SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1530 (92), Friday, November 27, 2009
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Man Dies Following Police
Beating
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A man died after being detained by police in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Thursday. The case is the latest in a recent wave of violent incidents involving police officers.
According to a statement from the police, a police officer used his foot to “push away” the man, who was allegedly drunk, in the process of detaining him on Nov. 2 because the man “leaned” on the officer.
The following day, the man was taken to the city’s Mariinsky Hospital, where he died of a burst bladder on Nov. 12. A police officer was detained on suspicion of injuring the man on Tuesday.
The case is one in a string of violent incidents involving policemen, the most recent of which was reported on Tuesday (see page 15), when three Moscow police officers were detained after beating a man to death in Moscow. They were reported to have been drunk when they assaulted the man.
The year’s most infamous incident happened in April when Major Denis Yevsyukov went on a shooting rampage, killing two people and injuring seven in a Moscow supermarket. He was also reported to have been drunk.
Maxim Reznik, the leader of the local branch of the Yabloko Democratic Party, said such incidents were no longer news in Russia.
“Sadly, the collective image of the Russian police today is not Uncle Styopa [an idealized Soviet policeman from a children’s poem by the late Sergei Mikhalkov], but the infamous Major Yevsyukov,” Reznik said by phone on Thursday.
Reznik said that the Russian police force’s two main problems are involvement in politics and corruption.
“The police feel that they don’t serve the people, but the corrupt bureaucrats — and people treat the police with contempt and fear,” he said.
“Feeling their necessity and impunity, [the police] themselves plunge into corruption and have become a repressive body. Some officers from Precinct 76 were detained in St. Petersburg recently for extorting 25 million rubles ($860,000). I’m not surprised that it was Precinct 76, because that’s where representatives of oppositional organizations were taken many times. “
Although there has been much discussion lately about the necessity of police reform, Reznik said the police could not be reformed without changing the way authority is structured in Russia.
“It’s impossible to think that we’ll change the bad policemen for the good ones now, and everything will change,” he said.
“There are good and bad people everywhere, but the system should be built in such a way that it helps the good ones, and doesn’t show indulgence toward the bad ones. There are good policemen even now, but it’s simply not their time.
“The police should be under very serious control from an independent parliament, which doesn’t exist; from an independent media, which is mostly under the control of the bureaucracy; and, of course, from an independent court system.
“An independent parliament, media and court system — all of this is called ‘democracy;’ there’s no other word for it.”
TITLE: Web Gains in Importance After Dymovsky
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: After a provincial policeman’s YouTube appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about corruption and unbearable working conditions became an Internet sensation earlier this month, officials all over the country have begun posting their grievances online.
Alexei Dymovsky, a ham-fisted yet convincingly earnest police major from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, garnered well above a million clicks for his videos on YouTube alone, prompting even pro-Kremlin politicians like State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov to demand an inquiry into his claims.
Local police quickly sacked Dymovsky for slander and unleashed a torrent of allegations about his personal and professional conduct.
The phenomenon has given whistle-blowers a cheap and potentially influential platform to air their complaints, which otherwise might miss a national audience. But media freedom campaigners are concerned that the attention could lead to more zealous monitoring — and ultimately greater restrictions on the country’s freest source of information and opinion.
Users have been particularly alarmed as Yandex, the country’s top search portal, agreed to drop a list of most-discussed blog topics, which frequently featured opposition or nationalist political posts. The state has also been taking a bigger interest in the company, which it calls strategic.
In September, Yandex said it was selling Sberbank a golden share for a nominal 1 euro, giving the state-controlled bank a veto over the sale of a blocking 25 percent stake.
And while Yandex’s concessions have been minor and apparently voluntary, Internet users fear that they could lead to restrictions like those in China, where access to pro-democracy and foreign news web sites is severely limited.
“The state has long wanted to restrict the Internet, and this desire has only grown after Major Dymovsky’s actions,” human rights campaigner Lev Ponomaryov told The St. Petersburg Times.
He said the number of Internet users in the country was bound to rise, and with them, the web’s significance as a source of information. “The numbers are going to go up, up, up,” he said.
Marketing company comScore estimated in May that Russia had an Internet audience of 32 million — almost double that of a year earlier. While this amounts to more than 22 percent of the country’s roughly 140 million population, it is far less than the more than 50 percent common in Western Europe and 75 percent in North America.
By contrast, numerous surveys have shown that the vast majority of Russians use television as their main source for news, and that people spend an average of five to 14 hours a day with TV sets switched on.
During Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the country’s television networks and much of the print media came under state control, which has continued under President Dmitry Medvedev.
Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders ranked Russia 153rd out of 175 countries in its World Press Freedom index.
With television an increasingly dull place, political debate has shifted to the Internet, where LiveJournal has become the key political forum. But law enforcement authorities say they monitor social web sites, as well, for illegal and opposition activity.
“Not to use their potential would be irrational,” Moscow city police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told Politonline.ru earlier this month. “[Opposition activists] continued tweeting even after being detained in police busses. We follow what they write and what they plan,” Biryukov said, referring to the Twitter microblogging service.
Human rights campaigners have expressed concern that Internet providers are freely passing user data to security agencies.
“We’re looking into two tiers of concerns: technological restrictions like in China and the transmission of private information [to the Federal Security Service] without court orders,” said Alison Gill, the Moscow head of Human Rights Watch.
So far, there have been no signs of Chinese-style censorship, which some attribute to Medvedev’s vocal support for Internet users.
“The fact that Medvedev is an active supporter of Internet use is a guarantee that no censorship will be introduced,” said Andrei Richter, a professor of journalism at Moscow State University.
Medvedev has championed the web as a path for the country’s modernization. He started his own blog and regularly addresses the public through online videos. He also first published his 4,000-word “Go, Russia!” article on the politically independent Gazeta.ru news portal.
Others say a Great Firewall — as the elaborate Chinese system is called — would probably be inefficient.
Alexander Plyushchev, a television and radio host and prominent blogger, said unlike with TV, controlling the Internet to the extent that China does would demand massive technical and human resources. And even then, users might find ways around filters and blocks.
“Internet differs from television because you cannot just tell editors of a few stations what to do,” Plyushchev told The St. Petersburg Times.
He added that the Kremlin was probably aware of this. “Allowing freedom of expression on the Internet might well turn out to be cheaper than suppressing it,” he said.
But the absence of direct restrictions does not mean that all is well for the country’s online journalists.
In 2008, Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the opposition site Ingushetiya.ru, was shot dead in Ingush police custody.
And bloggers have faced a spate of investigations in recent years — some for reporting on politics and corruption, others for potentially inflammatory commentary.
In March, Kemerovo prosecutors charged opposition activist Dmitry Solovyov with hate speech for posting someone else’s comments about law enforcement officials on his blog.
And in July 2008, a court in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi republic, handed blogger Savva Terentyev a one-year suspended sentence for a controversial post that said police officers should be “periodically set on fire” in city squares, “like in Auschwitz.”
Authorities are using extremism and libel laws to intimidate users, said Oleg Panfilov, head of the Institute for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
The easiest regulation for them to use is the one on extremism, thanks to its wide definition, he said. The law, passed in 2007, defines extremism as the “public slander of figures fulfilling state duties,” among other things.
