SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1391 (55), Friday, July 18, 2008
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TITLE: TNK-BP Chief Hit By New Headaches
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Migration Service has until Saturday to decide whether to extend the visa of TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley, in a key decision in the shareholder dispute between BP and its Russian partners in the 50-50 joint venture.
Dudley’s visa expires on Saturday and, unless it is extended, he will have to leave Russia — and TNK-BP — within 10 days, a spokeswoman for the Federal Migration Service said Wednesday.
At issue is the contract that Dudley supplied with his application for a work visa earlier this month, the spokeswoman said. It expired at the end of last year, but officials could still recognize it as valid, she said.
Dudley’s expulsion would be a blow to relations with foreign investors and raise doubts over repeated government statements that it is not involved in the dispute.
Most recently, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that, “We have repeatedly said that the problem is exclusively one of relations between economic entities.”
The dispute over British-Russian oil company TNK-BP has entered a “new phase” and the feuding sides are “poles apart,” the company’s chief executive was quoted as saying Thursday.
“We have entered a new phase in the shareholder dispute, when people in the company are poles apart,” the Interfax news agency quoted TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley as saying.
Dudley described a new lawsuit accusing him of discrimination against Russian employees in British oil giant BP’s joint venture as “a cynical step, nothing more than PR aimed at destroying the company.”
Sixteen TNK-BP managers filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Dudley and TNK-BP’s foreign directors of discriminating against Russian employees by paying higher salaries to foreigners, news agencies reported.
Lawyers for the 16 managers denied the lawsuit was linked to the dispute that has been tearing apart TNK-BP, a 50-50 joint venture between British oil major BP and a consortium of Russian industrialists known as AAR.
The departure of Dudley, a U.S. citizen, would be a victory for four Russian shareholders in TNK-BP — Viktor Vekselberg, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Len Blavatnik — who have accused him of putting BP’s interests ahead of theirs in the joint venture and calling for his replacement.
The Russian shareholders say BP has sent too many of its own high-paid employees to work at TNK-BP and has blocked foreign expansion abroad to protect its own international activities. BP has replied with the charge that the Russian side is trying to take control of the company.
Federal Migration Service lawyers are studying whether the contract could be considered valid under a clause in the Labor Code that says contracts remain in force after they expire unless one party to the contract wants it terminated, the service’s spokeswoman said.
The Russian shareholders, who are grouped in a consortium called AAR, appear to have demanded just that.
Dudley’s contract calls for him to remain in place until a replacement is appointed, AAR chief Stan Polovets said Wednesday. But he also said a law stipulating that CEOs can only serve for a fixed period takes precedence.
Polovets reiterated Wednesday that BP should name a replacement for Dudley. The contract between the sides says BP chooses candidates for the position.
“AAR has clearly stated that it would like a new CEO to be independent [and] without any ties to either side,” Polovets said by e-mail.
Marina Dracheva, a spokeswoman for TNK-BP, declined to comment on how the company would operate if Dudley has to leave but said the company was in contact with the migration service in an effort to avoid that outcome.
BP said it regarded Dudley as still holding office.
“We believe that Bob Dudley’s contract is still valid and that all the correct documentation was given to the FMS,” BP spokesman Toby Odone, said by e-mail.
(SPT, AFP)

TITLE: Murder of Last Tsar Marked 90 Years Later
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia on Thursday marked the 90th anniversary of the murder of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, a day after investigators announced that DNA analysis has finally identified the remains of the tsar’s heir, Alexei, and his sister Maria.
Prince Dimitry Romanov, a great-great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas I, was in St. Petersburg this week to attend a service Thursday at the Peter and Paul Cathedral commemorating the anniversary of the execution of his ancestors by Bolsheviks in 1918.
“We live abroad, yet we feel we belong to Russia,” Romanov told reporters in Russian on Wednesday. “After the downfall of Communism it became possible to visit Russia, and I come here every year.”
Romanov’s visits are prompted by much more than a tragic family connection and nostalgia for the old Russia. Romanov has found a place for himself in the country and a noble mission.
In the eyes of many, the pre-Revolutionary traditions of charity and sponsorship, in which the Imperial Romanovs played an important part, have not yet been revived. However Dimitry Romanov runs a charitable foundation that helps disabled people in Russia, and other CIS countries, with programs for blind and deaf children. 
The foundation was set up in 1992 in Paris, when seven representatives of the former royal family gathered to discuss their attitude to changes in Russia.
“It would be shameful to make demands on Russia,” Romanov said.  “The country lost so much during World War II. So we decided to help in a non-political way.”
“The Romanovs are not interested in politics; neither do we seek any power or the throne,” said Ivan Artsishevsky, the Representative of Romanov family in the Russian Federation and head of the State Protocol Service in St. Petersburg. “They love Russia and care for the country in a way that only deserves respect.”
Dimitry Romanov welcomed this week’s announcement of the results of the genetic tests which established that remains discovered near the royal family’s execution sight near Yekaterinburg belong to Maria and Alexei, two children of Nicholas II whose bodies had not been found along with the remains of the other Romanovs during 1991 excavations.
“It is crucially important that we now have these official results which give us 100-percent certainty,” he said. “A credible scientific method of identification has been used and we have to trust it. If ten or fifteen years from now more sophisticated research establishes that the bones do not belong to the Romanovs, well, we will have to accept it.”
Although details of the forthcoming burial of Grand Duchess Maria and Crown Prince Alexei have not yet been discussed on an official level, Romanov said the family believes that the two children of Nicholas II should be buried alongside the rest of the family at the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Earlier this summer, Eduard Rossel, the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, suggested the remains should be buried in the area where they were discovered.
Romanov said his family disagrees. 
“Of course, it would be only natural for members of a family to be buried and rest in peace together,” he said.
Artsishevsky said that preparations for the burial of Maria and Alexei may take several years.
“For the reburial of Empress Maria Fyodorovna [in Sept. 2006], a state commission created specifically for this purpose by the president took a year to prepare the ceremony,” he said.
Dimitry Romanov, who escorted the remains of the last tsar’s family from Yekaterinburg in 1997, recalls that time as the most traumatic and sad event in his life.
While the burial of Nicholas II and his family in 1998 was an international event, the story was very personal dimension for living Romanovs.
“The memory of holding a box in my arms with the remains of Nicholas II still gives me shivers,” Romanov said.
“My father never came to Russia; neither did he discuss the Bolshevik massacre of our ancestors with me,” he said. “He sought to protect my emotions, and such conversations would have obviously and quite understandably been tortuous for him. But the truth about this crime is something all of us Russians need to know.”
Under the Communists, a distorted image of Nicholas II was presented to students in Soviet schools and universities, and he was an unpopular — even despised — historical figure.
Today Russian people are becoming increasingly sympathetic to the country’s last tsar. In a poll to select the most significant Russian historical figure currently being held by Rossia television, Nicholas II is in the lead, ahead of Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin, who ranks second. 

See related story on page V of All About Town.

TITLE: Khodorkovsky Challenges Medvedev Over Parole
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky applied for parole on Wednesday in a bid to challenge President Dmitry Medvedev to follow through on promises to build an independent judiciary, his lawyers said.
The case could be the first test of Medvedev’s desire to enforce the rule of law in a country that consistently ranks near the bottom of corruption rankings, said Igor Trunov, a high-profile lawyer not connected to the Khodorkovsky case.
Medvedev has kicked off his presidency with promises to combat rampant corruption and “legal nihilism,” yet critics remain skeptical as to whether rhetoric will be transformed into tangible results.
“These words should be applied to real cases,” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Yury Shmidt told a news conference. “If [Medvedev] succeeds in achieving the independence of the courts, it won’t just be a reform, but a revolution.”
Khodorkovsky’s arrest in October 2003, on charges of fraud and tax evasion, was widely seen as a turning point toward greater state control in the rule of Medvedev’s predecessor, Vladimir Putin. Kremlin critics claim that Khodorkovsky was the target of selective justice, and many observers saw the case against the man who was once Russia’s richest as politically motivated.
Khodorkovsky, sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison upon being found guilty by a Moscow court, became eligible for parole in October 2007 after serving half the length of his sentence.
Yet even if the court in Chita, a city 5,000 kilometers east of Moscow, agrees to free Khodorkovsky, the former tycoon would remain imprisoned until a second case brought against him last year is heard.
Khodorkovsky’s pretrial detention on the second series of charges, which were brought in February 2007 and accuse him of large-scale embezzlement and money laundering, was last week extended until Nov. 2.
“We are treating these as two separate cases,” Vadim Klyuvgant, another lawyer for Khodorkovsky, told the news conference.
Trunov, who represented victims of the Dubrovka hostage siege, said Khodorkovsky technically had good chances for parole but cautioned that the politicized record of the courts would likely work against him.
“The opinion of the president will be taken into account, of course. Everyone knows the phone lines have not been cut,” Trunov said. Klyuvgant said lawyers turned in the parole request to the Ingodinsky District Court in Chita on Wednesday afternoon and that the court had 10 working days to acknowledge receipt of the documents, after which hearings could begin. 
“This is not an exceptional case,” Shmidt said. “It’s not a request for a pardon or amnesty.”
Despite refusing to approach Medvedev with a request for a presidential pardon, which would require an admission of guilt, Khodorkovsky’s lawyers said Medvedev should prove his commitment to upholding the rule of law.
“The end of legal nihilism won’t come on its own,” Klyuvgant said. “To sit around and wait for it ... would be naive.”
Were it to accept Khodorkovsky’s request for parole, “the court would be upholding the call of the president to combat legal nihilism,” he said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s departure from the Kremlin was key in the lawyers’ ability to convince Khodorkovsky to apply for parole, they said.
“Through conversations, Khodorkovsky made it clear that he has no complaints against Medvedev, and Medvedev doesn’t have any private complaints against him,” Shmidt said. “Medvedev did not put him in jail.”

TITLE: eXile Returns Online After Paper’s Closure
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The defunct alternative Moscow biweekly The eXile has launched a new web site, a month after its investors withdrew funding following a government inspection of its editorial content.
The new site, http://exiledonline.com, went up Monday and appears to be maintaining an editorial line similar to the newspaper and its old site. Editor and founder Mark Ames said in a message on the site that the main journalists would continue to write for the site, which will now focus more on the United States.
But co-editor Yasha Levine, the only eXile editor who will remain in Moscow, said Russia would still figure in the new project.
“We’ve basically gone global,” Levine said by telephone Wednesday. 
“But as long as I can hold out here, Russia is going to be a main focus.”

TITLE: Anti-Skyscraper Movement Collects Petition Signatures
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Living City, a pressure group that lobbies for the preservation of St. Petersburg’s historic center and heritage buildings, has collected nearly 2,000 signatures in a petition against skyscraper construction close to the city’s historic center, activist Pyotr Zabirokhin said on Thursday.  
The activists, who demonstrated on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa for nearly a week between last Friday and Thursday, are demanding that the newly built Stock Exchange be lowered from its height of 67 meters and that the Finansist residential complex be lowered from its height of 65 meters. They contest that these buildings have damaged the city’s famous view of Vasilyevsky Island’s Strelka by being too tall.
Living City says the buildings must not breach a 48-meter tall limit stated in 2004 height regulations that remained in force when the skyscrapers were designed and built.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko has admitted the new buildings violate the restriction but has insisted that the Stock Exchange be lowered by only 3.7 meters to comply with a permit that had been issued by the City Hall, which, in its turn, exceeded existing height regulations. 
The city’s preservationist movement argues that the view will not be restored by this minimal measure, even if it is undertaken.
“It has already been admitted that the Stock Exchange and Finansist are town-planning errors, and, correspondingly, we want to get the authorities not only to admit this but also correct the errors,” Zabirokhin said.
“We also want to call on [the authorities] to reconsider other skyscraper projects that have already been built, such as Monblan, Severniye Zerkala, Premier Palace and others, and to prevent such errors in the future.”
Living City is also demanding the reinstatement of the now-abolished 48-meter height restriction. 
“[The city authorities] abolished it with a secret phone vote between members of the government in December and introduced [the new, more vague regulations] officially in April,” Zabirokhin said.
The terms of the Living City petition include the 396-meter tall, RMJM-designed Gazprom Tower, part of the Okhta center development. 
Living City is planning to continue the campaign on its website, www.save-spb.ru, for another two weeks, according to Zabirokhin. The petition will be sent to Matviyenko and town planners, he said.

TITLE: Court Rejects Bid to Annul Elections
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova and Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by the Communist Party to have the results of the State Duma elections annulled on the grounds of what the party described as massive electoral violations.
Judge Nikolai Tolcheyev issued a short ruling to wrap up the two-day hearing, saying only that the court had decided to dismiss the complaint and that the full ruling would be issued in writing in the coming days.
The Communists presented 12,000 documents as evidence of electoral fraud in the Dec. 2 elections, in which they captured 11.6 percent of the vote, far behind the 64 percent garnered by pro-Kremlin party United Russia, which now has a constitutional majority in the Duma.
Among other purported violations, the Communists claimed that they had proof 200,000 votes were stolen from them in favor of United Russia.
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who was not present in court Wednesday, said he was not surprised by the ruling.
“We’ve had no doubt that the Supreme Court would not have enough will to admit the falsification of the parliamentary elections in favor of the party of power,” Zyuganov said, Interfax reported.
Vadim Solovyov, a lawyer for the Communists, said the party would appeal the ruling and would take its case to the European Court of Human Rights should the appeal be rejected.
“The court was polite but not objective, and it did not examine the evidence presented [by us],” Solovyov told reporters in the courtroom after the hearing. 
The party also accused United Russia of cheating voters by having more than 100 prominent candidates on its lists who subsequently did not take up their Duma seats, including then-President Vladimir Putin, who headed the United Russia ticket.

