SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1453 (15), Tuesday, March 3, 2009
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TITLE: Clinton, Lavrov Get Chance 
‘To Reset’
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The much discussed “reset” of troubled U.S.-Russia relations will kick off this week when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet for the first time. 
Lavrov and Clinton saw each other Monday at a donors’ conference for Gaza recovery hosted by Egypt at the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. 
The two diplomats will meet again Friday in Geneva for the first official talks between Moscow and Washington since the administration of President Barack Obama took office in January. 
The meetings are the second high-level personal contacts between the governments following talks by Vice President Joe Biden and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov at the Munich Security Conference in February. Biden won praise from Ivanov when he said that the Obama administration would like to “press the reset button” in relations with Moscow. 
A senior U.S. diplomat said Friday that Obama’s administration was determined to keep the focus on the positive at the Geneva talks. 
“We’re all looking forward to the meeting between Secretary Clinton and Minister Lavrov,” Daniel Fried, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs, told reporters in Washington. “There have been letters between the leaders, between the foreign ministers, outlining a way forward and a positive agenda, and it is on that that we want to build, but with our eyes open about some of the differences we have.” 
Those differences, Fried said, include the United States’ refusal to recognize a Russian sphere of influence in neighboring countries or the independence of the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, according to a transcript on the State Department’s web site. 
In addition, “each European country has a right to seek membership” in NATO, Fried said, in reference to Moscow’s hostility over Georgia’s and Ukraine’s bid to join the Western military alliance. 
Lavrov said Friday that the Geneva talks would focus on arms control issues, including a follow-on agreement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which expires in December. 
Clinton and Lavrov will also discuss deeper cooperation in areas such as Afghanistan, the State Department said. 
Geneva is regarded as a neutral territory and hosts the headquarters of a string of UN agencies. 
Ties nosedived under the administration of President George W. Bush and sank to a post-Soviet low after Moscow’s brief invasion of Georgia last summer. 
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has cautiously noted positive signals from the new administration, and Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to meet for the first time on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in London on April 2. 
The Foreign Ministry made it clear that Monday’s conference in Egypt would focus on the Middle East and not be a place for bilateral talks. 
“You must not call this a meeting [between Clinton and Lavrov] but just a first personal contact,” ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov told The Moscow Times on Friday. 
He said that to his knowledge, no special face-to-face meeting was planned because proper talks between the two would take place four days later. 
Lyakin-Frolov noted that Clinton and Lavrov have already spoken by telephone. In the conversation in early February, the two top diplomats agreed to work more closely on key strategic issues. 
Lavrov previously met Clinton during his tenure as ambassador to the United Nations when Clinton was first lady, the ministry spokesman said. 
Clinton, on her second foreign trip this week, will also visit Israel and the Palestinian territories and meet NATO and EU foreign ministers in Brussels before traveling to Geneva. 
Analysts said that while a breakthrough was unlikely, both sides had an interest in showing that the atmosphere was improving in relations. 
Nikolai Zlobin, analyst with the Washington-based World Security Institute, said Washington would try to cooperate because it wanted a new nuclear arms reduction treaty. “There is no reason for Washington to be hard on Russia,” Zlobin said. 
He also said Moscow’s attitude has been softened because of the deepening economic crisis. “The rhetoric has become much more flexible,” he said, adding that the country’s leadership had not issued any strong criticism of Washington since Obama took office. 
The Foreign Ministry last week took unusual pains to stress that the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report, which was strongly critical of Russia, had been composed under the Bush administration. “We hope that the new administration will correct its approach to these reports,” the ministry said in a statement on its web site. 
Lavrov also refused on Thursday to comment on Washington’s decision to place Patriot missiles in Poland, arguing that Warsaw could choose its own partners for military-technical cooperation. “U.S. plans to place a missile defense shield in Poland are a different thing because they touch on our security,” Lavrov said, according to his ministry’s web site. 
The Obama administration has said that it will decide on the controversial missile defense plans only when it has proof that the shield will work. 
Medvedev said in an interview published Sunday that he expected to hear “specific proposals” from Obama on the planned missile shield when they meet next month. 
“I hope that during my first meeting with the U.S. President Barack Obama we’ll be able to discuss this issue, which is extremely important for Europe,” Medvedev said in an interview with Spanish media, according to a transcript on the Kremlin web site.

TITLE: Elections Provide Test of Crisis Measures
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova, Anatoly Medetsky and Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russians voted in regional elections Sunday that promised to serve as a key test of the government’s anti-crisis measures, especially after the ruling United Russia party won new support from its chairman, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Putin, speaking at a meeting with United Russia on the eve of the elections, also warned against illegal riots, which economic hardships could provoke, saying the state won’t be “shy or afraid” of stamping them out. 
Opening the meeting with United Russia leaders at his out-of-town residence Friday, Putin offered assurances that the economy would not slip into a disaster, praising United Russia’s faction for promptly passing anti-crisis laws and sponsoring some of them at the request of the government. 
“The year will be difficult, but there won’t be a catastrophe,” he said. “We will cope with all problems.”
In St. Petersburg, United Russia received just under 80 percent of the posts at 108 municipal councils in the local elections held on Sunday, though attendance was low at just 17 percent.
With about 90 percent of ballots counted on Monday, United Russia had 77 percent of the vote, A Just Russia had 7.2 percent, the Communist Party 1.82 percent and the Liberal Democratic Party 0.87 percent.  Independent candidates received 13 percent of votes, the St. Petersburg Election Commission reported.
The preliminary count gives United Russia 989 local council seats, Fair Russia will get 91, the Communists 24, the Liberal Democrats five and independents 141.
Vadim Tyulpanov, head of St. Petersburg’s United Russia branch said the party’s strong performance was largely due to the crisis, Fontanka.ru reported.
However, activists from the Communist Party and A Just Russia said that they intend to file complaints about the elections to some of the local municipal councils.
“During the elections we witnessed a whole range of violations, from illegal agitation to ballot stuffing,” said Konstantin Smirnov, a member the city election commission and the Communist Party, Fontanka reported.
Vladimir Fyodorov, head of St. Petersburg’s Communist Party branch, said he was not surprised that United Russia had received so many votes. 
Fyodorov also said that he also was not surprised about the low results of the Communist Party though he found them “sad.”
“I think, the Communist Party did not pay enough attention to the pre-election campaign, particularly in St. Petersburg.  We had some internal problems and we wasted our energy on that instead of on the elections,” Fyodorov said.
Attendance at the elections was poor, with a far lower turnout in comparison with the presidential election in March last year, at 69.78 percent, and elections to the city’s Legislative Assembly elections in January 2007, at just over 33 percent.
Marina Gudkova, 27, manager, said she didn’t go to the elections because she only had a vague idea about the elections.
“I don’t know the people who are on the lists to those municipal councils and I have no idea what they can do for us,” Gudkova said.
Fyodorov, however, said that the turnout of 17 percent should not be considered as being “very low” in the context of municipal elections. 
“People usually go to vote when important and powerful authorities are being elected,” said Fyodorov. “Municipal councils have much less influence and resources.  In addition, average citizens often don’t know what municipal councils actually do. For that reason I’m not terribly surprised that so few people turned out.” 
Sergei Shelin , a political analyst, said the party results in the St. Petersburg elections “were not very demonstrative.”
“The results are not that significant because very little was at stake at these elections,” Shelin said.
Shelin said the results were more significant in those places where people elected mayors.
Meanwhile, the results of the elections on Sunday to other regional authorities across the country demonstrated United Russia’s dominant position.
Early results indicated that United Russia representatives received the majority of votes in parliaments in eight out of the nine subjects of the Russian Federation where local parliamentary elections were being held.
United Russia received the majority of votes in Kabardino-Balkaria (72.2 percent), Karachayevo-Cherkesia (69.3 percent), Tatarstan (79.5 percent) and Khakasia (57.3 percent). Majorities were also scored in Arkhangelsk, Bryansk and Vladimir regions, Pravda reported.
Slightly lower results were registered in the Volgograd region (49.4 percent) and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (42.4 percent).  
United Russia also won in mayoral elections in cities such as Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Murmansk and Blagoveschensk.

