamensky, director of auction house Sotheby’s Russian division, told Reuters.
The London-based auction house displayed pre-Bolshevik paintings last week near the Kremlin to prospective buyers, of which many are Russian.
The collection, which includes majestic, somber scenes of empty Russian landscapes by the artist Arkhip Kuindzhy, will go on sale in mid-April in New York.
Kamensky said that 80-90 percent of traditional Russian art at Sotheby’s is bought by Russians, who either live in the country or abroad. They also buy about 70 percent of contemporary Russian art.
“It [art] is to present themselves to the world. It is used to bridge the gap between 19th century Russia and 21st century Russia,” Kamensky said.
Sotheby’s, which sold a contemporary Russian art collection featuring a miniature Lenin in a setting sun for a record $8.35 million last month in London, opened its Moscow branch last May.
Russia is undergoing its longest economic boom for more than a generation, fuelled by record oil prices and the new wealthy enjoy lavish lifestyles with multiple houses and English-speaking nannies for their children. Alongside that trend — not experienced since tsarist times nearly 100 years ago — thirst for art has also resurfaced.
Lawyer-come-millionaire and music enthusiast Maxim Viktorov purchased a rare Italian violin from Sotheby’s in February for a record $3.9 million.
The Guarneri, which was made in 1741 and been plucked by European composers throughout its long history, was played a fortnight ago to a hand-picked audience in Moscow Conservatory’s grand hall by Israeli virtuoso Pinchas Zukerman.
“Maxim [Viktorov] had a vision . . . to bring back the standard and quality that Russia had many years ago,” said Zukerman, who is the musical director of Ottawa’s National Orchestra.
“This is his way of expressing his gratitude to being Russian,” he said the night he played the unique instrument.
Two oligarchs with a penchant for soccer clubs are also active participants on the artistic scene, swapping Russian and English art between the countries’ capitals.
Alisher Usmanov, metals tycoon and owner of almost a quarter of London’s Arsenal football club, recently paid for English artist JMW Turner’s work to be displayed at Moscow’s Pushkin museum.
Works by the 18th century English Romantic painter will be shown to Muscovites for the first time since 1975 from November.
Last year in London, Usmanov snatched up the entire art collection belonging to late musician Mstislav Rostrapovich for a reported $50 million, promising to return it to Russia.
“It’s patriotic [to buy Russian art], but of course you can’t be patriotic if you don’t have products,” said Olga Sloutsker, who founded an elite chain of fitness clubs 15 years ago and counts several oligarchs in her close circle of friends.
Billionaire and owner of London’s Chelsea football club Roman Abramovich has also sponsored exhibitions showing the work of Russian artist Max Penson.
His photographs, showing Uzbekistan adjusting to communism in the 1930s, have been shown at several outlets in London.

TITLE: The world’s tallest man struggles to fit in
AUTHOR: By Olga Bondaruk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PODOLYANTSI, Ukraine — Leonid Stadnik’s phenomenal height has forced him to quit a job he loved, to stoop as he moves around his house and to spend most of his time in his tiny home village because he cannot fit in a car or bus.
But Stadnik, who Guinness World Records says is the world’s tallest human, says his condition has also taught him that the world is filled with kindhearted strangers.
Since his recognition by Ukrainian record keepers four years ago, and by Guinness last year, people from all over Ukraine and the world have shipped him outsized clothing, provided his home with running water and recently presented him with a giant bicycle. Recently, he got a new car, courtesy of President Viktor Yushchenko.
“Thanks to good people I have shoes and clothes,” said the 37-year-old former veterinarian, who still lives with his 66-year-old mother.
In 2006, Stadnik was officially measured at 2.57 meters tall (8 feet, 5 inches), surpassing a Chinese man to claim the title of the world’s tallest person.
His growth spurt began at age 14 after a brain operation that apparently stimulated the overproduction of growth hormone. Doctors say he has been growing ever since.
While he may appear intimidating due to his size, Stadnik charms visitors with a broad grin and childlike laugh. He seems at times like a lonely boy trapped in a giant’s body, even keeping stuffed toys on his pillow.
Stadnik’s stature has earned him worldwide attention, but it has mostly been a burden to him. He has to battle to lead anything close to a normal life.
All the doorways in his one-story brick house are too short for him to pass through without stooping. His 200 kilograms cause constant knee pain and often force him to move on crutches.
Stadnik loves animals, but he had to quit his job as a veterinarian at a cattle farm in a nearby village, after suffering frostbite when he walked to work in his socks in winter. He could not afford specially made shoes for his 43-centimeter feet.
But his recent fame has brought him friends from all over the world and taught him not to despair.
A German man who said he was his distant relative invited Stadnik for a visit several years ago. On the trip, Stadnik got to sample frog legs in an elegant restaurant and saw a roller coaster in an amusement park — both for the first time.
Shortly after that, Stadnik came home one day and saw a brand-new computer connected to the Internet sitting on his desk — a gift from a local Internet provider. Company workers “sneaked into the house like little spies” to install the equipment, Stadnik joked.
Since then he has made numerous online friends, including several in the United States, Australia and Russia. Stadnik hopes to learn English so he can communicate better with his Anglophone contacts; currently, he relies on computer translations, which he says are often inadequate.
In March, an organization for the disabled in his home village of Podolyantsi, 200 kilometers west of Kiev, gave Stadnik a giant bike so he could pedal to the grocery store, which is in a nearby village. The group also presented Stadnik with a fitness machine.