TITLE: Napolitano Backs New Security Pact
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday praised Russian proposals for new broad security framework for Europe, saying he would promote the idea within the European Union, in the warmest response so far from a Western politician to the Kremlin’s overtures. 
Russia’s cooperation within the Group of Eight major economies and investment opportunities were also high on the agenda as Napolitano met with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for talks Wednesday. 
“I personally listened to the ideas regarding a new architecture for Euro-Atlantic security put forward by the president with great interest,” Napolitano told reporters after the talks. “Italy’s position will be one of special attention to this issue and openess to deeper discussions of the proposal within the European Union.” 
Medvedev has called for a new European security pact that would also include countries like the United States and Canada, saying at an EU-Russia summit last month in Khanty-Mansiisk that existing security blocks like NATO or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were imperfect because they didn’t account for the interests of all European countries. Medvedev also brought the issue up with European leaders at the G8 summit on the Japanese island of Hokkaido earlier this month but has received a lukewarm response. 
Meeting with Napolitano later in the day, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia was pleased with the support from Italy, a NATO member. 
“We’ve always counted on and have not been mistaken in relying on your country’s support in our dialogue with Europe, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” Putin said, in comments posted on the government’s web site. 
Putin added that Russia has watched countries like Italy closely in developing its political system. 
“For us, it is by no means uninteresting and unimportant to look at similar processes in other countries, including one of Europe’s leading countries  — Italy,” Putin said. 
While the president is the head of state in Italy, the position is largely ceremonial, with the majority of power lying with the prime minister. 
Putin’s comments were particularly interesting in light of an address by Medvedev to a gathering of Russian ambassadors on Tuesday, in which the president outlined a foreign policy strategy granting Putin unprecedented authority for a prime minister in implementing foreign policy. 
Medvedev, who called Napolitano, 83, “one of Europe’s most authoritative politicians,” said Italy’s chairmanship of the G8 next year put added emphasis on the bilateral ties. 
The Kremlin could be looking for support following increased claims by some Western officials that Russia doesn’t belong in the G8, after allegations that it backtracked on sanctions against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. Moscow vetoed a UN Security Council resolution Friday calling for an arms embargo and financial and travel restrictions on Mugabe.

TITLE: Uncut Text of Solzhenitsyn’s ‘First Circle’ Due in English
AUTHOR: By Hillel Italie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — An uncut edition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle,” a highly praised and controversial novel published 40 years ago and heavily edited because of its story of a Soviet prison camp, is coming out in English. 
“‘The First Circle’ is one of the most important novels of the 20th century, and we are thrilled to be making this masterpiece available in its full glory,” Carrie Kania, senior vice president and publisher of Harper Perennial, said in a statement Tuesday.
Harper Perennial, a paperback imprint of HarperCollins, will release “The First Circle” in 2009. Solzhenitsyn, 89, winner in 1970 of the Nobel Prize in literature, returned to Russia in the 1990s and now lives in Moscow. 
The novel, completed in 1964 and banned by Soviet officials even after Solzhenitsyn cut nine chapters, is set in a gulag where scientists and scholars have been sent for alleged subversion against the Stalinist regime. A shortened, 580-page version of “The First Circle” came out in English in 1968 — the text had mysteriously been leaked out of the Soviet Union — despite objections by the author, who believed that his work was being exploited for profit, and by scholars who feared that the book’s release could jeopardize his safety. 
Solzhenitsyn’s struggles — the manuscript of his novel was seized by the KGB — set off an extended Cold War debate and assured “The First Circle” a welcome reception in the United States.
The full edition has long been available in Russian; mortality, not censorship, helped delay its U.S. release.

TITLE: German Peace Plan Gets Cool Response
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TBILISI — Germany’s foreign minister received a cool response Thursday to a peace plan drawn up in Berlin aimed at ending a dangerous dispute over the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier started a two-day trip in Tbilisi that will also take him to Russia and Abkhazia in a bid to defuse a conflict that brought the region to the brink of war just months ago.
Steinmeier, whose country chairs the so-called United Nations Group of Friends of the Secretary General on Georgia, said the situation in Abkhazia was “difficult and tense.”
He aims to thrash out a way forward based on a three-stage peace proposal drawn up by Berlin and presented to the three parties over the past week.
His Georgian counterpart Eka Tkeshelashvili said after talks with Steinmeier that she found Berlin’s initiative “interesting” but told reporters that the plan would still have to be “refined”.
“The most difficult part will be to persuade Russia to be constructive in this process,” she told reporters.
The first step of the plan would entail an end to violence, confidence-building measures over the next year that could lead to the resumption of direct talks between Georgia and Abkhazia.

TITLE: Russia Freezes Foreign Loans for Next Three Years
AUTHOR: By Boris Kamchev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Finance Ministry announced last month that Russia does not intend to take out foreign loans between 2009 and 2011 because the federal budget has enough money for all its planned investment and additional needs.
Since late 2007, Russian foreign debt has declined 14.6 percent to $44.2 billion, according to RIA Novosti news agency. $1.6 billion of Russia’s debt is owed to the Paris Club of Creditor Nations, while in January 2008, loans from former Soviet republics stood at $7.2 billion — debt inherited from the Soviet Union. The remainder of the debt is in Eurobonds, amounting to $28.6 billion, and new foreign debt including loans from international finance organization ($5.1 billion) and loans extended by foreign governments ($1.74 billion).
Soaring oil and gas prices have provided the Russian state with the possibility of paying back the total foreign debt, but western financial institutions are not prepared to accept full repayment. According to experts, the foreign loans taken out under former Russian president Boris Yeltsin were granted at higher interest rates, and the recent crises on the global financial markets and lower interest rates at Western banks would therefore make repaying the debts “ineffective.”
Dmitry Pankin, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Finance, believes the problem is that the old system of regulating international finances established in the aftermath of World War II, with its strong reliance on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, is flawed and unable to solve the problems related to these crises.
“The U.S. dollar has become an international problem,” said President Dmitry Medvedev in a recent interview with Reuters, pointing out that the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. and tumbling share prices in the west are affecting the Russian market as well.
Russia’s relative economic strength, termed by some an “island of stability” amid the storm of global financial crises, carries significant political weight. In the nineties, when Russia was among the poorest debtor countries and facing an economic meltdown, Yeltsin had to make major concessions to the west, especially when the deadlines for interest payments were looming. His successors, former president-turned Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Medvedev are now in quite a different position. 
While the state has rapidly decreased its foreign debts, the same cannot be said about Russian commercial banks. Private and commercial Russian banks have large amounts of foreign debt because they applied for loans from western financial institutions, where interest rates are much lower than in Russia — while the interest rate on loans announced by the Central Bank in December last year was 10.8 percent per annum, rates in the U.S. range from 4.9 percent to 6.38 percent, according to the National Credit Union.
After the shares tumbled last week in two leading U.S. home loan agencies in which $104 billion of Russian gold and currency has been invested, the Finance Ministry denied there was any risk to the Russian economy, saying that the money was invested in bonds, not shares. The ministry said that the U.S. government has publicly declared its willingness to financially support these companies, and that their bond prices will remain stable.
Both the leading U.S. mortgage companies, Fannie Mae — the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac — the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, saw their share prices plunge last week amid investor fears of new losses from falling house prices.
According to the Finance Ministry, the bonds were purchased using the currency deposits of the Russian Central Bank and “not a single dollar of the Stabilization Fund or the National Prosperity Fund has been invested in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has stoked the debate in Russia on why foreign gold and currency reserves have been invested abroad instead of being spent on the country’s industry and development. 
“If we invest part of the foreign currency reserves in developing strategic and infrastructure projects, perhaps we would create tens of thousands of new jobs, but we would automatically boost inflation,” said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin recently. Kudrin is a fervent opponent of investing federal gold and currency reserves in domestic industry and infrastructure. 
Observers have described his position in Putin’s government as “influential,” claiming he is a member of Putin and Medvedev’s “Petersburg clan.”

TITLE: Locals Protest Against Second Timber Plant Near Novgorod
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Rozhkov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The German wood-based panel product manufacturer Pfleiderer laid the first stone for the building of its second plant on Monday near the village of Podberyozie in the Novgorod Oblast, where around 30 locals staged a picket protesting in German against the construction.  
The protesters believe that the plant, which the company hopes will double its production rates by 2010, may endanger lives and worsen the ecology of the district. Pfleiderer AG is currently being sued by a person who claims that he developed a disease due to the production. Veliky Novgorod City Court has demanded a new set of ecological tests, but officials from Rospotrebnadzor — Russia’s  federal service for the protection of consumer rights — say that ecological standards are not being violated.
“Our service has conducted numerous tests,” said the deputy head of the Novgorod Oblast’s Rospotrebnadzor, Leonid Petrov. “An increase in the disease rate was not confirmed.”  Petrov said the village is located one kilometer from the plant — more than three times the sanitary limitations set by law.   
“The construction of wood-processing enterprises and long-term leasing are the two strategies for the development of the timber industry in the Novgorod Oblast,” said Sergei Mitin, Governor of the Novgorod Oblast.  He said it was crucial to be able to process wood locally, as low quality timber, mainly aspen, dominates  the Novgorod Oblast, totalling up to 80 percent of entire forestry. 
“We have all kinds of timber industries in the region, such as plyboard, fiberboard and paper manufacturing. But unfortuately, the focus is on round and high quality timber which is exported and processed, whereas low quality timber is neglected,” said Mitin, adding that timber imports comprise 700,000 cubic meters per year, while manufacturing rates do not exceed 900,000 cubic meters. 
A popular partner in the furniture industry and for home improvement stores and interior design suppliers, Pfleiderer launched its first plant in Russia in September 2006, located close to the second site. The  plant currently manufactures 500,000 cubic meters of medium-density fiberboard and 20 million square meters of laminated fiberboard a year, generating a total annual income of around $126 million.
“This is not just entering a new segment of production. We are earning a megacompany status,” Robert Hopperdietzel, deputy chairman of Pfleiderer’s Executive Board said at the groundbreaking ceremony. 
Timber markets in Eastern Europe are becoming more attractive due to positive dynamics and a favorable economic outlook. The demand for fiberboard in the Russian furniture and interior design industry increases by 15 percent a year. “We expect to see a 35 percent rise of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) at our plant in Podberyozie,” Dr. Hopperdietzel said. 
The new plant will occupy 40,000 square meters and be completed by 2010 in stages, with investment totalling up to $228 million. Pfleiderer is planning to hire a further 350 workers in addition to the 400 it already employs. The estimated annual production of medium- and high-density fiberboard will reach 500,000 cubic meters.

TITLE: Mayor’s Wife Denies Buying Mansion
AUTHOR: By Jeremy Ventuso
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Yelena Baturina, the country’s wealthiest woman and wife of Mayor Yury Luzhkov, on Wednesday denied a report in a British newspaper that she had bought a luxurious London residence for $100 million. 
The Daily Mail Online reported that Baturina purchased Witanhurst — the second-largest private estate in London, after Buckingham Palace — for 50 million pounds. A spokeswoman at Inteko, Baturina’s construction and real estate company, denied the purchase and attributed the story to rumors. 
The 3,700-square-meter mansion, currently with “holes in the ceilings and crumbling cornices,” was sold last year for 32 million pounds ($64 million) to property developer Marcus Cooper, the report said. 
Alane Fairhall, a representative of the Marcus Cooper Group, declined to comment when contacted Wednesday, but she said an announcement would be made to the press “first thing tomorrow morning.” 
The mansion, located on 2.8 hectares in the village of Highgate, North London, has 90 rooms, including 25 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, the Daily Mail said. It also features a grand ballroom and two hectares of gardens. 
The property’s main house was built in the early 18th century and has been filmed in several period dramas. After a major reconstruction finished in 1920, the estate eventually fell into disrepair and had been on the market “for some time” before it was purchased July 18, 2007, the report said. 
Forbes magazine’s Russia edition listed Baturina in May as the 32nd-wealthiest person in the country, with an estimated fortune of $4.2 billion. 
Inteko has often been awarded lucrative contracts for public works projects by the Moscow city administration.

