SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1381 (45), Thursday, June 12, 2008
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TITLE: Yabloko Split Centers On Yavlinsky
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Yabloko prepares for a leadership election, the democratic party is facing a split between radical and reformist members and its current leader Grigory Yavlinsky, whom they hope to unseat.
The opposition party is due to elect its new leader at a conference in Moscow on June 21-22. Ahead of the vote, some of Yavlinsky’s most outspoken critics claim there is a plot to strip them of party membership nearing the decisive conference.
Yabloko’s arbitration committee will this week review a complaint filed by Maxim Reznik, the head of the party’s St. Petersburg branch, and a group of other members of the party who feel their membership has become threatened as a result of their cooperation with the radical anti-Kremlin National Assembly.
Reznik and Ilya Yashin, head of the youth wing of Yabloko, have accused Anatoly Rabinovich, deputy head of the party’s Moscow branch, of masterminding a plan to kick them out of Yabloko for their dissent. They claim Rabinovich has requested that the party revises the membership of those he regards as renegades.
The National Assembly, which has Garry Kasparov, head of the United Civil Front; Eduard Limonov, the National Bolshevik Party leader; and Alexei Prigarin, the leader of the Communist political movement RKP-KPSS among its leaders, unites an array of opposition politicians across the political spectrum. Twenty-nine members of the Yabloko party have joined the Assembly.
Rabinovich has confirmed his concerns about Reznik and Yashin’s involvement with the National Assembly but claimed he does not intend to strip anyone of party membership. He is seeking, however, to investigate the activities of “the rebels” who “continuously ignore the decisions and recommendations of the party leadership and violate the party’s charter.”
Yabloko press secretary Yevgenia Dillendorf dismissed Yashin’s allegations on Wednesday, calling his claims “groundless” and his behavior “inappropriate.”
Yavlinsky and some of his close allies, including Sergei Mitrokhin, the head of the Moscow branch of Yabloko, have protested against party members joining forces with the National Assembly.
Speaking at a party session in Moscow on May 30, Yavlinsky stressed that in his opinion, supporting the National Assembly, which he regards as too radical in character, contradicts Yabloko membership. Yavlinsky stated that being associated with the Assembly would damage Yabloko’s political reputation and taint its public image.
The confrontation between Yavlinsky and the reformist bloc of the party, represented by Reznik and Yashin, who have long campaigned for unification with other liberal opposition forces and creating a strong and wide opposition coalition, has intensified greatly during the past year as pro-Kremlin parties have come to dominate the political landscape.
Reznik, in particular, has earned the reputation of a rebel and troublemaker among the party’s leadership. His ideas and proposals aimed at forming political coalitions have been sharply criticized by Yavlinsky and his allies.
During the past decade, Yabloko has periodically held discussions with another liberal party, the Union of Right Forces (SPS), about a possible alliance, but the discussions foundered.
Both parties have lost their representation in the Duma, and SPS leaders frequently put the blame on Yavlinsky. They blame him for putting his own political ambitions above the interests of the democratically-minded electorate that they say they represent along with Yabloko.
It is Yavlinsky’s rejection of any possibility of an alliance with other opposition forces that lies at the heart of his conflict with the members of his own party.
TITLE: Head of TNK-BP in Question Marathon
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley spent five hours answering questions at an Interior Ministry office Tuesday in what appeared to be the latest episode in a wrangle for control of the company between a group of Russian billionaires and Britain’s BP.
Dudley was called to the ministry’s Central Federal District office as part of an investigation into “tax matters” related to his company’s predecessor, TNK, for which he never worked.
Looking tired but relieved, he downplayed the questioning session as he emerged from the barbwire-topped fence surrounding the compound, passing the Kalashnikov-toting guard at the entrance.
“It was a very routine meeting. There were no problems. It was a review of TNK,” Dudley said to the dozen of reporters waiting outside. “Routine matters, by the law, very professional.”
As his two bodyguards cleared a path through the group, he repeated the statement to a squall of further questions. His black BMW sped away as soon as the door slammed closed behind him.
Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik have been embroiled in a dispute with BP over their TNK-BP joint venture, calling for foreign expansion and less reliance on expensive Western employees.
The group of Russian shareholders and BP each own half of the company.
TNK-BP insisted in a statement last week that the Interior Ministry summons was unrelated to the “current shareholders’ discussions,” but a source close to BP said it was just a part of the efforts by “one group of shareholders” to win control over the company.
In recent months, TNK-BP has suffered a series of setbacks that has been interpreted as an attempt by the Russian shareholders to increase their role in decision-making at the company.
On Monday, TNK-BP sent a senior executive to meet with a Moscow city prosecutor to discuss a probe of its hiring and compensation practices for foreign staff. It has effectively been barred from employing its 150 foreign engineers since March, initially because of visa irregularities, then because they were barred from entering the company’s offices by security guards, and now as a result of a court injunction.
In March, federal security agents searched the company’s offices after detaining an employee on charges of industrial.
Tuesday’s Interior Ministry appointment meant a serious interruption in Dudley’s duties at TNK-BP, a source familiar with the situation said.
“It’s not particularly normal that he had to spend five hours there — basically an entire work day — when he had other things to attend to,” the source said.
Industry sources and analysts believe that the dispute at the company was sparked by plans on the part of a state-owned company, most likely Gazprom or Rosneft, to take a controlling stake in the venture.
Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev told reporters at a business forum in France on Tuesday that the gas company would consider investing in TNK-BP only after its shareholders had settled their dispute.
TNK-BP spokeswoman Marina Dracheva said Tuesday that Dudley had been summoned by investigators as a witness in “tax matters pertaining to … TNK activities in 2001-2003.”
Although Dudley never worked for TNK, Dracheva said he was questioned because TNK-BP is still responsible for any of the TNK’s legal liabilities.
Investigators said they appreciated Dudley’s agreement to come talk to them, as he was not legally bound to show up, an Interior Ministry source said, Interfax reported. The source said Dudley provided the information investigators were seeking.
A spokesman for the ministry’s Central Federal District office declined comment.
The Interior Ministry said last month that it was investigating a former TNK executive on charges of failing to pay nearly $1 billion in taxes from 2001 to 2003. Interfax reported that the suspect was Simon Kukes, who now heads Samara Nafta.
TITLE: Deputy Warns of Invasion of Eurovision Drug Addicts
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly sent a formal request to Governor Valentina Matviyenko on Wednesday asking her prevent the Eurovision Song Contest from being held in the city next year.
Last month Russia’s Dima Bilan won the Europe-wide showbiz competition, earning the country the right to host the next contest in 2009.
The request was initiated by Just Russia deputy Yevgeny Marchenko who said he was worried not about the contest itself, but what may come with it, Interfax reported.
“Experts say that the Western music trends presented at Eurovision demoralize our youth and provoke drug addiction,” Marchenko said.
Marchenko said police in the different countries where the contest has been held say that during the contest the volume of imported drugs increases by several times.
“Foreign guests who come to the contest often have the reputation of being drug addicts, and they have police records,” he said, without clarifying his remarks.
Marchenko also said holding the contest would be a drain on the city’s budget.
He suggested hosting a festival of modern Russian Orthodox songs called Nevskiye Kupola (Neva Domes) that at present “has no significant media and financial support like Eurovision.”
Not all the deputies in the city parliament agreed with Marchenko on the Eurovision issue.
Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of the Legislative Assembly, said he didn’t agree with the text but he said that the parliament supports the right of deputies to make such formal requests. However, he said he would welcome the chance to host the Eurovision Song Contest.
“I think that St. Petersburg can only gain from hosting Eurovision. This event will show the beauty of our city once more,” Tyulpanov said, Interfax reported.
Vladimir Fyodorov, a Communist Party deputy, takes a similar view.
“In my personal opinion, I think it’s quite normal to hold such international events in St. Petersburg. Our city has good opportunities for that and we should not limit ourselves,” Fyodorov said.
At a previous Legislative Assembly session in May, deputies forwarded a request to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asking him to consider the candidature of St. Petersburg to host the contest, which is often ridiculed in the West for its kitschy acts, novelty songs and singular lack of taste.
The author of the earlier request was Oleg Nilov, who heads the Just Russia faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. Nilov said at the time that St. Petersburg deserves to host the event because “it’s the cultural capital not only of Russia but also of Europe.”
Nilov said that St. Petersburg has proved many times that it can hold international events, contests and festivals at the highest level.
TITLE: Concerts, Chirac, but No Heep
AUTHOR: By Yelena Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will celebrate its national holiday Thursday with outdoor concerts, sports competitions and a Kremlin awards ceremony attended by former French President Jacques Chirac. But a concert by the legendary British rock band Uriah Heep was canceled amid a dispute with its tour promoters.
Russia Day on June 12 marks the date in 1990 that the Congress of the People’s Deputies of the Soviet Russian Republic adopted a declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. For most Russians, however, the holiday is an eagerly welcomed long weekend.
President Dmitry Medvedev will present state awards during a ceremony in the Kremlin’s Georgiyevsky Hall, a Kremlin official said. Chirac will receive a state award for his dedication to human rights, while Vladimir Arnold will be recognized for his accomplishments in mathematics and Alisa Freindlich for her contributions to classical theater.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend the ceremony, but he is not scheduled to deliver a speech, said Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.
The city’s department of physical culture and sport is organizing a track competition called the Kremlin Mile, starting at Manezh Square at 2 p.m.
Concerts and special events for children, veterans and the elderly will be held across Moscow, including on Manezh Square and the main parks.
But Uriah Heep will not be performing as planned. The band — the first Western rock group to play inside the Soviet Union — called off the concert at the last minute because of the tour promoters’ “complete lack of adherence to contractual stipulations” to provide visas and make scheduled payments, among other things, it said on its official web site.
Forecasters are predicting an overcast Thursday in St. Petersburg and a high of 17 degrees Celsius.
First called Independence Day in 1991, the June 12 holiday was renamed the Day of the Declaration of the Sovereignty of the Russian Federation by then-President Boris Yeltsin in 1994. In 2002, Putin gave the holiday its current name, Russia Day.
TITLE: Chaika Forbids Investigation
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has issued an order forbidding the Investigative Committee from investigating a criminal case involving one of his top deputies, the latest development in a standoff between the two law enforcement entities, Kommersant reported Monday.
Chaika issued the order after Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin attempted to reopen a criminal case in which First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman was accused of illegally helping his wife get a job as a Moscow notary public, the report said.
The accusation came from a woman who was passed over for a notary job in 2005 by a commission headed by Buksman, who was then head of the Federal Registration Service and reported directly to Chaika, then the Justice Minister.
The commission awarded Buksman’s wife, Irina Buksman, the job — a move that the plaintiff, Inna Yermoshkina, said was illegal because of a conflict of interest.
A criminal investigation based on the complaint was closed in July 2006, one month after Chaika was appointed Prosecutor General, Novaya Gazeta reported in 2006.
Bastrykin, however, tried to reopen the case last month, prompting Chaika to issue the order preventing the Investigative Committee from further pursing the case, Kommersant said Monday.
Reached by telephone Monday, spokespeople for both the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee declined to comment on the report.
Created last year as a semi-autonomous body that is under the auspices of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee has taken over many of the investigative powers formerly held by the Prosecutor General.
TITLE: Gazprom CEO Predicts Oil at $250 Next Year
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said Tuesday that he expected oil prices to top $250 per barrel next year, a figure considerably higher than most industry forecasts.
Speaking to reporters in Deauville, France, Miller laid out the gas giant’s strategy for the next few years, promising to invest $30 billion by December and significantly more afterward.
He also accused the European Union of jeopardizing energy security through what he called “protectionist” policies.
“The [oil] price is reaching new highs. We expect it near $250 per barrel in the foreseeable future,” Miller said. The figure referred to 2009, Gazprom officials later clarified.
Miller blamed speculation for much of the recent rises in oil prices, which neared a record $140 per barrel last week, and said gas prices — which lag oil prices by six to nine months — would witness similar increases on the back of rising demand. Earlier predictions that gas prices would reach $400 per thousand cubic meters by the end of 2008 have already been surpassed, he said.
But analysts suspected that Miller was talking up the oil price deliberately in an effort to put pressure on Gazprom customers. Gazprom is trying to put “pressure on buyers to emphasize that … they must pay high gas prices in the future,” said Valery Nesterov, an energy analyst at Troika Dialog, which has a forecast of $100 per barrel for 2009.
Gazprom, the world’s third-largest company by market capitalization with a stock market value of more than $330 billion, hopes to emerge as the largest company worldwide within seven to 10 years with a market cap of $1 trillion, Miller said in his speech, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times.
It is a bold ambition, one that Gazprom has outlined before and that Nesterov said was probably wishful thinking, given potential antipathy toward the company”s expansion in certain markets, particularly Europe.
“If the company gets too ambitious, it might see some political opposition,” Nesterov said.
Miller said the EU’s best guarantee to securing stable energy supplies is through cooperation and not by putting up barriers to investment, particularly with its “anti-Gazprom clause.”
The anti-Gazprom clause refers to the third energy package on the single energy market proposed by the EU’s Slovenian presidency but does not discriminate against the monopoly, said a spokesman for the EU delegation to Russia. The spokesman, Denis Daniilidis, said there was “some good news” in this package for Gazprom relating to the eased unbundling of energy companies in the electricity and gas markets. “It will not affect Gazprom”s prospects on European markets,” he said.
Europe depends on Russia for about one-quarter of its natural gas supplies and has sought to diversify its supply base to secure its energy supplies. Gazprom, which would like to provide more gas to Europe, said it was equally dependent on Europe and that it was senseless to diversify for the sake of it.
“If you diversify suppliers, it will not solve the problem,” Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom”s deputy CEO, said at the news conference.
He insisted that the company’s ambitions to expand in Europe were not politically motivated. “Why would we invest money to create the possibility of shutting off the gas supply?” he said.
TITLE: ‘Miserable’ Moscow Ranks Low
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow’s quality of life for expatriates is one of Europe’s most miserable, while personal safety is the worst on the continent, according to a study released Tuesday.
The 2008 Quality of Living Survey, published by consulting firm Mercer to help big companies and governments with international assignments, ranks Moscow a low No. 166 out of 215 cities worldwide in terms of overall quality of life.
Using New York as a benchmark with an index of 100, Moscow gets just 55.5 points and is sandwiched between Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, and the Libyan port of Tripoli.
Moscow fares worse than St. Petersburg, which won the country’s best spot at No. 162, and Kiev, which ranked 161st.
The rankings are based on 39 determinants, including the political and social environment, health care, schooling, public services, consumer goods and housing.