TITLE: RusAl Mining Town Residents Shun Vote as Crisis Cuts Deep
AUTHOR: By Nadia Popova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SEVEROURALSK, Sverdlovsk Region — Voters in this sleepy Urals mining town of 33,500 people didn’t seem to care Sunday who would win the mayoral election.
The incumbent mayor, United Russia candidate Vasily Brezhatenko, 60, hasn’t been seen for the last week of the campaign after his office said he was rushed to a hospital in Yekaterinburg, 500 kilometers away, to be treated for high blood pressure.
His main rival, a divorced mother with two children from the Liberal Democratic Party, has been more visible, hanging campaign posters around town and unsuccessfully suing Brezhatenko on allegations of abusing his authority to strong-arm mayoral rivals.
But some voters said Sunday that it really didn’t matter who ran City Hall and compared the election to the presidential vote that saw Dmitry Medvedev replace Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin last March 2.
“Medvedev came after Putin, and nothing has actually changed,” said Andrei, a bauxite mine driver, outside a polling station in Severouralsk’s culture center with loudspeakers blaring the words of a love song, “I love you! I love you! I love you!”
“It doesn’t matter who will be our mayor. I came just because I was passing by and heard the music,” said Andrei, 38, declining to give his last name for fear of reprisals. He works for a bauxite mine owned by United Company RusAl, Severouralsk’s main employer.
Severouralsk was among several thousand towns and cities holding elections Sunday. Nine regions also held legislative elections.
Few people could be seen on Severouralsk’s streets Sunday afternoon. Several residents said they had decided not to vote. “I haven’t seen my 2,500-ruble salary for the last two months. Why should I spend my time voting for someone?” said a female manager for the local bus station who asked that her name be withheld for fear of being fired.
“There is no work in this town, and I have a small child,” she said. “Something serious must happen to change the situation, but these elections are not that kind.” The LDPR candidate, Tatyana Novosyolova, 40, has tried to tap this kind of discontent with her campaign. Novosyolova, a municipal lawmaker’s aide, earned 27,795 ($774) rubles for all of last year and has no car, according to a poster. Brezhatenko, in contrast, posted an income of 709,000 rubles, has an AvtoVAZ-made car and a house where he does not live, the poster says.
Most voters Sunday were pensioners, said an elections official at another polling station based in a school.
A young man walking by the school said he was glad that no one had forced him to vote this year. “We were told to go and vote no matter what during the presidential elections last year,” said Ivan, 25, a bauxite mine blaster. He refused to give his last name for fear of being fired. “They have decided everything without us, so there is no point no in casting my ballot,” he said.
Valery Zolotarev, the head of the local trade union, thought differently. “I am going to the legislature to make the miners’ voices heard,” said Zolotarev, A Just Russia candidate for a single seat open in the town’s legislature. The seat became vacant when the lawmaker accepted a post in City Hall.

TITLE: As Medvedev Watches, Italy Returns a Church
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BARI, Italy — Italy on Sunday returned ownership to Russia of an Orthodox church named after St. Nicholas in a goodwill gesture toward Moscow and the Orthodox faithful.
President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to the southern Italian city of Bari for the handover ceremony, which aims to boost ties between the two countries and improve often-tense Roman Catholic-Russian Orthodox relations.
Russia built the church in the early 20th century to welcome its pilgrims who traveled to Bari to pray near the relics of Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century saint associated with Christmas and much-revered by Russian Orthodox faithful.
His remains are kept in the crypt of the nearby Catholic Basilica of St. Nicholas, where Orthodox rites also are celebrated.
The Russian church became the property of the city of Bari in 1937 as the number of Russian Orthodox pilgrims dwindled following the Bolshevik Revolution. Its surrounding complex was used to house Russian emigres and some city offices.
“With this act, another wall falls,” said the Reverend Vladimir Kuciumov, the church’s rector. “Years ago we had the Berlin Wall, now we witness the fall of a wall that divided Catholics and Orthodox, Italians and Russians.”
The restitution is expected to boost tourism to Bari by Russians, who lately have flocked to Adriatic beach resorts further north on Italy’s east coast. It will also consolidate Bari’s traditional image of a bridge between East and West, said Mayor Michele Emiliano.
The gesture reflects the growing influence of the Orthodox church in Italy, said Marius Gabriel Lazurca, ambassador to the Holy See from largely Orthodox Romania. With more than 1 million immigrants from Romania and other eastern European countries, Orthodox Christianity now competes with Islam as the second-largest religion in Italy after Catholicism.

TITLE: Local New Wave Legend Grisha Sologub Dies, 47
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Grigory (Grisha) Sologub, one of the most influential and best-loved local rock musicians, died of heart failure in St. Petersburg on Friday. He was 47.
Born in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, on July 19, 1961, Sologub began his music career as a principal member of the city’s pioneering ska band Stranniye Igry, or Strange Games, in which Sologub played guitar and sang, alongside his older brother, bass guitarist and vocalist Viktor Sologub.
Having made its major stage debut at the Contemporary Music Club in March 1982 as the support band for Akvarium, the band quickly grew into one of the leading local underground bands, taking third prize at the Leningrad Rock Club’s competition festival and recording its debut  samizdat album, “Metamorphoses,” the following year.
As early exponents of New Wave in Russia, the band was influenced by 2-Tone bands such as Madness and The Specials. For lyrics they frequently used the poetry of French Dadaists such as Tristan Tzara and Raymond Queneau that they took from a Soviet anthology of modern poetry in Russian translation.
Stranniye Igry sounded and looked fresh and original, having no equivalents in the Soviet Union at that time. Both musically and visually, Sologub was one of the principal members of the band, which added a good measure of punk attitude and sense of the absurd to the Russian underground rock scene. 
Although Stranniye Igry split in 1985, the band influenced a generation of local musicians, from Dva Samaliota to Spitfire and Leningrad. Alongside Akvarium, Kino and Alisa, Stranniye Igry was featured in the album “Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the U.S.S.R.,” compiled by American singer Joanna Stingray and released in the U.S. to rave reviews in 1986.
After the split, the Sologub brothers went on to form the post-punk band Igry, or Games, which made its debut in February 1986 and was active through 1991. Throughout the 1990s, Grigory Sologub played with the punk and alt-rock bands Israel, Narodnoye Opolcheniye, Mashninband and, again with Viktor, with The Dolphins.
Between 1997 and 2000, Sologub was the frontman of the local ska band Dva Samaliota, as a replacement for original member Vadim Pokrovsky, who was not performing with the band at that time.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Sologub was active in several Stranniye Igry reunions.  He last performed with the reformed band at the local music bar Sochi on November 1, 2008.
As well as composing for Stranniye Igry and Igry, Sologub also wrote a number of his own songs that have not been released. He performed a solo concert at Griboyedov bunker club in March 2008, which was recorded and shows Sologub performing his own songs as well as songs by the late local rock musicians Georgy Ordanovsky of Rossiyane and Mikhail “Maik” Naumenko of Zoopark.
“Although we were oriented mostly toward Western bands such as Madness, we had a deep respect for Stranniye Igry, and I could never have imagined that I would one day play in the same band as Grisha,” said Mikhail Sindalovsky, Dva Samaliota’s drummer, by phone on Monday.
“But after many years it happened that we started to play together and he sang many songs with us, and we recorded two albums with him, I think.”
Denis Kuptsov of the local ska-punk band Spitfire said that Sologub’s contribution to Russian rock was immense.
“Grisha was a remarkable musician and a good man, and it’s a big loss for Russian rock music,” he said.
“He was a real punk, a real new wave musician, who helped to integrate new wave and ska music into Russia.”
Grigory Sologub will be buried at the Kuzmolovskoye Cemetary in the Vsevolozhsky District, 24 kilometers from St. Petersburg, at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

TITLE: State Opens Emergency Site
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government launched a web site Sunday aimed at educating people about the law, recognizing counterfeit rubles and finding the address of the nearest police station. 
The web site, 112.ru, is a brainchild of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and is named after the telephone number used to call emergency services throughout the European Union. 
The government is also setting up a 112 telephone number uniting all the emergency and law enforcement services, and the Kursk region became the first to start using the number Saturday. 
The Russian-only 112.ru web site says it will fight law violations in business and everyday life in order to develop the country’s economic security and simplify communication with law enforcement agencies. 
The web site has been designed in cooperation with 12 federal ministries and services, including the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Finance Ministry and the Economic Development Ministry. 
“Each of the ministries has access to the site’s system to update information. The key role belongs to the Interior Ministry,” Deputy Interior Minister Nikolay Ovchinnikov said in an interview with Gazeta last week. 
The web site offers press releases from the ministries and a form where users can send suggestions and complaints to law enforcement officials. 
It also offers a database of Russian laws, the addresses for police stations and information on fake rubles. 
Sections for missing persons and lists of criminals wanted by the police were mostly empty Sunday.

TITLE: Canada Intercepts Russian Bomber in Arctic
AUTHOR: By Rob Gillies
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO — Fighter jets intercepted a Russian bomber in the Arctic as it approached Canadian airspace on the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to Ottawa last week, Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said.
MacKay said the bomber never entered Canadian airspace. But he said two Canadian CF-18 jets met the Russian plane in international airspace and sent a “strong signal that they should back off.”
“They met a Russian aircraft that was approaching Canadian airspace, and as they have done in previous occasions they sent very clear signals that are understood, that the aircraft was to turn around, turn tail, and head back to their airspace, which it did,” MacKay said Friday.
“I’m not going to stand here and accuse the Russians of having deliberately done this during the presidential visit, but it was a strong coincidence,” he said of the Feb. 18 incident.
Obama arrived in Ottawa the day after the incident and Canadian security services were focused on his arrival.
MacKay also linked the Russian flights to the competition between Canada, Russia, the U.S. and other countries to secure Arctic resources. With polar ice melting, there are new opportunities to exploit the region’s oil, gas and mineral reserves.
“We know that the waters are opening up,” he said. “We know that other countries have expressed interest in the Arctic.”
However, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that Russian planes have not approached Canada’s borders and that Canadian authorities had been informed about the flight.
“During the flight, Russian bombers strictly followed international flight regulations and excluded the very possibility of violating Canadian air space,” ministry spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky said in a statement. “Border countries have been notified about the flights.”
“The statements by Canada’s defense minister about flights of our aircraft are absolutely incomprehensible,” Drobyshevsky said. “They are nothing but farce.”
MacKay spokesman Dan Dugas said he would not respond to that, but said Canada was not informed about the flight and that it occurred less than 24 hours before Obama visited Ottawa.
Russian Air Force spokesman Vladimir Drik said in a statement carried by state-owned RIA Novosti that the flight of the Tu-160 bomber had been planned in advance and was part of routine patrols. He said the crew acted according to international agreements and did not violate Canada’s airspace.
Dmitry Trofimov, a counselor at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, said Russia has been informing the North American Aerospace Defense Command — or NORAD — of its flights.
Soviet aircraft regularly flew near North American airspace during the Cold War but stopped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 
MacKay said Russia gives no warning prior to the flights. “They simply show up on a radar screen,” MacKay said. “This is not a game at all.”