TITLE: Building Begins On Biggest Power Plant
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SURGUT, Russia — Germany’s E.ON began building two 400 megawatt turbines at a power station in Russia’s oil heartland, which when completed would make it the largest station in the world, the utility said on Thursday. The construction is part of a 76 billion ruble ($3.29 billion) investment program that Germany’s E.ON plans to carry out at its newly acquired Russian company, OGK-4, by the end of 2011.
The construction of two combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) will cost 19 billion rubles ($821.8 million) and is being carried out by General Electric in partnership with Turkish engineering firm Gama.
When the construction of the two turbines is finished, Surgut Power Station No. 2 will have a total capacity of 5.6 gigawatts, OGK-4 said.
The power station is located in the oil-rich region of Khanty-Mansiisk, and the city of Surgut is home to Surgutneftegas, Russia’s fourth-largest oil company.
“This is a vital place to build new capacity,” said Andrei Kitashyov, OGK-4’s general director.
Russian power generation and grid firms plan to invest over $100 billion in new infrastructure in the next few years, an important part of Russia’s overall plan to spend up to $1 trillion on all infrastructure projects in the next decade.
Unlike its main competitors in the Russian electricity sector, E.ON is not seeking to vertically integrate electricity generation, supply and grid assets, focusing instead on power production.
“We looked into the issue (of vertical integration) and we decided not to move in this direction,” said Berndt Dubberstein, development director for E.ON Russia Power, one of the company’s Russian units.
E.ON’s largest Russian competitors, Integrated Energy Systems, the power investment of billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, and gas giant Gazprom, have said they want to consolidate their power generation, distribution and sales units.
The pair have also used construction companies and engineering firms that are linked to them to build a new turbine.
Dubberstein said he was not concerned that this would amount to unfair competition on the electricity market.
“We are not experts in construction. Construction is someone else’s specialty,” he said, adding that E.ON had found the supply and distribution business too risky for now.
The company’s main goal is to complete OGK-4’s investment program through 2011, which would bring OGK-4’s total installed capacity to more than 11 gigawatts at its five power stations, including one in Moscow.
Kitashyov, the general director, said the company had secured long-term gas supply contracts to fuel the new turbines being built, including from Gazprom and independent suppliers Novatek and Surgutneftegas.
Surgutneftegas’s associated gas, a by-product of oil production, accounts for 80 percent of supplies to the Surgut Power Station Number 2.

TITLE: 25 SuperJet Orders Taken at Farnborough
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: FARNBOROUGH, England — Sukhoi Civil Aircraft and Finmeccanica said their SuperJet airliner venture won orders for 25 planes worth about $750 million at list price.
Five SuperJets were purchased by AMA Asset Management of Switzerland, with a further 20 ordered by an undisclosed European buyer, the companies said Wednesday at the Farnborough International Air Show outside London.
Russia is spending more than $1.4 billion developing the 75-to 95-seat SuperJet to make its civil aviation industry competitive. Moscow-based Sukhoi said on Tuesday it would sell 24 planes worth $630 million to Russian leasing company Avialeasing with an option to supply 16 more. Sukhoi and Rome-based Finmeccanica SpA, Italy’s biggest defense company, have a target of selling at least 1,800 SuperJets over 20 years, including a bigger version to compete with Airbus SAS’s A320 series and Boeing Co’s 737.
AMA will receive its aircraft from 2011 and the other client from 2010. The SuperJet is due for certification in the middle of next year and first delivery by the year’s end, Victor Soubbotin, president of joint venture company SCAC, said at the air show.
Soubbotin said the company is experiencing some delays in building the SuperJet because of difficulties with suppliers. He said he’s confident the venture will still be able to stick to its delivery schedule.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Russia Takes the Lead</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russia surpassed Germany as Europe’s biggest auto market in the first half as sales rose 41 percent to 1.65 million cars, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said.
Spending on autos increased 64 percent to a record $33.8 billion, buoyed by $27 billion of imports, the accounting firm said in an e-mailed report last week, citing data from a PwC study, Russia’s statistics and customs offices and Moscow consultant ASM.

<b>New Customs System</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Federal Customs service will present a plan for overhauling the customs system on Aug. 1, Vedomosti reported, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the matter.
The proposal will call for the majority of goods to be processed on the border, not at customs posts inside the country, the Moscow-based newspaper said. Sergei Shokhin, deputy head of the customs service, described the planned changes at a meeting with members of the Association of European Business in Moscow on Wednesday, according to Vedomosti.
The infrastructure on the border isn’t ready to handle the potential volume of goods and will likely lead to long queues at crossings, the newspaper said, citing Dmitry Rotkin, the executive director of Rolf Group.

<b>Local Logistics Project</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Raven Russia Ltd., the U.K. developer of warehouses in Russia and Ukraine, agreed to form a venture to build a warehouse and logistics center in St. Petersburg.
Raven will develop the facility with Venture Investments and Yield Management, the company said in a statement distributed by Regulatory News Service on Thursday. The project will be valued at $216 million after it is completed, according to the statement.
The center’s first stage will be finished in the fourth quarter of this year, while the second and third phases are set to be completed in 2010, Raven said.
Israeli Bank in Russia
JERUSALEM (Bloomberg) — Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s biggest bank by assets, agreed to buy a 78 percent stake in SDM-Bank JSC of Moscow for $111 million, its first purchase in Russia.
Buying a controlling interest in the Russian bank meets “one of the most important objectives, which is to increase the bank’s international activity,” Hapoalim Chairman Dan Dankner said in a statement. “The acquisition represents a major growth engine for Bank Hapoalim for the coming years.”

<b>Meat Imports Banned</b>
SEATTLE (Bloomberg) — Russia temporarily suspended meat imports from eight  countries after discovering banned substances, RIA Novosti reported, citing the state agricultural regulator.
Imports from certain companies in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain were restricted Tuesday, and shipments from others in Australia, Argentina and Brazil will be restricted as of July 21, the state-run news service said.

TITLE: Moscow’s Creeping Annexation
AUTHOR: By Ronald Asmus
TEXT: There is war in the air between Georgia and Russia. Such a war could destabilize a region critical for Western energy supplies and ruin relations between Russia and the West. A conflict over Georgia could become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. How they respond could become a test of the potential commander-in-chief qualities of Barack Obama and John McCain. 
The issue appears to be the future of Abkhazia, a breakaway province of Georgia and the focus of a so-called frozen conflict. The real issue, however, is Moscow’s desire to subjugate Tbilisi and thwart its aspirations to go West. For several years, Russian policy toward countries on its borders has been hardening. Moscow has concluded that democratic breakthroughs in places such as Georgia and Ukraine are threats that need to be squashed. It is using the “frozen conflicts” in such places as Abkhazia and South Ossetia to re-establish a sphere of influence. With a lame-duck president in Washington and Europe heading off on vacation, Moscow may sense an opportunity to “resolve” this issue once and for all. 
This latest round of Russian aggression started after the West recognized Kosovo’s provisional independence in February and NATO bungled the issue of offering Georgia and Ukraine a Membership Action Plan at its Bucharest summit in April. Moscow has since launched a creeping annexation of Abkhazia, including a series of illegal moves to strengthen its military hand and to provoke Tbilisi into actions that could lead to further Russian military intervention. 
Many in the West are tempted to look the other way. This crisis is, after all, inconvenient. Georgian democracy is far from perfect, and Tbilisi has certainly made its own mistakes. Russia has a new president who we all hope can be more liberal and open to the West. The United States and its allies also need Moscow to be aligned with the West in the United Nations on issues from Iran to North Korea to Zimbabwe. This is an awkward time to take a tough stance. It would be only too easy to equivocate, blame all parties a little and call for more diplomacy. 
But this approach is making war in the Caucasus more likely, not less so. 
Notwithstanding its warts, Georgia is the region’s best hope for democratic development. If the Rose Revolution fails, we will wait a generation or more for another chance for positive change. Critical principles, including sovereignty and territorial integrity, are at stake. Russia is seeking to redefine the rules of post-Cold War European security to its advantage. And as Georgia is considered a U.S. project, the prestige of the United States is on the line. The Rose Revolution was animated by American values. Tbilisi has pursued U.S.-style economic reforms, has soldiers in Iraq and wants to join NATO. The region is waiting to see whether and when Washington will step in. If the West doesn’t try to stop Russia’s overstepping, countries in the region — from Azerbaijan to Central Asian energy producers — will recalculate accordingly. 
There is one way to stop this Russian power play for Georgia: solidarity. Working with its allies in Europe, the United States can draw a clear line and tell Moscow that there will be real consequences in its relations with Washington if it does not stop its aggressive course. Georgia, too, needs to act to de-escalate the tension. Yet Tbilisi cannot resolve this crisis alone. Halting the drift toward war requires heavy lifting by the West. In the short term, the United States needs to prevent a conflict from starting this summer. In the medium term, Washington needs Moscow to reverse its creeping — and illegal — annexation of Abkhazia. In the longer term, we need to establish an authentic peace process that can resolve the conflict for good. 
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is finally engaged in this issue personally. President George W. Bush should be, too. After all, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with whom Bush prides himself on having a close relationship, is the mastermind of this anti-Georgia campaign. If McCain and Obama issued statements strongly supporting Georgia, Moscow would have no illusions that its actions in the months ahead would affect U.S.-Russian relations after January, no matter which of the two senators becomes president. 
Last weekend, I attended a conference at Lavadia Palace in Yalta. In the place where Roosevelt and Churchill acquiesced in February 1945 to Stalin’s desire for a sphere of influence, I couldn’t help thinking about the costs and consequences of accepting spheres of influence today. Many suspect that Crimea could be the next target if Moscow subjugates Georgia and then shifts its sights to Ukraine. 
Whatever the failings of these countries, they deserve better in the 21st century. They should be free to choose their own paths and to become normal democratic societies, including joining the European Union or NATO, if they so choose. That is why the United States and its allies should stand up for Georgia today. Accepting Moscow’s demand for a sphere of influence was wrong in 1945. It would be wrong again today. 

Ronald Asmus is executive director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center and is in charge of strategic planning at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. This comment appeared in The Washington Post.

TITLE: FSB Blues
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Things have not been going so well for our siloviki. The BBC ran an interview on July 7 with an anonymous high-ranking agent of Britain’s MI5 counterespionage unit who declared that Russian authorities were behind the poisoning death in London of former Federal Secret Service agent Alexander Litvinenko.
The declaration will probably lead to a new wave of angry recriminations against foreigners, and many will be asking why this unidentified MI5 agent made these accusations during a popular BBC program. But the answer to that question is simple, albeit unpleasant, for the Kremlin: to support and defend the rule of law. In normal countries, people are not usually poisoned with polonium-210 in the heart of a major world capital, with the murderers walking away scot-free.
In another case, British spymaster Alex Allen, who is also chairman of the country’s Joint Intelligence Committee, was found in a coma in his London apartment two weeks ago. British newspapers speculated that al-Qaida or the Russian secret service might be responsible for his condition.
To be honest, I don’t think Russian agents could have pulled off such a major feat. They are limited to more modest and blunt operations, like blowing up a bus in Nalchik or a market in Sukhumi. But Alex Allen? Don’t make me laugh. This is nonsense. An agency more accustomed to shooting down unarmed people in Nazran and then photographing the bodies with planted weapons in their hands is hardly qualified to orchestrate a sophisticated operation against an ace agent like Allen.
At the same time as these events were unfolding, the London court agreed to hear the claims of businessman Michael Cherney against oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Cherney accused Deripaska, his former business partner, of failing to pay the full price for his shares in Russian Aluminum. 
I don’t want to guess the outcome, but I think Cherney’s claims aren’t worth the paper they were written on. Cherney’s industrial empire, in which Deripaska once participated, was built upon extremely informal connections between the various players. The ownership documents Cherney has in his possession, and which both he and Deripaska have signed, are quite typical for such shady transactions — that is, they might carry some validity in the criminal world, but not in a British court of law. Nonetheless, the British court agreed to hear Cherney’s case on the rationale that he was unable to obtain justice in Russia. It is truly a sad testament to the current state of affairs when a London court considers Russia’s reputation as being worse than Cherney’s.
They say that it takes the first half of your life to build your reputation, but during the second half, your reputation then works for you — or against you, as the case may be. Cesare Borgia, the 15th-century Italian military commander, probably did not sleep with his sister, as has been claimed. He just sent killers to knock off her husband, and when they failed in the first attempt, Borgia ordered them to go back and try again. The second time, however, they finished off the wounded man in his bedroom, in front of Borgia’s sister. Objectively speaking, Borgia was an excellent commander and a brilliant statesman, and it is unlikely that he was responsible for half of the killings attributed to him. Nonetheless, he has been stuck with a largely negative reputation.
Before Litvinenko’s poisoning death, Russia had one reputation, but now it has a different one. That new reputation won’t change until the murder case is investigated and brought to its full conclusion — and until murder suspect and State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi gives an honest deposition instead of giving self-promoting news conferences and television interviews. 
In democracies, there are certain things that should never be bargained away or swept under the carpet. Murder is one of them.

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

TITLE: Rock and revolution
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Manic Street Preachers, the seminal British rock band formed in Blackwood, Wales, in 1991, always aimed to bring rock music and revolution together. With its most recent album, “Send Away the Tigers,” reviving the band’s early enthusiasm and energy, the trio will make its Russian debut by performing in Moscow on Wednesday. Bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by phone from his home in Wales last week.

