SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1384 (48), Tuesday, June 24, 2008
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TITLE: Garden Standoff  Enters 2nd Week
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As a week-long standoff between a construction company and local residents at Skver Podvodnikov (Submariners’ Garden) continued Monday, a new hot spot emerged in the Moskovsky District in the south of the city where protestors prevented concrete-mixers from accessing an infill construction site between Prospekt Kosmonavtov and Prospekt Yuriya Gagarina.
Since Wednesday evening, the Submariners’ Garden group has destroyed a concrete fence erected near the building site earlier last week. By Monday, 18 out of 21 concrete plates of the fence, each weighing two tons, had been pushed down. The residents put up two tents next to the benches blocking the road and are holding a round-the-clock vigil. Police and construction company guards are on the scene most of the time, sitting in cars, often without license plates, at a distance.
The garden, located in Kvartal 43 Polyustrovo in the north of the city, has been the subject of a legal battle for the past three years, with the construction company Stroikompleks XXI planning to destroy it to build four buildings ordered by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet KGB. 
The garden’s defenders say they have been on watch since May 27, but the conflict escalated when builders arrived with guards and the police to cut down trees and erect a concrete fence around the planned construction site last Monday (June 16).
Several defenders were reported to have been beaten, some seriously, by the construction company’s guards, while the police detained several during the past week. Stroikompleks XXI’s lawyer and spokeswoman Tatyana Lukyanova, speaking by phone on Monday, denied the beatings had taken place and said the company hopes to continue with construction, on hold since Thursday, as soon as possible.
“The fence is on its side, covered with obscenities about [Governor] Valentina Matviyenko and the FSB,” she said. When The St. Petersburg Times visited the site several times during the weekend, however, no obscenities were seen on the fence. There was some protest graffiti painted over by street cleaners on Saturday night.
In the struggle, anarchists and the local branch of Eduard Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) have backed local residents.
“We support any struggle by people against a government that acts in conjunction with capitalists,” said anarchist Oleg Smirnov who was detained and charged with “hooliganism” last Monday. A court dismissed the case the following day. 
“We also want to have more parks and gardens in the city, [that’s why] we’re against infill construction,” he said, referring to the practice of building on green spaces between existing apartment blocks.
The NBP’s local leader, Andrei Dmitriyev, said that his group has been struggling against infill construction since 2004. 
“We support any actions of civil disobedience, any points where citizens are ready to fight for their rights,” he said. “We see it as one of our main tasks to work with grassroots social activity, help people and support them when the authorities step on them and when people are ready to resist.” 
Dmitriyev said that the significance of the Submariners’ Garden case is that its defense has been well organized in every aspect, from lawsuits to letters to the authorities to publicity to street resistance.
“As a result, [the case of] of this garden becomes crucial — if we manage to defend this garden, it will make sense to fight in other areas. That’s why this is, if you will, our lifting of the Siege of Leningrad or our Battle of Stalingrad within the ‘Great Patriotic War’ [World War II] of residents against Smolny [City Hall] and builders. It’s the key direction, that’s why we’re taking part.”
On Saturday, the garden’s defenders were due to hold an open-air concert but performers coming in a car from outside the city failed to reach the location. 
“They were detained for allegedly taking a wrong turn and when they were let go several hours later, there was already no sense in them coming,” said activist Yelena Malysheva. However, local band SP Babai will perform a show called “A Concert for the Homeless FSB” in the garden at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
Malysheva said that inspired by the example of the garden’s defense, residents in several other districts have begun mounting protests against infill construction, which is often substandard and conducted without proper documentation.
On Friday morning, 30 to 50 residents of the Moskovsky District blocked the route of two concrete-mixer trucks heading to an infill construction site in a garden between Prospekt Kosmonavtov and Prospekt Yuriya Gagarina. After staying for several hours, the trucks moved away. During the following night, the locals overturned a slab in the temporary concrete road the builders had built for their trucks last year to create an obstacle, and were in place from 8 a.m. on Monday ready to block any more trucks if the builders were to repeat the attempt.
Last year, the construction company, Tsentr Dolevogo Stroitelstva (TsDS), cut down trees in part of the garden and surrounded the section with a concrete fence. Work was soon stopped as the company only had permission for preparatory works, but last month the builders started to actually construct the building, which, residents say, is illegal. Protestor Vladimir Lint said the builders had driven 30 piles into the ground without permission.
On Wednesday, the work was temporarily stopped by City Hall’s Construction Committee which demanded the company collect the full documentation necessary for construction, even though apartments in the planned 18-story block have been on sale off-plan since 2006. TsDS’s website now says that apartment sales in the building have been “temporarily stopped.”
But on Monday, when Vice Governor Alexander Vakhmistrov signed the decision, a concrete mixer truck arrived again. It was stopped and sent away by protestors.

TITLE: Bureaucrats Play Two-Faced Game With Portraits
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — While it remains unclear whether Dmitry Medvedev or Vladimir Putin is more powerful, many government officials have reached a compromise — at least on what to hang on their walls.
The portraits of Putin that dominated government offices during the eight years of his presidency are giving way to photographs of Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev together.
In the White House, where Putin has his office, many bureaucrats have hung the photos on their walls, a White House official said.
“Officials are mainly hanging the picture of them together in their offices. There is no rule forcing you to do that. It is their choice,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the media.
Former Prime Ministers Mikhail Fradkov and Viktor Zubkov were denied such an honor, the official said. “I never saw their portraits anywhere. People only had President Putin’s portrait at the time,” the official said.
It was unclear which officials had hung up the photos. The White House official refused to provide names, and other people contacted at the White House refused to discuss the issue.
But pictures of the two leaders together are popular, if the hundreds that have popped up at stores around Moscow are any indication. Dual portraits of Putin and Medvedev are sold in all the big bookstores, while clocks and matryoshkas featuring the stern power couple can be found in kiosks and any stall selling souvenirs.
In the 17 years since the Soviet collapse, Russia has never had a powerful prime minister. Putin is an exception, and his dominance is confusing the country’s bureaucracy, which is used to having “a point of reference,” said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with the INDEM think tank.
“This is why they keep the portrait of both of them in their offices. They don’t want to offend either of them, even from a visual point of view,” Korgunyuk said.
“But our bureaucrats are really flexible: They can change their mind within few seconds. If they see that Putin is not powerful anymore, they will cut his portrait off the picture and throw it away,” he said.
Since Medvedev was inaugurated as president on May 7, Viktor Deryugin, an artist who has been painting portrait of politicians since 1990, has sold about 100 copies of a framed portrait of Putin and Medvedev against the Kremlin or the Russian flag, as well as 100 diptyches of the two. Most of the buyers want to place the pictures in their offices, he said.
Deryugin said he also has sold five 140-by-73-centimeter oil paintings of Medvedev for 500,000 rubles ($20,000) each. Putin by himself is selling less.
“Everyone has already bought their share over the past eight years,” Deryugin said.
The Tvoi Portret company is offering a 10 percent discount on oil paintings of the leaders together or Medvedev alone until the end of this month. No Putin portraits are on sale.
“Such a picture emphasizes your status and strengthens your position,” it says on its web site.
Tvoi Portret development manager Alexander Vladimirov said companies were the main clients. “Ordinary people do not hang these portraits in their homes,” he said.
The Moskva bookstore on Tverskaya Ulitsa offers a 53-by-38 centimeter portrait of Medvedev in a suit and tie for 4,680 rubles ($195), while for 2,510 rubles customers can take home a horizontal dual portrait of Medvedev chatting with Putin. A saleswoman said the dual portraits were big sellers. 
Not everyone is hanging the portraits in their offices.
“We haven’t reached such a level yet,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, a Moscow City Duma deputy with the opposition Yabloko party.
State Duma Deputy Gennady Gudkov has a portrait of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky in his office.
“I think he was a professional, and I respect him,” said Gudkov, a member of A Just Russia and former KGB official.
He said he was given Putin’s portrait years ago but kept it “somewhere at home.”
Russia’s youngest State Duma deputy, Robert Shlegel, 23, said he has pictures of friends in his office. “I haven’t thought about hanging a portrait of the president and the prime minister. It is a tradition, but maybe I’ll hang a Russian flag,” said Shlegel, a member of United Russia, the party headed by Putin.
A City Hall official said only new bureaucrats intent on climbing the government ladder placed portraits of Putin and Medvedev in their offices. “The veterans don’t care about this show of loyalty to the powers that be. They know that they are not losing their jobs,” the official said.
He added: “We have [Moscow Mayor Yury] Luzhkov’s portrait. This is enough.”
When a reporter at Putin’s last Kremlin news conference in February asked him whether he would put Medvedev’s portrait on his wall, Putin replied dryly that he did not need to make such a display of loyalty.
“I don’t need to bow to his portrait — there are other ways of building a relationship,” Putin said.
And he seems to have kept his promise. “Putin does not have any portraits in his office,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.

