SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1440 (2), Friday, January 16, 2009
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TITLE: Mariinsky Diva Back With New Production
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: “I am happy, I am so very happy,” whispered Mariinsky star soprano Anna Netrebko, one of the world’s most acclaimed opera singers, as the curtain fell. The 37-year-old diva, who in September gave birth to her first child, son Tiago, made a triumphant comeback on stage on Wednesday night singing Lucia in John Doyle’s production of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
The role of Lucia in Doyle’s ascetic and elegant production, which became a favorite with both critics and audiences after it premiered at the Scottish Opera in 2007, came naturally to Netrebko. The diva was on top form vocally with a fluid, soaring style.
The Mariinsky’s artistic director Valery Gergiev searched for a director to stage “Lucia” for many months after discovering Netrebko’s interest in the role. The maestro came across Doyle’s staging in August 2008 during his company’s tour to the Edinburgh International Festival, and immediately felt the production would be ideal for Netrebko.
The deal was sealed in October, leaving the company just over two months to prepare. The sets arrived in St. Petersburg in December. “There was some time pressure with the rehearsals, but I really feel everything went beautifully, very smoothly on the opening night,” Netrebko said, smiling, after the premiere.
Doyle’s production is the first by the Scottish Opera to be produced on the Russian stage.
Alex Reedjik, the company’s general director, spoke to reporters in the U.K. with pride and excitement about the Russian premiere. “We are truly delighted,” Reedjik said. “She is one of the world’s leading sopranos, who has created many important roles around the world.”
“It is a terrific opportunity not only for Scottish Opera, but it is also a way of showing to the wider world what is going on in Scotland. We like to think of it as an export made entirely in Scotland.”
Reedjik flew to St. Petersburg to attend the premiere on Wednesday.
In her first performance after more than six months’ maternity leave the opera superstar captivated the audience with the exuberance of both her voice and stage presence.
The air was intense with anticipation at the Mariinsky theater on Wednesday night.
John Doyle’s production of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” originally staged for the Scottish Opera in 2007, was generously advertised in St. Petersburg, with large billboards posted across the city, and a wealth of television and radio ads.
The show generated tremendous audience interest. In September 2008, Netrebko gave birth to a son, Tiago, fathered by Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott. She was absent from the stage for more than half a year. She had to cancel, among others, a production of “Manon” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera where she had been scheduled to perform from the second half of December 2008 to the first half of January 2009.
The St. Petersburg premiere sold out long before the New Year, within days of the first tickets going on sale.
The cheapest tickets were a bargain at $65, while black market prices soared, reaching $1,050.
“We paid 2,000 rubles [$63] per ticket, which got us seats on the balcony on the top row of the theater,” said Anna, a management student, who attended the premiere with a friend. “I am not what you would call a devoted opera-goer, but I just couldn’t miss this evening. A Russian singer who evolved into an international celebrity, Anna is a Cinderella story come alive. Her life is like a fairy tale that has come true, and that attracts me.”
Despite the enormous interest the premiere has generated, the atmosphere for Netrebko’s stage comeback was surprisingly low-key. There was an abundance of flowers, but no banquet or formal reception after the show.
“Anna Netrebko made a conscious decision in choosing the Mariinsky stage for her return as she sought to muffle the stress of a stage comeback after months of absence,” said Mariinsky spokeswoman Galina Pavlova. “This stage feels like home, and her dedicated audiences feel almost as close as family.”
One of the world’s most acclaimed sopranos, whose stage comeback was eagerly anticipated, Netrebko admitted that she did not miss the stage and had not been rehearsing at all until a few weeks ago when she started on ‘Lucia.’
“My life revolves around my child now,” the diva smiled. “I have been spending all my time with Tiago who doesn’t give me a chance to catch up on my sleep, let alone anything else.”
Netrebko’s next engagements include “Lucia di Lammermoor” at the New York’s Metropolitan Opera which premieres on Jan. 26.
TITLE: Steep Price Hikes to Hit Consumers in 2009
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Every New Year in Russia seems to bring price hikes, but this year increases in the cost of numerous goods and services seem particularly steep. Communal services (utilities), transport, cars, medicines, alcohol and some other products have all gone up in price in the first weeks of 2009.
Experts say price increases during a time of economic crisis may change the purchase patterns of the population.
The first sign of price hikes hit St. Petersburg residents after the New Year as soon as they entered the metro, where the cost for one journey went up by three rubles to 20 rubles (63 U.S. cents).
The cost per trip on other public transport such as buses, trolleybuses and trams also increased by two rubles to 18 rubles (56 U.S. cents).
Minibuses (marshrutkas) also increased their prices by at least two rubles. The price for many marshrutkas is now 24-26 rubles. Amid the economic crisis and high inflation, such prices seem to have scared off some passengers, especially those who used to travel by marshrutka to their nearest metro station. People walking long distances to metro stations is now a common sight.
The cost of communal services and water also rose steeply. St. Petersburg residents will have to pay 24 percent more for central heating and hot water, 24.5 percent more for cold water, and 15 percent more for garbage collection.
Mikhail Oseyevsky, the city’s vice-governor, said such serious price increases were caused by a raise in gas prices, which in the first part of the year will become more expensive for industrial enterprises by 27.7 percent and 35.4 percent for domestic users.
The cost of electric energy is also growing by 25 percent, whereas the night tariff has increased by 50 percent.
DRIVING PRICES
Meanwhile, car owners face difficulties with most carmakers announcing price increases on popular brands by an average of 7.2 percent. The price of an Audi is to increase by four percent, a BMW by 11-16 percent, a Chevrolet by 5-8 percent, a Ford by five percent, a Toyota (except the Toyota Camry made in Russia) by 3.8–8.10 percent; and a Volvo by 10-15 percent, according to Avtostat analysis agency.
The prices of the popular Ford Fiesta, Fusion and Focus brands produced in the town of Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Oblast are to increase by five percent.
Russian carmakers also intend to raise their prices — AvtoVAZ plans to increase the prices of its Lada cars by 2-3 percent. Lada dealers said this was due to an increase in the price of car parts.
Interest rates on loans for cars have also been raised. Some banks now offer loans with a 20-25 percent interest rate, and some even at 30 percent, a rise from previous interest rates of around 10 percent.
Car insurance in 2009 may increase by 10-15 percent. Insurance companies say such measures are necessitated by the risk of increased crime during the economic crisis, which may result in an increase in car thefts, Fontanka.ru reported.
However, recent research by Rosgosstrakh insurance company showed that the number of people who think that insurance is a necessary way to protect themselves against unexpected turns of events grew in Russia from 30 percent in 2007 to 52 percent in 2008, Interfax reported.
Today people have a greater fear of car accidents, fires and illnesses than previously, the research showed.
Analysts say the prices of medicines are to increase by 23 percent this year. David Melik-Gusseinov, research director at Pharmexpert, said that “local medicine producers suffer from increases in the cost of borrowing even more than transnational ones,” Fontanka.ru reported.
Melik-Gusseinov said cheaper Indian and Chinese medicines could flood the market.
Food prices have also increased. The import duty on pork has increased by 75 percent, while import duties on poultry above the set quota went up by 95 percent, that is not less than 0.8 euros per kilogram, Fontanka.ru reported.
GOOD TIMES NO MORE
It is not only commonly available products that are getting more expensive. Luxury goods and travel services will also be hit.
Imported alcohol is also facing price increases. Beginning Feb. 1, the Whitehall company that supplies Hennessy cognac, Krug Champagne, Veuve Clicquot, Dom Perignon and Moet&Chandon intends to raise its prices by 10 percent. Diageo, suppliers of Johnnie Walker whisky, Baileys liquer and Gordon’s gin, are increasing prices by 15-25 percent.
Sergei Korneyev, vice-president of the Russian Tourist Industry Union, said that even the winter season of 2008-2009 has become more expensive by 20-30 percent, Fontanka said.
“It has to do with the growth in oil prices. The price of aviation fuel has increased by 70 percent,” Korneyev said.
Roman Mogilevsky, head of the Social Information Agency, said an increase in the price of tourism services may change the way Russian people spend their vacations.
“People want to travel because recently they have got used to it and traveling has become a part of their values. However, they may opt for cheaper ways to do it,” Mogilevsky said.
Despite the price hikes in certain categories, slowing inflation, market slumps and discounting mean that there are bargains to be had in real estate, rents, and some consumer goods.
Experts say that many retail companies are now in need of cash, therefore stores selling home appliances, clothes, footwear and perfume will have more sales. Computers, TV sets and refrigerators are also set to become cheaper.
Mogilevsky said price increase during the economic crisis “can change the purchase strategy of the population in general.”
Mogilevsky said that people usually divide their purchases into two categories: things that they save for (an apartment, a car, or other serious investments) and current consumption.
“So, I think people will change their attitude to the first category, deciding to postpone those big purchases. As for current consumption, they may switch to simpler and cheaper goods: e.g. cheaper meat, and local products that are cheaper than imported ones,” he said.
TITLE: Ukraine Rejects Latest Gas Request
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine rejected Russia’s latest request Thursday to pipe natural gas west to increasingly frustrated EU consumers, deepening the bitter economic and political dispute that has paralyzed energy shipments to Europe.
Desperate to restore supplies, the European Union said it was ready to join a weekend meeting between Russia and Ukraine to seek a solution to the crisis that has left eastern Europe frantically scrambling for heat, light and power.
With the cutoff of Russian gas supplies via Ukraine in its ninth day, neither country showed signs of backing down or concern about leaving parts of Europe freezing.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Ukraine has enough gas reserves to last a year — far more than previously reported.
