SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1411 (75), Friday, September 26, 2008
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TITLE: City Quota For Work Permits Used Up
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreign managers and other employees are facing difficulties in obtaining the documents necessary to continue to work in Russia after the quota for work permits for foreigners for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast was filled last month.
The local migration services are unable to help the lines of individuals and HR managers flooding their offices, as the decision on whether or not to increase the quota for the year can only be made in Moscow by the Federal Migration Service. 
At a roundtable on labor migration policies organized by the American Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, Sergei Smirnov, deputy head of immigration issues for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, said the decision would be made at the end of this month or the beginning of October.
A panel of migration service and employment center representatives at the roundtable said that the situation was the result of differing rules for foreign workers from countries within the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union countries such as Ukraine, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) and for those from other countries. 
Companies that wish to employ foreigners from outside the CIS must apply to the city’s Employment Center for the right to do so, stating the number, job titles and nationalities of the employees required during the next year. There is no quota for the number of companies that can apply for permission to employ foreigners, and most of the companies currently facing problems applied for and were granted permission to employ foreigners months ago, only to discover when applying for work permits that there were none left. 
Citizens of CIS countries, who constitute the vast majority of foreigners working in Russia, can apply directly for a work permit to the migration service rather than applying through their company, meaning that far more permits are issued in total than are preliminarily requested by companies. By the time companies that applied to hire foreigners — even large numbers of them — attempted to renew their employees’ work permits, there were no permits left.
Smirnov said another 105,000 permits for St. Petersburg were needed. 
Various bureaucratic problems were discussed at the roundtable, such as the crucial importance of consistency in job titles. If a company applies for permission to hire a foreign “general manager of the enterprise,” for example, then unless the wording for the position on the list of vacant permits is identical, the company will not be able to obtain a work permit for that person.  If the word order of the title is different, or the word “enterprise” is absent, or even if the title uses capital letters on one list and not on another, the application will be unsuccessful.
Tamara Mikhailova, HR director at the Nevskij Palace hotel, appealed to the panel of migration service officials about the problem of having to specify the nationality of the foreign employees needed on the application to employ foreigners.
“If I have a French or German head chef, and I apply for permission to employ a French or German chef, and then he leaves, and we need to recruit a new chef — if the new chef is not from France or Germany, then we have to change our application to employ foreigners completely,” she said.  She asked the panel if there were any plans to change the rules so that it would no longer be necessary to specify the nationality of the employee, and received a negative response.
In an interview after the roundtable, Mikhailova said that the main problem facing HR directors is the vagueness of Russian labor laws.
“The laws are not clear enough; they are not specific,” she said. 
“There is also a contradiction between contract terms and immigration regulations. We might be prepared to offer an employee a 5-year contract, but we cannot, because the work permit is only valid for one year.  To keep in line with the labor laws, we are forced to terminate the employee’s contract when the work permit expires, and hire them again straight away. This creates a huge amount of extra bureaucracy for us, because we have to prepare all the paperwork for their contract all over again.”
Mikhailova said it was extremely difficult for HR directors to predict the exact details of employees when applying for permission to employ foreigners.
“We don’t know what plans our employees have, what their family situation could be — how can we know all this two years in advance?” she said.
“Of course all our employees work legally, in full accordance with immigration laws, but we come up against some incredible difficulties,” she said. “We only have a few foreign members of staff, and I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for companies who have many foreign employees.”
Another recent development in Russian immigration procedures was the canceling by the Federal Migration Service of an informal arrangement by which some companies had been exempt from some of the medical tests necessary to receive a work permit. 
Foreign employees of certain companies had previously only been required to be tested for HIV, but will now also have to undergo all of the other tests specified by the government — currently leprosy, tuberculosis, syphilis, Chlamydia, chancre and substance abuse.   
Last year, the laws were changed to specify which clinics were permitted to issue the medical certificates. In St. Petersburg, the list consists of five state-run clinics. Certificates from the more modern, private clinics preferred by many Westerners are no longer valid.
Migration laws are notoriously subject to change. Requirements for obtaining a work permit last year in some cases involved an interview with a psychiatrist.

TITLE: War Puts Russia on U.S. Election Agenda
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — When U.S. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain go live on air to battle over foreign policy in their first presidential debate Friday, last month’s conflict with Georgia might mean that Russia will feature more prominently, the candidates’ top advisers said.
Viewers should not expect a fiery debate on this point, however, as the topic is still likely to be overshadowed by the drama of the global financial meltdown and attention to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are on the ground.
“I think Russia is a secondary issue in foreign policy in this campaign,” Frederick Kagan, a foreign policy adviser to McCain, said in a telephone interview this week.
“The United States is at war [in Iraq and Afghanistan], and these theaters are not within Russia,” Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said from Washington.
Michael McFaul, Obama’s adviser on Russia, said foreign policy was still a secondary issue for most American voters. “After last week’s events [on Wall Street], this is even more so,” McFaul said in a telephone interview from Stanford University, California, where he is a professor of political science and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“The economic debate has wiped out” U.S. media attention on Russia, he said. “It will come up again Friday, but whether it is still alive next week, I am not sure.”
Worse, there might be boredom ahead, as there is not much separating the candidates when it comes to relations with Moscow, and the war in Georgia has not done much to change opinions.
“There is no disagreement between me and Michael about the nature of the current Russian regime and that has been true for some time,” Kagan said.
But both agreed that the conflict had pushed the issue further up the agenda.
“The Russian invasion of Georgian territory was a pretty fundamental turning point in international history,” Kagan said, adding that the debate about Russia would have been even milder without the conflict over South Ossetia.
McFaul said the present discussion was already markedly stronger than in the primary debates, where Russia “was really an afterthought.”
McFaul offered another reason why Russia might not be such a tame topic after all.
While the candidates’ positions on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan were quite well known, Russia was a relatively new issue.
“People don’t know much about their positions,” McFaul said. “It can be more volatile.”
As might be expected, his opinion of McCain’s position — that some of his statements in the past have been “reckless bluster” — was lower than his take on Obama’s position, which he described as more “nuanced.”
McFaul scoffed at the notion that McCain was tough on Moscow while Obama was soft.
“I just hate those terms to be honest. I don’t know what hard-liner, soft-liner means,” he said, suggesting that the more interesting question is who has the more effective strategy for defending American national interests.
The problem with McCain, he argued, was not so much that he was taking a hard line but that he had no strategy for Russia.
As an example, he singled out McCain’s demand to expel Russia from the Group of Eight.
“I don’t know whether this is hard line or soft line, I just think it is bad policy,” McFaul said.
Obama has said the move would pose a greater risk by isolating Russia.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Obama appears to be more popular among Moscow’s political elite than McCain.
“McCain would simply be a catastrophe — for the whole world,” said Sergei Markov, a State Duma deputy in the Kremlin-friendly United Russia party. 
He called the Republican candidate a “mad pensioner” and described his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as a “housewife, chosen by mere chance.”
Markov also accused McCain of warmongering and put him in the neoconservative camp, which had “organized the war in Iraq, was the catalyst for the war in South Ossetia, is ready to go to war with Iran and might lead to World War III.”
He echoed earlier comments by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, calling the conflict in Georgia “a Cold War campaign against Russia” that helped McCain catch Obama in the polls.
McCain has a record of critical comments about Putin, having described him as a “a dangerous person” and said that when he looked into his eyes he saw three letters “a K, a G and a B” — in reference to U.S. President George W. Bush’s statement after his first meeting with then-President Putin that he had looked into his eyes and “got a sense of his soul.”
While McCain is sticking with an extremely critical approach, Obama may yet to have made up his mind.
Christopher Preble, director for foreign policy studies at the CATO Institute, cautioned against labeling the Illinois senator as the more “liberal” foreign policy maker. While McCain had indeed taken a tough stance toward Moscow, “Senator Obama just does not have the same long track record as McCain,” he said.
Preble pointed out that Democratic officials like Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke had been “pretty hard line” vis-a-vis Moscow.
Nicolai Petro, a political science professor at the University of Rhode Island, argued that campaign rhetoric was not necessarily a strong indicator for what policies would be adopted after a new government is in office.
“Much depends on personal relationships,” he said in a telephone interview, adding that regardless of who wins, their foreign policy team won’t be clear before next spring, when the relevant positions in the new presidential administration have been filled.
The debate, to be held at the University of Mississippi, begins at 8 p.m. local time, 11 a.m. Moscow time, and will be carried live on CNN and the Internet.