TITLE: Yavlinsky Quits As Leader
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Grigory Yavlinsky, the 56-year-old co-founder of the liberal party Yabloko which he has led for the past 15 years, was replaced as party chairman on Sunday by Sergei Mitrokhin, the party appears to have deflected the threat it would split.
Mitrokhin, who heads the Yabloko faction of the Moscow City Duma, received 75 out of 125 votes at the party conference on Sunday. Maxim Reznik, the head of the party’s St. Petersburg branch, won 24 votes, and Vasily Popov of the Yabloko’s branch in Karelia received 20 votes.
Before Yavlinsky withdrew his name from the chairmanship poll on Saturday to back Mitrokhin, many critics predicted the party would split over ideological disagreements. 
Yavlinsky and Mitrokhin have been increasingly critical of Reznik and his allies for seeking common ground with opposition forces across the political spectrum, including Communists and National Bolsheviks.
“Yabloko belongs to the democratic opposition: not nationalist, not fascist, and not any other breed of it,” Yavlinsky told the conference on Saturday. “Messing with movements like those only serves to discredit Yabloko.”
During recent weeks Mitrokhin and Reznik have bitterly accused each other of leading the party into an abyss. There has also been speculation that Reznik, Ilya Yashin and other members of Yabloko would be expelled from the party.
Reznik criticized Yavlinsky for creating a strict “vertical of power system” within the party, a reference to former president Vladimir Putin’s autocratic centralization of political power in his hands. 
“Society has perceived Yabloko as ‘the Yavlinsky party’ and started to turn against it,” Reznik added. “The democratic party started to appear rigid and lacked flexibility.”
Upon his election to a four-year term as head of Yabloko on Sunday, Mitrokhin was quick to offer peace.
“Nobody is going to kick Reznik and Yashin out: repression is the resort of the weak,” he told reporters in Moscow on Sunday.
Reznik’s rhetoric also softened. Stressing that reform of the party’s management and structure is necessary, the St. Petersburg politician has stopped talking about a split and has adopted a more optimistic tone.
“Yavlinsky’s departure was essential,” he said on Monday. “During the fifteen years that he led the party, Russia changed three presidents, and the political landscape transformed drastically. A new breed of politician needs to be given a chance to meet new challenges.”
Yavlinsky’s future became uncertain after State Duma elections in December. Yabloko failed to make any dent in the landslide victory organized by Putin’s Kremlin for its client party United Russia. 
Reznik then called for the party leader to be replaced and for the introduction of several co-chairmen.
The co-chairmen idea was not accepted by the conference but Yavlinsky offered a compromise by creating a seven-to-ten-member political council to be elected in the future.
Unlike Reznik, who seeks radical changes and favors a broad outreach campaign to win a greater share of supporters, Mitrokhin has always closely shared Yavlinsky’s core values and policies, even denying there was ever a leadership crisis.
“There is no internal crisis,” he told reporters after his election on Sunday.
For the change of leadership to result in Yabloko’s rebirth as an opposition force, changes in the party need to be introduced quickly, Yuly Rybakov, a human rights advocate with St. Petersburg’s Memorial pressure group, said.
“This is Yabloko’s chance for survival,” Rybakov said, recommending that the party must concentrate on winning Duma seats. “Yavlinsky’s decision to step back was vital to save the party from falling to pieces.”
Rybakov said a new outreach strategy must be key if the party is seriously thinking about making a comeback.
“The image of the democrats is tainted, and critics argue the liberals are not in a position to improve it because they have neither financial, nor state resources to rely on,” said Vladimir Yeryomenko, a political analyst at the St. Petersburg Institute for Economics and Trade. “Yabloko is seen by many as a ‘political antique’ and not very marketable.”
Critics say one of the key recent mistakes of the liberal opposition parties, and Yabloko specifically, has been the radical nature of their criticism of the Russian president, who is said to have an approval rating nearing 70 percent. St. Petersburg’s Reznik has been one of the most outspoken and fiercest critics of the Kremlin.
Experts say Mitrokhin faces a Herculean task because Yabloko’s outsider status makes it impossible for the party to deliver on voters’ basic demands.
“Ordinary people want someone in power who will guarantee them a decent living wage, and Yabloko, although it makes all the right noises, does not convey that impression,” said Yury Korgunyuk, a leading expert on political parties with the Moscow-based think tank INDEM. “Yavlinsky personified this image, and the biggest challenge for Mitrokhin would be to improve it.”

TITLE: In Face of Russian Opposition UN Pushes New Kosovo Plan
AUTHOR: By John Heilprin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — Undeterred by Russian opposition, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pledged on Friday to move ahead with a new plan for administering Kosovo, a step supported by most other Security Council members.
The UN chief also appointed Italian diplomat Lamberto Zannier to take over as UN governor in Kosovo.
Ban told the council the UN must confront “a profoundly new reality” since Kosovo declared itself an independent nation in February. He said the UN, as interim administrator, is not in a position to handle as effectively the vast majority of tasks it dealt with in the past.
“This needs to be acknowledged as a fact of life,” he said.
Serbian President Boris Tadic appeared before the council to oppose Ban’s plan, which would help propel Kosovo’s independence by handing some of the key operating duties to the European Union.
Serbia has rejected Kosovo’s drive for independence as illegal. Serb officials say the southern province is the country’s historic and religious heartland,
“Serbia will never recognize the independence of Kosovo,” Tadic told the council.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Hearing Postponed</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — A court hearing into the British Council’s lawsuit to win back some of the tax arrears it was charged was postponed to July 3, Kommersant reported Friday.
Tax officials had asked the Moscow Arbitration Court to postpone considering the case.
British officials and Russian tax authorities would not disclose the amount of the council’s tax bill for 2007, which was partially paid by it last month. 

<b>Ecology Warning</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Parts of Russia will be uninhabitable within the next three decades if the country does not take better care of the environment, President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday, news agencies reported. Speaking in St. Petersburg, Medvedev said Russians had been more concerned about survival than the environment in the 1990s.

TITLE: World’s ‘Oldest Surgeon’ Uglov, Aged 103, Dies
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two internationally renowned medics who lived in St. Petersburg died over the weekend. 
Academician Fyodor Uglov, 103, who claimed to be listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest practicing surgeon, died in St. Petersburg on Monday, while Natalya Bekhtereva, a world-renowned neurologist and neurophysiologist who was the scientific director of the Institute of Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, died on Sunday at the St. George’s hospital in Hamburg, Germany. She was 82.
Bekhtereva’s work revolved around a revolutionary approach to studying the function of the human brain as well as new methods for the study of the mechanisms of thinking, memory, emotion and creativity. 
In 1990 Bekhtereva and her son, neurophysiologist Svyatoslav Medvedev established the Institute of the Human Brain to implement these methods.
Bekhtereva was awarded the title of the Honored Citizen of St. Petersburg by the city parliament in May.
“Natalya Bekhtereva was a true patriot of the city, whose opinion always carried tremendous weight and was treated with great respect — and not only in medical circles,” said Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
Uglov was a pioneer of many new international trends in surgery, especially with regard to the operations on the lungs and heart. His book, “The Surgeon’s Heart,” became a bestseller. The legendary surgeon had performed more than 6,500 operations. 
The surgeon, whose motto was “there are no completely hopeless situations, and there should always be a way out,” will be remembered as being fearless by his colleagues. Often he took on board cases that his colleagues considered hopeless, and completed the operations successfully.
In a much-discussed case when he was performing an operation during the Siege of Leningrad during World War II, a shell exploded outside the window and the shock wave sent glass fragments flying into the room. Without thinking of his own safety, Uglov bent over the patient to protect the wound. When the nurse told the surgeon that the explosion had made her drop the only clean scalpel on to the floor, Uglov did not hesitate and completed the operation with a razor.
“The life of Fyodor Uglov won admiration across the globe; this veteran surgeon saved many thousands of lives,” said Vadim Tyulpanov, the speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
A public farewell service for Fyodor Uglov will be held in his former apartment on the Petrograd Side at Flat 5, 20 Ordinarnaya Street, at midday on Wednesday.

TITLE: Medvedev Hits Out at Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Denis Dyomkin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BREST, Belarus — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev condemned on Sunday what he described as attempts to rewrite wartime history — an attack the Kremlin said was aimed at Ukraine and the three Baltic states.
In a joint declaration marking the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Medvedev and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko denounced a “politicised approach to history.”
Their countries “strongly condemn any attempt at rewriting history and revision of the results of World War Two,” they said.
Ukraine and the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have challenged Moscow’s view of history, saying their nationals suffered from Soviet as well as Nazi oppression, and a Kremlin spokesman said later the criticism was aimed at them.
Meeting in the Belarussian town of Brest, where Nazi forces first crossed the Soviet border on June 22, 1941, the two leaders said that “a selective, politicised approach to history should be set against honest, scientific debate.”
“Only on this basis can Europe draw the lessons of history and avoid a tragic repetition of the errors of the past.”
“This declaration is indeed a reaction to the actions of the countries in the Baltic and Ukraine, in which recently there has been the rehabilitation of the SS Halychyna division,” the Kremlin spokesman told Reuters. “In other countries, Britain for example, Nazi criminals are arrested, not justified.”
Russia has chided Ukraine for taking steps since the mid-1990s to grant some form of recognition as combatants to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), guerrillas who fought both Nazi and Soviet troops to secure an independent state.
The issue is contentious in Ukraine, where commemorations expose the country’s split into the nationalist west and centre and the Russian-speaking east, more sympathetic to Moscow.
Historians say the UPA had 40,000 men in its ranks at its peak. Some Ukrainians donned Nazi uniforms in a unit known as SS Halychyna.
Russia has also complained about Baltic nationalists who resisted Soviet occupation. It became embroiled in a diplomatic row with Estonia last year over the removal of a statue of a Red Army soldier from Tallinn’s city centre to a military cemetery.
Moscow also says Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia and Latvia have been denied basic rights against a background of strong anti-Russian sentiment.
Medvedev also reaffirmed Russia’s support for steps to create a “union state” with Belarus — planned since the mid-1990s but with little concrete progress so far.
Lukashenko, accused by Western countries of crushing fundamental rights, has championed the post-Soviet merger as the cornerstone of Belarus’s foreign policy, but Moscow has cooled to the idea in recent years.

