SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1463 (25), Tuesday, April 7, 2009
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TITLE: Putin Says $90 Bln Plan to Ease Hard Year
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson and Lucian Kim
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the government is planning 3 trillion rubles ($90 billion) of stimulus measures this year to help the economy through a “very hard” year.
About 1.4 trillion rubles of emergency spending will be included in this year’s budget, with the rest of the stimulus coming from tax breaks, central bank lending and other sources, Putin told lawmakers in the lower house of parliament today.
“We managed to avoid the worst scenario,” Putin said. “At the same time, 2009 will be very hard for us.”
The government abandoned the three-year budget it approved last year and has delayed passing the 2009 spending bill as it debates ways to minimize the first economic contraction in a decade. The government and central bank have already spent or pledged more than $150 billion in emergency funding since September to cope with the country’s worst financial crisis since the debt default and ruble devaluation of 1998.
“Could Russia have avoided the crisis or completely escaped its negative effects?” Putin said in the State Duma. “Of course not, it’s impossible, an illusion. The problems didn’t arise here and they weren’t our fault.”
Russia’s economy grew at the slowest pace in almost a decade in the fourth quarter as the global credit squeeze and falling commodities prices pushed the world’s biggest energy exporter to the brink of recession. Unemployment rose to a four- year high of 8.5 percent in February and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin expects a “second wave of problems” as companies fail to repay loans.
Last month, Russia began tapping its Reserve Fund, one of two sovereign wealth funds holding windfall oil revenue to cover the first budget gap in a decade. The deficit, planned at 3 trillion rubles or 7.4 percent of projected gross domestic product, is equal in size to the stimulus package. The measures include increased spending on the military and infrastructure and additional support for commercial banks.
The revised budget is aimed at “ensuring the optimal combination of anti-crisis measures and long-term plans,” Putin said today. “So that we don’t just defend ourselves, but attack; so that we build a new, more effective economy,” he said, adding that supporting uncompetitive industries would mean “throwing away” taxpayer money and “conserving yesterday’s economy.”
In the event that “harmful tendencies” suddenly arise, the revised budget also includes a 125 billion ruble “safety cushion,” that could be tapped, Putin said.
Putin’s address to parliament today was the first of its kind and gave lawmakers a chance to question the premier on his government’s handling of the crisis. President Dmitry Medvedev, who replaced Putin 10 months ago, said in November that the prime minister would start giving an annual performance report as part of an expansion of parliament’s “control functions.”
Putin, 56, heads the United Russia party that controls 315 seats in the 450-seat chamber. Another pro-government party, Fair Russia, has 38 seats, while the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which tends to support Putin, has 40. The opposition Communist Party holds the remaining 57 seats.
Putin backed proposals by business lobbies to delay replacing the Unified Social Tax with separate health and social insurance payments that would see employers’ payroll tax burden rise from 26 percent to 34 percent. The changes may be introduced a year later, in 2011, he said.
The government will channel as much as 780 billion rubles from the budget and the National Wellbeing Fund, which is formed from windfall oil profits, to cover the drop in revenue to the pension system, Health Minister Tatiana Golikova was quoted as saying by the Interfax news service after Putin’s speech.
Putin also said he supported consolidation among the country’s 1,500 banks and warned lawmakers to support, rather than “attack,” bankers because they are vital to the economy.
Banks have “serious tasks” to perform, particularly in the second half of the year, with the volume of bad loans increasing and officials pushing for increased lending to the real economy, Putin said. 255 billion rubles, of aid to banks will be “tightly tied” to lending to non-financial companies, Putin said.
TITLE: Duma Deputy Accused in Dubai Murder
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova and Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dubai police on Sunday accused State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov of masterminding the assassination of former Chechen commander Sulim Yamadayev and said they would seek his arrest.
Delimkhanov, a first cousin of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and a former Chechen deputy prime minister, denied the allegation and criticized the police investigation as shoddy.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said it would not extradite Delimkhanov.
Yamadayev, an enemy of Kadyrov, was shot dead near his Dubai home on March 28 in what police have described as the first political killing on Dubai soil.
The announcement that Delimkhanov has been implicated in the murder could have significant ramifications for Kadyrov, whose strong-arm tactics have been tolerated by the Kremlin because of the calm he has brought to Chechnya. Yamadayev’s death is the latest in a series of murders of Kadyrov’s foes in Turkey and Austria in recent months.
Kadyrov has denied involvement in Yamadayev’s death and the other murders.
Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said Sunday that two suspects, an Iranian and Tajik, have been arrested in connection with Yamadayev’s murder, and three others, including the person who pulled the trigger, have fled to Russia.
“Our investigations found that Delimkhanov was the mastermind behind the assassination of Yamadayev,” Tamim said in a statement.
He said one of the suspects in custody told police that Delimkhanov’s guard provided him with the murder weapon, a gold-plated, Russian-made Makarov discarded by the killer. He showed a photo of the gun at a news conference in Dubai.
He said Chechen authorities did not cooperate with Dubai police during the investigation, and he denied Chechen media reports that an ultraconservative Arab Salafi group was behind Yamadayev’s slaying.
“This murder was a pure Chechen operation, during which they were settling scores in Dubai,” he said.
Tamim said he would seek Interpol’s assistance to arrest Delimkhanov once the investigation was completed.
Delimkhanov denied involvement in the murder and said he was ready to cooperate with the Dubai police. “The police seem unable to conduct a proper investigation,” Delimkhanov said, RIA-Novosti reported. He said the accusations were based on allegations by one of Yamadayev’s brothers.
Yamadayev’s brother Isa has accused Delimkhanov of masterminding the murder of a third Yamadayev brother, Ruslan, who was killed on a Moscow street in September. The Yamadayev family were once close allies of the Kadyrov clan but had a falling out.
The Prosecutor’s General Office said Delimkhanov, who has immunity from prosecution as a Duma deputy, would not be extradited because the Constitution forbids the handing over of Russian citizens to foreign governments.
Chechnya’s senator in the Federation Council, Ziyad Sabsabi, called the Dubai allegations “provocative and deceptive.” “Such statements are aimed at destabilizing the situation inside Chechnya and in the south of Russia,” he said, Itar-Tass reported.
Delimkhanov was appointed Chechen deputy prime minister in 2006, and he gave up the position the following year when he was elected to the Duma as a member of United Russia. Delimkhanov, 40, is deputy head of the Duma’s Regional Affairs Committee.
As Chechen deputy prime minister, Delimkhanov personally supervised an operation to apprehend former Chechen commander Movladi Baisarov, an ally-turned-foe of Kadyrov who was killed on a Moscow street in 2006. Moscow prosecutors have said Baisarov died in a botched attempt by Chechen law enforcement officers to arrest him.
Dubai police initially detained about 20 Russian nationals in connection with Sulim Yamadayev’s death at his luxury Jumeira Beach Residence, Kommersant reported last week.
All except one — St. Petersburg businessman Maxim Dolgopolov, who was detained as a witness — were released by Friday, Kommersant said. The police did not release Dolgopolov with the others because he had jokingly told a police officer that he was Russia’s chief expert on terrorism, a friend of Dolgopolov told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, another Russian national has disappeared in Dubai after having been detained by police, Interfax reported Friday. Dmitry Legotin was traveling to Malaysia from Russia with a connection at the Dubai airport when he was detained by police who mistook his pain medicine for illicit drugs.
Police recognized their mistake and planned to release him to travel to Malaysia on March 28, but he was detained again together with the group of Russians suspected of possible involvement in Yamadayev’s killing, Interfax said.
TITLE: Police Raid Rally as Human Rights Activists Appeal to Ministry
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Human rights activists appealed to Russia’s Interior Minister about alleged police beatings and humiliation of protesters in St. Petersburg last month, while the police broke up a peaceful rally against police arbitrariness and arrested a number of participants on Saturday. Four protesters were held in custody for 48 hours until they were released by a court on Monday afternoon.
The protest and appeal both addressed a protest held by anarchists in St. Petersburg on March 27 in support of workers who took control of their plant in Kherson, Ukraine on Feb. 2. The demonstration was brutally dispersed by the police, who detained around 20 participants, some of whom later complained of being beaten and humiliated during the arrests and after being taken to Police Precinct 76.
On Saturday, anarchists and ant-Nazi activists held 48 one-person protests — a form of demonstration that does not require any authorization from City Hall — along Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, but were dispersed by the police, who detained five protesters and a photographer.
Protesters stood at a 20-meter distance from each other, holding posters with slogans against police arbitrariness such as “No to Unlawfulness” and “Policeman, I Pay You with My Taxes,” as well as rather more absurdist ones such as “It’s Scary to Live” and “Jah Is With Us.” Some had taped over their mouths so as not to be charged with using bad language in public — one of the standard charges used by the police against activists — in the event of being detained.
“I came out to hold a one-person demo to protest against police arbitrariness,” read the leaflet that protesters handed out to passers-by.
“A one-person demo doesn’t require any authorization. But the policemen do not know the laws and invent various pretexts for detainments. That’s why my mouth is taped — so that the police shouldn’t attempt to charge me with using bad language or drinking strong alcoholic drinks in public again.”
Two detained activists were charged with resisting arrest, and two with violating the rules for holding public events.
“It is obviously unlawful when people who attempt to act in a legal way are stopped and detained,” said one protest participant who only gave his first name, Dmitry, by phone on Monday.
“It appears that now, because of the crisis, everybody is afraid of everybody, they want to stop people from protesting. That’s why even the funniest and most absurd slogans are seen as a political demonstration and nipped in the bud.”
On Monday, the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council sent a letter to Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev ordering him to investigate the alleged beatings of protesters on March 27 and to punish those guilty. Copies were also sent to the head of the local Interior Department, Vladislav Piotrovsky, and St. Petersburg Prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev.
“The policemen kicked those being detained in the face, threw them in the dirt and kicked them in the kidneys” according to the letter, which cited activists’ reports on Indymedia web site. The site listed more beatings and humiliation inside police vehicles and at Police Precinct 76.
According to the report, one policeman identified as “Fokin” twice kneed in the groin an activist who was not resisting arrest, and beat another with his fists in the police vehicle while shouting “that he would kill us when we’re taken to the precinct.”
The Human Rights Council suggested that the police had violated Article 21 of the Russian Constitution, which says that “(1) Personal dignity is protected by the state. Nothing can be a ground for diminishing it; (2) Nobody should be subject to torture, violence, or other cruel or humiliating treatment or punishment.”