TITLE: Former Duma Deputy Yamadayev Shot Dead in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev and Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ruslan Yamadayev, a former State Duma deputy and a member of a Chechen clan that challenged President Ramzan Kadyrov’s authority, was gunned down in central Moscow late Wednesday.
An unidentified attacker walked up and fired a pistol several times into Yamadayev’s Mercedes S500 after Yamadayev stopped for a red light at 10 Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya, near the White House, Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said in televised remarks.
Yamadayev died on the spot, and his passenger, former military commander for Chechnya Sergei Kizyun, was seriously injured, Gribakin said.
Channel One television showed Yamadayev, wearing a green jacket and white shirt, sitting sprawled out in the driver’s seat. The channel said the car belonged to his brother, Sulim, former commander of the special commando battalion Vostok.
The attacker fled in a foreign-made car, Gribakin said. Police were combing the city for an Audi-80 sedan Wednesday night, RIA-Novosti reported, citing sources in the investigation team.
Ten 9-mm bullets fired from automatic weapons were retrieved at the site of the attack, RIA-Novosti said.
Yamadayev, 47, and his brothers Sulim and Badrudi headed a powerful clan that had a falling out with Kadyrov after enjoying warm relations with Kadyrov’s father, assassinated Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov.
A source in the Chechen administration said Kadyrov was upset to learn about Yamadayev’s death.
“You know, rumors will start now that he might be involved,” the official said by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Like the Kadyrovs, Yamadayev and his brothers initially supported Chechnya’s independence from Russia in the 1990s. They fought against federal troops during the first Chechen war but switched sides during the second military campaign and supported Kremlin efforts to end Chechnya’s de facto independence.
With Akhmad Kadyrov, the Yamadayevs arranged for their stronghold — the Chechen city of Gudermes — to be taken over by federal troops without a fight. In return, a grateful Kremlin allowed the Yamadayevs to use their fighters to form Vostok under the auspices of the Defense Ministry. Ruslan and Sulim Yamadayev were awarded Hero of Russia medals for their fight against Chechen rebels.
Sulim Yamadayev was made commander of Vostok, while Ruslan was elected to the State Duma on the pro-Kremlin United Russia ticket in 2003. He was not re-elected in December 2007 in what insiders said was a sign that Chechen authorities no longer wanted him to occupy the high-profile post.
He continued to live in Moscow with Sulim Yamadayev, the Chechen official said.
The Yamadayevs were believed to be the only political and military force in Chechnya capable of acting independently of Kadyrov, who became president in February 2007. Yamadayev’s death further cements Kadyrov’s grip on Chechnya, said Sergei Markedonov, a Caucasus expert at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis.
A standoff between the two clans culminated in April when a Vostok convoy failed to yield to Kadyrov’s motorcade. A furious Kadyrov ordered a crackdown on the Yamadayevs.
Chechen prosecutors opened an investigation into Sulim Yamadayev on murder charges, and he was subsequently put on a wanted list. Kadyrov’s press service distributed a flurry of press releases accusing the brothers of organizing extrajudicial killings, torture, extortions and kidnapping. Among the allegations, the brothers were accused of raiding a St. Petersburg company owned by a Chechen businessman and then kidnapping his relatives.
“They had a lot of enemies,” the Chechen official said.
However, Kadyrov’s efforts to undercut the clan did not stop Sulim Yamadayev from commanding the Vostok battalion during Russia’s military operation to push Georgian troops out of South Ossetia in early August, and he granted interviews to the Russian press in South Ossetia.
Shortly after the South Ossetia conflict, Sulim Yamadayev was fired from Vostok, but he also was removed from the Chechen wanted list.