TITLE: Lavrov Urges Delay on U.S. Missile Defense
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday urged the United States to delay deployment of elements of a planned missile-defense system in Europe and called on NATO to halt its eastward expansion.
Addressing a conference in Moscow, Lavrov said the United States and its allies risk further damaging their relations with Russia should they choose to ignore Moscow’s objections on the contentious issues.
“We propose taking a break,” Lavrov told the conference. “This means that all these projects must stay where they are. ... They must be frozen.”
Russia has bristled over U.S. plans to deploy missile-defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Washington maintains that the missile shield is not targeted at Russia, but rather meant to head off a possible attack by Iran. Moscow says, however, that the shield would be a threat to the country’s security.
Moscow has also strongly opposed the NATO plans to bring former Soviet neighbors Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance. A NATO spokesman said by telephone from Brussels on Friday that he could not comment on Lavrov’s statements.
All of these issues have lead to a serious deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations, Lavrov said. “It may sound absurd, but we had more mutual trust and respect on an intergovernment level during the Cold War,” he said.
Lavrov’s comments came a day after John Beyrle, who has been nominated as the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, said Washington would look to strengthen ties with Moscow. 
Lavrov also addressed the Middle East, strongly warning against using force in dealing with Iran.

TITLE: Palace Goes On Market
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The Sheremetev Palace located at 18 Shpalernaya Ulitsa will shortly be up for sale after Taleon shareholders decided to sell it, it was announced on the company’s official website.  The total area of the building, which consists of seven apartments, 10 halls and an inner courtyard, is 4,887 square meters.  
Taleon, which operates in the hotels, restaurants and casinos industry, acquired the building in 2001 on condition of investment after it had been destroyed by a fire, and became its owner in 2006 after reconstruction work was completed. The company lets out the residence at a cost of 1 million to 1.3 million rubles ($42,300 to $55,000) a day.
“The building was reconstructed with the purpose of selling it, and the funds will be invested into other Taleon projects,” said the company’s director, Boris Kazakov.  He declined to specify the palace’s value.
The controlling stake in Taleon belongs to Talio-Princeps, which according to returns accounting from the final quarter of 2007 is owned entirely by Alexander Yebralidze.  Investment into the reconstruction of the Sheremetev Palace totaled about $40 million, Yebralidze said previously.
The value of such a property could be from $50 million to $70 million, said the director of investment consulting at the local office of Colliers International, Nikolai Kazansky.
The director of investment sales at Becar real estate, Alexei Lazutin, estimated the palace’s value at a minimum of $20,000 to $22,000 per square meter.  “It’s a landmark, but the number of those wanting to acquire it might be limited due to its large size,” he said.
Kazansky said that the building was suitable as the representative office of a major company.  Lazutin agreed, saying it was unlikely to interest hotel operators.  
The time when major firms and banks sought to acquire private mansions for their offices has passed, said Boris Moshensky, the general director of Maris Properties. Now their main criterion is practicality, he said, and therefore they prefer high-class business centers to palaces.

TITLE: Car Sales Continue to Rocket, Prices Rise
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Rozhkov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Car sales in Russia continue to soar, having reached a record 855,000 vehicles so far this year, including both imported and domestically-produced models. From January to May this year, the Ford Focus, Chevrolet Lacetti and Renault Logan models became Russia’s bestsellers, according to statistics from the European Business Association. Sales in May 2008 rose by 42 percent compared to May 2007.
The demand for cars continues to grow on developing markets and will not slow down soon, according to Ian Henderson, portfolio manager of JP Morgan Natural Resources Fund. Russia’s growing wealth is fuelling the demand for automobiles, he said. 
There are currently 260 car owners per 1,000 people in Russia, and if the trend in sales persists, Western Europe will be overtaken in two years’ time. The United States, with a rate of 900 cars per 1,000 people, is set to be left behind in another two years. 
But the market is unlikely to double or even triple in volume in the near future, said Sevastian Kozitsyn, an analyst at Broker Credit Service. “A lack of good roads and high gasoline prices already influence the level of demand for cars. Besides, it will take 10 years to put the road network in order and fuel is unlikely to become cheaper as the oil traders in Russia keep their eyes on world prices,” he said.  
The Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ is set to announce a new increase in prices, Vedomosti newspaper cited a representative of the company as saying last week. On average, the cost will increase by 1.46 percent. For example, to buy a Niva — an off-road four-wheel drive and the most popular model — will cost an additional $200 to the current $10,000 price tag. 
This will be the third leap in prices since the beginning of 2008. In January, AvtoVAZ responded to the new Euro-3 ecological standard that came into force in Russia with a 1.87 percent rise, and added a further one percent this May, bringing the total price increase this year to 4.4 percent. 
Yelena Andronova, supplies manager at the Rostokino-Lada dealership, notes that AvtoVAZ has never previously increased prices so often within such a short period of time. “This is not final, as a new hike on the Lada car series is expected this fall,” she said. AvtoVAZ officials explained the summer rise as being the result of a planned salary increase and growing expenses on raw materials such as metals. 
While domestic carmakers are surviving by raising prices, the numerous competitors from abroad are not rushing to change their prices tags and continue to conquer the market, earning the North West the label of the “Russian Detroit.” 
One of the pioneers of the car making industry, Ford opened a plant in Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Oblast in 2002, and in addition to 75,000 Focuses manufactured annually, now intends to launch the Mondeo in September, when the price will be announced. Wolfgang Sneider, Vice President of Ford Europe, confirmed that the company is expanding the plant to reach a projected capacity of 125,000 cars a year. “We are also increasing imports as the Russian car market reports constant growth,” he said. Investment into the construction and expansion of the plant has totaled $230 million. 
During the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum earlier this month, the Korean carmaker Huyndai laid the first stone in its new plant that is due to manufacture 100,000 cars a year when it opens in early 2011.  
On Nov. 5 one of the world’s biggest carmakers, General Motors, is aiming to penetrate the Russian market further with the opening of its second plant in St. Petersburg, into which it has invested $300 million and which will produce 70,000 cars a year, including the Chevrolet Captiva. GM’s first plant opened in 2007.
Japan’s Suzuki and Nissan are also in the process of building plants that are due to open next year, meaning new competitors for Toyota Motors, which has manufactured cars in Shushary on St. Petersburg’s outskirts since 2005. 
Finland’s Valmet Automative, a Porsche contractor that assembles the Porsche Boxter and Cayman, is also negotiating the possibility of opening a branch in Russia’s North West. 
Although the Russian car market, which is worth more than $22 billion per year, is witnessing stable and serious growth, cars will never become cheaper, says Konstantin Romanov, a machine construction industry analyst at Finam company. “But the rate of price increases may slow down if import duties on new cars also decrease. But in my opinion, the chances are minimal, as this will never happen within the next five years.”
Carmakers are able to balance car prices against their subsequent expenses if there is competition on the market, said Kirill Tachennikov, a machine construction industry analyst at Otkrytie financial company. “Prices will grow annually by a maximum 10 percent, if the competition rate grows.” 
As soon as there are 300 to 350 cars per 1,000 people, Russians  will see a decline in the automobile hype, Tachennikov said. Sales rates will then slow down to a more stable 15 to 20 percent, and 2009 may be the year that the sellers’ market will become a buyers’ market, with more bargains and discounts and fewer crowds desperate for a new car, he said.

TITLE: Uralkali Billionaire Buys Trump’s Florida Mansion
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YEKATERINBURG — Urals fertilizer billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev is the new owner of Florida’s most expensive house after paying U.S. property tycoon Donald Trump $100 million for the waterfront property. 
Rybolovlev, whose fortune has soared by $10 billion in the last year on an unprecedented boom in demand for fertilizers, said through a spokesman that the purchase was an investment and that he had no plans to swap Moscow life for the Florida coast. 
Trump more than doubled his money on the sale of Maison de l’Amitie, a 3,000-square-meter mansion on Palm Beach bought for $41.4 million at a bankruptcy auction in 2004, The Wall Street Journal said. 
The price, however, was still $25 million below that at which Trump first offered the house for sale, the newspaper said. 
Rybolovlev, 41, made his fortune from the potash mines of the Ural Mountains. London-traded stock in his Uralkali mining company has doubled in value this year. 
“For many years, my main business interests have been in the potash industry, but I also have many interests in a range of companies all around the world,” Rybolovlev said. 
“These companies operate in different fields of business. In particular, one of them makes investments in real estate,” he said in comments e-mailed through a spokesman. 
“This acquisition is simply an investment in real estate by one of the companies in which I have an interest and does not represent a decision by me to live in the U.S. — indeed, neither my family nor I have any intention to do so,” he said.

TITLE: Analysts Downbeat on Financial Markets
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Summer may have arrived in Moscow, but ongoing gloom on global financial markets just keeps raining on its parade. 
Analysts from the Royal Bank of Scotland, or RBS, delivered perhaps the darkest news of all, predicting a global stock market crash in the next three months. 
The U.S. Federal Reserve is in “panic mode,” said RBS credit strategist Bob Janjuah in a June 11 note to clients, which became public only last week. “The massive credibility chasms down which the Fed and maybe even the ECB [European Central Bank] will plummet when they fail to hike rates in the face of higher inflation will combine to give us a big sell-off in risky assets.” 
Inflation is now the No. 1 concern in many countries, and central banks are tussling over which is the lesser evil: high inflation or a slow-down in economic growth. But RBS analysts feared that central banks would commit what it deemed a major monetary-policy error and fail to raise interest rates — the chief tool against inflation in the West — in time. 
While many analysts were quick to provide a more upbeat offering to the bank’s bleak view, European markets were nevertheless rattled. More bad news was to come in the shape of Morgan Stanley’s earnings, which came out worse than expected. 
Gloomier still, New York-based hedge fund manager John Paulson predicted that the financial losses — just shy of $400 billion to date — could triple to $1.3 trillion. 
While analysts at Alfa Bank have warned of a major correction at home, some Moscow-based investors remained more cautiously optimistic, arguing that aggressive state spending, and the makeup of the commodity-dominated stock markets, would head off any drastic drop. 
“It’s going to be hard to see a real big sell-off in Russia at $130 per barrel oil,” said James Fenkner, managing partner at Red Star Asset Management. “Oil has to come down [first].” 
Oil has broken new records — again — to stop just short of $140 per barrel. 
It sharply dropped, however, on news that the Chinese government had slapped higher duties on fuel, which some analysts said might curb domestic demand in the world’s second-largest oil importer, and that Saudi Arabia had announced a production hike of 200,000 barrels per day. 
But analysts argued that there is enough volatility on global markets to shore up oil in the near-term, a view confirmed by militant attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria late last week. 
Inflation concerns contributed to a sluggish week on the domestic bourses. “Summer has already come to the Russian markets,” said Fenkner, predicting a quiet period through to the end of August. 
Most of the movement was in the metals and electricity stocks, while banks and energy stocks — affected by the falling oil price — fared less well. 
OGKs, the electricity stocks, started to move toward the end of the week, after upgrades from Alfa Bank and comments from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on the potential of the sector.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Retail Sales Rocket Up</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian retail sales growth unexpectedly accelerated to 14.6 percent in May from the slowest pace in almost a year and a half the month before.
Sales growth picked up from a revised 13.9 percent in April, the Moscow-based Federal Statistics Service said in an e-mailed statement Monday. The median forecast of 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for annual growth to slow to 13 percent. In the month, sales rose 2.5 percent.

