SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1367 (31), Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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TITLE: Medicines Running Out in City
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Several major local hospitals have reported shortages of anesthetics this month after suppliers failed to make deliveries on time. Stocks of adrenaline and atropine in some clinics will run out within less than a month, City Hall’s Health Committee said on Monday.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko has sought the support of Russia’s Health and Social Development Ministry, asking the officials to directly intervene and resolve the problem before the situation becomes critical.
State-funded local clinics are currently using the previously accumulated stocks of the medicines that are quickly running out. The Health Committee said any new deliveries of the drugs to hospitals have been suspended after Russia’s atropine producers stopped making the drug in January.
Production was suspended because the factories ran out of substances, and to get new stocks, the producers will have to go through a painstaking process of registering them.
The factories may not be able to resume production until the end of the year.  
Western companies that make the medicine have not yet been able to complete the lengthy process of registering the substances in Russia. 
A shortage of anesthetics was this month reported in other Russian cities, including Moscow and Krasnoyarsk, where some clinics have begun to postpone non-urgent operations. 
Boris Taits, chief doctor at the Yelizavetinskaya hospital told reporters on Friday that the quantities of atropine in his clinic will last only for a week. 
A month’s supply of the anesthetic is available to the St. Petersburg Ambulance Service, the organization’s information office said.
Ruslan Khalfin, deputy health and social development minister, told a news conference in Moscow that the crisis is being effectively dealt with, and will be resolved in the near future.
“There is no risk of any operations being delayed or a patient dying when a doctor is performing surgery on them,” Khalfin said, warning against exaggerating the scale of the problem. “We have enough anesthetics in stock to cover immediate needs.”
Hospitals were advised to use alternative drugs with similar characteristics and were offered assistance in ordering them, the official added. Doctors are worried, however, that alternative combinations of medicines would give the patients side-effects and increase mortality risks.
In the meantime, Andrei Mladentsev, deputy head of Russia’s Healthcare Monitoring Agency, said the deficit arose as a result of poor planning within the Health Ministry. He announced that his office is taking the matter under its control to ensure that every hospital in the city receives the medicines before long.

TITLE: Russia Denies Downing Georgian Plane
AUTHOR: By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — A Russian fighter jet shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane as it flew over the breakaway region of Abkhazia, Georgia’s air force commander said Monday.
Colonel David Nairashvili said that the video footage recorded by the plane before it was shot down Sunday shows the attacking jet to be Russian. The footage, which was shown to The Associated Press, showed an aircraft firing a missile in the direction of a plane and a few seconds later the screen goes blank.
The incident occurred over Abkhazia, a region that has had de-facto independence since breaking away from the Georgian government in the 1990s.
Nairashvili said the plane’s distinctive twin-tail markings indicate it is a MiG-29 and radar shows it took off from the Abkhazian town of Gudauta, the former site of a Russian military base.
“It’s a Russian aircraft. Georgia does not possess it, nor do Abkhaz separatists,” he said. “It’s absolutely illegal for a Russian MiG-29 to be there.”
Georgia announced it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to lodge a protest.
Russian Defense Ministry officials directed all comments to a spokesman for Russia’s joint chiefs’ of staff, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, who could not be immediately located for comment.
However, the Interfax news agency quoted him as denying any involvement by Russian air force jets, saying Sunday was a day of rest for Russian pilots.
Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed to bring both Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, back under central government control. He also has cultivated strong economic and military ties with the United States and actively sought NATO membership — much to Russia’s consternation.
Russia, meanwhile, has tacitly backed South Ossetia and Abkhazia, granting their residents passports and other support. Moscow recently announced that it was establishing stronger ties with both regions.
Tensions have grown between the Abkhazia and Georgian governments since Abkhazia in February formally appealed for the world community to recognize it as independent.

TITLE: Russian Nationalist Makes Waves as NATO Envoy
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BRUSSELS — He was once a firebrand nationalist politician who led rallies against illegal immigration, met indicted Serbian war criminals and ran a campaign ad that seemed to compare dark-skinned southerners to garbage.
Now, Dmitry Rogozin lives in a brick house located in a quiet, leafy neighborhood of Brussels. Inside, only a Russian flag, a picture of St. Basil’s Cathedral and some snapshots of Rogozin with world leaders suggest that it is the official residence of Russia’s envoy to NATO.
Since taking the post in January, Rogozin has brought his bombastic style from the streets of Moscow to the corridors of NATO, where he has made headlines and provoked controversy with his criticism of the alliance.
“I express the viewpoint of my country,” he said in a recent interview at his residence in the Belgian capital. “I am a thermometer that reflects the emotional level of Russia’s reaction to steps taken by NATO, among other things.”
The temperature of Russia-NATO relations has been rather hot lately, as Moscow has pushed back furiously at NATO proposals to admit Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance and to support building elements of a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe.
Despite assurances from U.S. President George W. Bush and other Western leaders, President Vladimir Putin has called the missile shield dangerous for Russian security and threatened to target missiles at Ukraine if NATO installations ever appeared there.
Against this backdrop, Putin made his surprise appointment of Rogozin, who rose to prominence as a leader of the nationalist Rodina party, as Russia’s permanent representative to NATO.
In Brussels, some argue that Rogozin is not much of a diplomat. They see him more as a blunt instrument designed to convey Russia’s stance as loudly as possible to the West.
“Clearly, he is not a person who is trying to find some solution to harmonize,” said Rihard Piks, a former Latvian foreign minister who now represents Latvia in the European Parliament. 
Piks, who said he knew Rogozin from his days on the State Duma’s foreign relations committee, called him a “nationalistic and arrogant politician” with an aptitude for stirring up controversy.
“From my experience, Mr. Rogozin sometimes does not know very much what he is speaking about,” Piks said. “His main aim is to make some noise, to surprise the people around him and to win attention.”
Rogozin defends his style and insists that it is the correct response to the challenges he sees facing Russia.
“Diplomats who hide the meaning of their words are bad diplomats,” he said. “I had one acquaintance, a Russian diplomat, who could speak for two hours and not say anything. He thought this was super, that it was a sort of mastery. But I considered him an idiot.”
The reason he needs to be blunt, Rogozin said, is that NATO expansion and missile defense pose a clear and present danger to Russia. The envoy dismissed suggestions that Moscow itself was being the aggressor by meddling in the affairs of its Soviet-era dominions.
“Any of our objections, any of our occasionally emotional outbursts, are seen as signs of aggression,” Rogozin said. “But who are the real aggressors here? They are the ones building new military bases, the ones moving ever closer to our borders, the ones digging foundation pits for rocket bases near our defensive perimeter.”
A NATO official denied that the alliance’s expansion posed a threat to Russia. “That’s something that we don’t agree with at all,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. 
The official linked NATO expansion to the spread of democratic values and downplayed the military aspect of the alliance.
“If you were to look very carefully at the actual effect of enlargement,” he said, “you have, first, an enlarged area of predictability and transparency, and second, you’re talking about countries which are in the process of ensuring the highest standards which NATO expects. And military standards are just one part of this.”
Rogozin does not buy that argument. 
“Imagine if the Warsaw Pact were alive today,” he said, “and we were telling Bush that the entry of Venezuela and Panama did not pose a threat to America, but was simply an expansion of our democratic alliance. It would be interesting to see how Washington would react to such rhetoric from our side.”
Earlier this month, Moscow appeared to win a skirmish in the ongoing struggle when NATO decided not to offer Membership Action Plans — the concrete steps needed for admission — to Ukraine and Georgia. 
But the compromise deal reached at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, affirmed that the two countries would eventually join the alliance.
For Rogozin, this means he still has work to do.
“In Bucharest, they once again confirmed that it would be good to swallow up Ukraine and Georgia,” he said. “Their appetite is excellent, which is something they can be complemented on. My only concern is that, from the viewpoint of NATO’s external appearance, it resembles those people who eat too much at McDonald’s.”
Though some may call him an unyielding hard-liner, Rogozin said he wanted to be constructive and find areas where Russia and NATO can cooperate.
In the interview, he repeatedly mentioned an agreement signed in Bucharest allowing the alliance to ship supplies across Russia to forces in Afghanistan. Other potential areas of cooperation, Rogozin said, are the fight against radical Islamic groups like the Taliban and international drug trafficking.
“NATO seems to understand that the main threat to it today comes from the south, but it continues expanding to the east,” he said.
This is not the first time that Rogozin has sought to win people over by emphasizing a threat from the south.
Illegal immigration from the Caucasus and Central Asia was one of Rogozin’s signature issues during his decade-long career in the State Duma. In 2005, he was accused of racism after appearing in a Rodina campaign ad that showed dark-skinned immigrants tossing watermelon rinds on the ground. The television commercial showed Rogozin chastising them and ended with words “Let’s clear the city of garbage.”
The Moscow City Court ruled that the ad incited ethnic hatred. Rogozin called the ruling politically motivated and denied that the term “garbage” was supposed to refer to the immigrants.
In 1996, before he was first elected to the State Duma, Rogozin met with Bosnian Serb Army leader Ratko Mladic, who had been indicted in The Hague on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Rogozin has also spoken at ultranationalist rallies in Moscow where demonstrators displayed Nazi and anti-Semitic signs, although he has denied holding racist beliefs himself.
Perhaps the peak of Rogozin’s career came in December 2003, when his Rodina party won 9 percent of the vote in the Duma election. Rodina, which means “motherland,” had been cobbled together a few months earlier and was widely seen as a Kremlin project to steal votes from the Communists.
Rogozin’s relationship with the Kremlin quickly soured, however, and after the court ruling against his “garbage” commercial, Rodina was barred from the 2005 Moscow City Duma elections. 
In 2006, Rogozin resigned as the party’s leader, citing heavy Kremlin pressure, and was replaced with a more compliant, less charismatic leader, businessman Alexander Babakov. 
Last year, Rogozin attempted to start a new nationalist party, Great Russia, but its registration was denied on technical grounds.

TITLE: Weapons-Grade Plutonium Reactor Shut Off
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia said on Monday it had closed a weapons-grade plutonium reactor as part of a deal with the United States to reduce the risk of proliferation from Cold War-era nuclear bomb plants.
The reactor, at a secret Siberian plant founded by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, was turned off on Sunday, 45 years after it was started up to create plutonium for the Soviet weapons program.
“The industrial reactor ADE-4 was finally stopped on Sunday at 11 in the morning. That is the final closure of the reactor,” said a spokesman for the Siberian Chemical Combine, in the closed city of Seversk, formerly known as Tomsk-7.
After the end of the Cold War, weapons-grade plutonium was no longer needed for Russia’s nuclear weapons program.
But the reactors at the plant were kept running to provide heat and electricity for the local community, and the U.S. Department of Energy has estimated the plant produced enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs a week.
The unwanted plutonium was stored at the plant, prompting environmental groups to raise questions about its security. Russia says its nuclear plants are properly guarded.
Aid from the United States was used to help refurbish a 1950s coal-fired power plant, reducing the community’s dependence on the reactors for power.
Another reactor at the plant, known as ADE-5 and started in 1965, will continue to produce heat and power until the summer. The United States and Russia agreed in March 2003 to shut down Russia’s three remaining plutonium-producing reactors.
The U.S is funding an electricity and heat plant to replace a plutonium plant near the closed city of Zheleznogorsk.

TITLE: U.S. Pastor Gets 3 Years in Prison
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian court on Monday sentenced a U.S. pastor to three years in prison for illegally bringing hunting ammunition into the country. 
Phillip Miles was arrested in a Moscow airport on Feb. 3 for smuggling in a box with 20 rounds of undeclared hunting ammunition in his luggage. Miles said at the time it was a present for his friend, a pastor from the Urals city of Perm. 
For this violation of Russian law a judge in Moscow’s Golovinsky district court ruled that the 52-year-old evangelist from Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, will spend three years and two months in a prison camp. 
Interfax news agency quoted Miles as saying he regretted violating Russian law, but he also called his sentence “severe.”

TITLE: Soyuz Lands In Wrong Place
AUTHOR: By Shamil Zhumatov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KAZAKH STEPPE — A Russian space capsule landed about 420 kilometers off course in Kazakhstan on Saturday but South Korea’s first astronaut and the other two crew were safe.
The Soyuz capsule landed west of the target area and about 20 minutes past the scheduled time after it adopted a so-called “ballistic landing,” space officials said. Rescue helicopters rushed to the site.
“The capsule landed with an overshoot. Such things happen,” said mission control spokesman Valery Lyndin.
He said the crew had begun leaving the capsule, which carried Yi So-yeon, a 29-year old nanotechnology engineer from Seoul, U.S. commander Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yury Malenchenko.
A Reuters photographer, who traveled to the landing site in a helicopter with rescue crews, saw plumes of smoke rising from the capsule, which was lying on its side stamped about 30 cm into the ground with its parachute burning.
The photographer said the U.S. astronaut looked pale and was not fit enough to take part in a brief news conference. He said the Korean and the Russian looked fine as they traveled in a helicopter from the site to the Kazakh city of Kustanai.
He said the Korean had been dozing in the helicopter most of the way back to Kustanai but started smiling and made a flower drawing on the wall after she was served tea and had her blood pressure measured.
“Even though it is a very small place you can float back and fourth under each other, over each other,” smiling Yi So-yeon said in English of her experiences in zero gravity environment at the International Space Station.
Russian space officials back at mission control in Moscow had waited nervously before confirmation came that all three were safe and their health was satisfactory.
The capsule landed so far off course because of a ballistic landing when the capsule follows a much steeper and shorter trajectory to earth, Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia’s Federal Space Agency, told reporters.
A ballistic landing puts much higher gravity loads on the astronauts as the capsule spins towards earth.
“The crew did not report that they had taken the ballistic landing course on re-entry,” Perminov told a news conference, adding that the incident will be investigated.
Russian space officials said the capsule landed close to the Kazakh border, just south-east of the Russian city of Orsk.
Yi became the first South Korean aboard the International Space Station earlier this month.
In October last year, the Soyuz capsule carrying Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a surgeon from Kuala Lumpur, touched down about 125 miles off course.