“This gives us the opportunity to hold negotiations in a completely calm way,” she said.
Vladimir Putin, her Russian counterpart, reiterated his demand that Ukraine deliver Russian gas to Europe, according to his spokesman.
Still, the two agreed to meet Saturday in Moscow on the crisis, officials said.
Europe depends on Russia for about a quarter of its gas, with 80 percent of it delivered via Ukrainian pipelines. Russia stopped selling gas to Ukraine on Jan. 1 because of a price dispute, then accused Ukraine of stealing Europe-bound gas and turned off the taps entirely on Jan. 7.
A hard-won deal to deploy EU monitors at key gas junctions raised hopes for a renewal of supplies Tuesday, but they were quickly dashed amid mutual recriminations between Russia and Ukraine.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been badly strained since the 2004 Orange Revolution propelled pro-Western leaders to power in Kiev.
For the third day in a row, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant Gazprom opened a tap near the border Thursday and asked Ukraine to send a limited amount of gas on to Europe. Ukraine’s state-run gas company Naftogaz refused, saying the route Gazprom demanded would force Ukraine to shut off energy supplies to millions of Ukrainian consumers first. Ukraine also said Russia must supply “technical gas” to prime the pumps.
“Technically we cannot deliver gas to that destination,” Naftogaz spokesman Valentyn Zemlyansky said Thursday. He confirmed that Gazprom had asked Ukraine to send just under 100 million cubic meters of gas to Europe.
Russia insists the requested route is fine.
EU officials have warned Ukraine’s leaders — who want their country to join the EU and NATO — that the crisis is raising questions about the country’s reliability. But they have also criticized Russia, asking why it wasn’t sending the normal daily volume of gas to Europe, about 300 million cubic meters.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was sending invitations Thursday inviting the leaders of European gas-consuming nations to come to Moscow for a Saturday gas summit, but it was unclear whether Putin’s talks with Tymoshenko would be part of that meeting.
EU spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said the EU was ready to send Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and Czech Energy Minister Martin Riman — whose country currently holds the EU presidency — to the talks, provided that both the Russian and Ukrainian leadership were fully involved.
However, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko, Tymoshenko’s bitter rival, has indicated he would not attend a summit held in Moscow.
Medvedev and Yushchenko spoke by telephone Thursday, the Kremlin said. Medvedev proposed that Russia transfer to Ukraine the so-called “technical gas” that is used to push transit gas through the pipelines. But it was not clear from the Kremlin statement how that gas would be paid for or whether it would solve the routing problem that Ukraine says is blocking deliveries to Europe.
Laitenberger said the talks Saturday should not be an excuse to further delay the gas flow.
“All of this has gone on too long,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would call Ukraine on Thursday and press Putin on Friday when she meets him in Berlin.
“It is absolutely essential for us to see both Russia and Ukraine sit down at the negotiating table and resolve their issues,” she said.
The crisis has left several European nations with little or no gas for heating and electricity.
TITLE: Riots in Latvian Capital Leave Dozens Wounded
AUTHOR: By Gary Peach
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: RIGA, Latvia — Latvia’s government and opposition politicians blamed each other Wednesday for rioting in the capital that left more than 40 people injured in the worst violence since the country split from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The violence erupted late Tuesday after a peaceful anti-government demonstration in downtown Riga, where participants criticized ministers for the country’s worsening recession and called on the president to dissolve the parliament.
Most demonstrators left the area after the protest, but about 100 of them turned violent and tried to storm the parliament building. Riot police kept them away from the building, using tear gas and truncheons.
The rioters pelted officers with cobblestones and chunks of ice and vandalized three police vehicles. They smashed windows of boutiques, the Finance Ministry and a bank and looted a liquor store.
More than 40 people were injured in the violence, mostly protesters but also six police officers and eight military police, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sigita Pildava said. Police detained 106 people.
Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis told the LNT TV station that protest organizers bear responsibility for the melee, given their decision to hold the rally despite tensions over Latvia’s deepening economic crisis.
Opposition lawmaker Aigars Stokenbergs, who was one of the rally’s main organizers, called the government incompetent for not providing sufficient security at the protest, which gathered some 10,000 people, according to police estimates.
“What happened at the parliament was because of a lack of competence on the part of the Interior Ministry,” Stokenbergs said.
He called on Interior Minister Mareks Seglins to step down.
Both sides agree that the initial attack on the parliamentary building appeared to be organized. Police said they were investigating who was behind the rioting.
Police officials say the police force in Riga would be on alert Wednesday evening to prevent more disturbances.
TITLE: Austria Arrests Shooting Suspect
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev, Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Austrian authorities said Wednesday that they have arrested a Chechen suspect in the audacious killing of a fellow Chechen on a Viennese street and are investigating whether certain “secret services” may have been behind the attack.
The victim — reportedly a Chechen political refugee — was shot twice in the head from close range on a Vienna street at about 1 p.m. Tuesday, Vienna prosecutor’s office spokesman Gerhard Jarosch told The Moscow Times in a telephone interview.
Jarosch said he was not at liberty to disclose the name of the victim or the murder suspect, who was detained Tuesday evening. He said, however, that both men were from Chechnya and had lived in Vienna for several years.
The New York Times, citing the victim’s lawyer and family friends, identified him as Umar Israilov, a former rebel who had accused Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov of kidnapping and torture and had received political asylum in Austria.
Jarosch said investigators were looking into claims that “secret services” were involved in the slaying. He declined to say to which country such services might be linked.
Before fleeing to Europe, Israilov, 27, briefly worked as a bodyguard for Kadyrov, The New York Times reported on its web site. He filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 alleging abuses by security forces led by Kadyrov against suspected Chechen militants and their relatives, the report said.
The Vienna daily Kurier, citing no sources, reported on its web site that the suspect, identified only as Otto K., has denied involvement in the attack but told investigators after being detained that Israilov had “earned” death because he had switched allegiances after previously being loyal to Kadyrov.
Timur Aliyev, an adviser to Kadyrov and a former journalist who covered the two Chechen wars extensively, said by telephone from Grozny that he had never heard of Israilov.
He also expressed doubt that the murder could be an act of revenge by the Chechen leadership. “There are other Chechens, more important, known and influential, who file complaints against Russia in Europe and criticize Kadyrov, but they still walk around safe and sound,” Aliyev said.
Israilov filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in 2006, describing cases of abductions and torture committed by Kadyrov and his associates between 2003 and 2005, The New York Times said.
The press office for the European Court of Human Rights said Wednesday that it received an initial complaint from an Umar Israilov in November 2006 but that it could not confirm that it was from the man slain in Vienna.
Because it received no follow-up information from the plaintiff following the initial appeal, the complaint was expunged from the court’s records, the court’s press office said. For this reason, the court said it could not provide details of the complaint or further information about the identity of the plaintiff.
Israilov’s Austrian lawyer, Nadja Lorenz, said through her secretary Wednesday that she could not speak about the case until she had consulted with the Israilov’s relatives.
But she told The New York Times that she had recently sought protection for Israilov from the authorities but that her request had been denied.
Israilov was returning to his apartment building from a trip to the grocery store at about 1 p.m. Tuesday when he was ambushed by two men two men wearing camouflage pants, one of whom was carrying a handgun, witnesses told the Kurier.
A wild foot chase ensured, with the attackers pursuing Israilov through the streets of Vienna, forcing numerous drivers to brake abruptly to avoid hitting them, the report said.
“We heard shots, the street was packed with pedestrians,” an unidentified witness was quoted as saying.
Israilov fell to the pavement on the Ostmarkgasse, where the attackers shot him twice in the head, Vienna police spokeswoman Karin Strycek told the Kurier.
Reached by telephone, Strycek referred all inquiries to the Vienna prosecutor’s office.
Many Chechens, including rebels, have fled abroad in the two wars that have ravaged the restive republic since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A senior rebel, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, was killed in Qatar in 2004 when a bomb ripped through his sports utility vehicle in Doha. Two Russian intelligence service agents were arrested in Qatar and sentenced to life in prison for the bombing. They were extradited to Russia in January 2005, and a month later the head of the Federal Prison Service, Yury Kalinin, publicly acknowledged that they were not being held in any Russian prison.
TITLE: Pirate Attack in Gulf of Aden Foiled by Russian Warship
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A Russian warship helped foil a pirate attack on a Dutch container ship in the dangerous Gulf of Aden, a maritime watchdog and the Russian Navy said Wednesday.
Six pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades Tuesday at the ship, which took evasive maneuvers while calling for help, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Malaysia.
The pirates chased the vessel for about 30 minutes in the waters off Somalia but aborted their attempt to board after a Russian warship and helicopter arrived, Choong said.
Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said a Ka-27 helicopter was sent from the Admiral Vinogradov warship on patrol off the Horn of Africa and fired at three suspected pirate speedboats that were trying to attack the Dutch ship.
He said three pirates were wounded.
Dygalo said one of the speedboats was halted near Yemeni waters and Russian teams from the Admiral Vinogradov boarded the other two, finding ropes with grappling hooks and gas canisters but no fishing equipment.
Pirates last year attacked 111 ships and seized 42 off the Horn of Africa, many in the Gulf of Aden. An international flotilla including U.S. warships has stopped many attacks, but the area is too vast to keep all ships safe in the vital sea lane that leads to the Suez Canal and is the quickest route from Asia to Europe.
Choong said it was nevertheless getting harder for Somali pirates to hijack ships because of increased naval patrols and the vigilant watch kept by ships that pass through the area.