<b>TNK-BP Ruling Due</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — BP’s Russian venture TNK-BP will receive a ruling on the number of foreigners it can employ next week after managers submitted conflicting applications, Interfax said, citing an unidentified Moscow city government official.
TNK-BP Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley said last month he filed to get permission for 150 foreign employees, after TNK-BP shareholder and Executive Director German Khan submitted an “unauthorized” request for 63 slots in April.

<b>Unemployment Falls</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s unemployment rate fell more than economists’ expected to 6.4 percent in May, the Federal Statistics Service said.
The rate dropped from 6.6 percent the month before, the Moscow-based Statistics Service said in an e-mailed statement, and was lower than the 6.5 percent median forecast of 16 economists in a Bloomberg survey.

<b>Smuggling Laws Altered</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russia will legalize smuggled goods starting in September if traffickers pay tariffs on the imported items within five days, Kommersant reported, citing documents from the Federal Customs Service.
Customs officials will no longer automatically confiscate the goods at the border, the newspaper said, citing a June 5 order signed by Andrei Belyaninov, chief of the customs service.
The legislation will boost the volume of imports and increase the popularity of legal customs brokers in Russia, Kommersant reported.

<b>RR Wins Power Stake</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Railways, the country’s rail monopoly, has won an auction for the government’s stake in TGK-14, a key power supplier along the Trans-Siberian Railway.
State-run Russian Railways and its partner ESN Group agreed to pay 0.74 kopeks (0.03 U.S. cents) per share for control of the Khabarovsk-based generator, Marita Nagoga, spokeswoman for the seller, Unified Energy System, said by phone in Moscow on Monday.

<b>Gazeta Site Acquired</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russia’s SUP has acquired the Gazeta.ru news web site from billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s Kommersant publishing house to expand its online media assets.
Kommersant received a “significant” stake in SUP in the transaction, along with the right to name two members of SUP’s management board, the companies said in a joint e-mailed statement on Monday.
Russia businessman Alexander Mamut’s SUP, which owns U.S.-based blog-hosting site LiveJournal, wants to broaden its range of Russian-language online services with the new acquisition, according to the statement. Gazeta.ru will remain an “independent resource” within the SUP group, according to the statement.

TITLE: Kazakh State Pays Less Than Promised
AUTHOR: By Nariman Gizitdinov
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: ALMATY — The Kazakh government has spent 51 billion tenge ($417 million) to complete stalled residential construction projects, a fraction of bailouts promised by the prime minister last year.
Kazakhstan’s economy grew more than 10 percent annually from 2000 through 2006, sparking a building boom in the former Soviet republic, which holds 3.3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Growth slowed to 8.5 percent last year as banks curtailed lending amid the global credit crunch, leaving builders short of funds and thousands of homebuyers in the lurch.
The government said on Nov. 14 that it would spend $1 billion by the end of 2007 and another $3 billion in 2008 to “provide economic stability and growth” by supporting the real estate market and small and medium-sized businesses. Prime Minister Karim Masimov said two weeks later that this emergency investment program could be expanded.
Yury Khramtsov, an analyst at Almaty-based Visor Capital, said by telephone on Monday that the government has provided “no specific information” on why it has spent less than promised on construction.
“The government may not be in a hurry to distribute the money because of concerns that it could be wasted,” Khramtsov said. “Construction companies also say that the interest rates for the loans offered by banks are too high.”
Spokeswomen for the prime minister, the Economy Ministry and the Industry and Trade Ministry all declined to comment immediately on the discrepancy between promised and actual spending when contacted by Bloomberg News.
State-development holding Kazyna deposited $262.5 million in banks, which in turn lent the money to contractors, allowing them to finish 36 apartment buildings in the capital Astana, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said Monday in a mailed statement. Kazyna also deposited $90 million in banks for the completion of 23 projects in Almaty, the country’s commercial center. More than 12,000 homebuyers will soon be able to move into their new apartments, the ministry said.
This “first tranche” of federal funds will help about 40 percent of homebuyers who pre-paid for apartments in stalled projects, the ministry said. The government has approved the distribution of $590 million through Kazyna for Astana and Almaty, it said.
The ministry said the remaining $237 million will be released only if the initial sum is spent in full.
State-run Kazakhstan Mortgage Co., which received $169 million to purchase debt from commercial banks, had spent $53 million as of May 23, the ministry said.
 The government agreed to buy 2,659 apartments for public-sector employees at a price of $150 million, part of $339 million earmarked for acquiring 6,000 apartments in unfinished buildings in Astana. To date, the mayor’s office has spent $16.5 million as a pre-payment for the apartments.
The Kazakh government also plans to spend $142 million to complete residential construction projects in the capital Astana and to punish “careless builders” who left the buildings unfinished. President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered the state to step in and finish the projects, “which have no source of financing,” to “help to reduce social tension,” Edil Mamytbekov, a deputy minister of industry and trade, said on June 20.
The Industry and Trade Ministry said that 939 residential buildings, with 45,130 apartments pre-paid by homebuyers, were under construction on Jan. 1.

TITLE: Medvedev Speaks on Growth
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia must reign in consumer price growth, President Dmitry Medvedev told a government meeting.
“It’s necessary to return to the benchmarks we set earlier. For this we need to seriously focus on macroeconomic indicators,” Medvedev said at the Kremlin on Monday without elaborating. He spoke in Moscow after signing a document that outlines budget policy recommendations for 2009-11.
Annual inflation has accelerated every month since September, reaching a five-year high of 15.1 percent in May. Meeting the government inflation target of 10.5 percent this year will be “very complicated,” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on June 17. The government must adopt a “tougher approach” to spending growth, he said.
Government spending increased 40 percent in 2007 as inflation accelerated to an annual 11.9 percent, above the government’s 8.5 percent target for the year.

TITLE: RusAl Advises Shareholders
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Company RusAl urged Norilsk Nickel shareholders on Friday to elect two independent directors in a high-stakes June 30 vote for control of the board at the world’s largest nickel miner. 
Several billionaires are vying for position on a new board at Norilsk to have a greater say in the future of the $52 billion company at the heart of rival proposals to create a Kremlin-approved mining colossus. 
RusAl chief executive Alexander Bulygin said his company, a one-quarter shareholder in Norilsk since April, planned to pursue a full merger. He said Norilsk shareholders should pool their votes for two independent directors to minimize the chance that billionaire Vladimir Potanin ends up with control of the board. 
“A balanced board composition should include four representatives of Interros, three representatives of RusAl and two independent directors,” Bulygin told reporters on Friday. 
The statement altered RusAl’s previous assertion that Norilsk’s nine-man board should be split equally three ways between its own representatives, those of Interros and independents. 
Explaining this, Bulygin said he feared that minorities might disperse their votes, resulting in only one independent being elected and Interros gaining an extra seat on the board. 
He said he believed that minority shareholders owned less than 40 percent of Norilsk, but did not know the exact distribution.

TITLE: Georgia Orders Megafon to Pay Fine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Tbilisi accused MegaFon of illegally expanding its network into Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia on Friday. 
Georgia’s National Communications Commission said MegaFon was carrying out illegal activities on its territory and must pay a fine of $3,500 within 30 days. 
MegaFon, Russia’s No. 3 mobile operator, denied that it operated on Georgian territory and said it could not stop people from accessing its services from base stations in nearby Russian regions. 
“In villages ... the population has been using MegaFon company sim cards, in particular MegaFon Northern Caucasus, since 2005,” the Georgian telecoms regulator said on its web site. 
“The work of MegaFon without a license on the territory of Georgia may be considered a criminal activity,” it said. 
A MegaFon spokeswoman confirmed that the company had received a notice from the Georgian authorities and said lawyers were studying it. 
“We are not carrying out any commercial activities in Georgia,” said spokeswoman Marina Belasheva. 
Asked to explain how people in South Ossetia were using MegaFon services, she said it was “impossible to limit the transmission of base stations in a way that matches the border.” 
The MegaFon allegation came days after Georgian troops briefly detained a group of Russian peacekeepers. 
President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday that Russia wanted a negotiated end to territorial disputes in Georgia but would not tolerate attempts to stir up its peacekeeping troops. “Georgia is a close neighbor. Existing disputes, including the territorial problem, should be resolved through bilateral negotiations,” he told law students at St. Petersburg State University, his alma mater.