Top of the list is Swiss financial hub Zurich, which scores 108, followed by Vienna and Geneva, which tied for second.
The cities with the lowest quality of life are mainly in Africa, with Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, at 212, Congo’s Brazzaville at 213 and the Central African Republic’s Bangui at 214. At rock bottom, though, is Baghdad.
Moscow’s performance was particularly poor in terms of personal safety for expatriates, published as a separate ranking based on a mix of internal stability, crime, effectiveness of law enforcement and relationships with other countries.
Here, the capital scored only 37.7 out of New York’s 100, giving it the rank of 196, the lowest in Europe. Luxembourg came out top, followed by Bern and Geneva.
To improve, Moscow would have to address both internal stability issues and environmental factors like air pollution, said Slagin Parakatil, a senior researcher at Mercer who is responsible for the study.
Mercer lists Moscow as the world’s 14th-dirtiest city, worse than New Delhi but slightly better than what it called the ecological disaster zones of Mexico City and Baku.
“Sending an expat to Moscow would require to add quite a hardship allowance to compensate for that,” Parakatil said by telephone from Geneva.
The report says overall quality of life is worse than Moscow in two other Russian cities, Novosibirsk and Kazan, and two cities elsewhere in Europe, Minsk and Albania’s capital, Tirana.
Moscow’s comparative advantages, Parakatil said, were its size and international outlook.
“Moscow definitely scores very highly when it comes to entertainment, including opera and theater,” he said.
“It is also fairly cosmopolitan and offers a large variety of food [in restaurants].”
Parakatil said costs were not included in the quality of life survey. “We are looking at the availability [of goods and services] and at their quality, not at their cost,” he said.
Mercer has for the past two years ranked Moscow as the world’s most expensive city for expatriates. The firm’s annual cost-of-living survey will probably be published at the end of this month, Parakatil said.
He would not comment on the likelihood of Moscow retaining its top position.
He said cultural issues like language skills did not enter the report’s equation because otherwise the findings would become subjective.
As an example, he explained that it might be just as difficult to find English speakers in Tokyo as for a Japanese person to find a Japanese speaker in Spain.
A Moscow City Hall official said that while he could not comment on the report before he had studied it, there had been instances of bias and errors in past reports.
“We carefully monitor such ratings because we want Moscow to be an attractive city in every sense … and because we believe that it is a modern civilized city,” said Alexander Pogorelov of the city’s international relations department.
As an example, he cited a tourism survey published by a London newspaper that gave Moscow a low ranking because it apparently lacked a single United Nations World Heritage site. “But the Kremlin, Red Square and the Novodevichy Convent are listed,” he said.
Earlier this week, Moscow came 61st in an environmental survey of Russia’s 89 regions.
TITLE: Pentagon Claims Russia Is Upping Its Nuclear Ante
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Virginia — Russia appears focused on strengthening its nuclear capabilities rather than its regular armed forces, which makes maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal increasingly important, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
The Pentagon chief, speaking to Air Force officers in Virginia, said Monday that the United States’ need for nuclear weapons to deter potential enemies from striking would grow in the future.
While that is partly due to the risk that nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of anti-American groups or states, such as Iran, it is also related to Russia’s plans to build its nuclear capabilities, Gates said.
“It seems clear that the Russians are focused as they look to the future more on strengthening their nuclear capabilities,” he told reporters.
“So to the extent that they rely more and more on their nuclear capabilities as opposed to what historically has been a huge Russian conventional military capability, it seems to me that it underscores the importance of our sustaining a valid nuclear deterrent, a modern nuclear deterrent,” he said.
Difficulty reforming the military has led Russia to determine that it may be more efficient to bolster its nuclear weapons capabilities instead, Gates said. “Russia is really not investing very much in their conventional forces,” he said.
TITLE: Hope Fades for 12 Missing Miners
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YENAKIYEVO, Ukraine — Rescuers have little chance of finding alive 12 miners missing after a gas explosion at a Ukrainian colliery, officials said Tuesday.
Twenty-four men were brought to the surface on Monday — more than 24 hours after the blast shattered installations and blocked shafts at the Karl Marx pit in the Donbass coal field. One man was found dead, and four were seriously burned.
First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksander Turchynov said many of the missing men had borne the brunt of Sunday’s blast. “I do not want to make any predictions, but I would say that the chances are minimal. But there is always hope,” he said.
Nine of the men, he said, were on their way to the surface in an elevator when the blast hit them full force at a depth of 200 meters, sending the cage cascading back down the shaft.
TITLE: Experts Analyze Development of Russian Internet
AUTHOR: By Nikita Savoyarov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The latest trends in the development of the Internet in Russia were presented at the Third St. Petersburg Internet Conference, held June 6 at Olgino Motel. The conference, which was organized by the Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies (ROCIT) from Moscow and the company Trinet, examined the various problems of the emerging market and discussed solutions, new ideas and ways of implementing them to meet the growing demand for Internet-based business solutions.
Increased demand was demonstrated this year by a greater number of participants (more than 1000) and the number of categories — 16 separate topics were discussed.
Alexei Lesnikov from RU-center, a company that registers domain names, drew attention in his opening report to the closing gap in Internet development between Russian cities — the number of major Internet providers in St. Petersburg now almost equals that in Moscow. In terms of the pace of development, Russia is just behind China, and Internet development in Moscow lags three to four years behind world leaders in indicators such as presence of Internet providers and access.
Russia occupies 12th place in the number of domain names in the world, having reached the million mark in September 2007, and currently has 1.5 million registered domain names and is expected to reach two million at the start of 2009. Visible growth was also recorded in the .su (Soviet Union) zone as the result of an international agreement to renew this domain until 2042. Russian Internet society is now awaiting the decision of ICANN (the international organization that manages address domains on the Internet) on the recognition of domain names in different languages. The new projected domain name for Russia is .ei, and the decision is due in June.
Ruslan Tagiyev from TNS Gallup polling association provided participants of the conference with the new results of research on the Internet. He said there are about 24.5 million Internet-users over the age of 12 in Russian cities with a population of more than 100,000 citizens, equal to 40 percent saturation of the market. In Moscow there are 5.7 million users — 60 percent saturation, resulting in a two-year time lag between Moscow and the rest of Russia.
The proportion of Internet advertising is small — currently only two percent of all media budgets — but grew by 90 percent in 2007 and is expected to reach six percent in 2012, exceeding the volume of radio advertisements.
The most popular Internet sites visited by Russian users are Mail.ru (6.5 million per week), Yandex.ru (6.1 million), Vkontakte.ru (4.4 million) and Odnoklassniki.ru (4 million), said Tagiyev.
In a section of the conference entitled “Increasing the efficiency of advertising on the Internet,” Natalya Kuryleva from MediaCartel presented the best sites for advertising on the Internet. In St. Petersburg the leading news site is Fontanka.ru, while the two business leaders are rbc.ru and dp.ru. MediaCartel’s ratings of different sites and portals are used by local companies to plan their media advertising.
Another section of the conference focused on the electronic payment market. Alexei Cherniyaev from ChronoPay outlined the preconditions for the development of the market: A large number of cardholders, the existence of broadband Internet, and growing interest of banks. The Internet sales of travel services, such as tickets, tours and accommodation, is already growing in Russia and totaled a billion dollars in 2007. Russia’s three biggest mobile phone operators reported an income of 22 billion dollars in 2007, half a billion of which was paid by card.