Andrei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, which advocates for press freedom, said current laws give authorities plenty of ways to punish bloggers and online journalists. “Extremism here is defined as any disagreement with the leadership in a more extreme form,” he said.
But Pavel Danilin, editor of Kreml.org and an analyst with the Effective Politics Foundation, a pro-Kremlin think tank, noted that the Russian-language Internet already harbors far more radical content than Dymovsky’s.
He mentioned the muckraking web site Compromat.ru. “They’ve been online for years and nothing has happened. I find it quite funny that now suddenly a maladapted cop’s online appeal raises fears of censorship,” Danilin told The St. Petersburg Times.
He said it was important for security agencies to monitor the web, as was shown by the case of a French nuclear physicist, who in October was arrested after discussing possible terrorist attacks in e-mail exchanges with North African al-Qaida suspects.
TITLE: Summer Gardens Statues to Be Replaced With Copies
AUTHOR: By Maria Kiselyova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Frightening pictures of damage inflicted on the statues from the Summer Gardens by nature and vandalism were shown Tuesday at a press conference organized by the State Russian Museum focusing on the restoration of the sculptures.
The Summer Gardens were closed for restoration this summer, and when they reopen in 2011, all the original 18th-century marble sculptures depicting figures from antiquity will be replaced with copies, while the originals will go on display in the Mikhailovsky Castle. The decision was taken back in 1986, but the final permit from the city authorities was only received in August 2009, after which restoration got underway immediately.
Ivan Karlov, deputy director for storage and restoration at the Russian Museum, said that the sculptures had been badly affected by wind, rain, air pollution and deliberate vandalism for centuries. There is not a single sculpture that has not been partially destroyed or undergone restoration.
Restoration from past centuries could also cause harm to the statues eventually, said Bella Toporkova, head of the group of restorers. For example, in the 18th century, sections of steel were put inside the statues to reinforce them, and now they are getting rusty and can be seen from the surface. Karlov said that the marble on the surface of many of the sculptures has “died,” or turned into limestone.
Tatyana Kozlova, head of the Summer Garden complex, which is part of the Russian Museum, said it was high time to remove the sculptures, because in a few more years they would be ruined completely. Protecting sculptures from the environment is a global process, said Karlov, and the same is being done in the parks of Versailles in France and Sanssouci in Germany.
Restoration work is now being carried out in seven studios on the premises of the Russian Museum. The restorers use a wide range of instruments, from modern laser cleaning machines to toothbrushes and surgical and dental instruments. Almost all of the sculptures are missing noses, fingers or other details.
Restorer Alexei Baruzdin says that if there are no photos of the original sculpture, research work is carried out to decide what a missing part should look like. Art historians search for similar images throughout Europe to find an analogy. After restoration, silicone moulds are created of the sculptures and filled with a mixture of marble crumb and polyether resin. After removing the mould, the statues are steam-cleaned. Karlov says the material is guaranteed to last for 15 years, during which time the sculptures will look perfect. The present copies are expected to stand in the Summer Gardens for the next 50 to 100 years.
The material is exported from Germany and is not cheap, according to Larisa Mukina, the general director of Art Studiya group, which is carrying out the restoration work. Mukina said the materials cost the museum more than the salaries of the mould-makers.
“Afterwards we will have a special place in the studios that will resemble a scene from a horror film,” said Karlov. “The silicone moulds will be stored there to make new copies in the future.”
Storing the moulds will also help to combat vandalism. At present, it is hard to make vandals pay, because the sculptures are priceless and it is difficult to define their precise sum. In future, vandals will have to pay for a new copy of a sculpture to be made using an existing mould. If the culprit is not caught, the copy will be partially replaced.
So far, 61 objects from the Summer Gardens have been restored, and replicas have been made of 20 marble originals. The original sculptures will be exhibited in the Mikhailovsky Castle, which is also a branch of the State Russian Museum. Karlov said that a hall had been found for them overlooking the Summer Gardens.
Kozlova said it was very important that the whole collection of sculptures stays together in one place. Some of the original sculptures will be exhibited in the Russian Museum this summer, added Mukina.
TITLE: Rep for Federation Council Approved
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Federation Council on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to approve United Russia politician Viktor Yevtukhov, a lawmaker with the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, as the senator representing the St. Petersburg government in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. Thirty-one senators supported Yevtukhov, while three parliamentarians voted against him. Two ballot papers were declared invalid.
Yevtukhov will replace Sergei Tarasov, formerly a deputy governor of St. Petersburg, who is leaving to take a key job with state corporation Rosavtodor.
Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council and the leader of A Just Russia party, welcomed the appointment of Yevtukhov to the post, but immediately gave a warning to the ambitious United Russia politician, telling the newly-appointed senator to refrain from promoting his party interests at the council.
Yevtukhov sounded enthusiastic about his new post, promising “to make the interests of the city his top priority.” The new senator was short on specifics, however, and emphasized the importance of networking and building new connections.
Born in St. Petersburg in 1968, Yevtukhov has been a lawmaker of the city parliament since 1998. He was voted into the Legislative Assembly as a member of the liberal Yury Boldyrev’s bloc but promptly deserted the democratic faction to join United Russia.
As head of the assembly’s Committee for Legal Issues, he worked on more than 100 city laws. Among the areas of his special interests were town-planning and youth policies. Yevtukhov was the author of a law that banned juveniles from frequenting gambling clubs. The politician is also responsible for recently imposed restrictions on the sale of alcohol between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m.
Yevtukhov was proposed for the position at the Federation Council by Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
“Viktor Yevtukhov has outgrown his job in the city parliament,” Matviyenko said. “He has a wealth of political experience and all the right qualities to make a good career.”
In 2008, Yevtukhov almost became Russia’s representative at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, though his appointment fell through at the last moment and went to the more experienced Georgy Matyushkin instead.
TITLE: Report: Women Face Rampant Abuse in Russia
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Thousands of women in Russia are subject to violence, including sexual abuse, domestic violence, human trafficking and crimes related to national traditions, according to a report released Wednesday.
Every hour, a Russian woman is killed by her husband or partner, while a woman is sexually abused every 30 minutes, the report said. The study was prepared by the Anna Center, which works to prevent violence against women, and released to coincide with the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.
“Violence against women remains a big problem, but it receives little attention,” Marina Pisklakova-Parker, the center’s director, said during the report’s presentation.
The Syostry, or Sisters, call center, which helps victims of sexual abuse, received 3,534 calls in Moscow last year.
“There is no state support for victims during the first moments after an act of violence. Instead, women are interrogated for an investigation,” said Alexei Parshin, a lawyer who handles sexual abuse cases. Law enforcement agencies often treat such crimes as if they were provoked by the victim, he said.
The country has just 21 places of refuge for women facing domestic abuse, and only one of them is in Moscow.
The situation is particularly grim in the North Caucasus, where women are sometimes abducted and killed under local traditions and sharia law.
According to the report, 180 abductions were registered in Dagestan alone last year, most of which were aimed at forcing women into marriage.