TITLE: Ecologists: 10,000 Tons Of Waste Headed for City
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Up to 10,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride are expected to travel through St. Petersburg in the next six months, according to the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Bellona. The next cargo is expected to arrive in town in early October.
Arriving by sea, the radioactive material will then be sent by rail to the town of Novouralsk in Siberia for reprocessing and storage. Most of the cargo arrives in Russia from the Netherlands and Germany but Russia has signed contracts with India, Pakistan and China — states that are rapidly bolstering their nuclear programs — and looks set to receive even more spent nuclear fuel and uranium hexafluoride for reprocessing.
“Alarmingly, the trains that carry the hazardous cargo originate at the Avtovo railway station, very near residential areas,” said Rashid Alimov, head of Bellona’s St. Petersburg branch, at an environmental conference on nuclear safety this week. “Worse, as our investigations have shown, most of the locals in the area have absolutely no idea about the risks that they are regularly being exposed to as a result of the dangerous transfers.”
According to official sources, cargos containing depleted uranium hexafluoride arrive in the city on average ten times a month.
Alimov said radioactivity levels near the trains have significantly exceeded the norm on several occasions over the past year. 
“For example, when we measured the levels in March 2008, our equipment showed 680 microroentgen per hour, which is a health- threatening level: the norm is less than ten percent of that amount,” Alimov said.
The environmentalists described “a cloud of secrecy” surrounding nuclear transportation.
“We are especially worried by the fact that Russian environmental groups are constantly denied any opportunity of an independent control and monitoring of the traffic,” Alimov said. “Despite numerous requests, officials have refused to inform us about rescue or clean-up plans that would be implemented should an accident happen.”
The authorities insist they are in full control and do not welcome any help from ecological groups.
Speaking at the conference earlier this week, Oleg Muratov, head of the public council of the Russian Atomic Energy Agency, said there has not been a single road accident involving radioactive materials during the history of its transportation in the country.
“The nuclear industry is crucially important for Russia; our country provides nuclear fuel for every third nuclear reactor in the world,” Muratov said. “This earns the state budget a tremendous amount of money: the export of nuclear fuel is Russia’s third most profitable export, after the export of oil and gas.”
Tatyana Minina, a spokeswoman for the Oktyabrskaya Railroads, said her company has invested over 100 billion rubles into enhancing the safety of trains — both passenger and cargo trains — over the past five years. 
“We also have our own environmental monitoring service and provide a round-the-clock control over leaks, crashes or any other potentially dangerous situations,” Minina said.
Alimov warns, however, that transport accidents are still very common in Russia, with trains sometimes colliding or going off the rails and even falling off bridges.
“Russia’s transport system is not immune to accidents and if an accident involving radioactive material happens in St. Petersburg, the  price that the city would pay would be much too high,” Alimov said. “If a transport accident occurs that breaks the hermetic seal of a container which is loaded with spent nuclear fuel, it may result in lethal cases of radiation poisoning in a 32-kilometer radius from the site of the spill.”
Igor Merkushev, a lawmaker with the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said the parliament’s Health Care and Environment Commission will investigate the details of the transport of nuclear materials. The deputy also said the assembly is working on a law on radiation safety and has discussed the possibility of persuading the federal authorities not to allow nuclear traffic to pass through St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Venezuela Offered $1Bln Loan
AUTHOR: By Sebastian Alison and Henry Meyer
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia offered Venezuela $1 billion in credit to buy weapons as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits to develop military ties amid worsening relations between both countries and the U.S.
Russia agreed to “issue a $1 billion credit line to Venezuela for the realization of military-technical cooperation programs,” the Kremlin said in an e-mailed statement, using a term that Russian authorities employ to describe defense sales.
Chavez, visiting Russia for the second time in two months, will meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at his residence outside Moscow later today before flying to Orenburg, near the Kazakh border in southern Russia, to observe military maneuvers and hold talks with President Dmitry Medvedev tomorrow.
His visit comes as Russian warships sail to the Caribbean Sea for joint exercises with the Venezuelan navy, and shortly after two Russian Tupolev-160 strategic bombers returned to Russia from a brief training visit to Venezuela. Russian relations with the U.S. have soured over Russia’s war with U.S. ally Georgia last month.
Venezuela spent $4.4 billion on 12 contracts for Russian weapons from 2005-2007, the Kremlin said. These include deals to buy 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 50 military helicopters and 24 Su-30 jet fighters, according to a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report.
Russia is now in talks to sell air defense systems, armored personnel carriers and new-generation Su-35 fighter jets due to start production in 2010, the Kommersant newspaper reported Sept. 18, citing state industrial holding company Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov.

TITLE: Human Error Suspected As Cause of Perm Plane Crash
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said Wednesday that there were no mechanical problems with the Aeroflot Nord airliner that crashed near Perm on Sept. 14, killing all 88 people on board.
“This was not a case in which the plane should not have been allowed to fly because of a technical defect,” Levitin said, adding that both of the jet’s engines were in proper working order before the flight and there had been no midair explosion, Interfax reported.
His comments came a day after a source within the technical commission investigating the crash of the Boeing 737 told Kommersant that the tragedy had been the result of underqualified pilots.
Airline industry experts were quick on Wednesday to defend the skill of the country’s commercial pilots in general and of the pilots of the Aeroflot Nord flight, in particular.
“Those preparing to be pilots go through multiple years of training and regularly attend advanced training courses,” Yury Fedyushin, deputy head of the State Aviation Inspection Service, said Wednesday.
Aeroflot Nord, a subsidiary of state-owned Aeroflot, defended the pilots of the crashed plane.
“Those were experienced pilots,” said Anton Popov, the company’s spokesman, adding that the captain of the craft had logged a total of 3,689 flying hours in his career, including 1,165 in aircraft produced by Boeing.
Vladimir Gerasimov, a flight safety expert with the Russian Association of Cockpit Personnel, said the cause of the crash had to lie elsewhere.
“Pilot error couldn’t have been the cause of the catastrophe,” Gerasimov said. “We have to look for the cause of the accident, which could be in the conditions under which the pilots were working as well as in the mechanical condition of the jet.”
He said the regulation of flight safety had deteriorated since the pilot’s service within the Soviet Ministry of Civil Aviation folded after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

TITLE: Kissinger Gives Palin a Russian Lesson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has briefed Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin about foreign policy challenges regarding Moscow, particularly Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August.
“It was great,” Palin told reporters of her hour-long session with Kissinger as she left his Park Avenue office.
Palin’s foreign policy adviser Stephen Biegun told reporters afterward that Palin had a lot of questions about how to develop a “cooperative relationship” with Russia.
Kissinger credited French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the Russian-Georgian cease-fire, for his strong stance on behalf of the Georgian people during the crisis. He told Palin that he was going to give a speech “and I’m going to give him a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia.”
“Good, good,” Palin replied. “And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”
Palin’s thin foreign policy resume has been the subject of criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans. Until Tuesday, she had never met a foreign leader. She met Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who were in New York for the UN General Assembly. With Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Palin on Wednesday was to meet Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
The meetings come as part of a drive to prepare Palin for a debate with her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, on Oct. 2.

TITLE: Ex-Envoy Says Georgia in NATO Not in U.S. Interest
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine is not in Washington’s or the alliance’s interest, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock said as he and other former U.S. and Russian envoys decried the poor relations with Russia.
“To simply say every country should have the right to apply to any alliance it wants, that’s true. But an alliance and its members should also have the right to determine whether it’s in their interests to take in a member,” Matlock told a forum sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I’m saying it’s not in the United States’ interests, and it’s not in NATO’s interests,” said Matlock, who was ambassador to Moscow from 1987 to 1991.
President George W. Bush firmly backs Georgia and Ukraine in NATO.
Georgia had not settled territorial disputes with its neighbors and appeared to want to use NATO to help resolve them, Matlock said, in a reference to last month’s war with Russia.
As for Ukraine, joining NATO would risk splitting a country where many people oppose the bid, he said. 
He said genuine strategic cooperation with Moscow would be nearly impossible “as long as we’re pushing this.”
Matlock and former U.S. Ambassadors James Collins and Arthur Hartman shared a platform with two former Soviet ambassadors to Washington, Alexander Bessmertnykh and Yury Dubinin, who denounced the NATO expansion policy as a major irritant in relations.