TITLE: Chechen President Kadyrov Defends Honor Killings
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: GROZNY — The bull-necked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die.
Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had “loose morals” and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings.
“If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed,” Kadyrov told journalists in Grozny.
The 32-year-old former militia leader is carrying out a campaign to impose Islamic values and strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya in an effort to blunt the appeal of hardline Islamic separatists and shore up his power. In doing so, critics say, he is setting up a dictatorship where Russian laws do not apply.
Kadyrov’s bluster shows how confident he is of his position. “No one can tell us not to be Muslims,” he said outside the mosque. “If anyone says I cannot be a Muslim, he is my enemy.”
Few dare to challenge Kadyrov’s rule in Chechnya.
Kadyrov describes women as the property of their husbands and says their main role is to bear children. He encourages men to take more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Russia. Women and girls are now required to wear headscarves in all schools, universities and government offices.
Some Chechen women say they support or at least accept Kadyrov’s strict new guidelines.
“Headscarves make a woman beautiful,” said Zulikhan Nakayeva, a medical student whose long dark hair flowed out from under her head covering, her big brown eyes accentuated by mascara.
But many chafe under the restrictions.
“How do women live in Chechnya? They live as the men say,” said Taisiya, 20, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retribution. She was not wearing a headscarf while shopping in central Grozny, which she said was her way of protesting.
Most women now wear headscarves in public, though the scarves rarely fully cover their hair and in some cases are little more than colorful silk headbands. Women who go out without a headscarf tend to tuck one into their bag for use where headscarves are required.
Many people suspect that Kadyrov is branding the seven late November slayings “honor killings” to advance his political agenda. He said the women were planning to go abroad to work as prostitutes, but their relatives found out about it and killed them.
Few Chechens believe that.
“If women are killed according to tradition then it is done very secretly to prevent too many people from finding out that someone in the family behaved incorrectly,” said Natalya Estemirova, a prominent human rights activist in Grozny.
Estemirova said two of the women were married, with two children each. Their husbands held large funerals and buried them in the family plot, which would not have happened if the women had disgraced their families, she said.
Kadyrov’s version also has been contradicted by federal prosecutors in Moscow, who have concluded that relatives were not involved. No arrests have been made and the investigation is continuing. Kadyrov’s office refused to comment on the investigators’ conclusion.
Novaya Gazeta reported that some of the women worked in brothels frequented by Kadyrov’s men. Many Chechens say they suspect the women were killed in a police operation. The truth of the killings may never be known, given how much Kadyrov is feared.
Rights activists fear that Kadyrov’s approval of honor killings may encourage men to carry them out. Honor killings are considered part of Chechen tradition. No records are kept, but human rights activists estimate that dozens of women are killed every year.
“What the president says is law,” said Gistam Sakayeva, a Chechen activist who works to defend women’s rights. “Because the president said this, many will try to gain his favor by killing someone, even if there is no reason.”
Sakayeva also said she worried that Chechen authorities would now be less willing to prosecute men suspected of killing women.

TITLE: DLT Development   Schedule Extended
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva and Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The deadline for the reconstruction of the DLT (Dom Leningradskoi Torgovly) department store by luxury merchandiser Mercury in downtown St. Petersburg has been extended by over a year.
Mercury, which obtained the building at 21-23 Bolshaya Konushennaya Ulitsa in April 2005, was supposed to reconstruct it as a luxury retail center by March this year, but a decision taken by the city’s construction committee on Feb. 12 extended the deadline for completing the project until June 2010. 
Alexander Reebok, Mercury’s general manager, announced on Wednesday that the project would be completed and that his company had not made any changes to the design. He declined to comment on the volume of investment into the project, which has an estimated cost of $50 million, and on the causes of the delay.
The construction committee’s press service said that Mercury had not been able to meet the original deadline due to the large volume of restoration work necessary.
According to information from the press service, the area to be reconstructed is 26,400 square meters, and after the extension project is complete, the total area of the building will be increased to 33,240 square meters. A source at the local office of Mercury, who preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed this information.
According to the source, along with the reconstruction of the six-story building with a basement and attic, the project will include the construction of a five-story annex and enclosed car park with space for 120 vehicles.
Nikolai Kazansky, director of investment and consulting at Colliers International, estimated investment in the project at $50 million. He confirmed that the Mercury project was still far from completion. Kazansky said that it was worth altering the focus of the project to concentrate on a more “democratic” segment, since even before the economic crisis, the market for luxury goods in St. Petersburg was less developed than in Moscow.
The DLT building was built from 1908-1909. As the First State Department Store, and later the DLT, it specialized in children’s goods. Mercury was founded in 1994 and sells clothes, shoes and accessories by labels including Giorgio Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, Prada, Rolex and Tiffany & Co. The holding includes the chain of TsUM boutiques in Moscow and other Russian cities.

TITLE: Ukraine Reassures IMF, World Bank
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — President Viktor Yushchenko has promised Ukraine’s biggest creditors, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that the country’s authorities will cooperate to protect loan deals, including cutting the budget deficit.
Yushchenko sent a letter to both institutions late Friday after the IMF said it was willing to adjust its $16.4 billion credit program, given a deterioration in global conditions since it was signed in October.
The IMF has, in effect, suspended the release of the second tranche of that credit, worth about $1.8 billion, because of differences over the way Ukraine is fulfilling the program.
The global economic crisis has slashed demand for Ukraine’s steel and chemical exports, and investors have also been spooked by politicians’ resistance to meeting the terms of the IMF deal. Two international rating agencies have downgraded Ukraine’s state debt.
“Next week, state institutions and political parties will produce agreed positions on unresolved issues and turn them over to the IMF office in Washington,” Yushchenko wrote.
“Laws deemed necessary by the latest IMF mission will be presented to parliament. This will enable us to significantly reduce the 2009 state budget deficit. Through these steps, Ukraine will show it is ready to resume dialogue with the IMF.”
Yushchenko dispatched the letters after a day of talks with his main rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the speaker of parliament and a senior opposition leader.
At the close of the talks, the president urged politicians to end quarrels as Ukraine gears up for a presidential election early next year. 
The influential weekly Zerkalo Nedeli said Friday’s talks also produced agreement between the president and prime minister to leave in place Central Bank Chairman Volodymyr Stelmakh. Tymoshenko has demanded that the president dismiss the Central Bank chief over a decline in the hryvna.
The IMF mission chief to Ukraine, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, told reporters in Washington on Friday that the fund was willing to consider different options for the budget deficit.
A balanced budget or a gap of no more than one percent of gross domestic product was no longer feasible, she said, but Ukraine had to secure further financing. The budget now provides for a deficit of about three percent of GDP.

TITLE: Lebedev Annouces Plans For New Radio Station in English
AUTHOR: By Ira Iosebashvili
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Businessman Alexander Lebedev, who bought London’s Evening Standard newspaper in January, is planning on expanding his media holdings yet again — this time with a Moscow-based, English-language radio station. 
The station will target the “over one million potential listeners in Moscow who speak English” and give him an additional platform for criticizing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the billionaire said Friday in comments to The St. Petersburg Times and in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that was displayed on its web site. 
Moscow has been without English-language radio programming since 1995, but interest from the business community could help revive English radio content, which had been directed mostly at expatriates in the 1990s. 
Lebedev has a major stake in Novaya Gazeta, a leading investigative newspaper that has been a harsh critic of the Putin regime. He recently purchased two radio licenses and plans to use one of them as an English-language news service to Moscow. 
Among the city’s million English speakers are “a very large amount of professionals,” Lebedev told The St. Petersburg Times. “I would be glad to dedicate an FM frequency for this purpose.” 
Lebedev, who has railed against Putin in the past, said his growing media portfolio was giving him the clout and the means to continue criticizing the government, particularly its handling of the financial crisis. 
“Putin doesn’t have any plan at all, and he’s doing a bad job of running the government,” Lebedev said in the Guardian interview. “It’s only the media that can interfere. I don’t think he will be very happy, but what can he do?” 
He also discussed the possibility of making the Evening Standard available in Moscow and talked about forming partnerships with other newspapers. 
Lebedev’s taste for critical and investigative reporting has come with a price. Novaya Gazeta has had its phones tapped and hard drives stolen, and four of its reporters have been killed or died under suspicious circumstances in the past eight years. 
In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter who savaged the Kremlin for its conduct of the war on Chechen separatists, was shot outside her apartment. Two Chechen brothers who were on trial for the murder were recently acquitted by a jury. 
In January, reporter Anastasia Baburova was fatally shot in the street, along with human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, by a masked gunman. 
Lebedev has suggested that the authorities allow the paper’s editorial staff to carry guns for self-defense. 
“I can’t live without Novaya Gazeta,” he said. “I cherish and pursue the authority to speak out.”