“It’s easier to track down cases of violence in Dagestan because there are many organizations working there. In places like Chechnya it’s much harder because few organizations are still there,” said Yelena Zolotilova, who works at a women’s shelter in the nearby southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
Earlier this year, seven Chechen women were shot dead in a banya by their male relatives in what were reportedly honor killings. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a devoted Muslim, said the women were rightfully shot for their “loose morals.”
Zolotilova said law enforcement in the North Caucasus frequently ignores cases of abducted women to focus on terrorism. Prosecution of such abductions is all but impossible, she said, because there is no separate federal law that prohibits the kidnapping of brides.
TITLE: Court Reopens National Bolshevik Case
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the reopening of an investigation into a previously convicted opposition activist, following a European Court of Human Rights ruling last year that he was imprisoned unlawfully.
Roman Popkov, who led the Moscow branch of the banned National Bolshevik party, was also awarded 5,000 euros ($7,500) after the European court ruled that his pretrial detention of more than two years was illegal.
Dmitry Agranovsky, a lawyer representing Popkov, told The St. Petersburg Times that the Supreme Court overruled earlier court decisions to incarcerate Popkov during the investigation.
The Supreme Court’s chairman, Vyacheslav Lebedev, ordered that Popkov’s case be reopened because of newly obtained evidence, Agranovsky said.
TITLE: Arrival of French Ship Fuels Debate
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hundreds of St. Petersburg residents, many of them navy officers and shipbuilders, lined up in the fog on Wednesday to visit the French warship The Mistral, which arrived in the city on Monday and which the Russian military hopes to buy.
During a two-day visit by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to France that started on Thursday the two countries may finally agree the purchase of a French Mistral-class amphibious assault ship, RIA Novosti reported.
Yury Ushakov, a deputy head of the Russian government staff, said Putin’s visit agenda does not envision Mistral talks but said the issue “could be discussed.”
If the deal is signed, the Mistral will be the largest vessel Russia has ever bought, according to experts. The Mistral, worth 400-500 million euros (around $600-$750 million), is inferior in size only to Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov.
The Mistral, a 21,500-metric ton 299-meter vessel, can anchor in coastal waters and deploy troops on land — a capability the navy lacks. The ship can carry 16 helicopters and dozens of armored vehicles, as well as up to 650 military personnel. The vessel is equipped with a 69-bed hospital and can be used as an amphibious command ship.
But while some of the ship’s visitors on Tuesday admired its size and power, others said Russia should not buy the vessel in what would be its first major arms deals with a NATO country.
“Our navy needs such ships,” said one of the visitors, seaman Andrei Yegorov, 42. “It could be quite useful in regional conflicts, such as last year’s Georgian conflict. Such a ship could serve as a good constraint there,” Yegorov said.
Yevgeny Yakovlev, 70, a retired submarine designer, said that a ship like The Mistral would help bolster the nation’s global clout. “Good weaponry would allow us to play a more active role and influence things like the U.S. does,” he said.
But shipbuilders have strongly opposed the Mistral deal, saying Moscow should invest in domestic production instead.
“I feel very negative about the planned purchase,” Natalia Zuyeva, 26, a ship designer, said after visiting The Mistral. “It’s an act of sabotage against the domestic shipbuilding industries. We can build such ships ourselves, but the authorities don’t give us any orders or the money for it.
“However, Russia builds naval ships for India,” Zuyeva said.
Dmitry, 25, also a ship designer, who didn’t want to give his last name, said “the design and construction of a similar ship by local shipbuilders would cost approximately the same amount of money.”
“Russia has good specialists who are able to build such ships and an order for such a ship would create more jobs for Russians. In addition, it would be a more modern design than The Mistral’s,” Dmitry said.
The Mistral’s captain Didier Piaton, who held a press conference in the city on Tuesday, said the ship was “very easy to maneuver and move about in shallow waters.”
“The ship can carry out four key tasks including the landing of 450 troops, tanks and up to 150 armored vehicles; it can serve as a helicopter base, a hospital and a center for navy operational headquarters,” Piaton said.
The ship arrived in St. Petersburg on Monday to demonstrate its capabilities to the Russian military and to participate in joint maneuvers.
Russia’s plans for the purchase of such a ship have fueled concerns in Georgia and other ex-Soviet nations that Russia is upgrading its navy to intimidate its neighbors.
In recent years, Russia has sought to boost its global reach and prestige in world affairs.
It has sent warships to patrol pirate-infested waters off Somalia, and in 2008 it dispatched a navy squadron to the Caribbean for joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy and for several port calls. The Caribbean mission, which came just months after the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, marked Moscow’s first show of muscle near U.S. shores since the Cold War.
However, the post-Soviet economic meltdown has left the Russian navy with only a handful of big ships in seaworthy condition and badly crippled the nation’s shipbuilding industries.
Russian shipbuilders have opposed the Mistral deal, saying the government should invest in domestic production instead. Navy officials have argued that licensed production of Mistral-class ships would help modernize Russia’s aging industries.
Vladimir Vysotsky, Chief Admiral of the Russian Navy, has said that a ship like The Mistral would have allowed the Russian navy to mount a far more efficient operation in the Black Sea during the Russia-Georgia war. He said the French ship would take just 40 minutes to do the job that the Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels did in 26 hours, apparently referring to amphibious landing operations, the Associated Press reported.
TITLE: Matviyenko's New Post Questioned
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While Governor Valentina Matviyenko continues to receive congratulations on her election to the Supreme Council of the United Russia party, which held its annual congress in St. Petersburg on Nov. 21, her rivals are arguing that the city official’s promotion to the post is illegal.
Nikolai Rybakov, deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the democratic Yabloko party scrutinized the United Russia charter this week and found that to be eligible for a place on the party’s Supreme Council, candidates have to have been a party member for at least a year, which Valentina Matviyenko was not.
Rybakov sent an official request to Russia’s Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov for an investigation into what he described as an illegal deal. Matviyenko joined the party last Friday.
“Matviyenko’s appointment is a very obvious case of the law on political parties — which obliges them to observe their charters — being ignored,” Rybakov said. “The United Russia charter clearly states the condition of a minimum one-year membership of the party. If this party does not observe its own charter, one can imagine how much respect its members have for the law in general and the rights of ordinary people.”
Party members are defending Matviyenko’s promotion by saying that, in the case of the St. Petersburg governor, party membership was a formality.
“For the past six years she was effectively, and wholeheartedly, a United Russia member, although she did not actually hold a membership card,” said Vyacheslav Makarov, a coordinator of the United Russia faction at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. “In this case, this ‘virtual membership’ counts.”
Dmitry Yuryev, head of the executive committee of United Russia’s local branch, branded Rybakov’s protest “a hopeless attempt to win attention for the non-existent Yabloko party.” Speaking to the Zaks.ru internet site, Yuryev said that although he is not a lawyer, he is “convinced the party decision was legitimate.”
Rybakov is happy to continue arguing the point. “United Russia may feel invincible but it broke its own charter,” he said. “At the very least, this shameful act should draw the attention of both the court and the public.”