TITLE: Medvedev to Polyus Gold: Stop Whining
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday criticized the director of Polyus Gold for “whining” in a comment that may have played a part in dampening investor demand for stock in one of the world’s largest gold miners.
Polyus shares surged in morning trade after news that billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov was close to gaining control of the company, removing the risk of a standoff with his partner in the venture, billionaire Vladimir Potanin.
But the stock price slid later in the day after Medvedev told Polyus director Yevgeny Ivanov to stop complaining about delays in state support for the development of the world’s third-largest gold deposit, Natalka.
“I understand that it’s difficult for businesses to work, that we have an unwieldy bureaucracy, but don’t whine,” Medvedev said at a meeting with officials and business people in the far eastern city of Magadan. “If gold mining profits are too marginal for you, give up this work; we’ll find someone else. If you want, we can take the license back.”
By the end of trading, Polyus shares had lost about two-thirds of the gains from earlier in the day but still posted a rise of 3.8 percent from Tuesday.
Ivanov had mentioned that the government had indicated in October that it might help financing design work on the project, but had yet to reach a final decision, Polyus said in a statement. 
He also made requests for tax breaks based on the low gold content of the ore in Natalka, Reuters reported.
Ivanov did get something of a positive response to one of his requests, with Medvedev ordering First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to look into providing 12 billion rubles ($481.5 million) for the construction of power lines and other energy infrastructure for the project, Bloomberg reported. 
Natalka, based in the Magadan region, is expected to produce more than 1 million ounces of gold per year, which would raise Russia’s total production by one-quarter. Opening exploitation of the field in 2013 will require an estimated $2.5 billion in investment, and Polyus has already spent $100 million on exploration for the project.
Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said the comments by Medvedev, who stopped in Magadan on a regional development tour of the Far East, were meant to urge the company to work better and respect the state’s interests, Interfax reported.
Polyus shares went up sharply in the morning after Kommersant reported that Prokhorov was nearing an agreement with Potanin to obtain a further 35 percent in the company. Prokhorov, the owner of investment vehicle Onexim, already holds a 30 percent stake and is the gold miner’s chairman.
In exchange for the stake, Prokhorov would give Potanin a 2 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel, 25.8 percent in Rusia Petroleum, which holds the license for the Kovykta gas field in Siberia, and 95 percent in poultry producer Agros, the report said.
Onexim chief Dmitry Razumov confirmed the report as generally accurate, Reuters reported. “We are close to a final deal, but we don’t know when,” he said.
A spokeswoman at Potanin’s Interros investment company declined to comment Wednesday.
Medvedev’s testy comments about Polyus conjured images of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s rough handling of coal and steel firm Mechel in July, which slashed off a heavy chunk of the company’s value.
Prokhorov reacted swiftly, calling a meeting of the company’s board of directors for Sept. 30 to address Medvedev’s remarks.
“Medvedev’s comments were just a kind of thing which would scare off, particularly, foreign investors,” said Michael Kavanagh, an analyst at UralSib.
But he added that the comments didn’t represent a direct threat and that the Polyus Gold’s valuation doesn’t include Natalka.
“Like the rest of the market, I didn’t take it as a Mechel-like situation,” said Robert Mantse, an analyst at Alfa Bank.

TITLE: Inflation Rate Up On August
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Consumer prices rose 0.5 percent in the first three weeks of September, according to official data Wednesday that pointed to an acceleration in inflation this month.
Prices jumped 0.2 percent in the week to Monday — the biggest weekly increase since mid-July. With about a week to go, September’s inflation rate looks set to surpass August’s 0.4 percent. Prices are already up 10.2 percent in the year to date.
“It is a horrible number,” said Yulia Tseplyayeva, chief economist for Russia and CIS at Merrill Lynch, forecasting that prices would rise 0.7 percent in September as whole.
Increases in the cost of eggs, meat products, salt and sweet goods in the latest week offset a 1.5 percent fall in fruit and vegetable prices and cheaper gasoline.
Officials had hoped that a good harvest would tame price pressures in the late summer and fall, but the impact has been offset by other factors, including a weakening ruble.
The measures taken by Russian authorities to avert a financial market crisis this month are expected to push prices up in the future.
“It is very hard at the moment to take aggressive anti-inflationary steps because measures that lower inflation also reduce liquidity,” Tseplyayeva said.

TITLE: Forum Aims to Boost National Industries
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Rozhkov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A brand-new model of the Kirovets front loader tractor, made by the St. Petersburg Tractor Plant — a subsidiary of the Kirov Works — was one of the objects on display at the Rossiisky Promyshlennik (Russian Industrialist) exhibition held this week at Lenexpo, the city’s main exhibition center.  
The deluxe cabin of the K-3060, equipped with air conditioning and climate control function, a GPS system and video camera for viewing the trailer was first displayed in April this year at the international Mining World Russia 2008 exhibition, earning the company the Golden Miner diploma for the best new product of 2007.
“With its ratio between price, consumer properties and productivity, the new Kirovets tractor can successfully compete with its leading foreign counterparts,” said a spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Tractor Plant.
The international Russian Industrialist forum has been held annually since 1997. 
“What was initially a tiny exhibition occupying an area of 1,500 square meters and organized to show that the national industry was alive, is now a significant event in the business life of the country,” said Viktor Glukhikh, president of the International Congress of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
In 2008, leading industrialists displayed products in four showrooms covering a total area of 15,000 square meters. The exhibition attracted more than 500 companies from around 40 regions of Russia, as well as 24 participants from Belarus, Ukraine, Austria, Germany, Taiwan, Holland, Finland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. 
The forum is organized to support the formation of national policy for industrial development in Russia, the formulation of concrete proposals for federal and regional target programs, the application of innovations and scientific achievement, improvement in the quality and competitive ability of products and training of staff.
According to Mikhail Oseyevky, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, this year’s major focus was on innovative approaches to the electronic cluster being developed in the city.
“Electronics was once a key industry of St. Petersburg,” said Oseyevsky at the opening ceremony on Monday. “And now we have to regain the leading positions in that sector.” 
Eurorobot, a competition of mobile robots, was one of the highlights for numerous visitors, who were able to appraise the design of transparent and smart devices that not only played golf and soccer, but navigated independently while searching for crystals on a simulated Martian surface. 
“These robots are fairly fragile, and during this competition we have to implement various protective systems to prevent collision,” said Vladimir Salnikov, a referee of the Eurorobot competition, who mentioned that teams are often eliminated due to malfunctions in their models. 
Other unique displays at Russian Industrialist 2008 included Albatros, a pilotless aircraft designed by a Ukrainian engineer that is capable of avoiding detection by ground radar systems due to its plastic parts.