<i><b>Q: Your most recent album, “Send Away the Tigers,” has been described as a return to form.</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Yeah, I know. I think we looked back to our youth. We’ve been going eighteen years now as a band, and we looked back to what made us want to be in a band in the first place — the enthusiasm and idealism and anger, just a genuine love of being in a band.
Perhaps we’d lost our way a bit, because, like you said, our previous maybe three or four albums — they’re still very good records, but maybe we’d lost something of our spirit. So we looked back to the early start, when it was just the three or four of us in our bedrooms writing songs together. That’s what we wanted to recapture. We wanted to make a really exciting rock and roll album, and I think that’s what we achieved!
<i><b>Q: So it did work this way?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Yeah, I think it did. What we did was the three of us went back to a little rehearsal place in Cardiff in South Wales, and there was no management, there was no record company, there was no one. It was just us three. We just wrote songs together again just like we had done nearly twenty years ago. And it just made us excited. To be honest, during the whole year since it was released, it’s just been a great year. We’ve played places we’ve never been, from Turkey to Croatia to Romania, and now we’re coming to Russia. It kind of gives us a new lease of life.
<i><b>Q: As for the two albums before this one, you said in an interview that you had a “theory that we should sound like New Order or The Pet Shop Boys.” Was it kind of a joke?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> No, it’s true. Around the time of 1998 ("This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours") was probably the biggest we’ll ever be as a band: we sold 3 million albums and we played concerts everywhere. After that you just don’t know what to do. You’re still young men, and your thought process becomes quite confused. And then you try and reinvent yourself as something. It’s not the essence of what you are, really. But I’m glad we’ve done that. I think all the best bands have had phases where they make quite interesting and confused records. And that gives you a chance to go back to the start. 
<i><b>Q: Looking back to the career, as I watched the “Greatest Hits (Forever Delayed)” DVD, I noticed there were loud guitar songs and then soft pop songs. Is that because they’re from different periods, or are they somehow mixed together in your work?</b></i>
<b>A:</b> Yeah, I think it is different… You can’t deny change as you grow up, and all our favorite bands [did this]. The Clash went from the first album to “London Calling,” which is like a very mature rock record with all different styles. They did that within three years.
I think all the best bands move on and change. As long as you keep the main essence, you’re all right. I’ve known [frontman] James [Dean Bradfield] since school. We’ve been in the same school together, the same band together. I guess you get bored with each other sometimes. (Laughs.)
<i><b>Q: On the new album, there's a duet with Nina Persson (“Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”) that comes as a bit of a surprise. How did it happen?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> We are big fans, me in particular. I write the lyrics for the band. I’m a big fan of Nina’s lyrics, especially as, obviously, her first language is Swedish, but her command of the English language is just amazing. And we’re big fans of The Cardigans, we just love her voice. The song was written as a duet and she was always the first choice. We were a bit scared to ask, we thought she might say no, but she loved the track. James went to New York, and recorded it in a little studio in New York, and then she did some concerts with us, and Glastonbury and TV. She’s just a really, really lovely person, a really intelligent person with a great voice.
<i><b>Q: Is the cover of John Lennon's “Working Class Hero” on the album sending a message?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> We just used to use it as a warm-up song. We were in the studio, and every day we’d go in and that would be the song we played just to kind of get us into the feeling, because the lyrics are some of the greatest lyrics ever written. One day, we didn’t even know about it, but we were in the studio and the engineer recorded it, so it’s totally live. It just felt like a nice little thing to put on at the end, because we are very working-class people, we grew up in a very working-class area in South Wales, and it just felt like a nice little tribute, really, to John Lennon’s song. It’s very much a tribute to what we think is a brilliant song.
<i><b>Q: At least two songs on the album deal with war in Iraq and maybe Afghanistan. Why was it important to you to write about that?</b</i>>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Well, it’s just something that’s always been with us. I went to university, you know; I got a degree in politics, which just stayed with me. I’m not really, say, a campaigner; I’m not like Bono or something like that. I just find politics really interesting—the way it works, and the implications of war. [I’m interested] almost more in a journalistic way, if you know what I mean. It’s just something right from the start I generally find interesting. I think it’s important to write about what you really care about, what you feel. I’d be lying if I were writing about going to nightclubs or doing drugs, because I don’t do that! (Laughs.) I stay home and read and watch TV and stuff, so I think it’s just important to write about what you feel, really.
<i><b>Q: What about the other songs on the album? Are they more abstract?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> I don’t know if you know the band’s history, but one of our founding members, Richey Edwards, disappeared. He was in the band up until “The Holy Bible,” and he just disappeared, in 1995, and he’s never returned. So obviously that had a big effect on us, because I went to university with him. He was not just in the band, but he was one of our best friends as well, so that’s obviously something… “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough” is very much concerned with him. We used to sit down and write lyrics together. He’s very much still in our thoughts, so there’s always that kind of influence on the record as well. Just the idea of loss, closure, and trying to come to terms with stuff.
<i><b>Q: How would you describe your political views? Are they socialist or what?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> (Laughs.) Oh, it’s difficult. I mean I grew up, like I said to you earlier, [in a working-class area]. I guess socialism in Britain was different to socialism in other places in the world, but a lot of the ideals of fairness that came with that I still agree with, but obviously my life has changed and Britain has changed so dramatically over the last twenty to thirty years. Deep down I do believe in socialism, I believe in a lot of what it stood for, but the world has changed so much. It’s hard to keep those beliefs sometimes.
<i><b>Q: George Orwell was socialist, but then became disillusioned and became a critic. What do you think of him?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> He’s one of my heroes, George Orwell, just as a writer. He’s just unbelievably brilliant, whether it’s “Animal Farm” or “1984” or “Homage to Catalonia.” “Homage to Catalonia” in particular, because he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists, and that book had a massive influence on me because a lot of people from my area went to fight in that war, and the song “If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next” was directly influenced by George Orwell. I really admire the man: I think he’s one of the last great British heroes. He not only wrote about it, he kind of did it as well. And yes, he did get disenchanted, like we all do, because that’s the nature of politics. You’ll always be disappointed by political systems, but right to the end he was so intelligent. He was always kind of wrestling with the dilemma of a political thought. So I definitely do admire him.
<i><b>Q: When I think about political bands, the first thing I think of is Chambawamba. What do you think about them?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Yeah, I think that’s a different area. With our politics we looked to stuff like Public Enemy, coming from America, or The Clash or The Sex Pistols. It’s still very much based in rock and roll entertainment: we’re not campaigning. I think Chumbawamba are much more political: their lifestyle is dictated by their politics. I admire that but it’s not for me. 
<i><b>Q: Was your concert in Cuba in 2001 a separate event or was it part of a national festival?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> No, it was just us wanting to do something really different. We wanted to go on an adventure, to go to one of the last places where bands just didn’t play. It was all financed by us. (Laughs.) It cost us a huge amount of money, which I’m not bothered by. But it’s not like we could sell records there, because you just can’t sell records there anyway.
But it was a real experience, good and bad: there was a lot about it we really enjoyed and some which was also difficult. I’m glad that maybe when I’m retired and I’m looking back at our career, I can at least say that we did something pretty unique. There are not many other bands that took the risk to do what we did.
The concert itself was amazing. And the fact that Fidel Castro was there, and after the gig he came back and chatted to us for about an hour. That was just weird, and it was hard to take it all in. But I am glad we did it.
<i><b>Q: But they’re very good at using people for propaganda purposes.</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Yes, that’s true. But I think with us it was different, because we were known as a political band already, if you know what I mean. We weren’t expecting some kind of nirvana; we knew the good points and the bad points of Cuba. It was much more an event, really, for the both of us. They used us and we used them as well, because it was also a launch pad for our own record as well. It was a pretty exciting way for journalists, for the media to come and see us. It was the first gig we did on the new record “Know Your Enemy,” so I guess it worked both ways.
<i><b>Q: But in such situations, they usually try to isolate you from ordinary people, or it was not the case with you?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> No, I don’t think it was like that. I think they knew what we were [there for]. We were talking with every newspaper in Britain, [with media] from all around Europe. It wasn’t like we were there promoting Cuba. They were asking us a lot of hard questions of us, anyway, why we were doing it and all the rest of it, because it was quite a difficult thing to pull off. It goes both ways to be honest. Like I understand why people think we were being used for propaganda, but like I said, I think I didn’t feel that way; when we came home, I thought, “Well, we’ve done it now and we can move on.”
<i><b>Q: When I watched “Greatest Hits (Forever Delayed)” DVD, in one video the drummer was wearing a Soviet naval officer’s fur hat and in the other video somebody was wearing Soviet medals. I wonder where you got those. </b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Well, around the time of “The Holy Bible,” our third record, we went kind of military mad. (Laughs.) We had loads of Soviet stuff. We’d obviously grown up reading a lot of Marx and Engels at the university, all that kind of stuff. We just went round second-hand shops in the U.K. and antique fairs (there’s a lot in Cardiff and in South Wales), and we bought lots of medals, loads of uniforms. From all around the world, really, but the Soviet stuff always looked the best! (Laughs.)
<i><b>Q: The Clash used red stars, and The Sex Pistols wore a Karl Marx portrait.</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Exactly. There’s quite a long tradition of it in the U.K. Echo and the Bunnymen, in particular, were one of our favorite bands and they went through what they called an “Apocalypse Now” phase when they dressed in military uniform all the time, and we just copied them, really.
<i><b>Q: When you speak to politically-minded Western musicians, the conversation is usually about President Bush or something, but they usually seem to have no interest in what’s happening in Russia…</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> No, I think what it is, is that George Bush is just such an easy target, isn’t he? I think a lot of the people you’re talking about, they’re just not really interested in politics. Perhaps it’s the obvious target to choose, just to say, “George Bush is terrible,” and blah, blah, blah. A lot of British bands will say that: that’s their kind of political statement that. Let’s face it: Politics is much more complex and influential in different ways than that. I’m no fan of George Bush but I don’t spend my life looking at him. There’s much more excitement and interesting things in other parts of the world.
<i><b>Q: What do you feel about current Russian-British relations — the poisoning scandal and the fact that the main suspect was elected to the Russian parliament?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> It’s in the news all the time. It just seems so complicated and complex and almost kind of old-fashioned, if you know what I mean — like something from the Cold War! It’s hard for me to judge. You meet lots of people in London from Russia, and they all seem to be getting on with their lives and enjoying their lives. I can’t wait to come. I’ve never been, and it’s always been bit of a dream of mine to play in Moscow. I know the band are really looking forward to it. And we’re coming in a day before, so we hopefully will get a chance to get a good walk around and experience a bit of it as well.
<i><b>Q: Is there any interesting happening in today’s music?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> I’m a huge fan of music and I love music, so I’m always buying records. The band called The Enemy is really good, and they have a good social kind of standpoint. I think the Paul Weller album this year—“22 Dreams”—is really brilliant, and then, [the album by] a singer-songwriter from America, Bon Iver, which is a gorgeous kind of isolation record. There’s always good music, but I think we’re all waiting for that moment when an amazing band just comes from nowhere and sort of conquers the world. 
<i><b>Q: Are you planning a new album?</b></i>
<i><b>A:</b></i> Yeah, we are planning: we’re writing in the studio, we got eight or nine songs. I think it’ll be kind of a development, slightly different again from “Send Away the Tigers,” but still very much a rock record, maybe slightly darker. We hope to get it out maybe March or April next year. You know, we’re feeling at good place at the moment, so we want to keep working as hard as we can.