TITLE: Bribes Amount to Third of State Budget
AUTHOR: By Boris Kamchev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Approximately $33.5 billion is paid annually in bribes by big companies to corrupt officials, while the total amount of funds grafted by officials employed at different levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy is roughly a third of the state budget, or $120 billion, according to reports published at a recent meeting of the Investigation Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.
The committee’s chairman, Alexander Bestrykin, revealed that in the first quarter of this year, the committee opened 1,020 criminal probes into bribe-taking, compared to only 2,067 for the whole of 2006.
“Half of the cases are against regional authorities, judges, prosecutors, and even State Duma and Federation Council members,” Bestrykin was quoted by news agencies as saying. 
Sixteen thousand corruption-related crimes have been reported so far this year, he said. The number of reported incidents was up 9.4 percent for the first three months of this year compared to 2007.
President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly pledged to take serious steps in eradicating corruption, including in his last address at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
One of the measures that the Kremlin has taken to fight corruption is the setting up of an anti-corruption council. Medvedev, who will chair the council, has said that its paramount task is “to establish an independent judicial system that corresponds to the level of economic development.” 
Another governmental measure is the implementation of a database of property details to help to prevent tax evasion. 
There are varying views on the causes of the high level of corruption in Russia. 
Several years ago the general opinion was that officials took bribes out of the need to supplement their meager state wages. During the last two years the government has significantly increased the salaries of officials at various levels. 
Last month the government announced that 20 million Russians still live in poverty with a monthly income that is lower than the minimal wage, which currently stands at 4,300 rubles ($183).
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic party once said that officials in Russia even take bribes from their wives and children.
Sixty-eight percent of leading Russian businessmen and CEOs of large companies see corruption as a major problem, according to a recent survey conducted by the Russian School of Economics and Vedomosti newspaper. 
The survey, supported by the Ministry of Economic Development, examines how leading businessmen see the country developing by 2020. After corruption, the main problem cited was an inefficient judicial system. The most serious danger in Russia cited by top businessmen was however stagnant demography rates and low educational standards.
No serious external threats to the country were perceived by the respondents. According to the survey, growing protectionism in developed Western countries, decreasing oil prices and global inflation do not represent a serious threat to Russia — only 17 to 24 percent of Russian businessmen expressed concern over these problems. 
Some Russian businessmen believe that citizens who offer money to officials should be immune from criminal prosecution on the condition that they report the case to the police.
“The whole hierarchy of the bureaucracy needs to be changed,” said one businessman on condition of anonymity when asked about the problem of corruption.
Nevertheless, not many Russian oligarchs are as honest as Boris Berezovsky. The London-based exile once admitted that many prospered in Russia because officials sold them public assets for a fraction of their value, considering the property they were selling to be “no man’s land.” 
Neil Cooper of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce in Moscow indicated corruption and bureaucracy as two of the main concerns for investors in an interview with the Moscow News weekly, adding that, “At the moment, the positives of investing in Russia far outweigh the negatives.” 
The fight against corruption is an ongoing battle in many countries around the world.
In 2007, Russia was ranked 143rd out of 179 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, a global NGO that campaigns against corruption. According to the survey, 17 percent of respondents said they had paid bribes in Russia in order to procure a service. 
Some experts believe the key cause of the growth of corruption in Russia is a lack of control over the bureaucracy. Sociologist Georgy Satarov, director of the INDEM research group, said there is a lack of external control mechanisms over the government, political opposition and independent press in Russia.

TITLE: Sechin ‘Sees End’ to TNK-BP Wrangling
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Igor Sechin, the deputy prime minister tasked with overseeing the energy sector, said Friday that he saw an end to the debate over TNK-BP, the British-Russian oil firm mired in an acrimonious shareholder dispute. 
Also Friday, Moscow prosecutors announced that an investigation into TNK-BP had uncovered two “insignificant” violations of the labor law. 
“It seems to me that some moves toward a resolution have begun,” Sechin told reporters during a visit to Ivanovo, outside Moscow, Interfax reported. 
“At least the two sides have started to talk to one another,” he said, without providing further details. 
TNK-BP, the country’s third-largest oil producer, is half-owned by Britain’s BP and half by a consortium of Russian oligarchs known collectively as AAR. A dispute over the company’s future ownership structure and strategy exploded into the media last week, with both sides saying dialogue had broken down and accusing the other of trying to wrest control of the 50-50 venture. 
Both BP and AAR say they have no interest in diluting their stake in the firm and deny holding negotiations with state-run Rosneft or Gazprom amid market speculation that a state-run energy firm hopes to buy into the company. 
Sechin, chairman of Rosneft’s board of directors, declined to comment on whether a third party hoped to buy into TNK-BP, Interfax reported. 
Rosneft became the country’s largest oil company last year after buying up the main assets of bankrupted Yukos. Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, serving an eight-year sentence on charges of fraud and tax evasion, accused Sechin of orchestrating the legal campaign against him. 
Sechin urged the two sides to do more to reach a speedy conclusion. “They need to resolve this more actively, or they will face losses,” he said. 
In Moscow, prosecutors said they had found labor law violations during an inspection of TNK-BP, which has faced visa problems for nearly 150 BP employees assigned to the firm as the Russian shareholders call for a clampdown on expat hires. 
“Today, we completed the inspection of how TNK-BP observes labor and migration laws,” said Yury Basov, prosecutor for Moscow’s Presnya District, Interfax reported. 
“Two insignificant breaches of labor laws were exposed,” he said. “The first deals with the registration and circulation of employment records at the company, and the second concerns the granting of vacations,” Basov said. 
He said prosecutors had sent TNK-BP chief Robert Dudley a letter with suggestions on how to correct the violations. 
BP has accused AAR — which groups Mikhail Fridman and German Khan’s Alfa Group, Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova, and Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries — of using corporate-raiding tactics reminiscent of the 1990s in hopes of gaining control over TNK-BP. AAR has denied the accusation.

TITLE: Forgotten Art Up For Sale
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Sotheby’s New York said it will sell three “rediscovered” Russian modernist masterpieces from the collection of an American museum that may net as much as $10.3 million in a November auction.
The three paintings by Boris Grigoriev belong to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Outside experts hadn’t seen the works since 1948 when they were given to the museum by two collectors.
Berkshire Museum said it aims to tap demand for Russian art by a new class of rich Russian and Ukrainian buyers, and to spend the proceeds on new art works and pay for the upkeep of its existing collection.
The Grigoriev paintings will be sold with about “20 to 30 other art works” in New York on November 4, Sotheby’s said. The auction house usually only has one New York Russian sale a year, in April.
The top lot “Pipe Players” (circa 1920s), has an estimate of $4 million to $6 million. The 7-foot work, one of Grigoriev’s largest oil paintings, shows peasant musicians performing folk songs. “Man with Pipe” (circa 1920s) has an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. “Shepherd of the Hills” (1920) has an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million.

TITLE: Australian Businessman Battles Bureaucracy
AUTHOR: By Conor Sweeney
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Every morning, staff at fashion jewelry chain Diva line up to bring their Australian boss about 500 documents to sign, as he swims against a tide of bureaucracy and corruption. 
In two years, entrepreneur Peter Bohn has opened 36 small stores in shopping centers across Russia, selling inexpensive jewelry to fashion-conscious young women. 
The problem is that the original schedule to hit 200 stores had to be put back, and Bohn currently estimates the startup costs for the chain will top $4 million, against an initial estimate of about $1.5 million to $2 million. 
“I’ve got a signing period from 10 to 10:30 a.m. per day, and every one in the office knows it,” Bohn said. “On one extreme it could be ridiculously mundane paperwork, on the other hand, I could be signing my life away.” 
The walls of his outlets are covered in display cabinets of bangles, hair slides, chunky necklaces and fake diamond rings that cost a fraction of the real thing. Bohn’s eye is on the oil-fueled boom that is gradually turning a section of the population into a middle class with disposable incomes. 
Standing in his way is an incessant series of headaches. In one recent incident, a shipment was impounded because a single document was missing. 
Customs froze the delivery and charged rental fees and fines that, three months later, left Diva with a bill five times higher than the cargo’s value. 
“There was no flexibility at all,” said Bohn, shaking his head, still frustrated by the episode. “And all because we missed out on one little document.” 
President Dmitry Medvedev has said cleaning up graft and boosting small business are among his top ambitions. Small firms make up 15 percent of gross domestic product, but Medvedev wants their share to reach 50 percent. 
“It’s very difficult to run a small business ... but we do see that retail and consumer goods sectors are developing, so despite all these obstacles, people are doing business and making profits,” said Yelena Anankina, a credit analyst with Standard & Poor’s in Moscow. 
If Bohn’s experience is typical, there is a long way to go. The World Bank’s site www.doingbusiness.org calculated that it takes 54 procedures and over 704 days to get the licenses, paperwork and utility connections to build a warehouse in Russia. 
“This place is in the dark ages with most of its structures,” Bohn said. 
Bohn is attempting to go it alone — without a local business partner and the connections that might bring. 
“My job is to get this business to 200 stores within three years and sell it for the best price I can and give the money back to the venture capital firm and hopefully make my life a bit more reasonable,” said Bohn, who is backed by Australian venture capitalists, BB Retail Capital. 
He says Diva does not pay bribes but that there have been attempts to extort cash from the firm. 
Diva only operates in shopping centers, to minimize its exposure to local crime gangs or zealous officials seeking to find excuses to shut down a shop — a typical threat unless operators pay out a few thousand dollars. 
Already, local tycoons have muscled in and forced Diva to quit two shops in the regions, despite having the law — at least in theory — on its side. That experience left Bohn with an uneasy fear that someone may come along and try to wrest the firm from him. 
“It’s structured so if someone wants to make a mess they can’t take everything,” he said. 
Diva should turn the corner by the year’s end, said Bohn, who now hopes to open up to three new shops per month. 
“It’s been tough, but I’m an optimist, so it will work out. Still, it is virtually impossible for a small business to start up here.”