“I have always dreamed that my life and the life of my loved ones … would become more comfortable,” Stadnik said. “My dream is coming true.”

On March 24, he traveled to Kiev to get a new, shiny-blue car. Stadnik first struggled to squeeze himself into the passenger’s seat, his knees nearly reaching his face, but once he did Yushchenko briefly drove the beaming Stadnik outside the presidential office. Authorities in his village have promised to supply gas.
His neighbors joke that they may also benefit from Stadnik’s success. “Of course we are proud of him — we may have gas here soon thanks to him,” said Nila Kravchuk, 75.

Since he quit his job, Stadnik has concentrated on managing the family garden and taking care of his three cows, one horse and assorted pigs and chickens. He lives with his mother, Halyna, and his sister Larysa, 42.

Stadnik says his dream now is finding a soul mate, just like the former titleholder, China’s Bao Xishun, who was married last year.

TITLE: Golden wonder
AUTHOR: By Gareth Arnison
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Just a few doors down from the American Consulate and across the road from the well-known American-style food joint City Bar, the Brits have moved in.
The Golden Pint Pub is an English pub that consists of two rooms, each holding around 30 people, with genuine pub-style upholstery and tables. The decor is perhaps the pub’s main attraction, with small old-fashioned leaflets from traditional English pubs splattered across the walls to make a collage. Thrown into this mixture is also the odd memorabilia framed photo of, for example, London black cabs bearing the registration plates “England” and “London.” 
Each room is also equipped with a large flat-screen television showing sports matches. With a friendly and lively atmosphere (although this atmosphere died out as the night wore on) combined with the high stools that line the bar, this pub would be a good place to come and support your soccer or hockey team. 
An intriguing name such as “The Golden Pint” may conjure up images of a pint of gold. Of course, visitors should not be disappointed if they do not find this here, but The Golden Pint Pub offers an alternative selection of amber pints in their liquid form. 
Although on the pricey side at 200 rubles ($8) a pint (110 rubles, $4.40 for a half-pint), English stout Bombardier, Irish lager Harp, dark and light German beers, white Belgian beer, Newcastle Brown Ale (although this was not available on our visit) and an interesting Belgian cherry lager, Timmermans Kriek, are all served in The Golden Pint.
The menu however, is not in keeping with the pub’s English surroundings. One might expect some typical English dishes, given the atmosphere, but the menu is more a selection of European cuisine, with the odd Russian dish here and there.
The suluguni cheese at 140 rubles ($5.60) was a delicious starter. Traditional Russian beer snacks such as grenki (deep fried black bread) with cheese or garlic (80 rubles, $3.20) and a selection of salads are also available, but the Greek salad (170 rubles, $6.80) was nothing to shout about.
There is a fair amount of choice in the main courses with various meat dishes. Although the portions were rather small, the salmon with mashed potatoes (330 rubles, $13.20) was enjoyable and a very well presented steak with potato wedges (380 rubles, $15.20) made for good standard pub food. 
The dessert menu is limited to three choices — a selection of ice-cream (120 rubles, $4.80), cheesecake (170 rubles, $6.80) and for those with a sweet tooth, strawberry soup (150 rubles, $6), which in fact consisted of a scoop of ice-cream floating in the middle of a very sugary strawberry-flavored liquid.
All this can be gobbled up to the sound of cheesy hits from the ‘80s playing through the music system around the pub, whose volume increases as you go into the clean and chic toilets.
On weekdays from 12 p.m. until 4 p.m. there is also a standard business lunch for 190 rubles ($7.60), which is a selection from the evening menu along with slight variations.
As for the fast and banter-filled service, be sure to eat the side-salad that accompanies the main course or the waitress will not hold back in telling you its vitamin benefits. The jocular waitress was however at times too casual. Infuriated by her use of the informal “you” (“ty”) my companion challenged her about this derogatory manner and child-like treatment of customers. Laughing, she simply shrugged off the accusation, saying “everyone is a child!”