<i>Manic Street Preachers perform at B1 Maximum in Moscow on Wednesday.</i>

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: The street cred of <b>Gogol Bordello</b> has been perhaps affected by its Ukraine-born frontman Eugene Hutz’s recent collaborations with Madonna. He appeared with the pop diva to perform “La Isla Bonita / Lela Pala Tute” at the London Live Earth concert in July 2007, and, earlier this year, starred in her directorial debut, the film “Filth and Wisdom.” 
Whether it has affected the band’s live performances, can be checked out on Wednesday, when Gogol Bordello will make its St. Petersburg debut by taking part in a music event called Afisha’s Music at Lenexpo’s Pavillion 8A.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times in December 2006, before Gogol Bordello’s first Russian concert in Moscow, Hutz denied he played with the stereotype of a “wild man from the East.”
“I don’t play with any stereotype, it’s not how I see it,” he said, speaking in English by phone from New York.
“I don’t go on stage and think, ‘I’m gonna play somebody.’ It’s me, man. It just gets louder. Just the music is louder. So I get louder. But it’s basically the same person. It’s just ridiculous for me to watch musicians who have stage image and, like, not a stage image. It’s not really my school of thought.
Gogol Bordello was the first band containing ex-Soviet members that won international audiences — unlike Russian rock bands who tend to play almost exclusively to Russian emigres when touring abroad.
“The thing is that we’ve been never really <i>trying</i> to reach the Russian audience from the beginning, because I wasn’t living in the Russian neighborhood,” he said.
“I lived in the Puerto-Rican neighborhood, you know, and so my whole context was totally different. I didn’t really have that much of a Russian connection. Now it has grown again because of the popularity of the band.
“But I didn’t start there, you know. So my angle was completely different. I just wanted to play  <i>my</i> music that was based on <i>my</i> roots, I wanted to find a very new, aggressive angle for it. Something that makes everybody understand it. Not like Eastern-European music for Eastern Europeans. That’s been done, you know, that’s been not interesting at all. I wanted to make an explosive, fantastic mixture of these things.
“So we broke into the Spanish-speaking audience and into the English-speaking audience, and then Italian and Scandinavian. But I don’t know why the Russian audience, actually, happened to be basically almost the latest one, the last one to come to the table. I think they were just too busy listening to Leningrad or something like that.”
<b>Metallica</b> will perform at SKK on Friday, <b>Carlos Santana</b> will perform at the Ice Palace on Sunday.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Living history
AUTHOR: By Anne Waller
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Veliky Novgorod is a quiet, clean town with green spaces and fresh air 190 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, and a pleasant place to escape to from the city.  However, it used to be a powerful city republic whose political system resembled a democracy and whose territory extended thousands of miles from Estonia to the Ural Mountains. The memory of this unique city-state — not to be confused with the city of Nizhny Novgorod — was overshadowed after it was annexed by Moscow, but many of the social, cultural and religious traditions which began here have profoundly shaped Russian culture.  
The hub of the ancient city-state, the imposing, red-walled Kremlin (a smaller version of its famous Moscow cousin), holds architectural and cultural gems which span a millennium of Russian history.
A monument marking the country’s thousandth birthday is one of the first landmarks the visitor sees on entering the Kremlin gates.  In 862, considered the beginning of Russia, Novgorod’s first ruler, the Viking Rurik, came to power and went on to found the old state of Kievan Rus.  Russia’s most important cultural and political personalities since that time are recreated in bronze around the sides of this bell-shaped sculpture.
Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who introduced Christianity to Russia, holds the Eastern Orthodox Cross with its two additional cross-beams symbolizing the inscription board above and the foot-rest below. Its slant is said to remind Russian Orthodox Christians of the paths of good and evil and the Last Judgement. At the top of the impressive Millennium Monument, Russia herself is symbolized by a woman who kneels before an angel blessing her.  
Fresh air and a panoramic view over the city can be had by climbing the Kokui Tower, the tallest tower in the Kremlin wall.  At the other end of the Kremlin (or “Detinets” as it is called by the locals), there are wide views along the Volkhov river from the top of St. Sophia’s Belfry, which also contains a small museum of bells from St. Sophia’s Cathedral.
However, the city’s most famous bell is missing: the veche bell, which called the city’s government to assemble, and was a potent symbol of Novgorod’s independence and democracy, was taken away by Ivan III in the 15th century when the city was annexed by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. 
Novgorod’s often debated system of democracy had begun in 1136 when the prince of the time was overthrown by the boyars, or nobles. The city’s location with access to trade with Sweden via the Baltic Sea had contributed to the dominance of the merchant class, who could become boyars in Novgorod, yet there was no hereditary tradition of princely rule, so boyar rule became established. 
The veche was the public assembly of boyars at which they discussed current issues and elected or dismissed the city’s mayor, or posadnik, and princes.  Notably, the debates were held in public, and ordinary citizens could gather nearby and shout their approval or disapproval.  Because of this, some consider the veche an early form of democracy, yet others dispute the amount of influence citizens truly had over political decisions, or indeed how much influence the veche had over the city’s rule.
Russian historian Valentin Yanin has pointed out that a single posadnik often held the same office for several terms and then passed it on to relatives, suggesting that Novgorod was more like a boyar aristocracy.
The debate is not over, but democratic values are still ascribed to the old Novgorod city-state, the mentality of its citizens, and the earthy and humanistic Christianity it is argued that is distinctive of Novgorod icon painting.   
Evidence of life during the early political system can be seen at the Novgorod State United Museum, near the Millennium of Russia Monument. There are illustrations of peasants being cast into a river during one of the frequent rebellions against the boyar rulers. There are also some of the first codes of law in Russia, letters and documents written on birch bark scrolls, and children’s school items, testifying to the old city’s status as a center of learning and literacy.
On the museum’s second floor is an exhibition of Novgorod icon painting.  The clear explanations and chronological presentation from the 11th to 19th centuries allow English-speaking visitors to understand the deep significance of Christianity in early Russian culture and to see the changing identity of the city unfold in the icons.
Icons were not only seen as holy images, but were believed to provide divine protection from opponents during political assaults on the city.  Novgorodians believed that their city had special status: its St. Sophia’s Cathedral is named not after a person but after the Greek concept of “Holy Wisdom,” which the citizens believed they possessed and were obliged to defend.
The icon, The Battle of the Novgorodians and the Suzdalians (The Miracle of the Icon “Our Lady of the Sign,” 1450-75) on display in the museum, illustrates the strong link between Novgorodians’ religious faith and pride in their identity. It was painted when Novgorod was fiercely fighting for independence from Moscow and its absolutist form of rule. But the legend depicted happened 300 years earlier during a 12th-century battle between Novgorod and Vladimir-Suzdal, the principality that preceded the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The icon is shown protecting Novgorod against the invaders. Arrows shoot towards the icon, which turns its face away from the Suzdalians, plunging them into darkness and saving the city. 
The icon believed to have worked the miracle can still be seen in St. Sophia’s Cathedral, perhaps the most famous building in the Kremlin. Built in the 11th century, it was the spiritual heart of the ancient city and today is the oldest working building in Russia. It is nearly 1000 years old.
Leaving the Kremlin and crossing the river over an expansive and high footbridge, visitors can see rare work by another important figure in Russian culture, Theophanes the Greek, at the Church of Our Savior at Ilino.  His way of drawing inspiration from his own imagination and feelings that arose from spiritual contemplation, rather than basing his work on existing icon paintings, was considered revolutionary at the time and had a great impact on the future of Russian painting.   His 14th-century frescoes in this church are the only surviving examples.
After seeing some of the main sights, there are several places in Veliky Novgorod to rest and relax. There is a small beach just outside the Kremlin wall bordering the Volkhov river, and boat trips along the river itself, leaving every half hour, are a pleasant background for a drink with friends.
A little further afield, an interesting group of wooden buildings and churches, set in quiet parkland, is a refreshing place for a stroll. In the 12th century there was a real village here, Vitoslavlitsky, surrounded by monasteries.  About fifty years ago, a replica village — the Vitoslavlitsky Museum of Wooden Architecture — was constructed from actual buildings from around the region, with an effort to show living conditions and traditions in real Russian villages from the 16th to 20th centuries. Traditional festivals are held here at various times of year.  The outdoor museum is a 20-minute bus ride from the city center.  (Take bus No. 7 from Sofiiskaya Ploshchad in the direction of Lake Ilmen, and get off at Yureyev Monastery.)
Novgorod underwent much reconstruction after suffering severe damage during three years of Nazi occupation during World War II.  Its restoration was one of the post-war Soviet government’s priority projects, a sign of its high status in the nation’s heritage.
Novgorod continues to attract those with an interest in Russian history, yet debates about its intriguing past are far from over.

<b>How to get there</b>
There are daily “electrichka” suburban trains from St. Petersburg to Veliky Novgorod, costing 250 rubles each way (buy a ticket on the train). There is a discount for holders of a Russian student card.
Moskovsky Vokzal to Novgorod: 
Departs 8.12 Arrives 11.54 
Departs 17.18 Arrives 20.33 
Novgorod to St. Petersburg: 
Departs 16.25 Arrives 21.15 (Vitebsky Vokzal)
Departs 17.40 Arrives 21.36 (Moskovsky Vokzal)

<b>Where to stay </b>
As there is more than enough to see in one day, The St. Petersburg Times suggests staying overnight at one of the city’s hotels or guest houses.

<b>Top-range:</b>
Beresta Palace Hotel
2 Studencheskaya Ulitsa
+7 (8162) 15 80 10
www.beresta@novtour.ru

<b>Mid-range:</b>
Hotel Akron
24 Predtechenskaya Ulitsa
+7 (8162) 13 69 18

<b>Economy/Budget:</b>
Rosa Vetrov
27 Nonoluchanskaya Ulitsa
+7 (8162) 27 20 33
Where to eat
Detinets restaurant is one of the city’s most popular in town. Located inside the Kremlin in the Pokrovskaya Tower, it has a cosy candle-lit and rustic interior. Medovukha, an old Russian honey alcoholic drink, is brewed on the premises. Because this restaurant is popular, it is highly advisable to book a table ahead. +7 (8162) 27 46 24. 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

Ilmen cafe and bistro offers fairly fast service and large seating areas which can usually be relied on for space during crowded summer days. Visitors can combine their own choice of several reasonably priced main courses and side dishes. +7 (8162) 27 63 10. 2 Ulitsa Gazon. 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

TITLE: Close shots
AUTHOR: By Rodric Braithwaite
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: You would have thought that the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 had been picked over by historians, memoirists, political scientists, filmmakers, conference organizers and decision-making theorists, until there was absolutely nothing more to be said. But Michael Dobbs has ferreted in the files, and his riveting book “One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War,” does succeed in casting new light on aspects of the story hitherto carved in unassailable historical stone. 
The Kennedy brothers did not abandon the hope of overthrowing Cuban leader Fidel Castro after the dismal failure of the attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs the year before. Even as the missile crisis was beginning, Robert Kennedy (somewhat exceeding his responsibilities as attorney general) was still driving his people to come up with schemes for sabotage that could be blamed on the Cubans and provide the pretext for an invasion. Some — such as a proposal to hurl grenades at the Chinese Embassy in Havana — were approved by his brother, the president. Others — shooting down a civilian airliner, for example — apparently were not. 
By the middle of 1962, the CIA had recruited a vast array of spies inside Cuba — and was overwhelmed by the mass of stuff it received. Its analysts were highly skeptical; they had read Graham Greene’s satire “Our Man in Havana,” about an amateur British spy fabricating intelligence for London. So they missed some remarkably accurate reports about the arrival of Soviet missiles, and on Sept. 19 they published a National Intelligence Estimate which flatly said, “The establishment on Cuban soil of Soviet nuclear striking forces which could be used against the U.S. would be incompatible with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it.” The clinching aerial photos of the missiles arrived on Kennedy’s desk less than three weeks later.
Among the myths that Dobbs dispels is the idea that U.S. and Soviet vessels came close to a clash but that the Russians blinked. For those of us who went to work that Wednesday morning wondering if we would ever see our families again, the worst seemed to be over when the missile-carrying Soviet ships turned back. In fact, Dobbs tells us, the U.S. warships were more than 600 kilometers away. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, had already ordered his ships to turn back the previous day. The real crisis came three days later, on “Black Saturday,” when both Kennedy and Khrushchev came very close to losing control of events. The U.S. military prepared to wipe out the Soviet military installations on Cuba. And in case the Soviets reacted, the U.S. Strategic Air Command was already geared up to wipe out the Soviet Union, as well.
The Soviet forces in Cuba — far more numerous than the Americans had realized — had already shot down a U2 spy plane belonging to the United States without authorization from Moscow. Now, under the command of Soviet Colonel Dmitry Yazov, an infantry regiment, armed (unknown to the Americans) with tactical nuclear weapons, prepared to take out the U.S. base at Guantanamo. Another U2 had accidentally strayed hundreds of kilometers into Soviet air space, and three bewildered Soviet submarines were forced to the surface by U.S. warships. One captain, who had lost contact with Moscow and did not know whether his country was at war or not, wondered whether he should use his nuclear torpedo to destroy the U.S. carrier task force. Neither side had fail-safe devices to prevent the unauthorized firing of a nuclear weapon by an individual commander or even an individual airman. 
Moscow and Washington misinterpreted one another’s messages throughout. It was as much by good luck as good judgment that Kennedy and Khrushchev stumbled into an arrangement whereby the Americans agreed not to invade Cuba, the Russians withdrew their missiles, and the Americans indicated — though not in public — that they would eventually withdraw a bunch of outdated missiles from Turkey.
Ironically, the man who gained most from the crisis was Castro. The Americans kept their word to Khrushchev and abandoned any further serious attempts to overthrow him. He continued to lead his country for decades after Kennedy and Khrushchev had passed from the scene. This, Khrushchev claimed, justified the reckless gamble he had taken by putting missiles in Cuba in the first place.
Khrushchev’s colleagues did not agree, and a year later they removed him from office. But as one of them told a U.S. official, “You got away with it this time, but you will never get away with it again.” From then on, the Soviet leadership was determined to achieve strategic parity. They succeeded, and bankrupted their country. Meanwhile, the world remained on the knife-edge of destruction.
Kennedy was, of course, the man of the moment. His cool decisiveness, his firm grasp of the politics both at home and in Moscow, had forced not only the Russians to blink, but the U.S. military as well. But this, Dobbs argues, was perhaps the most insidious myth of all. The idea took hold that the Americans had learned how to calibrate the approach to war, even to nuclear war, and that they could prevail not only by superior technology, but by superior logic — the logic of conflict and deterrent theory. But the truth, as Kennedy himself recognized, was that “there’s always some son-of-a-bitch that doesn’t get the word.” The world was indeed lucky that none of the many things that went wrong proved to be decisive. 
Kennedy and Khrushchev were trapped in an inescapable moral and political dilemma from which their successors were unable to escape for as long as the Cold War lasted. For deterrence to be credible, each side had to talk and act as if it were ready to launch a strategic exchange at a moment’s notice: a nightmarish responsibility. But both Kennedy and Khrushchev knew what was at stake, and they were desperate to avoid an Armageddon. Even Margaret Thatcher, the formidably pugnacious British prime minister, once confessed that she was not sure she would be able to press the button “because I want grandchildren.” The Cuban missile crisis was not the only time a combination of misjudgment and accident brought us close to nuclear catastrophe. The fortunate combination of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan — both morally repelled by the implications of nuclear deterrence — eventually returned us to a kind of normality.
The U.S. and Soviet militaries could not afford to indulge in such soul-searching, then or later. Their professional duty was to plan and win a nuclear war, and they comforted themselves with myths. During the missile crisis, the commander of the Strategic Air Command remarked that if a strategic exchange ended with two Americans left alive and one Russian, “we win.” His civilian interlocutor commented sarcastically that they had better make sure that one of the Americans was a man, and the other a woman. 
Years later, Thatcher said to Yazov, now the Soviet Union’s last defense minister, that the great thing about nuclear weapons was that they had kept the peace. Yazov raised a bushy eyebrow, and he was right to do so: Thousands of Soviet and U.S. soldiers and millions of the local inhabitants had died in the superpowers’ proxy wars in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

Rodric Braithwaite is a former British ambassador to Moscow and the author, most recently, of “Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War.”