“The attacks are continuing, but successful hijackings by pirates have [been] reduced,” he said.
There have been 11 attacks in Somali waters so far this year, with two ships hijacked. In total, 11 vessels with 210 crew members remain in pirate hands, Choong said.
Russia sent a warship to the area in September after Somali pirates hijacked a Ukrainian freighter, the Faina, with a cargo of battle tanks and three Russian crew members. One of the crew members has since died of an illness, but the ship remains under the control of the hijackers.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and its lawless coastline is a haven for pirates. The multimillion-dollar ransoms are one of the only ways to make money in the nation.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Writer Marks 90th
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Famed Russian writer Daniil Granin was awarded with the Order of St. Andrew on his 90th birthday in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko presented Granin with the medal in a solemn ceremony at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Interfax reported.
The decree for the award was signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Matviyenko called Granin the “patriarch of St. Petersburg culture, a moral leader, a public figure planting the seeds of wisdom, kindness and eternity.”
“The match of your soul and thought with our amazing city is striking… we would be different without you and your books,” Matviyenko said.
One of Granin’s most popular books is the 1987 novel “Bison” that tells of the Soviet geneticist Nikolai Timofeyev-Ressovsky, according to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. A minor planet, 3120 Dangrania, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1979 is named after him.
TITLE: Economy-Class Stores See Boom in Business
AUTHOR: By Yelena Zborovskaya and Natalya Chumarova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Turnover at Lenta supermarkets reached $2.04 billion last year, the chairman of the company’s board of directors, Stephen Ogden, announced this week. Growth stood at 30.7 percent compared to 2007, and December last year brought the company 6.7 billion rubles in revenues — 44 percent up on November, he said.
From October to November 2008, Lenta opened five new outlets, compared to two in 2007, and this is reflected in the growth rate of sales in December, which grew by 23 percent compared to December of the year before, or 10 percent if the new outlets are not taken into account, said Ogden.
Economy-class chains such as Magnit, Auchan, Pyatyorochka and Lenta had a more successful month in December 2008 than in December 2007, said Tatyana Bobrovskaya, an analyst at Brokercreditservice. According to her, sales at Magnit in December rose by 43 percent compared to December 2007. Net income from sales at Magnit from retail sales in 2008 reached $5.3 billion — 46 percent up on the previous year. Revenues at Dixi during the first 11 months of 2008 grew by 34 percent to 43 billion rubles compared to the same period of the previous year. Seventh Continent increased its revenues for the same period by 24 percent up to 39 billion rubles. According to data from Petrostat, the turnover from retail trade in St. Petersburg during the first 11 months of 2008 was 508.4 billion rubles — 12.4 percent greater than in the previous year.
Dixi, Kopeika and Okay could catch up with Lenta’s end-of-year results, said Alexei Krivoshapko, the director of Prosperity Capital Management. According to estimates by Prosperity Capital Management, the top results for 2008 will be announced by X5 ($8.2-8.5 billion), Magnit ($5.3 billion), Metro Cash & Carry ($4-4.5 billion) and Auchan ($3.2 billion).
Ogden said that in 2009 Lenta plans to open three stores and expects sales growth of 28 percent. It will be a difficult year for retail, he admitted. He said that Lenta intends to concentrate on popular essential items, and could slightly reduce its range of durable goods.
The rate of revenue growth at Magnit, according to forecasts by analysts at Unicredit Aton will slow down in 2009 to 20 percent. Lenta has created a good foundation for profit by opening eight new stores in a year — this year retailers will have fewer funds for investment, said Bobrovskaya.
Last year, Lenta shareholders intended to sell the chain. WalMart, France’s Carrefour, Finland’s Kesko and Croatia’s Agrokor Group were all named as possible buyers. At the beginning of August, market figures estimated the value of the chain at $2 billion, taking into account $500 million of debt. According to Ogden, in the final quarter of 2008 the sale of Lenta was postponed due to a slump in prices on the Russian and global stock markets. Lenta will not be sold for less than it is worth, he said.
Revenues are not the only factor taken into account in valuing the business — the size of Lenta’s debts will be of more importance to a potential buyer, said Ivan Kotov, a consultant at A. T. Kearney.
TITLE: Schroeder to Join TNK-BP Board
AUTHOR: By Eduard Gismatullin
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, will join TNK-BP’s board as a non-executive director as BP Plc’s Russian oil venture installs new management and seeks to put a damaging power struggle behind it.
James Leng, chairman of Corus Group Plc, and Alexander Shokhin, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists, will also become non-executive directors, BP said today in a statement. Mikhail Fridman, a shareholder in TNK-BP, said the new directors will help the company become an “international major” to compete with the world’s largest oil producers.
BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and his billionaire partners in TNK-BP — Fridman, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik — agreed on Sept. 4 to end an eight-month dispute over the running of the venture by removing CEO Robert Dudley, who left the company on Dec. 1. The power struggle hurt output and discouraged investors.
“It’s going to be reasonably positive in the context of Russia and all those vagaries that it brings with it,” Jason Kenney, an analyst at ING in Edinburgh, said today by telephone. Schroeder “can hopefully progress assets for TNK-BP using the influence” he has with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, he said.
Schroeder has close personal ties with Putin and chairs Gazprom’s Nord Stream pipeline venture, which plans to build a link under the Baltic Sea to supply Russian natural gas directly to Germany.
Russian investors have pushed for TNK-BP to expand internationally, proposing projects in Poland, Germany and northern Iraq. BP’s directors have previously shot down most of these suggestions, according to the billionaire shareholders, collectively known as AAR.
TNK-BP stockholders “have agreed to appoint the three directors to avoid the risk of deadlock between the 50:50 owners of the joint venture, which are represented on the 11-strong board by four directors from each side,” BP said.
TNK-BP Ltd. shareholders may soon announce the nomination of Denis Morozov, the former head of miner GMK Norilsk Nickel, to the post of CEO, BP said last Friday. Morozov has a “high” chance of being appointed to the job, Vekselberg said Nov. 13.
Tim Summers will continue as acting CEO until the new nomination, BP said Thursday in the e-mailed statement.
Last week, BP and the Russian investors approved expansion of the board to 11 directors, four from each side and three independents. The earlier board had 10 members, split evenly between BP and AAR.
Stockholders also agreed, as part of the September accord, to study the sale of shares in a unit of TNK-BP Ltd. and ways to boost the company’s market value, BP said last Friday. TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil company, accounts for almost a quarter of BP’s output.
The new directors, “along with a recently agreed new system of corporate governance, will strengthen our company and make it more competitive, efficient and valuable,” Vekselberg said Thursday in an e-mailed statement.
TITLE: Ruble Sinks to Record Low Against Dollar
AUTHOR: By Emma O’Brien
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s ruble tumbled to a record low against the dollar Thursday after the central bank accelerated the devaluation of the currency in an effort to stem the drain on foreign-exchange reserves.
The currency dropped to as low as 32.4112 per dollar, the weakest since Russia redenominated the ruble at the start of 1998, before the financial crisis. The trading band versus the dollar-euro basket was widened for the fourth time in five days, a Bank Rossii official said. The ruble has lost 27 percent against the dollar since August.
“Russian policy makers have realized they can’t fight this and that’s why we’re seeing this increase in the pace of devaluation,” said Peter Rosenstreich, chief market analyst at Geneva-based currency-trading firm ACM Advanced Currency Markets. “The staggered devaluation will continue as it’s the only way to relieve pressure on reserves depletion.”
Russia’s defense of the ruble drove foreign-currency reserves $11.7 billion lower to $426.5 billion in the 2 1/2 official trading days between Dec. 26 and Jan. 9, extending the decline since August to 29 percent. Emerging-market currencies in the region have fallen since the start of the year, led by the Romanian leu and Hungarian forint, as falling commodity prices and halted gas supplies add to concern of a recession.
Russia’s energy-led economy is slowing after a 64 percent drop in the price of Urals crude, the country’s main export oil blend, since August to $43.47. Russia cut its average oil forecast for this year to $40 a barrel, from a previous $50, Vedomosti newspaper in Moscow reported, citing government officials. That’s below the $70 average the finance ministry says is needed to balance this year’s budget.
The ruble weakened 1.4 percent to 36.8072 versus the basket Thursday. It closed at 36.2937 Wednesday, when it was allowed to fall 1.4 percent. Devaluations in December averaged about 0.6 percent a day, according to data compiled by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The currency fell by an average 1.5 percent in separate devaluations this week, according to data from Bloomberg and the Micex stock exchange.
Bank Rossii has devalued the ruble 16 times since Nov. 11, allowing it to weaken 21 percent against the basket, which is made up of about 55 percent dollars and 45 percent euros and is used to protect exporters from currency swings.
“The bottom line is that they need to get this over with and the faster the better,” said Rory MacFarquhar, Moscow economist for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which forecasts a further 12 percent depreciation in the ruble versus the basket. “They’re still catching up with what happened in oil last year. They’re still getting it to a sustainable level.”
Investors see the ruble as a “one-sided bet” and are placing so-called short positions, or wagers it is going to fall further, said ACM’s Rosenstreich, who predicts a total ruble depreciation of 15 percent against the dollar and the basket in the first quarter. BNP Paribas SA, France’s largest bank, advises clients to short the ruble versus the basket.
TITLE: Auto Sales Forecast to Plunge 19% in 2009
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian auto sales may fall 19 percent this year as the economy stumbles, the ruble loses value against the dollar and euro, and the government raises import taxes, the Association of European Businesses said.