TITLE: Zhukov Sees Chance To Modernize the Economy
AUTHOR: By Jessica Bachman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: To improve what the global economic crisis has exposed as the Russian financial system’s Achilles heel — a dearth of long-term domestic funding sources — the government needs to demonopolize and modernize the Russian economy, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said Friday. 
When the crisis hit, “the government became the sole source of long-term credit” for companies, revealing the country’s dependence on global markets, Zhukov said at a three-hour long “brainstorming” session at the annual Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, RIA-Novosti reported. 
“Today the crisis is our chance not only to survive, but also to also modernize all areas of people’s lives,” Zhukov said. 
To work more effectively, however, companies need to stop running to the government for help, said Arkady Dvorkovich, a top Kremlin aide, also speaking at the forum. 
“The authorities want to see businesses taking responsibility for themselves. ... The state won’t help them. We won’t save anyone. They need to take responsibility for themselves and work more efficiently,” Dvorkovich said, Interfax reported. 
Dvorkovich also said inflation could climb as high as 15 percent in 2009, slightly higher than the Economic Development Ministry’s forecast of 13 percent to 14 percent. 
As regional unemployment rates rise and production slows, regional governments are facing an economic turning point, Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Khloponin said. 
“The margin of safety in the most powerful regions of Russia will last for a month. Already, payments between suppliers and large enterprises have been halted and a parallel situation has swept over the banking system,” he said, Interfax reported. 
He said the crisis has caused an alarming number of layoffs among administrative workers and has forced prospectless, loss-making enterprises in Krasnoyarsk to fold. 
Khloponin also announced at the conference that he signed a cooperation agreement with Vladimir Dmitriyev, chairman of Vneshekonombank, or VEB. 
Cooperation between the regional government and bank will be primarily focused on supporting small- and medium-sized businesses. 
Dmitriyev said VEB was ready to move beyond “traditional” funding channels and involve its subsidiary banks in support of the region’s businesses. 
“We will be buying credit profiles from local banks and will carry out very pinpointed work with those companies who have had to lay off workers on account of the crisis,” Dmitriyev said.

TITLE: Matviyenko to Put Footage Of New Stadium On Line
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: St. Petersburg plans to film the construction of the city’s new soccer stadium and broadcast it live on the Internet to placate fans after some infrastructure projects were delayed because of the crisis.
The global recession won’t stop Russia’s second biggest city from finishing the future home of UEFA Cup holder Zenit St. Petersburg by November 2010, as scheduled, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said in an emailed statement on Saturday.
Matviyenko invited fans to help build the 13 billion-ruble ($363 million) stadium directly during “later and more safe stages of construction.”
Billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Transstroi Corp. won the contract to build the stadium in December. Zenit is owned by state-run Gazprom, the world’s biggest gas company. 
St. Petersburg, the native city of both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, decided this month to delay $13 billion of infrastructure projects after financing dried up amid the country’s worst economic crisis in a decade.

TITLE: Gold Should Continue to Rise
AUTHOR: By Courtney Weaver
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vyacheslav Shtyrov, president of Sakha, approached Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday with a plea for help. The sparsely populated republic, home to companies including Transneft, Surgutneftegaz and Mechel, is suffering from the drop in prices for gas and coal. 
Sakha is having trouble keeping up with its investment goals for 2020 and the region’s labor market is suffering, Shtyrov said at the meeting. 
Putin listened and then took a breath. 
“Vyacheslav Anatolyevich,” he said, addressing him by his patronymic, “the global prices of coal, gas, metals and even diamonds have fallen. But the price of gold is rising — and gold is mined on your territory.” 
When Shtyrov called attention to miners’ problems with creditors, he was once again rebuffed. “We’ll solve the problem with gold mining,” Putin said. “Especially since — I’ll say it again — I’m well aware that the price of gold is rising on world markets.” 
While the price of gold might not be enough to save Sakha single-handedly, the prime minister, for the most part, is right. 
Minus a slight setback this week, the commodity’s value has increased steadily since Nov. 12, when it reached an annual low of $712.30 per ounce. Between then and this year’s Feb. 20 high, it has gained 39.4 percent to $992.90. 
Gold’s decline this past week reflected a correction of a sharp rally, said Lenar Khafizov, a metals analyst at Rye, Man & Gor Securities. On Friday, prices for the metal fell to $984.74 an ounce, down 4.2 percent from the previous week. 
Nonetheless, the rally should continue through the first half of the year, with gold reaching a maximum price of $1,150 an ounce in May or June, Khafizov said. 
While gold tends to fluctuate in reverse correlation to the dollar, the longtime safe haven has been given an extra boost from the vulnerability of foreign currencies. 
The leader in the Russian market is Polyus Gold, which saw its shares on the MICEX rise 172 percent from 448.95 on Nov. 18 to 1,220.46 on Friday. Shares of gold and silver producer Polymetal grew 207 percent on MICEX from a yearly low of 70.03 on Nov. 20 to close last week 213.86 . 
Russian gold producers have also benefited from the falling ruble, said Nikolai Sosnovsky, a metals analyst at UralSib. “A strong gold price coupled with a weak ruble means lower cash costs for production, which in turn means better financials this year,” he said. 
“UralSib believes 2009 will be tough and we don’t see a recovery this year,” he said. “We don’t see any positive movement in global economies, and for the moment that will keep gold prices high.” 
It remains to be seen, however, how the news will play out for Shtyrov. In a statement dated Thursday on the Sakha web site, Putin’s second reminder on the price of gold appeared in a slightly different form from the official transcript. 
“I think we’ll solve the gold mining question. Especially since the price of gold on world markets is rising,” Putin said, according to the Sakha statement.

TITLE: Russian Stocks Best In Europe
AUTHOR: By Emma O’Brien and Laura Cochrane
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia, the worst-performing major stock market in 2008, was Europe’s best last month as the ruble rose and reserves stabilized. Every neighboring market crumbled.
The Micex equity index climbed 6.6 percent in February as the world’s second-biggest oil producer stopped speculators from driving down the ruble and depleting its $382 billion of foreign exchange reserves. In Ukraine, the central bank’s holdings fell 24 percent since August and the benchmark PFTS Index lost 21 percent last month. Latvia’s OMX Riga Index dropped 8 percent.
While Russia’s government said the economy will contract for the first time in a decade and currency reserves are down 36 percent from August, the nation’s relative strength is raising Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s influence over former Soviet states. Ukraine discussed borrowing $5 billion. Kazakhstan wants Russia to buy ailing BTA Bank. Belarus is asking for $3 billion in loans, on top of $2 billion granted last year.
“Russia isn’t looking at a straight-line deterioration into oblivion,” said Kieran Curtis, who helps manage $800 million in emerging-market fixed-income assets in London at Aviva Investors Ltd. “It has enough liquid assets to take stakes in all kinds of things in the former Soviet states.”
Last year, international investors fled Russia after its war with Georgia, a 54 percent decline in the price of Urals crude, and the global credit crisis sent the Micex down 67 percent. Speculators targeted the ruble, driving it 20 percent lower against the dollar and 19 percent versus the euro. Bank Rossii spent $216 billion to keep the currency’s seven-month drop from turning into a rout.
Standard & Poor’s cut Russia’s credit rating in December by one level to BBB, the second-lowest investment-grade ranking. The government expects to run a budget deficit of about eight percent of gross domestic product this year.
The central bank steadied the ruble, which gained 0.5 percent against the dollar last month, by pledging to raise interest rates and curtailing loans that banks were using to bet against the currency. Investors anticipate government plans to provide $200 billion in loans and reduce taxes will bolster the economy and push up the Micex, which is down 67 percent from its record high in May.
The Micex fell 2.2 percent on Monday and the ruble dropped as much as 0.8 percent to its weakest level against the dollar in a week.
Russia is “still better off than others, mostly because of the reserves,” said Beat Siegenthaler, chief emerging-markets strategist in London for TD Securities.
Russia may be willing to draw on its reserves to prop up neighboring economies, said Ivan Tchakarov, an economist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in London. “Ukraine will require more than the $16 billion from the IMF, so they will need Russian money,” he said. “It’s the perfect time for Russia to flex its muscles.”
“I welcome Russia’s efforts to try and create stronger economic linkages because for investors it’s stabilizing,” said Jerome Booth, head of research at Ashmore Investment Management Ltd. in London, which manages $36 billion of emerging-market assets. “It’s looking for relationships it wants to solidify in the region.”