On Sunday, two United Civil Front (OGF) and Yabloko Democratic Party activists were detained when they attempted a peaceful protest on Nevsky Prospekt against repeated bans on public protests in the city center — repeating the attempt they made on March 29.
Their application was rejected by City Hall because of “anti-terrorist measures” and “intensive traffic” in the area. After spending 22 hours in custody, they were released on Monday.
“It’s an unhealthy situation when the authorities constantly ban social and political public meetings, pickets and marches in defiance of the Constitution,” human rights activist Yury Vdovin, deputy chairman of Citizens’ Watch and a member of the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council, said by phone on Monday.
“Citizens have the right to hold these kind of events after notifying the authorities. This principle of notification has been turned into a principle of authorization by the authorities. After this, Nurgaliyev’s [policemen] disperse all the demonstrations.”
Vdovin said that police beatings are “intolerable” and should be punished.
“They are crimes committed by law-enforcement agencies, and somebody should be held responsible for these crimes. In my view, if Nurgaliyev doesn’t take measures to stop it, he should resign. No country in the world would tolerate an interior minister who beats his own people.”
A police spokesman declined to comment when contacted on Monday.
TITLE: Berlusconi Puts Off Russia Visit
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOCOW — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has postponed a visit to Moscow after an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude shook central Italy early Monday morning, leaving more than 90 dead and thousands injured. (For related story, see Page 12.)
Berlusconi declared a state of emergency and has not announced a new date for the visit, the Italian Embassy in Moscow said. A group of businessmen were to accompany him for an Italian-Russian economic forum.
The visit was expected to be capped with a signing ceremony Tuesday between Gazprom and Eni, Italy’s biggest oil and gas group. The two companies agreed last month that Gazprom would buy a 20 percent stake in its oil arm that Eni won in an auction in April 2007.
TITLE: Small Banks Beg State for Respite
AUTHOR: By Jessica Bachman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Executives from hundreds of small banks flocked to Moscow on Friday to lobby against a new law that could force them to close by the end of the year, but Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin insisted that the government would not budge.
At an annual conference of the Association of Russian Banks, the small banks begged lawmakers and state officials to amend the law requiring them to increase their net worth to 90 million rubles ($2.6 million) by Jan. 1 and to 180 million rubles by 2012.
“Our colleagues have announced, and with good reason, that this law will lead to the closure of many successful small banks and bring harm to many honest small and medium enterprises,” the association’s president, Garegin Tosunyan, said in his opening remarks.
Small banks with less than 100 million rubles in capital make up 28 percent of the association’s membership, which includes 760 of the country’s 1,200 financial institutions.
“This strain is coming at a time of crisis ... and so our members propose that the time period for coming up with the minimal capital requirement is extended by two years,” Tosunyan said.
The government has said Russia has far too many banks, and Pyotr Aven, head of the largest private bank, Alfa Bank, has predicted a wave of failures on bad assets several times in recent weeks.
At the conference, the chiefs of the biggest banks called for lower refinancing rates and more direct government support for banks. But the looming capital requirement was the main concern of most conference attendees.
The only speaker of the day who managed to draw midspeech applause from the banking crowd was former Economics Minister Andrei Nechayev, a sharp critic of the capitalization minimum.
“In the base-case scenario, it is stupid to require the banks to have 90 million rubles in capital by Jan. 1. In the worst-case, it is sabotage,” Nechayev said. “Let the market dispose of these banks in market terms. ... Why should we do it artificially?”
Kudrin, who took the stage after Nechayev, said the law would weed out banks that contribute little to Russia’s economic growth and criminally active banks that have increased their money-laundering operations during the crisis.
“We believe that it is necessary to increase and consolidate banking capital to create developed institutes that are able to provide for economic growth,” Kudrin said.
“What are 90 million rubles? Most of you in the crowd understand what this sum is worth. ... If a bank doesn’t have 90 million rubles, it is a very small bank, rather, it is a minibank,” Kudrin said.
Kudrin said that while there are still “honest” banks in this small-cap category, there are also many banks “engaged in money laundering,” banks that exist not to lend but to “protect the owners’ or someone else’s money.”
“This law will increase control over banks. There will be less banks but much more supervision,” he said.
Kudrin predicted that about 150 banks would not have enough capital to meet the requirements by Jan. 1.
TITLE: Nemtsov: Authorities Hampering Sochi Bid
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas and Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sochi mayoral candidate Boris Nemtsov accused police of illegally confiscating tens of thousands of campaign pamphlets Saturday as part of a drive by regional authorities to derail his bid.
The complaint from the opposition politician came a day after Sochi election officials unveiled the final list of candidates for the April 26 election. The original list of 26 candidates was reduced to nine, including Nemtsov, wealthy businessman Alexander Lebedev and Acting Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov, who is backed by United Russia.
Ballerina Anastasia Volochkova failed to make the list because she forgot to put her date of birth on a bank deposit slip when submitting the required registration fee, the ballerina said Friday.
Sochi is slated to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, a project for which the federal government has earmarked billions of dollars, and the next mayor will have a strong say over how the government will spend the money.
Nemtsov, a Sochi native and former deputy prime minister, said Sochi police on Saturday seized 125,000 pamphlets, and he appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev to dismiss Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov for “the outrage and unlawfulness” of the confiscation, according to a statement released by his campaign team.
Sochi’s top election official, Yury Rykov, said Sunday that Nemtsov’s complaint would be examined, Interfax reported.
Nemtsov is familiar with police confiscations.
In the run-up to the State Duma elections in 2007, police across the country seized millions of newspapers published by the Union of Right Forces, Nemtsov’s now-extinct party, for purported legal violations.
Nemtsov wrote on his LiveJournal blog recently that two Sochi radio stations have refused to broadcast his campaign ads under pressure from regional authorities.
Major television and radio stations in the Black Sea resort of Sochi have refused to give airtime to candidates in the mayoral election while providing coverage of Pakhomov in his capacity of acting mayor, the web site Kavkaz-uzel.ru reported Thursday.
Volochkova, who made headlines in 2003 after she was fired from the Bolshoi Theater reportedly because she weighed too much, said Friday that the decision to deny her registration “proves that my personality is threatening for certain other candidates,” Interfax reported.
“It is an absurd, illegal reason, and I will absolutely appeal this decision in court,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Sochi elections commission told The St. Petersburg Times that Volochkova was denied registration but gave no reason.
Volochkova said in a statement on her web site that the missing date of birth on the bank slip was the “official reason” for her rejection.
She declared that a rival candidate, Dmitry Berdnikov, had “managed to topple” her.
TITLE: Acquitted Suspect Detained On New Extortion Charge
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A former Moscow police officer acquitted in the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya has been detained on suspicion of extortion.
Sergei Khadzhikurbanov is accused of extorting $350,000 from a key witness in Politkovskaya’s murder trial, which saw Khadzhikurbanov and two others acquitted in February, Interfax reported.
The witness, city police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, owed money to Khadzhikurbanov but could not pay it back, Novaya Gazeta reported in February. In lieu of the cash, Khadzhikurbanov tried in vain to force Pavlyuchenkov to spy on Politkovskaya shortly before her death, the newspaper said.
Khadzhikurbanov was charged in the purported extortion attempt before he was released from custody in late February following his acquittal in the Politkovskaya case on condition that he not leave the city, Novaya Gazeta said.
Two months after Politkovskaya’s slaying, Pavlyuchenkov survived an attempt on his life, Novaya Gazeta reported, without elaborating.
Khadzhikurbanov was detained in Moscow on Thursday while being questioned by city police investigators.
A former officer with the organized crime department of the Moscow city police department, Khadzhikurbanov was cleared of involvement in Politkovskaya’s murder along with Chechen brothers Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov. Politkovskaya’s son and Novaya Gazeta editors said at the time that they still believe that the three were involved in the murder.
Khadzhikurbanov had been accused of organizing the killing and obtaining the gun used to shoot Politkovskaya dead in the elevator of her central Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006.
The Makhmudovs had been charged as accomplices, while a third Makhmudov brother, Rustam, is suspected of pulling the trigger.
TITLE: Communists Slam Medvedev
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More than 500 people gathered at a Communist protest meeting in front of the Finland Railway Station in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
The meeting was part of Russia-wide protests held by Communists demonstrating against high unemployment rates and the consequences of the economic crisis in Russia, as well as a recent act of vandalism carried out on the statue of the former Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. An explosive device was set off inside the state on April, blowing a hole through it.
The demonstrators were predominantly pensioners. They held red flags and various banners with slogans blaming the country’s government for being unable to overcome the consequences of the economic crisis.
The leaders of the organizations who gathered in St. Petersburg demanded that the government resign.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of the protest about a dozen young people began to throw leaflets depicting caricatures of Russia’s current Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and a headline reading “Communism is Russia’s plague.” Police detained the youths, Interfax reported.
The Communists gathered for similar meetings in 30 Russian cities, in regions including the Far East, Siberia and the Urals.
Activists of the youth movement Molodaya Gvardia tried to disturb the Communist protest events in most of the cities where they took place. They chanted anti-Communist slogans and were either detained by the police for creating disturbances or, in some cases, attacked by the participants in the meetings.
The Communist meeting in Moscow attracted about two thousand people.
Zyuganov said that the crisis in Russia is getting worse. He described Russia’s finance minister Alexei Kudrin as “a primitive accountant, who doesn’t know about finance,” Expert Online reported.
Zyuganov said that the government’s anti-crisis program is “useless” because “the staff of the government is itself useless.”
“The current government is being saved only by the gold currency reserves and the high prices for oil,” Zyuganov said.
The Communist leader demanded that the government consider an alternative anti-crisis program that has been drawn up by the Communists.
In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk the meeting attracted about 3,500 people, while in Yekaterinburg three thousand people turned out.
Ahead of the rallies, the Communist Party said more than 5 million people would participate, but it was impossible to determine how many had actually shown up. Neither the Communists nor the police provided national figures as of Sunday.
The protests have been seen as a test of the Communist Party’s ability to harness growing dissatisfaction with the economic crisis and turn it into political muscle.
“Many families are on the edge of survival, unemployment is growing,” Viktor Ilyukhin, a senior Communist deputy in the State Duma, said by telephone Friday. “Citizens aren’t relying on the government to support them any more.”