During her tenure as St. Petersburg governor, Matviyenko has frequently spoken of her support for United Russia, yet she had previously refrained from joining the party until this month, claiming that a governor “has to remain above the political fight and serve to ensure a political balance by not becoming a member of any political party.”
Despite her claims, Matviyenko has been routinely criticized by members of the opposition for using her political weight and administrative resources to help achieve United Russia’s political goals.
In the autumn of 2007 she joined the United Russia party list for the December 2007 elections to the State Duma. She remained in office for the duration of the campaign.
TITLE: Medvedev Sacks Generals for Explosions
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ULYANOVSK — President Dmitry Medvedev sacked several senior generals Tuesday over a series of explosions at an arms depot in central Russia this month, in which 10 people were killed, Reuters reported.
Two people died when a chain of ammunition explosions ripped through the Navy arsenal in Ulyanovsk, 800 kilometers east of Moscow on Nov. 13. Eight more were killed at the depot 10 days later when shells exploded during a clear-up operation.
“Unfortunately, this was possible because of lack of control from the Defense Ministry leadership and criminal negligence by those responsible for destroying old ammunition at the depot,” Medvedev told reporters during a visit to Ulyanovsk.
He said he had dismissed from military service the heads of the Defense Ministry’s engineering and artillery departments and a deputy regional commander. He ordered Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to sack the head of Depot 31, where the blasts took place.
“The quality of storing ammunition should be checked, and I order the defense minister to conduct a complete review. I give you one month,” Medvedev said, standing next to Serdyukov.
Serdyukov is aiming to reform the armed forces into a mobile force capable of fighting in modern conflicts.
TITLE: Ismailov’s Sons Named in Swiss Luxury-Car Crash
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The sons of multimillionaire Telman Ismailov were two of the drivers said to have been involved in a luxury-car race in Switzerland that ended in a crash leaving an elderly German badly injured, media reported Tuesday.
Alekper and Sarkhan Ismailov were steering the $1.9 million Bugatti Veyron and the $670,000 Mercedes SLR McLaren along Lake Geneva late Thursday when a third participant crashed a Lamborghini Murcielago into a Volkswagen, Kommersant reported, citing a source in the Swiss police.
The name of the Lamborghini’s driver has not been revealed because he is the son of a high-ranking Russian government official, the report said.
Itar-Tass on Tuesday identified the Lamborghini driver as a certain Babayev and said someone named Mironov was among the drivers. The agency cited Swiss paper Tribune de Geneve, yet as of Tuesday evening the paper had not published names on its web site. Eric Hoesli, a publications director at the newspaper, confirmed the name Babayev to The Moscow Times in e-mailed comments late Tuesday.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko confirmed that four Russian citizens were questioned in connection with the accident and released on bail, Interfax reported.
Asked about the drivers’ identities, Geneva police spokesman Patrick Pulh told The Moscow Times that he could only say they were all Russian citizens, male and between 20 years old and 24 years old.
The Lamborghini’s driver was a Geneva resident, he said. A fifth man, also in the car, had Swiss citizenship. All were released after questioning, and the investigation is ongoing, Pulh said.
A spokesman for Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov told Radio Mayak that his son was in Moscow and not involved in the race. Mironov is a relatively common surname in Russia.
The crash has roused considerable media attention and even caused Dmitry Rogozin, the Kremlin’s outspoken envoy to NATO, to lambaste the behavior of the country’s “golden youth.”
Swiss media reported that the driver was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 percent, well above the legal limit of 0.05 percent. He was part of a group of four cars speeding along the Geneva-Lausanne road. The accident happened when he was trying to catch up with his friends after he was forced to stop at a red light, the reports said.
He hit a Volkswagen driving in front of him, injuring a 70-year-old German man so badly that police have still been unable to question him. After the accident, the Russians rushed back, rescued the Lamborghini’s two passengers and drove away. They were soon tracked down by police and questioned.
When questioned by police as eyewitnesses, the Ismailov brothers said they did not know the Lamborghini’s driver and had just helped him to get out of the car after noticing the accident, Kommersant reported.
Swiss media reports said they did not care for the injured Volkswagen driver.
The fact that his sons were linked to a high-profile act of decadence comes as the latest blow to Telman Ismailov, who lost a significant part of his Moscow business this year.
He came under fire this summer when the government forced the closure of the massive Cherkizovsky Market, controlled by his AST Group, for alleged safety violations.
The bust came after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized law enforcement for being complacent on smuggling, prompting speculation that it was an attack on Ismailov, in part because of his lavish spending abroad. Weeks earlier, the Azerbaijan-born businessman threw a sumptuous party at the opening of a luxury resort on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, which was attended by many prominent Muscovites.
Ismailov is believed to be in Turkey.
Geneva’s La Tribune paper reported on its web site Tuesday that three of the Russian drivers have flown to Istanbul in a private jet. The report said they left Geneva on Sunday.
TITLE: Iran Refuses to Ship Out Uranium Stockpile, Demands Extra Guarantee
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA — Iran said Tuesday that it was not prepared to ship most of its enriched stockpile out of the country, effectively rejecting a plan designed to delay its ability to build a nuclear weapon.
Diplomats said six world powers were preparing to criticize Iran’s nuclear defiance at a meeting later this week.
While saying it was ready to exchange its low-enriched uranium with a higher enriched material, an Iranian official said Tehran would do so only on home soil to guarantee the West follows through with promises to give the fuel.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran had sent its response to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, saying it wants a simultaneous exchange on Iranian soil.
“Iran’s answer is given. I think the other side has received it,” Mehmanparast said. “The creation of a 100 percent guarantee for delivery of the fuel is important for Iran.”
TITLE: Three Moscow Cops Detained for Murder
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A drunken policeman, assisted by two colleagues, beat to death an Abkhaz man on a street in southeastern Moscow on Monday night, investigators said, the latest incident in a recent spate of police violence.
The three were arrested Monday night and were cooperating with investigators, the Investigative Committee said Tuesday in a statement.
Police Colonel Vladimir Domashev, commander of the regiment in which the alleged killer, Anver Ibragimov, 22, and his colleagues worked, was suspended on orders from police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev.
The three patrolmen were fired, police spokesman Viktor Biryukov said.
Ibragimov and his colleagues, Alexei Chernikov and Viktor Kuznetsov, were all drunk and on duty, a police source told The Moscow Times, declining to be identified because the investigation was ongoing.
Ibragimov started the fight with Eduard Gurtskaya, 20, a native of Abkhazia, at about 11 p.m. on Zelenodolskaya Ulitsa in the Moscow’s Kuzminki district, the source said. Both Chernikov and Kuznetsov were also involved.
Gurtskaya, left badly beaten by the police, was carried to a neighborhood drugstore by his friend, a pharmacist at the drugstore told The Moscow Times.
Ambulance doctors called by the workers at the store tried to save Gurtskaya, but he died shortly thereafter, the pharmacist said on condition of anonymity. She described Kuzminki as a “seedy neighborhood where locals often fight with each other.”
Suspending Domashev — a high-profile and decorated officer — follows an order issued in May by Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to hold commanding officers responsible for the behavior of their subordinates.