TITLE: Brave Environmentalist Wins ‘Green Nobel’
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian ecologist Marina Rikhvanova was last week awarded the world-renowned Goldman Environmental Prize — the “Green Nobel” — at a ceremony at San Francisco’s Opera House on Monday.
Rikhvanova, 46, who is co-head of the Baikal Ecological Wave (BEW) organization, is known for her impressive and effective work in protecting Siberia’s Lake Baikal from suffering an ecological catastrophe. She works to protect Baikal, the world’s biggest reservoir of fresh water, from the growing interests of the oil and nuclear energy industries in Russia that threaten to pollute the region.
“I was shocked when I heard the news that I had won the Goldman Prize,” Rikhvanova told The St. Petersburg Times a few weeks before the ceremony from her home city of Irkutsk in Siberia.
“This prize is an acknowledgement of BEW’s achievements and the Baikal movement as a whole that also gives us an opportunity to continue our activities to develop the ecological movement and preserve the unique natural property given to us — Lake Baikal,” she said.
Rikhvanova was awarded the $150,000 prize along with six other ecologists from different parts of the world including Belgium, Mexico, Ecuador, Mozambique and Puerto Rico.
“This year’s prize recipients exemplify the astounding environmental work being done by ordinary people around the world,” said Goldman Prize founder Richard Goldman.  
“Their commitment to bettering both the lives of people living in their communities and the environment around them has received our attention and praise,” he said.
One of Rikhvanova and her team’s biggest achievements was convincing the Russian authorities not to build a petroleum pipeline within less than a kilometer of Lake Baikal.
In 2002, the Russian government announced plans to build the longest petroleum pipeline in the world, extending 4,130 kilometers from eastern Siberia to an oil terminal on Russia’s Pacific coast through the Lake Baikal basin. In 2005 Transneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, decided to build the pipeline 800 meters away from Baikal, despite concerns about possible oil spills and leakage.  Rikhvanova immediately opposed the plan, and embarked on a four-year struggle to protect the lake.
Rikhvanova successfully led a national campaign that included rallying thousands of people to protest. Volunteers of the BEW and Baikal movement also obtained more than 20,000 signatures and partnered with international organizations during the campaign. Thanks to these efforts, in April 2006, President Vladimir Putin ordered that the pipeline should to be rerouted away from the lake’s watershed. This marked a success for civil society and the environmental movement in Russia.
Rikhvanova said the key role in the victory was that in March 2006 the BEW untied its efforts with the Humanitarian Fund and different political movements and trade unions. As a result they formed a strong movement.  
“Thanks to such wide public participation we managed to organize three meetings in Irkutsk with 5,000 people each. Then the wave of meetings went around the country, including Moscow,” Rikhvanova said.
“I wouldn’t say it was just my team who had changed the situation. It was the whole team in Baikal — the common goal united people,” she said.
Today, however, Rikhvanova and her colleagues face a new threat to Lake Baikal — the Russian government plans to construct an International Uranium Enrichment Center nearby.
In late 2006 the government announced plans to build the center near Angarsk on the grounds of an existing nuclear facility located just 80 kilometers from Lake Baikal.  The purpose of the center is to enrich uranium transported from other countries and then return it to them to reuse.
Once the uranium is enriched, only 10 percent of the radioactive material will be returned to the customer, leaving 90 percent behind for storage, the Goldman Foundation said.
Rikhvanova and the BEW are now leading the effort to stop the construction of the center. They are demanding that an independent environmental impact assessment and review be carried out.
“The danger of such a center is the storage of a huge volume of toxic and radioactive waste that gets generated when uranium is enriched — so-called depleted uranium. If there was an accident, pollution could reach Baikal by air,” Rikhvanova said.
In early 2007 she traveled to Moscow to protest against the building of 40 new nuclear power plants across Russia and in the spring of 2007 she organized several protests in Irkutsk. Rikhvanova also met with officials from the Russian Atomic Energy Agency who agreed that if the local population was against the center, it would not be built. Despite the promise, plans for its construction continue.
Rikhvanova said she speaks out against nuclear energy because such “energy is not justified either from an economic or ecological point of view.”
“The preparation of fuel for nuclear power stations takes a lot of energy but the problem with waste is not solved. Nobody besides Russia is willing to store nuclear waste on its territory.  Many countries refuse to develop nuclear power stations. If Russia spent the state subsidies for nuclear energy on saving energy and alternative energy sources, the effect would be much better,” she said.
However, Rikhvanova’s work is not easy. She experiences pressure and recent challenges to Rikhvanova’s activity have caused controversy with her son, Pavel, 19, who was allegedly involved in a murder that occurred at a protest camp run by radical political groups held in summer 2007.
“I think that Pavel’s problems were connected with my ecologic activities. After Pavel’s arrest, the mass media distributed information from the Irkutsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office about the detention of Pavel, and that he was my son. It said BEW could have something to do with the attack. Such an emphasis can’t be a coincidence,” Rikhvanova said.
Russian ecologist Alexander Nikitin who was also a Goldman laureate in 1997, said that Rikhvanova’s work was  important.
“There was nobody else who would have done more for the protection of Lake Baikal than Marina and her organization,” Goldman quoted Nikita as saying.
Nikitin was at the center of a notorious legal case in 1996 in which he was charged with treason and espionage for compiling a report about the environmental dangers posed by Russia’s decommissioned nuclear submarines. He was acquitted by a St. Petersburg court in 1999.
Yevgeny Usov, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said Rikhvanova is a very committed ecologist.
“She often works against the best interests of her health and family life. She works all the time,” Usov said.
“Marina is well-known in ecology circles because she’s been working in that field for many years, taking part not only in ecological action but also in the public and political life of the country,” Usov said.
Rikhvanova became the forth person from Russia to receive the Goldman Prize after Sviatoslav Zabelin in 1993, Alexander Nikitin in 1997, and Vera Mishchenko in 2000.
Other winners of Goldman Prizes this year included: Ignace Schops, 43, from Belgium, who won the prize for leading the effort to establish Belgium’s first and national park; Jesus Leon Santos from Mexico for leading a land renewal program to transform depleted soil in Oaxaca into arable land; Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza for one of the largest environmental legal battles in history against oil giant Chevron.
Feliciano do Santos from Mozambique won the prize for using traditional music, grassroots outreach and innovative technology to bring sanitation to the most remote corners of Mazambique, and Rosa Hilda Ramos from Puerto Rico for leading her community to permanently protect the Las Cucharillas Marsh, one of the last open spaces in the area and one of the largest wetlands ecosystems in the region.

TITLE: Newspaper That Ran Putin Gossip Closes
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Solovyov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Moscow newspaper that reported Vladimir Putin had divorced his wife and planned to marry an Olympic gymnast was closed by its publishers on Friday, just hours after the Russian president angrily denied the report.
Moskovsky Korrespondent said last week Putin had secretly divorced his 50-year-old wife, Lyudmila, and would wed Alina Kabayeva, a 24-year-old Olympic gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics, in the summer.
The 55-year-old Kremlin leader reacted furiously when asked about the report at a news briefing in Sardinia with Italian prime minister-elect, Silvio Berlusconi.
“There is not one word of truth in what you have said,” he told the journalist who asked the question.
“I have always reacted negatively to those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others’ lives,” the former KGB spy said.
Until the news briefing in Italy, most of the Russian media had not touched the story in Moskovsky Korrespondent, a racy tabloid owned by pro-government deputy Alexander Lebedev.
The newspaper quoted society sources as saying plans were being laid in St Petersburg, Putin’s home town, for a lavish summer wedding.
On Friday it at first defended its story and said editorial staff did not intend to apologize “despite pressure from people linked to the owner of the paper.”
Igor Dudinsky, deputy editor-in-chief, said: “We stand by our story — we had information and we reported it.”
But after Putin spoke, publisher National Media Company said it had suspended publication until it had found “a new concept” for the title.
Editor-in-chief Grigory Nekhoroshev had resigned, Interfax news agency reported.
Artyom Artyomov, head of the National Media Company, was quoted by Interfax as saying the move had nothing to do with the reported romance.
“There is no question of any political background behind the decision to suspend the newspaper’s publication,” he said. “We will decide on a new concept for the newspaper and a business plan for its development in the near future.
The newspaper’s website www.moscor.ru was also abruptly switched off on Friday night.
Putin, who steps down as president in May, married Lyudmila, a former Aeroflot air hostess, in 1983 and they have two daughters who are both in their twenties. A fan of theater, music and winter sports, Lyudmila has at times looked uncomfortable with her official role.
Putin has so far kept his private life out of the media and reports about his family are very rare in the Russian press, which carefully follows Kremlin guidance.
Putin said media had linked him to a host of women including Kabayeva and Russian television journalist Yekaterina Andreyeva.
“In other such publications other successful, beautiful young women and girls have been mentioned. I don’t think it will be a surprise if I say that I like them all — because they are all Russian women,” Putin said with a smile.
Kabayeva, whose website proclaims her “the most magnificent gymnast in the world,” was born in Uzbekistan. She won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens for rhythmic gymnastics.
A spokeswoman for Kabayeva said of reports of her relations with Putin: “It is rubbish, all complete rubbish. Alina is not going to comment on the rubbish published by the tabloid press.”
Recruited into Putin’s United Russia in a drive to add glamour to the ruling party, Kabayeva was elected a deputy in the State Duma, parliament’s lower house, last December, although she is not often seen there.
According to her website, Kabayeva lists collecting cuddly toys among her hobbies.

TITLE: Putin Wins Nobel Prize, But Not The One That’s Famous
AUTHOR: By James Kilner
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian president Vladimir Putin has won a Nobel prize. Not the better-known Nobel Peace Prize handed out by the Oslo-based committee to luminaries such as last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev or ex-South African President Nelson Mandela.
Instead, Putin has won the Ludvig Nobel Prize for services to Russia — an award organized by Russian businessmen and artists which, apart from shared historical roots, has no connection to today’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“Under the previous president, [Boris] Yeltsin, there was chaos and lawlessness,” Yevgeny Lukoshkov, who heads the Ludvig Nobel Prize’s selection committee, told Reuters.
“Somebody had to stand up and take responsibility and stop the robberies and murders. Putin took responsibility for eight years.”
Putin, 55, leaves office next month after eight years in which he has become Russia’s most popular politician.
Most Russians credit him with overseeing the longest economic boom in a generation, creating political stability and restoring the country’s standing on the world stage. 
A minority accuse Putin of trampling on democratic freedoms.
“He was very pleased to win,” Lukoshkov said. “But he couldn’t make it to the ceremony. I don’t know why.”
Ludvig Nobel, who lived mainly in St. Petersburg and became a Russian citizen, was the older brother of Alfred Nobel — founder of the Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine and literature in Stockholm and the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
Like his brother, Ludvig made huge profits in the 19th century by extracting oil from the coastline around the Azeri capital Baku. He is also credited with inventing the oil tanker.
Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, which comes with a fat check, there is no cash award for the Ludvig Nobel prize.
“We decided that you can’t measure everything with money,” Lukoshkov said.

TITLE: New Polar Bear Cubs Make Zoo Debut
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two polar bear cubs born in December at St. Petersburg’s Leningrad Zoo made their public debut on Sunday.
The zoo also announced the names of the male cubs after holding a competition to name them. The winning names are Krasin and Peter.
“Krasin was named after the well-known Russian ice-breaker Krasin, and Peter got his name after the founder of St. Petersburg, Tsar Peter the Great,” said Tatyana Solomatina, spokeswoman for the Leningrad Zoo.
Solomatina said the cubs ventured outdoors without fear. Krasin showed that he is active and curious by trying to jump into the water in his enclosure, but his mother Uslada stopped him.  The other cub, Peter, was more calm.
The name contest was run by the zoo and Metro newspaper.
A fan of St. Petersburg soccer club Zenit suggested naming one cub Zenit and the other Champion. Another soccer fan thought that Dick, after Zenit coach Dick Advocaat, and Gus, after Gus Hiddink, the coach of the Russian national soccer team, would be appropriate for the cubs, Solomatina said.
Solomatina said by chance the zoo announced about the birth of the cubs in December on the same day that President Vladimir Putin announced the name of his successor Dmitry Medvedev. 
Some people accordingly suggested calling the cubs Vova and Dima, short versions of Vladimir and Dmitry.
The names eventually picked were suggested by the crew of the ice-breaker Krasin in honor of 90 years of Russian polar exploration, and a 9-year old girl called Alisa. 
Solomatina said the cubs will leave their mother in July. Krasin is due to go to the Moscow Zoo, and Peter will go to live at a zoo in Japan. However, the cubs leave the zoo under the condition that if the zoo needs them back, they can return, she said.
The cubs are leaving their mother earlier than usual because Uslada, 21, is getting too old to care for them properly.

TITLE: Cyber Soviet Union Just Won’t Go Away
AUTHOR: By Mansur Mirovalev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Soviet Union may be in the dustbin of history, but there’s one place the socialist utopia lives on: cyberspace.
Sixteen years after the superpower’s collapse, web sites ending in the Soviet “.su” domain name have been rising — registrations increased 45 percent this year alone. Bloggers, entrepreneurs and die-hard communists are all part of a small but growing online community resisting repeated efforts to extinguish the online Soviet outpost.
Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire is part of the story. Nashi, or “Ours,” is a pro-Kremlin youth group that gained notoriety for raucous protests against Kremlin critics. The group loyally praises President Vladimir Putin at “nashi.su,” though it denies its choice of the “.su” domain was meant to send a political message.
Many web entrepreneurs also see potential profits in the domain, grabbing instantly recognizable names already claimed in other, better known domains.
A small Moscow car repair shop that specializes in Ford vehicles boasts a home page at “ford.su,” while the owner of “apple.su” is a Muscovite who said he is ready to swap it for a new laptop computer — and not necessarily a Mac from Apple Inc.
Vladimir Khramov, a network administrator from Moscow, said he bought “microsoft.su” last year simply to acquire an easy-to-remember ending for his e-mail address.
While Khramov insists he “did not buy it for reselling,” others are out to make a quick ruble. Yan Balayan registered a number of high-profile addresses, including “ussr.su,” “stalin.su” and “kgb.su” — he’s asking for $30,000 each, but stands ready to haggle.
With few exceptions — namely, the tech-savvy Baltic state of Estonia — Internet penetration is relatively low in the former Soviet republics. Russia’s Public Opinion Foundation says that only 27 percent of Russian adults use the Internet — and only about 12 percent of the adults on any given day.
Yet many Internet entrepreneurs are passionate about the “.su” domain, even as others are scornful of it as a relic of the past, saying it doesn’t deserve the same status as “.ru” for Russia, “.uk” for the United Kingdom or “.fr” for France.
“They are selling tickets to a drowning ship,” said Anton Nosik, a veteran web journalist and founder of several successful online projects. “Their message is to losers and latecomers.”
What’s next? Domain names for the Roman Empire or Ancient Greece?
Country-code domains, derived from a list kept by the International Organization for Standardization, typically disappear when a country ceases to exist or changes its name. Both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia lost their domain names after they broke up into smaller nations. So did Zaire after it became the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Internet’s key oversight agency, the Marina del Rey, California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and its predecessors have made several efforts since the 1990s to eliminate the “.su” address.
All have failed.
In late 2006, ICANN even sought advice from the community on how best to revoke outdated suffixes. Yet the resistance continued, and the phase-out seems to be in a stalemate. The domain continues to work normally, but listed in records as “being phased out.”
“There are no technical issues,” said John Crain, ICANN’s chief technical officer. “It all comes down to politics.”
The “.su” domain dates back to September 1990, a little more than a year before the Soviet collapse. Russia was given the “.ru” domain name in 1994. Other former Soviet republics were also assigned codes.
But the owners of “.su” sites stubbornly resisted switching on commercial, political and patriotic grounds. Some even accused the White House of scheming to eliminate the last remnants of its Cold War rival.
As a compromise, the Russian organization responsible for registering new domain names under “.su” agreed to stop issuing new ones, while existing “.su” addresses were allowed to continue for the time being.
A loophole allowed existing “.su” addresses like “lenin.su” to assign subdomains such as “vladimir.lenin.su.” As a result, the online population at “.su” kept growing throughout the 1990s — although not nearly as fast as “.ru.”
Then, in 2001, in response to pressure from users eager for freer access, registration in “.su” was opened to everyone everywhere.
The price was kept artificially high — $120 per name, six times the price for “.ru” — to limit the number of new users and prevent entrepreneurs from grabbing names for resale in a practice called cybersquatting, said Andrei Vorobyev, spokesman for RU-Center, the body authorized to register domain names.
But in January, RU-Center dropped the price for “.su” to $25 in a bid to boost the domain’s worldwide popularity.
The attractive new price sparked a registration rush that bumped up the number of “.su” sites to 45,000 today, more than quadruple the 11,000 registered as of late 2006. The demand shows no signs of relenting — the jump from 31,000 in January represents a 45 percent rise.
But by domain name standards, the number of “.su” registrations is still very small. Russia’s “.ru,” for instance, has more than 1 million names. Germany’s “.de” has 12 million, and the global “.com” has about 75 million.
Champions of the online Soviet domain say there is still plenty of room for growth.
Some envisage the “.su” domain as a virtual venue for those who fondly recall the old Soviet Union as a place where Russian, the lingua franca of the Soviet empire, knit together a host of Asian and European ethnic groups and cultures.
And by late April, the “.su” domain plans to start allowing names in Russian; currently such names are limited to English letters, numerals and the hyphen.