Micro payments via SMS were also discussed, with Sergei Tulaev from i-Free presenting data on this market. The average transaction size in Russia is about three dollars, and the speakers were unanimous in their opinion that there is huge potential for the development of this market.
One question often asked by those outside the Internet industry is where and how money can be made on the Internet. Domain names can be a source of income, explained experts in the session devoted to this theme. Pavel Khramtsov from RU-center talked about dealing in registered names on the secondary market by selling them either directly or via auction. People who own names can also “park” and organize advertising traffic through them, with the support of a parking permit holder, which can be a highly profitable exercise.
In reply to a question on the possibility of an Internet crisis in Russia, Khramtsov said that the scenario for the Russian Internet can be considered to be the same as the dotcom market. If the volume of advertisements in Russia decreased by 30 percent, the Russian Internet market would disappear, he said.
Advice on investing in the Internet in St. Petersburg for both investors and startups was available at a section chaired by Andrei Ryabykh from i-bourgeois.ru consultancy. During the course of the discussion, newcomers were told, “If you can build your business without outside investment — then do so.”
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Bank Sees Profits Soar
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Bank St. Petersburg, the biggest private lender in northwestern Russia, said first-quarter profit more than doubled as it expanded its retail-banking network.
Net income rose to 639.6 million rubles ($27 million) from 235.3 million rubles a year earlier, the bank said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday. Its assets almost doubled to 138.5 billion rubles.
“In spite of the unstable market environment the bank is performing strongly,” Chairman Alexander Savelyev said in the statement. “Customer accounts remain the principal source of funding.”
1st Sokos Hotel Opens
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The first Sokos Hotel opened in St. Petersburg on Monday, the company’s press service reported.
Sokos Hotel Olympic Garden, located on Moskovsky Prospekt, is the first of the Finnish hotel chain to open in Russia and aims to attract both business and leisure tourism.
Hotel manager Jukka Raisanen said, “We hope that the presence of our safe and familiar Sokos Hotels will heighten Russia’s attraction for Finns.”
S Group now operates two hotels in St. Petersburg. Holiday Club St. Petersburg, the first hotel, is situated on Vasilievsky Island, and Sokos Hotel Vasilievsky, the third hotel, is due to open in fall 2008.
Glavstroi Deal Signed
ST. PETERSBURG — On June 2 Sistema management company secured an agreement with Glavstroi Exploitation to collaborate on the use of industrial, administrative and residential real estate projects belonging to the St. Petersburg Glavstroi corporation.
Sistema will also provide consulting services for Glavstroi’s development projects, such as the Shklapina-Rosenstein and Apraksin Dvor business complexes.
Yevgeny Yakushin, general director of Sistema said, “Today, leaders in the development market understand that the creation of outstanding, significant and competitive objects of real estate in St. Petersburg is impossible without the participation of specialists in the use and maintenance of modern real estate.”
Statoil Studies Samples
OSLO (Bloomberg) — StatoilHydro ASA, the Nordic region’s largest oil producer, has opened a laboratory in Russia to study oil samples in a bid to better tackle fuel spills amid growing pressure to explore fields in the far-northern regions.
The laboratory, based in Murmansk on the Barents Sea, will analyze oil samples taken from tankers loaded for export from the port, the Stavanger-based company said in a statement posted on its web site Tuesday. Oil spills can be collected more effectively when the properties of the fuel have been determined beforehand, the company said.
The laboratory will be run jointly with the regional government and the samples will be available to the Norwegian and Russian authorities, the company said.
RusAl Closer to Green
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — United Co. RusAl, the world’s biggest aluminum producer, began testing a smelting technology that it said may cut emissions of greenhouse gases by a third.
The company invested $25 million to introduce an additive in the electrolytic cells of its Krasnoyarsk smelter in Siberia, Moscow-based RusAl said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement.
The move, which will be extended to other RusAl smelters between 2010 and 2015, will cut carbon-dioxide emissions to 53.5 kilograms for each ton of aluminum produced, from 78.9 kilograms, RusAl said.
MTS License Extended
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mobile TeleSystems, Russia’s largest mobile-phone company, said it received a permanent license to offer the BlackBerry e-mail device in Russia.
Mobile TeleSystems has been offering the BlackBerry service on a trial basis to more than 25 corporate clients under a temporary license and now expects to considerably increase the number of customers for the device, the Moscow-based company said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement.
Gazprom Eyeing Japan
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, the world’s largest natural-gas producer, may provide Japan with additional supplies of the fuel once the company satisfies domestic demand in Russia’s Far East.
Gazprom may supply gas and chemical products to Japan from the Vladivostok region, the Moscow-based company said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday.
Deliveries from Vladivostok may become possible once a pipeline from Sakhalin Island and the Russian republic of Sakha is completed, Ananenkov said.
Norilsk Profits Slump
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — GMK Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest producer of nickel and palladium, reported an unexpected drop in 2007 profit after slashing almost $2 billion off the value of mining and power companies it bought last year.
Net income fell 11 percent to $5.32 billion, or $29.2 a share, from $5.97
billion, or $31.70, a year before,
the Moscow-based company said Tuesday, adding it may write down assets further.
TITLE: A prize for Prilepin
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Zakhar Prilepin, a veteran of the two Chechen wars, National Bolshevik Party activist and author of “Grekh” (“Sin”), has won this year’s National Bestseller prize, a respected nationwide literary award that has its ceremony in St. Petersburg.
Comprised of a series of novellas united by a common theme, “Sin” touches on, as the author himself puts it, the art of “being happy,” and how to “indulge in happiness while not sacrificing one’s soul and drowning in sin.”
The book’s life-affirming spirit is expressed through its main character, a young man who has been employed as everthing from a gravedigger to a bouncer to a contract soldier. Throughout he remains an optimist who maintains his appetite for life.
“This book gives you the impulse to live your life to the fullest without shallow hesitations,” said writer Dmitry Bykov, the winner of the National Bestseller prize in 2006.
Prilepin — the pen name of Yevgeny Lavlinsky, editor of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta in Nizhny Novgorod — was predicted to win the National Bestseller prize this year by many experts in the industry.
“While there is genuine talent among the other contestants, this writer has simply become a phenomenon who is impossible to ignore,” Alexander Garros, a writer whose debut novel, “Headcrusher,” written in 2002 with Alexei Yevdokimov was awarded a National Bestseller prize, wrote in a commentary for the literary magazine Prochtenie.
In Garros’s opinion, Prilepin’s success resembles the 2006 victory of Bykov, who won the National Bestseller for a biography of Boris Pasternak after four previous nominations.
Prilepin’s debut autobiographic book, “Pathologies,” was shortlisted for the National Bestseller prize in 2005 and served to introduce the author to wider audiences.
“Sankya,” a novel that put Prilepin on the National Bestseller shortlist in 2006, generated both rave reviews and wide interest among readers.
While being a very powerful city romance that follows the tradition of classical pre-Revolutionary Russian prose, the book offers an intense and realistic insight into the motives that drive young Russians into the National Bolshevik Party, which was outlawed on extremism charges in 2007.
With graphic scenes of police violence, depressing images of poverty-stricken Russian villages and the country’s provinces overwhelmed by alcoholism, unemployment and stagnation, the book provides an important fresh angle of how politics is viewed by young Russians that see radical opposition as the only form of resistance to the regressive mainstream.