The decree followed several deadly incidents involving uniformed officers around Russia, most notably a supermarket shooting in southern Moscow.
The Moscow police source said Domashev was respected by his subordinates. But the head of the Moscow police’s independent trade union, Mikhail Pashkin, said the regiment that Domashev commanded experienced difficulties hiring patrolmen and brought in men from “literally everywhere.”
“I spoke to some of our union members, and their bosses told them to find new people even from the street,” Pashkin told The Moscow Times.
Domashev’s regiment was responsible for crowd control during protests and football matches.
Pashkin said the three were new recruits, serving only for one year, and could not be considered “policemen in full” because of the lack of training.
With crime committed by police officers up 16 percent this year, according to the Inferior Ministry’s statistics, holding commanders personally responsible for subordinates may become an effective measure, said Alexei Volkov, a deputy head of the State Duma’s Security Committee.
“Bosses will be much closer to their subordinates and will take their duties more seriously,” he said.
Andrei Babushkin, a leader of the Committee for Civil Rights, said police chief Kolokoltsev should focus on a radical reform of the city’s 90,000-plus police force. New York has roughly half as many police.
“Muscovites don’t need a lot of badly paid policeman. They need fewer, better-paid policemen,” he said.
The attack poses a new challenge to Kolokoltsev, who has promised to rid the city’s force of criminal elements, calling them “drunk goons armed with guns.”
He was appointed to the post in September, replacing the long-serving Vladimir Pronin, who was fired by President Dmitry Medvedev.
The sacking was in response to Moscow police Major Denis Yevsukov’s drunken shooting rampage in a Moscow supermarket in April, which left three dead and another six wounded.
• Two decapitated bodies of law enforcement officials were found in Kabardino-Balkaria on Tuesday morning, Interfax reported.
The bodies of a court marshal and a police investigator were found locked inside a Mercedes sedan parked on a street in the city of Cheget, just outside the regional capital of Nalchik.
Local police officials blamed Islamic militants for the murders.
TITLE: Triumphant Car Owners Push For Greater Political Influence
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Triumphant after their recent victory over United Russia, a top lobby group for car owners has decided to register as a political movement and has already drawn pledges of support from populist politicians, a leader said Monday.
The Federation of Russian Car Owners, known by its Russian acronym FAR, spearheaded protests against a bill that would have raised the base rate for a tax that car owners pay each year.
The bill was unanimously passed by United Russia deputies earlier this month, but the State Duma sheepishly called the bill back for reconsideration after a public outcry led the Kremlin to pull its support for the measure.
“We have achieved a political victory, so now it’s time for us to be present on the political stage,” Sergei Kanayev, head of FAR’s Moscow branch, told The Moscow Times.
FAR voted to turn the loose federation into a more tightly regulated public movement, which would allow it to create political unions with existing parties, at a congress in Novosibirsk on Sunday.
The group has members in 28 regions, and becoming a movement will allow it to expand into electoral politics, Kanayev said.
The Novosibirsk branch of the Communist Party was the first to offer its support, he said. “Whatever we may think about the Communist Party, they were always supportive of our actions.”
The drivers’ group has never had support from United Russia, which Kanayev called a “technical party, not a real political majority.” But he stopped short of saying they would never work with the ruling party.
“It’s not our place to sack the government, we want to sack the bureaucrats who are guilty of wrongdoings,” Kanayev said, adding that FAR was wary of parties trying to capitalize on the group’s name.
Deputies from A Just Russia, a left-leaning pro-Kremlin party, in the St. Petersburg city legislature have already welcomed FAR members to run on their party list.
TITLE: Watchdog, Oil Firms Reach Deal
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service reached an agreement with the four-biggest Russian oil firms on determining oil prices, hopefully ensuring that there is no repeat of a protracted spat between the two sides that has run on since 2008.
The service reached the agreement with the heads of Rosneft, LUKoil, TNK-BP and Gazprom Neft, Anatoly Golomolzin, deputy head of the service, told Prime-Tass on Wednesday.
According to the agreement, the oil firms will determine domestic oil prices by taking the price on international markets and subtracting customs tariffs and delivery costs, Golomolzin said.
In addition, prices must change on the domestic market at the same rate that they change on the international market, he added.
The agreement calls for the creation of a working group with representatives from each of the four firms in addition to other market participants. The commission’s first meeting will be Nov. 30.
The anti-monopoly service opened cases against the oil majors in 2008 and found them in violation of the law on competition. The service accused the oil firms of colluding to set artificially high prices on gasoline and other refined products and levied modest fines against them.
The service opened another set of cases against the majors this year, upping the ante by significantly increasing the fines. It fined Gazprom Neft 4.7 billion rubles ($163 million), TNK-BP 4.2 billion rubles, Rosneft 5.3 billion rubles and LUKoil 6.5 billion rubles.
TITLE: Prosecutors Veto Plan For Customs Checks
AUTHOR: Dmitry Kazmin and Maxim Tovkailo
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Customs Service’s plan for announced inspections of business next year was the first to fall afoul of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which said 90 percent of its proposed checks were illegal.
Beginning next year, all planned checks on business need to be approved beforehand with the Prosecutor General’s Office. The service had intended to check companies more frequently than once every three years, and some firms would face inspections from several different customs departments within the course of a year, the prosecutor’s office said. The infractions also included more than doubling the maximum duration of an inspection, currently three months.
The customs service conducts two types of inspections: in warehouses, to search for contraband, and audits, during which officials can check information provided on import documentation, said Marina Lyakisheva, an adviser at DLA Piper.
She said business has faced heavier pressure from the customs service this year. “Of course, you can understand where the Federal Customs Service is coming from, too. They were given a tough plan for collections, which they aren’t able to meet.”
The Federal Customs Service is planning to contribute between 3 trillion rubles and 3.1 trillion rubles ($104 billion to $108 billion) to the budget this year, director Andrei Belyaninov told Vedomosti in August. The figure was 400 billion to 500 billion rubles below the Finance Ministry’s target.
The service brought in 50.6 percent of the 2008 federal budget’s revenue.
As a result, the service has even had to dip into Gazprom’s pocket, using preliminary declarations to calculate gas export duties. The same system, which does not take into account losses during transport, is used for oil producers.
The change would cost Gazprom 111.7 billion rubles ($3.9 billion) this year alone.
Spokespeople for the Federal Customs Service and Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to calls Tuesday evening. The prosecutor’s office is acting within its powers, and the decision has nothing to do with the service’s conflict with Gazprom, said Dmitry Peskov, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.
Companies surveyed by Vedomosti said they approved of the prosecutors’ decision, but they said planned checks were not their biggest customs problem.
Gazprom’s top issue is how duties are calculated, not inspections, spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said. Inspections are not much of a concern for the oil industry, either, said Vladimir Kuznetsov, head of TNK-BP Management’s legal department. Export volumes are easy to control, and the duties are calculated based on the volume, he said.
The main obstacle for home appliance importers are the constant increases in goods’ customs value, said Anton Guskov, a spokesman for RATEK. Recalculating prices and goods delayed at customs are the biggest issues, agreed the director of a major meat importer, adding that his company never even had any planned inspections.