TITLE: Financial Watchdogs Fear Spate of Pyramid Scams
AUTHOR: By Courtney Weaver
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Rezeda Rafinkova, a 32-year-old doctor, took out a bank loan of 200,000 rubles in 2006 to invest in what appeared to be a legitimate financial company promising annual returns of up to 50 percent on the booming real estate market. 
Just over a year later, Rafinkova discovered that she was among 100,000 victims of the Rubin Business Club, an officially registered, St. Petersburg-based pyramid scheme. 
Prosecutors say the Rubin scam, uncovered in February 2008, defrauded investors of tens of billion rubles, yet it was just one of 200 financial pyramids that the Interior Ministry investigated last year. 
While police arrested one of the accused organizers in St. Petersburg last week, the club’s founder remains missing more than a year later. 
“The company existed officially for two years in the center of St. Petersburg. Lawyers looked it over and said it was fine,” Rafinkova said in a telephone interview from the Tatarstan city of Nizhnekamsk. 
And while the Russian press has closely followed the investigation into Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme — dubbing it the “American MMM” in reference to the most notorious Russian pyramid of the 1990s — the government’s financial watchdogs say they’re more worried about a resurgence of homegrown swindlers. 
In addition to the social harm they cause, financial crimes undermine trust in government regulators both in Russia and abroad. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been thrown into chaos over accusations that it overlooked warning signs in the Madoff case for years. 
According to Interior Ministry statistics, more than 500 financial pyramids have gone bust or been liquidated in the country since 1991. In the past few years, however, there has been a “sharp growth” in fraudulent organizations, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service told The St. Petersburg Times in a response to questions. 
Yury Korotky, the service’s first deputy chief, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta in an interview published Wednesday that financial crimes, including pyramid schemes, could start to rise even more sharply because of the economic crisis. He said particular attention would be paid to lending pools and fraudulent investment projects. 
Rafinkova said she didn’t blame the government for her losses but that the state should have done a better job regulating the Rubin Business Company and the various deals it advertised. 
“I had 100 percent trust in them,” she said, referring to the Rubin organizers. “There were disabled people, war veterans and survivors of the Siege of Leningrad who defended their country for so many years and then invested their life savings in this company.” 
The monitoring service, Russia’s financial intelligence body, said it shared the concern that the pyramids could “result in a loss of trust in the government,” and officials have been working in recent months on a series of new anti-fraud regulations. 
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month threw his support behind rules drafted by the Federal Service for Financial Markets that would impose stricter regulation of advertisements for retail financial services. 
But the government may also have to retool as economic criminals move toward more sophisticated fraud. 
In the past, Russia has had a higher number of asset diversion cases, incidents where, for example, a company might employ a fictitious supplier to make payments under the table. Now there is likely to be a rise in account manipulation as companies face pressure to maintain business as usual after years of tremendous growth, said Ian Colebourne, head of forensics at KPMG in Russia and the CIS. 
“You basically have a double whammy — a higher risk of account manipulation because of the market downturn. And also, as the market goes down, you have the risk that historic practices will get flushed out,” he said. 
The past few months have unveiled the small-scale pyramid schemes of a number of “mini-Madoffs” as well as other instances of high-profile, white-collar crime. 
Ramalinga Raju, CEO of Indian IT company Satyam, disclosed in January that $1 billion — or 94 percent — of the company’s reported worth was fictitious. In Denmark, IT Factory chief executive Stein Bagger skipped a November ceremony where he was to be named Ernst & Young’s Danish entrepreneur of the year because he was busy fleeing the country after allegations of an estimated $185 million fraud. 
“When I was reading about Satyam,” Colebourne said, “in the back of my mind was: Where is Russia’s Satyam going to be?” 
Ivan Ryutov, head of risk advisory, fraud investigation and dispute services at Ernst & Young in Moscow, said he expected more pyramids in Russia this year. “In uncertain times, people are willing to take larger risks for larger rewards. During the turmoil, the rewards will potentially be higher,” he said. 
The Interior Ministry reported a 1.9 percent decrease in financial crimes year on year in the period from January to November, the most recent period for which data are available. 
But the gap between crimes committed and detected could be masking the extent of the problem, Ryutov said. 
The ministry uncovered 429,600 economic crimes in the first 10 months of 2008, and of them, 26,600 were incidents of tax fraud. Comparable figures for other countries are much higher, Ryutov said. “It’s ridiculous that in such a big country as Russia only 1,500 commercial corruption cases are detected,” he said, referring to 2008 data through October. 
One of the biggest tasks facing the state is improving financial literacy, said Andrei Salashchenko, head of the RTS exchange’s department for cooperation with the government. 
“The state understands that any defense measure might not be enough if private investors don’t understand how the market operates and what the risks are,” he said. 
Pyramids typically target lower- and middle-class Russians, who are sometimes tricked into investing their life savings and even borrowed money in schemes that have no regulatory approval, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service said. 
“Those of us who invested weren’t specialists,” said Rafinkova, the Rubin investor. “But some specialists were fooled themselves.” 
The Russian investors rumored to be among Madoff’s victims are likely of an entirely different set. The New York Times reported last month that a handful of Russian investors lost millions of dollars to Madoff through Austria’s Bank Medici. 
Bank Medici has repeatedly denied that it had any Russian clients as well as reports that it had been looking to expand into Russia. 
But the bank’s claim to not have had Russian clients may ultimately rest on a technicality, said Bruce Marks, managing director of the law firm Marks & Sokolov, who organized a seminar for Madoff victims in Moscow last month. 
“I would be surprised if there were individual Russians or Ukrainians who invested in their own name,” Marks said. “Typically, Russians and Ukrainians invest through offshore vehicles,” such as Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. 
Rafinkova said she knew about the Madoff scandal from Channel One television but that there seemed to be few similarities between his scheme, which attracted established banks and institutional investors, and Rubin’s, which targeted ordinary citizens. 
Still, she said, there’s a reason why these schemes thrive. 
“People want a better life,” she said. “It’s normal.”

TITLE: Medvedev Wants Charter
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev plans to present proposals for a new Energy Charter to help resolve disputes such as the gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine that disrupted Europe’s supplies in January. 
The new accord should “address the concerns of producers and transit states,” in contrast to the current “consumer-oriented” agreement, Medvedev said in an interview with Spanish media, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin web site Sunday. 
Russia has signed but not yet ratified the Energy Charter Treaty from 1994, which establishes rules for resolving disputes in the industry. Medvedev said he expected to present his proposals on Monday during a meeting of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries. 
Gas supplies to more than 20 European countries from Russia via Ukraine were disrupted for almost two weeks in January amid a spat over prices and transit fees. Russian lawmakers have cited disagreements over transit issues as a reason for not ratifying the current Energy Charter. 
Under an agreement to end the gas dispute, Ukraine’s state-run energy company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, is due to pay Gazprom $400 million for gas imports from Russia in February by Saturday. The company has said it will not miss the payment.
Should Ukraine fail to pay on time, Russia will only supply the fuel on “a prepayment basis,” Medvedev said. 
“Of course, we hate turning back to the previous scenario, this is certainly not our choice, but I can tell you frankly that we will have to act correspondingly if they refuse to pay,” he said. 
The January cutoff, which echoed a similar conflict three years earlier, led to renewed calls for the European Union to diversify its sources of energy away from Russia. 
Medvedev criticized the reaction in Spain to a possible bid from LUKoil, Russia’s largest nonstate oil producer, for a stake in Repsol. Claims that the proposal would endanger Spain’s security were based on “stereotypes” and contradicted “the idea of a united Europe,” he said. 
“In this case, we are simply dividing all investments into good and bad ones, as well as investors into right and wrong ones, which is a new Berlin Wall, but this time in the economy,” Medvedev said. “As far as I know, the companies are still in talks,” he said. 
A LUKoil spokesman declined to comment on the remarks. He asked not to be identified, citing company policy. Kristian Rix, a spokesman for Repsol, said by telephone that the company reiterated the statement made by chief executive Antonio Brufau on Feb. 26. 
Any possibility of LUKoil buying a stake in Repsol is “history,” Brufau told reporters that day. 
Medvedev also said Russia should avoid social unrest as the first recession in a decade approaches because improvements to the economy and welfare systems have made the country far more robust than it was in the 1990s.

TITLE: Rosinter Cuts Food Portions and Prices
AUTHOR: By Courtney Weaver
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosinter Restaurant Holding is starting to serve smaller, lower-priced portions in its restaurants and offer its customers a choice between imported foods and locally produced menu items in an effort to fight off declining sales at its leading restaurant chains, company founder Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanayevsky Blanco said in an interview Wednesday. 
Transactions at Rosinter’s casual dining restaurants dropped 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, mainly because of the influence of regions. The sagging sales were a sour end note for the year as a whole, which saw a jump of 28 percent and a 45.3 percent increase in the size of its network. Transactions at the firm’s flagship tandem, Il Patio and Planeta Sushi, are also down, Blanco said, declining to give specifics. 
“Smaller portions present the possibility for smaller prices,” Blanco said, adding that the company also plans to use more local food items to hold on to restaurants’ customer bases. 
“We will keep the menu items that are hits but also make sure we have a local supply alternative,” he said. “If people want to eat Australian beef, we’ll offer it, but they’ll pay more money than for dishes with Russian beef, which will be good but maybe not as tender as Australian beef.” 
Blanco is the founder and president of Rostik Group, which controls Rosinter Restaurant Holding and co-manages ROSTIK’S KFC with its Louisville, Kentucky based partner YUM! Brands. 
Born in 1950s Venezuela to a family of Russian descent, Blanco has survived the 1984 and 1989 crashes in Venezuela and the 1990 and 1998 Russian collapses. 
Counting calamities, he says 2009 is his fifth, but he is still able to maintain his calm in part by meditating regularly and wearing a sandalwood Japanese bead bracelet, which he said “soothes my mind.” 
“I always say I have a Ph.D. in crisis management. Four crises in which I was hit and one where I took the opportunity,” Blanco said referring to 1990, when Rosinter opened up its first restaurant, El Rincon Espanol, near Red Square. 
Since then, Rosinter has grown by leaps and bounds and is now operating 337 restaurants in nine countries. And despite declining transactions, Blanco estimates that the company will open five to 10 new corporate restaurants and 20 to 30 franchises in Russia this year. 
None of those, however, will be under new brands. The “name of the game” right now is brand loyalty, he said, and the company’s current goal is to improve restaurant efficiency. 
The Russian restaurant industry is notoriously inefficient, Blanco said, citing as an example a Moscow T.G.I. Friday’s that employed 120 people four years ago while a Prague restaurant of the same size was only employing 47. 
Previously, the industry has gotten away with such inefficiencies because of a lack of competition. During the crisis, however, restaurants will no longer have this luxury. 
“You have two choices: You correct your efficiency or you die. There’s no middle opportunity,” Blanco said. 
Though the nation’s purchasing power is falling, Blanco insisted that Russians would continue to indulge and eat out this year. “In times of crisis, people have a need to socialize. They need to feel that they are together with somebody,” he said. 
“Staying at home is depressing.”