Sales will probably decline to fewer than 2.4 million vehicles from 2.93 million last year and 2.58 million in 2007, Martin Jahn, vice chairman of the Moscow-based lobby group’s automakers’ committee, told reporters on Thursday. He declined to give a breakdown for foreign and domestic brands.
“We can’t expect growth in Russia in 2009,” said Jahn, who is also managing director of Volkswagen’s division in the country. Foreign car sales grew at a faster pace than deliveries of Russian brands in 2008, he said. “This year depends on the devaluation of the ruble, which will have a big impact on the price of imported cars.”
Russia’s economy may slide into recession this year and disposable income has withered as prices slump for oil, gas and metals, the country’s biggest exports. Investors withdrew $245 billion from Russian markets and currency between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, BNP Paribas estimates. The ruble has lost 27 percent against the dollar and 14 percent against the euro since Aug. 1.
The weakening currency will give domestic brands a chance to win back customers, Jahn said.
International automakers may have to raise prices in rubles by as much as 20 percent this year to compensate as the currency loses value and by about 5 percent to cover new import taxes, Nigel Brackenbury, the head of Ford Motor Co. in Russia, said in an interview Thursday.
Ford plans further price increases in Russia this year after boosting them 5 percent from Jan. 1, Brackenbury said. Ford’s Vsevolozhsk plant near St. Petersburg uses about 70 percent imported car components. The plant was idled for a month until Jan. 21 because of slowing demand.
The estimate for the car market is “a best-case scenario,” Brackenbury said. Sales may be lower unless bank lending revives, carmakers rein in price increases and the government extends a pledge of support for car loans to foreign brands that are locally produced, he said.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Austrian Pulkovo Bid
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Flughafen Wien, the operator of Vienna International Airport, plans to submit a bid for the airport in St. Petersburg, the Austrian Press Agency reported, citing Chief Executive Herbert Kaufmann. Flughafen Wien is part of a consortium with six other partners including Gazprombank, the report said.
Military to Get Boost
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia plans to spend about 4 trillion rubles ($124 billion) to rearm the military through 2011, Interfax reported, citing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Putin said the defense industry would receive more than 150 billion rubles in state assistance through 2011, the Moscow-based news service reported.
Budget Changes Ahead
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the government will prepare amendments to the budget next month, RIA Novosti reported.
TITLE: A Reason for Hope Would Ease the Pain
AUTHOR: By Irina Yasina
TEXT: Owing to the harsh economic situation, it was decided to cut off the light at the end of the tunnel as a temporary measure.” That is but one of the jokes making the rounds these days as the country faces its most severe crisis in a decade.
Having been born in the early 1960s, my generation remembers two crises. The first, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was almost cataclysmic: Nothing was in the shops, the country was in bankruptcy and all savings were lost. The other affected everyone but was less severe: Russia’s 1998 default, which saw a fourfold devaluation of the ruble. Today’s crisis is acute, but there is no sense of an approaching apocalypse.
Yet the crisis will be severe, not only because prices for the major Russian export commodities have plummeted, but also because the government, which believed in its boundless force and wisdom, now seems inadequately prepared for the challenges the country faces. Yes, Russia has enormous gold and currency reserves, but they are being depleted fast. They will not last for long while being spent — mostly in defense of the ruble — at the current pace.
Most important, there is no one in power who can change the country’s economic policies. Instead, Russia is ruled by “yes men” who are only able to agree and echo, “As you say, Mr. Prime Minister” or “Whatever you wish, Mr. President.” One reason is that the country’s leadership now appears to be digesting the same garbage information it feeds to the public.
Entire regions — the Urals and Mordovia, for example — are stagnant. Moscow, which used to rain gold on the economy, is also suffering because it too depends on natural resources, and its biggest taxpayers — Gazprom, LUKoil, Transneft — are now in bad shape. Indeed, Moscow’s budget has lost about a quarter of its revenues. But, given the tastes and appetites of Moscow’s mayor, you can assume that he will continue to pour what money remains into the city’s building boom. What does not bring in money — roads, schools, hospitals and kindergartens — will suffer.
As in the early 1990s, everyone is again afraid of unemployment. But back then, there was almost no unemployment; it peaked at 12 percent because the Labor Code makes firing employees difficult and very costly. Moreover, most Russians do not object strenuously to wage cuts, reductions in working hours and unpaid leaves.
There is a good reason for this docility. Moving and buying a new apartment in a different place is almost impossible, which makes Russian workers highly immobile. In Soviet times, people were proud of the fact that they had only one or two jobs during their lifetime. Those who acted differently were referred to pejoratively as “job-hoppers.”
So, today, people stay near idle factories — formally employed but having little to do and earning virtually no money. Occasionally, the factory pays them something, but people mainly live off their own vegetable gardens. The outcome is widespread alcoholism, poverty and lack of prospects.
Yet real signs of crisis are emerging. Electricity consumption fell 6 percent in November from a year ago, and freight traffic has decreased by 20 percent. Even a deputy minister with the Economic Development Ministry, Andrei Klepach, publicly recognized in mid-December that Russia has entered a recession that might last through the second quarter of 2009.
The strange thing about today’s crisis is that Russia’s billionaires have been hit harder than others. Don’t worry, Russia’s oligarchs are not starving, but the fortunes of many of them have collapsed. In another joke making the rounds in Moscow, a billionaire borrows 300 rubles (just over $10) from another to buy Forbes so he can check his place in the latest rankings of Russia’s richest people.
Indifferent to the poor, Russia’s government is actively supporting its fallen oligarchs, especially those who are close to the Kremlin. For example, the state has granted a $4.2 billion loan to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska (who held first place on the Forbes list before the crisis) to pay off his Western creditors. While experts are not sure whether Deripaska will repay the loan, the Kremlin and the oligarchs have their own ways of settling debts.
Deripaska, who accompanied President Dmitry Medvedev on his recent trip across Latin America, appealed to Russia’s rulers to study Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the 1930s as a model for economic recovery. Roosevelt’s idea of a treaty between industrialists and the authorities appeals to the Russian oligarch. Notably, Deripaska has suggested that the government create an “aluminum stabilization fund,” because the industry — his industry — is losing money and global market share.
Of course, Vladimir Putin had already put in place a treaty between Russia’s government and the country’s richest men (or woman), who agreed not to comment on the actions of the state in exchange for the freedom to earn as much money as possible in any way they wanted. And if a well-placed official wanted to enter into a successful business, refusals were not accepted.
Fortunately, Russians know how to survive hard times. I remember the late 1980s not only for its hopes for freedom, but also for a total absence of baby food for my newborn daughter. Twenty years have passed. My daughter has grown up. There is enough baby food in the shops. But now there are no hopes for freedom.
Moscow intellectuals debate whether the current economic crisis will bring a new wave of liberalization to Russia. This is the key question for me. With a feeling of approaching freedom, any economic crisis can be endured more easily. So far, that feeling remains a ghost.
Irina Yasina is an analyst at the Institute of Transitional Economy, a weekly economic commentator for RIA-Novosti and a representative of the Open Russia Foundation. © Project Syndicate.
TITLE: This Crisis Isn’t So Bad After All
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: The most common way of formulating an economic forecast is to compare current events to similar cases in the past, analyze how those historical events unfolded and then base the prediction on that model. All of today’s economic forecasts are constructed in this way.
The question of how the U.S. recession will progress is important to answer because Russia, like all developing economies, will probably not experience economic growth until it picks up in developed economies. The answer to that question depends on which past U.S. event we base our comparisons. If we take as our model the economic panic of 1907, when the stock market and production fell at a pace that is similar to current declines, then the economy will recover in about one year. But if we conclude that a closer match with today’s crisis, given its severe credit shortages, is the Great Depression, the recovery might take a few years.
We can also draw lessons from comparisons with other recessions. The 1970s recessions in developed nations taught us that aggressive monetary policies could lead to growth coupled with inflation or inflation without growth. Recessions of the 1980s demonstrated that running a fiscal deficit is not a problem as long as the economy is growing. And Japan’s recession in the 1990s showed that an economy might stop growing when a government allows banks not to write off their bad assets.
Russia’s history of capitalism is very short — a little less than 20 years. The catastrophic decline that began in the first six months of 1990, which ultimately brought down the Soviet Union, occurred under a centralized, planned economy. Privatization of state enterprises, despite all of the fanfare, was just one step leading to a market economy. Lessons can be learned from the attempt at macroeconomic stabilization from 1995 to 1998, the reaction by the economy and the government to the Asian crisis of 1997 and the collapse of the fixed exchange rate in August 1998.
In fact, if you compare the current economic crisis to the one in 1998, this could be a cause for optimism. True, the drop in industrial output was worse last November (and December as well, if the preliminary data is correct) than during fall 1998, but it is important to put this into perspective: The 2008 declines were from a far greater height after nine years of growth, while the 1998 crisis hit the country after eight preceding years of declining production (with a brief period of low growth in 1997).
Furthermore, production declines in late 2008 were worse than in the catastrophic year of 1990, but manufacturing constituted a far greater percentage of the gross domestic product during the Soviet era than it does now. Against these backdrops, the recent decrease in the industrial production and a dramatic drop in the GDP growth rate does not look quite so alarming.
But the main cause for optimism today lies in comparing contemporary businesses and employees with those of 10 and 20 years ago. Today’s firms and workers are more energetic and better able to ride out rapidly changing market conditions. In fact, the widespread layoffs in certain industries and salary cuts instituted in the third and fourth quarters of 2008, which were of a much larger scale than a typical economics textbook would have predicted under similar circumstances, actually testify to the resilience of today’s businesses. Even with all of the handwringing currently going on, Russia’s companies and work force today are much healthier than they were in 1990 and 1998. Now isn’t that a reason to be optimistic?
Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the New Economic School/CEFIR, is a columnist for Vedomosti.
TITLE: Raising their voices
AUTHOR: By Robin Paxton and Olga Petrova
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CHUVASHKA, Russia — When Olga Tannagasheva starts to sing, her gentle voice transforms into a bass-line growl designed to invoke other-worldly spirits.
Tannagasheva, one of Russia’s 14,000 remaining Shors, also wants to communicate with modern Russians, as her ancient culture strives to reassert itself after decades of Soviet repression and enduring economic hardship.
Performing under the pseudonym Chyltys — meaning “star” in the Shor language — in blue, red and gold silks and a three-pointed hat, Tannagasheva’s style of throat-singing is popular with epic performers that draw on shamanist traditions. In Shor culture, such epic songs could last for several days.
“Whenever I travel, people ask me: ‘Who are the Shors?’” she said. “They think we come from China!”
The Shor people are descended from various Turkic tribes that migrated to the mountains of southwest Siberia from Central Asia. They had no unified identity until the mid-19th century, when the tribes, skilled horsemen and hunters, amalgamated.
Nicknamed the Blacksmith Tatars for their talent in fashioning tools from local iron deposits, they were granted their own mountain region — Gornaya Shoria — in 1926. Thirteen years later, Soviet leader Josef Stalin scrubbed it from the map.
“It was the policy of our government, of Stalin. Nobody ever explained this decision or apologised to us,” said Nadezhda Pechenina, director of the Shor information center.
The natural resources that once defined the Shors were also responsible for their downfall. Stalin flooded the region with other nationalities to exploit rich iron ore and coal seams for the steel mills that still dominate the city of Novokuznetsk.
“There was an entire period of Russification,” said Gennady Kostochakov, a lecturer at the Shor language faculty in Novokuznetsk’s teaching academy.
“The incoming urban population was all Russian-speaking, even though they were of different nationalities.”
But the Shor language, outlawed by Stalin, is making a comeback. Kostochakov, wearing a pinstriped blazer over a Puma sweater, has 15 first-year students in his class. About 140 people have graduated from his faculty in the last 20 years.
“When I graduate, I want to become a Shor language teacher,” said first-year student Nadezhda Sharagasheva. “Why should I, as a real Shor, not know my own native language?”
The Shors, also renowned for fishing, settled in valleys along the Tom River and its tributaries, the Mras-Su and Kondoma. Men and women inhabited separate quarters inside the cramped huts they fashioned from birch branches.
About 11,500 Shors, over 80 percent of the group, live today in this part of Kemerovo region, 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) from Moscow. Most of them live in the mountain town of Tashtagol.
Industrial towns, like coal-mining centre Mezhdurechensk, have swallowed up many of the original villages, but 90 small settlements remain where over half the residents are Shors.
Chuvashka is one. Leonid Aponkin, 70, lives there with his wife, Rufina. They draw water from a well in their garden and fill the stove in the corner of their living room with coal brought in bags from an opencast mine nearby.
“This was once purely a Shor village. My grandmother didn’t even speak any Russian,” Aponkin, a retired engineer dressed in a brown blazer, said inside his snowbound wooden cottage.
“They started teaching only in Russian and banned use of the Shor language. But there was no real discrimination.”
The Aponkins each receive a monthly pension of 4,000 rubles ($126), which Rufina says is sufficient to live on. Her husband studied in the Siberian city of Tomsk and worked in Kyzyl, capital of the Russian republic of Tuva.
The family album of sepia-tinted photographs includes portraits on Red Square and Sochi’s Black Sea coast, revealing how the Aponkins assimilated into Soviet society before retiring to their home village.
But it is also telling that they left their homeland to find work. The depletion of alluvial gold in the rivers and the collapse of state industrial holdings have contributed to unemployment rates of 95 percent in remote Shor villages.
“Our living standards are the lowest in the region. Scholars consider our demographic situation to be critical,” said Pechenina, also a former deputy in the Kemerovo administration.
“Chuvashka is an exception in that it has electricity.”
Urban Shors have launched a monthly newsletter to inform villagers, many of whom live without television or the internet, of events in the wider world. It’s in Russian, because printing costs were too high for an edition in the Shor language.
The Shors, without a republic of their own, have less autonomy than other Siberian ethnic groups. Neighbouring Altai and Khakassia each have their own republics.
Novokuznetsk, the region’s largest city with a population of over 500,000, is dominated by heavy industry. It hosts two giant steel mills, as well as an aluminum smelter and coal mines.
Not far from the city’s original, 1930s-era steel plant, a Shor cultural group meets regularly on the top storey of a theater to celebrate their culture and prepare for their next New Year celebration on March 21-22.
The Shors were originally shamanists, although their belief in the spirit world has co-existed with Christianity for centuries after the first Europeans arrived in the region. Now, many are Russian Orthodox Christians first and foremost.
The epic songs are an enduring fragment of the culture, often accompanied by a two-stringed wooden instrument known as the kai-komus.
Carole Pegg, a musician and lecturer at Cambridge University, says epic performance traditionally offers a way for the narrator to reach beyond the living world.
“It’s not speaking and it’s not singing. It’s a particular sound that is designed to communicate with other levels of the universe — spirits and the epic heroes,” said Pegg, an expert on Inner Asian music who has lived in neighboring Altai region.
“It’s a sound that is produced for a reason. It opens up pathways to other levels of reality and that enables the epic performer to then travel to those other levels.”
TITLE: Word’s worth
TEXT: If you work with translators or translations, here are a few things translators wish you knew about us and the work we do.
1. Ïåðåâîä÷èêè ïåðåâîäÿò íà ñâîé ðîäíîé ÿçûê (Translators translate into their native language). Yes, yes, I know: There are lots of exceptions to this rule and a few experienced translators who translate competently — and sometimes even brilliantly — out of their native language. But for each uniquely talented translator who can produce good texts in a foreign language, there are thousands who do it badly.
2. Just for the record: Ðîäíîé ÿçûê ïîíèìàåòñÿ êàê ÿçûê, êîòîðûé ÷åëîâåê óñâàèâàåò ñ ðàííåãî äåòñòâà áåç ñïåöèàëüíîãî îáó÷åíèÿ (Native language is understood as the language that a person masters from early childhood without special instruction). Generally, your native language is what you grew up speaking, usually in an environment where everyone around you spoke that language. Studying in school from an early age, spending a semester abroad, watching a lot of movies, or speaking it occasionally with a grandparent doesn’t make you a native speaker.
3. So even if you know the language your text is being translated into, don’t assume that you know more than your native speaker translator. If I had a nickel for every time a client thought õîðîøèå ïåðñïåêòèâû should be translated as “good perspectives” instead of “good prospects,” right now I’d be writing this at my beach house while being served a mojito by my servant Juan. If something strikes you as wrong: Ñïðîñèòü, ïðåæäå ÷åì ðóãàòüñÿ (Ask before you yell). You might say: Ïî÷åìó âû îäíî è òî æå ñëîâî ïåðåâîäèòå ïî-ðàçíîìó? (Why did you translate the same word differently?)
4. If you have not followed Rule No. 3 and are still arguing with your translator, don’t be surprised when you hear two mutually contradictory phrases about dictionaries: Òàê íàïèñàíî â ñëîâàðå (That’s what’s in the dictionary) and Ìàëî ëè ÷òî òàì â ñëîâàðå íàïèñàíî (There is lots of nonsense in the dictionary). We use the first phrase when we are trying to convince a client that, say, “plant” can mean an industrial building and not something in your garden. We use the second phrase when we are trying to convince a client that, say, “roadster” does mean an open car with no roof, but it cannot be used as synonym for a 2008 model convertible.
5. If your company or organization has a style book or a glossary, give it to the translator before he or she begins work. If you don’t have one, provide the translator with similar translations done in the past. Ïåðåâîä÷èêè íå ÷èòàþò ìûñëè (Translators don’t read minds).
6. Be honest about the length and nature of the translation job. If you say: Íàäî ïåðåâåñòè ïðîñòîé òåêñò — ñîâñåì íåìíîãî (We need a simple text translated — it’s not much at all), your translator will not expect 15 pages of complicated text.
— Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator
TITLE: Case closed
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators have closed an investigation into the shooting by Bolshevik revolutionaries of Russia’s last Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1918, Itar-Tass news agency reported Thursday.
Launched after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the investigation was broadly viewed as a review of the country’s Communist past — considered by some as 70 years of national glory and others as a bloody nightmare.
“Today I signed an order to close this criminal case,” Tass quoted investigator Vladimir Solovyov who has conducted the inquiry for 15 years as saying.
“We have no information which would suggest that those were not the royal family,” he said of the bodies of the Tsar, his wife and three of his children.
A group of Bolsheviks dumped their bodies in a pit near the house in the town of Yekaterinburg in the Urals where they had shot the family during a civil war between supporters of the Emperor and revolutionaries who supported Vladimir Lenin.
“Their bodies and the cause of their death have been identified,” Solovyov said.
The family was reburied in the imperial crypt of the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg. Officials said last year they had identified the missing remains of Nicholas II’s 13-year-old heir Grand Prince Alexei and daughter Grand Princess Maria.
Solovyov said the results of the investigation will be presented in early March at a conference but that the issue of what to do with the remains of Grand Prince Alexei and Grand Princess Maria was still to be decided.