TITLE: The storyteller
AUTHOR: By Boris Fishman
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: 
I want to hate David Benioff. He’s annoyingly handsome. He’s already written a pair of unputdownable books, one of which was made into Spike Lee’s most heartbreaking film, “The 25th Hour” — for which Benioff was asked to write the screenplay, leading to a second career in Hollywood. (They should just get it over with and put the man in the movies already.) He takes his morning orange juice next to Amanda Peet. And he’s still in his 30s. See what I mean?
Benioff’s new novel reveals why there are so many Russians — not oligarchs or prostitutes, but soldiers and old babushkas — in this nice American boy’s fiction. “City of Thieves” follows a character named Lev Beniov, the son of a revered Soviet Jewish poet who was “disappeared” in the Stalinist purges, as Lev and an accomplice carry out an impossible assignment during the Nazi blockade of Leningrad. Before Lev begins to tell his story, however, a young Los Angeles screenwriter named David visits his grandfather in Florida, pleading for his memories of the siege. But this is no postmodern coquetry. In fact, the novel tells a refreshingly traditional tale, driven by an often ingenious plot. And after that first chapter Benioff is humble enough to get out of its way. For some writers, Russia inspires extravagant lamentations uttered into the eternity of those implacable winters. Happily, Benioff’s prose doesn’t draw that kind of attention to itself.
Lev, an intelligent, awkward, eternally self-doubting Jewish teenager, and Kolya, a Slavic Adonis, have been imprisoned after wartime infractions. Awaiting execution, they’re summoned by the secret police: Colonel Grechko’s daughter is getting married, and eggs are needed for the cake. It would be easier to find snow in Saudi Arabia, but if Lev and Kolya can locate a dozen they’ll get back their ration cards — and their lives. Very soon, the odd couple are dodging a husband-and-wife team of cannibals and seducing their way — well, Kolya is, at least — through the starving city.
This isn’t flippant or inappropriately irreverent: gallows humor, so nourished by the horrors of Stalin’s regime, certainly survived into the era of the blockade. In contrast to the piety of so many of today’s historical novels — their facts unimpeachable and their souls somewhere in the library — Benioff’s book lets its characters inhabit the human condition in all of its sometimes compromised versatility.
But it’s never cavalier, because the author has done his research. Benioff could have read in a history book — or learned from his grandfather — that cannibals first went for the buttocks, “the softest meat, easiest for making patties and sausages,” but an expletive that a passing driver shouts at Lev and Kolya requires a sixth sense. I know of no such phrase in Russian, but in an English-language novel simulating Russian speech, it captures precisely the maternal obsessions of Russian swearing.
The research never stands out because Benioff weaves it in so deftly. He shifts tone with perfect control — no recent novel I’ve read travels so quickly and surely between registers, from humor to devastation — and expertly evokes the vagaries of Lev’s adolescence. Readers who look down on plot-driven fiction will learn something new, even if Benioff miscalculates with a too-neat resolution, which includes both a love interest and a coming-of-age challenge. But if this is Benioff’s grandfather’s story, that’s the way it must have happened, right?
Who knows. In a recent interview, Benioff said the novel’s first chapter was pure invention — that all four of his grandparents were born in the United States. But in the bound galleys of the novel he thanked his grandfather for his “patience with my late-night phone calls” about the blockade. The final version of the book doesn’t carry that acknowledgment. What gives?
In its own modest way, “City of Thieves” becomes a commentary on the literary rigidities of our day. James Frey and Margaret B. Jones — gifted storytellers who, perhaps cravenly, mislabeled their work as nonfiction — are eviscerated in the same court of public opinion that venerates apple-cheeked first-timers who transcribe every heartbeat of their suburban youth but have the moxie to call it fiction. 
Benioff’s opening chapter, “true” or not, is a gentle reminder that fiction is often nonfiction warped by artifice, and that nonfiction is unavoidably a reinvention of what actually happened. In exposing these seams — God bless his editor for leaving in that chapter — Benioff reminds us what a beautifully ambiguous world we live in. 

Boris Fishman has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and other publications.

TITLE: And the winner is...
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The British chose Winston Churchill; the Americans chose Ronald Reagan; and the South Africans chose Nelson Mandela. 
Now Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II, the country’s last monarch, are running neck and neck in a contest sponsored by state-run Rossia television called “Name of Russia,” a Russian version of the BBC show “Great Britons” aimed at selecting the country’s most significant historical figure.
As of 9 p.m. Monday, more than 2.3 million votes had been cast in the Internet poll, which had Stalin in first place with 252,360 votes, narrowly leading Nicholas II, who had 252,262 votes, according to the contest’s web site, www.nameofrussia.ru.
Trailing the two front-runners were Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, with 171,224 votes, followed by gritty-voiced folk singer Vladimir Vysotsky, with 150,405 votes, and Peter the Great, with 115,115 votes.
Until Monday, Stalin, an ethnic Georgian and one of the bloodiest tyrants of the 20th century, had been dominating the poll. Nicholas II shot past Stalin for several hours Monday, however, thanks perhaps in part to a campaign organized by the contest’s producer.
“I arranged a flash mob for [Nicholas II] on Odnoklassniki.ru,” Alexander Lyubimov said Monday evening, referring to the popular social networking site.
Lyubimov, a groundbreaking television host during perestroika, admitted that the poll was ripe for manipulation since it allowed an unlimited number of votes from the same computer.
The site was attacked over a three-day span last week, and a flood of incorrect requests caused the system to break down several times and stop counting votes, Lyubimov said in a statement last week.
At the same time, “mass voting for Stalin was being organized from several Internet resources,” Lyubimov said.
With Thursday having marked the 90th anniversary of the execution of the tsar and his family by the Bolsheviks, it seems that monarchists are fighting back. Nikolai Lukyanov, head of the All-Russia Monarchist Center, said his organization was rallying Internet support for Nicholas II as well.
“More than 400,000 users of [the social networking site] Vkontakte.ru consider themselves monarchists, and we are asking them to vote in support of our last tsar,” Lukyanov said.
Nikolai Savelyev, who has been impersonating Nicholas II for 12 years, said he was happy that his doppelganger is doing so well in the poll. “I really like him,” Savelyev said Monday afternoon while loitering near Red Square waiting for tourists seeking souvenir photos. “He was a very good person: kind but spineless. That was a big minus.”
The top 50 in the contest include writer Anton Chekhov and poets Alexander Pushkin and Sergei Yesenin. The first man in space, Yury Gagarin and the father of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolyov, also make the list. The first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, is currently at No. 12. There’s no Vladimir Putin, though, since the list does not include living people.
The show’s organizer, Lyubimov, also downplayed fears that Stalin would win. “Research says that the choice of Stalin as Name of Russia is not possible,” he said.
Stalin is revered by many for, among other things, leading the Soviet Union during its defeat of Nazi Germany.
Lyubimov predicted a backlash of anti-Stalin sentiment in September, when the top 12 figures will be discussed in television debates.
“The majority will be affected by this show only when it’s on the air,” Lyubimov said. “When they watch the show and see that Stalin is winning, imagine how many people will vote.” 
One group, the Communists of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, is urging its members to vote for Stalin and Lenin. 
“The regime, which is against the people, hopes the winner will be Nicholas II, bloody Yeltsin, [White Russian leader Anton] Denikin or the dissident [Andrei] Sakharov,” the group said in a statement published on its web site last week. “We must destroy the plan of the pro-Kremlin forces.”
Veronika Klinovitskaya, a spokeswoman for the group, said she voted for Stalin, though both he and Lenin were “undoubtedly outstanding people.” 
“They did a lot to create the Soviet Union and make it develop,” she said.
Asked about the darker side of the Stalin regime, Klinovitskaya said “every regime has negative sides” and that his actions were “expedient in the situation.” 
She predicted that Lenin would win, since very few lived under his rule, and “people tend to idealize those whom they know less about.”
Well-known Lenin impersonator Anton Karbushev is not one of those who will be supporting the man whose visage he uses to make money off tourists. Karbushev, who has been a Lenin impersonator for 13 years, said he would vote for Sakharov, the dissident and Nobel Prize winner. “He is more likely to understand and express the problems that now exist in Russia,” Karbushev said.
The pro-Kremlin youth group Young Guard, which is encouraging its members to vote in the contest, said “grandmothers” nostalgic for Soviet times were responsible for Stalin’s fast start, despite the fact that pensioners are a social group with comparatively limited Internet access.
“Naturally, we don’t like the fact that Stalin is coming through in first place,” Young Guard activist Maria Sergeyeva said, attributing his high rating to “a lot of mentally inadequate people.”
“We don’t think people are voting for Stalin with a full understanding of what they’re doing,” Sergeyeva said. “Maybe it’s a provocation by someone or it’s actually being organized.”
Sergeyeva said she voted for the political reformer and pre-Revolutionary Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin.
Alexander Prokhanov, editor of nationalist newspaper Zavtra, said it was hardly surprising that Stalin was doing so well.
“Fifty percent of the Russian population are Stalinists,” Prokhanov said. “If you put Stalin and Vysotsky on a competitive basis, or Stalin and [pop star] Alla Pugachyova, of course there will be a huge number of people for Stalin. That isn’t surprising.” 
The poll studies “what kind of people live in Russia,” Prokhanov said. “Whether, for example, it’s possible to throw Lenin out of the mausoleum, whether it is possible to destroy Soviet symbols, and what will happen if they start knocking the emblem of the Soviet Union off the State Duma building.”
Stalin’s high rating “corresponds to all previous votes and polls,” said Boris Belenkin, a member of Memorial, a human rights group that campaigns to publicize Stalin-era atrocities and support the victims. “It’s not unexpected,” he said, adding that he was “ambivalent” about the poll.
The result could be interpreted as the acknowledgement of Stalin as “the most terrible, bloody, repulsive figure” in Russian history, Belenkin said. 
“You pronounce the word Russia and the first association is that bad name, isn’t it?” he said. “Here the answer is honest. We don’t associate it with Sakharov or [poet Alexander] Pushkin.”
Belenkin added, however, that the contest probably showed something else: that people genuinely see Stalin as a hero. “Such is the level of self-identification, such is our historical memory, such are our ideals,” he said.
Lyubimov, deputy head of the state radio and television company VGTRK, said he deliberately decided not to use the word “great” in the title. 
“If you name this show ‘Great Russians,’ you actually are almost forced to deny Stalin and Lenin being part of that,” he said. “On the other hand, that makes the picture of your country biased by your political approach, and that doesn’t leave any discussion for the show.” 
The initial list included Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet-era secret police, although he has now been eliminated.
In an analogous contest in Germany, Adolf Hitler and all Nazi figures were excluded from the initial list of names up for public vote. 
Lyubimov said he welcomed the voting controversy. “Any reaction is healthy,” he said. “Our mission is to attract more attention of the general audience to Russian history.”

TITLE: Bastille Day on the beach
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Although France celebrated its national holiday, as always, on July 14 (Monday), St. Petersburg’s traditional Bastille Day celebration will take place on the beach of Peter and Paul Fortress nearly a week later on Sunday (July 20).
St. Petersburg shares with Paris the spirit of revolution and where better to mark the 219th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison in 1789, a key event in the French Revolution, than near the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress which also served as a prison for political prisoners in the 18th and 19th Centuries? 
In the February Revolution of 1917, the prelude to October’s showdown, the fortress was attacked and the prisoners were freed in an echo of events in Paris 128 years before. Unlike its Russian counterpart, the Bastille was demolished within months of its storming and its stones sold off as souvenirs. 
In St. Petersburg, the Bolsheviks continued to use the Peter and Paul Fortress as a prison for Tsarist officials for a few years but in 1924 it was turned into a museum.
Bastille Day at the Peter and Paul Fortress celebrates the long bonds between Russian and French culture.
This year’s celebration is headlined by the French band Sergent Garcia supported by other musicians and dancers that will represent traditional French music along with its modern trends and art forms. 
The festivities, beginning at 7 p.m., will be opened with a performance by the Musette Ensemble, a St. Petersburg-based band of accordion players. This will be followed by a performance of “The Stroke of Tenderness” by the Krepostnoy Ballet of Yelena Prokopyeva who was inspired by the romantic image of the France of the 1960s in the film “Les Valseuses” and the songs of Jacques Brel. 
After the nostalgic rhythms of the 1960s, a hot latino dance performance of salsa, samba and mamba by Vitaly Marchenko and Oksana Bogdanova from the Khrapkoff Dance Studio will take place. The dancers will also give a master class. 
Sergent Garcia, a band of six musicians founded by Bruno Garcia, a French musician of Spanish descent, will perform the mixture of reggae, salsa and raggamuffin. 
Garcia has released five albums in French and Spanish and is well known for combining urban and traditional music.
“St. Petersburg is the only city in Russia where Bastille Day is traditionally celebrated,” Yuliya Starovoytova, head of the culture department of the French Institute in St. Petersburg, said. “Having transferred from France to the Northern Capital, the French national holiday is free of its official form and has become a summer party, a declaration of love to France and the French culture.”
The concert performances are just part of this billet doux: this weekend also sees the Seventh Annual Sand Sculpture Festival take shape on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The winning design was announced Thursday and all the sculptures, created by professional sand sculptors from all over the world, will be on display.
Other activities to take place on the beach include petanque, a French beach game that involves tossing metal balls toward a jack, a France versus Russia table-soccer tournament, an exhibition of comic book art, kite-flying demonstrations and the chance to drink a glass of French wine.