Associated Press Writer David Nowak in Moscow contributed to this story.

TITLE: Experts Warn Against Underground Projects
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Underground car parks and shopping centers planned for the center of St. Petersburg could damage adjacent buildings, experts warned Monday at a roundtable at Rosbalt news agency, calling for a cautious approach to the city’s architectural heritage.
“Vast amounts of money have come to the city, and developers want to make a profit quickly. But construction is not a cheap activity in our city,” said Alexander Margolis, co-chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments (RSPM).
Recalling projects that have damaged buildings in the historic center of the city, he suggested that the prosecutor’s office should monitor development activities.
The construction of an underground car park for the Nevskij Palace hotel damaged three surrounding buildings, two of which had to be completely demolished.
“That was the result of the reconstruction of one single building and an attempt to build a relatively small underground car park,” said Alexander Kononov, an expert from the RSPM.
The facade of the newly reconstructed Musical Comedy Theater cracked because of new construction begun in proximity to the building, he added. Other examples include the damaged facades of the Muruzi House and the Yusupov Palace on the Moika.
Several buildings close to Ploshchad Vosstaniya were demolished to make way for a new high-speed railway station, which was never completed. A shopping center is currently being constructed in the abandoned pit, putting the facades of nearby buildings at risk, Kononov said.
The Mariinsky Theater’s new building, Mariinsky II, also required the demolition of several buildings. “Problems with the ground forced developers to postpone the deadline for the project and increase the total budget,” Kononov added.
Another expert saw the source of the problem in the violation of construction standards.
“Architects should cooperate with engineers and geotechnology experts. But that’s not the case in St. Petersburg. Developers turn to geotechnology experts only when something collapses,” said Vladimir Ulitsky, head of the building foundations department at St. Petersburg State University of Communications.
“They keep critical experts out of their projects and invite foreign specialists who behave as if they are working in Africa, violating construction standards and damaging the ground structure,” Ulitsky said.
Experts said that the central part of the city is a difficult area for development.
“The foundations of 60 percent of buildings are under too much pressure. These buildings are unstable — that’s why they sink and crack. We should take this into account when planning any projects in the center,” said Rashid Mangushev, head of the geotechnical department at St. Petersburg State Architecture and Construction University.
Mangushev recommended that construction companies take out insurance against construction risks. He also indicated that underground construction would be more efficient outside the city center, close to the end-of-the-line metro stations on the outskirts, where large-scale projects could be implemented for less money.
“A single car park for 7,000 cars in the city center would not solve the transport problem,” Mangushev said.
Ulitsky agreed. “We should solve the transport problem coherently and not in bits and pieces,” he said. Citing the example of Shanghai, Ulitsky suggested building a high-speed express and moving private cars out of the city center.
The experts also expressed concern about the New Holland project, which includes a three-story underground car park and other underground premises.
“We made a historic and cultural examination of New Holland, but most of our recommendations were neglected and were not implemented,” said Mikhail Milchik, deputy director of the Spetsproektrestavratsia research institute.
“Some of the buildings on the island are built on wooden pole foundations. Any change in the level of water underground could damage these poles. According to the project, the underground car park is planned 1.5 meters from the historic buildings. Construction cannot be carried out without having a negative effect on those buildings,” Milchik said.
He also said that no technical or engineering project for New Holland had been publicized so far. “We have seen only an architectural project. This situation is more than odd,” he said.
Businessmen were more optimistic about underground developments, including the much-criticized Mariinsky project.
“We did not face any surprises. The ground there is just the same as in any other part of the historic center. I’m confident that we are doing the right thing. We are using modern equipment to trace any ground movements,” said Alexei Shashkin, general director of Georekonstruktsia Fundamentproject.
He announced that a hole had been successfully dug and that preliminary foundations were in place.
Shashkin insisted that parking spaces and road junctions should be moved underground in St. Petersburg.
Vladimir Eroshin, general engineer of Aditum, which is planning the underground shopping center at Ploshchad Vosstaniya, was also optimistic.
“We examined the ground and foundations in a 50-meter area around the future shopping center. Experts assured us that it is possible to build there without harming the environment. If the additional reinforcement of foundations is necessary, we will see to it,” Eroshin said. 
ParkingInvestCenter is planning ten underground car parks in the city center. Alexander Strelnikov, the company’s deputy director, estimated expenses at $56,000-95,000 per parking space.
“We know that this investment will be a long time in bringing a return, but land is a limited resource. And we expect that in a few years the situation could change, making such an investment reasonable,” Strelnikov said.
“Underground construction is necessary for the development of the city,” said Alexei Dolmatov, deputy chairman of City Hall’s Committee for Town-Planning and Architecture.
As for violations of construction standards, Dolmatov said that the local authorities plan to reintroduce a committee for foundations to assess new projects and their possible consequences.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Lenta Case Withdrawn</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The co-founders of Lenta, Russia’s third-biggest supermarket company, may sell their stakes after settling their ownership dispute, Vedomosti reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Oleg Zherebtsov last week retracted a lawsuit in a St. Petersburg court against co-owner August Meyer, a move that will probably lead to a joint sale, the newspaper said. Both men declined to comment, Vedomosti said.
All minority shareholders except the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development will also probably agree to sell their stakes, Vedomosti said.

<b>Ford Plans More Staff</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co., the world’s third-largest carmaker, will add 1,500 workers at a factory near St. Petersburg to boost Russian production by almost 75 percent.
Ford has begun a recruitment campaign for the plant in Vsevolozhsk, the Michigan-based carmaker said Monday in a statement. The plant, which now employs 2,074 workers, produces the Focus hatchback, Russia’s best-selling foreign-brand car in 2007.
The company plans to boost capacity at the factory to 125,000 vehicles next year, Yekaterina Kulinenko, a spokeswoman in Moscow, said Monday.
<b>Cable to Launch in June</b>
TOKYO (Bloomberg) — A fiber-optic cable between Japan and Russia’s Sakhalin island built by Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japan’s largest phone company, and TransTelecom will be operational in June.
NTT’s unit, NTT Communications Corp. and the Russian telecommunication company split the $50 million cost to build the 570-kilometer cable equally, Tokyo-based NTT Communications said in a statement.
The cable was built in response to increasing telecommunications between companies in Japan and Europe, as well as a back-up for existing networks to Europe in case of damage caused by disasters such as an earthquake, NTT Communications said.

<b>GECF to Discuss Rules</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will propose rules for creating a “gas OPEC” at a meeting of producers in Tehran next week, Kommersant reported, citing unidentified Russian officials.
Russia sent a charter drafted by the Industry and Energy Ministry and gas-export monopoly Gazprom to 15 interested countries last week, the Moscow-based newspaper said. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, a loose grouping of producers formed in 2001, meets in Iran on April 28 and in Moscow in June, Kommersant said.
Russia’s draft charter is less stringent than Iran’s proposal and focuses on creating a universal price formula, coordinating new pipeline projects and establishing mechanisms for using spot deliveries to substitute for short-term shortfalls in long-term supply contracts, Kommersant said.

<b>U.A.E. Approves Russia</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia got the approval of the United Arab Emirates for its bid to join the WTO, Interfax reported, citing a Finance Ministry official it didn’t identify.
Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and U.A.E. Foreign Trade Minister Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi signed the agreement in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, the Moscow-based news service said.
Russia, the world’s biggest economy outside the WTO, must reach agreement with Saudi Arabia and Georgia before its membership bid can proceed to the next stage, Interfax said. Talks with Saudi Arabia are scheduled for this week in Geneva, and negotiations with Georgia are set for next Monday, also in Geneva, the news service said.

<b>Scania Wins X5 Order</b>
BERLIN (Bloomberg) — Scania AB, Sweden’s second-largest truckmaker, has won an order for 146 trucks from the Russian X5 Retail Group.
Scania will begin delivery of the two- and three-axle distribution trucks in September, the Swedish company said in a statement Monday.
Scania, the largest western truckmaker in Russia with almost a third of the market, has 30 service dealerships in the country and plans to add more, the truckmaker said Monday. Scania delivered 144 vehicles to X5 last year.

<b>Inflation Gathers Pace</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Inflation in Russia, the world’s largest energy producer, accelerated to its fastest pace in more than 2 1/2 years in March as food costs rose.
The rate rose to 13.3 percent from 12.7 percent in February, the Moscow-based Federal Statistics Service said in an e-mail Monday — the highest since June 2005.
Russia is struggling to bring down the inflation rate from 11.9 percent in 2007 as rising global food prices and money from oil and gas sales boost prices.

TITLE: Property Prices Soar
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — London is the world’s most expensive place in which to buy a home, followed by Monaco and St. Jean Cap Ferrat in southern France, an annual global survey by real estate consultant Knight Frank LLP showed.
The average price of a property in the best locations of central London was $6,191 a square foot, according to the firm’s Prime International Residential Index, published Monday. Monaco averaged $5,888 a square foot and properties in St. Jean Cap Ferrat cost $5,853 a square foot, the London-based firm said.
Average prime residential prices gained 11 percent globally last year as the number of high net worth individuals, those with more than $1 million of assets, increased by 4.5 percent, Knight Frank said, citing a study it compiled with Scorpio Partnership.
Moscow and St. Petersburg were among the five locations registering the fastest growth for prime residential property, reflecting Russia’s position as home to some 100 billionaires.
 Average prime residential prices rose 38 percent in St. Petersburg to $1,937 a square foot and in Moscow by 35 percent to $2,235 a square foot, Knight Frank said.
French ski resort Courchevel, a favorite with Russians, registered the fourth-highest prices in the survey at $4,710 a square foot, the study showed.

TITLE: Putin, Berlusconi Discuss Alitalia, Libya
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi on Friday rekindled ties by talking up a possible new bid by Aeroflot for troubled airline Alitalia and hinted that a gas deal between Gazprom and Italy’s Eni involving Libya could be in the cards. 
But the two men, old allies and friends, struggled to focus on business and political ties at a joint news conference that was overshadowed by Putin’s denial of a tabloid allegation about his private life. 
Putin was visiting Berlusconi on the island of Sardinia just days after the Italian media mogul’s victory in parliamentary elections. Putin arrived on the island late Thursday after completing a two-day trip to Libya, where he signed a raft of deals on debt, railways and energy. 
The meeting took place at Berlusconi’s luxury villa, where he has previously hosted Putin and his family. 
Berlusconi said Italy would talk to Aeroflot about the sale of Alitalia, while Putin said Aeroflot’s board was ready to reopen talks with Alitalia about a role in saving the airline, contradicting recent statements by an Aeroflot official. 
“We spoke about Alitalia and the possibility of opening negotiations with Aeroflot,” Berlusconi said. He added, however, that the situation was “very open” and that there were still talks going on with bidder Air France-KLM. 
Putin responded: “Today, I spoke to the Aeroflot chairman. They are open to resume contacts.” 
Natalya Vodneva, an aviation analyst with Deutsche Bank, said Aeroflot’s rekindled interest in Alitalia was unexpected. “Only a few days ago, Aeroflot officially said that it was not interested anymore in Alitalia,” she said. 
Vodneva said that considering the problems of the Italian carrier, which lost 3 million euros per day last month, and the cost of the bid, “to buy it would not be a very convenient deal for Aeroflot.” 
The Italian leading economic newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported Friday that close Berlusconi adviser Gianni Letta met late Thursday with his nephew Enrico Letta, undersecretary to outgoing Prime Minister Romano Prodi, to find a strategy for closing the Alitalia sale before the carrier runs out of cash. 
In a last-ditch bid to save Alitalia, the Italian government put it up for sale last year. Aeroflot made a joint bid with Italian bank UniCredit but pulled out three months later. 
During his election campaign, Berlusconi called Air France’s bid “arrogant and unacceptable” and asked Italian investors to make a counteroffer. 
On energy, Putin hinted that a Gazprom deal with Eni involving Libya could be close. 
“Eni has already received access to assets on the territory of the Russian Federation, and Gazprom expects to get appropriate assets in other countries, including in Libya,” Putin said during the news conference, Interfax reported. 
Putin and Berlusconi said Gazprom and Eni would continue working on joint projects, which include the $10 billion South Stream pipeline aimed at supplying Europe via the Black Sea. 
Putin’s comments came a day after Eni chief executive Paolo Scaroni offered Gazprom a stake in the 140,000 barrels-per-day Elephant field in Libya.

TITLE: Berezovsky Case Heard In London
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON — A $2 billion lawsuit brought by self-exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky against his former business partner, Roman Abramovich, reached the High Court in London on Friday. 
Berezovsky, who was granted asylum in Britain in 2003, claims that Abramovich, acting in concert with President Vladimir Putin, used threats of state confiscation to force Berezovsky and a partner, the late Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, to sell their interests in oil firm Sibneft, television channel ORT and aluminum producer RusAl at far below market value. 
“Abramovich undertook a course of conduct in which he made and was a party to explicit and implicit threats and intimidation” that were “intertwined with the Sibneft transaction,” lawyers for Berezovsky said in the lawsuit. 
Abramovich’s lawyer, Andrew Popplewell, said at the High Court that the claims were unfounded, Agence France Presse reported. “The arguability of the claims depends wholly on oral conversations,” he said. 
Berezovsky was convicted by a Russian court in absentia in November on charges that he embezzled from state airline Aeroflot and was given six years in prison. He has dismissed the charges as “politically motivated.” 
From 2001 to 2003, Berezovsky sold Abramovich the Sibneft stake for $1.3 billion. In 2005 Abramovich sold Sibneft to state-run Gazprom for $13.1 billion. Berezovsky says in the suit that he lost as much as $4 billion. 
(Bloomberg, NYT)

TITLE: 1Bln No Longer Enough for Forbes’ 100
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A billion dollars just ain’t what it used to be — to make the cut on Forbes Russia’s new top 100 a cool $1.1 billion is required. 
In the rich list, published Friday, the number of Russian billionaires shot up to 110, from 87 since Forbes’ U.S. edition published its global rich list a month ago. 
Surging commodity and property prices helped push the combined fortunes of the top 100 up 54 percent to $522 billion, or more than one-third of the country’s economy, from $338 billion in March 2007, Forbes said. 
And unlike in the days when Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other oil barons dominated, now those who made their fortunes from metals and mining make up one-fifth of the top 100. 
Topping the Russia list this year is aluminum king Oleg Deripaska, the majority owner of United Company RusAl, whose fortune — including infrastructure, energy and financial assets — is estimated at $28.6 billion, $11.8 billion more than a year ago. 
Longtime leader Roman Abramovich, with $24.3 billion, was pushed into third place by Severstal owner Alexei Mordashov, whose fortune rose to $24.5 billion on the back of rising steel prices. 
Another metals magnate, Novolipetsk Steel owner Vladimir Lisin, is fourth with $23.9 billion, while Norilsk Nickel co-owners Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin hold fifth and sixth positions, respectively. More leading positions went to metals and mining tycoons: Polymetal owner Suleiman Kerimov was eighth, Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works chairman Viktor Rashnikov came in 11th and Igor Zyuzin, whose Mechel has benefited from record coal prices was 12th. 
“The whole list is full of surprises,” said Maxim Kashulinsky, the editor of Forbes’ Russian edition, who added that similar jumps in market valuations for Russian companies were responsible for the difference between the two lists. 
“For the global report, we used conservative estimates for many companies because we did not know their financial reports for 2007,” Kashulinsky said. “For the [Russia] list, we relied on companies’ declared financial performances and they were bigger than we anticipated.” 
Last year, when the U.S. dollar was worth more, there were just 60 Russian billionaires, and a fortune of $660 million was enough to make the top 100.
Finans magazine, a Russian rival to Forbes, in February listed 101 billionaires on its rich list. Finans put Deripaska’s fortune at $40 billion.
“All those figures were seriously exaggerated. They were simply blown out of proportion,” said a spokesman for Deripaska, who requested anonymity.
Despite the ascendancy of the metal barons, however, oil men still held places in the top 10, with LUKoil chief Vagit Alekperov in ninth place, while TNK-BP shareholders Mikhail Fridman and German Khan are seventh and 10th respectively.
Real estate tycoons, meanwhile, reaped the rewards of lucrative initial public offerings. Yury Zhukov and Kirill Pisarev, co-owners of developer PIK Group, saw their fortunes rise from $830 million to $6.1 billion, while Andrei Molchanov, of LSR Group, saw his fortune rise to $4.8 billion.
Yulia Sokolova, a spokeswoman for LSR, said Forbes’ figure was even a little on the low side. 
“New company capitalization figures released Thursday indicate that Molchanov is now worth $5.1 billion,” Sokolova said.
Amid the global credit crunch, some bankers fared less well on the list.
The list’s biggest drop, from 19th place to 36th, was attributed to Russky Standart bank owner Rustam Tariko, who saw his fortune shrink by $2 billion to $3.5 billion. 
But a source close to the bank dismissed the ranking as guesswork.
“Forbes is way off the mark,” the source said. “If you look at the recent sale of Absolut Bank and Expobank, both relatively minor players, their sale prices were four or five times greater than their book value. By the same evaluation, [Russky Standart] would be worth $5 billion to $6 billion.”
The poorest billionaire on the list is Viktor Kharitonin, who made $1.1 billion running Pharmstandard, the country’s biggest drug maker.