TITLE: Medvedev Adviser Says Inflation May Exceed Forecasts
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economic growth may slow and inflation may accelerate more than the government expected amid the credit crunch, said Arkady Dvorkovich, Dmitry Medvedev’s adviser.
The financial crisis may erode gross domestic product growth, which the Economy Ministry estimated at 7.8 percent this year, by as much as one percentage point, he said Thursday, according to state broadcaster Vesti-24. Inflation may reach or “slightly” exceed 12 percent, he added.
“Inflation will be higher than expected, in part because the crisis prompted making a large volume of liquidity available on the market,” Dvorkovich said, according to the broadcaster’s web site.
Russian authorities halted stock trading for two days last week amid record declines after foreign investors pulled $56.7 billion from Russia from Aug. 8 to Sept. 19, according to BNP Paribas SA’s estimates. Capital outflows followed last month’s five-day war in Georgia, the drop in commodities prices and the seizure in capital markets.
President Dmitry Medvedev pledged last week 500 billion rubles ($19.6 billion), including 250 billion rubles from the budget, to ensure “the stability of the stock market.” This was part of more than $100 billion the government said could become available through loans to banks, tax cuts and delayed tax payments for companies and other measures to boost liquidity.
“Russia has approached this crisis as a strong nation with large reserves, an economy that’s working efficiently,” as well as trade and government budget surpluses, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in live televised remarks during his party’s meeting in the Samara region Thursday.
Russia’s international reserves, the world’s third largest, fell $900 million last week to $559.4 billion as the central bank sold currency to support the ruble.
Dvorkovich said that the government doesn’t need to buy stock in the nation’s largest companies yet, adding that everyone should be “patient and calm.” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last Friday that the government may buy stock in state-run Gazprom, Rosneft and VTB Group if the shares remain “undervalued.”
Moscow-based Alfa Bank on Thursday revised its growth forecast for this year to seven percent from 7.5 percent because of slower lending growth.

TITLE: Kazakhstan Pulls Out of Multi-Billion Dollar Agreements With Georgia
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ASTANA — Russia’s ally Kazakhstan has pulled out of business deals worth billions of dollars in Georgia, a state company official said Thursday, a month after the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
State energy company Kazmunaigaz has abandoned plans to build a refinery in the Georgian port city of Batumi, while its subsidiary Kaztransgaz has cancelled the purchase of Georgian gas distributor Tbilgaz, the official said.
Referring to the refinery deal, the Kazmunaigaz official told AFP: “It’s because of economic considerations. The capacity of the Rompetrol refinery is enough for us... The decision does not have any political subtext.”
The project was valued at around five billion dollars.
The official, who asked not to be identified, also said that Kaztransgaz out of economic considerations had cancelled its purchase of Tbilgaz, a deal worth an estimated 12.5 million dollars when agreed in 2006.
Observers in the Russian media said the cancellations could be due to pressure from Russia.
Kazakh Agriculture Minister Akhylbek Kurishbayev on Monday said Kazakhstan would not build a planned grain storage facility in Poti, another Georgian port, saying this was due to political instability in the region.
Kazakhstan has voiced some support for Russia’s military action in Georgia but has stopped short of joining Russia in recognising the independence of the two Georgian separatist regions at the heart of the conflict.
The former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, which has rich oil and gas reserves, is one of the leading states of the Central Asian region.

TITLE: New Car Hire Service Aims To Attract Business Travelers
AUTHOR: By Boris Kamchev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Higher quality service for lower prices” is the motto with which the luxury vehicle rental service, Dollar Rent A Car, plans to penetrate St. Petersburg’s promising car rental market. While the Moscow market is saturated with numerous car rental companies, the same cannot be said of the northern capital. 
The Dollar Rent A Car brand in St. Petersburg, which opened Wednesday, is being operated by Auto Pride and will focus on chauffeur services aimed primarily at business travelers — corporate personnel and managers who arrive in the city in search of new business opportunities. However, the company will face competition from the illegal car hire market and fly-by-night taxi companies on the local market. Taxi services in Russia do not correspond to Western standards, and are characterized by major legislative loopholes.
“The Russian car hire market consists of 80 percent of illegal taxi drivers. Thirteen percent are legal companies, and only seven percent have their own fleet of taxis,” Vladimir Slonchak, general manager of Dollar’s St. Petersburg branch, said Wednesday at a presentation by the company. 
Most car rental companies are based in and around Moscow, while the rest of the regions account for a very small proportion of Russia’s total car rental business.
According to experts, along with the poor conditions of the country’s road network, the lack of tourism infrastructure is another obstacle preventing car hire businesses from growing in the remote Russian regions. Moscow and St. Petersburg car rental companies are seeing increasing revenues due to companies taking out long-term rental contracts, while in Europe revenues are generated mainly from tourists. 
“Dollar Rent A Car has existed on the Russian market since 2005, and we are growing not so fast. Last year Dollar’s profit in Moscow amounted to $8.5 million. After all, our aim is quality in the services we offer, that would deteriorate if we tried to grow faster,” Viktoria Kruchinina, general manager of Raiden, the company licensed to use Dollar’s brand in Russia, said Wednesday in an interview. The company is also responsible for using the brand in Kazan, where they opened their first Russian branch last year.
Slonchak said that in the initial phase of the project, Auto Pride invested over $100,000 to expand the Dollar brand and other services on the St. Petersburg car rental market. 
“Besides car rental, the Auto Pride center offers car and van repair services,” he said at the presentation.
Local market research by Dollar has shown that St. Petersburg taxi drivers generally do not attend professional driver training and that their vehicles are usually more than three years old. Dollar aims to offer a high level of client service and daily work standards for drivers, including extensive professional driving experience, a suitable corporate appearance, good manners and compulsory knowledge of the English language.