TITLE: Olympian heights
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sochi Restaurant // 30 Bolshoi Prospekt, Petrograd Side (above Captain Morgan casino). Tel: 230 7230. www.r-sochi.com // Open noon through midnight. Menu in Russian only. Dinner for two 3,210 rubles ($138)

Blame it on the International Olympic Committee. By selecting the southern Russian resort of Sochi to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, the town, remembered by generations of Russians as a long-gone Soviet idyll for hot and happy childhood holidays, is suddenly fashionable again. 
Not one but two establishments called Sochi have opened for business in St. Petersburg in the past month, but they couldn’t be more different. One, a music bar on Kazanskaya Ulitsa, is run by Anna Albers, the doyenne of the city’s alternative party scene. The other is an upscale restaurant above a casino on Bolshoi Prospekt on the Petrograd Side.
Sochi (the restaurant) is troublesome to locate because visitors must enter through the Captain Morgan Casino and proceed to the third floor. As yet there are no signs at street level to indicate this. The presence of huge black 4x4s parked near Captain Morgan’s gaudy, neon-lit canopy, its smoked-glass doors and grim bouncers, add up to intimidate rather than welcome guests. It is also unclear what relationship Sochi has with its downstairs neighbor: is it intended only for casino patrons or is anybody welcome?
The restaurant is large with one huge room seating perhaps as many as 200 guests. The styling is impressive. The marble floor is flecked with copper. Large banquettes are upholstered in soft chocolate brown leather. The linen scheme alternates between cream tablecloths and brown napkins and vice versa, while four large chandeliers make the most of what is an unusually low ceiling. Coffee-colored chiffon curtains allow in plenty of light from large windows, but an off note is struck by the presence of a flat screen TV at one end of the room.
Memories of Soviet Sochi may suggest that this restaurant offers Caucasian cuisine. Indeed it does and an open charcoal grill behind the bar is used for a quite uninspired range of shashlyks. But don’t worry; this being Russia, there’s also a full sushi menu too. But if neither the Black Sea nor the Sea of Japan floats your boat, take a sail to the Mediterranean: naturally Sochi has an Italy-inspired “fusion” menu, which is where the really interesting meals are docked.
A warm salad of beef, cherry tomatoes, rocket and parmesan (520 rubles, $22.40) combined its ingredients with a sly understanding of how heat alters flavor that was to reappear in other dishes during the meal. The tomatoes had been warmed to sweeten them and provide a sharp counterpoint to the fresh, peppery tips of rocket leaves. The tender strips of beef contrasted with a drizzle of sharp crushed garlic in oil. 
A wonderful veggie starter was eggplant with mozzarella, tomato and pesto (320 rubles, $14). A whole eggplant had been sliced to its stem, fanned out and grilled with melted cheese. It had been prepared to the point when its flesh was soft but not soggy, flavorful not scorched.
The chef has an affinity for fresh vegetables and how to enhance their natural flavors by not overcooking them and adding unexpected complementary sauces and dressings. A main course of pan-fried fillet of salmon with asparagus (720 rubles, $31) was smothered in what appeared to be a warm, lurid guacamole that tasted of pistachio. Alongside it sat a dollop of ice cold fruit confit that resembled marmalade or chutney. It was a whimsical but not altogether successful combination. However three juicy asparagus spears nestling under the fish were not in the least bit woody and were redolent of freshly mown meadows and cool summer streams. 
Asparagus was also a welcome guest in a fettuccine with shrimps and cream sauce (390 rubles, $17). Scooped into a neat pyramid on a stylish black plate, the pasta tangle and lightly cooked ingredients represented excellent value for money: inferior spag bol in a pizzeria often costs as much.
The hit of the menu was, surprisingly, a side order. Braised French beans (320 rubles, $14) served in hot smetana infused with hazelnut oil, turned out of a ramekin and topped with slices of red bell pepper, was simply sensational. Exemplifying a lightness of touch that left the beans cooked-through but crunchy and sent into the stratosphere by the unusual sauce, this dish was worth every kopek.

TITLE: Gathering no moss
AUTHOR: By Stephen Holden
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: As you scrutinize the aging bodies of the Rolling Stones in Martin Scorsese’s rip-roaring concert documentary “Shine a Light,” there is ample evidence that rock ’n’ roll may hold the secret of eternal vitality, if not eternal beauty.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, the quartet’s three skinny members, certainly look their ages. But there is nothing stodgy about them. The strenuous rock ’n’ roll life has left them sinewy and lean, like longtime marathon runners. (The staid, above-it-all drummer, Charlie Watts, is the exception.)
Jagger’s lined face, with its deflated balloon lips, suggests a double exposure of Dorian Gray and his infamous portrait, at once defiantly youthful and creepily gaunt. The simian Richards, whose upper arm flesh has shriveled, resembles an old madam chewing over her secrets. As he plays, his lips dangling a cigarette, he leans back into his snarling guitar and a joyful grin spreads across his face. He could be the world’s happiest young older man: Peter Pan as a wizened Gypsy fortuneteller.
For the Rolling Stones appear supremely alive inside their giant, self-created rock ’n’ roll machine. The sheer pleasure of making music that keens and growls like a pack of ravenous alley cats is obviously what keeps them going. Why should they ever stop? At the heart of the gizmo, Jagger whirls, leaps, struts, wiggles his tiny hips and sashays around like an androgynous tart prowling a street corner at 3 a.m.
Ultimately the movie is Jagger’s show. If his long-running circus act is ridiculous when you analyze it, conjoined to the Stones’ music, it becomes a phenomenal high-wire exhibition of agility, stamina and cheek. He was 63 when the concert was filmed over two nights at the Beacon Theater in New York in the fall of 2006. From certain angles, when the blazing lights hit his face, he suggests an agitated zombie with a full head of hair. But if you squint until your vision blurs, he is the same tireless, taunting cock of the walk that he has always been.
The film, which used 18 cameras, many operated by eminent cinematographers, is an unabashedly reverent tribute to the Stones made in the same spirit as “The Last Waltz,” Scorsese’s elegiac 1978 movie of the Band’s farewell concert, and his more recent Bob Dylan biography, “No Direction Home.” That said, it is far less ambitious, and less overtly romantic.
This is a concert film with frills that places you on the stage with the band and, with a finely trained eye, observes the musicians’ interactions with one another and with the audience. The visual rhythms and unobtrusive editing reflect the contradictory status of the Stones as a majestic rock institution and a gang of down-and-dirty bad boys thumbing their noses at propriety while scooping up all the girls.
Although there is no frantic cutting back and forth, the cameras are continually on the move. As the movie artfully shifts its gaze, it helps you see much more than you could if you actually attended the concert. The audience is largely ignored.
Scorsese is a besotted rock ’n’ roll fan who wholeheartedly embraces its mythology. Its scruffy guitar heroes and roustabout rebel-prophets are the musical equivalents of the hotheads and outlaws who populate so many of his films. Almost every shot of “Shine a Light” conveys his excitement.
Prefaced by preconcert footage and interwoven with excerpts from television interviews from the Stones’ younger days, going back to 1964, “Shine a Light” makes no attempt to explain the Stones or to tell their story. All it wants to do is to give you the best seat in the house and the best sound you could possibly hope for.
The program is a best-of selection that concentrates on Stones classics, including “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Shattered,” “Some Girls,” “Tumbling Dice,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Start Me Up” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The only misfire is the quaint, quasi chamber-pop ballad “As Tears Go By,” a hit for Marianne Faithfull in 1964, which sounds incongruous in Jagger’s parched delivery. Otherwise, the full-tilt rock concert roars along like a steam engine. A horn section, a keyboardist (Chuck Leavell), a bass guitarist (Darryl Jones) and three backup singers augment the band.
There are three special guests: in ascending order of interest, Jack White, who trades vocals with Jagger on “Loving Cup”; Christina Aguilera, who shares the vocals on “Live With Me” and bestows demure pecks on the cheek to the musicians as she leaves the stage; and the great blues guitarist and singer Buddy Guy performing an old Muddy Waters song, “Champagne and Reefer.”
Jaggar and company are bohemian whippersnappers churning up variations on their elders’ musical bedrock. It is obviously a thrilling game to play into your 60s and beyond, if you’ve still got the juice. And the Stones have the juice. But it is ultimately just a game.

TITLE: Colombia Admits Using Red Cross Sign
AUTHOR: By Hugh Bronstein
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BOGOTA — Colombia misused the symbol of the Red Cross in this month’s military rescue of politician Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other rebel-held hostages, it said on Wednesday, admitting a possible violation of the rules of war.
“We regret that this occurred,” President Alvaro Uribe said in a speech following reports that the Red Cross emblem was displayed on a jersey or T-shirt worn by a Colombian intelligence officer who took part in the rescue mission.
Falsely portraying military personnel as Red Cross members is against the Geneva Conventions as it could put humanitarian workers at risk when they are in war zones.
Uribe has drawn widespread praise for the July 2 rescue of French-Colombian citizen Betancourt, three U.S. defense contractors and 11 other kidnap victims held for years by Marxist guerrillas.
Rebel leaders were duped into handing over their most prized hostages in the operation, which highlighted the success of Uribe’s U.S.-backed offensive against the guerrillas.
But the use of the Red Cross symbol takes some of the shine off the mission.
“Parties to the conflict must respect the Red Cross emblem at all times and under all circumstances,” said Yves Heller, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Colombia. “We will continue working in the field in Colombia.”
State security agents posed as members of a fictitious aid group that ingratiated itself with the guerrillas. They convinced the insurgents that they would fly the hostages by helicopter to meet with the rebels’ leader in a secret camp.
Once in the air, Colombian officers overpowered the two guerrillas on board, tied them up and told the 15 hostages they were free.
Uribe said on Wednesday that the use of the Red Cross symbol was not part of the government’s original rescue plan.
“One of the officers has admitted that when the helicopter was landing at the start of the operation he saw so many guerrillas that he got nervous. He feared for his life and he pulled out a jersey that had the Red Cross symbol and put it over his vest,” Uribe said.
Debate raged in Colombia over the legality of the mission.
“It would have been a violation of the Geneva Conventions if the state had used the Red Cross symbol to gain a military advantage,” said Rafael Nieto, a political commentator and former deputy justice minister. “In this case the goal was to complete a humanitarian, not a military, objective.”
But other legal experts disagreed.
“I doubt that a state can abuse the Red Cross symbol, no matter what the circumstances,” said Jose Alvarez, a professor at Columbia University Law School in New York.
The cocaine-funded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, still holds hundreds of Colombians for ransom and political leverage in its decade-old war against the state.
Uribe’s father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping years ago, and he is hugely popular for making the cities and highways safer with his hard-line military policies.