Pavel Krusanov, who won the National Bestseller prize in 2003, argued that Prilepin won not so much for “Sin” but rather as compensation for the contest’s jury overlooking “Sankya” in 2006.
“Prilepin has been helped by a strong tailwind,” Krusanov said. “The author has already become popular with the media, the public and the critics — which apparently played a role in the jurors’ verdict.”
Prilepin, however, disagreed that “Sin” is less worthy of an award than his earlier work.
“In my opinion both books are good, and this is not the point, anyway,” he said on Monday. “In terms of the quality of writing, all the other finalists equally deserved the prize. I won the prize not because I am more talented or that this particular book is exceptional. I won it because I have made a continued effort in a certain direction, and this effort has received attention and had a lasting resonance.”
The National Bestseller award was founded in 2001. During the contest’s brief history, its winners and finalists have included some of the country’s bestselling and most controversial writers, including Viktor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, Alexander Prokhanov, Mikhail Shishkin, Pavel Krusanov and Irina Denezhkina.
Prilepin attended the award ceremony at St. Petersburg’s Astoria Hotel on Sunday and met with the readers at the Bookvoyed bookstore on Ploshchad Vosstaniya on Monday.
Competing for the respected award with Prilepin’s intense social drama were Anna Kozlova’s bitter and glamorous trash novel “People With a Clear Conscience” and Lev Danilkin’s “The Man With An Egg,” a lively biography of the extreme ring-wing politician (and National Bestseller laureate) Prokhanov.
Other contenders were sinologist and anthropoligist Alexander Sekatsky’s high-brow philosophical study-come-parable “Two Caskets, Turquoise and Nephrite,” Andrei Turgenev’s historical “Sleep and Believe: A Siege Novel” and Yury Brigadir’s surreal novel “Mezentsephalon”.
The ceremony’s co-presenter, journalist Artemy Troitsky, said Brigadir’s book was an “encyclopedia for binge drinking, a must-have for every Russian man, which describes the ways in and out of booze.”
Writer Ilya Shtemler presided over the six-member jury that happened to include only one other writer, Ilya Boyashov, the winner of the National Bestseller in 2007. The other jury members were champion figure skater Alexander Yagudin, actress Emilia Spivak, literary agent Galina Dursthoff, art dealer Marat Gelman and financial expert Boris Fyordorov.
Traditionally, this jury makes the final verdict for the National Bestseller prize, while a grand jury, comprised of 19 writers, journalists, critics, publishers and cultural luminaries, chooses five or six finalists from several dozen candidates.
“Because I am no expert in literature, I am voting for a book that completely blew me away,” Spivak said explaining her choice of Prilepin’s “Sin.”
A decision-making panel consisting of amateurs — who make an emotional rather than an informed choice — is a trademark feature of the National Bestseller prize.
“In a way, this scheme of a large and competent professional jury pre-selecting the books and then the actual readers — being famous and popular in their profession they still remain part of the public, the people who buy books — making the final choice has helped to build the award’s solid reputation,” Boyashov said. “It serves to create a truly objective picture.”
TITLE: Chernov’s
choice
TEXT: The “anti-capitalist/anti-politician” musician Roger Waters inadvertantly found himself performing this week at the heart of a gathering of capitalists and politicians, named the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Moreover, his concert was presented as a “gift” from the Kremlin-backed event to “guests and residents of St. Petersburg,” and was advertised as such everywhere, including the Forum’s own English-language website.
However, the ex-Pink Floyd musician claimed he had no idea what he was taking part in.
Speaking at a press conference on the eve of the concert, he spoke, somewhat incoherently, about how the concert was set up.
“They asked all the band, ‘Are you free?’ I went, ‘Yeah, we’re free, and well, O.K., we’ll do it,’” said Waters speaking in the Angleterre Hotel’s conference room last Thursday.
He said he was not informed about the nature of the Economic Forum, which drew thousands of top businessmen and politicians to the city, including President Dmitry Medvedev and multi-billionaire Roman Abramovich, whose fabulous white yacht docked in the Neva overshadowed most other details of the event and who took time to attend Waters’ open-air show on Palace Square.
“So what is it? What is happening here?,” he said at one point, and that soundbite played on major Russian television channels and radio stations repeatedly during the weekend.
The local promoter for Waters’ concert said, however, that Waters was fully informed about what he was taking part in.
“He knew it,” said the press officer for Planeta Plus (PMI) agency by phone this week. “Of course, he got [all the details].”
That means that somebody is, well, lying. But whoever it might be, some international artists have a habit of waiving their integrity when they cross the Russian border.
Paul McCartney payed a visit to the then-President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in 2003, which included a private performance of “Hey Jude,” while the Scorpions performed at the FSB’s 90th anniversary concert last year. (FSB, or the Federal Security Service, counts its age from 1917, when Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin formed the Communist secret police that in the years to follow became responsible for millions of deaths.)
Interestingly, the Scorpions’ vocalist Klaus Meine also claimed he did not know that the concert was to celebrate the Soviet and Russian secret police.
“This is a moot point because we did not know,” said Meine to The Moscow Times, The St. Petersburg Times’ sister newspaper in Moscow. “We were told this would be a very special Christmas occasion.”
This week’s concerts include Serj Tankian (Yubileiny, Monday), Kylie Minogue (Ice Palace, Wednesday) and P.T.V.P (Zoccolo, Thursday).
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Sale of the century
AUTHOR: By John Varoli
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Sotheby’s auction house sold $41.8 million of Russian 19th- and 20th-century paintings in London on Monday, as Russian and Ukrainian collectors bid for works by fashionable artists such as Natalia Goncharova.
The result was within the Sotheby’s presale estimate of $35.9 million to $51.7 million, an indication of the sale’s mixed results. About 72 percent of the 56 lots sold and six paintings fetched more than $1.95 million each. Works by Marc Chagall and Alexander Yakovlev were left unsold, while 18 other lots beat their top estimates.
Nine straight years of economic growth in Russia has expanded the pool of buyers for the country’s art, pushing up Sotheby’s sales for the category 31-fold since 2000. The New-York based company said 71 percent of buyers yesterday were Russian, Ukrainian, or from the former Soviet Union, while 26 percent were from Europe, including Russian-born residents.
“Some art works tonight sold for several times more than they did just two years ago,” said Andrei Ruzhnikov, managing partner of Aurora Fine Art Investment Fund, owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. “The market just keeps going up and up.”
The top lot was Russian avant-garde painter Goncharova’s “Nature Morte aux Fruits” (“Still Life, Fruit”) (1912-13), sold from a French collection. The work was bought by a phone bidder for $4.45 million, compared with an estimate of $3.9 million to $5.8 million.
Goncharova’s “Still Life of Peaches and Red Flowers” (1910) sold Monday to Ukrainian collector Alexander Adamovsky for $2.26 million.
Still, the two lots barely beat their low estimates and the auctioneer struggled to find bidders.
“The Goncharova results make me think that her estimates are overpriced,” said London-based Russian art dealer, James Butterwick. “Ever since her record a year ago at Christie’s sellers want a very high price.”
Goncharova’s “Picking Apples” (1909) sold at Christie’s in June 2007 for $9.56 million, almost three times its top estimate, and a record for a female artist.
Goncharova (1881-1962) and her partner Mikhail Larionov are considered among the leading Russian avant-garde painters of the 20th century. They fled Moscow after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, and took up residence in Paris in 1921. She became a French citizen in 1939.