TITLE: Insufferable
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: If you like your contempt for humanity served overcooked and oozing fatty blobs of preening, lazy self-regard, you could not improve on Harold Pinter’s redo of the 1970 Anthony Shaffer play “Sleuth,” which Kenneth Branagh has used to remake the 1972 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film of the same title. (Got that?) The result is that what was once insignificant is now insufferable, though, at 86 minutes, almost an hour shorter.
Jude Law stars as Milo Tindle, a hairdresser and sometime actor who’s having an affair with the wife of a famous novelist and full-time sadist, Andrew Wyke, played by Michael Caine. Milo is young, lovely and, because he’s played by the talented Law, a pleasant screen presence. Andrew is decades older, wattled and grooved and, because he’s played by the talented Caine, equally fun to watch, even when he’s as badly lighted as he often is here. Both are less pleasing to listen to, largely because they’ve been enlisted to enliven a story reeking of mothballs and sexual panic and designed to titillate the audience by putting its two lab rats into an electrified maze. Zap! Zap! Sizzle!
The new “Sleuth” film follows the general nasty arc of the 1972 screen version, which starred Caine as the bedroom interloper and Laurence Olivier as his wily match. Milo (inexplicably) visits Andrew’s estate; Andrew (unpersuasively) coaxes Milo into a crime; Milo (unbelievably) retaliates; and so it goes, amid much twisting and turning of the meta-variety sort.
“Tell me,” Andrew asks in Schaffer’s original play, “would you agree that the detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds?” Milo, or really the playwright, replies, “Perhaps it would have been truer to say that noble minds are the normal recreation of the detective story.” Pinter more or less recycles these lines, thereby erecting a bridge between him and Agatha Christie, whom, depending on your view, Shaffer either robbed or parodied.
This version of the film cuts out chunks of complication and inserts surveillance cameras in and around Andrew’s manse, which adds screens within screens (some in green-hued night vision) though nothing of actual thematic interest. The performers tend to deliver the airless, self-consciously synthetic dialogue like untutored violinists dutifully sawing away to the steady tick-tock of a metronome. On occasion there’s a flourish of realism as one or the other approximates a human being rather than a dramatic contrivance. This happens infrequently, mostly when the two men are raising their voices and intimately grappling with the story’s tiresome sexual dynamics, which suggest a link between sadism and homosexual desire. Here a brandished gun comes loaded with symbolic import, not just bullets.
Branagh can be a fine film actor, but at this point in his screen career it’s safe to say he has no feel or facility for cinema when he’s calling the shots behind the camera. Almost every setup looks wrong: poorly considered, awkwardly realized, ugly. (The cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos has done fine work elsewhere.) Branagh fiddles with the lights, tilts the camera and hustles his hard-working actors upstairs and down and back again and into an elevator as small as a coffin built for one. He embellishes the screenplay’s every obvious conceit and word, hammering the point until you feel as if you’re trapped inside the elevator with Milo and Andrew, going up and down and up and down, though nowhere in particular.