The slogan “Where is the Money, Dima?” — announced on the Communist Party web site for use at regional protests — reflects ordinary people’s financial situation, Ilyukhin said. “The savings that citizens had have practically run out,” he said.
TITLE: Festival of Dance Cinema Brings World's Best to City
AUTHOR: By Aimee Linekar
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week sees the opening of the sixth international dance cinema festival in St. Petersburg. Featuring long and short films from as far afield as Switzerland, Canada, Belgium, and Zimbabwe, the festival promises to serve up a tantalising array of the creme de la creme of dance cinema from around the world.
This year’s ambitious theme — Choreography in Cinema in all its Shapes and Forms — extends beyond the big screen to “reveal new dimensions of the art form,” according to the festival’s founder and director, Vadim Kasparov.
While the majority of the festival’s screenings will be shown at the Rodina cinema on Karavannaya Ulitsa, the ProArte Foundation, Poterna exhibition hall, French Institute and iClub will hold workshops, lectures, additional screenings and an installation to complement the core program of films.
The celebration of dance in film is set to kick off on Thursday with a revival screening of Dziga Vertov’s newly rediscovered 1929 classic silent film Man with a Movie Camera, accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra’s highly-acclaimed live score.
For the first time, the festival is working in tandem with the city’s French Institute to showcase a retrospective of the best French cinematic choreography by such big names as Josef Nadj, Anjelin Preljocaj, Rachid Ouramdane and Alain Platel. The highlight of the retrospective will be an evening with Dominique Delouche, a key figure in French cinema and adept of ballet on the big screen, at Rodina on Sunday.
In parallel with these cinematic delicacies, from Tuesday audiences will have the opportunity to see the Peter and Paul Fortress in a new light thanks to the Open Ended Group’s installation “Point A->B” at the Poterna exhibition center. The American duo’s work draws its inspiration from parkour — “the urban sport in which the goal is to get from point A to point B as rapidly, as inventively, and often as dangerously as possible,” and will be accompanied by a workshop for artists and programmers at the iClub (Bolshaya Konushennaya Ulitsa 12/10), on Wednesday 8, and a screening and talk about their creative practices at the ProArte Foundation on Tuesday 14 at ProArte (Peter and Paul Fortress, Left Side).
The festival looks set to go out with a bang on Saturday 18 with an all-night extravaganza at Rodina cinema, showing original short films from Eastern Europe, the CIS and the Baltic states. The winner of the third Dance Film competition will be announced at the closing ceremony.
TITLE: Rossiya TV Claims U.S. Is Spying at Kyrgyz Base
AUTHOR: By Leila Saralayeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — A documentary on Russian state television has accused the U.S. of using an air base in Kyrgyzstan to spy on Russia and China — an allegation a spokesman for the base flatly denied on Monday.
The film, aired Sunday on the Rossiya TV channel, showed a building it said was used for electronic surveillance and identified a woman it said worked in the U.S. Embassy as a CIA agent.
Moscow has long been suspicious of the American presence in what it views as its traditional sphere of influence, and there are even some indications it may have pushed to have the Central Asian base closed.
Kyrgyzstan has ordered the United States to leave the facility by August, dashing plans to use it as thousands more troops prepare to pour into Afghanistan. The announcement of the closure came shortly after Russia pledged to give Kyrgyzstan more than $2 billion in aid and loans. Russia also has an air base in the former Soviet republic.
Of the accusations, Major Damien Pickart, a spokesman for the Manas base said: “It is all lies, it is false. There wasn’t a single point that I read about the narrative of the documentary that was accurate.”
The documentary showed a complex of windowless buildings at the base that it said required special passes to enter. The program said one building on the base housed an elaborate system of “radio-electronic reconnaissance.”
“At Manas, a station has been built that controls all of Central Asia and parts of China and Siberia,” the program said.
Pickart said the buildings are used as dormitories for troops posted long-term at the base. Reporters who visited the base in February said the buildings appeared to be used exclusively as sleeping quarters.
“Any media or government officials that would like to come to the base and see for themselves, go into those buildings that they showed, we will gladly invite them out,” Pickart said.
The program also shows a woman identified as Vicki Lynn Rundquist, whom it says is first secretary of the political division at the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan and an undercover CIA agent. It says she and a local contact scrawled chalk marks on lampposts to agree on meeting times for covert encounters.
The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the report, saying it was not at liberty to reveal details about its personnel.
A Kyrgyz government spokesman said he could not comment on the documentary.
The film was made by Russian journalist Arkady Mamontov, who came to prominence in 2006 after producing footage purporting to show British diplomats exchanging classified information with local agents through a device disguised as a rock on a street in Moscow.
A year later, Mamontov claimed in another documentary that the CIA was funding Russian opposition groups with the aim of replicating the popular uprisings in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Pickart said Mamontov has not visited the base.
TITLE: 15,000 Ukrainians Protest Against Finance Policy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV — Thousands of Ukrainians jammed Kiev’s main square Friday to protest government policies amid a worsening financial crisis as tensions build ahead of presidential elections later this year.
In the second major anti-government rally in over a week, at least 15,000 protesters waved flags of the opposition Party of Regions and chanted “No!” as they protested what they said was the government’s failure to battle the effects of the financial crisis here, which is one of the worst in Europe.
“Look what they’ve done to the country,” said Heorhiy Lukash, a 55-year-old unemployed train driver waving a giant blue flag. “They don’t care about ordinary people.”
With elections scheduled for Oct. 25, political tensions are running high, with fears that election posturing and infighting will only prolong — or deepen — the crisis.
TITLE: Business Centers Left Empty As Tenants Move Out
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin, Nadezhda Zaitseva and Yelena Zborovskaya
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: About 20 percent of the offices in one of St. Petersburg’s oldest A-class business centers — the Atrium, located at 25 Nevsky Prospekt — have become available to rent, after the center lost two of its biggest tenants in March — Regus and KIT Fortis.
The Belgian company Regus, which specializes in the renting out of office space, was due to leave the premises by the end of March. The firm had leased about 1,000 square meters on the third floor of the building since 1998. In May last year, Regus began renting 2,100 square meters on the third and fourth floors of the Austrian Business Center at 9 Pirogovskaya Naberezhnaya, said Natalia Renson, a spokeswoman for the firm.
The investment company KIT Fortis, which occupied about 900 square meters, moved in March to the Renaissance-Plaza business center at 69 Ulitsa Marata. Vadim Barausov, a spokesman for KIT Finance investment bank, confirmed that KIT Fortis had left its premises at the Atrium business center.
About 20 percent of the premises at the Atrium is currently unoccupied, said Vyacheslav Manukhin, general director of Nevsky 25. In total, the business center comprises 7,300 square meters of premises.
The company hasn’t yet found tenants for the premises that have been vacated. “There have been lots of calls, and negotiations are underway about the rates, but there haven’t been any contracts yet,” said Manukhin. He said that premises at the Atrium are being offered at about 500 euros ($677) per square meter per year, the exact figure being dependent on the total size of the premises and their location. Last year, the maximum rate reached 1,000 euros ($1,353) per meter per year. Manukhin declined to say how much Regus had been paying.
As a result of the difficult economic situation, companies are seeking cheaper locations, Manukhin said. According to Renson, the terms offered by Nevsky 25 did not meet Regus’s expectations in view of the general state of the real estate market. The rates in the Austrian Business Center in spring of last year were 15 percent lower than in the Atrium, estimated Dmitry Kuznetsov, director of the office premises department at Colliers International. Regus’s plans were altered by the economic crisis, with the firm giving up one of its sites in St. Petersburg due to shrinkage in the rental market, he said.
The situation is mirrored in other business centers in the city. BFA Development at Nevsky 38, for example, has been unable to fill the premises vacated by its anchor tenant, KIT Finance investment bank, said the development director at Praktis CB, Sergei Fyodorov.
The bank occupied 90 percent of the premises at the business center, and 40 percent currently remain unoccupied, said Olga Mitselovskaya, general director of Management Company BFA.
The situation will only get worse, with vacant premises accounting for an average of about 30 percent of A-class offices by the end of the year, Fyodorov predicted.
Finding tenants is difficult, landlords are making less income from business centers and many are lowering their rates, said Vitaly Vinogradov, marketing and sales director at Leader Group, whose company owns the Leader business center on Ploshchad Konstitutsii.
Vinogradov said that since December last year, rates have fallen by 10-20 percent on average.
According to Colliers International, about 140,000 square meters of premises remain vacant in St. Petersburg’s A- and B-class business centers. The proportion of vacant A- and B- class premises has almost tripled, increasing from five percent at the beginning of 2008 to 14 percent at the beginning of this year. The volume of vacant A-class premises has risen from 50,000 to 70,000 square meters, said Kuznetsov.
Income from the rental of premises in business centers will fall by about 10-50 percent in comparison with 2008, said Kuznetsov, with those landlords who have denominated their contracts in rubles losing out the most.
A large number of landlords in St. Petersburg are offering discounts, said a representative of Morgan Hunt Selection, Marina Lukyantseva, whose company leased premises in the Severnaya Stolitsa business center at the end of February.
TITLE: Putin Says $90 Bln Will Help Economy Survive
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson and Lucian Kim
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the government is planning 3 trillion rubles ($90 billion) of stimulus measures this year to help the economy survive a “very hard” year.
About 1.4 trillion rubles of emergency spending will be included in this year’s budget, with the rest of the stimulus coming from tax breaks and central bank lending, Putin told lawmakers in the lower house of parliament on Monday.
“We managed to avoid the worst scenario,” Putin said. “At the same time, 2009 will be very hard for us.”
The government abandoned the three-year budget it approved last year and has delayed passing the 2009 spending bill as it debates ways to minimize the first economic contraction in a decade. The government and central bank have already spent or pledged more than $150 billion in emergency funding since September to cope with the country’s worst financial crisis since the debt default and ruble devaluation of 1998.
“Could Russia have avoided the crisis or completely escaped its negative effects?” Putin said in the State Duma. “Of course not, it’s impossible, an illusion. The problems didn’t arise here and they weren’t our fault.”
Russia’s economy grew at the slowest pace in almost a decade in the fourth quarter as the global credit squeeze and falling commodities prices pushed the world’s biggest energy exporter to the brink of recession. Unemployment rose to a four-year high of 8.5 percent in February and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin expects a “second wave of problems” as companies fail to repay loans.