TITLE: Medvedev Steps Into Dispute
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — President-elect Dmitry Medvedev has stepped in to try to resolve a dispute between state-controlled power firms Unified Energy System and Rosneft, UES chief Anatoly Chubais said Friday. 
Medvedev’s mediation could shed light on his policies on a sector facing deep change as the government looks to create a competitive market by selling dozens of UES subsidiaries and raising electricity prices to market levels by 2012. 
The dispute centers on a lawsuit filed by oil giant Rosneft, which threatens to split up TGK-11, a unit of former power monopoly UES. 
Chubais backs Kremlin intervention in the dispute. 
“The president-elect has gotten involved in the negotiations and on his order a working group has been established ... to resolve the issue,” Chubais told reporters. 
“This gives us confidence that the state will finally rein in a state company,” he said, referring to Rosneft. 
Chubais and Medvedev are central figures in the government’s liberal camp, while Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin is one of the Kremlin’s most powerful hard-liners. He is deputy chief of staff to outgoing President Vladimir Putin. 
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said the company was seeking to resolve the matter in court, and declined to comment further. 
Under the electricity reforms, UES must sell off dozens of subsidiaries by July 1.

TITLE: UES Ready to Delay Sale of OGK-1
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Unified Energy System is ready to delay for up to two years the sale of electricity producer OGK-1 if a consortium of billionaires does not offer a premium price. 
“We will either sell above market or not at all. If we receive these funds a year or two later, nothing bad will happen,” UES chief executive Anatoly Chubais told reporters Friday. 
“We have already prepared the mechanism for [delaying the sale] and it would not disrupt the investment program,” he added. The sale of OGK-1, one of the country’s biggest generating companies, will raise as much as $7 billion. 
It is one of the last large power producers being sold off by UES as part of a Kremlin-backed sector reform. The reform will see UES dismantled and privatized by July 1, laying the ground for a competitive power market. 
The valuation of OGK-1, the last of six wholesale generating companies to be sold, is about $500 per kilowatt of generating capacity. 
UES has said it will only sell at a premium to this market price, but has never threatened such a long delay. 
“All of [our generating companies] have been sold either at the market price or above. We will keep this strategy until the end,” he said. 
But a delay of one or two years would mean OGK-1 will have to be sold after UES ceases to exist this summer, leaving the fate of the company and its shares uncertain. Chubais said that UES had worked out a mechanism for selling the firm in 2009 or 2010.

TITLE: MegaFon In Talks To Sell iPhone
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — MegaFon, Russia’s third-largest mobile-phone company, is in talks with Apple Inc. about offering the first legal iPhone service in Russia, already one of the world’s biggest markets for the device.
“We would like to be their first partner in Russia if they offer an acceptable business model,” MegaFon Chief Executive Officer Sergei Soldatenkov told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. He said there are about 200,000 iPhones that have been unlocked to work on unauthorized networks in Russia, according to various estimates.
Apple plans to sell at least 10 million iPhones this year, expanding further in Europe and entering Asia. Sales of the device, which began in the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany last year, had reached 4 million by Jan. 15. The iPhone has since debuted in Ireland and Austria.
MegaFon’s larger competitors Mobile TeleSystems and VimpelCom have also expressed interest in selling the iPhone in Russia. Mobile TeleSystems Chief Executive Officer Leonid Melamed said Wednesday the company was ready to negotiate with Apple on selling the device.
“We have had contacts with Apple,” VimpelCom spokeswoman Yelena Prokhorova said Thursday. “Though we don’t have any concrete talks now, we are interested.”
VimpelCom CEO Alexander Izosimov has an iPhone, according to Prokhorova. Melamed said he doesn’t own one.

TITLE: New Pig Farm for Lenoblast
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new pig farm, the Pulkovsky agricultural complex, will open on Thursday in the Leningrad Oblast. It will be the largest livestock-rearing complex in the Northwest region, the project’s general contractor, STEP, said Friday in a statement.
The new farm will be located in the village of Tarasovo in the Tosnensky district. Total investment into the project is estimated at $595.5 million.
On Thursday only the first part of the complex will be opened, but the whole project should be completed by 2012.
The farm is part of the state program for the development of agricultural industry. The Pulkovsky complex will consist of a breeding center, reproduction center, feeding center, fodder production plant and an educational farm.

TITLE: No Takers for Baikal Plant
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Co. rejected Russia’s proposal to convert a pulp plant controlled by billionaire Oleg Deripaska that is polluting Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, RIA Novosti reported.
Coca-Cola HBC inspected the plant at the invitation of Russia’s National Resources Ministry and decided not to convert it to produce drinking water, the state-run news service said, citing company spokeswoman Yana Guskova.
Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the ministry’s environmental watchdog, said Coca-Cola HBC was deterred by the size of the investment needed to convert the mill into a bottled-water production facility, RIA said. Mitvol said on Dec. 17 that the mill was pumping an “unacceptable” amount of pollution into the lake.
Mitvol said no other companies had inquired about buying the plant.

TITLE: Pulkovo Airport Open to Bids
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: The city has opened a $1.5 billion tender for a 30-year concession to operate its Pulkovo airport, a city official said on Monday. A winner will be picked by March 12, 2009 and the concession agreement will be signed by the end of July that year, the city’s vice-governor Yury Molchanov told reporters. 
The city of St. Petersburg owns the airport and plans to raise 35 billion rubles ($1.5 billion) to renovate one of its two runways. 
It will hold a road-show in London on May 7-9. 
“All 100 percent of the investment will come from investors. We have no plans to match funding,” Molchanov said. 
The World Bank is acting as a strategic adviser on the Pulkovo concession project, Citibank will act as a financial consultant while Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP will act as a legal consultant. 
It also plans to build a new terminal by 2025 with an annual capacity of 22 million passengers. The airport, Russia’s fourth largest in terms of passenger turnover, handled 6.1 million passengers last year.

TITLE: Companies Wait for Moment to Launch IPOs
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — By this time last year, four Russian firms — Sitronics, Polymetal, Sberbank and Integra — had already raised a total of almost $10.5 billion in IPOs. Yet the first quarter of 2008 has been deafeningly quiet on the Russian IPO front, with not one company braving an initial public offering.
“People are waiting to see how the first one fares,” said Stuart Leasor, who tracks IPOs at consultancy firm PBN. “One always gets the feeling that it is like a floodgate — everyone is holding off until they see how the first one performs, and if it goes well, then they’ll be a torrent,” Leasor said.
With the values of IPOs by Russian companies increasing by almost 50 percent year on year for the past few years, 2008 is unlikely to match its spectacular predecessors.
The reason for the Russian hesitance is simple: It’s all about the financial rout that has been taking place abroad, and, particularly, in the United States.
“It has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with the current situation in the U.S.,” said Ronald Smith, head of research at Alfa Bank.
Now, however, the pipeline of potential listings is bulging, and the next few Russian companies to list should offer good value for money, analysts said.
“The message is loud and clear: If you want to raise money today, it had better be at a clear discount,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib. “It’s a long time before its going to be a seller’s market again.”
There is currently around $40 billion worth of IPOs waiting to hit the market, Weafer said. “And if you add RusAl, then that takes it up to around $50 billion,” he said.
While RusAl’s postponement represented the major casualty of the 2007 IPO rush, other Russian companies seemed able to weather the global storm.
No matter how bleak the outlook or headline-grabbing the postponements, the underlying boom in IPOs by Russian companies has often seemed to carry on unaffected.
Back at the beginning of 2007, when the subprime crisis was just a tear in the corner of Wall Street’s eye, bankers and analysts were feeling gloomy about the Russian offerings. Investors’ appetites seemed to be waning, and Russian firms no longer looked guaranteed to secure sold-out IPOs.
By Jan. 1, however, it was clear that Russia had posted another record year for IPOs, despite the worsening international financial situation. In fact, for some Russian companies, the current global situation has even proved a boon rather than a bane for their listings.
Late last year, as global markets began to teeter and uncertainty over the repercussions of the credit crunch peaked, fertilizer producer Uralkali raised eyebrows by pushing on with its offering.
Benefiting from the spare cash burning a hole in the pockets of investors who had been set to spend big on RusAl, the potash giant’s IPO was a startling success and proved that fairly priced Russian offerings in smaller sectors would be snapped up. Since listing on the RTS and LSE in mid-October, Uralkali’s shares had risen more than 200 percent by March.
Even in the banking sector hardest hit by the global turmoil, Bank St. Petersburg flummoxed the analysts by launching a domestic IPO in early November. Despite being toward the upper end of its pricing range, the offering ended up seven times oversubscribed.
Getting exposure to the booming St. Petersburg market seemed in this instance to outweigh the concerns about the international banking sector’s prospects.
With Russia’s economy booming due to soaring commodity prices, and apparently irrespective of the international climate, some sectors are particularly attractive. As demand grows, the retail and consumer sectors are set to continue soaring, while construction, boosted by a Kremlin-led charge toward the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, also look like a safe bet, analysts said.
As for the trends that emerged in 2007, one of the most striking was the greater apparent sophistication of the Russian IPO machine. Whereas a few years ago public offerings might have seemed like a way for oligarchs to cash out, in 2007, reinvestment rates skyrocketed. 
“The amount increased from around 38 percent in 2007 up to 81 percent in 2008,” said Leasor at PBN. Although London remained the prime destination for Russian firms throughout 2007, northeast Asia seems to be creeping up slowly on the outside, and the Russian markets are staking their claim as major international hubs.
RusAl has been rumored to be considering switching to Hong Kong, and another Basic Element metals subsidiary has already confirmed that it is headed to the Pearl River Delta.
At the end of the day, smaller firms seem to think that a domestic listing is adequate, while the big beasts are still being drawn to London. “The big exchanges are still the place to raise really serious investments,” Leasor said.

TITLE: Barclays Capital Chief Warns Russia Cannot Avoid Stormy Seas
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will not emerge unscathed from a likely global slowdown, and will need to tackle high growth rates if it is to bring down inflation, Barclays Capital chairman Hans-Joerg Rudloff said. 
“Fundamentally, the Russian growth story stays intact, but there will be a much more difficult sea to navigate,” Rudloff, who sits on Rosneft’s supervisory board, said in an interview. 
Since last summer, some of the West’s largest financial corporations have revealed massive write-downs in the wake of the U.S. subprime crisis, while equity markets have tumbled around the world. The U.S. economy is widely thought to be on the brink of a recession. 
“No integrated economy will escape the consequences [of the crisis], and the Russians want to be integrated. You can’t have it both ways,” Rudloff said. 
The International Monetary Fund issued a sobering report recently, where it cut its global growth forecasts for the second time since January, to 3.7 percent from 4.9 percent in 2007, on the back of the financial crisis, which has spread to core parts of the financial system and the housing sector in the West. 
Russia, meanwhile, has proclaimed itself an “island of stability,” arguing that its banks have little exposure to the subprime crisis, thus helping insulate its economy. Last year, Russia’s economy expanded by an impressive 8.1 percent, up from 6.7 percent the year before, adding a ninth straight year of economic growth. But Russia’s growth, Rudloff said, could be under threat. “Never has there been a country or a period where a country’s growth [for] 10, 20, 30, 40 years [has been] without interruption or some hiccoughs,” he said. “Strain in economic development will always occur — one should take that as an absolutely natural development. 
“The present situation will clearly lead to a slowdown of economic growth, even in countries like Russia and China,” he said. 
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, the guardian of the country’s purse strings, has suggested that the economy is overheating, fueling inflation, and that growth should be brought down to sustainable levels. But his view is at odds with Economic Development and Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina, who called for a stop to “this talk of overheating,” and has insisted that the country cannot afford to slow its economic growth. 
Like many countries, Russia is battling high inflation. The first week of April saw food-price inflation hit its highest level since October, a sign that the government is failing to bring it under control and will miss its 2008 targets. 
The government will need to aim for more moderate growth, as well as implement other policy measures such as higher interest rates, if it is to succeed in bringing down inflation and provide some relief to the poorer parts of the population, Rudloff said. 
“In countries like Russia, high inflation rates are like a heavy taxation burden on the poor parts of the population, and rapidly eat into the popularity of governments,” he said. 
Inflation reached 11.9 percent in 2007, its highest level in several years, and the government introduced a range of initiatives to bring it down, including voluntary food-price freezes and higher import tariffs on some goods, as the country headed into State Duma and presidential elections. Economists have expressed skepticism that any of these measures will work, and have called on the government to tackle the issue head on with robust measures, such as allowing the ruble to appreciate, which would hurt domestic producers. “All measures taken against inflation are, by definition, unpopular,” Rudloff said. 
And it seems unlikely that the government is ready to stem growth, particularly at a time when global growth is so vulnerable. During President Vladimir Putin’s two terms, growth has been a constant watchword. After eight years of planning, the government is finally moving into a new phase of huge state-led investment, targeted at overhauling the country’s dilapidated infrastructure. 
Private investors will be an integral part of this, Rudloff said. “The Russian economy suffers from a bottleneck in many areas, and the modernization of its industry as well as its infrastructure will demand a major financial effort,” he said. “Therefore, foreign investment and lending will be crucial.” 
As Medvedev prepares to take up the presidential reins in May, investors are hoping the new “Western-friendly” president will make it easier for foreign investors. Bruised by the recent broadside against TNK-BP and claims of intimidation from Hermitage Capital, Russia has work to do if it is to dispel some of the lingering concerns about investing in the country. 
“I would expect that Russia [under Medvedev] will show a much more friendly image to the world, without giving in on substance,” Rudloff said.