TITLE: Economists See Growth In Q4
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The economy will contract throughout 2009 but may show the first signs of growth in the fourth quarter because of the ruble devaluation, a poll of 14 economists showed Friday.
The economy is expected to contract by 2.5 percent, close to the government’s forecast of 2.2 percent, but analysts expected growth of 0.2 percent in the final quarter, median forecasts showed.
“The policy of gradual devaluation of the ruble should bring results in six to nine months through substitution of imports in food processing, manufacturing and construction,” said Yelena Sharipova from Renaissance Capital.
Sharipova said she expected 3.3 percent growth in the fourth quarter and that higher oil prices toward the end of the year as well as comparatively weak growth in the fourth quarter of 2008 would also contribute.
The forecasts varied significantly, however, and some projections were much gloomier.
“The economic contraction will soon get a new kick from a sharp fall in consumer demand and investment,” said Igor Nikolayev from FBK, who forecast a 10 percent contraction for the year, including a 7 percent slump in the fourth quarter.
“The way out of the current situation would be a cut in the budget deficit to 3 to 4 percent of the gross domestic product and a transition to inflation targeting with a target of 5 to 7 percent inflation,” said Maxim Oreshkin, from Rosbank.

TITLE: Putin’s Circus Lions Are Hungry — and Angry
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Oreshkin
TEXT: For most countries in the world, the global crisis is strictly economic. But Russia is experiencing two crises simultaneously — economic and political. 
Economic downturns, including the current one, come and go, but Russia’s political crisis will never go away. This is because Russia’s political model has always been deeply grounded in the myth of monism: one monolithic state, one party, one ideology, one national leader and one people. Those who lived during the Soviet period remember the ubiquitous overblown slogans of “the unity of all Soviet nationalities” or “the unified Soviet nation.”
Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership is doomed by historical inertia and tradition to continue the Soviet monistic model. United Russia is Putin’s modern version of the Soviet Union’s “United U.S.S.R.” — that is, the Communist Party. Nonetheless, United Russia is not as unified as Putin would like. There is the United Russia faction loyal to State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, and there is the one loyal to Mayor Yury Luzhkov. Luzhkov rigidly controls the party’s membership in Moscow and won’t let any federal functionaries get within a mile of holding power. 
Of course, you don’t have to look very hard to see how empty the concept of a “unified people” really is. A large percentage of the Russian population don’t hide their opposition to being “unified” or placed on the same level as the people from the Caucasus. This leads to the country’s social schizophrenia. On one hand, Russians passionately supported the Russia-Georgia war to protect their “fellow citizens” in South Ossetia, in accordance with myths of a unified, monolithic superpower. But on the other hand, if they happen to meet one of their repatriated fellow citizens at any one of Moscow’s street markets, they are quick to complain that the capital is being invaded by the “dark-skinned scum” from the Caucasus. 
In mature democracies, whenever a failed president’s term ends, power is peacefully passed on to a new administration. The new president receives a mandate from the people to remake and repair his predecessor’s political failures. Putin’s power vertical, however, remains a sacrosanct institution for roughly 80 percent of the population, regardless of the small cracks in the foundation that have revealed themselves as the crisis unfolds. Putin’s political system is considered so sacred that the mere thought of its dissolution would be seen as a catastrophe. What model would replace his power vertical? Who would lead it? In Putin’s power vertical, everything is decided by and dependent on one person only. If that person is removed, the entire political system collapses. A monistic system is by definition monopolistic; there are no alternatives.
Of course, Putin is not immortal. At some point — perhaps when he completes two more presidential terms at the age of 72 — there will be a change of power. Just like Yeltsin anointed Putin and Putin anointed Medvedev, Putin in his 70s could anoint a successor. But it is never that simple. In all likelihood, it will not be Putin himself but the most powerful clique within his elite — those who control the most resources in the country — who get the final say in who becomes president after Putin. And as Putin gets older and weaker, this could be a messy affair, as feuding clans within the elite battle with one another to fill the imminent vacuum. This behind-the-scenes fight for power is a time-honored tradition passed on by the Communist Party’s Central Committee. In this sense, Russia’s politics will continue to be as secret and nontransparent as they always were. Despite the superficial semblances of democracy and popular vote, the people will have little if any say in the change of power. 
Putin could have continued propping up his Potemkin power vertical and his Potemkin democracy for many more years if the petrodollars kept pouring in. That money was crucial to keep Putin’s “circus lions” — that is, the various elite surrounding him — well-fed and docile. But now the money is running out, and it is frightening to consider the consequences. It is well-known that even the best-trained circus lions have been known to turn on their trainers unexpectedly, even when they are well-fed. Just think of what could happen if those lions are hungry — and angry. We have already heard the first menacing roars from Putin’s lions. They are gritting their teeth and salivating at the mouth. I am sure that Putin sees and hears all of this. 
Putin’s Potemkin village is about to fall apart at the seams, but this is nothing to rejoice over. The only pluralism we will see as a result of this collapse will be “armed pluralism” — that is, widespread protests and violence on the streets. The government will respond by further strengthening its autocratic rule. 
There is an outside chance that the collapse of Putin’s model might end with a whimper, but in all likelihood it will end with a huge explosion — like the lid blowing off an overheated pressure cooker. 

Dmitry Oreshkin is a Moscow-based political analyst.

TITLE: Rotten to the Core
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: In the mid-1960s, there were pundits on both sides of the Iron Curtain who predicted that the Soviet and U.S. systems would eventually become identical. The Soviet Union was then in a relatively liberal phase, whereas the United States, with President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program full speed ahead, seemed to be moving toward social democracy.
By the 1970s, such talk ceased when the Kremlin tightened the ideological reins. But economic similarities did emerge in one aspect: The formidable U.S. economy, stifled by government intervention and overly bureaucratic corporations, began to stagnate almost as badly as its Soviet counterpart. The 1980s then became a period of renewal for both countries, even though the responses — and results — were very different, underscoring the contrast between the two political systems. 
U.S. President Ronald Reagan proved to be the right man for the times. The United States was able to generate new ideas and find new sources of growth, which resulted in a quarter century of robust economic gains, technological and industrial innovation and spreading prosperity. 
In the Soviet Union, where reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader in 1985, change had been long overdue. The rest of the world — “a consumption society,” according to Soviet propaganda — produced goods of increasing variety and better quality, whereas the Soviet economy struggled to produce enough food, clothing and other staples. The sheer contrast between consumer choices abroad, even in poor countries, and empty shelves in Moscow was enough to refute any ideology of the Kremlin. The Soviet Union was bankrupt not only economically, but also morally and ideologically.
As soon as Gorbachev began altering the Communist system to make it more open and more efficient in providing consumer goods and services, it collapsed under itself. The Soviet Union was like a listing house where all the beams had rotted. Such houses can sometimes remain standing unless somebody tries to repair them.
Today, the United States once again faces a major economic and political challenge. It is impossible to say whether President Barack Obama’s program, a combination of public spending on infrastructure and investment into new technologies, will succeed. But the odds are favorable. 
Many people in Russia, having been raised on the few uncomplicated Marxist tenets, tend to dismiss U.S. democracy as an underhanded ploy to help the rich keep down the poor. They also paint the United States as a young, childish nation. Yet the U.S. political system — with its genuine, bottom-up self-rule and healthy system of checks and balances — has been remarkably resilient and has lasted for nearly 250 years. The United States is one of the oldest continuously functioning governments on Earth that most nations in the world have tried to emulate.
It is also the exact opposite of the Russian political system. All the wars, revolutions and purges since World War I have benefited, expanded and enriched one class only in Russia: the bureaucracy. Russia remains an incorrigibly top-down society in which an enormous layer of unproductive, corrupt bureaucracy rules over passive people. 
Even though Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s popularity in Russia rivals Obama’s approval ratings in the United States, the Russian system has none of the resiliency of America’s democracy. If the Kremlin introduces political or economic reforms in response to the economic crisis, the system may crumble — even if such reforms, on paper, should have benefited the country.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: British Band DragonForce Back for Orlandina Gig
AUTHOR: By Alec Luhn
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: British metal band DragonForce will return to St. Petersburg this week as part of the band’s European tour in support of their fourth release, “Ultra Beatdown.” Typically labeled “extreme power metal,” DragonForce’s sound encompasses everything from the bracing charge of Machine Head to the battle-cry choruses of Helloween.
DragonForce’s keyboardist, Ukrainian-born Vadim Pruzhanov, talked to The St. Petersburg Times about his band’s new album and surviving in the atavistic world of a hard-working, hard-partying metal band during a phone interview from Gothenburg, Sweden.
Pruzhanov, whose first language is Russian, is often overshadowed in DragonForce by the careening, gerbil-on-amphetamines twin guitar onslaught of Sam Totman and Herman Li, who were voted “Best Shredders” in the 2007 Guitar World Readers’ Poll.  Nevertheless, the 23-year-old keyboardist plays a vital role in the band, writing half the songs and filling out the group’s signature soaring melodies.  
Pruzhanov hadn’t played piano in years and was working on picking up guitar when Li asked him to help the band on keys in 2001. 
“I had lost all my classical skills,” Pruzhanov recalled. “I hadn’t practiced or anything; I just thought, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be a metalhead’.”  
Since then, the keyboardist, who grew up 50 kilometers outside of Kiev in a Russian-speaking area but moved to London to study English at age 14, has become an important creative force and played an integral part in recording “Ultra Beatdown.” The disc takes a more varied approach to the hard-hitting, frenetic cascade of sound the band perfected on their breakthrough album, 2006’s “Inhuman Rampage.”  
“Rampage’s” hit single “Through the Fire and Flames” gained the band exposure on YouTube with its jaw-dropping music video, which featured cut-away boxes to show Totman and Li’s darting fingers during the dueling guitar solo section. The track is typical of the unrelenting guitar assault showcased on the album.
But whereas the guitars on Rampage don’t cut out for even a second during the course of the album, Beatdown tempers the white-hot guitar riffing and song-of-the-sirens choruses with subtle intros, outros and interludes.
“[‘Ultra Beatdown’] kind of grows on you,” Prozhdanov said.  “Herman and Sam are gonna hate me for saying this, but I think guitar-wise it’s a little bit simpler.”
The band even takes a break from its inhumanly fast pace on the mid-tempo rocker “The Last Journey Home” and the ballad “E.P.M.” 
The first consideration when writing new tracks is melody, Pruzhanov says, and his main function is to fill out chords and melody lines behind lead singer ZP Theart’s harmonious wail as the latter spins tales of glory, power and triumph. Pruzhanov recorded over 30 separate keyboard tracks for each song on the new album.
“I try to think of frequencies to make the sound full without getting too busy,” he said.  “It’s really hard actually to get the balance right.”
DragonForce has also introduced innovations to its live show: At one point, Pruzhanov steals the spotlight from the guitarists to play an epic keyboard solo, and the band has been inviting opening acts to join them on a song.  To keep things fresh, Pruzhanov and Totman think up a new aerobatic move before each show.  
“It’s more visually entertaining and it sounds better,” Pruzhanov said.  “We’re much better now — we practice more.”
DragonForce’s work ethic is however tempered by a hard-drinking party mentality. The band members follow a cycle by which half the members drink one night while the rest recuperate from their hangover, leaving them fresh to take care of show preparations and PR commitments the next day. 
Such tedious tasks occupy much of the band’s time, and on their last stop in St. Petersburg, the group had no time to take in the city’s wealth of sights and attractions. Pruzhanov spent the trip in the throes of a fever and only made it through the show with the aid of steroid-based medications.
“The fans were really supportive and cool and tried to get me to drink … I made some good friends,” he said.
This time around, Pruzhanov is looking forward to some sightseeing.
“We’ll get Herman to do all the press and we’ll go out and see things,” he said.
DragonForce also hopes to get the crowd to stay and party after the show.
“It’s the last couple of dates before we have time off,” Pruzhanov said, “so I’m sure everybody (in the band) will be destroying their livers.”
 DragonForce will play on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Club Orlandina. Nab. Reki Karpovki 5/2, M: Petrogradskaya.     Tel: 234 8046