The second-most-expensive lot Monday was Ivan Aivazovsky’s “Pushkin and Countess Raevskaya by the Sea Near Gurzuf” (1886), which was sold by a Russian collector for $3.57 million, just beating its high estimate. The buyer was London-based dealer Ivan Samarine. The painting sold at Sotheby’s London in 1985 for 19,800 pounds, then worth approximately $25,000.
Konstantin Korovin’s “View from the Terrace at Gurzuf” (1912), sold from a Swiss collection to a phone bidder for $2.9 million on a top estimate of $1.5 million, an auction record for the artist.
Gurzuf is a town in Crimea close to Yalta. In the tsarist-era it was a resort popular with the intelligentsia.
The most dramatic sale was Zinaida Serebriakova’s “Reclining Nude” (1929), which sold to a phone bidder for $2 million on a top estimate of $390,800, an auction record for the artist.
The biggest disappointment was Chagall’s “Alla” (1909-10), which failed to sell on a low estimate of $2.34 million.
Two works by Yakovlev, a top Russian modern master, also failed to find buyers. “Standing Nude” (1928) and “Kirghiz Women and Their Children in the Himalayas” (1931) each had a low estimate of $390,800
In 2007, Sotheby’s reported a 24 percent rise in Russian art sales to $190.9 million.
TITLE: Free media? What free media?
AUTHOR: By Clifford J. Levy
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — On a talk show last fall, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail Delyagin had some tart words about Vladimir Putin. When the program was later televised, Delyagin was not.
Not only were his remarks cut — he was also digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily, leaving his disembodied legs in one shot.)
Delyagin, it turned out, has for some time resided on the so-called stop list, a roster of political opponents and other critics of the government who have been barred from TV news and political talk shows by the Kremlin.
The stop list is, as Delyagin put it, “an excellent way to stifle dissent.”
It is also a striking indication of how Putin has increasingly relied on the Kremlin-controlled TV networks to consolidate power, especially in recent elections.
Opponents who were on TV a year or two ago all but vanished during the campaigns, as Putin won a parliamentary landslide for his party and then installed his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, as his successor. Putin is now prime minister, but is still widely considered Russia’s leader.
Onetime Putin allies like Mikhail Kasyanov, his former prime minister, and Andrei Illarionov, his former chief economic adviser, disappeared from view. Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and leader of the Other Russia opposition coalition, was banned, as were members of liberal parties.
Even the Communist Party, the only remaining opposition party in the Duma, has said that its leaders are kept off TV.
And it is not just politicians. Televizor, a rock group whose name means TV set, had its booking on a St. Petersburg station canceled in April, after its members took part in an Other Russia demonstration.
When some actors cracked a few mild jokes about Putin and Medvedev at Russia’s equivalent of the Academy Awards in March, they were expunged from the telecast.
Indeed, political humor in general has been exiled from TV. One of the nation’s most popular satirists, Viktor Shenderovich, once had a show that featured puppet caricatures of Russian leaders, including Putin. It was canceled in Putin’s first term, and Shenderovich has been all but barred from TV.
Senior government officials deny the existence of a stop list, saying that people hostile to the Kremlin do not appear on TV simply because their views are not newsworthy.
In interviews, journalists said that they did not believe the Kremlin kept an official master stop list, but that the networks kept their own, and that they all operated under an informal stop list — an understanding of the Kremlin’s likes and dislikes.
Vladimir Pozner, host of “Vremena,” a political talk show on the top national network, Channel One, said the pressure to conform to Kremlin dictates had intensified over the last year, and had not eased even after the campaign.
“The elections have led to almost a paranoia on the part of the Kremlin administration about who is on television,” said Pozner, who is president of the Russian Academy of Television.
In practice, Pozner said, he tells Channel One executives whom he wants to invite on the show, and they weed out anyone they think is persona non grata.
“They will say, ‘Well, you know we can’t do that, it’s not possible, please, don’t put us in this situation. You can’t invite so and so’ — whether it be Kasparov or Kasyanov or someone else,” Pozner said.
He added: “The thing that nobody wants to talk about is that we do not have freedom of the press when it comes to the television networks.”
Vladimir Solovyov, another political talk show host, said Pozner was complaining only because his ratings were down and he was looking for someone to blame if his program was canceled. Solovyov, a vocal supporter of Putin, said he had never been bullied by the Kremlin.
Yet last year, his show, “Throw Down the Gauntlet,” regularly featured members of opposition parties. This year, the only politicians to appear have been leaders of Putin’s party, United Russia, and an allied party.
Asked why he had not invited opposition leaders lately, Solovyov said: “No one supports them. They have nothing to say.”
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal and former member of Parliament who used to appear on the show, said Solovyov was covering up for the Kremlin.
“He lies, of course,” Ryzhkov said. “My programs with him were among the highest rated programs of any in the history of his show.”
Ryzhkov said he was usually allowed to appear in lengthy segments on only one major channel: Russia Today, the English-language news station, which the Kremlin established to spread its viewpoint globally.
“I can go on Russia Today only because they want to make it seem that in Russia, there is freedom of the press,” he said.
After the Soviet Union’s fall, several national and regional networks arose that were owned by oligarchs. Though they operated with relatively few restrictions, their owners often used them to settle personal and business scores. One network, NTV, garnered attention for its investigative reporting and war dispatches from Chechnya.
Putin chafed at negative coverage of the government, and the Kremlin effectively took over the major national networks in his first term, including NTV. Vladimir Gusinsky, NTV’s owner, was briefly arrested and then fled the country after giving up the network. From that point on, executives and journalists at Russian networks clearly understood that they would be punished for resisting the Kremlin.
All the major national and regional networks are now owned by the government or its allies. And since the presidential election in March, neither Putin nor Medvedev has indicated any interest in loosening the reins.
“Our television is very often criticized,” Medvedev said in April. “They say it is boring, it is pro-government, it is too oriented towards the positions of state agencies, of those in power. You know, I can say that our television — in terms of quality, in terms of the technology used — is, I believe, one of the best in the world.”
Valery Komissarov, a former host on a state channel who is now a governing party leader in the Duma, said television coverage was a convenient scapegoat for opposition politicians and antagonistic commentators.
“These are people who are not interesting for society, who are not interesting for journalists,” Komissarov said. “But they want publicity and perhaps they want to explain away their lack of creative and political success by the fact that they are persecuted, that they are included on the so-called stop list.”
While the Kremlin has focused on TV because it has by far the largest audience, many radio stations and newspapers also abide by the stop list, either ignoring or belittling the opposition.
There are exceptions: a few national and regional newspapers regularly publish critical news and commentary about Putin and comments from those on the stop list. In addition, the Internet is not censored, and contains plenty of criticism of the government.
A small national network, Ren TV, pushes the boundaries, as does a national radio station, the Echo Moskvy, which has become the voice of the opposition even though Gazprom, the government gas monopoly, owns a majority stake in it.
The Kremlin seems to tolerate criticism in such outlets because they have a limited reach compared with the major television networks. The nightly news on Channel One, for example, is far more popular than any of its counterparts in the United States. It regularly is one of top 10 most-watched programs in Russia.
Delyagin, the political analyst edited out of the talk show last fall, said he was surprised to have been invited in the first place. He said he last appeared on a major network several years ago, before he began attacking the Kremlin and supporting the opposition.