TITLE: Baltic spirit
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: From uploading amateur recordings onto the Internet to releasing an album and performing in Moscow, Alina Orlova has come a long way in the past two years. The Lithuania-born singer/songwriter and artist, 20, who sings in Lithuanian, English and Russian, will make her St. Petersburg stage debut at The Place on Sunday.
Orlova’s indie fame in Lithuania started with her early recordings on the Internet. 
“At first, I performed alone, just piano and voice, but when I uploaded my songs, people got interested and started to invite me to play small concerts,” Orlova said in a telephone interview from Vilnius. “I played in a cafe where I worked and other small places, and people came — even without any publicity.”
“I started to get offers from labels, but didn’t want to hurry. Then I found musicians who I thought were right, and we recorded the album. 
“After that I got the band that I perform with now, and I’m very glad because I had always been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to explain to musicians or producers what I wanted, that we would fail to come to find a common language, but it all worked.”
Orlova, who compares her sound to “someone’s crying behind a wall” on her MySpace page, cites Nick Cave, Lou Reed, Talking Heads and David Bowie as her favorite singers.
“I prefer male vocals, for some reason,” she said. “But I like Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins and [U.S. female duo] CocoRosie. I like strange female vocals, but listen more to male [vocals].”
Based in Vilnius since she graduated from high school last year, Orlova was born Alina Orlovskaya in the town of Snieckus, built on the Visaginas Lake for workers at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in 1975.
Originally named after a Lithuanian communist leader, it was renamed Visaginas in 1992, a year after the country had broken from the U.S.S.R. 
“It drew specialists from all over the Soviet Union and has remained very Russian and very different from the rest of Lithuania,” said Orlova, whose mother was born in Voronezh and met her Lithuania-born Polish father in Kazakhstan before moving to Lithuania. 
“They moved to Lithuania, because it’s in the Baltics, and everything is beautiful and good there,” she said.
Despite the proximity of the nuclear plant, the area boasts beautiful natural surroundings with lakes and pine forests, prompting Orlova to cite “birds” as her influence on her MySpace page. “…& wolves,” she added recently.
Although lessons at five out of seven schools in the town were taught in Russian, Orlova’s parents, who didn’t speak Lithuanian, sent her and her brother to a school where lessons were taught in Lithuanian, she said — hence her command of both languages.
Orlova also took classes in piano and art. 
“I must have had a need for writing songs. I started to compose some songs and lyrics when I was very young,” she said. “It was very naive and funny in the beginning, but then I grew older and something serious started to come out of it, and it took a distinct form.”
Orlova’s debut album, recorded over eight months and released in January, is titled “Laukinis Suo Dingo,” or “The Wild Dog Dingo,” named after a Soviet Russian book for school children about innocent teenage love. “I remember this book very vaguely,” she said, “It didn’t impress me greatly, but the title has stayed.” 
Although she sings mostly in Lithuanian, Orlova also writes songs in English and Russian. She said the Lithuanian audiences have no problem listening to her Russian songs, despite the Kremlin’s frequent outrages at the Baltics.
“I know many young people — those who are younger don’t speak any Russian — listen to the Russian songs without understanding the words and react normally. There’s no problem with it.”
Orlova’s Russian stage debut was in Moscow’s Apelsin in May. The Russian edition of “Laukinis Suo Dingo” is due on the Moscow-based Snegiri label on Friday.

<i>Alina Orlova performs at The Place at 8 p.m. on Sunday. www.alinaorlovamusic.com, www.myspace.com/alinaorlova</i>

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: Amid nationalistic hysteria in the Kremlin-controlled media, the local rock band <b>DDT</b> will perform an anti-war concert called “Don’t Shoot.”
Named after a song that the band’s frontman <b>Yury Shevchuk</b> wrote in 1980, when the first coffins from Afghanistan arrived in his hometown of Ufa, the concert is the band’s comment on the recent hostilities in Georgia.
Shevchuk, who has recently visited Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, has organized two special concerts in Russia’s main cities. DDT performed in Moscow on Wednesday and will perform in St. Petersburg, at Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex, on Friday.
The concert will open with a five-minute documentary made by film director Sergei Morozov about “friendship between peoples,” as Shevchuk put it, and will feature Georgia’s acclaimed world-music singer Nino Katamadze and the Ossetian folk and dance ensemble Eriston.
The Ukrainian rock band Bratya Karamazovy will also take part. “I just hope that we don’t go to war with Ukraine,” he said at a press conference in Moscow this week. 
Speaking this week on Ekho Moskvy, perhaps the last Russian radio station that is not entirely pro-Kremlin, Shevchuk, who has been seen at protest rallies during this year, criticized the authorities for creating militaristic hysteria.
“Through this new wave of militarism and imperialism that is being instigated in this country, the people are brainwashed into thinking that we are already mighty, powerful and ahead of all the nations … It is meant to divert the masses from internal problems.”
Shevchuk said Russian rulers should concentrate on economics and people’s freedoms, rather than threaten the rest of the world.
“This patriotism promoted through television and certain radio stations and newspapers is based on antagonism and hostility.
“And when based on antagonism and hostility toward the other nations… in my view, patriotism turns into radical chauvinism. And it all ends with local wars that can lead to a huge world war. And everybody will suffer.
“The guys in power now won’t be saved in bunkers either. Who will feed them?”
Shevchuk said he witnessed the lives of people in Russia’s provinces while on tour and it is a far cry from what is shown in biased television reports.
“Brezhnev-style praising is starting once again, ‘long live the Communist Party’ or the ‘United Russia,’ and those parades again. In heads, in brains, in speeches…,” he said.
“It’s incredible, we’re falling somewhere again. There are constant lies, informational wars, a lack of objective information. That’s what we will be talking about [in the concert] tomorrow, too.”
According to Shevchuk, the band is also planning concerts in Tskhinvali and in Georgia. 

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: In perfect harmony
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Ethnomechanica, a world music festival set up, for the first time, by the team behind SKIF (an annual festival of experimental music, jazz, rock and folk, held in April), began Thursday with a film program about urban and rural folklore. 
Bands and DJs will perform in two rooms of the former film theater Priboi, where the Sergei Kuryokhin Modern Art Center, run by the late musician’s widow Anastasia Kuryokhina, is located. The main room and a stage in the foyer on the second floor will be used.
The four-day music event, which runs through Sunday, features a diverse and representative lineup of both Russian and international acts. The first day of live performances, Friday, will feature Orange Blossom, a French band that plays a mix of world music and electronica. The four-member band formed in Nantes in 1993.
The Helsinki-based band Alamaailman Vasarat (Finnish for “Hammers of the Underworld”) describes its style as “something like ‘ethnic brass punk.’” It was founded by drummer Teemu Hanninen and bass player Jarno Sarkula, who played with Hoyry-kone, an acclaimed avant-garde progressive rock group, in 1997.
Ethnomechanica also features Zdob Si Zdub, a Moldovan band that blends rock and punk and Moldovan folk music, Belarus cabaret band Serebryanaya Svadba and Namgar, a folk act from the Russian republic of Buryatia. 
British reggae/jungle vocalist General Levy, a veteran of the London urban music scene responsible for adding the word “booyaka” to the English language, is also performing. Featured in the track “Incredible” (The Jungle Is Massive) by M-Beat, it means either a gunshot or a certain mental state. Levy was born Paul Levy in London in 1971. 
Levy will be backed by Jack Murda, the 40-year-old ragga/jungle DJ who uses a “lickshot box,” a delay, and a microphone. 
With Friday dedicated to women’s singing, Saturday will feature mostly various music mixes, with folk mixed with rock, punk or electronic music. St. Petersburg’s leading bands such as folk-punk bands Iva Nova and Skazy Lesa (both mix Russian folk and rock and punk) and La Minor, perhaps the finest Russian urban-folk band will perform.
The festival will close on Sunday with Vadjra dance and music by the Tibetan monks from Phyang Monastery in Ladakh, India.