TITLE: The BRIC Globalizers
AUTHOR: By Harold James
TEXT: The winners of the great globalization push of the 1990s were small states, such as New Zealand, Chile, Dubai, Finland, Ireland, the Baltic countries, Slovenia and Slovakia. The East Asian tigers that pushed themselves onto the world economy’s center stage were small units, and in some cases — Singapore, Taiwan, or Hong Kong — were not even treated as states. Even South Korea, which is a giant in comparison, was only half a country.
Such states are vulnerable, and the past is littered with small and successful globalizers that lost out because of power politics: the Italian city states of the Renaissance, the Dutch Republic, or, in the 20th century, Lebanon and Kuwait. Small states frequently became the victims of larger but poorer neighbors envious of their success and eager to seize their assets who are oblivious to the fact that such seizure actually destroys the source of wealth and dynamism.
In the world of pure globalization, small states do best because they are more flexible and can adapt more easily to rapidly changing markets. Small states are better at public policy adjustments, freeing up labor markets, establishing a solid framework for competition and facilitating crossborder takeovers and mergers.
The urgency of such a program has been underscored in recent analyses by the poor performance of the major continental European economies — France, Germany and Italy — compared with smaller and much more dynamic economies in northern and central Europe. At the same time, small states are also more likely to be successful in defending crucial aspects of the welfare state. 
A larger state can inevitably do more to control the economy and hence is exposed to the costly temptation to intervene in response to political pressure from vested interests. In a small-state setting, imposition of a dense network of controls is likely to lead to the loss of mobile factors of production, while in a large state it is harder for labor or capital to escape. 
On the international stage, large states try to make international rules and often build their domestic legitimacy on their claims to be able to shape a larger world: They think in terms of what French thinkers call “harnessing globalization.” Instead of accepting the international system roughly as it is, with all its imperfections, they think that they can use their weight to alter the rules — in their favor. 
Small states’ nervousness and fear began to increase starting in 2000. The new political realities were highlighted by the Iraq war, China’s search for energy sources in developing countries, and Russia’s assertiveness in foreign and domestic policy. 
In today’s world, it looks as though the new winners are big states with large populations and rapid growth: Brazil, Russia, India, and China, or BRIC, in addition to the United States. These dynamic giants terrify the wealthy populations of the industrialized world with the potential power of their low-cost competition, cheap products and outsourcing of services. 
BRIC countries (we might rewrite the term as Big and Really Imperial Countries) project power more easily, but they need to project power to compensate for their weaknesses. They have their own problems, but at the same time they are likely to behave more like traditional big states and will try to shape globalization rather than simply accepting it as an inevitable process. 
There are at least three obvious flaws that afflict these big globalizers much more than the small globalizers who had done so well previously. First, highly populous countries must integrate their poor and ill-educated underclass — in China and India mostly rural — as they engage with world markets. 
Second, China and Russia have financial systems that lack transparency, while Brazil and India are financially underdeveloped, putting further integration in the world economy at risk and increasing prospects for a financial crisis. 
Third, Russia is already facing a massive demographic decline and an aging and sickening population; China faces the near certainty of a Japanese-style demographic downturn from the 2040s onward, a belated legacy of its one-child policy. 
Flawed geopolitical giants have in the past been a source of instability (Germany before World War I is an obvious analogy), and there are good reasons to see them presenting increased risk in the 21st century. But for the moment, they are unquestionably powerful. 
The result is that the BRIC countries will look for compensating power and prestige, as well as military and strategic influence, as a way to solve internal problems. Gone are the 1990s, when for a brief moment in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the world looked as if it would be permanently peaceful and unconcerned with power. 
That hope soon proved illusory. Many commentators, indeed, were stunned by the rapidity with which tensions returned to the international system. While many blame U.S. behavior, these tensions have in fact been fueled by the unfolding of a new logic in international politics. 

Harold James is professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University and author of “The Roman Predicament.” (c) Project Syndicate

TITLE: The Lovely Smell of U.S. Stagnation
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: It has become a cliche to point out that the government is busy reviving various ideological and symbolic trappings of the Soviet Union. One of the most amusing ideological constructs in the writings of “patriotic” pro-Kremlin commentators, as well as in the minds of ordinary Russians, is the growing belief that the U.S. economy is somehow a spent force.
Those who grew up under communism remember Marxist-Leninism’s “scientific” conclusion that the capitalist system was rotting away. This Soviet mantra, endlessly repeated in the face of evident Western prosperity, gave rise to jokes like this one:
Rabinovich applies to emigrate to the United States. 
“Why do you want to go to America?” his KGB minder inquires. “Capitalism is rotting.” 
“I know it is. But by God, comrade major, doesn’t it smell lovely?”
Naturally, capitalism didn’t collapse, but communism did. Ironically, the Soviet economy did rot away, and, in line with Marxist predictions, the Soviet Union crumbled under the weight of its own contradictions. Undeterred by the failure of the old prophesies, we now have a new crop of Russian Cassandras. If Nikita Khrushchev and Mao couldn’t bury the United States in their time, perhaps Chinese President Hu Jintao will.
I’ve just come back from a trip to Southern California. I stayed an extra day to visit a school friend of mine, a microbiologist, now living in San Diego and working at one of its world-famous research institutes.
The last time I visited San Diego was 30 years ago. After my freshman year at a New York college, I came out to the West Coast and spent a summer frying chicken at an amusement park. San Diego was then a sleepy, pleasant burg inhabited by U.S. Navy retirees and their Mexican gardeners. Now, it is a global hub of the biotech industry. My friend is part of a sizeable group of Russian biologists doing academic research or working for various startups. Many of his former classmates at Moscow State University and colleagues from research institutes are also scattered around the United States. Some have even started their own biotech companies.
“I don’t know where they have learned,” shrugs my friend. “They used to be your regular Moscow scientists, with thick glasses. Now, they put companies through venture capital financing and IPOs.”
Actually, he has worked for a startup himself and does consulting for private business. Although he remains very much tied to Russian culture (a Pushkin volume lies casually on his kitchen counter and his kids speak fluent Russian), he is extremely comfortable in San Diego. Who wouldn’t be? He has absolutely no interest in returning to Moscow. Some Russian scientists working in the United States might return, but very few, if any, will do so for professional reasons. Conditions for research and its practical application are simply too good in the United States. 
Nor have they been matched elsewhere. At my friend’s institute, most foreign researchers prefer to work in the United States, even though their countries now offer them incentives to come home. For all the money China and India spend on science and technology, they have yet to find a way of chipping away at the United State’s primacy in innovation.
President Vladimir Putin’s pet project, nanotechnology, is a good illustration why. In most countries of the world, support for science and innovation is a top-down exercise, where bureaucrats decide what needs to be developed and how. Typically, they get it wrong. The U.S. system, meanwhile, thrives by being bottom-up, allowing scientists to succeed — or fail — on their own terms.
It is true that the U.S. economy has problems. It is heavily dependent on imports, there is too much debt and the middle classes have been hollowed out. But as long as the United States controls innovation, there is little chance of it surrendering its global economic leadership. 

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

TITLE: An Early Assessment of Putin’s Foreign Policy
AUTHOR: By Fyodor Lukyanov
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s participation in the NATO summit in Bucharest and his talks with U.S. President George W. Bush in Sochi marked the final foreign policy episode in his two terms. 
Putin’s legacy is worthy of serious study and impartial analysis, but this is not possible right now. Time must pass before the strong enthusiasm of his supporters and the equally strong condemnation of his implacable opponents subside. Only then will we be able to analyze the Putin epoch accurately. 
The country Putin will be handing over to his successor differs substantially from the one he inherited from his predecessor. 
Observers in the West love to ask: Where did we go wrong with Russia? Why did Moscow take a path different from the democratic one everyone in the early 1990s was hoping it would follow? Why did it not become integrated into the European community under the benevolent supervision of the Western powers? 
But these questions emanate from the false premise that it is possible to construct a policy for Russia only. The world really has become a global community, and the West’s policy toward Russia cannot be conducted in a vacuum. 
Rather than wondering where it went wrong with Russia, the West should be asking: After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism, why haven’t we seen a fair and just world order? 
During Putin’s two terms in office, it has become clear that the formulas designed to solve the world’s problems might not actually work or could lead to unexpected results. At the same time, the West was slow to realize that global problems were increasing as a direct result of the inadequate methods it employed in grappling with them. In this sense, Putin benefited from the West’s failures. 
Russia’s new sense of confidence derives not only from high oil prices, but from the West’s miscalculations as well. The West — and primarily the United States — has lost the chance that it had in the early 1990s to play a leading role in the global transformation. 
It is worth noting that, for all of his aggressive rhetoric, Putin did not create a single serious problem for the West. It is another matter that Moscow exploited problems in other countries to strengthen its own status, but that is not surprising for a superpower trying to regain its position. 
Was Putin’s foreign policy confrontational? On the surface, yes. When asked in Bucharest why he thought everyone expected a fiery speech like the one he delivered at a security conference in Munich in early 2007, Putin answered: “There’s some kind of strong fear in anticipation of my speeches. I don’t know what caused it.” Of course, he knows. By the end of his second term, Putin had developed a penchant for making sharp, provocative remarks aimed at the West and then sitting back to watch the subsequent commotion. 
But confrontation with the West was hardly Putin’s goal. More likely, he was striving to put Russia on equal footing with the West by re-establishing its superpower status. Did he choose the right methods for this task? Hardly. Was he pursuing the right goal? Or more important, is there any point in speaking about integrating Russia into a global system that has not developed a stable foundation since the end of the Cold War? 
Nearly all the global institutions that formed the previous world order are now in crisis. The West has been unable to abandon its Cold War-era habit of dividing the world into ideological camps, rendering it unprepared for a movement away from ideologically charged international relations. Attempts to explain problems in terms of the presence or absence of democratic institutions have not produced the desired result. Global processes do not lend themselves to a universal model of development. 
In terms of rhetoric, global superpowers have rejected former geopolitical principles and outdated notions about the balance of power. But those advocating a return to realism are retrogressive in their thinking. After all, leading nations speak about humanitarian values and the need to do away forever with the mentality of the zero-sum game. In practice, however, every country acts out of personal interest, though perhaps somewhat subconsciously. At the same time, they are unwilling to shoulder the responsibility needed to formulate new rules of the game that would be acceptable to all the players. 
They also demonstrate a clear desire for an opponent. But every attempt to transform the battle against international terrorism into an integral element of the world order has ended in failure. A phantom-like adversary is incapable of either uniting the world community into a resilient alliance or serving as a perceived evil that is strong enough to define the ideological and political positions of the countries opposing it. 
Moreover, terrorism is not an independent phenomenon driving political events. It is the product of failed approaches to various strategic and economic problems. 
During Putin’s presidency, many in the West referred to “authoritarian capitalism” as exemplified by China and Russia. This political and economic model became the “official bogeyman,” even more than global terrorism. Unfortunately, the idea of pitting authoritarian capitalism against liberal capitalism is far-fetched. The fabricated collision of two capitalistic systems was probably born more out of the incapacity to grasp the underlying nature of current events than any willful desire to provoke an ideological battle. 
When evaluating what Putin achieved as president, the results are fairly modest. But he was tremendously successful in creating the perception of great achievements, both domestically and internationally. This contradiction, as well as the dangerous level of euphoria, seems to be causing some disquiet among the ruling elite — or at least among the small number of its more thoughtful members. 
The impression of success is due not only to powerful, omnipresent government propaganda, but also to Russians’ desire to overcome their complex of having lost the Cold War. Once that emotional high of success loses steam, however, Putin’s foreign policy legacy will probably be viewed in a more conservative light. Specifically, it will become clear which chances he missed, what he actually achieved and what he was unable to accomplish through no fault of his own. 

Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.