TITLE: Tour de France Marred by Series of Dope Scandals
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LAVELANET, France — The Tour de France was rocked by a third positive doping scandal Thursday following the news that Italian Riccardo Ricco tested positive for banned substances.
Ricco, who won two climbing stages last week, was taken into custody by French police amid scenes of chaos outside his Saunier Duval team bus before the start of stage 12.
His positive test for the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) was confirmed by the French national anti-doping agency (AFLD), which is carrying out all tests on the race as the race is being held under the auspices of the French federation.
The 24-year-old Ricco provided a urine sample which also contained the banned subtance CERA (Continuous Erythropietin Receptor Activator) after the fourth stage, a 29.5 km time-trial at Cholet.
His Spanish team initially took to the start line for the 12th stage from here to Narbonne, however the yellow-clad riders returned to the team bus shortly before 1200 GMT.
Saunier-Duval then announced through a spokesman they had decided to pull out of the race, and all other cycling activities, until they get to the bottom of the affair.
“We’ve decided to suspend all cycling activities until we find out what has happened,” team spokesman Matxin Fernandez said.
“Ricco is not just any rider, he’s a top rider. So for the sake of our team and the Tour de France we have made this decision. We can’t act as though nothing has happened, we have to accept the reality.”
Ricco becomes the third cyclist to be taken in for questioning by French police.
On Wednesday Spaniard Moises Duenas of the Barloworld team was taken into custody after it was revealed he had also tested positive for EPO. 
“I’m shocked,” Barloworld team manager Claudio Corti said in a statement. “The one thing I will say is that the team is not involved in this story at all, and we’ll take severe action against anyone who damages our credibility and the image of our team.”
Corti said a police search of the rider’s room found “some banned medicines that were absolutely not supplied or prescribed” by team doctor Massimiliano Mantovani.
“I’ve asked the French police to fully investigate the case so that we can fully understand,” Corti said. “He seems to have secretly used banned substances, hiding everything from everybody else in the team.
Another Spaniard, Manuel Beltran, left the race under a cloud last week after he also tested positive for the banned hormone.
Ricco, however, is by far the biggest name to have been snared by the anti-doping authorities.
A runner-up at the Giro d’Italia last month that was won by Alberto Contador, Ricco is considered the biggest start to emerge in Italian cycling since the late Marco Pantani, a former winner of the Tour and Giro.
Ricco fell under the doping spotlight last week when it was reported that he was one of several targets of the AFLD. He is reported to have a naturally high haematocrit level of over 50, meaning the volume of oxygen-rich red blood cells in his blood is higher than the norm.
The UCI introduced a ‘legal’ limit of 50 for cyclists in 1999, after many cyclists and endurance athletes were found to be using EPO in dangerous proportions.
EPO and other blood boosting drugs increase the volume of red blood cells, pumping more oxygen into the blood and therefore allowing athletes to work harder and longer.
Ricco last week brushed off the suspicions.
“I know I have nothing to worry about. My blood values are high, but for me they are totally normal because I’ve had them since I was a child,” Ricco said of the reports following his victory on the ninth stage.
“The International Cycling Union (UCI) know that and I have a certificate from the UCI to prove that they are naturally high.”
Ricco also won stage six of the race.
The two previous Tours were also marred by doping, pressing organizers ASO and the UCI to clean up the race. Sponsors, such as longtime German backer T-Mobile, pulled out.
Last year, the pre-race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan tested positive for blood doping, Italian rider Cristian Moreni tested positive for testosterone, Iban Mayo of Spain was busted for using EPO, and race leader Michael Rasmussen was kicked out just days before the end for lying about his whereabouts to avoid pre-Tour doping tests.
Mayo was cleared by his national federation, but the case is still being contested by the UCI.
In the 2006 Tour, Floyd Landis tested positive for synthetic testosterone after a spectacular comeback ride that set the stage for his victory. The American was later stripped of the title after a long court battle.

AP, AFP

TITLE: British Open Marked by Inclement Weather
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SOUTHPORT, England — Forget the leaderboard. The whipping wind and soaking rain were getting the best of everyone at Royal Birkdale.
The British Open got off to a cold, soggy start Thursday, with storms rolling off the Irish Sea turning the historic links course into a house of horrors.
Phil Mickelson lost a ball in the tangly rough. Sandy Lyle quit after 10 holes. Vijay Singh was 10 over through 11 holes.
Tiger Woods couldn’t have picked a better time to miss his first major since 1996. He was back home in the States, all warm and comfy as he recovered from knee surgery.
Certainly, Kenny Perry must have been chuckling to himself after taking all that grief for deciding to skip the oldest of the majors because he didn’t think it suited his game.
“It got to the point where you just don’t care,” moaned Pat Perez, who shot a 12-over 82. “Now I know why Kenny stayed home.”
Nearly six hours after Craig Parry hit the opening shot of the tournament, only one player was in the red: two-time U.S. Open winner Retief Goosen at 1 under. No one else was better than 1 over, and some scores were really ugly.
Four of the first nine players to finish shot higher than 80. The average score at midday was nearly 79. The leader in the clubhouse was Australia’s Brendan Jones with a 74.
“Par is irrelevant on a day like this,” said Parry, who struggled to a 77. “You can only laugh and take it on the chin. The golf course is going to win.”
Perez awoke at 3:30 a.m. to get in a workout. He knew right away that it wasn’t going to be a very pleasant round.
“It was raining and howling,” he recalled. “I said, ‘This is going to be some kind of day.”’
Despite a sore wrist, Padraig Harrington got off to a promising start in defense of his win last year at Carnoustie. The Irishman, who wasn’t even sure he’d be able to tee off, was 2 over with four holes to play—good enough for a spot on the leaderboard in brutal conditions.
Heath Slocum, who traveled across the Atlantic as an alternate with no guarantee he’d get to play, was rewarded at the last minute when Japan’s Toru Taniguchi of Japan dropped out with a back injury.
Slocum hastily joined a group that included 1995 Open champion John Daly, and was among the early contenders after he birdied No. 4.
Five-time Open champion Tom Watson birdied the first hole to send a roar through the shivering gallery. But it was a miserable, short-lived tournament for another former winner. Lyle, who won the Open at Royal St. George’s in 1985, pulled out after playing the first 10 holes in an 11-over 49.
“I felt I could do myself more harm than good,” said the 50-year-old Lyle, who plays his first Senior Open tournament at Troon next week. “It could take three weeks for recover from this.”

TITLE: Pope Speaks Out on Consumption Threat
AUTHOR: By Philip Pullella
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — Pope Benedict on Thursday told a huge gathering of young people that they were inheriting a planet whose resources had been scarred and squandered to fuel insatiable consumption.
His latest appeal to save the planet for future generations came in an address to some 150,000 youths in Sydney after he rode through the city’s harbor standing on the outdoor deck of a white ferry as dozens of boats blew their horns.
“Reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth, erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption,” he told the cheering crowd.
The 81-year-old pope appeared in good form as he started the official part of his trip after three days of rest. He chatted with young people on the ferry and stepped off sprightly to receive a bear hug welcome by an Aboriginal on the dock.
He told the young people, some of whom had come from island nations threatened by rising sea levels or drought-hit nations such as Australia, that protecting the environment was “of vital importance to humanity.”
The pope recalled how during his long flight from Rome last weekend, he marveled at the sparkle of the Mediterranean, the grandeur of the north African desert, the lushness of Asia’s forests and the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
“It is as though one catches glimpses of the Genesis creation story — light and darkness, the sun and the moon, the waters, the earth and living creatures,” he said.
In a welcoming speech to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday morning, the pope said: “It is appropriate to reflect upon the kind of world we are handing on to future generations.”
Australia, one of the world’s highest per capita greenhouse emitters due to coal-fired power stations, is in the grip of the worst drought in 100 years and is struggling to save its major river system that feeds the nation’s food belt.
The pope also praised Australia for apologizing for past injustices to Aborigines, saying it was a courageous move to repair race relations and offered hope to the rest of the world.
Rudd officially apologized to Aborigines in February.
Australia’s 460,000 Aborigines make up about 2 percent of the country’s 21 million population and have consistently higher rates of unemployment, substance abuse and domestic violence, as well as a life expectancy 17 years less than other Australians.
The pope thanked Aborigines for a traditional welcoming ceremony and acknowledged Aborigines are the first people of Australia.
“I am deeply moved to stand on your land, knowing the suffering and injustices it has borne, but aware too of the healing and hope that are now at work...,” he said.
The Catholic Church hopes World Youth Day, the brainchild of the late Pope John Paul II, will revitalize the world’s young Catholics at a time when the cult of the individual and consumerism have become big distractions in their lives.
The pope said the “social world” also had scars, highlighting alcohol and drug abuse, violence and sexual degradation. 
He questioned how the media’s portrayal of violence and sexual exploitation can be considered “entertainment.”
He warned young pilgrims “do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer.”

TITLE: France Denies Citizenship to Veiled Muslim
AUTHOR: By Angela Charlton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — The case started quietly, when a Muslim woman who sheaths herself in a head-to-toe veil was denied French citizenship because she had not assimilated enough into this society. France’s highest body upheld the decision, and politicians across the spectrum agreed it was the right move.
A few dissenting voices, though, are now questioning whether the decision pushed France’s secularist values too far.
“Where does it begin or end? What are we calling radical behavior?” asked Mohammed Bechari, president of the National Federation of French Muslims. “Will we see a man refused citizenship because of the length of his beard ... or a man who is dressed as a rabbi, or a priest?”
On June 27, France’s highest administrative body, the Council of State, ruled that the woman, identified only as Faiza X, had “adopted a radical practice of her religion incompatible with the essential values of the French community, notably with the principle of equality of the sexes, and therefore she does not fulfill the conditions of assimilation” listed in the country’s Civil Code as a requirement for gaining French citizenship.
The council said the decision to refuse her citizenship did not aim to “attack (her) freedom of religion.”
But critics accuse the French justice system of breeding fear and intolerance of Islam under the guise of upholding secularism. The country is home to western Europe’s largest Muslim population, estimated to be at least 5 million of the nation’s 63 million people — and growing.
French officialdom has struggled to instill secular traditions in Muslim immigrant communities, passing a law in 2004 barring the Islamic headscarf and other highly visible religious symbols from public schools. Proponents of that law welcomed the decision denying citizenship to Faiza X, who wears a niqab, or full-body veil, to her meetings with immigration officials.
“The burqa, it’s a prison, a straitjacket,” France’s minister for urban affairs, Fadela Amara, herself born to Algerian parents, was quoted as saying.
The terms burqa and niqab are often used interchangeably in France, though the former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes. An official state document said the woman wore a full-body niqab, which left her eyes uncovered.
“It is not a religious sign but the visible sign of a totalitarian political project preaching inequality between the sexes, and which carries within it the total absence of democracy,” Amara was quoted as saying in the daily Le Parisien.
Amara told the paper she hoped extremists would get a strong message from the Council of State’s ruling, which upheld immigration officials’ refusal to grant citizenship to Faiza X.
The council’s ruling did not refer to Faiza’s niqab, which she said she adopted after arriving in France from her native Morocco, according to a report from a government commissioner to the Council.
The woman told immigration officials that she did not know anything about secularism or her right to vote, according to the commissioner’s report. All the immigration officials handling her case were women. They asked her to remove her veil to identify herself, which she did only when no men were in the room, the report said.
Later, in a letter to immigration officials, the woman defended her lifestyle by noting that other immigrants granted French citizenship also maintain “ties with their culture of origin.”
The woman and her husband told immigration officials that they adhere to Salafism, a strict strain of Islam.
Her statements to immigration officials indicate that “she leads a life almost of a recluse, cut off from French society,” leaving the house only to walk with her children or visit relatives, the report said.
“She lives in total submission to the men in her family ... and the idea of contesting this submission doesn’t even occur to her,” the government report said.
Politicians on talk shows this week spoke out in support of the ruling.

TITLE: Ronaldinho Arrives in Milan Amid Expectations From Fans and Coach
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MILAN — Ronaldinho arrived at AC Milan’s training ground on Wednesday where he was due to undergo a medical and sign a three-year contract.
Barcelona agreed late on Tuesday to sell the Brazil forward for an initial fee of 21 million euros ($33.5 million) following two days of talks with Milan chief executive Adriano Galliani.
Ronaldinho and Galliani flew into Milan earlier on Wednesday and went straight to the Milanello training ground where the squad was gathering for the first day of pre-season work.
Some 4,000 fans were outside the gates to welcome the 28-year-old playmaker, who was FIFA World Player of the Year in 2004 and 2005 but struggled last season with form and fitness.
The formalities of the move will be concluded over the next couple of days and he will then be presented to the media.
Milan endured a tough time last season, losing their Champions League crown after falling to Arsenal in the last 16 and then finishing fifth in Serie A and only qualifying for the UEFA Cup this term.
Coach Carlo Ancelotti has been under huge pressure in the last few months but he said he was thrilled to get back to work after the close season break with Ronaldinho’s arrival making him even happier.
Italy fullback Gianluca Zambrotta and France midfielder Mathieu Flamini were other notable buys from Barca and Arsenal.
“The club has made a great sacrifice and has bought outstanding players,” Ancelotti told reporters, referring to the large amounts of money paid.
“With what is at our disposal we can count on being competitive on all fronts. Ronaldinho will bring lots of enthusiasm and that enthusiasm is a fundamental component to start the season well.

TITLE: S. Korea Markets Cloning of Pets
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SEOUL — Two South Korean labs are offering pet owners the chance to clone dogs, but for those looking to bring back a beloved beagle, be ready to wait in line and have plenty of cash on hand.
The Seoul-based labs -- one affiliated to RNL Bio Co and the other to Sooam Biotech Research Foundation — are separated by about 30 km (20 miles) and bill themselves as the only places in the world where you can clone a cocker spaniel or retrieve a retriever, with costs running at about $50,000 to $100,000.
But the labs are turning out far more copies of working dogs and endangered breeds than pets.
Customers such as South Korea’s customs service have cloned a champion sniffer dog, seeing the option as a cost-effective way to produce candidates for expensive training programs.
The customs service estimates the cost at 60 million won ($60,000) per clone. It costs about twice that to breed and train a normal sniffer dog, but only about 30 percent are good enough to make the grade, it said.
“This all came about from the question of how we could secure dogs with superior qualities at a low price,” commissioner of the Korea Customs Service Hur Yong-suk said.
Near South Korea’s main international airport, trainers have been putting seven Labrador retrievers cloned from a top drug sniffing dog named Chase through their paces.