TITLE: Gazprom Increases Investment Plan for 2010
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom modestly increased its investment spending for next year to $27.9 billion Tuesday, even as it risks losing half as much this year and next year in a dispute over extra customs duties.
The spending is 5.4 percent more than the world’s largest gas producer is investing this year, further evidence of its hopes for a market recovery. But the optimistic spending plans may run into trouble if the Federal Customs Service wins in an ongoing, multibillion-dollar dispute, although Gazprom is cautious about describing the threat.
“We believe it would be more accurate to speak about the emergence of a risk for Gazprom’s earnings to fall seriously, which could influence the company’s financial position,” a company spokeswoman said.
This made the outlook for the company seem disturbing, despite assurances by board chairman and First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. He said in a Gazprom statement that the company would “undoubtedly” meet its investment targets in 2010. The statement announced the approval of the spending by the board.
Gazprom complained earlier this month — in the financial report for the third quarter — that the customs service changed the rules that it applies to gas exports, effective from April. It began asking Gazprom to state the exact volume and price of its outbound shipments before they cross the border. Gazprom said it was technically unfeasible and declined to alter its practice, which was to file the statements after signing off-take papers with the customers abroad.
As a result, customs officials began charging higher duties based on Gazprom’s preliminary export statements, which carry export estimates normally exceeding the actual volume and price. The Federal Customs Service, which has the task of filling the federal budget, refused to accept the more accurate final export statements that the company supplied later.
“Such actions by the customs service divert considerable financial resources from Gazprom’s business,” the company said in the report.
The Federal Customs Service also demanded earlier this year that Gazprom pay the export duty in advance for every month. Previously, the company paid the duty after delivery.
Gazprom may lose a total of 386.1 billion rubles ($13.4 billion) this year and next year because of these changes, Vedomosti reported Tuesday. Most of the losses would come from Gazprom’s inability to recover value-added tax of more than 200 billion rubles next year on the gas exported this year, after the customs service rejected its final export statements, the report said.
The rest would include the difference between the higher duties from the customs service and what Gazprom would normally pay according to its final export statements. As another portion of the losses, Gazprom would also pay penalties because it continued to pay the duties it considered fair.
The Gazprom spokeswoman declined comment on the amount and nature of potential losses.
Federal Customs Service spokesman Dmitry Kotikov referred questions about the matter to Central Energy Customs, the branch that deals with energy trade. Central Energy Customs spokeswoman Yulia Ivashkovskaya asked for the questions to be e-mailed; they went unanswered Tuesday.
TITLE: Ulyukayev Says Central Bank Will Carry On Making Cuts to Rates
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank will keep cutting interest rates as policy makers try to prevent speculative capital from flowing in and destabilizing the currency, First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said Wednesday.
Russia needs to keep cutting rates to stem the use of the ruble as a vehicle for the carry trade, and after the economic decline removed inflation risks, Ulyukayev said at a conference.
The bank cut the refinancing rate Tuesday to a record low of 9 percent in the ninth reduction since it started easing in April, as it tries to curb speculative gains in the ruble and ease credit flows. Demand for ruble assets has left Russian stocks overvalued, leading to a threat of overheating, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday. The bank said in October that it would also use interest rates to manage the ruble.
Ulyukayev said Wednesday that the bank will be “more active” in using currency transactions to steer the ruble within a “floating” corridor of 35 to 38 against a target basket of dollars and euros. The crisis has shown that the economy is “extremely vulnerable” to external events, Ulyukayev said.
Russian equity funds drew record amounts at the end of October, according to EPFR Global. The ruble is the second-best performer among emerging market currencies after the Chilean peso in the past three months, having gained 8.7 percent in the period, Bloomberg data show.
The ruble gained even after Russia bought foreign currency, raising reserves to $441.7 billion as of Nov. 13, compared with a low of $376.1 billion on March 13, Central Bank data show.
The government isn’t planning to restrict capital and will target “soft measures” to help stem the ruble’s appreciation, Kudrin said. Central Bank officials have already promised soft measures to curb speculative inflows to emulate steps already taken by Russia’s BRIC peers. Kudrin said Russia would not reintroduce direct capital controls, which it scrapped in 2006.
“We should be afraid of cheap money — I mean speculative capital inflows,” Kudrin said. “We, like many other markets, have received a large volume of short-term speculative money from the world markets. They have arrived, they are among us, and the index is inflated. It is overheated.”
The bank will also continue to cut interest rates as it sees “no inflationary risks” next year with a rate “much lower” than 9 percent, Ulyukayev said. Inflation slowed to an annual 9.7 percent in October.
Russia, which has the fourth-highest benchmark interest rate in Europe after Ukraine, Iceland and Serbia, is the only BRIC nation still cutting rates.
Russia will require its lenders to have bigger capital buffers in future, Kudrin said. Capital requirements for banks should be raised to 1 billion rubles ($34.7 million), a move that the government hopes will lead to consolidation, Kudrin said. The number of banks will probably fall to about 500 from 1,100, he said.
(SPT, Bloomberg)
TITLE: Expats Struggle to Maintain Lifestyle, But Friends Help
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Maintaining a comfortable lifestyle while working in Russia is difficult for many foreigners, but the ease of making new friends among the locals could sweeten the pill for many.
According to HSBC’s expat experience report, Russia ranks two points from the bottom in terms of quality of life among the 26 countries surveyed, but it places fourth in terms of making new friends, especially among locals.
The survey rated 26 countries on 25 day-to-day factors, such as food, social life, the ease of organizing finances and accommodation.
Russia ranked 24th in terms of overall quality of life, placing dead last in terms of ease of setting up financing and enrolling children in school, and was also ranked poorly for its quality of healthcare (25) and commute (23).
Canada, Australia and Thailand placed among the top three globally, while India and Qatar trailed the rest, ranking 25th and 26th, respectively.
Russia’s weak points also include a difficulty in setting up utilities (25) and finding an apartment to live in (23), but the country ranks stronger in terms of entertainment (9) and social life (7).
Russia’s people, however, may be its most valuable asset, as many expats found it comparatively easier to make friends while living here.
“While making friends is easy for most expats, there is a preference for making friends within the expat community rather than the local community,” the report said. “An exception to this is Brazil, which ranks highest for local community integration (94 percent of expats making local friends easily). This was closely followed by Canada and South Africa (both 91 percent), India and Russia (both 90 percent).”
While foreigners living here may be having a hard time of it, Russians working abroad are among those most likely to stay away for a long time.
“The countries that produce the ‘expat-lifers’ include those originally from Thailand, Bahrain (81 percent), South Africa (73 percent), Russia and the United States (both 70 percent),” the report said.
HSBC issued the first survey in its series in June reporting on the economic experiences of expats. According to that report, one-third of all expats living in Russia — the highest proportion in the world — make more than $250,000 per year, with almost half reporting an income of $200,000 per year or more.
Almost 60 percent said they had $4,000 or more every month in disposable income, the second-highest proportion in the world, while 70 percent earn enough to be able to employ at least one person as domestic staff, significantly higher than the global average of 48 percent.