TITLE: Iron Felix to Metals Magnate for Dynamo
AUTHOR: By Max Delaney
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Overlooking the fumes and bustle of Moscow’s Leningradskoye Shosse, Dynamo Stadium stands like a sad monument to faded glory and lost hope.
From the grimy ticket stalls, flecked with racist graffiti, to the peeling paint and patched-up windows, the home of one of the country’s most-decorated football clubs appears a testament not just to one team’s decline but also to the broader decay of Russian football.
In 1923, the Dynamo sports club was set up on the orders of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious founder of the Soviet secret police, who wanted his officers in better physical shape.
Now, after years without success, and as the club celebrated its 85th anniversary Friday, the Dynamo Moscow soccer team is currently riding high in second place in Russia’s Premier League — and a new stadium is on the way.
Some of the highest-ranking figures in the country’s all-powerful security services have teamed up with one of the country’s wealthiest men, metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov, to revive the soccer club’s fortunes.
But with a path from Iron Felix to stainless-steel magnate Usmanov, Dynamo’s history encapsulates both the positives and perils of Russian football’s close ties to politics and big business.
The Dynamo sports association “unites almost all of the state’s security forces, including the Interior Ministry, the Federal Customs Service and the tax services,” said Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin, who chairs Dynamo’s board of trustees.
“At Dynamo we don’t like to refer to ourselves as the ‘Chekist team,’” Stepashin said, referring to members of the Cheka, the name given to the secret police founded by Dzerzhinsky.
Stepashin headed the Federal Security Service, or FSB, in the 1990s, before becoming interior minister and later prime minister under late President Boris Yeltsin.
The security services continue to hold sway at Dynamo. FSB Deputy Director Vladimir Pronichev is head of the Dynamo sports association, which, in addition to the football club, includes two ice-hockey teams, and basketball and volleyball teams of the same name. FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev heads Dynamo’s volleyball club.
During the Soviet era, Dynamo’s rivals represented other powerful organizations. Lokomotiv represented the railway workers, CSKA was the army club, and Spartak was essentially the people’s club, an amalgamation of trade unions. 
In the late 1930s, as the Stalinist purges consumed the country, Dynamo’s association with the secret police spilled over into football, taking a grim turn that casts a dark shadow over the club’s history.
After Dynamo won the first national championship in 1936 and the league and cup double the following year, crosstown rival Spartak topped the table in 1938 and 1939.
Off the pitch, Dynamo’s tactics had turned to intimidation, arrest and even execution after Lavrenty Beria, the feared secret police chief, became honorary chairman of the football club in 1936, Jim Riordan, a British academic and Soviet sports expert who briefly played for Spartak in the early 1960s, wrote in the academic journal Europe-Asia Studies.
As Dynamo’s fortunes sagged, Beria, a keen football player from his youth in Georgia, developed a personal vendetta against Spartak founder and Komsomol chief Alexander Kosarev and Spartak’s star player, Nikolai Starostin. While Kosarev was executed as an enemy of the people in the late 1930s, Starostin — who once called Beria “a crude and dirty left half” — was hauled off to jail in 1942 along with his three brothers and eventually spent years in a gulag camp before being taken under the protection of his old acquaintance, Vasily Dzhugashvili, son of Josef Stalin.
So dramatic was the Dynamo-Spartak rivalry that it was even turned into the bestselling novel “Dynamo” by British author Tariq Goddard, who heard the story from Riordan.
In his fictionalized account, Goddard portrayed Dynamo as the bad guys, an instrument of state oppression playing murderously dirty to stop the mercurial talents of Spartak.
“Dynamo had a different way of playing — they almost followed the state structure of centralized planning for every game — with what would be regarded as the English long-ball technique designed to grind out a result,” Goddard said by telephone from his home in Hampshire, England. 
Seventy years later, it seems that current fans have still not forgotten the tortured history between the clubs. At a 2006 home match against Spartak, Dynamo supporters held up a huge portrait of Beria with the words: “He Sees Everything.”
In response to the gesture, fans of St. Petersburg’s Zenit the following season held up the same picture of Beria during a home match with Dynamo. “You’ll Pay For His Sins,” was written under the portrait.
At the return match in Moscow, Dynamo fans retaliated with a portrait of Ksenia Sobchak, the socialite daughter of former St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, with the words: “Even in 100 Years You Couldn’t Pay For Her Sins.”
“We have a respectful, sporting relationship with Spartak,” Stepashin said. “Every year at the annual meeting between Dynamo fans and players, the fans always say, ‘We can forgive everything, all your defeats, but you just have to beat Spartak.’”
In its most recent home match, Dynamo, for the first time in five years, managed to beat Spartak in a thrilling 4-3 victory Sunday. Angry Spartak fans responded to the loss by tearing out most of the seating in the away fans section, a Dynamo representative said during a tour of the stadium.
In one of the most extraordinary and politicized episodes in the country’s football history, Dynamo was sent to tour Britain on a groundbreaking trip in 1945.
“As secret police team, Dynamo could be trusted to go overseas as part of propaganda campaign after end of World War II. It was a short-lived one,” said Ronnie Kowalski, a professor at Worcester University in Britain who wrote a study on Dynamo’s British tour.
From a football point of view, the tour was a raging success. Dynamo drew with Chelsea, before thrashing Welsh side Cardiff City and beating Arsenal in a game remembered principally because it was shrouded in impenetrable fog. The final match was a draw against Scottish side Glasgow Rangers.
Despite being taken to watch Zenit as a child by his father while growing up in Leningrad, the young Stepashin was drawn to the success of the Dynamo team of the era.
“Dynamo in those times ... was famous throughout the Soviet Union and abroad,” Stepashin said, though he admitted he still feels an affinity for Zenit.
Stepashin’s experience was typical, as fans from outside Dynamo’s traditional police base flocked to follow the club’s successes, said Manfred Zeller, a researcher on the subject at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.
“Dynamo after the war was very successful, and so they gained a lot of support,” Zeller said. “This then became known as the era of Lev Yashin.”
Yashin, the legendary Soviet goalkeeper, was a mainstay of the Dynamo team between 1949 and 1971 and has been voted the greatest goalkeeper of the 20th century. A statue to him now stands outside Dynamo’s stadium.
Despite its illustrious history, Dynamo has been in the doldrums for most of the past 15 years, consistently finishing behind local rivals CSKA, Lokomotiv and Spartak.
In a bid to rectify the situation, Dynamo’s FSB-linked leadership in February signed a sponsorship deal for the 2008-2009 season with Metalloinvest, owned by steel magnate Usmanov, a Dynamo fan. 
If football matches in the Soviet Union pitted army, police and trade union clubs against one another, nowadays they are battles between the country’s wealthiest and most powerful clans.
Current champion Zenit is sponsored by Gazprom and headed by Sergei Fursenko, brother of Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko.
Lokomotiv is owned by Russian Railways, the state giant run by Vladimir Yakunin, who had a neighboring dacha to President Vladimir Putin’s in the early 1990s. Spartak is currently backed by energy giant LUKoil.
Now Dynamo has Usmanov’s patronage, and both the metals mogul and Dynamo seem satisfied with the partnership.
“He is a longtime supporter of Dynamo,” Stepashin said of Usmanov. “It was his initiative and his personal, sincere desire to help our club.”
Usmanov said Thursday that while the deal will give broader coverage to Metalloinvest, he was not sponsoring Dynamo “just for the advertising.”
“I really love football and am willing to support the growth of a club that I feel involved with,” he said in e-mailed comments. “I want Dynamo to become the best team in Russia.”
Usmanov said there was no conflict with his stake in Arsenal, as he owns no shares in Dynamo and Metalloinvest is only sponsoring the Russian club.
For Dynamo fans, Usmanov’s cash boost has already brought tangible results, allowing the club to sign national team center forward Alexander Kerzhakov from Spanish side Sevilla.
But with an average attendance of around 10,000 spectators per match and minuscule income from television rights compared with European leagues, Russian clubs are often completely reliant on a sugar daddy.
“Normally clubs are unprofitable and far away from breaking even,” said Sharif Galeyev, head of the football finance group at Deloitte CIS. “We believe that a real turn to profitability may appear only in three to four years.”
The Champions League final will be played in Moscow next month and Russia’s national team has qualified for Euro 2008 this summer in Austria and Switzerland.
With CSKA’s victory in the 2005 UEFA Cup final and Zenit going strong in the same competition this year, Russian teams have shown that they can compete with Europe’s elite clubs, Galeyev said.
“However, from the financial perspective there is still quite a big gap,” he said. “For example, in the 2006 to 2007 season Real Madrid made 351 million euros [$557 million], while Zenit’s budget in 2008 is estimated to be up to $120 million.”
Metalloinvest’s deal with Dynamo is not the first foray into football for the Uzbek-born Usmanov, ranked Russia’s 19th-richest man with a fortune of $9.3 billion by Forbes.
In August, Usmanov followed Chukotka governor Roman Abramovich into English football when he bought a stake in London club Arsenal. 
Stepashin said he had even discussed with Usmanov earlier this week the possibility of sending Dynamo staff to London to get training at Arsenal.
But money does not necessarily equal success, as Dynamo’s experience with other deep-pocketed would-be saviors has shown.
In 2001, the club signed a sponsorship deal with Yukos, then the country’s largest oil company, which was headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The partnership seemed ideal to help Dynamo fulfill its dream of returning to prominence. But Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 on tax and fraud charges that eventually landed him in prison and led to the dismantling of his business empire.
As Yukos began to sink under the weight of the authorities’ onslaught, Dynamo turned to another investor, signing a sponsorship deal in 2004 with Monaco-based Russian businessman Alexei Fedorychev, head of sulfur producer Fedcominvest.
Fedorychev, who chaired Dynamo’s board of directors and owned a majority stake in the club, lost no time in pumping an estimated $200 million into the club, bringing in new faces such as Portuguese duo Maniche and Costinha and former Russian national team coach Oleg Rumyantsev.
Six coaches and two seasons later, Dynamo barely managed to avoid relegation, and Fedorychev was jettisoned. In early 2007, he sold his controlling stake in the club for what Russian media reported at the time to be a reduced fee of several million dollars to the Dynamo sport association, headed by Pronichev, the FSB deputy director.
“Business has always influenced Russian football and sometimes in a negative way — as with Dynamo,” Stepashin said. “Three years ago we were the richest team in the league, and we almost got relegated.”
Five games into the 2008-2009 season, young Dynamo coach Andrei Kobelev and his young team remain unbeaten. 
Next month, the club is hoping to unveil plans for a new 35,000-seat stadium to be built on the site of the current one, said Oleg Tochelovich, the stadium’s general director.
“The key moments in the history of the club are happening now, in the present,” Stepashin said, pointing to a new training ground and plans for the new stadium.
For the time being, Dynamo fans are cautiously optimistic about the course taken by the club’s new management. But they do have some advice.
“A lot of money is a hypothetically a good thing,” said Andrei Shulinsky, a spokesman for one of Dynamo’s fan clubs. “But you have to spend it intelligently, and in our country we have problem with doing things intelligently.”

TITLE: Vainshtok Resigns As Olympic Chief
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja and Nadia Popova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Semyon Vainshtok, the head of the Olimpstroi state corporation responsible for preparing Sochi for the 2014 Olympics, resigned abruptly Thursday, amid accusations of mismanagement and cost overruns.
Viktor Kolodyazhny, the mayor of Sochi, was named as Vainshtok’s replacement.
Vainshtok’s departure, just seven months after being appointed to the job, came after months of criticism from lawmakers and state officials, who said the cost of preparations for the Olympics had ballooned to nearly $12 billion. 
At a news briefing Thursday at Olimpstroi’s Moscow office to formalize the handover, Vainshtok introduced Kolodyazhny as his successor. In front of television cameras, Vainshtok hugged Kolodyazhny and wished him luck.
Kolodyazhny spoke only briefly, saying merely, “The preparations will be finished by the deadline.” 
Earlier, Regional Development Minister Dmitry Kozak told reporters that Olimpstroi would now work to complete the preparations ahead of time.
Afterward, Vainshtok insisted that he had done what was expected of him, and it was time to step aside.
“I had a certain task: to begin the preparations for the Olympic Games, and I have fulfilled it,” Vainshtok said in an interview on the street outside the Olimpstroi office. “I am satisfied, by now 46 billion rubles ($1.97 billion) has been transferred to the accounts of Olimpstroi.”
Vainshtok, 60, added that he had had “a number of very good offers [of jobs] but nothing from the state.” 
Officials sought to downplay Vainshtok’s resignation, saying he had planned it for some months.
Kozak said at the briefing that he had agreed with Vainshtok in September that he would leave after completing his allotted task. 
“He has done as planned,” Kozak said. “I see no politics in what has happened.” 
He added that Vainshtok would soon be given a high-ranking state award.
Both President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on Thursday praised Vainshtok for his work at Olimpstroi.
Vainshtok, formerly head of pipeline monopoly Transneft, was tapped by Putin to head Olimpstroi on Sept. 11, a day before Putin appointed Zubkov prime minister in a shakeup of top government and state officials. After stepping down at Transneft, which he headed for eight years, Vainshtok was replaced by Putin ally Nikolai Tokarev, the head of state oil firm Zarubezhneft.
Kozak on Thursday praised Kolodyazhny, 54, calling him “a highly professional manager.” He added that Kolodyazhny “was not the only candidate” to replace Vainshtok but declined to name the others. On Thursday, Vladimir Afanasenkov, a former deputy governor of the Krasnodar region, replaced Kolodyazhny as Sochi mayor.
Olimpstroi vice president Sergei Grigoryev, a lieutenant of Vainshtok’s who followed him from Transneft, said Thursday that Kolodyazhny’s appointment had been “quite unexpected.” 
Grigoryev stoutly defended Vainshtok against his critics.
“Less than a year has passed since we won the bid. It is obvious that we have neither the financial nor the strategic plan yet with exact figures and parameters,” Grigoryev said.
Grigoryev, a former vice president at Transneft under Vainshtok, hinted that the team that came with Vainshtok from the pipeline monopoly last September might also leave Olimpstroi. “But don’t expect any dramatic changes in the company,” Grigoryev said.
Public arguments among officials over the spiraling costs for the Olympics have increased in recent months, with Vainshtok telling State Duma deputies last month that the games would cost taxpayers three times the initial estimates. Building the transportation infrastructure alone could cost 316 billion rubles ($13.5 billion), Vainshtok said.
The government initially earmarked 200 billion rubles ($8.5 billion) of state funds for Olympic construction, including the cost of design and construction of sports facilities, energy supply, communications and tourist attractions.
“A lot was missing [in the estimates] and most of what was included was not confirmed by state experts,” Vainshtok told deputies. “[The cost of] purchasing land was not even taken into account, and this alone would require an additional 82.4 billion rubles ($3.5 billion).”
The first serious hint of Vainshtok’s position being under threat came earlier this month, when Victor Ilyukhin, a Communist Duma deputy, urged authorities in an open letter to fire Vainshtok and start an investigation into possible money laundering at Olimpstroi. 
Ilyukhin said the state’s planned budget for Sochi, $11.9 billion, would dwarf the $6 billion combined total spent on the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Salt Lake City and Turin.
Audit Chamber chief Stepashin warned a Cabinet meeting last month that the Sochi Games would end up costing taxpayers $24 billion.
Ilyukhin said Thursday that the departure would offer only temporary relief. “Not much will change immediately, but all hopes are on [Kolodyazhny] to use his good local knowledge to put things right,” Ilyukhin said.
In his complaint, Ilyukhin attacked Olimpstroi’s status as a state corporation, which he said meant that it was beyond the control of the Justice Ministry, State Registry, and tax and customs services. 
“This gives huge opportunities for money laundering,” Ilyukhin said.
Ilyukhin put the blame for quickly rising land prices in Sochi on Vainshtok’s shoulders, saying speculators had gained at the expense of the state.
Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib, said Vainshtok’s departure had not come as a big surprise, as “a lot of changes across the government structure” were to be expected during the presidential handover period between Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
Vainshtok’s move to Olimpstroi in September had more to do with moving him out of Transneft, where he was blocking a deal between the state and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, than with him being involved long-term with the Olympic preparations, Weafer said.

Staff Writer Tim Wall contributed to this report.

TITLE: Federer Ends Title Drought as Davydenko Pulls Out
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OEIRAS, Portugal — Roger Federer ended a long drought with his first title of the year, and it took a leg injury to his opponent to ensure victory for the world’s top-ranked player.
Federer captured his 54th career title Sunday, winning the Estoril Open when second-seeded Nikolai Davydenko retired with a left leg injury while trailing 7-6 (5), 1-2.
“I think it’s the first time in my life I play a final and someone gave up,” Federer said. “I guess if you put yourself in the position so many times it’s going to happen eventually, but you don’t hope for it.”
Federer returned to his winning ways in his fifth tournament of the season. It had been eight years since Federer had needed so many events to reach a final. He won despite windy conditions and the fact that he was playing on his most challenging surface.
“It’s great to win a title again, and to straightaway win my first clay-court tournament of the season gives me great confidence going into Monte Carlo,” the 26-year-old Swiss star said. “I guess now, if you get better conditions, (I’ll) play so much better.
“Two months ago when I didn’t have enough matches and because of my sickness everything looked a little more up in the air,” said Federer, who has battled mononucleosis.
Davydenko, who is ranked fourth in the world, broke Federer’s serve to start the second set before pulling out of the match.
“I was running to the left and I felt some stretched muscles and (it was) painful,” said Davydenko, who had received 3 minutes of medical attention at the close of the first set. “Maybe I can finish the match but I don’t want to lose 6-2. I have the Masters tournament coming up, so what can you do? It’s really tough.”
Davydenko, who fell to 0-12 against Federer, said his opponent was as tough as ever.
“He had good control, he kept the same (play) as before,” the Russian said. 
“I don’t see anything different between (the) last matches and now.”
Federer added Estoril to his schedule in a bid to boost his chances of winning the French Open. The 12-time Grand Slam winner also recruited clay-court specialist Jose Higueras as coach to help win the only major championship missing from his collection.
Federer leveled his record in clay-court finals at 7-7 on a day on which cold and intermittent rain left both players reacting rather than dictating the play.
“Today was just the toughest conditions. You can’t chase the line any more at all, you just try to keep the ball in play,” Federer said. 
“It’s just not easy to play aggressive tennis, it’s more of a waiting game.”
Maria Kirilenko beat Iveta Benesova 6-4, 6-2 to win the women’s crown-her third career title.
The second-seeded Russian broke Benesova’s serve five times, helped by the Czech’s five double faults. It was the third straight tournament in which Benesova lost in the final.

n CHARLESTON, S.C. — Serena Williams captured the Family Circle Cup title Sunday, defeating Vera Zvonareva 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 for her first clay court title since the 2002 French Open.
Williams’ third title of the year was expected to lift her to No. 6 in the rankings. She won earlier in Bangalore and Miami. She is 19-1 in matches this year after winning her 31st career title on the green clay here on a breezy, overcast afternoon.
“I feel like I have some momentum behind me and I just want to keep going,” said the fifth-seeded Williams, who won $197,000 and a crystal cup at the $1.3 million tournament. “I definitely look at everyone as my clay court competition.”
Unlike earlier matches at the Family Circle, Williams started strong, winning the first set and scattering 10 aces during the match.
“I just wanted to get that first set under my belt, and thank God I did because I lost the second,” said Williams, who anticipated a long day against the ninth-seeded Russian. “I’ve played her a few times, so I really know her game and she’s a real fighter and she never stops.”
Williams improved to 5-1 against Zvonareva, who should rise to No. 14 in the rankings by making the finals.
In the third set, Zvonareva broke Williams in the third game — the final point on Williams’ second double-fault of the day.
But Williams broke back in the next game, then held serve at love in the next.
“She never made a mistake when I was up,” Zvonareva said. “I think I could have done a little better job about holding my serve, which I wasn’t able to do.”
Williams then broke Zvonareva a second time, taking advantage of two consecutive double-faults.
“She always puts pressure on you, so you always have to go for a bigger serve and eventually your serve percentage goes down,” said Zvonareva, who ended with eight double-faults. 
“I accepted I would have some double-faults today and I knew it was going to happen when I was coming into the match. It’s just too bad to have two of them in a row.”
It was Williams’ fifth appearance in Charleston, but her first title. She was runner-up to Justine Henin in 2003.