TITLE: Manchester, Barcelona Through to Semis
AUTHOR: By Zoran Milosavljevic
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BELGRADE — Manchester United completed a 3-0 aggregate win over AS Roma on Wednesday to join Liverpool and Chelsea in the Champions league semifinals as the three English teams repeated last season’s success. 
They will be joined by 2006 winners Barcelona, who beat German side Schalke 04 by a single goal at home to secure a 2-0 aggregate victory after Ivorian midfielder Yaya Toure scored shortly before halftime. 
Liverpool face Chelsea in the Champions League semifinals for the third time in four seasons after beating them in 2005 and last year while United, who lost last term to eventual winners AC Milan, play Barcelona. 
United manager Alex Ferguson was looking forward to his team’s first competitive visit to the Nou Camp since their 1999 Champions League triumph there when they beat Bayern Munich 2-1 thanks to two stoppage time goals. 
“Barcelona are a fantastic club and it is a marvelous stadium with great memories for us,” Ferguson told a news conference. 
“We can’t go there and be negative, we have to go there and be positive and if we do that we have a good chance. 
“You have opportunities in life when you have got something really special in your club and I think we’ve got something special in this team.” 
A Carlos Tevez goal after 70 minutes gave United a 1-0 win at Old Trafford on Wednesday as the English champions maintained their record of never losing a knockout tie in Europe after winning the away leg first. 
They did so for the 14th time after weathering some nervy first-half moments, including a penalty which Roma midfielder Daniele de Rossi blazed over the bar on the half hour following Wes Brown’s challenge on Mancini. 
It was United third successive home win over Roma, following last year’s 7-1 thrashing at the same stage of the competition and this season’s 1-0 victory in the group stage. 
United never looked like repeating last year’s 8-3 aggregate drubbing of the Italian side but Tevez sealed their passage when he headed an Owen Hargreaves cross past Doni. 
With several key players rested ahead of their crunch Premier League clash with Arsenal on Sunday, United looked uncomfortable for long spells before the Argentinean calmed their nerves with his fourth Champions League goal.  
Like Ferguson, Barca manager Frank Rijkaard was also relishing the clash that will renew old rivalries. United beat Barcelona 2-1 to win the now defunct Cup Winners Cup in 1991 and the teams twice drew 3-3 in the Champions League eight years later. 
“I think we have got to get ready for two games against a team that is in top form and play very good football,” Rijkaard told a news conference.

TITLE: Olympic Torch Route Dogged By Protesters
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO — Last-minute changes to the Olympic torch’s route through the only North American city on its world tour helped it evade not only protesters, but also fans who lined up for hours waiting for a historic sight that never arrived. 
“I’m disappointed, annoyed, tired, frustrated,” Sydney Sullivan, 18, said after unsuccessfully trying to chase the flame through the city. “I mean, it’s not every day you get to see the Olympic torch.” 
With scuffles breaking out between human rights activists and pro-Chinese groups Wednesday, the relay was rerouted and shortened to prevent disruptions by massive crowds. The planned closing ceremony at the waterfront was canceled and moved to San Francisco International Airport. The flame was placed on a plane and was not displayed. 
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge expressed relief that the San Francisco relay avoided the turmoil of the torch’s previous stops in London and Paris, where demonstrators had tried to snuff out the flame. 
“Fortunately, the situation was better ... in San Francisco,” Rogge said at an Olympic meeting in Beijing. “It was, however, not the joyous party that we had wished it to be.” 
The torch’s 85,000-mile, 20-nation global journey is the longest in Olympic history, and is meant to build excitement for the Beijing Games. But it has also been targeted by activists angered over China’s human rights record, its rule of Tibet and its support for the governments of Myanmar and Sudan. 
Chinese officials declared the San Francisco event a success. 
“During the torch relay there we have seen lots of patriotic overseas Chinese and local people who warmly welcomed the torch relay, which left many moving moments in our hearts,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Thursday. “The torch will go ahead in spite of all the difficulties and spread the Olympic spirit and the concept of peace, friendship and progress. And this can not be stopped by any forces.” 
Less than an hour before the relay began, officials cut the original six-mile route nearly in half. 
Then, at the opening ceremony, the first torchbearer took the flame from a lantern brought to the stage and held it aloft before running into a waterfront warehouse. A motorcycle escort departed, but the torchbearer was nowhere in sight. 
Officials drove the Olympic torch about a mile inland and handed it off to two runners away from protesters and media. The runners began jogging in the opposite direction of the crowds, and the procession gave front-row views to nearby residents, who leaned out their windows for the unexpected sight. More confusion followed, and the torch convoy apparently stopped near the Golden Gate Bridge before heading southward to the airport. 
As the flame traveled toward the airport, news dribbled through the crowds of more than 10,000 spectators and protesters gathered at the waterfront that the torch wasn’t coming. While Olympic fans dispersed in disappointment, many protesters were undeterred by the development. 
San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong said the decision was made after protesters who swarmed into the street along the original route refused police orders to get back behind barricades. Disputes among China protesters and supporters were escalating into “pushing and shoving matches,” Fong said, and one protest group began breaking windows on a bus. 
There were signs of tension even before the torch relay began. Pro-Tibet and pro-China groups had side-by-side permits to demonstrate, and representatives from both sides spilled from their sanctioned sites across a major street and shouted at each other nose to nose, with no visible police presence to separate them. 
“I’m proud to be Chinese and I’m outraged because there are so many people who are so ignorant they don’t know Tibet is part of China,” Yi Che said. “It was and is and will forever be part of China.” 
Only a handful of arrests were made, and no major incidents were reported, police said. 
On Friday, the IOC’s executive board was due to discuss whether to end the remaining international legs of the relay after San Francisco because of widespread protest. The torch is scheduled to travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then to a dozen other countries before arriving in China on May 4. The Olympics begin Aug. 8. 
After the San Francisco event, Indonesian officials announced it would significantly shorten its leg of the Olympic torch relay in the capital, Jakarta, citing security concerns. Their relay was scheduled for April 22. 
Rogge has refrained from criticizing China, saying he prefers to engage in “silent diplomacy” with the Chinese. 
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would not attend the opening ceremony. Brown’s office said the decision was not aimed at sending a message of protest to the Chinese government, that Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell will represent the British government at the opening, and that Brown would attend the closing ceremony. 
London is hosting the 2012 Olympics and British officials were expected to attend events throughout the games. 
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he is debating not attending the opening ceremony as a protest of China’s crackdown in Tibet.