<i>Ethnomechanica World Music and Arts Festival at Sergey Kuryokhin Modern Art Center, through Sunday. www.kuryokhin.ru, www.myspace.com/ethnomechanica</i>

<b>PROGRAM</b>
<b>Fri., Sept. 26</b>
MAIN STAGE: Namgar (8 p.m.); Iva Nova (9:30 p.m.); Orange Blossom (11 p.m.); Volga (12:45 a.m.); General Levy and Jacky Murda (2 a.m.); Trojan Sound System (4 a.m.)
SECOND STAGE: Vereya (8 p.m.); Belorybitsa (10 p.m.); Ptitsa Tyloburdo (11:30 p.m.); Atlantida (1 a.m.); DJ Dr. Ethno a.k.a. Nazim Nadirov (2:30 a.m.)
<b>Sat., Sept. 27 </b>
MAIN STAGE: Nervenklinik (8 p.m.); Skazy Lesa (9:15 p.m.); Alamaailman Vasarat (10:45 p.m.); Zdob Si Zdub (1:15 a.m.); Swing Couture (2 a.m.); Zhopa Novy God (3:30 p.m.)
SECOND STAGE: Lyokha Chykanas (8 p.m.); Osipov (9 p.m.); Psoy Korolenko (10:15 p.m.); La Minor (10:15 p.m.); Serebryanaya Svadba (1:30 a.m.); DJ Slava Shalygin (3 p.m.)
<b>Sun., Sept. 28</b>
MAIN STAGE: Vajra music and dance by the monks of Phyang Monastery, Ladakh, India (5 p.m.)

TITLE: Fishy business
AUTHOR: By Bruce Collinson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russkaya Rybalka (Russian Fishing) // 452a Primorskoye Shosse // Tel: +7 901 310 9998 // Open noon through midnight // Dinner for four with wine: 7,423 rubles ($297)
The restaurant Russkaya Rybalka (Russian Fishing) poses a number of problems. The branch at Repino on the Gulf of Finland, some 45 kilometers from St. Petersburg shares a unique selling point with its sister restaurant on Krestovsky Island (where Vladimir Putin famously entertained Gerhardt Shroeder): diners catch their own dinner from a small pond on the grounds. 
Sturgeon, eel and trout were on offer during a recent visit, but a keen angler in the party declared them off-limits after viewing the trout in the prettily landscaped pond.
Beware, too, not to suffer the infuriating situation where the waitress approaches fractionally too soon, is asked for three minutes, and then makes it twenty before returning. A bottle of Chablis looked fair at 1,628 rubles ($65) and was requested. The waitress said she would check its availability; another twenty minute interlude.
It was almost an hour before any drinks were served — in mid-afternoon, with half-full tables. The whole atmosphere was a paradox; apparently ample numbers of staff, all liveried (the waiters all with half-mast trousers; somebody has a sense of humor) but providing inadequate service. Very late in the day we guessed that our Chablis was being brought down to drinking temperature.
Things had started poorly.
A slight improvement arrived with the starters which, although served out of sequence (how hard is it?), were good: a fresh, balanced tomato and mozzarella salad (468 rubles, $19) with complimentary dressing; smoked herring well supported by sliced boiled potato and red onion (198 rubles, $8), delicious lightly-smoked fish only just spoilt by too much plain oil; vegetable salad, (268 rubles, $11) missing the lemon from its dressing; and ukha (fish soup), well served and wholesome at 298 rubles ($12).
The Chablis was now going down well. The main courses extended the space/time paradox, as a plate of otherwise good pork kebab (468 rubles, $19) with potato wedges sat balefully alone, a full ten minutes before the remaining dishes arrived. Veal, tagliatelle and mushroom sauce (868 rubles, $35) was medium-well cooked. Opinions varied upon whether the buckwheat (198 rubles, $8) was under or over-cooked. Redemption, partial at least, arrived in the form of excellent ratatouille (218 rubles, $9) with rice (128 rubles, $5).
Desserts and coffees were better timed and served — a filling cherry cake (238 rubles, $10) and good cherry vareniki (ravioli), at 198 rubles ($8).
The restaurant has been designed and built in the fashion of a large, multi-tiered log cabin and makes clever use of a number of split-level dining areas and screens to break up, almost to make intimate, a substantial establishment. The upper-tier tables have good sea views and are undoubtedly the pick of the positions. One of our party even succumbed to the charms of a locally-made teddy bear, not Steiff but stiff at 1,200 rubles ($48). 
Then the Chablis got its own back. We thought we had ordered a full bottle, but the slightly ambiguous wine list actually had it as a half bottle. The full-bottle equivalent which had been served was an eye-watering 7,000 rubles ($280). The administrator saw the issue and settled it quickly, equitably and pleasantly. However this is an establishment trading on reputation, not results.