The survey was commissioned by HSBC Bank International and conducted by research company FreshMinds. More than 3,100 expats were questioned between February and April 2009.
TITLE: Putin Promises to Build Homes for Officers
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday promised to provide housing by 2012 for all military officers who have retired in the last 20 years.
The government has shown increasing urgency in its goal to provide adequate housing for servicemen and women, with next year looming as a deadline for providing World War II veterans with their long-promised free apartments.
Putin vowed on Monday to provide 90,000 apartments for officers currently serving in the armed forces and promised that housing would be provided for all those who were discharged in the 1990s or early 2000s by 2012.
“It’s not these people’s fault that the state didn’t have enough funds to fulfill its obligations when they were discharged. But these obligations haven’t gone anywhere, and we need to fulfill them,” Putin said in comments posted on the government web site.
Putin also visited a St. Petersburg district development built in part to house officers of the Navy, Air Force and the Leningrad Military District. He urged Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to make the housing available on a permanent basis as it would help increase the country’s birthrate.
“[Permanent housing] will encourage people to give birth to more children. We will improve the demography,” Putin said.
According to legislation, the government is obliged to provide housing to all former and current officers and their families.
President Dmitry Medvedev promised in May 2008 to provide housing by the 65th anniversary of the end of the war for all World War II veterans, including family members of those already dead, who were on the waiting list before March 1, 2005.
Medvedev pushed the topic again in his state-of-the-nation address, saying providing apartments for the veterans, regardless of whether their names were on the waiting list, was a key task for the government.
Putin on Saturday repeated the promise that the government would provide housing for all needy veterans from World War II by 2010.
“Our obligations on providing housing for the veterans of World War II will be carried out in full in 2010. As we have promised, we’ll provide apartments for all the needy veterans, including those who missed being put into the waiting list before the fixed term of March 1, 2005,” he said, addressing United Russia’s party congress in St. Petersburg.
The process of formalizing documents, which are necessary for receiving an apartment, remains very complicated, Putin said.
“It’s very difficult for elderly people to collect all these papers,” he said. “At the very least, war participants have earned with their whole life the government’s support and participation in their destiny — and not just because they were put on a waiting list on time.”
Veterans have grown restless waiting for the promised housing.
“I’m still waiting for my apartment,” said Ludmila Kireyeva, 77, who survived in the Leningrad Siege as a young girl. “I’ve been to the local prefecture a number of times asking when I can receive it, but local authorities have nothing definite to say,” said Kireyeva, who heads a local Leningrad Siege Residents Organization in Moscow.
Kireyeva is living in an 18-square-meter room in a two-room apartment in a khrushchyovka, the ubiquitous concrete housing blocks constructed during the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, which she shares with her 22-year-old grandson.
The Western District Prefecture offered her a temporary apartment, but she refused because she would have to leave at the first request of officials, she said.
Nevertheless, veterans are still holding out hope, especially since Putin has gotten involved with the issue.
“We believe in what Putin has said on providing housing,” said Tatyana Moiseyenko, a member of the veterans’ organization. She added that veterans in Moscow are hoping to move into the new apartments promised by the government as early as next year.
There were 2,408,000 living veterans in Russia as of Nov. 1, said Valery Ryaguzov, an official in the administration of the State Duma Veterans Committee.
Ryaguzov said 18,600 veterans were waiting for the apartments promised by the government, and that 2,515 veterans had moved into the new apartments in 2009.
The State Duma is considering a bill that would offer monetary compensation for World War II veterans instead of the apartment itself.
“This measure will hasten the process of providing housing for veterans,” he said.
TITLE: Modernization — 1937
AUTHOR: By Sergei Guriev and Aleh Tsyvinsky
TEXT: After President Dmitry Medvedev’s state-of-the-nation address, we were planning to write about whether it is possible to carry out modernization in Russia without political liberalization. But last week’s tragic death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a pretrial detention facility pushed all other issues aside.
We know that readers have been given exhaustive information about this incident in recent days, but we cannot refrain from writing about it because it would be absolutely pointless to discuss any other aspect of modernization without first addressing Magnitsky’s death. What difference does it make if the stock market is up or down or what is happening with interest rates and exchange rates if no value is placed on human life? Does it make sense to speak about honoring contractual agreements if one side can take the other side’s lawyer hostage? Why discuss ownership rights when owners are denied the right to life?
Judging by available information, Magnitsky died after fulfilling his professional duties. He worked within the framework of the law while trying to defend the interests of his client, William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital. Browder never criticized Vladimir Putin when he was president. In fact, during the Yukos case, Browder tirelessly spoke out on the side of the Russian authorities. But that did not help him in the end. His fight for the rights of the shareholders of a Russian hydrocarbon company cost him the right to enter Russia. The Russian budget lost far more. The case on which Magnitsky was working and that led to his imprisonment ended with people from the siloviki seizing three companies from Browder and then using them to rob Russian taxpayers of 5 billion rubles ($173.4 million).
Since Browder’s enemies did not want to, or could not, retaliate against him, they arrested his lawyer. When the authorities denied medical treatment to Magnitsky after he complained of chest pains, they were guilty of torture. Article 1 of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture precisely in that way. It states that “the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him.” Russia is a signatory to that convention.
In this sense, law enforcement officials in Russia employ essentially the same methods as the notorious NKVD did in 1937. Up until last week, we knew that torture was frequently used in the country’s detention centers, but we convinced ourselves that it did not concern us personally. Now, if we are honest with ourselves and our children, we must acknowledge that this problem concerns everyone.
We already knew that it is dangerous to be an opposition politician, an independent journalist or a human rights activist in Russia. We thought that it was safe to stay out of politics and simply work in your chosen profession. At least, that is probably what Magnitsky thought. He did not die at the hands of some unknown hired assassin, but at the hands of the state. This is the same state to which we — including Magnitsky — pay our tax money.
You can talk all you want about trying to halt Russia’s brain drain or how to convince Russian specialists working abroad to return home. But the fate suffered by Magnitsky and former Yukos vice president Vasily Aleksanyan, a Harvard Law School graduate, sends a clear signal to all professionals: Russia can be a very hostile, if not dangerous, place to work. Will current or future Russian students enrolled in top foreign university and graduate programs want to return to this country after graduating? And yet this is the talent base that Medvedev wants to tap to carry out his modernization program. The parallels with the 1930s are uncanny: The Soviet Union also invited foreign specialists to help modernize its industrial base, and many of them later became victims of Stalinist repression.
Magnitsky was a citizen of Russia. We don’t know whether he voted for Medvedev in 2008, but only a few days before Magnitsky died, the president said during his state-of-the-nation address: “In the 21st century, our country once again needs to undergo comprehensive modernization. This will be our first ever experience of modernization based on democratic values and institutions.”
The president probably wanted to highlight the difference between current plans for modernization and Josef Stalin’s ruthless industrialization program. But after learning about Magnitsky’s death, it is difficult to avoid the fact that today’s Russia evokes disturbing memories of 1937.
Sergei Guriev is the Morgan Stanley Professor of Economics and rector of the New Economic School. Aleh Tsyvinsky is a professor at Yale University and the New Economic School. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.