LIFE AND TIMES
Now that Russia has closed an investigation into the shooting by Bolshevik revolutionaries of Russia’s last Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1918, it is time to reflect on the monarch’s life and times. He and his family’s remains were found in a forest grave near Yekaterinburg in the Urals in 1991 where they were shot.
Here are some details about what happened:
Nicholas II, the last Russian Emperor, was the eldest son of Alexander III and was born on May 6, 1868. He ascended the throne on October 20, 1894, and was crowned on May 14, 1896.
The ceremony in Moscow was overshadowed by a catastrophe on Khodynskoe Field, where more than 1,500 people were trampled to death during the traditional distribution of gifts at his coronation.
A DOOMED REIGN:
This set the tone for a doomed reign, marked by a disastrous war against Japan in 1904-5, and mass slaughter in World War One for which he was held responsible after he took direct control of the armed forces.
In 1905, his Imperial Guard opened fire on peaceful strikers carrying his portrait. Several thousand people were killed or wounded on what became known as “Bloody Sunday” and left him with the nickname “Bloody Nicholas.”
?Nicholas sealed his downfall by firmly resisting long-overdue political, economic and social change, fearing that reform had been to blame for the assassination of his grandfather Alexander II.
WAR AND DESTRUCTION:
In World War One, Russia entered on the allied side in August 1914. Dissatisfied with the army’s conduct of the war, Nicholas took personal command in September 1915. Russia lost territory and suffered massive casualties. Nicholas’s popularity dwindled.
By late 1916 royalists within the Duma warned the Tsar that revolution was imminent. Nicholas still refused to sanction further constitutional reform. During the so-called “February Revolution” in 1917, which he misinterpreted as a minor uprising, his suppression orders to the Petrograd garrison sparked its mutiny. In March 1917, Nicholas II abdicated. * After the abdication, the royal family at first remained in Tsarskoe Selo then, by decision of the interim government, were transported to Siberia. In April 1918, the Bolshevik government decided to move the Imperial family to Yekaterinburg in the Urals. Here, they were all shot on July 17, 1918.
Nicholas was shot dead along with his wife Alexandra, four daughters, son and four servants in the basement of the house where they had been kept under house arrest for several months.
A SAINT:
Russia’s Orthodox Church canonised Nicholas II in 2000, deciding that he and his family had died as martyrs.
TITLE: Mixed bag
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia’s fractious political and economic relations with its former Soviet territories are much in the news with the ongoing gas dispute with Ukraine and, most bitterly, last summer’s war with the tiny Caucasus nation of Georgia. But while such disputes threaten conflict between Russia and its neighbors, ordinary people are bound by a shared cultural heritage — and nowhere is this clearer than when it comes to food.
An unassuming new Georgian cafe-bistro that opened last June, before the Russia-Georgia War in August, proves the point — although with mixed results. Packed over the Christmas and New Year holidays, the place — simply called Georgia — attracts customers with its low-key interior and straightforward menu of Georgian cuisine’s greatest hits.
A dark pink, burgundy and beige decor is a little shabby and the manner of setting tables with shot glasses is old-fashioned but this is a place where lapses like a television on the wall and the ghost of a wine-stain on the carpet will be forgiven if the food and service is good.
The waiter, though hesitant and confused sometimes by the names of Georgian dishes — a bit of a mouthful in all ways — was polite and friendly, without being cloying. The meal, however, showed an astonishing range from the quite excellent to the almost inedible. Wandering into this culinary minefield is not for the feint-hearted.
Georgian cuisine’s most famous and perhaps simplest dish — shashlyk, a shish kebab grilled on coals — was inexcusably prepared at Georgia. A small amount of tough and possibly out-of-date pieces of chicken (220 rubles, $7) seemed to have been, shockingly, deep-fried in cheap oil and served bone dry with a minimum of garnish. A lobio salad of red beans of onion (160 rubles, $5), another famed dish, was disappointingly bland. Odzhahuri, an often hearty mix of roast meat and potatoes served with lemon wedges (290 rubles, $9), was nothing special here.
So far, so bad. But other dishes were pleasing enough: a large, well-toasted khatchapuri po-Adzharsky cheese bread (250 rubles, $7) was as good as any in the city. A satsivi — cold chicken served in a nutty cream sauce — was refreshing and well made (200 rubles, $6). And there was nothing wrong with the plump, floury lavash bread served on the side.
How odd then that Georgia suddenly springs surprises with dishes so delicious that it is hard to believe they were made in the same kitchen by the same hands. Two attractively served khinkali, deep-fried meat parcels, were crunchy and packed with tasty morsels (100 rubles, $3.15). A chilled stew of carrots, eggplant and onion called Adjapsandali was spicy and almost South Asian in presentation — covered in fresh parsly and served in a clay dish. Finally, eggplant slices, fried to almost melting point and wrapped around dollops of creamy, walnut pate, balanced and toyed with their flavors and avoided the trap that often befalls this dish — overdoing the oil (160 rubles, $5).
At Georgia, whose large street-sign proudly announces the restaurant in a design that features the Georgian flag (white with a red cross), a strange and contradictory picture emerges — much like Russia and its relationship to its former subjects.
TITLE: Putin, the artist?
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: There are few governors as loyal as Valentina Matviyenko, the governor of St. Petersburg, but she may outshine Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as, despite the crisis, businessmen compete to throw money at her and Putin’s art at a charity auction in the city on Saturday.
Putin makes his artistic debut in an auction for paintings made by celebrities including rock singer Sergei Shnurov, which will raise money for a local hospital, the restoration of a church and a cancer unit in the city.
World leaders have often been fond of relaxing with art. Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill were both known painters, although Putin is better known for throwing people onto judo mats than painting on a canvas.
“Of course Putin’s picture will go for the most,” Nadezhda Anfalova, chief artist of the auction, told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “The buyers look at the name.”
All of the paintings — one for each letter of the Russian alphabet — are based on a story that begins with a natural resource being stolen in Ukraine. Not Russia’s problems with gas transit in Ukraine but Nikolai Gogol’s story “The Night Before Christmas,” which begins with the devil stealing the moon.
The Gogol story was chosen to mark the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth. All the works are painted on overcoat cloth in another reference to Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat” about a bureaucrat and the cat fur-lined overcoat he buys.
The auction, in its third year, raised 5 million rubles ($160,300) in 2007 and more than 20 million rubles last year through the sale of the paintings. The governor’s paintings — “Hedgehog under the Pine Tree” and “Mishki” — fetched 2.2 million rubles and 11 million rubles, respectively, in the auction.
Putin took hand to brush at the end of December when he visited a Christmas fair in his hometown, painting a “u” and the word uzor, or pattern, and a window with curtains with a red pattern on them. How much Putin painted of the artwork is unclear, as they were then finished by a professional artist.
Matviyenko’s third painting is for the letter “M” for metel, or blizzard, a painting of a village hit by a storm. Her painting was ahead of Putin’s in a poll on the organizer’s web site but still behind opera singer Anna Netrebko's.
All the pictures can be seen at the Tsarskoe Selo web site. www.spbcarnival.ru/photo/22
TITLE: Blockbuster
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There are projects so conspicuous that even while they’re at the concept stage they seem doomed. Let’s be honest here, when Fyodor Bondarchuk — the bearded, shaven-headed son of a hallowed Soviet film director with an omnipresent media persona and inherited courtier skills — announced a few years ago that he was going to direct a screen adaptation of a saga written by the gods of geeky Soviet science-fiction epics, the Strugatsky Brothers (who probably are as far from today’s popular culture as they were from having any courtier skills back in the U.S.S.R.), it sounded a bit ominous.
The Strugatskys’ novels are so full of social satire and recognizable parallels to reality that one can easily imagine a new film of one of their books being an apocalyptic Dostoyevsky-meets-Star Wars style flick, generously spiced with trendy “sovereign democracy” salutations. And perhaps time is ripe: in 2005 is was said that the movie market wasn’t ready to consume something as colossal as a two-part sci-fi giant with a budget somewhere north of $30 million, but now it seems to be.
Although previous attempts to make a good film in this genre, by Timur Bekmambetov (the “Night Watch” series) and others, have foundered, Bondarchuk’s “The Inhabited Island,” based on the Strugatsky’s 1969 novella of the same name, seems to have hit the mark.
It is what it is, not a landmark and not a milestone but a good seasonal entertainment film and it would be pointless to get deeply into its plot. Put simply, “The Inhabited Island” is the story of a guy named Maxim who during an intergalactic rite of passage crashes on an unfriendly planet governed by a group of self-proclaimed tyrants that is being torn apart by an endless civil war.
Two weeks prior to the nationwide release of “The Inhabited Island,” Hollywood’s sci-fi flick of the season, “The Day The Earth Stoood Still,” hit the screens. Deservedly a bit of a turkey, this Keanu Reeves vehicle was at least made with the usual Hollywood meticulousness, attention to production details and well-crafted special effects. None of this unfortunately can be applied to “The Inhabited Island.”
On the big screen, its special effects and production design look cheap, sometimes amateurish. Action sequences work just as many times as they don’t. Most unfortunately, the ambiance of the planet feels fake or is missing altogether.
However, the movie’s young leads, Vasily Stepanov — a fresh-faced newcomer — and Julia Snigir, shine through the movie’s lengthy two hours-plus running time. Their novelty is pleasant against a supporting cast of established Russian actors whose faces are all too familiar (Kuzenko, Garmash, Mikhalkova, Merzlikin and a bewigged turn by the director himself). They are however, well cast with special kudos going to Maxim Sukhanov for portraying a terrific tyrant, Sergei Mazaev (of “Moralni Kodeks” fame) for dying on screen without saying (or singing) a single line and to the director for not casting overexposed stars such as Sergei Bezrukov or Liza Boyarskaya — although, who knows? There’s a sequel on the way.