TITLE: Carter Says Hamas ‘Can Live With Israel’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.”
Carter relayed the message in a speech in Jerusalem after meeting last week with top Hamas leaders in Syria. It capped a nine-day visit to the Mideast aimed at breaking the deadlock between Israel and Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.
Hamas leaders “said that they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders” and they would “accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace,” Carter said.
The borders he referred to were the frontiers that existed before Israel captured large swaths of Arab lands in the 1967 Mideast war — including the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza.
In the past, Hamas officials have said they would establish a “peace in stages” if Israel were to withdraw to the borders it held before 1967. But it has been evasive about how it sees the final borders of a Palestinian state and has not abandoned its official call for Israel’s destruction.
Israel, which evacuated Gaza in 2005, has accepted the idea of a Palestinian state there and in the West Bank. But it has resisted Palestinian demands that it return to its 1967 frontiers.
Carter urged Israel to engage in direct negotiations with Hamas, saying failure to do so was hampering peace efforts.
“We do not believe that peace is likely and certainly that peace is not sustainable unless a way is found to bring Hamas into the discussions in some way,” he said. “The present strategy of excluding Hamas and excluding Syria is just not working.”
Israel considers Hamas to be a terrorist group and has shunned Carter because of his meetings with Hamas’ supreme chief, Khaled Mashaal, and other Hamas figures. Syria harbors Hamas’ exiled leadership in its capital, Damascus, and supports the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas who warred with Israel in the summer of 2006.
Carter said Hamas promised it wouldn’t undermine Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to reach a peace deal with Israel, as long as the Palestinian people approved it in a referendum. In such a scenario, he said Hamas would not oppose a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri in Gaza said Hamas’ readiness to put a peace deal to a referendum “does not mean that Hamas is going to accept the result of the referendum.”
Such a referendum, he said, would have to be voted on by Palestinians living all over the world. They number about 9.3 million, including some 4 million living in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
The only senior Israeli official to meet with Carter during the former president’s latest Mideast mission was Israeli President Shimon Peres. During their meeting, Peres scolded Carter for meeting with the Islamic militant group.
Israel says Carter’s talks embolden Palestinian extremists and hurt Palestinian moderates as they try to make peace with the Jewish state. Abbas, who rules only the West Bank, is in a bitter rivalry with Hamas.
“The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria,” Carter said Monday. “The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved.”
Carter said Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has “regressed” since a U.S.-hosted Mideast conference in Annapolis, Md., in November. He faulted Israel for continuing to build on disputed land the Palestinians want for a future state and for its network of roadblocks that severely hamper Palestinians traveling in the West Bank.
“The prison around Gaza has been tightened,” he said, referring to Israel’s blockade of the territory since the Hamas takeover.
Israel has been negotiating directly with Abbas, who heads a moderate government based in the West Bank. Abbas lost control of the Gaza Strip last June, when Hamas violently seized control of that territory.
Carter said Hamas has promised to let a captured Israeli soldier send a letter to his parents.
Direct communication between Israel and Hamas could facilitate the release of Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who has been held in Gaza for nearly two years.
Israel agrees in principle to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Schalit, but after back-and-forth talks through Egyptian intermediaries, has approved only 71 of the specific prisoners that Hamas wants freed, he said.
However, Carter said Hamas rejected his specific proposal for a monthlong unilateral cease-fire.

TITLE: Chelsea, Liverpool Go At It Again
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Avram Grant may have been almost monosyllabic after Chelsea beat Everton last week but his comments about Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard are sure to add some spice to their Champions League semifinal on Tuesday.
Liverpool meet Chelsea for the third time in four seasons with a place in the Champions League final at stake and the Chelsea coach was full of praise for Gerrard before the first leg against the five-times European champions.
“Gerrard is a great player and a great person,” Grant was widely quoted as saying in British Sunday newspapers.
“For me, he is the player of the year in England, and maybe in Europe because of the influence he has on the team.
“I like him as a player very much and I know him, he is a nice guy and an example to others. 
“He plays against me but he is still my favourite player and if you can bring him to me, I would be very happy.”
Chelsea made two attempts to sign Gerrard under Grant’s predecessor Jose Mourinho and the England midfielder was close to signing, first for $40 million in 2004 and for $64 million the following summer.
Chelsea also failed in two attempts to beat Liverpool at this stage of the competition under Mourinho, in 2005 when they lost 1-0 on aggregate and again last year when they went out on penalties at Anfield after being locked at 1-1 on aggregate.
With just three goals scored in their six Champions League meetings, another closely fought battle looks likely.
However, unlike the semis of 2005 and last year, Liverpool are at home in the first leg and will have to go for goals at Anfield because Chelsea are formidable at Stamford Bridge, where they have not lost to English opposition for over four years.
Going for goals at Anfield though, is one thing Liverpool do well, especially on European nights.
In November they set a Champions League record when they beat Besiktas 8-0 in the group stage and two weeks ago they beat Arsenal 4-2 in one of the greatest European games played at the ground.
Another factor in their favour is that they last lost at this stage in the hunt for the European Cup in 1965.
However, they will be up against Chelsea players who will be utterly determined not to suffer another semi-final defeat by Liverpool.
The London side gave a gritty, resolute performance on Merseyside on Thursday when they won 1-0 at Everton to keep alive their Premier League title hopes.
Their captain Frank Lampard, whose possible departure in the summer could facilitate the arrival of Gerrard, said they would not be motivated by revenge against Liverpool.
“The best thing we can take from those defeats is the memory of the feeling that hits you at the final whistle. It’s the worst you can have,” he said.
Chelsea will be without the suspended Michael Essien for the first leg with Michael Ballack expected to replace him in midfield, while Gerrard is suffering from a slight neck strain but should play.

TITLE: Obama Ahead In Cash Race
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama began the three-week sprint toward tomorrow’s Pennsylvania primary with about five times more cash to spend than rival Hillary Clinton.
Obama, an Illinois senator, had $42.5 million available for spending on primary elections and caucuses, his campaign said yesterday. Clinton, a New York senator, had about $8 million, according to her spokesman, Jay Carson.
The cash edge allows Obama to buy extra advertising time on television and spend more on staff and telemarketing, a trend that is likely to continue into the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6. Clinton advisers say Obama’s team is outspending them by at least 2 to 1 in Pennsylvania.
“Clearly the money race belongs to Senator Barack Obama,’’ said Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Obama’s pickup of prominent Democrats as supporters has also hurt Clinton, he said. It “makes contributors button their back pockets and keep the wallet safe,’’ Schmidt said.
Obama raised just over $41 million in March, and more than $40 million of that was for the primary elections, according to his campaign and a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Clinton raised about $20 million for the primaries, Carson said.
“Hillary will have the resources needed to compete and win,’’ her campaign said in a statement sent to reporters. Her advisers note that she was also outspent in Texas and Ohio, where she won primaries last month.
Clinton, 60, lags behind Obama, 46, in the total number of delegates needed to win the nomination. She’s counting on a victory in Pennsylvania to keep her candidacy alive.
Obama spent almost $31 million during March, or roughly $1 million a day. His expenses included about $9 million for media production and air time, $4.8 million for telemarketing, $1.4 million for print advertising and $665,378 for online ads. He finished March with $662,785 in debts.
“The Clinton campaign is getting beat in terms of spending,’’ said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. Obama’s spending in Pennsylvania is cutting into her lead there and makes a “blowout’’ less likely, Zelizer said.
When Clinton entered the race in January 2007, she began raising money for both the primary and general elections, allowing donors to give $2,300 for each. She now has more than $20 million put aside for the general election.

TITLE: Bayern Hope for Triple Success As UEFA Cup Showdown Beckons
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — Luca Toni has won the hearts of Bayern Munich fans with eight goals in the last four matches, an amazing 10-day tear leading his team to the German Cup, the UEFA Cup semifinals and on the brink of the Bundesliga title.
But the towering Italy striker, who wants to win two more titles with Bayern within the next month, admitted on Saturday he has a special place in his heart for Berlin.
After he helped Italy beat France in the same stadium nearly two years ago to win the World Cup, Toni lifted the German Cup at the Olympiastadion on Saturday after leading Bayern with another dazzling two-goal performance.
“Yes it’s special for me and I had the good fortune to play here for the World Cup with Italy,” Toni told German television after scoring both goals in Bayern's 2-1 extra-time win over Borussia Dortmund in Saturday’s German Cup final.
“It's incredible here,” he said, noting he had the same locker for both matches in the German capital city, which is 600 kilometers north of Munich.
“It's always good to win titles. We won the German Cup and now we want to win the Bundesliga championship and then get the triple with the UEFA Cup. I really wanted to lift this German Cup. It's my first national cup.”
If Bayern can complete their recovery from last season’s dismal fourth place league finish with a record three titles this season, it will be Toni who deserves much of the credit.
With 35 goals in 41 matches in all competitions, Toni has been a veritable goal-machine for Bayern, a remarkably reliable goal scorer who has never come close to a scoring slump.
In the last fortnight, Toni scored two goals in the final five minutes of extra-time in the UEFA Cup quarterfinals against Getafe, two more in Bayern’s 5-0 thrashing of Dortmund in the Bundesliga, two in Bayern’s come-from-behind 3-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday and two more on Saturday.
“He’s extraordinary,” said goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, Bayern’s captain. “It’s rare that you see a striker who takes advantage of his chances in such cold-blooded fashion as Toni.”
Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzfeld could also barely contain his enthusiasm for Toni.
“He’s a world-class striker. He’s got an amazing instinct for goals. He’s always believing he can score two or three goals in each match. He’s never satisfied and always hungry for more goals. He’s a real winner, a leader on our team.”

TITLE: Torch Hits Malaysian Capital
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A crowd of Chinese onlookers heckled and hit a Japanese family with inflated plastic batons Monday after the three unfurled a Tibetan flag before the start of the Malaysian leg of the Olympic torch relay.
The family, comprising two adults and a boy, was detained by police, who also took a Buddhist monk and a British woman wearing a “Free-Tibet” T-shirt into custody. The woman and monk were later released.
About an hour later, the president of the Olympic Council of Malaysia, Imran Jaafar, set off with the torch, jogging a short distance before handing it to the next runner in the relay covering 10 miles through downtown Kuala Lumpur.
“I am very excited, very honored to be the first runner. The honor is not just for myself, but also for the country,” Imran said.
The relay, which started in blistering sun, ended about four hours later in blinding rain at the iconic Petronas Twin Towers after passing through the hands of 80 runners.
Criticism of China’s human rights record has turned the Olympics into one of the most contentious in recent history.
Protests have dogged the torch relay during its stops in Paris, London and San Francisco, with demonstrations over China’s crackdown in Tibet where it forcefully put down anti-government riots.
Witnesses said the adult couple and the boy were heckled by Chinese bystanders during the confrontation at Independence Square where the 10-mile relay began.
Scenes captured by a television cameraman showed some of the Chinese supporters striking the family members with plastic blow-up batons that they were carrying to celebrate the occasion.
Some shouted “Taiwan and Tibet belong to China” during the confrontation.
Police intervened and took the Japanese family away.
The supporters carried Chinese flags and waved banners that read: “The Torch will spread around the world,” and “No one can split China.”
Kuala Lumpur police chief Muhammad Sabtu Osman said the family was detained “only for documentation,” and said he had no information that they were beaten by others in the crowd.
Muhammad Sabtu, the police chief, said the monk, whose nationality was not known, and the British women wearing a “Free Tibet” T-shirt were detained because they were not carrying their passports. 
Both were freed a few hours later, he said.

TITLE: Indonesia Jails Militants Linked to Bali Bombing
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JAKARTA — An Indonesian court sentenced two top leaders of the regional Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant group to 15 years each in prison on Monday for harbouring militants and for weapons possession.
Abu Dujana, the military chief of the group, was arrested in June on charges of keeping explosives and sheltering fugitives wanted for a series of deadly attacks in the country in recent years.
Zarkasih, who was arrested only days after Dujana, was the alleged amir, or leader, of the group from 2005 through 2007.
Their arrests were regarded as a major blow for the group, blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings in which more than 200 people were killed, as well as many other attacks in Indonesia.
The chief judge, Wahjono, said Dujana had been sentenced to 15 years for rifles and ammunition possession and funding and harbouring other group members.
The judges also sentenced Zarkasih to 15 years for his membership in JI and “evil conspiracy in terror activities.”
An earlier charge sheet said that Zarkasih, nicknamed Mbah, or grandfather in the Javanese language, had received military training in Pakistan in the late 1980s and taught map reading at a Muslim rebel camp in the southern Philippines in 1998.
Dujana and Zarkasih have denied any role in attacks blamed on JI, which the panel of three judges said was a “terrorist” organisation.
Police in several countries have linked JI to al Qaeda but Indonesian authorities have argued they cannot ban the group since it is not a formally established organisation.
Although several key strategists and bomb experts in JI have been captured or killed, some analysts say it and its splinter groups still have the capacity to launch attacks.
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country. While the vast majority of Muslims are moderate, the country has seen the emergence of an increasingly vocal militant minority.

TITLE: Moseley To Step Down Next Year
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — World motorsport chief Max Mosley wants to complete his term at the FIA and step down voluntarily next year after 16 years as president.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph he defended his right to a private life and said it had no effect on his ability to run the International Automobile Federation.
Mosley is suing The News of the World for unlimited damages for publishing revelations about his involvement in what was depicted as a Nazi-style sado-masochistic orgy with prostitutes.
His future will be the subject of an extraordinary meeting of the FIA general assembly in Paris on June 3, which he asked to be called, during which he faces a vote of confidence.
He told the Telegraph he intends to address the meeting.
“If they wish me to continue, I will continue, if they don’t, I’ll stop,” said the 68-year-old. “But I will also say to them that it was always my intention, because it is, that I was never going to go beyond 2009.
“The reason’s very simple, If you stop in 2009, aged 69, you can maybe still do something else useful. Were I to stay on till I was 73, I’d be getting very marginal.”
Mosley has faced calls to resign from former drivers and the Automobile Association of America (AAA), the largest motoring organisation in the world with 51 million members in the U.S.
Australian driver Mark Webber would not comment on whether Mosley should resign but he told the BBC on Saturday:
“The current scandal has brought the sport into disrepute. Whether we like it or not, all of us in F1 are role models, and F1 simply cannot have scandals of this type.”
The revelations about Mosley’s private life have divided the motor racing world but the president of the sport’s governing body claimed he had received a lot of support.
“The fundamental reason (I’ve not resigned) is that the people who elected me, the presidents of all these clubs worldwide, a number of them have written, and for every letter I’ve had from a club president saying, ‘I think you should step down’... I’ve had... slightly more than seven who said, ‘You’ve absolutely got to stay, don’t give an inch.
“It would then be impossible to turn around to all these people, the great majority, and say, ‘No, I’m going to walk away’, even if I’m inclined to. But my inclination is to stay and fight.
“As far as the people in the sport are concerned, it’s interesting that none of the heavyweights have said anything, the people who really are the opinion formers in Formula One.”
Mosley hoped his reign as FIA president, during which he has introduced measures to give the general motorist, and racing drivers, greater protection, would help swing the June vote.
He said he had been forced to respond to the articles in the British tabloid because of the publicity they had generated.
“I think most adults would say whatever in that spectrum somebody does, provided it doesn’t hurt anybody, provided it’s consensual, provided it’s among adults, provided it’s in private, it concerns nobody but the people doing it,” he said.
Mosley, whose father Oswald founded the pre-World War Two British Union of Fascists, said there were no Nazi connotations to his involvement with the prostitutes at a London flat.