TITLE: American To Play For Russia
AUTHOR: By Oscar Dixon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — WNBA All-Star Becky Hammon will play for Russia at the Beijing Olympics.
Hammon said Tuesday in a phone interview that she signed with the Russian national team Monday, about two weeks after getting her Russian passport.
The 31-year-old point guard for San Antonio Silver Stars also plays professionally in Russia. But she is not among the pool of 29 U.S. players hoping to make the 12-player Olympic roster.
“I’m going where they really want me and where I have an opportunity to win a medal,” said Hammon, a nine-year WNBA veteran.
The South Dakota native also signed a three-year extension with the Russian pro team CSKA.
She said she began the passport application process last year — her first with CSKA. Many WNBA stars who play overseas have a second passport — Diana Taurasi has an Italian passport; Sue Bird has an Israeli one — so they’re not counted as Americans on the team’s roster.
The 170-centimeter tall Hammon averaged 18.8 points and 5.0 assists last season for the Silver Stars.
She said she will head to Russia in late July after the WNBA shuts its season down for the Olympics. The U.S. and Russia may not meet during the Olympics, but the teams play Aug. 4 in the FIBA Diamond Ball Tournament, a tuneup for Beijing.
“It might be a little awkward at first,” Hammon said. “But when the ball goes up, you just play the game.”
Hammon said she struggled to come to the decision to play for Russia as she ran hundreds of scenarios through her mind, like marching under the Russian flag in the parade of nations during opening ceremonies. But she became more comfortable with the idea after extensive conversations with her parents, Silver Stars coach Dan Hughes and her agent, Mike Cound.
Cound said under the rules of the Russian pro league Hammon was eligible for an international passport and to become a naturalized citizen. And since she had not played for the U.S., or any other country, in a major FIBA-sanctioned international competition, she is able to play for Russia in the Olympics.
“If I thought there was any indication that I could play with USA Basketball, I probably wouldn’t have done it,” she said. “I feel good [about the decision]. My options were to sit on my couch and watch the Olympics, or play in the Olympics. It made it an easy decision.”