Russia began tapping its two sovereign wealth funds, which hold windfall oil revenue, last month to cover the first budget deficit in a decade. The stimulus package in the 2009 budget is identical to the planned deficit and equals 7.4 percent of projected gross domestic product. The measures include increased spending on the military and infrastructure and additional support for commercial banks.
The revised budget is aimed at “ensuring the optimal combination of anti-crisis measures and long-term plans,” Putin said on Monday. “So that we don’t just defend ourselves, but attack; so that we build a new, more effective economy,” he said, adding that supporting uncompetitive industries would mean “throwing away” taxpayer money and “conserving yesterday’s economy.”
Putin’s address to parliament on Monday was the first of its kind and gave lawmakers a chance to question the premier on his government’s handling of the crisis. President Dmitry Medvedev, who replaced Putin 10 months ago, said in November that the prime minister would start giving an annual performance report as part of an expansion of parliament’s “control functions.”
Putin, 56, heads the United Russia party that controls 315 seats in the 450-seat chamber. Another pro-government party, Fair Russia, has 38 seats, while the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which tends to support Putin, has 40. The opposition Communist Party holds the remaining 57 seats.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Wal-Mart Eyes Lenta
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Wal-Mart Stores has renewed talks on buying a controlling stake in Russian food retailer Lenta, Kommersant reported, citing unidentified minority shareholders.
Wal-Mart is seeking to buy 51 percent of St. Petersburg-based Lenta, the Russian newspaper said. That includes acquiring founder Oleg Zherebtsov’s 35 percent stake; the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s 11 percent stake and 6 percent from another minority shareholder, Kommersant said.
All of the parties declined to comment, according to the newspaper.
Gazprom Set to Splurge
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, Russia’s gas exporter, may spend at least $2 billion on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi on the Black Sea coast, Vedomosti reported, citing the state-run company’s investment program through 2012.
Gazprom, the biggest investor in the preparation for the Olympic Games after the government, plans to invest about 28 billion rubles ($843 million) of that sum this year alone, the Moscow-based newspaper reported.
A skiing complex and four-star hotel with 600 rooms are the main projects Gazprom is undertaking in Sochi, Vedomosti said.
Inflation Reaches 14%
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s inflation rate rose to a five-month high in March as the weaker ruble boosted import prices.
The rate rose to 14 percent from 13.9 percent in February, the Moscow-based Federal Statistics Service said in an e-mailed statement Monday. That matched the median forecast of 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Consumer prices grew 1.3 percent in the month, compared with 1.7 percent in February.
Inflation was spurred at the start of the year by the weakening ruble, which pushed up import prices, helping the annual rate jump to 13.9 percent in February from 13.4 the month before. Russia abandoned its defense of the ruble after the price of oil, the state’s biggest export earner, tumbled more than two-thirds from a July record in less than six months. The ruble has lost 29 percent against the dollar since August.
Sliding Tax Rate Possible
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said “the whole world” envies Russia’s 13 percent flat income tax, yet didn’t rule out that the government may adopt a system of sliding rates in the future.
Revenue from income taxes has risen 12-fold since the flat tax was introduced eight years ago and now brings in more revenue than the value-added tax, Putin told lawmakers in the lower house of parliament Monday.
Prokhorov Takes Shares
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to accept shares in United Co. RusAl and bonds from a unit of Russia’s biggest aluminum producer as part of a deal to restructure $2.8 billion of debt, Vedomosti reported.
Prokhorov will get an additional 5.5 percent of RusAl and $400 million of bonds issued by RusAl Bratsk in exchange for the debt, which is part of RusAl’s acquisition of a stake in GMK Norilsk Nickel, the newspaper said.
Prokhorov’s Onexim Group will hold about 19 percent of RusAl after he receives the new shares, Vedomosti said. Onexim and RusAl declined to comment, according to the newspaper.
TITLE: Pollution in the Baltic Sea Threatens Seal Population
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “The best present we can give to future generations is a clean Baltic Sea,” announced Finnish President Tarja Halonen on a recent visit to St. Petersburg. One of the biggest environmental problems in St. Petersburg is indeed the state of the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland on which the city is situated. Pollution, fishing and transport are taking their toll on the sea and its inhabitants, with the result that the ringed seal is in danger of dying out.
If at the beginning of the 20th century there were about 200,000 seals in the Gulf of Finland, there are now just several thousand ringed seals and several hundred grey seals. Their population in the Baltic Sea is listed as endangered on the World Conservation Union’s List of Endangered Animals, and specialists observe fewer varieties of species.
One of the main reasons for the reduction in their number is the influence of humans, which is reflected in the pollution of the environment, said Mikhail Veryovkin, a specialist at the Baltic Nature Foundation. Other factors in their decline are poaching and climate change — ringed seals live on ice floes, and due to warmer winters, icepacks have begun breaking up earlier than in the past, meaning birthing lairs are often destroyed before the seal pup is able to fend for itself.
WHO IS TO BLAME?
The primary culprit in the pollution of the Baltic Sea is St. Petersburg and its sewage.
“Companies are limited to set norms of polluted sewage, and they pay for it, but this money does not help to clean the Baltic Sea,” said Olga Senova, chairman of the Friends of the Baltic organization and a board member of the Clean Baltic international coalition.
“More than 3 million tons of waste liquids enter the Neva River every day and more than one third of the volume has not been treated,” she said. “And the remainder is not purified enough.”
Independent research shows that rivers including the Okhta, Okkerville, Slavyanka, Mga and Tosna have the dirtiest sewage, and all these flow into the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea.
“The town of Lomonosov and many other settlements on the coast do not have any treatment plants,” said Senova. “However, St. Petersburg, [the municipal water utility] Vodokanal and their northern neighbors are trying to develop this area.”
A POISONED SEA
Water pollutants include nitrates and phosphates, the former of which are waste products from domestic animals and human toilets, while phosphates are waste liquids from detergents.
When found in the earth, these substances are good for plants, but when they are found in water, they can lead to rapid growth in plants, which can be dangerous for other organisms. The growth of algae results in heightened consumption of oxygen, which means there may not be enough oxygen for marine animals. New algae may also appear that can be poisonous for people and animals.
“In such conditions, the ones that suffer the most are fish and the plankton they eat,” said Senova. “As a result, the birds and animals who eat fish suffer too, including ringed seals.”
Seals are at the top of the food pyramid, and the decreasing number of fish species also affects animals’ food rations.
Another cause of pollution are the alien organisms that appear in the Baltic with ships from other countries, along with waste liquids from these ships, said Rustam Sagitov, director of the Baltic Nature Foundation.
“Navigation and fishing disturbs animals and it can happen during critical periods of their lives — reproduction, rest, molting,” said Sagitov.
Ecologists also fear the influence of the Marine Facade, a new district of St. Petersburg being built in the Gulf of Finland on land reclaimed from the sea. The project includes a new marine port, business center and elite residential estate. As a result of the building, the waters have become clouded and the ground has shifted.
“There are live organisms on the bottom, and they cannot go away on holiday to the Black Sea and come back three years later,” said Mikhail Shilin, an ecologist. “It is their home and it is disappearing now.”
A GROWING PROBLEM
Research shows that the ecological situation of the Gulf of Finland is becoming worse. The Baltic Sea is surrounded by land, so human activity along the coast is very important.
One of the most severely affected species of the Baltic Sea is seals, according to scientists.
“Water pollution leads to the weakening of their immunity, and consequently to the rapid growth of disease among animals,” said Maria Sokolovskaya, a specialist at the city’s Leningrad Zoo.
Another harmful influence on animals in the Baltic Sea is the large volume of oil present in the water.
“During the last ten years, marine terminals specializing in oil transportation have been constantly built on both the north and south coasts,” said Veryovkin.
Oil spills can happen during even the most careful work or transportation, and for marine animals, even a small amount of oil is fatal. The oil film that covers the surface of the sea makes life here impossible. Ringed seals are often found covered with such a film.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
All Baltic countries face the problem of the decreasing seal population.
A special Baltic Marine Environmental Protection Commission (HELCOM) is the governing body of the Convention on the Protection of the Maritine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, otherwise known as the Helsinki Convention.
“According to HELCOM, every country of the Baltic region should have a national plan for managing the seal population,” said Sagitov. “Yet its realization in Russia is still a big question.”
Some initiatives have however been set up. The Leningrad Zoo has created a rescue center for marine animals in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad Oblast — the only center of its kind in Russia, where seals are rehabilitated through medical care and feeding. Eleven ringed seal cubs were rescued and cared for at the center last year.
There are many requirements for such centers, and the Russian one cannot yet provide facilities comparable with those available abroad.
“Each small ringed seal eats 2-3 kilograms per day and there should be special systems to clean their living quarters,” said Sokolovskaya. “There must be enough water. When seal cubs shed their coats and reach the age when they enter the water, they should have enough room to swim, and the water must constantly be changed.”
The Russian center is ideal for the first period of rehabilitation, as it has a special quarantine zone where cubs live during treatment. Each cub has its own small room and bath, but as soon as the seal seems healthy, has reached its target weight and is getting too old to live alone, the center’s specialists release the animal into the sea, explained Sokolovskaya.
“It is important for seals not to get used to people,” she said. “They should find food for themselves, so the less contact they have, the better.”
The rescue center is currently empty, but is always on standby.
Sagitov said that the center cannot solve the problem, but it can help to save suffering animals.
The seals are not the only ones to suffer from the disappearing food supply in the Gulf on Finland.
“Birds fly along the Gulf of Finland to the north in spring, and back to central Western Europe in the autumn. They need food and rest on their way,” said Senova.
“Without a certain reserve of energy for the flight, birds do not have the strength to fly to warm countries, they do not reproduce on time and die,” said Georgy Noskov, director of the Ladozhskaya ornithological station. “It is the same as trying to take off in a plane without fuel.”
A SOCIAL PROBLEM
One of the problems in Russia is low environmental awareness. People do not know what to do if they find a sick ringed seal, while in Finland almost everyone knows the rules of behavior in such situations. The role of society is an important one in combating the pollution problem.
“My forecasts are not consoling,” said Sagitov. “Unfortunately, the mentality of society in Russia is not a nature loving one. Nature protection is not a priority in state political interests, and uncontrolled, irrational industrial and economic development does not promise any good things for nature.”
Specialists from environmental protection societies are agreed that the Helsinki Convention is a good, circumspect set of guidelines and a real guide to action.