TITLE: Wanted: Secretaries Ready To Provide ‘Intim’ Service
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — People ring up Pyotr to hire a secretary, male or female, but these are no ordinary 140-words-per-minute assistants. His secretaries all offer an extra service: “intim.”
You may have seen that word around town. It is usually written in bright-red letters on a first-floor window that has been blacked out. It also appears in lots of ads for masseuses but usually with the prefix “bez,” or “without.” 
The word once meant intimacy, but now is a not-so-coy euphemism for sex.
Pyotr says his company, Ivershin’s Luxury Assistants, is just like any other recruitment firm that finds staff for top bosses. And “the crisis has had no effect,” he insisted, even though each secretary earns a monthly wage of $3,000, which admittedly might be quite tempting for those who have had their pay cut recently.
Just in case you didn’t get the message, Pyotr’s web site is illustrated with a black-and-white photo circa the 1920s of a languorous secretary, skirt riding high. She is sitting on her desk, tapping one key of the typewriter with a finger and holding a cigarette in the other hand while her boss looms nearby. 
When I rang up as a PA wanting to hire a secretary for my 180-kilogram boss — married, three children and halitosis — Pyotr was eager to help out. 
“How about a blonde?” I asked.
“Whatever you want,” said Pyotr, who didn’t sound at all like the pimps in movies. More like a former choirboy who can send photos — lots of photos — for you to make your choice.
Just to check, a female colleague also rang up and found out that male secretaries are also available at the same price.
“Is it legal?” I asked.
Look at the FAQ , he said. 
The site explains in the kind of mealy-mouthed language that would get any of its secretaries sacked, that in Latin, the word “intimus” means deep, internal and personal.
“We do not mean that we are involved in prostitution, which is illegal,” it adds, quoting a legal definition of the offense that does not mention the word secretary.Instead, “close relationships take place only with ONE boss on condition of RECIPROCAL attraction and on an UNPAID basis,” the site insists.
Meanwhile, Pyotr takes TWENTY percent of the secretary’s first year SALARY — $7,200 .
Pyotr said no secretary has left her job yet, but who knows, maybe that is because they are languishing in a house of white slavery somewhere in Moscow. 
If you’re wondering, Pyotr, by house of white slavery I am referring to an original Latin term meaning a house of kindness and generosity. It’s just that the way they do business is personal and very deep.

TITLE: Iran Insists No Bomb Being Made
AUTHOR: By Nasser Karimi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Monday dismissed U.S. concerns about how much fissile material the country has produced, saying it isn’t developing a nuclear bomb and that any effort to make weapons-grade uranium would be difficult under the eyes of international inspectors.
The comments came a day after the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said Iran has sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon and warned of a dire outcome if Tehran moves forward with building a bomb.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran has processed 1,010 kilograms of low-enriched uranium. But the report left unclear whether Iran is now capable, even if it wanted, of further enriching that material to the much higher degree needed to build a warhead.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi told reporters in Tehran, “We have said many times that a nuclear weapon has no place in Iran’s defense doctrine.”
Qashqavi did not comment specifically on the amount of fissile material Iran has produced. But he implied that even if Iran wanted to produce weapons-grade uranium, it would be difficult since the country’s enrichment facility is being monitored by the IAEA.
“How is it possible for uranium enriched 3 to 4 percent to be enriched up to 90 percent while under IAEA monitoring?” he said.
Iran says its nuclear program aims only to generate electricity and has been producing uranium that is less than 5 percent enriched in line with fuel needs of modern reactors. Nuclear weapons use uranium that is enriched to about 90 percent.
The U.S. and many of its allies suspect Iran’s real aim is to develop a program that would allow it to produce nuclear weapons and fear it will take the next step to further process its enriched uranium. International inspectors have not said Iran has taken that step.
Uranium is enriched by spinning a uranium gas at supersonic speeds in a series of thousands of centrifuges, and the technology can be used to produce low-enriched uranium for fuel or high-enriched for a warhead. But the latter requires more complicated techniques, and experts say it is unclear whether Iran has mastered the process.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, also appearing on a Sunday talk show, did not go as far as Mullen, saying the Iranians were not close to a weapon at this point, leaving time for diplomatic efforts. Gates appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, while Mullen was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday.”
President Barack Obama has offered increased diplomatic engagement with Iran in a bid to prove Tehran has more to lose by ignoring the wishes of countries concerned about its uranium enrichment than it has to gain through its nuclear efforts.
The UN has passed three sets of sanctions against Iran for its failure to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

TITLE: Soldiers Assassinate Guinea-Bissau President
AUTHOR: By Assimo Balde
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau — Soldiers assassinated the president of Guinea-Bissau in his palace Monday hours after a bomb blast killed his rival, but the military insisted no coup was taking place in the West African nation.
A military statement broadcast on state radio attributed President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira’s death to an “isolated” group of unidentified soldiers whom the armed forces said they were now hunting down.
The capital, Bissau, was calm but tense despite the pre-dawn gunfight at the palace, which erupted hours after armed forces chief of staff General Batiste Tagme na Waie — a longtime rival of the president — was killed by a bomb blast at his headquarters.
The former Portuguese colony has suffered multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one. The United Nations says the impoverished nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa has recently become a key transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe.
Following an emergency Cabinet meeting on Monday, military spokesman Zamora Induta said top military brass told government officials “this was not a coup d’etat.”
“We reaffirmed our intention to respect the democratically elected power and the constitution of the republic,” Induta said. “The people who killed President Vieira have not been arrested, but we are pursuing them. They are an isolated group. The situation is under control.”
The constitution calls for parliament chief Raimundo Pereira to succeed the president in the event of his death.
Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr. said the fact that the military did not go through with a coup deserves praise. “The military showed their patriotism by not seizing power,” he said, adding that both Vieira and Waie will receive state funerals in the coming days.
Vieira had ruled Guinea-Bissau for 23 of the past 29 years. He came to power in the 1980 coup, but was forced out 19 years later at the onset of the country’s civil war. He later returned from exile in Portugal to run in the country’s 2005 election and won the vote.
The armed forces’ statement dismissed claims that the military killed Vieira in retaliation for Waie’s assassination late Sunday. The two men were considered staunch political and ethnic rivals and both had survived recent assassination attempts.
Vieira, from the minority Papel ethnic group, once blamed majority ethnic Balanta officers for attempting a coup against him, condemning several to death and others to long prison sentences.
Among them was Waie, who in the late 1980s was dropped off on a deserted island off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, according to Waie’s chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Bwam Namtcho. Waie was left there for years before he was allowed to return and officially pardoned by Vieira.
Namtcho said the bomb that killed Waie had been hidden underneath the staircase leading to his office.
Hours later, volleys of automatic gunfire rang out for at least two hours before dawn in Bissau and residents said soldiers had converged on Vieira’s palace.
The Portuguese news agency LUSA reported that troops attacked the palace with rockets and rifles. The president’s press chief, Barnabe Gomes, escaped but was struck by a bullet in his right shoulder, LUSA said.
It was the second attack on Vieira in recent months. In November, Vieira’s residence was attacked by soldiers with automatic weapons who killed at least one of his guards. The president complained later that the army never intervened, leaving his presidential guard to fight off the attackers.
In January, Waie received a call from the presidency asking him to come at once, said Namtcho. But when Waie stepped outside to get into his car, unidentified gunmen opened fire on the car. Waie narrowly escaped and Namtcho says he assumed the attack had been ordered by the president.
Luis Sanca, security adviser to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., confirmed that the president had died but gave no details.
The African Union condemned the killings, calling them “cowardly and heinous attacks which have come at a time of renewed efforts by the international community to support peace-building efforts in Guinea-Bissau.”
In Lisbon, the Portuguese Foreign Ministry lamented Vieira’s death and said it was “fundamental that all political and military authorities in the country respect the constitutional order.”
Portugal said it would call an emergency meeting of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, an eight-member organization based in Lisbon.