TITLE: The Trials 
Of Moving
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: <i>Ïåðååçä</i>: a move

For the expat community, summer is the time of moving in and moving out. If you are not moving, it's a great time to snap up some moving sale bargains. If you are moving, it's a great time to buy a case or two of vodka. 
All Russians appreciate the pain of moving; they only argue about how to quantify it. Some people say: <i>Ïåðååçä — ýòî ñòèõèéíîå áåäñòâèå</i> (A move is a natural disaster). Others say: <i>Îäèí ïåðååçä òð¸ì ïîæàðàì ðàâåí</i> (One move is equal to three fires). Still others maintain that a move is only equal to two fires. 
I think they are all wrong. I think a move is a natural disaster, fire, bankruptcy and divorce all rolled into one.
True, gone are the days when a Moscow move meant cadging boxes from the local store, buying tons of newspapers for packing, cajoling friends into helping and moving at night because that was the only time the friend of your second cousin could get the vegetable truck from the local store. Today you can buy all kinds of <i>óïàêîâî÷íûå ìàòåðèàëû</i> (packing materials) and hire companies to do the work for you. 
Here's what you need to know:
1. To pack up a Moscow apartment, you need <i>êàðòîííûå êîðîáà</i> (cardboard boxes), <i>êîðîáà äëÿ îäåæäû ñ âåøàëêîé</i> (wardrobe boxes, sometimes called ÷åõëû äëÿ îäåæäû), <i>âîçäóøíî-ïóçûðüêîâàÿ ïëåíêà</i> (bubble wrap), <i>ëåíòà-ñêîò÷</i> (packing tape), and maybe <i>çàùèòíûå óãîëêè</i> (protective corners). You will need 10 times more than you think of everything. 
You will also need <i>ìîþùèå ñðåäñòâà</i> (cleaning supplies) because you will discover that you haven't cleaned the inside of your cabinets since you moved in, as well as <i>ìóñîðíûå ïàêåòû</i> (garbage bags) because after a back-breaking day of arduous packing, you will decide that you'd rather toss out than pack up. You will also need a good sense of humor, a large supply of tranquilizers and/or alcohol, diminished standards of personal hygiene, a list of take-out restaurants and a chiropractor on call.
2. You will probably need <i>ãðóç÷èêè</i> (movers). These guys are specialists in the ðàç-/ðàñ- verbs: <i>ðàçáèðàòü</i> (take apart), <i>ðàñêðó÷èâàòü</i> (unscrew) and <i>ðàñêëàäûâàòü</i> (taking items out of the closet and drawers). 
Then they know how to pack up (<i>óïàêîâûâàòü</i>) your possessions so that nothing breaks. They will be able to lift 200-kilogram boxes with one hand, fit them all into your tiny elevator and pack them into the truck like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. 
If they are good, they are worth their weight in gold. To keep them happy, add to your shopping list: <i>èêðà</i> (caviar), <i>êîï÷åíüÿ</i> (smoked meats), <i>ñàëàòû</i> (salads), <i>òîðòû</i> (cakes) and <i>ïðî÷èå äåëèêàòåñû</i> (assorted delicacies). Consider <i>êóáèíñêèå ñèãàðû</i> (Cuban cigars) and <i>ñêîò÷</i> — the liquid kind, not the plastic tape. Or at least a couple bottles of vodka and a generous tip.
3. You will need to master a number of phrases to work with your moving team. The most important word is <i>Îñòîðîæíî!</i> (Be careful!) 
You might also need to say: <i>Âûáðîñèòü? Âû ÷òî?! Ýòî àíòèêâàðèàò!</i> (Throw it out? Are you crazy? It's an antique!) <i>Ìîÿ áàáóøêà ïîäàðèëà ìíå ýòó âàçó</i> (My grandmother gave me that vase). <i>Äà, âèæó, ÷òî âû ïðîìàðêèðîâàëè êîðîáêè. Íî ÷òî çíà÷èò "ñò. êó."?</i> (Yes, I see that you've labeled the boxes. But what does "st. ku." mean?) <i>Íå ëó÷øå ëè íàïèñàòü "ñòåêëî êóõíÿ"?</i> (Isn't it better to write "glass-kitchen"?) <i>Âû óïàêîâàëè âñå ìîè òóôëè? Âñå?!</i> (You packed up all my shoes? All of them?!) 
When you realize that all the clothes you were planning to wear on your trip home are now packed in mysteriously marked boxes, it's time to crack out the vodka and order in pizza. <i>Ýòî íå êîíåö ñâåòà — ýòî ïðîñòî ïåðååçä</i> (It's not the end of the world — it's just a move).

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

TITLE: End of The eXile Era
AUTHOR: By Owen Matthews
TEXT: So farewell, The eXile. An era has ended, and we shall not see its like again. After over a decade of delivering caustic comment, childish pranks and more information than we perhaps wanted and needed to know about the editors’ sex lives and drug habits, Moscow’s original alternative expat newspaper is finally being shut down. Four inspectors from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage recently visited The eXile’s offices, wanting to know about Eduard Limonov, a long-time contributor to the newspaper whose radical National Bolsheviks form the last remnants of Russia’s real opposition. The inspectors were investigating whether the newspaper violated Article 4 of the Law on Mass Media, which bans media outlets from promoting extremism, pornography or narcotics. The writing was on the wall. 
Is the paper guilty? Hell yes — at least by the puritanical standards of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The eXile was a biweekly dish of political gossip (often surprisingly incisive), grim reports from the country’s underbelly and amphetamine-fueled vitriol against Middle America. It was also heavily laced with pornography, satirical graphics and outrageous club reviews penned by a series of fictional correspondents. This was the paper that created the “Death Porn” column, a compendium of the week’s most gruesome crimes illustrated with police photos. Its most recent issue hailed the early arrival of “snapper season,” complete with photos of naked provincial girls taken from the “Dyevscovery Channel.” 
In one of their most famous pranks, the editors made a cream pie mixed with horse sperm and threw it in the face of New York Times bureau chief Michael Wines. The journalistic offenses Wines had committed are long forgotten, but the memory of the pictures of him licking cream off his fingers lingers on. Former editor Matt Taibbi, posing as a sports promoter, once persuaded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to sign up as a motivational coach for the New York Jets. And, in the later, darker years, The eXile chronicled Mark Ames’ epic odyssey to celebrate the paper’s ninth anniversary by sleeping with nine whores in nine hours, armed with a pocketful of Viagra, $450 in expenses and a digital camera. (For the record, he failed.) 
But The eXile’s mission was more than just to shock. It ran Yasha Levine’s 2007 piece on working as a gypsy cab driver on Moscow’s nighttime streets — as powerful a piece of city reporting as I’ve read anywhere. In addition, Taibbi’s report from the distant mines of Vorkuta in the aftermath of the 1998 crisis delivered a level of detail and raw empathy that no mainstream reporter had matched. And an antic experiment to hire prostitutes to come and spend an hour writing short fictional stories in The eXile offices instead of their usual work — printed in the paper under the headline “Whore-R-Stories” — actually produced deeply moving, pathetic little tales of provincial despair. 
U.S. author and journalist Tom Wolfe said, “There are only two adjectives writers care about anymore — brilliant and outrageous.” The eXile was both. But it was also an anachronism. Indeed, it was a minor miracle that it should have survived so long. Even before the paper’s demise, I couldn’t think of it as anything but a child of its time, vibrating to the deep, doomed rhythms of a specific moment. It could never have happened anywhere else but the Moscow of the mid-1990s. Like the city itself, The eXile was vulgar, venal and violent. It was also manic, obscene, uproarious and mammon-obsessed. But above all, it was only by soaking up enough of the penetrating cynicism of that time that all of Russia’s tragedies could seem, on some level, darkly amusing. 
Moscow, I found, seemed to attract people who were ferociously smart but often hungry and damaged, fleeing failure or trying to prove something to the world. Russia — especially the Russia that created The eXile — certainly had a definite appeal for anyone with a dark streak of gross irresponsibility and self-destructiveness. And if you had these traits, there was nothing to stop you from indulging them. It was a weird Godless world where values went into permanent suspended animation and you were terrifyingly free to explore the nastiest recesses of your own black heart. Like a traumatic love affair, it seemed to change people forever. Like a drug, it would be exhilarating at first. Then, as it wore on, it reclaimed the buzz it had given, with interest. 
Despite the good times, Moscow got its revenge on its new masters, insidiously screwing with foreign psyches. You’d see how young men, who had arrived as cheery, corn-fed boys, would, within a year, adopt that hardened, taciturn look that one usually associates with circus people. Selfish young hedonists quickly turned into selfish psychotic monsters — too much sexual success, money, vodka, drugs and cynicism in too short a time. Ames lived it and wrote about it. He described his encounters with heroin, teenage prostitutes and speed with a savage self-loathing and fueled, in his own words, by “vanity and spleen.” 
The story of The eXile is the story of an earlier, pre-boom Moscow, before gourmet supermarkets and sushi restaurants sprouted on every corner. The eXile was born in a place that was dark, vibrant and absolutely compelling. The money, the sin and the beautiful people — it was doomed, apocalyptic and transiently beautiful. The incandescent energy of the pretty, deluded party kids whom the paper wrote about could have lit up this blighted country for a century if channeled into anything other than self-destruction and oblivion. 
They were indeed strange and savage times, to borrow a phrase from U.S. author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson. And Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi were their greatest chroniclers. 

Owen Matthews, author of “Stalin’s Children,” is Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek magazine.