“Our Baltic neighbors pay serious attention to it while we do not,” said Sagitov. “In my opinion, the reason lies in the mentality of society in general and in the absence of ecological problems in the state’s political priorities — we just talk, but don’t do anything,” he said.
TITLE: Arrival of Nuclear Waste Scares Environmentalists
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian ecologists regularly take to the streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow to protest the transportation of nuclear waste from other countries to Russia.
One recent protest was prompted by the arrival of the ship MV Schouwenbank loaded with 1,250 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride or so-called uranium tailings from Germany to St. Petersburg on March 18. It was the biggest transfer of German radioactive waste to Russia in history, the St. Petersburg ecological organization ECOperestroika said.
“Another shipment of radioactive waste to Russia arrived despite such activities being completely illegal, and in violation of the promises of the Russian Nuclear Energy State Corporation, or RosAtom, to stop the import of so-called uranium tailings,” Rashid Alimov, head of ECOperestroika said on the organization’s web site.
“The transportation of such cargo is extremely dangerous. It is fraught with incidents in which containers have become depressurized, which can lead to the poisoning of a large number of people, and to the toxic and radioactive pollution of large areas, including Russia’s big cities,” he said.
Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of another ecological organization Ecozashchita (EcoDefense), said the import of uranium tailings is highly dangerous, both during transportation through Russia and in its storage.
The transportation is most dangerous due to the risk of depressurization on the way to the storage destinations in Russia, he said.
“When we speak about uranium tailings, we must be doubly careful, as it’s a very toxic material,” Slivyak said. “If there is an incident on the railroad along which the substance is being transported — a fire, explosion or an accident — the tailings that are being transported in solid form may sublime into a gas, and if leaked, may pollute large surrounding areas.”
“The toxic and partially radioactive effect of the tailings can be fatal within a radius of 32 kilometers,” he said.
The second danger of importing uranium tailings to Russia lies in their storage.
Slivyak said ecologists have doubts that tailings are kept in adequately secure storage.
“There is information that a danger of the containers depressurizing exists in the places where they are stored, because the containers are not kept under any shelter and they may suffer corrosion,” he said.
“Therefore we do not understand why Russia needs to live with such risk,” Slivyak said. “Why does it need to import these tailings? We are completely against this practice.”
Depleted uranium hexafluoride is a by-product of uranium enrichment that results when fuel for nuclear power stations is produced. Russia and a number of other countries have accumulated several million tons of such uranium.
Uranium tailings are imported into Russia under contracts between RosAtom and the German-British-Dutch company Urenco, France’s Eurodif and others.
Under the terms of Urenco’s contract with RosAtom, cargos of waste have already been shipped to Novouralsk in the Sverdlov Oblast, Seversk in the Tomsk Oblast, Angarsk in the Irkutsk Oblast and Zelenogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk region.
During the last 10 years, Russia has accumulated more than 700,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride through the country’s own waste as well as through the process of additional enrichment.
The waste is kept under the open sky, which according to Russian Technical Watch is a breach of safety standards. There have also been officially recognized cases of tanks containing uranium tailings becoming depressurized, ECOperestroika said.
The current contract between RosAtom and Urenco is valid until 2009, and until 2014 with Eurodif, the organization said.
Slivyak said that when sending its tailings to Russia, Urenco tries to find the cheapest way to get rid of the responsibility for radioactive and toxic waste.
“We demand a stop to this cynical and immoral business, which contradicts Russian legislation,” Slivyak said.
From the St. Petersburg port, the latest train carrying the tailings went to the city of Novouralsk. As usual, the train traveled through St. Petersburg, passing by residential buildings, ECOperestroika said.
Last year a train carrying similar nuclear waste from Germany was discovered by ecologists near residential buildings in the city’s Avtovo district. The ecologists measured the radiation background near the containers and found that it exceeded the normal level of background radiation by 30 times, environmental groups said.
Oleg Bodrov, head of the Green World ecological organization based in the town of Sosnovy Bor in the Leningrad Oblast, said that the Ust-Luga port west of St. Petersburg is currently building new infrastructure for the import and export of nuclear materials. In two years cargos of nuclear waste will be transported via Ust-Luga, he said.
“This is a threat for the Kurgalsky peninsula,” Bodrov said.
Nuclear experts recognize the danger from the transportation of uranium tailings. The British nuclear company BNFL has said that “the sudden emission of a large quantity of uranium hexafluoride, if taken by the wind, may lead to a large number of victims. Theoretically, in certain weather conditions the deadly concentrations may spread over a radius of 32 kilometers from the place of emission.”
RosAtom’s press-service said last month that deliveries of depleted uranium hexafluoride or OGFU is carried out on the basis of contracts signed by Technabexport in the mid 1990s, and that the ministry will end the agreement in 2009-2010, Interfax reported.
“In 2009-2010 the old contracts on the additional concentration of OGFU will run out, and we will not prolong them or sign new contracts,” said Igor Konyshyev, head of RosAtom’s public relations department. “We said it in 2007, and we will keep our word.”
Konyshev said the “various enterprises of RosAtom possess more effective technologies for the enrichment of uranium than European enterprises.” Russian technologies enable OGFU of European origin to be used as a raw material for producing U-235 — the isotope used for the production of fuel for nuclear power stations, he said.
Starting in 1996, under such contracts Russia has received more than 80,000 tons of uranium tailings from Europe. Ecologists say that by the end of 2009, another 20 tons of waste is to be delivered to Russia.
Russia and other countries have currently accumulated several million tons of OGFU. In the U.S. such waste officially became considered as radioactive waste in 2005. European countries do not consider the substance to be radioactive waste, and send it for burial to Russia.
Russia is the only country in the world that receives depleted uranium hexafluoride on an industrial scale from abroad. The presence of radioactive territories is officially recognized in 15 regions of Russia.
TITLE: Waste Disposal in Spotlight
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A conference held in the city last week focused on the issue of waste management technologies and problems in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. The forum, titled “Effective Waste Management and Recycling and Use of Innovative Technologies,” was organized by Chadbourne & Parke, a U.S.-based legal firm that has a practice focusing on climate change headed by former New York State Governor George Pataki. Pataki spoke at the conference, along with representatives of the St. Petersburg government and local waste disposal and environmental experts.
The focus of a large part of the conference was the MPBO-2 waste reprocessing facility located in the village of Yanino in the Leningrad Oblast. The St. Petersburg government plans to hold a tender this year for the reconstruction of the facility, with the aim of reprocessing as much waste as possible and only resorting to landfill for dangerous waste.
Pataki spoke about his experience in the field of waste management during his 12-year tenure as governor of New York, advocating private-public partnerships as the most effective way of dealing with the problem and as a possible solution for the reconstruction of Yanino.
“PPPs are the way to get things done,” he said. “The government must guarantee the collection of municipal waste and its delivery to a regional center. The private sector must take a risk in building the plant, financing it, providing the technology and operating it. In return, the investor will make a profit.
“PPPs allow you to do things you couldn’t do with taxpayers’ money,” he said.
Pataki also said the issue of constructing sufficient waste management facilities could be viewed as an economic opportunity rather than a problem.
“It can be looked upon as a problem, or as an opportunity — to make a cleaner, greener city and promote economic growth,” he said.
Various waste management technologies were also examined, with most attention being devoted to incineration and landfill.
The issue of incineration is a contentious one, with some arguing that the fumes produced can cause cancer. Plants in the U.S. are bound by law to reduce their emissions of dioxins. Modern technologies now include alternatives to incineration, and can allow the residue of waste destined for landfill to be reduced from up to 20 percent (under old technologies) to as little as three percent.
When asked how the technology should be chosen, Pataki said that picking technologies was not an advisable strategy for the government.
“The government should not pick the technology,” he said. “It should pick the outcome it wants, be it the lowest cost option, the option that will result in the minimum remaining waste, or any other priority.”
The issue of cost was discussed, with participants pointing out that waste is more expensive to collect in urban areas than in rural areas, but the cost of power is higher in urban areas, so if the aim is to generate power through waste management (for example, by producing fuel pellets), there is more opportunity to do so in urban areas.
Nikolai Kolychev, a member of the board of directors at Spetstrans Avtopark No. 1, which is responsible for the city’s waste disposal, gave a presentation on the subject of waste management.
One of the most difficult tasks in the issue of recycling in Russia is the attitude of ordinary people. Recycling is far from widespread in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities, with few facilities or programs. For most people, it is simply not a priority. The question was raised at the conference of how to change the culture and ingrain the habit of recycling in the population.
“People react well to the program we have,” said Kolychev. “But we need more recycling containers.”
Pataki advised focusing on educational programs in schools, to instill in children the importance of recycling from an early age. But educational programs alone are not enough, he added.
“There must be a law,” he said. “Introduce fines, and you will find they are very effective.”
Existing fines are often too small to deter companies from violating environmental legislation.
“Russian legislation does not provide measures of liability appropriate to the environmental offences,” said Roman Volynsky, head of environment, health and safety for Russia at Mannheimer Swartling law firm in St. Petersburg.
“The maximum penalty for most environmental offences rarely exceeds 10,000 euros ($13,500). So in practice, many prefer to violate rather than follow the regulations. Unfortunately, economy still prevails over legality and social responsibility,” he said.
The law itself is part of the problem in environmental issues.
“The major weakness of the environmental legislation is its groundless complicity and over-administration,” said Volynsky. “It provokes businesses to violate the law, and the state authorities to abuse their powers.”
Improving Russia’s environmental laws would necessitate the involvement of the state authorities, legal community, technicians and business community, he said. It would also require the adaptation of Soviet-era technical standards to the real needs of the modern world and competitive market, he said.
“It is obvious that the competent development of legislation and lobbying will serve as a compromise between the state authorities and the interests of the business community,” he said.
Local legislation regarding waste disposal is far from perfect, said Volynsky.
“It follows federal legislation, and sometimes has the same defects and loopholes,” he said. “I would say that we have clear laws governing waste disposal neither at a federal level, nor at the local level,” he said.
TITLE: The Great Gogol Is Alive and Relevant at Age of 200
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Kiselyov
TEXT: Last Wednesday was the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol’s birth. One hundred fifty-seven years have passed since his death. Yet at times, it seems that there is no author in Russian who is more modern than Gogol. This is not because Gogol’s works are timeless. It is because Russia has not changed. The same foolish customs Gogol poked fun at then are still with us now. As he wrote in the last lines of the first volume of his book “Dead Souls,” Russia is heading somewhere, but nobody knows where, and is “overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give you way!”