TITLE: Project Depicting EU Countries Causes Controversy
AUTHOR: By Douglas Lytle and Kevin Costelloe
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: PRAGUE — Czech officials and an artist apologized for “Entropa,” an avant-garde installation at the European Union headquarters that has been criticized for casting a disparaging light on many of the 27 individual member states.
“Entropa is just art, nothing more, nothing less,” Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra told reporters Thursday in Brussels, standing in front of the eight-ton work hanging in the main hall of the EU Council. “This is not how the Czech government or presidency view the EU or any member state. I understand that some could feel offended, and I would like to apologize.”
The Czech Republic, which assumed the EU’s six-month rotating presidency on Jan. 1, has already been forced to grapple with weighty matters such as the shutoff of natural gas from Russia and the Gaza conflict. It had intended to make Entropa a fun centerpiece of its cultural program, which runs alongside the formal political and economic events that occupy a country’s time as head of the bloc.
David Cerny, the artist who was commissioned to seek the input of 27 other individuals in preparing the 170-square-foot work but instead produced it himself with help from a small group of artists, called Entropa “an art piece” before apologizing.
“We are really sorry” about insulting “individual nations,” Cerny, 41, said at the news conference. He said he had apologized “to my government” and will return the 10 million koruna ($482,700) money he received for the project to the Czech government.
Entropa assigns stereotypes or comic references to the 27 states in the bloc, including a strike banner for France, Ikea boxes in Sweden and soccer players in Italy. Germany is laced by autobahns roughly in the shape of a Swastika cross and Romania is depicted as a Dracula theme park. The U.K. is the only country not shown, in an apparent jibe at its ties to Europe and often standoffish approach to EU policy.
The Czech nation is represented by an electronic billboard that displays remarks by Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who opposes government attempts at limiting global warming and is against further European political and administrative unification and the single currency.
Bulgaria, whose country was represented by an image of a Roman or “Turkish” toilet, has already asked that the installation be removed as soon as possible. Cerny said he apologizes to “Bulgaria and its government if it feels offended” and said he is ready to “engage in a dialogue” with the country if the government desires.
Vondra, who described Cerny as a “conceptual artist,” said the project is intended to stay until the end of June, although the government has indicated to the Bulgarians that it may be ready to remove the Roman toilet emblem. Vondra did not say whether it would order the installation’s removal.
“I don’t have any personal wish,” Vondra said. “My personal wish is not important. I accept the responsibility, but we are not leaving the scene.”
It is not the first time Cerny’s work has sparked criticism or debate. Cerny first broke into the Czech art scene in 1991 when he surreptitiously painted a Soviet tank monument pink, drawing a sharp rebuke from Russia.
In 1999 his comic rendition of a famous statue of St. Wenceslas in Prague’s main square depicted the former Czech king astride what appears to be a dead horse.
In an interview Wednesday with the Times in London, Cerny said he drew on the humor of Monty Python and Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” character in creating the map of Europe.
Cerny said in a statement on his web site that the plan to have 27 individual artists collaborate on Entropa could not be realized due to “time, production and financial constraints.”
“The team therefore, without the knowledge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, decided to create fictitious artists who would represent various European national and artistic stereotypes,” Cerny wrote, adding that one goal of the project was to determine whether “Europe is able to laugh at itself.”
Cerny’s Entropa project includes a brochure introducing each non-existent “artist,” including their past works, explanations of their contributions to Entropa and links to fake web sites.
“What do we really know about Europe?” Cerny said. “We have information about some states, we only know various tourist cliches about others. We know basically nothing about several of them. We did not want to insult anybody, just point at the difficulty of communication without having the ability of being ironic.”
TITLE: Nalbandian, Djokovic Through to Semis
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SYDNEY — Argentina’s David Nalbandian scored a sweet victory over fierce Australian rival Lleyton Hewitt to power into the semi-finals of the Sydney ATP International on Thursday.
The tournament fourth seed dominated with his groundstrokes from the back court as he parcelled up a 7-6 (7/3), 7-5 win over the former world number one in one hour and 48 minutes.
Nalbandian, who still trails the Australian 3-2 in career meetings, next has a Friday semi-final with Frenchman Richard Gasquet.
Top seed Novak Djokovic was frustrated by two rain delays, totalling almost two hours, before completing a 6-3, 6-4 win over Croatia’s Mario Ancic in the night quarter-final.
Djokovic will next play Jarkko Nieminen after the Finn received a walk-over into the semi-finals when his opponent, French third seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, pulled out with a lower back complaint, aggravated in Wednesday’s second round.
Unseeded Gasquet, a runner-up in last week’s Brisbane International, was too strong for compatriot qualifier Jeremy Chardy, 6-2, 7-6 (7/4) in an earlier quarter-final.
“I think I should have won earlier, or easily in both sets,” Nalbandian said. “I was a break up in both sets, but I couldn’t make it in the first one, and even in the second one.
“It was a little complicated in both sets, but I won, so that’s important.”
Nalbandian has had a long and at times bitter rivalry with Hewitt since the Australian’s 2002 Wimbledon final triumph in straight sets.
The pair exchanged sharp words during a changeover in Hewitt’s marathon five-set win over Nalbandian in the quarter-finals of the 2005 Australian Open.
Hewitt’s ranking has dropped to 74 since hip surgery last August, but he has been playing strongly in the Sydney tournament with victories over France’s Julien Benneteau and Serbian Janko Tipsarevic.
Hewitt was only playing his sixth match since undergoing the career-saving operation and will head into next week’s Australian Open unseeded after reaching the 2005 final against Marat Safin.
“I don’t think I’m that far away from it,” Hewitt said. “Especially because he’s one of the best players in the world and probably capable of beating nearly anyone on any surface on any given day.
“I had chances in both sets. It’s probably just not having those tough matches against the best players that let me down today.”
Nalbandian was in control of the majority of his match with Hewitt.
He broke the Australian twice in both sets, but double-faulted on break point as he served for the match at 5-4 in the second set after decisively winning the opening set tiebreaker.
Gasquet has never beaten Nalbandian in six meetings and knows he is set for a tough assignment in the heat of an afternoon semi on Friday.
“I never beaten Nalbandian and it will be a difficult game for me because he never misses, not so much,” Gasquet said.
“So it will be a big match for me. I won’t be the favorite.”
But world number 25 Gasquet will be encouraged by his recent form heading into his second successive Australian tournament semi-final.
“I played well in Brisbane and I’m feeling more confident because I’ve won more matches,” he said.
“I’m playing good. I’ve won in two sets all my matches in Sydney, so I will see tomorrow.”
TITLE: Israel Bombs UN Headquarters, Hospital in Gaza
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and the main warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of dollars of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.
The UN chief, in Israel for the day, demanded a “full explanation.”
A senior Israeli military officer said Israeli troops shelled after coming under fire from Palestinian militants inside the compound — an account dismissed by a UN official there at the time as “nonsense.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers, said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a “grave mistake.”
Even as a top Israeli envoy went to Egypt to discuss a cease-fire proposal, the military pushed farther into Gaza in an apparent effort to step up pressure on Hamas. Ground forces thrust deep into a crowded neighborhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover. Shells also struck a hospital, five high-rise apartment buildings and a building housing media outlets in Gaza City, injuring several journalists.
Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings.
The army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.
Israel launched its war on Dec. 27 in an effort to stop militant rocket fire from Gaza that has terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians, according to UN and Palestinian medical officials. Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said at least 50 people were killed throughout Gaza on Thursday.
Thirteen Israelis also have been killed since the campaign began. Israel says it will press ahead until Hamas halts the rocket fire and stops smuggling weapons into Gaza from neighboring Egypt.
The UN compound struck Thursday houses the UN Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people.
“I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defense minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation,” said Ban, who arrived in Israel on Thursday morning from Egypt.
It had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for 700 Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, UN officials in Gaza said.
John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, said the attack at the compound caused a “massive explosion” that wounded three people.
A senior Israeli military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of an expected official announcement, said troops opened fire after militants inside the compound shot anti-tank weapons and machine guns. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal army announcement later in the day.
Ging, who was in the compound at the time, dismissed the Israeli account as “nonsense.”
Israeli shells first hit the courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN’s main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames, Ging said. Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.
“It’s a total disaster for us,” Ging said, adding that the UN had warned the Israeli military that the compound was in peril from shelling that had begun overnight. UN officials say they have provided Israel with GPS coordinates of all UN installations in Gaza to prevent such attacks.
The refugees were moved to a school away from the immediate fighting, he said.
Separately, Israel shells landed next to a UN school in another Gaza City neighborhood, wounding 14 people who had sought sanctuary there, medics and firefighters said.
An Israeli attack near a UN school in northern Gaza earlier this month killed nearly 40 people. At the time, Israel said militants had fired on army positions from the beginning.
TITLE: Man City’s Kaka Deal Remains
In Doubt
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Manchester City’s reported world record bid for AC Milan’s Brazilian playmaker Kaka hung in the balance on Thursday with conflicting reports on how the transfer talks were progressing.
The club’s assistant manager Mark Bowen told the BBC that a deal was “very close,” but an Arabian business website insisted that talks had broken down.
Reports on Wednesday said that the Abu Dhabi-owned City had proferred a staggering $150 million dollars to acquire the services of the 26-year-old former World Player of the Year and that club officials had met with their Italian counterparts in Milan.
“We have understood there have been negotiations for a fair while now and as far as we are concerned we believe a deal is very close,” Bowen, who is assistant to head coach Mark Hughes at Eastlands told the BBC.