TITLE: Schools Closed as Australia Braces for Winds, More Fires
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia — Hundreds of schools were ordered closed and millions of residents warned by mobile phone message Monday that conditions in wildfire-scarred southern Australia could become deadly again.
Forecasts of powerful winds in Victoria state on Monday night and rising temperatures predicted for Tuesday triggered fears of a repeat of the fires that roared across the state on Feb. 7, killing more than 210 people.
“This is not a case of crying wolf. This is the case of a very genuine concern about the weather,” Victoria’s Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin told reporters.
Up to 5,000 firefighters backed by hundreds of trucks and water-dumping helicopters have been deployed in Victoria as forecasters said winds in the state’s west would start gusting up to 150 kilometers per hour on Monday night and temperatures would rise into the mid-30s Celsius.
The dangerous conditions would continue for up to 48 hours, officials said.
On Feb. 7, hundreds of fires scorched more than 3,900 square kilometers of forest and farmland in Victoria, razing more than 1,800 homes in the country’s’ worst wildfire disaster.
Several large fires that have raged for weeks were still burning Monday, though they were within firebreaks and have not threatened homes for days.
Officials ordered more than 300 government schools and 250 childcare centers in Victoria to be closed on Tuesday, as well as 30 national parks where fires could spring up.
Victoria police sent mobile phone messages to some 5 million people who subscribe to a warning service.
“If these fires get away tomorrow, you will see them race up hills at literally 50-100 kilometers an hour and that’s why it’s such a dangerous, dangerous day,” Victorian Premier John Brumby said.
Officials have urged residents to decide either to leave their homes before fire threatens or to prepare themselves to fight the fires.

TITLE: CIA Destroyed Terror Tapes
AUTHOR: By Devlin Barrett
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged.
The revelation Monday comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.
The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.
“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”
The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.
The letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says that the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit. The letter claims that the details being collected include a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents, and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.
But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel that viewed the tapes.
“The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs,” states the letter.
John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, was appointed to lead the criminal investigation out of Virginia.
Durham had asked that the requests for information filed in the civil lawsuit be put on hold until he had completed his criminal investigation. 
Durham asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work, and has not asked for another extension.

TITLE: United States Surprises Ski World With Medal Haul
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LIBEREC, Czech Republic — The U.S. ski team entered the Nordic world championships in the usual fashion, with modest goals, no stars and low expectations. A medal would have been a success, two would have been unheard of.
After collecting six, including four golds, the Americans leave this small Czech town having stirred up the traditional order in the sport and finally shedding their image as a fringe team.
“I was happy to walk out of here with a couple of medals,” team director John Farra said. “It was hard to imagine we’d even get three, let alone six… It’s validation for us that we’re doing the right thing, and that our hard work is paying off.”
If Farra is surprised, the rest of the skiing world is stunned.
In the 35 previous world championships since 1925, the U.S. won a total of three medals — a gold, a silver and a bronze — and never more than one at the same worlds. This time they had four golds, a silver and a bronze and trailed only perennial power Norway in the medals table.
Now even the International Ski Federation is expressing hope that U.S. interest in the sport will take off if those results can be repeated at the Vancouver Olympics next year.
“That helps a lot, no question. We want to get North America involved,” FIS president Gian Franco Kasper said. “We really hope that will help the Vancouver games in promoting the sport even more.”
The American coming-out party started with Lindsey Van becoming the first ever women’s ski jump world champion on Feb 20. Hours later, veteran Todd Lodwick won his first world title by taking the Nordic combined mass start event. Lodwick won his second gold in the Gundersen normal hill event, with teammate Bill Demong in third. Kikkan Randall, then became the first American woman to win a crosscountry medal by taking silver in the individual sprint.
The only disappointment came when Demong lost his bib in the Nordic combined team event and was disqualified from the ski jump, ending the Americans’ medal chances.
Demong bounced back to win the final individual event Saturday for his first world title, which reduced his bib blunder to a “tiny asterisk in our perfect week,” Farra said.
Lodwick said the unprecedented results will provide “a perfect opportunity for us to do something positive” to build interest in the sport back home.
“It’s absolutely incredible to have six world championships medals. I’m speechless,” said Lodwick. “Now, it’s just an opportunity to get sponsors on board, and get people excited. Now we have something to offer.”
It can hardly be called an overnight success, however. Lodwick spent 15 years laboring in relative obscurity before finally climbing a podium, and both Demong and Randall are veterans of four previous worlds.
“I don’t think there’s any secret [to what we are doing], but I think it has taken a really long time,” said Demong. “What’s coming through now is the hard work we’ve always done.”
The Nordic combined team had hoped their breakthrough would come at the 2002 Olympics, but they left Salt Lake City without a medal. Now they’re again facing increased expectations to deliver success in Vancouver, but Demong said they had learned to deal with the pressure.
“For four years [ahead of Salt Lake City], it was like ‘In 1,200 days we’re going to win two Olympic medals,”’ Demong said. “We were so stressed about the whole thing. … But we’re older and more mature, and we know this doesn’t mean anything for next year, except it helps us on the inside with our confidence. And we know that what we’re doing is working.”
The medal chances are more limited in the Olympics, however, as women’s ski jumping is not included and there are only two individual Nordic combined events.
Still, Farra said he doesn’t feel the need to start downplaying expectations.
“It would be silly to talk about numbers for what we want out of it,” he said. “But no one can question that we’re one of the best teams in the world.”

TITLE: Competition Heats Up For Champions League Places
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Aston Villa blew a chance to go eight points clear of Arsenal in the race for England’s fourth Champions League berth on Sunday after conceding two late goals against relegation-threatened Stoke City.
The 2-2 draw, with Stoke cancelling out their hosts’ 2-0 lead in the final three minutes, left fourth-placed Villa six points ahead of Arsenal and three adrift of second-placed Chelsea and Liverpool in the Premier League.
Champions Manchester United, who beat holders Tottenham Hotspur on penalties in Sunday’s League Cup final at Wembley, are seven points clear at the top with a game in hand.
Arsenal, who beat AS Roma 1-0 in the Champions League in midweek, had stumbled to a 0-0 draw at home to Fulham on Saturday.
Bulgarian Stilian Petrov put Villa ahead on the stroke of halftime and John Carew added the second in the 79th, only three minutes after replacing Emile Heskey.
Stoke then grabbed what looked like a consolation goal through Ryan Shawcross in the 87th before Glenn Whelan struck the equaliser in stoppage time.
“It’s desperately disappointing,” Villa manager Martin O’Neill, who rested several key players after their UEFA Cup last-32 defeat by CSKA Moscow on Thursday, told Sky Sports television. “We got a bit slack.”
The draw still left Stoke deep in trouble, dropping to 19th place after Blackburn Rovers beat Hull City 2-1 to claw their way out of the bottom three on goal difference.
Hull and Blackburn both ended their match with 10 men after the home side’s Dean Marney was sent off in the 63rd and Blackburn’s Morten Gamst Pedersen followed eight minutes later for a second booking.
Blackburn also scored twice in quick succession, taking the lead in the 34th when Roque Santa Cruz punished an error by goalkeeper Matt Duke and set up Stephen Warnock to side-foot into the top of the net.
Warnock then crossed from the left for Keith Andrews to tap home. Hull pulled a goal back through Ian Ashbee in the 79th.
Blackburn moved up to 17th place on 26 points, ahead of Middlesbrough on goal difference.
West Ham United beat mid-table rivals Manchester City 1-0 at Upton Park while Bolton Wanderers, fresh from signing a new contract with manager Gary Megson, beat Newcastle United by the same scoreline.
City’s Craig Bellamy, booed by the home fans on his return to his former club, set up a good chance for Robinho in the first half but the Brazilian poked it wide.
West Ham saw midfielder Valon Bahrami suffer a serious-looking injury in the first half. The Swiss international was given oxygen and then carried off on a stretcher with his knee in a brace.
Jack Collison side-footed the winner with 19 minutes remaining to send the Hammers up to seventh with 36 points.