TITLE: Dutch Town Fights With Pot Smokers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MAASTRICHT, Netherlands — Sitting among the mellow smokers in a coffeeshop in Maastricht it is easy to forget that a plan to relocate half of the cannabis-selling outlets to the city limits has aroused fury.
The southern Dutch city has been trying for five years to push seven shops to three new “coffee corners” at its northern, western and southern borders.
The marijuana equivalent of out-of-town shopping malls would serve the 1.5 to 2 million people who pour into the city each year in search of a powerful puff.
Neighboring Belgian districts and the Dutch community of Eijsden, enraged by the prospect of coffeeshops on their doorsteps, forced Maastricht to back down after winning a legal challenge last month.
The Dutch city has now put forward a watered-down proposal to place two coffeeshops in a single “coffee corner” at its southern edge for a trial period of three years. Its neighbors are still not happy.
“We see reckless driving, car theft... We already have the highest level of crime of any countryside district in Belgium and 95 percent of it is due to drugs,” said Huub Broers, mayor of the Belgian district of Voeren, just south of Maastricht.
About 80 percent of the city’s coffeeshop customers are foreign — of which 60 percent come from Belgium and the rest from France and Germany.
Most buyers come at the weekends but even on a weekday morning, there are Belgian cars clustered around coffeeshops. “Slow Motion,” near the station, is anything but, with a stream of customers in and out within minutes.
Both proponents and critics of the plan generally agree that the coffeeshops and the vast majority of their customers who come for a joint or a small bag of hash are not the problem, although residents do complain about congestion and parking.
The trouble comes from the criminals they attract, notably about 500 “drug runners” on the streets peddling substances such as cocaine, ecstasy or heroin.
Western Europe is the world’s largest market for cannabis resin and Europe is the second-largest global market for cocaine, the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board said in March.
John Walters, director of U.S. national drug control policy, said earlier this month the euro’s gains against the dollar may be behind an enormous increase in the availability of cocaine in Europe: selling in euros may be more profitable than in dollars.
“Maastricht is plagued by drug gangs,” said Brice de Ruyver, a professor of criminology and drugs expert at Ghent University.
“The coffeeshops themselves need huge quantities of illicit supplies. Then you have trouble in the city because of dealers. The reasoning is that whoever is interested in cannabis in a coffeeshop may also want something harder as well.”
Residents attest to the problems.
“You see the dealers jump out in the middle of the street flagging down French or German cars. They get in and can be aggressive,” said the owner of Nautica Jansen, a water sport shop beside two floating coffeeshops on the river front.
While Voeren’s mayor fears Maastricht’s plan would simply move the criminals towards his district, Maastricht argues it is difficult to stamp out drug crime in the tight central streets.
At more isolated sites outside the city, the Dutch say, policing would be easier and dealers less able to reach people driving into gated coffeeshop enclosures. Marc Josemans, chairman of the Maastricht coffeeshop association, believes illegal dealers would find demand reduced.
That would in turn cut supply: “It’s a normal market mechanism,” he said. “We cannot prove it, because no one has given us the chance.”
A survey by Joseman’s association found that a third of customers would prefer out-of-town sites: not surprising, given that so many are foreign.
The Dutch have cracked down on coffeeshops: there are now around 700, compared with around 1,200 in 1997. In Maastricht, all customers must prove they are at least 18 years old and there are plans to bring in finger scanners to ensure no one buys more than 5 grams per day.
“It’s easier for a terrorist to enter Europe than for a dope smoker to get inside a coffeeshop,” said Josemans.
“Tolerance in Europe has declined. You see that towards foreigners, religions. And that’s a key reason why the number of coffeeshops has fallen.”
But in Belgium, the rules have softened. Belgians are no longer prosecuted for possessing up to 3 grams (0.1 ounces) of cannabis and can grow a single plant, but would still face arrest for selling resin, plants or seeds in their country.
De Ruyver says the coffeeshops cannot simply be labeled a Dutch problem.
“If 60 percent of those visiting the shops on the border are Belgian, we must take our responsibility too,” he said.

TITLE: PSV Win 4th Straight Dutch League Title
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ROTTERDAM — PSV Eindhoven clinched their fourth Dutch league title in a row on Sunday with a 1-0 win at Vitesse Arnhem to finish above rivals Ajax Amsterdam.
PSV ended the season three points clear of Ajax, with 72 from 34 matches, after Serbia striker Danko Lazovic grabbed the winner just after halftime at the Gelredome.
It was the second year running the title race had come down to a nerve-racking final day with PSV triumphant again to secure a place in the next season’s Champions League group stage.
“There was a lot of pressure on this match but the goal was a relief,” PSV coach Sef Vergoossen told Radio 1. “But despite the close finish we really deserve this championship.”
Captain Timmy Simons added: “We knew that we had to be patient today and that is what we were and after the opening goal we just kept control”.
PSV, who dropped four points in their last three matches to allow Ajax back into the title race, needed at least a point in Arnhem to guarantee they would retain the trophy.
Serbian Lazovic struck his 10th league goal of the season from close range just two minutes into the second half after being set up by Jefferson Farfan.
Vitesse were reduced to 10 men 13 minutes from time after a second booking for Sebastien Sansoni.
In Amsterdam, Luis Suarez, Kenneth Perez and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored in the first half hour to give Ajax a comfortable lead over Almelo.
The visitors pulled a goal back through defender Ragnar Klavan in the 54th minute but Perez grabbed his second before John Heitinga wrapped up the victory.
Third-placed NAC Breda registered their highest league finish with 63 points, although they suffered a 3-1 home defeat on Sunday by NEC Nijmegen who came eighth with 49 points.
NAC join Ajax, fourth-placed Twente Enschede and Heerenveen, who finished fifth, in the playoffs to compete for a place in third qualifying round of the Champions League.
Matthew Amoah opened the scoring for NAC but a Jeremain Lens double and a goal from Jhonny van Beukering turned the tide in favour of Nijmegen, who enter the playoffs for a UEFA Cup spot with the other teams finishing between sixth and 10th spot.
Heerenveen condemned Excelsior Rotterdam to relegation with a 5-0 win that included a double strike from Gerald Sibon to leave the visitors propping up the table with 27 points.
VVV Venlo scored three second-half goals to seal a 3-0 home win over Graafschap Doetinchem that lifted them off the bottom and into the relegation playoffs along with their opponents and six second division teams. They finished 17th with 29 points.
Feyenoord, sixth on goal difference behind Heerenveen, beat Roda JC Kerkrade 3-0 with goals from Luigi Bruins, Nuri Sahin and Michael Mols. The teams meet again next Sunday in the Dutch Cup final at the Feijenoord Stadium in Rotterdam.

TITLE: Messy Calzaghe Beats Hopkins on Split Decision
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LAS VEGAS — Joe Calzaghe leaped onto the unfamiliar ropes with more hope than confidence, punching his fists skyward but also looking over his shoulder at the judges’ table.
The Pride of Wales had just finished a messy, difficult American debut against Bernard Hopkins, the 43-year-old master who excels at making younger foes look foolish. Calzaghe couldn’t be sure he had done enough to win-until the final judge’s scorecard hailed him as the best light heavyweight in the world.
Calzaghe kept his unbeaten record intact with a split-decision victory Saturday night, tenaciously rallying in the final rounds to end his first Vegas show with a flourish.
“I knew this wouldn’t look pretty tonight,” Calzaghe said after embracing his ecstatic father/trainer, Enzo. “He’s so awkward. He gave me some good shots. It wasn’t my best night, but I won the fight. The world title in a second division and a win in America is just icing on the cake for my career.”
Hopkins (48-5-1) knocked down Calzaghe (45-0) with a sneaky right hand just 70 seconds in at the Thomas & Mack Center. With grabby defense and canny counterpunching, Hopkins repeatedly negated Calzaghe’s attempts to trade blows and gain physical control, causing more frustration than Calzaghe has ever felt.
But during the 18 years since he last left a ring in defeat, Calzaghe learned he must always keep punching. Constantly wading into the teeth of Hopkins’ defense, he never stopped trying to wear down his older opponent, eventually gaining control in the final rounds — but still wondering about his fate.
Judge Ted Gimza scored it 115-112 for Calzaghe, and Chuck Giampa favored Calzaghe 116-111. Judge Adalaide Byrd gave it 114-113 to Hopkins, as did many reporters at ringside-including The Associated Press, which also favored Hopkins 114-113 despite Calzaghe’s dominance in the final five rounds.
“I just really feel like I took the guy to school,” said Hopkins, who grimaced and shook his head when the verdict was announced. “I feel like I made him fight my fight, not his.”
Calzaghe landed 33 percent of his 707 punches, while Hopkins connected with 27 percent of his 468 blows. Calzaghe had the edge in power punches with both total blows and accuracy, and he heavily outjabbed Hopkins.
In perhaps the most telling statistic of all, Calzaghe connected with 232 punches, the most ever landed against Hopkins in his 21 fights that were tracked by CompuBox statistics.
“I had to let the punches go as the fight wore on,” Calzaghe said. “He was very defensive. I was only hurt one time, but he never caught me with a clean punch. It was the toughest fight of my career. He’s very clever. I’m very proud.”
Shortly after Tom Jones finished singing the Welsh national anthem, Hopkins ducked in his crouch and knocked down Calzaghe with a perfectly placed right hand. Hopkins was a shade quicker and more elusive in the early rounds, staying away from Calzaghe’s more powerful punches with movement and carefully disguised holds.
While Calzaghe turned the momentum, referee Joe Cortez briefly stopped the fight twice for low blows by Calzaghe, including an extended delay early in the 10th round that infuriated Calzaghe. It also seemed to give Calzaghe the motivation to finish strong.
Calzaghe has been a super middleweight champion since 1997, winning 21 consecutive defenses and adding two more belts last November with a unification victory over Mikkel Kessler. But the flying-phobic Welshman never found a matchup enticing enough to get him across the Atlantic Ocean on boxing’s biggest stage, leaving him largely unknown to Americans.
Saturday’s bout has been anticipated for at least six years by fight fans who craved the stylistic contrasts between two of the longest-reigning champions in boxing history. 
After several false starts and disputes, the bout gained steam last December when Hopkins and Calzaghe got into a shouting match one day before Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s fight with Ricky Hatton.
“I would never let a white boy beat me. Never,” Hopkins proclaimed, and Calzaghe quickly agreed to find out whether the Executioner was correct.
With 20 straight title defenses as one of the longest-reigning middleweight champions in boxing history, Hopkins’ only losses since 1993 were two debatable decisions against Jermain Taylor in 2005. He then posted stunning upsets in his first two fights at light heavyweight, knocking off Antonio Tarver and Winky Wright with the same mix of impenetrable defense and counterpunching that threatened to confound Calzaghe.
Hopkins, whose win over Tarver made him the linear 175-pound champ, still shows remarkably few signs of athletic decline in his early 40s.
“I wanted him to run into my shots,” Hopkins said. “I think I made him do that, and I think I made it look pretty easy. I think I controlled the pace, and I controlled the fight. I think it was an old-school execution. He really wasn’t landing his shots. Maybe if he threw five or six, one or two landed if he was lucky.”
Though the arena had thousands of empty seats because of exorbitant ticket prices, thousands of British fans who turned out for Friday’s weigh-in got tickets and turned up waving Welsh flags and singing to Calzaghe.
Roy Jones Jr. is among the fighters who would love the next shot at Calzaghe, while Hopkins is running out of interesting opponents.
“I don’t know who I want to fight next, but I’m a legend-killer,” Calzaghe said.

TITLE: Ex-Bishop Ends Party Grip in Paraguay
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ASUNCION, Paraguay — The world’s longest-ruling political party is about to lose its six-decade grasp on power in Paraguay after a former Roman Catholic bishop won the country’s presidential election.
The Colorado Party’s reign — which began in 1947 and was marked by the right-wing dictatorship of the late General Alfredo Stroessner until his ouster in 1989 — was halted by Fernando Lugo, a charismatic 56-year-old who advocated for the end of political corruption and economic disarray.
He beat Colorado Party rival Blanca Ovelar, a 50-year-old protege of President Nicanor Duarte who had sought to become Paraguay’s first woman president in Sunday’s election.
The triumph of Lugo’s eclectic opposition coalition — the Patriotic Alliance for Change — is the latest in a series of electoral wins by leftist, or center-left, leaders in South America.
Mark Weisbrot, at the Washington think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Lugo’s election is a sign of “deep and irreversible ... changes sweeping Latin America.”
But Lugo faces many challenges: 43 percent of the country’s 6.5 million people live in poverty, illiteracy is high, 300,000 landless peasant farmers are clamoring for help and Paraguay’s corruption is notorious. Lugo himself is a political newcomer, forging his anti-Colorado coalition just eight months ago.
For now, the opposition is basking in its victory, holding gleeful celebrations in the Paraguayan capital and outlying cities.
“You have decided what has to be done in Paraguay. You have decided to be a free Paraguay,” Lugo told cheering thousands.
Those who cheered him will be looking to him to keep his promises. Rodney Bernal, a hotel security guard who watched horn-honking opposition celebrations peter out early Monday, said promises by politicians — even Lugo — have made him weary.
“Lugo made a lot of promises and we’re tired of promises. We’ll have to wait at least a year to see if he does anything, especially if he can give work to young people,” he said.
Riordan Roett, head of western hemisphere studies at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University, echoed that sentiment, saying there is scarce wiggle room ahead.
“The economic realities give the new teams very little room to maneuver,” he said.
Maria Ines Gonzalez, waving a flag of the opposition Liberals — the biggest force in the left-of-center coalition — said she hopes Lugo succeeds.
“My dad is a construction worker but he’s out of work because people don’t have money to build anything,” she said. “Lugo is a priest who understands the needs of the poor and I believe he is going to solve many social problems.”
The Colorado Party emerged from a 1947 civil war to begin its long rule in Paraguay. When Stroessner seized power in 1954, he recruited the party as an acquiescent “twin pillar” alongside his repressive military.
After Stroessner’s ouster, free elections led to a succession of Colorado presidents despite sporadic political unrest and party infighting. But countless corruption scandals blamed on party elites beginning in the late 1990s engendered new dissatisfaction with a party that still controlled a vast bureaucracy, jobs and, some say, Paraguay’s judiciary
Lugo became a bishop in 1994 but resigned the post in December 2006 to sidestep Paraguay’s constitutional ban on clergy seeking office. He says he is neither on the left nor the right and has distanced himself from the region’s more radical leaders, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Eight months ago, Lugo melded leftist unions, Indians and poor farmers into a coalition with Paraguay’s main opposition party, the conservative Authentic Radical Party. He now vows to use his five-year term, which begins Aug. 15, to right economic problems dating back decades.
With about 13,000 of 14,000 balloting stations counted, election officials said Lugo had 41 percent of the vote, Ovelar had 31 percent and former army chief Lino Oviedo had 22 percent.

TITLE: Greenpeace Targets Unilever
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Environmental demonstrators targeted Unilever across Europe on Monday, entering plants and scaling walls, including those of its London headquarters.
About 40 members of Greenpeace entered the multinational’s factory in Wirral, Merseyside, while about a dozen dressed in orang-utan outfits demonstrated outside its London headquarters, with some climbing its front walls.
About 20 demonstrated outside the Rotterdam offices of the Anglo-Dutch corporation, while protests also took place at smaller offices in Rome.
They are demonstrating against the source of Unilever’s palm oil, an ingredient in foods and soaps as well as a bio-fuel added to diesel for cars.
Greenpeace says the peatland forests of Indonesia, one of the last remaining habitats of the orang-utan, is being damaged to provide palm oil. Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven said: “Greenpeace is demanding Unilever publicly calls for an end to the expansion of palm oil into forest and peatland areas and stops trading with suppliers that continue to destroy rainforests.”
The group says there are alternative sources of palm oil which it is urging Unilever to use.
Unilever is a member of the multi-national Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). It owns many household name brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products and buys some 1.3 million tonnes of palm oil a year, making it, according to Greenpeace, the world’s single largest buyer of the product.
It uses 800,000 tonnes for food products, such as Flora margarine, and 500,000 tonnes for soap and cosmetics.