“I thought that maybe she forgot to look at the stop list,” he said, referring to the program’s host, Kira Proshutinskaya.
(Last week, after a Russian-language version of this article was posted on a blog run by the Moscow bureau of The New York Times, Delyagin was invited to appear on a show on NTV.)
Proshutinskaya’s program, “The People Want to Know,” had been censored before.
Ryzhkov, the liberal former Duma deputy, went on the show last year, but its network, TV Center, refused to broadcast it.
In an interview, Proshutinskaya conceded that Delyagin had been digitally erased from the program. She said she had been embarrassed by the incident, as well as the one with Ryzhkov, explaining that the network was responsible. The Kremlin had so intimidated the networks, she said, that self-censorship was rampant.
“I would be lying if I said that it is easy to work these days,” she said. “The leadership of the channels, because of their great fear of losing their jobs — they are very lucrative positions — they overdo everything.”
The management of her network would not comment. But the network’s news director, Mikhail Ponomaryov, said journalists and hosts of talk shows had no choice but to comply with the rules.
“It would be stupid to say that we can do whatever we want,” he said. “If the owner of the company thinks that we should not show a person, as much as I want to, I cannot do it.”
TITLE: Kasparov speaks out at World Newspaper Congress
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GOTEBORG, Sweden — World chess star turned political activist Garry Kasparov told world news industry leaders last week that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had assaulted press freedoms in Russia, and urged them to challenge Kremlin leaders over the issue.
Kasparov said Putin and his colleagues must be faced with complaints about press freedoms.
“Make sure they have to respond and make sure your governments raise the issue,” he told about 200 senior news industry executives at an invitation-only luncheon during the World Newspaper Congress in Sweden.
On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev urged the country’s parliament to scrap a bill widely seen as restrictive to the media.
It was not immediately clear whether Medvedev’s move signaled his intention to take a more liberal course compared to Putin, his predecessor and mentor, whose eight-
year tenure saw a steady rollback
of post-Soviet media and political
freedoms.
The congress on Tuesday also criticized the UN Human Rights Council, claiming it has repeatedly sought to undermine freedom of the press to protect religious sensibilities. The group adopted a resolution saying the council’s “proper role is to defend freedom of expression and not to support the censorship of opinion at the request of autocracies.”
The UN General Assembly formed the Geneva-based Human Rights Council in March 2006 to succeed the UN Commission on Human Rights, which was sometimes criticized for too heavily considering the views of member states that did not adequately guarantee human rights.
“International human rights groups have expressed concern that the Council may be emulating the practices that discredited the Commission on Human Rights,” the congress said in a statement.
Kasparov accused one of the delegates to the newspaper meeting, editor-in-chief of the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, Svetlana Mironyuk, of only publishing government propaganda.
That prompted Yevgeny Abov, deputy chief executive of the Russian government-controlled newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, to speak out in her defense.
“You have been unfair to Novosti,” Abov said. He said opposition leaders were given a voice in the news agency’s stories, and that it translates critical foreign news stories.
TITLE: What happens in Vegas should stay there
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: “What Happens in Vegas,” one of those junky time-wasters that routinely pop up in movie theaters, won’t make you laugh much or at all. (Once was enough for me.) But if you know anything about the art or have ever marveled at how even the most generic of old B movies look pretty good (they were usually in focus, for starters), you may wonder how a major studio like 20th Century Fox could release something this crudely manufactured, with its graceless setups, unstable lensing and ghastly lighting. It also makes you wonder if executives at studios look at dailies, much less can hear the poetry of the English language.
The word dailies here refers to select material shot that day and viewed by certain crew members. Dailies can be projected as prints or watched on videotape or both, but are now often digital and displayed on monitors, which may affect quality control. Because, unless you’re David Fincher and a genius, or an obsessive-compulsive, it may be easier to ignore your mistakes when they look like specks on a computer monitor. Or as Robert Elswit, the cinematographer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” which used traditional dailies, said on digitalproducer.com: “The other great thing about seeing film dailies is that you can’t kid yourself about focus and all the other technical issues that can come back to bite you.”
This digression may seem off the point of “What Happens in Vegas,” but because its director, Tom Vaughan, brings nothing of interest to the movie, including filmmaking, there isn’t anything to say other than to note its insulting ugliness and ineptitude. The badly matched Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher mug wildly, waving their limbs like upturned beetles. Diaz is particularly ill served by the material and the production; she’s harshly, at times brutally, lighted and often unflatteringly costumed. It’s disheartening that Diaz doesn’t seem to realize that there’s no upside to a role that strips away her dignity even as it peels off her clothes, especially when she’s playing the shrew. It’s no wonder Kutcher looks so relaxed.
Though it’s more sitcom than romcom, “What Happens in Vegas” recycles a plot — a separated couple reunite — that will be familiar to anyone who’s had the pleasure of watching films like “The Awful Truth” and “It Happened One Night.” The philosopher Stanley Cavell anointed this subgenre of 1930s and 1940s delights comedies of remarriage, stories driven by the effort to get the couple back together and involving what he terms overcoming skepticism. The couple aren’t sure if reuniting is a good idea but do so anyway, as when Rosalind Russell warily eyeballs Cary Grant at the end of “His Girl Friday” and says, right after he plants a wet one: “I’m just a fool. That’s what I am. I know what it’s going to be like.”
She knows, and we do too, having been given a glimpse of that happily ever after in the rat-a-tat of the couple’s wisecracking romancing. There are no wisecracks in Dana Fox’s screenplay for “What Happens in Vegas,” just insults, yucky yuks (“I threw up in my purse”) and exposition. The couple, strangers who marry during a Vegas drunk and stay together to hold on to a fat casino payout, enter without a shared history or much personality. They learn to live as a couple through mutual abuse and pranks: he removes the toilet seat, and she solicits some “sluts” to tempt him into contract-breaking infidelity.
The cynicism about human beings (us included) reeks as much as the filmmaking.
TITLE: Hiddink Slams Russia for ‘Stupid Errors’
AUTHOR: By Sonia Oxley
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: INNSBRUCK, Austria — Russia must learn some tough lessons fast if they are to progress at Euro 2008 after an error-strewn performance against Spain in their opening match, coach Guus Hiddink said.
While sometimes looking exciting going forward, the Russians left themselves exposed at the back and the Spaniards exploited the mistakes to run out 4-1 winners on Tuesday.
Hiddink’s team, full of young players in their first major tournament, have just days to turn things around before facing holders Greece in their next Group D match on Saturday.
“We have to learn to play a bit more counter (attack),” he said. “It is difficult to mature in three days. We have to learn very fast. Some of it you don’t even learn in three years.”
He said the fact that 22 of his 23-man squad play in the Russian domestic league was not helping.
“They don’t have to play every week in very tough, high-paced games where they cannot make an error without being punished,” he said.
Shorn of their two best forwards—the suspended Andrei Arshavin and injured Pavel Pogrebnyak—the Russians were at a disadvantage before the match even started.
As well as class, the pair add big-stage experience with both having played important parts in Zenit St Petersburg’s run to the UEFA Cup title last season.
Neither will be available to face Greece but Russia can take small comfort from the fact that striker Roman Pavlyuchenko netted against Spain to put behind him a poor few months.
They also had several other chances, including when Konstantin Zyryanov hit the post just after they went 1-0 down, and put together some nice passing moves that were at least attractive to watch if not productive.