TITLE: A Crackdown On The Azeri Press
AUTHOR: By Matthew Collin
TEXT: It’s been some time since the name of Che Guevara struck fear into capitalist souls. Now the revolutionary is more of a money-spinner himself — a hip totem used to sell countless numbers of T-shirts and trinkets carrying his iconic bearded visage. But in Azerbaijan, it seems, his spirit still has the power to unsettle. Earlier this month, police raided an event at a cafe in Baku celebrating what would have been Guevara’s 80th birthday. About 20 of the young revelers were detained for questioning, including members of the Che Guevara Fan Club and journalists covering the event. 
One of them was Emin Huseinov, chairman of the Institute for Reporter Safety and Freedom and a tireless campaigner for media rights in a country where opposition journalists are regularly jailed for libeling government officials. At the police station, Huseinov says he was taken into a room where a man in civilian clothes and sunglasses, who had led the raid, pulled out a pistol and said, “I will destroy you.” Then he started hitting Huseinov with the gun. Shortly afterward, he passed out and was taken to hospital with head injuries.
Azeri officials deny this. The police initially claimed that Huseinov had actually injured himself. Then the Azeri Interior Ministry said Huseinov wasn’t beaten up but was hospitalized because of a previous illness. This is a reference to the trauma he suffered when seriously assaulted by police during the presidential election in Azerbaijan five years ago. 
Then came a response from Azerbaijan’s presidential administration, fingering Huseinov as some kind of agent provocateur for unnamed forces, flitting from outrage to outrage. “Unfortunately, Emin Huseinov has repeatedly ended up at the center of these kinds of well-planned provocations,” an official said. “Missionaries arrange some party and Emin Huseinov goes there. Someone organizes something in front of the presidential administration — he is there again.”
As this statement suggests, Huseinov isn’t exactly the darling of the Azeri authorities. Before starting his media freedom organization, he led a pro-democracy movement called Magam (It’s Time), modeled on the youth resistance groups involved in revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. 
But it is curious that the police felt the need to bust the Che Guevara party at all, particularly considering that only about 50 people were there. The Interior Ministry said it was because the event was “unauthorized,” while the presidential administration official suggested that it was “not the right time” to hold such meetings. When that time will come in Azerbaijan remains unclear.

Matthew Collin is a journalist in Tbilisi.

TITLE: Spain Break Jinx to Face Russia in Semis
AUTHOR: By Simon Baskett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VIENNA — It was not pretty but Spain finally managed to lay to rest the ghosts of their past failures by edging world champions Italy on penalties and clinching a place in the semifinals of Euro 2008.
Connoisseurs of the game will have been disappointed by the quality of football on show in a dour match at the Ernst Happel stadium but for Spain it was not the manner of their victory but the psychological effects that are so important.
Spain have always been in awe of Italy because of their deeply ingrained winning mentality but this time it was they who showed the greater resilience, an inner belief that they could and would win the match.
Penalties are, as players so often like to say, a lottery, but Spain looked confident they had fortune on their side and would notch their first competitive victory over the Azzurri at a major tournament outside the Olympics.
So often before they had promised much and delivered little, but on Sunday their young, talented side was able to overcome the quarterfinal barrier and book their place in the semifinals for the first time in 24 years.
“It was about time too,” said goalkeeper and captain Iker Casillas. “It would have been unbearable to go out again at this stage but this time we got the luck that has always deserted us before.”
Striker David Villa, who was successfully closed out of the game by an orderly Italy defense, agreed.
“We had to suffer a lot, but in the end it was worth it,” he said. “For some time now history has owed us a favor.”
Because of the vagaries of the draw at Euro 2008, Spain will now face Russia in the last four, the same team they beat 4-1 in their opening match at the tournament.
For previous Spain sides there might have been some danger of complacency after such a victory but coach Luis Aragones is already working to ensure his young charges take nothing for granted against their opponents.
“Like all the Spanish camp I’m delighted by this victory,” said the 69-year-old Spain coach. “But we’ve done nothing more than win a small battle.”
“It will be a very different game to the one we played in the group,” he said. “They’ve got a physically very fit side and have had an extra day’s rest. It will be extremely tough for us.
“Russia are at their peak given the way their season works and they were outstanding against the Dutch in extra time. It will be very difficult because they have a very good side.”
After disposing of the world champions, Spain are determined not to let their chance of ending their reputation as big stage chokers pass them by.
“As a team we have matured a lot and we have shown that we are able to compete with anyone,” said fullback Joan Capdevila. “We want to give everyone in Spain something to cheer about.”

TITLE: MDC Pulls Out Of Zimbabwe Vote
AUTHOR: By Nelson Banya
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HARARE — Zimbabwe’s MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai will urge Africa this week to pile pressure on President Robert Mugabe to solve the country’s political crisis after the opposition pulled out of a presidential run-off vote.
Tsvangirai withdrew from the June 27 election saying his Movement for Democratic Change supporters would be risking their lives it they cast their votes.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Tsvangirai would lobby the international community and African countries to put pressure on Mugabe to settle the crisis.
“Over the next two days, the (MDC) president will be explaining our decision to the world, lobbying the international community, but mainly SADC and the African Union, to put pressure on the Mugabe regime to resolve the crisis we are facing,” Chamisa said, referring to the regional grouping the Southern African Development Community.
“We need this regime to respect democracy and the will of the people,” he added.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged the United Nations to hold a “full discussion” on the issue at Monday’s Security Council session.
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Monday he sympathized with Tsvangirai’s decision and his government added it was looking to increase sanctions against Zimbabwe.
“We are looking at whether we can enhance any of those and whether there are sanctions that we can bring to bear in other areas,” Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Australian radio, referring to financial restrictions and visa bans for Mugabe and his associates.
Tsvangirai said there was a state-sponsored plot to keep Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980, in power.
“We in the MDC cannot ask (voters) to cast their vote on June 27, when that vote could cost them their lives.”
There was no immediate reaction from Mugabe who in the past has blamed election violence on the opposition but Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Tsvangirai had simply quit the race because he knew he would lose.
There has been growing condemnation from African countries over Zimbabwe’s political crisis and the violence which the MDC says has left 86 people dead.

TITLE: All Eyes On Nadal At Wimbledon
AUTHOR: By Clare Lovell
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Tennis shops near Wimbledon have done a brisk trade in replicas of Rafael Nadal’s recent vivid green match-winning shirt, testament, perhaps, to his status as a real threat to Roger Federer’s dominance at the championships.
Many former and current players have tipped Nadal, who will revert to the traditional Wimbledon white when the tournament starts on Monday, to break Federer’s 59-match grasscourt winning streak, which has brought him five Wimbledon titles in a row.
Nadal crushed the world number one in the French Open final two weeks ago, allowing him only four games, and went on to win his first grasscourt title at Queen’s a week later to prove he was not master merely of clay.
The 22-year-old Spaniard, runner-up to Federer at Wimbledeon the last two years, is not talking up his chances, however.
He scoffed at reporters this weekend who suggested Federer might be vulnerable, pointing out the Swiss had just won the Halle warm-up tournament.
Big serving American Andy Roddick, runner-up in 2004 and 2005, is also contemptuous of Federer doubters.
Roddick, seeded six, said when he was asked whether the world number one could win the title: “I found that to be one of the most ridiculous questions I’ve ever answered in my life.
“You know he’s won it five times. I’m not sure what else he has to do.”
Third seed Novak Djokovic, forced to pull out against Nadal in the semi-finals last year with blisters but who has since won the Australian Open, was one of the equivocal voices.
“Quite some things have changed this year,” he said.
“It’s becoming more interesting to see some new names, new faces winning major titles,” the Serb said.
“Roger is still the number one player in the world... it’s normal to have ups and downs and he’s feeling the pressure a little bit,” Djokovic added.
Djokovic’s compatriot Ana Ivanovic, who followed his major-winning exploits with the French Open crown, is also aiming to put a new name on the women’s title winning board at the All England Club.
It is a daunting prospect for the ever-cheerful new world number one given that several names appearing in the draw also feature on the board.
Defending champion Venus Williams is looking for a fifth title and few would discount her chances or those of her sister twice former champion Serena, given their grasscourt power game and their love of the big stage.
Maria Sharapova, winner in 2004 at the age of 17, took herself away from tennis “to rest body and mind” after a poor showing at the French open and returned keen to restore her number one ranking.
“There’s lots of big competitors in the draw, different types of players... Hopefully it will all come together,” Sharapova said.
The Russian is seeded to meet second seed Jelena Jankovic in the semi-finals. Spurred on by the success of her Serbian compatriots, Jankovic said: “It just shows I can also win it.”

TITLE: Obama Braces For Race-Based Attacks
AUTHOR: By Charles Babington
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — A presidential candidate who’s named Hussein and wears a turban? A building that’s called the White House but run by a black guy?
Those political images and ideas already have found their way onto TV airwaves and campaign buttons, possible harbingers of racially tinged messages in a general election involving the first black candidate to head a major party’s ticket.
Though the election is more than four months away, the campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are shaping their strategies for dealing with such appeals.
The Obama campaign vows to fight back fiercely and fast, not repeating John Kerry’s mistake of waiting to respond to the 2004 “Swift Boat” ads that Democrats saw as a smear of his military record. McCain’s camp is alert for attacks on its man, too.
The McCain campaign promises to condemn any race-based political appeals. But it also insists it won’t stand still for false charges of racism or for allegations merely aimed at preventing criticism of Obama on legitimate issues.
“Every word will be twisted to make it about race,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a McCain adviser. When he and others confront Obama on issues such as national security and the economy, Graham said, it will have “nothing to do with him being an African-American.”
Obama adviser David Axelrod said the Democrat’s campaign will be on high alert for code words or innuendo meant to play on voters’ racial sentiments. “We’re going to be aggressive about pushing back on anything that we feel is inappropriate or misleading,” he said.
It’s not enough for McCain to say he cannot control independent groups airing racially charged ads on his behalf, Axelrod said, noting that the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” was independent of President Bush’s campaign.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” he said. “And we’re not going to be passive in the face of those kinds of tactics.”
Racially charged criticism of Obama already has surfaced in several states.
Shortly before North Carolina’s May 6 primary, the state Republican Party aired a TV ad linking Democratic candidates to Obama, who was described as “too extreme” because of his ties to the retired Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
Obama eventually ended his relationship with Wright, his longtime pastor who had been criticized for sermons in which he cursed America and accused the government of conspiring against blacks. The state party ignored McCain’s repeated calls to kill the ad.
Political professionals differ on how much racially tinged campaigning might emerge this summer and fall. Terry Holt, a strategist who worked on President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, said Republicans know that McCain has no tolerance for such tactics. For the McCain campaign, he said, “it’s not about what Obama looks like, it’s about what he’s going to act like.”