TITLE: Investigators Find Bed At Texas Polygamist Temple
AUTHOR: By Miguel Bustillo
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: SAN ANGELO, Texas — Authorities searching a remote polygamist compound for a 16-year-old girl who had claimed she was sexually abused discovered a bed inside a towering limestone temple and were told by a “confidential informant” that men used it to have sex with underage girls, according to a court document unsealed Wednesday. 
The discovery of the bed, which was ruffled and contained what appeared to be a long strand of a female’s hair, was disclosed in an affidavit that Texas Rangers used to obtain a second search warrant to expand their investigation of the YFZ Ranch, a 1,700-acre guarded complex outside the tiny West Texas town of Eldorado. 
YFZ, which stands for Yearning for Zion, was built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a 10,000-member sect that broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s after it banned polygamy. 
The allegation that sex between adult men and underage girls was occurring inside the monolithic white temple came Saturday from a confidential informant who formerly belonged to the religious sect and who had been cultivated over several years by Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, according to the affidavit. 
In addition, Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long disclosed in the affidavit that investigators had interviewed numerous underage girls who were pregnant or married to men with multiple wives. While inside the compound, Long saw a document “indicating marriages between one man and more than 20 wives, all of whom resided in the same residence” as of last August. 
When an investigator asked one girl her age, the affidavit states, the girl turned to her husband, Lee Roy Jessop, who said, “You are 18.” The girl then told the investigator that she was the fourth wife of Jessop, 33, and that “he was still married to the other three wives” in the eyes of the sect. 
The 16-year-old girl who triggered the initial complaint has yet to be found, though authorities believe she may be among the more than 400 children from the compound that Texas child welfare officials took into state custody this week. 
According to court papers also made public Wednesday, the frightened girl called a family shelter March 29 and said she was the child bride of a 50-year-old man named Dale Barlow who “hits her and hurts her.” 
She claimed that she had given birth to his child eight months earlier at age 15 and was pregnant again.

TITLE: Olympic Terrorists Arrested
AUTHOR: By Ian Ransom
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — Chinese authorities have detained 45 East Turkestan “terrorist” suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bomb attacks and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, a police spokesman said on Thursday. 
Uighur militants have been agitating to establish an independent East Turkestan in China ‘s predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. 
Chinese authorities cracked two “terrorist” groups, one of which belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Ministry of Public Security spokesman Wu Heping told a news conference in Beijing. 
ETIM was listed by the United Nations as a terrorist group in 2002 and has links to Al Qaeda. 
The group asked its members to do trial runs using poison gas and remote control explosive devices, Wu said. 
Their aim was “to create an international incident with the goal of disrupting the Olympic Games,” the spokesman said. 
The first group, led by Aji Muhammat, bought explosive materials and carried out 13 test explosions, Wu said without giving the nationality of the ringleader. 
Suspects in custody confessed they were ordered to commit suicide if arrested, he said. 
Police detained 10 suspects and seized 16,000 yuan ($2,300) in cash and a large quantity of “Holy War” training materials, Wu said. Several other suspects are on the run. 
At the end of last year, the group ordered its members to enter China and had planned to be ready by April to carry out  “terrorist” activities starting from May in Beijing and Shanghai, using explosives and poison, the spokesman said. 
In the second case, authorities in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi detained 35 suspects including Abdurahman Tursun, the ringleader of a “terrorist group” that had plotted  “to kidnap foreign journalists, tourists and athletes during the Olympics,” Wu said.