“The way the team plays is encouraging,” said Hiddink. “We don’t have to change drastically … going with this experience I hope we catch up with the others.”
Whatever happens in the next two matches, Russia will simply enjoy the experience.
“I would have been much more disappointed, and so would the players, to have just been watching this tournament in front of the television at home,” said Hiddink.
However, Russia were guilty of making stupid mistakes, Hiddink said in post-match comments on Tuesday.
“If you see the second goal, if you see the fourth goal, some school teams don’t make those errors,” the Dutchman told reporters after his side were sunk by David Villa’s hat-trick in the Euro 2008 Group D game.
“It’s not the members of the defense, it’s a matter of the whole team, knowing when the fire starts and knowing when to be firemen. To be honest I was rather angry at halftime because of this naive behavior.”
Hiddink said Russia made “stupid errors,” pointing to the fact they conceded a second goal just before halftime.
“We were rather naive in various situations,” he said. “We had a lesson in being punished by the counter-attack (for the second goal).”
Hiddink said Russia had to improve in their next matches against Greece and Sweden.
“At the end of the game in the locker room I said this is a tournament of three games,” said the Dutchman.
“We have to learn within hours not to be naive. If we can manage to learn fast we have chances in the other two games.”
He said it remained to be seen whether Spain’s performance was an indication of things to come at the championship.
“We will see how Spain react when they get more opposition … against a team who know the law of international competition. We helped them too much today,” he said.
TITLE: Euro 2008 Recalls ’70s Glory Days
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BASEL — A superb hat-trick from Spain’s David Villa and goals of beauty from Portugal, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden have put an extra sheen on a bright opening round of matches at Euro 2008.
One hugely debatable goal plus defeats for the reigning world champions Italy and European champions Greece and both co-hosts Switzerland and Austria have also added to an intriguing first four days of competition.
The action has been relatively clean too with such high stakes—after eight games to Wednesday we had not seen a single red card.
Only one match, the sterile Group C opener between Romania and France has failed to produce a goal or an outright winner.
Unusually in all four groups, the top two teams are due to meet each other in the second round of games over the next few days, including France who are second behind the Dutch in Group C over Romania for alphabetical reason.
Depending on how the results go, four teams could reach the quarter-finals with a match to spare and while it is still early days, some likely favourites appear to be emerging.
Portugal, Germany, Netherlands and Spain all impressed in their openers, and Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari summed up the feelings of all his colleagues after his side’s impressive 2-0 win over Turkey in Geneva in Group A on Saturday.
“It is so important to start well and win the first game as every opponent is tough,” he said. “An opening win doesn’t guarantee a place in the next round but it helps enormously.”
Portugal, runners-up on home soil four years ago, look as though they can reach the later stages again with Pepe contributing an outstanding goal after excellent build-up play.
Germany, who strangely had not won a match in the finals since winning Euro 96, ended that run in equally impressive fashion with a 2-0 win over Poland in Klagenfurt on Sunday.
Lukas Podolski’s second of the match, a stunning volley, finally broke Poland’s resistance.
The game of the tournament so far came when Netherlands beat Italy 3-0 in a match that evoked memories of Dutch Total Football of the 1970s.
Their second goal, a counter-attacking move ending with a volley from Wesley Sneijder, was simply breathtaking.
Their first, when Ruud Van Nistelrooy scored from what looked like an offside position but was ruled as valid because Italian defender Christian Panucci was deemed to be playing him onside even though he was off the pitch, was the biggest talking point.
It could well lead to a clarification of the law by FIFA’s International Board.
David Villa’s hat-trick in Spain’s 4-1 rout of Russia has been the outstanding individual performance, while Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s incredible right-foot thunderbolt for Sweden against Greece is also contender for goal of the tournament.
The only blot for the two host nations were the defeats for their teams with Switzerland falling 1-0 to Czech Republic and Austria beaten 1-0 by Croatia. They now look set to struggle to survive.
TITLE: Tiger Woods Helps Kids With School
AUTHOR: By Mark Lamport-Stokes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SAN DIEGO — Although Tiger Woods has important business on his hands in this week’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the core of his life’s work continues to unfold 130 kilometers to the north-west.
The state-of-the-art Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, California, has become a haven where children can develop life skills, getting to grips with subjects as diverse as forensic science, robotics, business entrepreneurship and rocket design.
Around 23,000 students, ranging in age from 10 to 18, have gone through the center since it opened in February 2006, most of them attending a day program for elementary schoolchildren or an after-school program for those at junior and senior high.
Roughly 85 percent of the students are Hispanic and they can also participate in community outreach programs and college access seminars.
While Woods’s drive to become the greatest golfer of all time is well documented, his passion for the success of the Learning Center and the Tiger Woods Foundation he created with his father Earl is on a much higher plane.
“Golf has always been a vehicle so I could touch others and help kids and make sure that they get to feel and experience the things that I’ve had in my life,” the American world number one told Reuters.
“The joy I get from winning a major championship doesn’t even compare to the feeling I get when a kid writes a letter saying: ‘Thank you so much. You have changed my life.’
“Or: ‘I have turned my life around because of you. I was in a gang and now I’m not in a gang and now I’m going to college.
“No one in my family has ever gone to a college and now I’m the first one to do it.’ That, to me, is what it’s all about.”
Since turning professional in 1996, Woods has frequently paid tribute to his mother Kultida and late father Earl for raising him in a loving and secure home.
With that as his inspiration, he has endeavored to provide a similar experience for the children at his Learning Center.
“I’ve had mentors in my life, I’ve had people take an interest in me when I could have easily gone down the wrong path,” said Woods, who plans to open a second Learning Center in the Washington D.C. area within the next five years.
“The love that I had from my parents allowed me to go ahead and be more aggressive, to search and to take risks knowing, if I failed, I could always come home to a family of love and support.
“Not all kids have that. At the Learning Center, we want them to feel like they are part of a family, that they can learn and grow and make a step in the right direction.”
Katherine Bihr, executive director of the center, relishes her part in helping to shape young lives.
“It’s the best thing I’ve done in my life for sure,” she told Reuters.
“It’s an emotional thing for me because I really think there are so many opportunities for kids and they just don’t have the options to find out how to get from point A to point B. It’s not fair.
“There is a system here that feeds the ‘haves’ and then there are the ‘have-nots’ and there is no reason why education shouldn’t be for everybody. That’s why I got into education. I wanted to help kids.
“Here at the Learning Center, it matters that they understand that there are people who will care about them, care about their future and want to see them be successful.”
TITLE: Doping Russian Lands in Court
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TURIN, Italy — Russian biathlete Olga Pyleva will face a criminal trial in Italy for a doping offense that cost her a medal at the Turin Winter Olympics in 2006.
Pyleva has been ordered to stand trial for alleged doping, which is a criminal offense in Italy, and the first hearing will take place on Oct. 16, the office of Turin prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello said Wednesday.
Pyleva was kicked out of the Olympics and stripped of the silver medal she won in the 15-kilometer race after she tested positive for carphedon, a stimulant which increases endurance and resistance to cold.
The 32-year-old Russian, who won the 10K pursuit at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, was also banned from competition for two years.
She has maintained she unknowingly took the banned substance when a doctor treating her for an ankle injury gave her an over-the-counter medication.
In Italy, doping carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail — although prison sentences of a couple of years are routinely suspended for first offenders.