“I’ve read a lot about his love of AC Milan — and that goes without saying — but even when people said the deal was dead, that was not our understanding.
“We are still hopeful of still signing Kaka.”
That view was not shared by Arabianbusiness.com which cited a “senior source close to the club’s owners” as saying that the deal was off.
The unnamed source was quoted as saying: “The deal is off, and the offer is no longer on the table. The club is now pursuing another striker which it is very close to signing. Manchester City is about to unveil a new striker, but he is not called Kaka.”
City manager Hughes, however, was quick to dismiss those reports telling a press conference: “I’ve seen these reports but you have to bear in mind that the people who are being given a platform to speak do not represent the owner [Sheikh Mansour] or [chairman] Khaldoon [Al Mubarak].
“In my opinion they should not be given a platform to say what they have because in this instance it is completely untrue because negotiations are still taking place.”
“It would be naive to think I have not been involved in discussions over this transfer. I have had meetings about it and have had an input.
“It is impossible to say whether it will go through or not but we will let everyone know when there is something to say.”
And reports in the Italian press suggest that the move is very much alive with Milan themselves seemingly keen to push it through.
The Gazzetta dello Sport claimed that Milan gave Manchester City permission to talk to Kaka on Tuesday with City representative and notorious Iranian-born agent Kia Joorabchian making contact with Kaka’s father and agent Bosco.
Kaka himself was quoted as saying that he was happy to stay at AC Milan if the club did not want to sell him.
TITLE: British Government Approves Plans For $13 Bln Expansion to Heathrow
AUTHOR: By Martina Fuchs
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SIPSON, England — The oldest resident of a village that will be wiped off the map by the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport has vowed to stay in his home and defy the bulldozers.
Jack Clarke, 96, who has lived in Sipson since the days when surrounding farmland supplied fruit and vegetables for London’s markets, said he will never accept compensation to move.
“I won’t leave,” he told Reuters. “They will not get me out of this house, I have been here too long.”
Plans for a new runway, sixth terminal and extra roads at the world’s busiest international airport have prompted fierce opposition in the small village, wedged between two of Britain’s busiest motorways on the airport’s northern boundary.
The airport’s 9 billion pound ($13.2 billion) expansion, approved by the government on Thursday, will lead to the destruction of more than 700 homes, a 500-year-old pub and a school.
The development is a world away from the days when farms around Sipson grew crops to sell in the capital.
Clarke, who has a “No Third Runway” poster in the window of his modest redbrick house, worked on those farms for nearly 40 years after moving to the village shortly before the start of Great Depression of 1929.
The airport opened in 1946 and has expanded hugely since, with 68,000 people working there.
His granddaughter Jackie Hand, 36, a hairdresser who works in the village, said: “My whole family heritage is going to be wiped out by the third runway.
“What can we do when the government takes a decision? We are just a cog in a very big wheel.”
While Britain says a third runway and sixth terminal are critical for its economic prosperity, opponents argue the development will increase noise and pollution and make a nonsense of the government’s environmental credentials.
Walking his dog on a cold winter morning, security guard Michael Eede, 65, pointed out the landmarks that he fears will be demolished in the village where he has lived for 20 years.
“All the people here are affected — schools, churches, even the cemetery will be destroyed,” he said, raising his voice over the roar of the jets.
Some locals say they do not trust assurances from airport operator BAA, owned by Spain’s Ferrovial, that the Cherry Lane cemetery could be saved.
“My nephew is buried here,” said Linda O’Brien, 50. “If they try to dig this up, I will be lying here on my nephew’s grave.”
Environmental group Greenpeace has bought a plot of land behind the pub. It plans to divide it into thousands of pieces and sell them to supporters to try to delay the development.
In large white capital letters, campaigners have spelled out the words “Our Climate, Our Land” to send their message to the thousands of passengers who pass overhead each day.
TITLE: Man United’s Cristiano Ronaldo Voted FIFA Player of the Year
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ZURICH, Switzerland — Cristiano Ronaldo won the FIFA World Player of the Year award Monday to complete a sweep of soccer’s top individual honors for 2008.
The Portugal winger led Manchester United to the Premier League and Champions League titles in May. He scored 42 goals in all competitions last season and became the first English Premier League player to win the honor in the award’s 18-year history.
“It is an overwhelming moment, a very special moment in my life,” Ronaldo said. “I would like to say to my mother and sister that the fireworks can be fired off now.”
Brazil’s Marta won the women’s award for the third year in a row. She earlier announced she is joining the Los Angeles Sol in the Women’s Professional Soccer League.
Ronaldo received 935 votes in a worldwide poll of national team captains and coaches. He was followed by Barcelona and Argentina midfielder Lionel Messi (678 votes) and Liverpool and Spain striker Fernando Taorres (203), with the results announced by Brazilian great Pele.
Ronaldo was widely expected to win after capturing the Ballon D’Or as European player of the year and World Soccer magazine’s player of the year. Before the announcement, the orchestra at the Zurich Opera House gave a not-so-subtle hint by playing an aria from Handel’s “Rinaldo.”
Ronaldo is the second Portuguese to receive the award. Luis Figo won in 2001 when David Beckham, who also wore No. 7 for Manchester United, was runner-up.
“It is a dream for me to get this prize because I want to bring the team and my country forward,” Ronaldo said. “I would like to dedicate it to my family. This is the most important thing to me.”
Ronaldo missed the start of this season because of injury and has struggled to regain his form. He has eight league goals, but the last came in November.
Before the ceremony, Ronaldo paid tribute to United manager Alex Ferguson and his former Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, who now manages United’s rival Chelsea.
“Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Scolari were decisive,” he said through an interpreter. “I would like to thank them for making me the player I am today.”
Messi led Argentina to the Olympic gold medal in Beijing and has helped Barcelona take a commanding lead of the Spanish league, scoring 20 goals in 22 games. AC Milan playmaker Kaka, last year’s winner, and Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez were also finalists.
TITLE: 124 Arrested in Pakistan Over India Attack
AUTHOR: By Kamran Haider
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ISLAMABAD — Pakistan said on Thursday security forces had closed five training camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the Mumbai attack, and arrested 124 of its leaders and those of a related charity.
Tension between nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India has been simmering since the late November attack in which gunmen killed 179 people in Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
India has become increasingly frustrated with what it sees as Pakistan’s lack of action in response. Pakistan has been angered by an Indian suggestion Pakistani state agencies were involved and what it sees as repeated Indian hints of military action.
Pakistan condemned the attack, denied involvement of any of its agencies and offered cooperation to India in the investigation.
Pakistan’s top Interior Ministry official, Rehman Malik, repeated that offer on Thursday as he outlined action the government had taken against the LeT and an Islamic charity the United Nations says is an LeT front.
“We have arrested a total (of) 124,” Malik told a news conference, adding those arrested were “mid-level, lower-mid-level and their top leadership”.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was banned in Pakistan in 2002 but the United Nations says it has been using its charity wing, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), as a front for its militant activities.
JuD was added to a UN list of terrorist organizations days after the Mumbai attacks.
Hafiz Saeed, founder of LeT and head of JuD, was put under house arrest soon after that.
Malik said the government had closed 20 offices, 87 schools and several religious seminaries, or madrasas, run by JuD. Authorities had also banned its publications and blocked six group websites, he said.
“All activities of that particular organization stand ceased,” Malik said.
The Indian government and military have said all options are open in their response to the Mumbai attack, which Pakistan has interpreted as a veiled threat of a military response.
But analysts say war is very unlikely.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said on Wednesday both sides had moved some troops but tension had not escalated to the point of threatening peace and stability.
Malik said he wanted India to allow Pakistani investigators to help in the investigation.
“In such matters we need interaction and I request my counterpart please make the arrangements ... where our investigators can interact with each other. Interaction will bring quick results,” Malik said.
India has provided Pakistan data from satellite phones used by the attackers and what it describes as the confession of a surviving gunman, part of a dossier of it says is evidence.
Pakistan has said the dossier India provided did not amount to evidence and the information needed to be carefully examined.
TITLE: 3 Red Cross Workers Taken Hostage by Gunmen in Southern Philippines
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MANILA, Philippines — Gunmen abducted three Red Cross workers Thursday in a southern Muslim militant stronghold, triggering the worst hostage crisis since guerrillas kidnapped foreign tourists nearly eight years ago, officials said.
The three representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross from Italy, Switzerland and the Philippines were driving to Jolo airport after visiting a jail when motorcycle-riding gunmen intercepted them, said Sen. Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross.
The driver and two other Filipinos were released and reported the incident, he told The Associated Press.
Jolo Gov. Sakur Tan said the vehicle was found abandoned in nearby Patikul town, scene of many clashes between troops and al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants, notorious for terror attacks and kidnappings.
Tan said about three to five gunmen were involved “but of course they have other companions.” Some villagers saw the hostages being tied up and were cooperating with authorities, he said.
Tan said the three-member delegation arrived in Jolo island on Wednesday to look into the previous day’s jailbreak during which 12 inmates escaped and one was killed.
Roland Bigler, a Red Cross spokesman in Manila, said the abduction took place several hundred yards (meters) from the prison gate. Red Cross staffers visit prisons regularly.
The kidnapped workers were identified as Swiss Andreas Notter, 38; Italian Eugenio Vagni, 62; and Filipino Mary Jean Lacaba, 37.
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Vagni comes from Montevarchi, near the Tuscan city of Arezzo. The ministry said it has been in contact with the Italian Embassy in Manila and the Red Cross.