TITLE: American Airlines Scrubs 2000 Flights
AUTHOR: By Martin Zimmerman and Andrea Chang
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — More than 100,000 air travelers across the nation wrestled with flight cancellations, long lines and ruined vacation plans Wednesday as American Airlines continued to ground planes for maintenance inspections and said more disruptions were coming in the days ahead. 
American Airlines canceled 1,100 flights Wednesday and said it expected to scrub at least 900 more flights Thursday while it inspects and makes adjustments to wiring bundles on its fleet of 300 MD-80 aircraft. There has been a string of air travel disruptions caused by maintenance inspections in recent weeks. 
The latest cancellations that began Tuesday created chaotic conditions at several major airports around the country, including Los Angeles International, where American is the biggest carrier in terms of passenger boardings. Passengers complained of jammed phone lines to American ticket agents and a lack of warning from the carrier’s computerized travel update system. 
“We know we have to fly and we have no say-so,” said Ron Ensz, 52, who was trying to get home to Wichita, Kan. “They tell us to wait in line like cows, we wait in line like cows.” 
Adding to the problems: Alaska Airlines canceled 25 flights — including one at LAX — while it performed checks on its MD-80s. 
American said the inspections were prompted by a Federal Aviation Administration spot check Monday related to the agency’s airworthiness directives, which spell out procedures for keeping the nation’s air fleet in top condition. 
Many travelers waiting at LAX said they didn’t understand why the airline would inconvenience so many travelers if there wasn’t any danger. And one travel expert said the repeated maintenance-related cancellations were taking a toll. 
“Travelers cannot count on the air travel system as it stands right now,” said Kevin Mitchell, head of the Business Travel Coalition. About 40 percent of members responding to a survey this week said they would be less likely to fly because of safety issues, Mitchell said. 
At LAX, where American scrubbed 25 of its 92 scheduled departures, hundreds of travelers waited in a line that snaked through Terminal 4 to re-book flights. American employees set out cartons of bottled water and coffee on a nearby table and handed out slips containing an apology and an 800 number, but few customers were mollified. 
American Chief Executive Gerard Arpey, in Marina Del Rey to attend a conference of airline executives at the Ritz Carlton, apologized “for the inconvenience that we have caused our customers because of the continued inspections of our MD-80s.” 
“We are doing everything possible to reaccommodate customers on other American Airlines flights or on other airlines. We obviously failed to complete this airworthiness directive to the precise standards that the FAA requires, and I take full responsibility for that.” 
Many passengers said their biggest complaint was the lack of advance warning from the airline. Although American said Tuesday that it was automatically notifying affected passengers, many said they didn’t find out about their travel disruptions until they arrived at the airport. 
“They didn’t get a message to me at all,” said Colleen Betts, 63, who was flying from Sydney, Australia, to visit her son in Denver. “For them to not let anybody know is just disgraceful. It’s just common courtesy to let people know.” 
Joe Sanders, owner of a home healthcare business, arrived at Palm Springs International Airport on Wednesday morning to find his flight to Omaha had been canceled. Sanders, 69, said the airline hadn’t contacted him by phone or e-mail to warn him. 
“In fact, I got an e-mail from them this morning that said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to print your boarding pass here before getting to the airport?’ “ he said. 
American re-booked him on a flight from LAX to Omaha with a layover in Dallas, and shuttled Sanders and other passengers to LAX. 
“However, now that I’m here, they’ve informed me that Dallas to Omaha is now canceled,” Sanders said. “So now I’m not where I want to go, and I don’t know what’s happening. I’m sure tired of standing in line.” 
American reportedly had to shut down its automated flight re-booking system after the computer began assigning passengers to MD-80 flights that were then canceled.

TITLE: Capello Claims Innocence, Remains Unfazed by Tax Fraud Investigation
AUTHOR: By Mark Meadows
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: England coach Fabio Capello is confident he will be cleared of wrongdoing in Italian tax and court investigations, he said in an interview. 
Prosecutors in Turin said on Tuesday that a lengthy investigation into possible tax fraud by the 61-year-old had been extended to his wife and two adult sons. 
“If there was one thing that I’ve always said to my consultants, it was that I didn’t want to end up on the front page because of tax problems. But it happened,” Capello told Vanity Fair magazine. 
“I am very convinced that everything has been done in a correct way, I am calm,” he said in an interview in this week’s edition of the magazine. 
“Certainly the English media concentrate a lot on the national coach, perhaps too much, and I was not expecting it. Perhaps there is pressure because for decades [England] have won nothing.” 
Capello is also being probed on suspicion of withholding information last month at a trial involving Luciano Moggi, the former Juventus director central to Italy’s match-fixing affair. 
A prosecutor will decide whether to charge Capello after reviewing evidence he gave to the trial of six men accused of wrongdoing in connection with Gea World sports agency which used to manage the careers of some top Italian players and coaches. 
“I was very surprised. I was heard by the prosecutor as a witness during the investigation and at the trial I repeated the same things that I had already said. I am convinced everything will be sorted out soon,” the former Juventus boss said, adding that he was still good friends with Moggi. 
“We go out to dinner with our wives, you cannot cancel certain things. If someone makes a mistake, for me they are not automatically dead. The results of Juventus were obtained on the field by me and the players, suffering and battling.”