TITLE: Finns, Swedes Fear Copycat School Gunman Attacks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KAUHAJOKI, Finland — Bomb threats and a flurry of menacing mobile phone messages sparked panic Thursday among students in Finland, as fears grew that copycat attacks would follow the nation’s second school massacre in 10 months.
In neighboring Sweden, police arrested a 16-year-old-boy for a suspicious clip he had posted on YouTube and urged residents to report any threatening Internet postings to police.
Finnish police said text message threats were being spread around the western town of Kauhajoki, where a masked gunman killed 10 people and himself in a fiery rampage on Tuesday.
“The text messages are threatening in nature and are causing fear and hysteria among young people, and we must stop them,” police spokesman Urpo Lintula said.
He declined to give details on the content of messages, but said Finland saw a similar wave of threats after the previous school shooting at Jokela high school near Helsinki last year.
Finnish media said several schools across the nation had received bomb threats, and that one school had been evacuated.
Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero told Finnish MTV3 that Finland could face more copycat school shootings. “I badly fear it’s possible,” he said.
Investigators said they were probing possible links between the Kauhajoki gunman, Matti Saari, 22, and 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who fatally shot eight people and himself at a high school in southern Finland in November.
In Sweden, police raided the teen’s home in Koping, central Sweden, after seeing the YouTube clip, according to police spokesman Borje Stromberg. He couldn’t immediately confirm the contents of the clip. The boy was arrested for illegal weapon possession.
In a message Thursday on its web site, Swedish police urged people to report any Internet postings that could be seen as “warning signals of planned crimes.”
Finnish investigators said Auvinen and Saari likely bought their guns at the same place and could even have been in contact with each other.
“The cases were similar. They were the same type of person, so it could be possible,” investigation leader Jari Neulaniemi told The Associated Press. “They had the same style of hair, same kind of clothing, same interests and ideals — and their deeds were the same.”
Both gunmen posted violent clips on YouTube before the shootings, both were fascinated by the 1999 Columbine school shootings in Colorado, both attacked their own schools and both died after shooting themselves in the head.
But Neulaniemi stressed that police had not been able to confirm a link between the shooters.
“We have (Saari’s) computer in our possession, but the Jokela case was almost a year ago, and we don’t yet know how far back the data go. We haven’t examined the computer or the telephone records,” he said.
The government pledged to tighten Finland’s gun laws and keep mentally unstable people from obtaining firearms after Saari’s rampage at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, 180 miles (290 kilometers) northwest of Helsinki.
Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said a new proposal would give police greater powers to examine gun applicants’ health records.
Finland has deeply held hunting traditions and ranks — along with the United States — among the top five nations when it comes to civilian gun ownership. After the previous massacre, the government had pledged to raise the age for buying a gun from 15 to 18 but never did so.
The government also called for an investigation into police handling of the case. After an anonymous tip, police had questioned Saari on Monday about YouTube clips that showed him firing a handgun, but said they found no reason to hold him.
Police were searching for a person who appeared to have filmed some of Saari’s YouTube clips but said there was no indication Saari had an accomplice.
Saari killed eight female students, one male teacher and one male student. A 21-year-old woman that Saari shot in the head is still hospitalized after having two operations.
Police said Saari had left a message saying he had planned an attack for six years and wanted to kill as many people as possible.

TITLE: New Leader Elected in South Africa
AUTHOR: By Paul Simao
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CAPE TOWN — South Africa’s parliament on Thursday elected Kgalema Motlanthe, deputy leader of the ruling ANC, as interim president of a country gripped by the worst political crisis since the end of apartheid.
Motlanthe, overwhelmingly elected in a secret ballot, replaces Thabo Mbeki, who resigned on Sunday after nine years in power.
The ANC withdrew its backing for Mbeki after a judge suggested he had interfered in a graft case against his arch rival, party leader Jacob Zuma, who is widely expected to become president in a general election next year.
Almost one-third of South Africa’s cabinet stepped down on Tuesday out of loyalty to Mbeki, who presided over South Africa’s longest period of economic growth.
Motlanthe said the new government would not change economic policy but would intensify efforts to create more jobs.
“In a turbulent global economy, we will remain true to the policies that have kept South Africa steady, and that have ensured sustained growth,” he said in a speech prepared for delivery, after parliament elected him interim president.
Motlanthe, a quiet spoken leftist intellectual and ally of Zuma, faces huge challenges including slowing economic growth and high inflation. Officials said on Thursday consumer inflation hit its highest level since before the end of apartheid in August, at 13.7 percent.
Reflecting the ANC’s dominance of parliament, Motlanthe won 269 votes from members of parliament, compared to 50 for the candidate of the opposition Democratic Alliance.
ANC parliamentarians greeted the announcement of the vote with cheers and clapping.
The upheaval in the ANC, climax of a power struggle between Mbeki and Zuma, has raised concerns of instability in Africa’s biggest economy and a possible split in the formerly monolithic ruling party.
“The ANC for some time has spoken about the need to maintain the (economic) policies that have been in place, so as things stand now, one shouldn’t necessarily expect a major policy change,” said Leon Myburgh, sub-Saharan specialist at Citigroup.
“Motlanthe himself of course has always been a bit of a quiet, behind the scenes figure, so the next few months will be interesting to monitor him, and what he says and his actions.”
In a sign of the wounds, parliamentary officials said Mbeki would not attend Motlanthe’s swearing-in later on Thursday despite being invited.
It was not immediately clear when Motlanthe would name his new cabinet although investors are keenly watching to see if highly respected Finance Minister Trevor Manuel will be reappointed.
Motlanthe, a former mine union leader and anti-apartheid soldier, is widely respected by both radical leftists and business tycoons within the African National Congress.
He will try to heal the worst rifts in the history of the party because of the battle between Mbeki and Zuma, which has overshadowed pressing issues such as widespread poverty and crime and an AIDS epidemic ravaging millions.
Radical policy changes under Motlanthe in the short transitional period are unlikely but foreign investors eager for stability and a continuity of economic policy will be watching closely for clues on whether the ANC will change course.
The populist Zuma is trying to reassure foreign investors he would not stray from business-friendly economic policies but is under pressure from left-leaning union allies to alleviate poverty through more government spending.

TITLE: EC Moves to Restrict Chinese Products Amid Milk Scandal
AUTHOR: By James Pomfret
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HONG KONG — The European Commission proposed on Thursday tests and restrictions on Chinese food products containing powdered milk as UNICEF and the World Health Organisation called China’s growing milk scandal “deplorable.”
Beijing is battling public alarm and international dismay after thousands of Chinese children were hospitalized, sick from infant milk formula tainted with melamine, a cheap industrial chemical that can be used to cheat quality checks.
A European Commission spokeswoman said EU authorities would test 100 percent of products from China containing more than 15 percent of milk powder, and would ban all products for children and young people containing any proportion of milk.
This came as the World Health Organisation and UNICEF issued a joint statement saying the deliberate contamination of food for infants and young children was “particularly deplorable.”
But the two agencies said Beijing’s plan to overhaul its food safety would help prevent a recurrence.
“We are confident that swift and firm actions are being taken by China’s food safety authorities to investigate this incident fully.”
“We also expect that following the investigation and in the context of the Chinese government’s increasing attention to food safety, better regulation of foods for infants and young children will be enforced,” the two organizations said in a statement.
The WHO and UNICEF urged mothers to breast feed their infants, a need further underscored by “alarming examples” of tainted formula scandals in China and around the world.
Nitrogen-rich melamine can be added to substandard or watered-down milk to fool quality checks, which often use nitrogen levels to measure the amount of protein in milk.
The chemical is used in pesticides and in making plastics.
So far, four deaths have been blamed on kidney stones and agonizing complications caused by the toxic milk.