It’s a shame that fewer Westerners are less familiar with Gogol than with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, but the reason is clear enough — Gogol is more difficult to translate, his images and flights of fancy are at times too phantasmagorical for a person with a rational European mindset. Take, for example, the story in which a man’s own nose runs away from him, and when it meets up with him later it is wearing a general’s uniform. The nose reminds the man that he is only a mayor, and as such, he could have nothing in common with a general. If Western politicians and political analysts had read this and other stories by Gogol, they would have a better understanding of what is happening in Russia now.
“The Nose,” “The Overcoat,” “Dead Souls,” “The Inspector” — open any of Gogol’s books and you will be confronted with the same thing that we see in today’s Russia: corruption, abuses of power by the police and the courts, lies and mutual deceit. Ordinary citizens are browbeaten, intimidated, humiliated and deprived of their rights. The petty officer’s widow who flogged herself. The judge who accepts greyhound puppies as a bribe. The merchants who complain about the city chief who takes larger bribes than are justified by his rank while they themselves hand out gifts to the authorities to whom they appeal for aid.
That bureaucracy has become so inefficient that the country’s leaders no longer trust it to manage the state’s key assets or to direct its top-priority projects — from nanotechnology to preparing for the Olympic Games in Sochi. This is precisely the reason behind the creation of the notorious state corporations such as Olimpstroi, Rosatom, Rosnano and many others. They are essentially beyond the jurisdiction of the government. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin installed people whom he personally trusts to head those corporations, people such as Igor Sechin, Anatoly Chubais, Sergei Kiriyenko, Dmitry Kozak, Sergei Ivanov and others. They were given a free hand, enormous resources and high salaries. To guarantee their success, they answer with their heads before Putin. That is approximately the same system Soviet leader Josef Stalin used when he had to create an atomic bomb and that Nikita Khrushchev employed to launch a rocket into space. The one difference, of course, is that those who failed Stalin answered with their freedom or their lives, and those who fail Putin face only a dishonorable dismissal from their posts. But in the end, the whole system is held together by fear — not of losing one’s life perhaps but of missing out on a very lucrative career.
Gogol’s inspired comedy, “The Inspector,” also deals with the theme of fear as a driving force in Russian history. It is the story of a bumbling fool who stumbles into a small town in which the corrupt officials mistakenly believe him to be a high-ranking inspector from St. Petersburg and proceed to lavish him with obsequious bribes and compliments to conceal their various wrongdoings. They ultimately end up humiliated by their own duplicity. It is a classic illustration of how fear can work miracles in Russia. These cunning old birds who are normally too smart to fool anticipate being called on the carpet for their guilty ways and experience such fear before the supposed official from St. Petersburg that they lose their ability to calmly and dispassionately gauge the situation.
In Russia, there is only one person who occasionally feels no fear and who is unafraid to shoulder responsibility — the supreme leader. It was Tsar Nicholas I who, against the advice of government censors, personally gave permission for “The Inspector” to be staged in 1836. He attended the premiere, clapped and laughed frequently during the performance and upon leaving his box seat remarked, “What a play! Everybody got what they deserved — and me most of all!”
Tsar Nicholas was smart. He understood that the public needs to occasionally express its dissatisfaction by, as Gogol said, “gathering all the stupid aspects of Russia into one pile and laughing at all of them at once.” However, even realizing that fact and a few others besides, Nicholas I did not want to change the rigid power vertical he had created. Nicholas felt that if he were to take one serious step toward liberal reforms, the whole edifice of the Russian empire would collapse.
The same logic seems to be motivating Russia’s current leaders who strongly oppose even the slightest loosening of the iron grip they hold over the political and social life of the country. This is because the present authorities — along with Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev — witnessed the Soviet collapse with their own eyes. What’s more, Putin referred to that event as the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” and a result of the erosion of the communist regime, a process initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. And perestroika began with greater press freedoms and a loosening of restrictions on elections for deputies in a few major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. That is why our current authorities are so adamant about maintaining control over all elections and television broadcasting.
However, because there is no normal feedback mechanism between the authorities and society, including the dialogue that would normally exist through television, leaders are in no position to properly evaluate what is actually happening in the country and how the authorities really appear in the eyes of voters. That type of television programming existed when Putin first took office as president, but the new administration did not like the way it was being portrayed, so they torpedoed the whole thing. All TV stations were either subjected to state control or eliminated. Apparently, the people in authority hadn’t read Gogol in many years and had forgotten the epigraph to “The Inspector”: “The looking glass is not to blame if your own face is plain.” But sooner or later, the authorities will need a mirror — that is, independent television — whether they want one or not. What’s more, they will have to make a place for all the rest of the full-fledged democratic institutions and procedures such as free elections, an independent judiciary, the division of authority and equal rights for all political parties. That might not happen soon, but it will probably be sooner than Gogol’s next major anniversary.
Yevgeny Kiselyov is a political analyst and hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Less Rhetoric, More Pragmatism in London
AUTHOR: By Fyodor Lukyanov
TEXT: The promise by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration to “press the reset button” in its relations with Russia holds promise for rapid progress in the near future as well as for dealing with serious problems down the line.
By the end of President George W. Bush’s last term in office, the level of mutual trust between Russia and the United States had fallen to a 30-year low. The meaningful communication needed for at least a modicum of mutual understanding had all but stopped between Moscow and Washington. The barbs they traded over the Russia-Georgia war in August demonstrated that a continuation of this state of affairs had the potential to escalate the verbal volley with Washington into an armed conflict.
Washington’s restrained reaction to the announcement that Bishkek would cancel the lease on the U.S. military base in Manas was a sign that the Obama administration was taking a different approach to foreign policy. It isn’t difficult to imagine what an uproar the same decision would have elicited from former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. We now hear far fewer of the unequivocal pronouncements about democracy and human rights that characterized the former occupants of the White House and State Department. It would seem that, in addition to pushing the “reset button,” Obama has decided to turn down the volume as well.
Russia’s anti-U.S. rhetoric has also decreased. Whatever residual criticisms we still hear are directed primarily at the back of the outgoing administration. It is worth noting that from the Kremlin’s point of view, Washington should take the first step to improve relations because U.S. policies led relations to break down in the first place. So far, Russia seems to be satisfied with the quantity and quality of the signals that it is receiving from the Obama administration.
The meeting in London has shown that both parties understand that by starting discussions on issues where their interests either overlap or are at least compatible, progress is more likely. That is why, at the first stage, talks have begun on strategic nuclear weapons and Afghanistan.
It is possible to reach a mutually acceptable decision on the reduction of strategic armaments. Some level of reductions would be advantageous for all concerned. First, it would give both sides the opportunity to eliminate unnecessary surpluses. Second, it would become the first success for Moscow and Washington in many years and the world as a whole would reap the benefits. Last, negotiations on strategic arms is the only area in which Russia enjoys parity with the United States, and that is an important psychological factor for Moscow. It would also be entirely logical for the two countries to reach an agreement on the transit of U.S. military supplies through Russian territory into Afghanistan. Both sides agree in principle on Afghanistan, and none of the leading world players — including Iran — wants to see a return of Taliban rule there. At the same time, such an agreement would not require any extra effort from Russia. Nobody is asking Russia to send in its troops, and it might even be advantageous for Moscow to play a supporting role. The long-term situation in Afghanistan remains uncertain because the goal of the coalition forces there is unclear. Obama’s directives vary, but it seems that the current steps are a prelude to a large, decisive withdrawal of coalition forces in the future. Russia will face new problems with Afghanistan once the coalition leaves, but that is a question for the future.
And that is the point where the easy part ends: The remaining questions on the agenda are fraught with potential conflicts.
The question of joint protection against nuclear attack is very delicate. It will be discussed last, and only if the level of trust significantly improves. Resolving that issue should be a crowning achievement, not a starting point, in the process of “resetting” U.S.-Russian relations.
The situation regarding Iran is extremely complex. Moscow and Washington have different understandings of the threat that Iran poses and the nature of its ruling regime. Both the United States and Israel suspect Tehran of being irrational and religiously fanatical. Russia is less concerned about Iran’s bombs and missiles and probably pays more attention to Tehran’s calculated efforts to earn the status of a regional power. No matter what happens, Iran, not the United States, will remain an important neighbor to Russia, and for that reason, Moscow wants to seize the opportunity to establish relations with Tehran that will pay dividends — in both commercial and geopolitical terms.
But this is not the main problem. It is probably impossible to halt Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy alone. (Theoretically, it is possible to imagine a sharp turnabout in U.S. policy along the lines of its reconciliation with China in the early 1970s. But the likelihood of this change is not great, because theocratic regimes make much more difficult partners than do communist regimes.) The United States considers a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat, inasmuch as it would lead to a breakdown in efforts to ensure the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This means that Obama, even more than Bush, will be forced to consider the military option as a means for containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. That would create a new situation with unpredictable consequences for Russia.
Finally, there is almost no hope for compromise regarding the former Soviet republics. Washington will never recognize these territories as Russia’s rightful sphere of influence because it contradicts the spirit of U.S. policy. At the same time, Moscow will never step down from its claims over those territories. From Moscow’s point of view, if Russia does not obtain special status throughout the republics of the former Soviet Union, it will be powerless to protect its vital security and economic interests as a result.
Even so, we can expect some improvement in U.S.-Russian relations. Obama has shown far less interest than Bush in bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and in deploying elements of U.S. missile defense batteries in Central Europe. These questions remain on the agenda, but they have been bumped from the top of the list. Washington is trying to “sell” that as a concession to Moscow and as a deal for some period in order to clear the path in other areas.
There is, however, a complicating factor — namely, the asymmetry of their relationship. The United States is far more important to Russia than the other way around. Here, the Obama administration must be given credit for behaving tactfully and for trying to emphasize Moscow’s importance in every possible way. But an objective imbalance exists.
On the positive side, the new Russian and U.S. presidents give the impression of being pragmatists trying to find a reasonable way to cope with the burdensome heritage of the previous years. Their predecessors were unable to manage it; too many high hopes turned into deep disappointments, and personal relations took precedence over relations between states. The first meeting between Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in London offers hope that now common sense and cooler heads will prevail.
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.
TITLE: The Wrong Weapons
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: Iran is the Cuba of the Middle East. Long ostracized and under sanctions, both are ripe for change. We will probably see breakthroughs with Cuba and Iran in U.S. President Barack Obama’s first term. Cuba will be easier, but Iran is more important to U.S. goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With few exceptions, the world agrees that it is not desirable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. One of those few exceptions is, of course, Iran itself.