TITLE: More Than 800 Feared Lost at Sea as Ferry Capsizes
AUTHOR: By Manny Mogato
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CEBU, Philippines — Rescuers held little hope on Monday of finding some 800 people missing from a capsized ferry in the Philippines, as divers prepared to drill into the ship’s hull in the hope of finding survivors in air pockets.
Coast guard boats searched the area around the ferry, which capsized during a typhoon with gusts up of to 195 kilometers-per-hour on Saturday afternoon. By Monday only 33 people had been found alive.
A spokesman for the navy said a team approached the ship on Sunday afternoon to check for possible survivors.
“We just approached the hull of the ship, we got near and then banged, knocked in order for us to give a sign if ever there are still people inside,” Lieutenant-Colonel Edgard Arevalo said. “Unfortunately there was no response.”
Typhoon Fengshen pounded the archipelago at the weekend, washing away houses and roads and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. Aside from the ferry disaster, a further 155 people were killed, according to the Red Cross.
A U.S. vessel was en route to help with search efforts and was expected to reach the site in around 15 hours, Jesus Dureza, a spokesman from the presidential palace said.
Nine male corpses believed to be passengers from the MV Princess of Stars washed ashore on the central island of Masbate on Monday.
“The bodies were bloated and decomposing. What we did was just to wrap them up and buried them right away,” a local mayor told radio.
Photographs showed only the tip of the ship’s bow visible above the waves.
In the worst-hit province of Iloilo, damage to agriculture and infrastructure was pegged at 1.7 billion pesos ($38 million).
The Department of Agriculture said in a statement nearly 250,000 ha of farmland was damaged, mostly paddy fields, at a cost of nearly 555 million pesos.
Disaster officials were worried about food supplies for evacuees, crammed into schools, churches and townhalls.
“I don’t think they have enough rice to tide them over,” Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines’ Red Cross, told local television.
The typhoon is currently over the South China Sea and is expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it moves northwards.
It will likely bring heavy rain and winds to Taiwan and Zhangzhou and Fuzhou in China in the next few days according to storm tracker website www.tropicalstormrisk.com.
A passenger picked up by a fishing boat and 28 others who landed at a small coastal village after drifting for more than 24 hours in a rubber boat, were the latest survivors from the Princess of Stars.
Fifteen people were reported dead.
Philippine transport authorities said on Monday they had grounded the vessels of ferry company Sulpicio Lines for inspection. The company’s ships have been involved in three other major disasters over the past 21 years.
In 1987, the Sulpicio-owned Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker killing more than 4,000 people in the world’s worst peacetime sea tragedy.
Distraught relatives of the 845-plus people on board the vessel complained to Sulpicio employees while waiting for news in the central city of Cebu, where the Princess of Stars was meant to dock.
“You can’t bring our loved ones back. You should be held responsible,” one woman told employees of the company.
A floor of the passenger terminal was converted into a mini chapel with a makeshift altar. Nuns and priests comforted those waiting.
During an emotional Catholic mass, one man pounded the wall in grief over his missing son.
Edward Go, one of Sulpicio’s owners, said the company was relying on the coast guard for information.
“We fully understand the feelings of the people and we are prepared to help them in any way we can, but, as of now there is really no information available,” he told Reuters.
The Red Cross’ Gordon said a survivor described mountainous waves and chaos as the ship went down on Saturday afternoon.
“According to him it was so dark, it was high noon but it was so dark, and there was too much rain and the waves were just too much for the ship,” Gordon said.
An archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines is hit by an average of 20 typhoons a year and has a long history of shipping tragedies.

TITLE: Russia Ecstatic at Victory
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vast numbers of ecstatic Russians celebrated well into the night after their team reached the Euro 2008 semi-finals on Saturday with a thoroughly deserved 3-1 extra-time win over Netherlands.
Hundreds of thousands of Muscovites poured on to the streets within minutes of the final whistle in Basel where Russia, coached by Dutchman Guus Hiddink, stunned their much fancied opponents with a great display of attacking football.
The area around the Kremlin in Moscow’s centre was jammed as people of all ages cheered euphorically at the unexpected result. Fans danced on phone booths and climbed on car roofs as the normally stern police kept a distance.
“We finally did it. Congratulations to everyone,” yelled a young fan, wrapped in the Russian flag as he walked along the Manezh Square, metres away from the red-brick Kremlin walls.
Others praised Dutch-born coach Hiddink. “Guus, Guus, Guus”, the fans shouted into the warm night air.
According to Moscow police, nearly 500,000 fans joined the party across the city of over 12 million people.
“In the city center alone we had more than 200,000 people celebrating the Russian victory,” a police spokesman was quoted as saying by local media.
President Dmitry Medvedev also congratulated the players on their win and suggested their Dutch manager could receive an unexpected reward.
The team “played very well. This is our common victory,” Medvedev said during an official visit to Belarus. He smiled when asked about Hiddink’s future and said Russia may “give citizenship” to him.
Russian television stations on Sunday also showed fans partying in the streets and in bars across the country, from Siberia in the far east to Sochi on the Black Sea to the south.
Broadcasters showed similar celebrations in former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan and Georgia, both independent countries now.
In Moscow, the post-midnight revellers packed the streets with thousands of jubilant fans waving national flags, yelling “Rossiya, Rossiya” and blocking traffic along the main roads.
Motorists honked their horns as passengers hung precariously from windows and others set off fireworks.
Russia will now take on Spain in the semi-final on Thursday.
It was 20 years ago, in 1988, as part of the Soviet Union, that Russia made the European Championship final in Germany but lost 2-0 to the Dutch, whose current coach Marco van Basten was on the scoresheet with a superb volley.
Thousands of riot police were on guard throughout Moscow on Saturday to keep the celebrations under control but there were no major disturbances or serious injuries reported.

TITLE: Massa Wins French Grand Prix, Hamilton’s Season Gets Harder
AUTHOR: By Alan Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MAGNY-COURS, France — Felipe Massa led a Ferrari one-two to win the French Grand Prix on Sunday and take the lead in the Formula One championship for the first time.
Massa’s third victory of the season, and eighth of his career, made the 27-year-old Sao Paulo driver the first Brazilian to lead the standings since the late triple champion Ayrton Senna in 1993.
Team mate Kimi Raikkonen, the world champion who won at Magny-Cours last year, led from pole but was overtaken by Massa just after the halfway mark when his Ferrari slowed with a broken exhaust.
Massa took the chequered flag 17.9 seconds clear of Raikkonen on an overcast and damp afternoon at the circuit in the heart of rural France.
“I didn’t expect that, sometimes you need a little bit of luck,” said Massa after Ferrari’s third one-two of the season.
“The championship is still 100 percent open and we still have many races to go.
“It’s nice but my dream is not to lead the championship, it is to win the championship. And I’m going to do my best to achieve that.”
Raikkonen could not hide his disappointment but, with his car almost stopping in the closing stages, accepted the second place.
“I’ll take the eight points and it looks much better in the championship,” he told reporters.
Italy’s Jarno Trulli gave Toyota, mourning the recent death of former team principal Ove Andersson, their first podium finish since the Australian Grand Prix of April, 2006, after holding off McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen in a thrilling chase to the line.
The two cars came close to banging wheels on the penultimate lap as Kovalainen tried in vain to pass.
“I don’t think we touched, just wheel-to-wheel like we did in go-karting,” said the Italian, whose last podium finish was with Toyota in May 2005. “I’d love to fight every race like that.”
Poland’s Robert Kubica, the championship leader for BMW-Sauber before Sunday’s race after winning in Canada, finished fifth with Red Bull’s Australian Mark Webber sixth.
Renault’s Brazilian rookie Nelson Piquet finally took his first point in Formula One, at the eighth attempt, with seventh place ahead of team mate and double world champion Fernando Alonso in eighth.
Massa, the fourth driver to lead the championship in the space of four races, now has 48 points to Kubica’s 46 with Raikkonen ending a two-race barren run to move up to third place with 43.
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who had been level with Massa in second place, finished 10th after starting 13th due to a 10-place penalty on the grid incurred for colliding with Raikkonen in the Canadian Gp pit lane. The 23-year-old Briton suffered a further blow when he picked up a drive-through penalty after 13 laps that dropped him from ninth to 16th place.

TITLE: Mandela In London For 90th Birthday
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Nelson Mandela is in London for a week of events to celebrate his 90th birthday.
The former South African president’s plane landed at Heathrow Airport Monday morning.
He is due to attend an outdoor concert in his honor in Hyde Park on Friday. Performers include Queen, Annie Lennox, Leona Lewis and the Soweto Gospel Choir. Troubled diva Amy Winehouse is also scheduled to sing, if her doctors allow it. She was taken to a hospital last week after fainting at home.
Proceeds from the concert will go to the 46664 charity, the AIDS charity named for the number Mandela wore while imprisoned by South Africa’s apartheid authorities.
Mandela also is due to meet prominent supporters, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
Mandela, who turns 90 on July 18, has visited London many times, and has expressed gratitude to the city for the constant vigil that was held outside the South African Embassy during the apartheid years.
Friday’s concert coincides with the 20th anniversary of London’s Free Mandela concert, held to demand he be freed from prison. He was released in 1990 after 27 years behind bars, and was elected South Africa’s first black president.