But maybe once again we’re worrying about the wrong weapons. Of more immediate significance are the S-300s that Iran has been trying to buy from Russia for the last two years. The S-300s are advanced and accurate surface-to-air missiles that operate from mobile launchers and can simultaneously track up to 100 targets while engaging 12 at a range of up to 200 kilometers and a height of up to 27 kilometers. They defend against aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles and could therefore hamper or cripple an Israeli airstrike like those the Jewish state made against nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria. Though important Iranian nuclear facilities may be scattered around the country and underground, those on the surface will have to be protected too. The Israelis feel threatened by the impending sale of the S-300s, and word that it had finally gone through could speed up any Israeli pre-emptive strike plans.
But the Russians don’t seem to be in any hurry to close this nearly $1 billion sale. Why not? Russia may not want to alienate Israel and Turkey, with whom bilateral trade is much higher than with Iran. Some argue that the delays indicate discord within the Russian government or between Iran and Russia. Others contend that Russia has been waiting to use the S-300s as a bargaining chip in dealing with the new U.S. administration. If so, that should be clear soon enough.
But something else is involved. Just as ambiguity about its nuclear intentions and achievements serves Iran’s purposes, so does an ambivalent attitude toward Iran serve Russia’s. Moscow does not want Iran’s pariah status to end. An Iran that deals openly with Europe and the United States can be the key to a significant, long-term weakening of Russia.
If Western Europe wants to reduce its dependence on Russian gas and oil, Iran is the best alternative route in from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia as well as being a significant gas source itself. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself has said that a Western pipeline like the proposed Nabucco is unthinkable without Iranian gas.
Iran’s eastern border is with Pakistan and Afghanistan, the two countries that American foreign policy will be bound up with for years to come. Because the Russians effectively bribed the Kyrgyz government to close the only U.S. airbase in Central Asia, the United States is now forced to ship material across Russia. For Moscow, this is a source of income, prestige and, ultimately, power over the American war effort. Once again, Iran is, at least physically, a better alternative route. Moscow may finally allow the sale of the S-300s to go through if a deal for rapprochement between Iran and the West seemed imminent. That would spoil the deal. And then Iran’s acquisition of an advanced missile system would suggest other analogies with Cuba.
Richard Lourie is the author of “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin” and “Sakharov: A Biography.”
TITLE: Murray Beats Djokovic to Take Miami Masters
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MIAMI — Andy Murray beat Serbia’s Novak Djokovic 6-2, 7-5 to win the Miami Masters and clinch his third title of the year.
The world number four wrapped up victory after reeling off the last five games of the second set having seen Djokovic, the world number three, throw away his chance to level the final.
The Serbian, the champion here in 2007, had served for the second set leading 5-3, but a fifth double fault disrupted his fightback and his game quickly fell apart.
Murray, the first three-time winner on the ATP Tour in 2009, also made further inroads on Djokovic’s world number three ranking with only 170 points now separating them.
The 21-year-old Scot dominated Djokovic for most of the match as the Serbian fell prey to a total of 43 unforced errors.
Djokovic called for the trainer early in the second set and Murray’s level subsequently dipped slightly, although the Scot said it wasn’t necessarily due to any distraction.
“If you look at the next game or so, he started rushing me,” Murray said. “He started coming forward more, and he hadn’t been doing that.
“He went for broke a little bit and tried to shorten the points. He hit the ball well. I struggled a little bit, but it wasn’t just because of the timeout he took.”
Djokovic broke Murray twice to win four games in a row, then the Scot won a marathon game to hold for 2-4 and regained the momentum.
Overall, Murray kept Djokovic off-balance with his variety of pace and direction and thwarted his attempts to come to the net with precise passing.
Murray’s day included two second-serve aces, including one 76 mile per hour ace that flummoxed Djokovic.
“The majority of players now play so well from the baseline and both sides, that if you can use some slice and drop shots, some high balls and stuff, it just takes them out of their comfort zone,” Murray said.
“It’s my way of dictating how the match is getting played. A lot of people might not necessarily think my game looks the most aggressive or offensive, but very few times will I not have the points played how I like them to be played.”
Murray said he also believed he had benefitted from his improved fitness. He has an apartment in the area and did pre-season fitness training here.
“I think mentally it makes a difference,” he said.
“Even if you’re struggling, you know your opponent is going to be feeling the same. Whereas before, sometimes you could get tired and look over at the other side and your opponent seems fine.
“A match like today - it was hot out there. A few long rallies and I would be a little bit out of breath. I could look down the court and see him struggling as well.”
Murray, the first British finalist here for 25 years, took victory when Djokovic went long with a lame volley after an hour and 42 minutes on court.
The 21-year-old Scotsman, who had raced through the first set with two breaks taking him to a 4-0 lead, has now won three Masters titles. He was the champion in Cincinnati and Madrid in 2008.
“I think any time you win a tournament, obviously it gives you confidence,” said Murray, who had also reached the final of the Masters event at Indian Wells in March.
“The Masters Series have always been, after the Slams, tough tournaments to win.”
Murray said the clay-court season will be the key to rising in the rankings.
“I want to try and improve it,” he said.
“I think the clay court season will be very important for me. On the hardcourts, I think my game is up there with the top guys. On grass it definitely got better last year.
“But on clay, it hasn’t been the same as them, and that’s where they have picked up a lot of the points. If you got rid of the claycourt season’s points, I think I would be very close to Roger, and not too far behind Rafa.”
TITLE: Powerful Quake Hits Italy, Kills at Least 90
AUTHOR: By Marta Falconi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: L’AQUILA, Italy — A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings early Monday as residents slept, killing at least 90 people and trapping many more, officials said. Thousands were homeless.
The earthquake’s epicenter was about 110 kilometers northeast of Rome near the medieval city of L’Aquila. It struck at 3:32 a.m. local time in a quake-prone region that has had at least nine smaller jolts since the beginning of April. The U.S. Geological Survey said Monday’s quake was magnitude 6.3, but Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics put it at 5.8.
Interior Minister Roberto Moroni, arriving in L’Aquila hours after the quake, said 90 people had been killed.
Officials said the death toll was likely to rise as rescue crews clawed through the debris of fallen homes.
L’Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said some 100,000 people had left their homes and that many buildings in the city’s historic center were damaged. Slabs of walls, twisted steel supports, furniture and wire fences were strewn about the streets and a gray dust carpeted sidewalks, cars and residents.
As ambulances screamed through the city, firefighters aided by dogs worked feverishly to reach people trapped in fallen buildings, including a student dormitory where half a dozen university students were believed still inside.
Outside the half-collapsed dorm, tearful young people huddled together, wrapped in blankets, some still in their slippers after being roused from sleep by the quake.
“We managed to come down with other students but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down,” said student Luigi Alfonsi, 22. “I was in bed — it was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me.”
The town of Castelnuovo also appeared hard hit, with five confirmed dead there.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up federal funds to deal with the disaster. He canceled a visit to Russia and planned to go to L’Aquila to deal with the crisis.
Residents and rescue workers hauled away debris from collapsed buildings by hand.
Firefighters pulled a woman covered in dust from the debris of her four-story home. Rescue crews demanded quiet as they listened for signs of life from other people believed still trapped inside.
Parts of L’Aquila’s main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, forcing the wounded to be treated in the open air or taken elsewhere.
Bloodied victims waited to be tended to in hospital hallways or outside in the hospital courtyard. Only two operating rooms were working. Civil protection crews were erecting a field hospital to deal with the influx of wounded.
On the city’s dusty streets, as aftershocks continued to rumble through, residents hugged one another, prayed quietly or frantically tried to call relatives. Residents covered in dust pushed carts full of clothes and blankets that they had hastily packed before fleeing their homes.
“We left as soon as we felt the first tremors,” said Antonio D’Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L’Aquila with a huge suitcase piled with clothes he had thrown together. “We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pajamas.”
Agostino Miozzo, an official with the Civil Protection Department, said between 10,000 and 15,000 buildings were damaged. He said stadiums and sporting fields were being readied to house the homeless.
“This means that the we’ll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months,” Miozzo told Sky Italia. “Our goal is to give shelter to all by tonight.”
ANSA said the dome of a church in L’Aquila collapsed, while the city’s cathedral also suffered damage.
The Israeli Embassy in Rome said that officials were trying to make contact with a few Israeli citizens believed to be in the region who had not been in touch with their families. Embassy spokeswoman Rachel Feinmesser did not give an exact number.
L’Aquila lies in a valley surrounded by the Apennine mountains. It is the regional capital of the Abruzzo region, with about 70,000 inhabitants.
The last major quake to hit central Italy was a 5.4-magnitude temblor that struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.
TITLE: Briscoe
Victorious In Honda Grand Prix
AUTHOR: By Mike Harris
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG, Florida — Ryan Briscoe was thinking about settling for a second-place finish when he suddenly saw an opportunity ahead of him on the track.
Getting ready for a restart with just 14 laps remaining, Justin Wilson, who had led more than half of Sunday’s season-opening Honda Grand Prix inexplicably slowed just enough to give Briscoe a run.
“I was a bit surprised,” Briscoe said. “Justin had been doing great restarts, and it looked like he changed his strategy. He was normally accelerating right at the entrance of the far chicane, really going deep into the last corner and then it was difficult to stay close.
“I didn’t want to take a big chance and throw away points. But, this time, he just let me stay close up until the last corner.”
When the green flag waved, Briscoe got a very quick start, driving to the inside of Wilson and easily slipping past as they drove into the first corner on the 14-turn temporary road circuit in downtown St. Petersburg.
Briscoe stayed out front the rest of the way and Roger Penske has apparently found his new team leader.
With the future of longtime Team Penske star Helio Castroneves in doubt as he stands trial on federal tax evasion charges, and replacement Will Power new to the team, Penske has placed some added responsibility on the slim shoulders of 27-year-old Briscoe.
Briscoe, starting his second year with Penske, responded Sunday with his third career IndyCar victory.
“It’s certainly been tough not having Helio, but no matter who my teammate is going into this year, my approach was the same,” Briscoe said. “I wanted to come in carrying off the experience I gained last year and try to kick the season off gaining points and trying to go for this championship.”
Ryan Hunter-Reay also got past Wilson on that same restart, but Briscoe was able to hold him off to the end, despite the challenger being on the new, softer alternate tires.
There was one last restart, but Briscoe was able to fend off a strong move by Hunter-Reay, who only got his ride with Vision Racing seven days earlier.
Leadership aside, Briscoe was relieved to finish the 100-lap event after crashing out here in his two previous starts — the first with Target Chip Ganassi Racing in 2005 and then last year with Penske.
“Finally,” Briscoe said as he emerged from his No. 6 Dallara-Honda. “This place has been bad to me. It feels so good to finally get to the end of this race.
“And it’s great to start off the year like this.”
Hunter-Reay lost his ride with Rahal Letterman Racing at the end of last season when the team lost its sponsorship and was signed for 2009 at the last minute by the team owned by Indy Racing League founder Tony George.
TITLE: Experts Cautious Over Missile Results
AUTHOR: By Jae-Soon Chang
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s rocket may have fallen into the sea, but military experts cautioned Monday against calling it a complete failure, noting that it traveled twice as far as any missile the country has launched.
Although the distance was still far short of showing North Korea could reach U.S. territory, it rattled the North’s neighbors and countries around the globe, with the U.S. and its allies pushing for quick punishment at an emergency UN Security Council meeting held hours after liftoff.
The launch, which demonstrated progress, is a particularly worrying development for a belligerent country that says it has nuclear weapons and once threatened to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire.”
President Barack Obama, faced with his first global security crisis, called for an international response and condemned North Korea for threatening the peace and stability of nations “near and far” with what Pyongyang claimed was a satellite launch and its neighbors suspect was a test of a long-range missile technology.
“North Korea broke the rules, once again, by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles,” Obama said in Prague. “This provocation underscores the need for action, not just ... in the UN Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.”
Council members met for three hours Sunday but failed to release even a customary preliminary statement of condemnation — evidence of the challenges in agreeing on some kind of punishment. China, the North’s closest ally, and Russia hold veto power and could water down any response.
Diplomats privy to the closed-door talks say China, Russia, Libya and Vietnam were concerned about further alienating and destabilizing North Korea.
“Our position is that all countries concerned should show restraint and refrain from taking actions that might lead to increased tensions,” Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui said after the talks.
Analysts say sanctions imposed after the North’s underground nuclear test in 2006 appear to have had little effect because some countries showed no will to impose them. Those sanctions bar the North from ballistic missile activity. Pyongyang claims it was exercising its right to peaceful space development.
Despite analyst caution that sanctions don’t appear to work, Japan plans to extend its economic sanctions on the North for another year. The measures, among other things, prohibit Japanese companies from buying North Korean exports.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il personally observed the launch, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency reported Monday, saying he expressed “great satisfaction” that North Korea’s scientists “successfully launched the satellite with their own wisdom and technology.”
Pyongyang says it launched a communications satellite into orbit that is now transmitting data and patriotic songs.
TITLE: Police: Dad Killed Kids Because Wife Was Leaving
AUTHOR: By Phuong Le
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GRAHAM, Washington — Authorities and relatives portrayed a father believed to have killed his five children and then himself as a strict parent who had been reprimanded by the state and a jealous husband driven to rage by another man.
The children, aged 7 to 16, were found shot to death Saturday in the family’s mobile home in Graham, 15 miles southeast of Tacoma. The father, James Harrison, was found earlier in the day, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot behind the wheel of his idling car 18 miles away in Auburn, about 30 miles south of Seattle.
The night before, the father and his eldest daughter went in search of the wife, Angela Harrison. The daughter used a GPS feature in her mother’s cell phone to find her with another man at a convenience store in Auburn, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff.
The woman told her husband she was not coming home, and was leaving him for the man with her at the store. The father and the daughter left, distraught, Troyer said. Sometime after the children went to sleep, he shot them each multiple times.
Four died in their beds. The fifth was found in the mobile home’s bathroom, surrounded by signs of violent struggle.
“He wanted the kids dead,” Troyer said. “It wasn’t like he shot a few rounds. He shot several rounds.”
Investigators believe he then returned to the area near the convenience store looking for his wife. His body was found near the store, Troyer said.
“A working theory is that he probably went back up there looking for her, wasn’t able to find her, realized the gravity of what he’d done and shot himself,” Troyer said.
Several weapons were found in the home.
Authorities have not released the names of the family, relatives identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison and the children as Maxine, Samantha, Heather, Jamie and James.
Candy Johnson, Angela Harrison’s aunt, described James Harrison as a strict, controlling husband and father who didn’t allow his wife to make any decisions without asking him first.
“My niece has been so controlled from the time she was young,” Johnson said, adding that James Harrison had impregnated Angela when she was 13.
“It’s unbelievable,” Johnson said. “My whole family is in shock. How does this happen? How does anyone do that?”
The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, said another of Angela Harrison’s aunts, Penny Flansburg. Troyer, however, said he worked as a security guard at a casino.
Ron Vorak, who lives across the street from the family’s trailer at the Deer Run mobile home park, said James Harrison “wasn’t too friendly a person.”
“He was always hollering at the kids. He seemed to be strict with them.”
Harrison was put on a parenting plan by state child welfare officials in 2007 after what Troyer describes as a “minor assault” on one of the children. He agreed to the plan and the case was closed, Troyer said.
Ryan Peden, daughter Maxine’s classmate, had said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden.
“Maxine texted me at 11 p.m. Friday. She said: “I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed.’”‘ His text to her the next day went unanswered.
Outside the mobile home, neighbors left cards and bouquets of flowers. The yellow crime-scene tape and dozens of investigators who responded to the scene on Saturday were gone. The home’s front yard was littered with unused bicycles, a swing set, a trampoline and a basketball hoop.
TITLE: Case Scores PGA Win at Shell Houston Open
AUTHOR: By Chris Duncan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HUMBLE, Texas — Paul Casey has three top-11 finishes in four career starts at the Masters. He’s heading there this year believing he’s one of the favorites.
Casey won the Shell Houston Open on Sunday for his first PGA Tour victory, beating J.B. Holmes with a bogey on the first playoff hole. The 31-year-old Englishman has nine international victories since 2001, but had never won in the United States. The victory boosted Casey from No. 12 to No. 6 in the world rankings, a career high.
Casey was in contention at Augusta last year before a double-bogey on the 4th hole in the final round. Two holes later, he called a penalty on himself for his ball moving a fraction of an inch and closed with a 79.
He’s returning to Augusta with a healthy mindset, and without the bad memories from last year.
“I don’t feel like I’ve got something to prove and I’ve got to go back and rid the demons on Monday, or something like that,” he said. “It will be the Masters 2009 and it’s a new tournament. I can’t step on the first tee with any sort of dash and any thoughts of last year.”
Holmes needed a win to join the field at Augusta, and is the only player from last year’s Ryder Cup who failed to qualify.
“It’s my favorite major,” Holmes said. “That hurts a little bit but, you know, I’ve had many chances and just didn’t pull them off.”
Casey bogeyed the 18th hole in regulation to complete a 72 and tie Holmes at 11 under par. Holmes wrapped up a 69 almost three hours before Casey finished.
The players met on the tee of the 488-yard 18th hole, the most difficult of the tournament with an average score of 4.336.
Holmes hooked his tee shot into the pond that lines the hole, admitting that the long wait threw him off.
“It was rough,” Holmes said. “I posted that three hours before they were done. That was an advantage I thought I had, but when you get into a playoff after waiting three hours, it turns out to be a bit of a disadvantage. I hit a bad shot and didn’t deserve to win.”
Casey then drove into the fairway bunker on the right side and hit a safe layup to the front of the green. Holmes reached the green with his fourth shot, then missed a long bogey putt. Casey two-putted from 27 feet to secure the win.
And now, onto the Masters.
“It’s time to start believing I can be a top 10 player in the world and maybe I can be in the top five,” Casey said. “We’ll see when we get there. Clearly, I just took a little while to sort of get used to things and feel comfortable. Now, I feel comfortable out here.”
Fred Couples, seeking his first victory since winning the 2003 Houston Open, led for most of the final round before bogeys on his final three holes left him at 9 under, tied with Henrik Stenson and Nick O’Hern in third place.
Couples and Casey were among six players tied at 11 under when the third round ended Sunday morning. Tour officials said it was the largest logjam at the top after 54 holes since at least 1970, when the statistic was first kept. Bo Van Pelt, Colt Knost and Ryan Moore were also part of the tie, but none of them broke par under the windy conditions on Sunday.
Couples birdied the par-5 fourth hole to take the outright lead at 12 under.
Holmes sank birdie putts on the first three holes on the back nine before a bogey on No. 14. He reached the par-5 15th in two and two-putted to move to 11 under.
“I never thought I was out of it,” said Holmes. “It just takes a couple of birdies.”
TITLE: Real Madrid
Prepare to Sign Kaka For 60
Million Euros
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MADRID — Florentino Perez, the favourite to win June elections for Real Madrid president, has reached an agreement with AC Milan to sign Brazilian star Kaka, a newspaper reported Monday.
Real will pay 60 million euros (80 million dollars) for the midfielder under the accord Perez reached during a meeting with AC Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani on March 16, sports daily Marca reported.
But possible offers from Chelsea and Manchester City, who are both interested in the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year, could complicate the Brazilian international’s transfer to Real, the newspaper added.
Perez is also interested in signing Spanish international midfielders Xabi Alonso, 27, from Liverpool and Cesc Fabregas, 21, from Arsenal, it said.
TITLE: 21 Die in Baghdad Bombing Attacks
AUTHOR: By Hamid Ahmed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — A string of deadly bombings in Baghdad killed 21 people and wounded at least 64 others Monday, as the U.S. military reported its first combat death in Iraq in about three weeks.
The deadliest attack occurred in the Shiite slum of Sadr City when a parked car bomb exploded in a market, killing 10 people, including three women and four children, and wounding at least 28 others, said Iraqi police and medical officials.
A total of four bomb attacks struck the city over a two-hour period, primarily in Shiite neighborhoods where people were either shopping or looking for work.
The first attack occurred at 7:30 a.m. when a car bomb exploded in the center of the capital, killing at least six people and wounding 16, said an Iraqi police official, who described them as mostly day laborers looking for work.
Salim Mutar, 18, a laborer wounded at the blast site, described a large fireball rising into the air.
“It shook the area,” said Mutar, who was hit in the arm by flying shrapnel. “I was so lucky.”