TITLE: A Third World Killing
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Last week, 37-year-old Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital, died in a Moscow pretrial detention center.
William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital and a talented financier, did a lot to improve the investment climate in Russia in the 1990s. We learned much from Browder about the way Gazprom is structured, and he was the first to inform the world about the existence of the Eural Trans Gas company, which traded gas from Central Asia through Ukraine to Europe.
In 2005, Browder investigated the ownership structure of Surgutneftegaz, a company that political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky claims actually belongs to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. As a result, Browder was forced to leave Russia, and Hermitage Capital’s office was raided in June 2007. Heading the search was Lieutenant Colonel Artyom Kuznetsov, an official with the tax inspection department of the Interior Ministry.
As Magnitsky later stated in testimony that may have been his death sentence, “Kuznetsov was present during the search of the branch office … and said that if we had met with him earlier as he had suggested, none of this would have happened.”
During the raid, agents seized official company stamps for three companies through which Hermitage, like any participant on the Russian market, traded shares with the goal of optimizing tax liability. Then, control of those companies was transferred to Moscow tax inspection offices Nos. 25 and 28. Next, a few phony firms brought hyped-up lawsuits against them in St. Petersburg that resulted in the former Hermitage companies being charged with a debt of 5.4 billion rubles ($187.5 million). The new owners of the three companies then requested that the tax inspectors refund that sum in profits tax that they had previously overpaid.
The tax inspectors quickly transferred money that had been converted to cash by using the small Universal Savings Bank controlled by Dmitry Klyuyev, a famous name in the world of corporate fraud. He was given a three-year suspended sentence for his role in a scam involving shares of the Mikhailovsky mining works.
What’s more, Klyuyev had a distant relationship with the security service of the Renaissance Capital investment bank, which, as Browder explained, suffered the same type of raid that the Hermitage subsidiaries suffered.
Renaissance did not lodge a formal complaint for understandable reasons. It was obvious that any group capable of making a tax refund using phony structures had ties that are better left unchallenged. Renaissance understood that crossing the siloviki could be very dangerous.
Browder, however, had nothing to lose. He was faced with an outrageous situation. The firms stolen from him during the raid, regardless of how small or bogus they were, were used to cheat the state out of 5.4 billion rubles. Browder went public with his accusations. What happened after that is incredible: Browder’s lawyer was put on the most wanted list, and the prosecutor began trying to prove that it was actually Browder who had stolen the 5.4 billion rubles.
For all intents and purposes, Magnitsky was tortured to death to extract testimony against Browder. Magnitsky’s death marks a new stage in Russian history — its has definitely become a Third World country.
Before, investors complained while sipping cocktails after work how siloviki stole their assets. Now, they complain how the siloviki kill their colleagues during pretrial detention.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Fairytale hero
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Getting hold of Eurovision Song Contest 2009 winner Alexander Rybak is near impossible. Almost every day the young singer and violinist has a concert in a new city or even new country. Rybak recently released his debut album “Fairytales” and has started a live tour of Europe, which includes a local concert on Sunday.
Such an intensive schedule is new for the 23-year-old artist, though he is no stranger to hard work. Born into a family of professional musicians, he began his artistic journey at about five years old. Around that time, his family moved to Norway from their native Belarus, after Rybak’s father received an offer of work abroad. The young Alexander was taught both violin and piano, but soon had to choose between the two instruments. Rybak plumped for the violin, which propelled him to international fame at the Eurovision Contest, where he represented his country with the song “Fairytale” in which he sang and played the violin.
At the age of 10, with the potential to become a classical musician, Rybak enrolled at the Barratt Due Academy in Norway, where he performed with one of the world’s most famous violinists, Pinchas Zuckerman.
“Everyone who starts playing the violin thinks they will become a classical musician, but I’ve entered another genre,” said Rybak in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times earlier this week.
“Popular music is an unusual genre for the violinist,” he said. “It is difficult to say why I prefer this genre. I always listen to my heart, and pop music gives me far more than classical music. Of course, it’s great to relax by listening to Mozart or Bach, but learning stories is far more important for me, and only pop music tells a story.”
In 2006, Rybak won the Norwegian talent show “Kjempesjansen” with his own song “Foolin.” A year later, the artist took part in a production of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” in which he played a fiddler and was awarded a Hedda, the highest acclamation a stage actor can achieve in Norway.
But such intensive work and so many engagements do not keep Rybak from his creative work.
“I am constantly creating something,” he said. “Every time I watch a film, I find inspiration. A picturesque landscape is always balm for my heart, and I compose new songs very quickly.”
The song that swept the artist to victory at Eurovision was also inspired by nature.
“I was traveling through Norway in the mountains on the west coast,” he said. “Every day, I walked for several hours, thought a lot and observed the life around me. When I was on the highest mountain, I took out my violin and started playing the melody.”
“For several days I was thinking about this song, and then I started writing the words for it. I told the story of a girl with whom I was in love, and so ‘Fairytale’ emerged.”
“Fairytale” conquered the hearts of millions of people. Rybak gained 387 points at the 54th Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, setting a new record for the winning number of points at the annual competition, and the song became a major hit in Europe. Rybak’s album is also titled “Fairytales.”
“The fairytale world is very close to my heart,” said Rybak. “I love Disney stories — my favorites are Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio and The Lion King. Everything is always very simple in these cartoons — very simple words and simple melodies. In my new album, I have also tried to compose simple melodies to make them clear and understandable for everyone.”
Thanks to his passion for fairytales and nature, Rybak has a very romantic image. He has been compared to fiddlers who in bygone times traveled through the Norwegian valleys and mountains playing for food. His image has given rise to a lot of romantic stories, including one that he has a talisman. Rybak however denies that this is true.
“No, I do not have a talisman,” he laughed. “I lose things too easily — it would be foolish to have a talisman. I have even lost violins several times on the train.”
Rybak’s sincere image has inspired his fans, who sometimes translate his work and even offer him their own songs. Although the Norwegian singer composes songs himself, he is open to everything new.
“My fans translate my songs into Russian,” he said. “Many celebrities have offered to write something for me, but if I like the music, it doesn’t matter who the author is — a well-known person or a fan.”
Since his victory at Eurovision, Rybak has seen scores of new countries. His promotional tour of the new album covers much of the world. Right now, the musician has 12 concerts in 11 cities in just two weeks, including dates in New York and five Russian cities including Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as gigs in Berlin, Helsinki, Tampere and Warsaw. Rybak, however, does not complain.
“I enjoy life on stage,” he said. “The only thing I did not expect from my stage career is the happiness and joy that I encounter on my way. I was very positively surprised that despite the busy schedule, there are lots of people who are there to help me. There are a lot of good people in the world. So moving from one country to another is not as difficult as people usually think — it is actually quite fun.”
Rybak continues to develop his skills on the violin, which Eurovision did not give him the opportunity to play live.
“That’s the rules,” he said. “Entrants cannot play musical instruments live. I played to make it look nice and show that I know how to play the violin. But it was not so important; the main thing was that I sang live.”
The artist does not see himself as a popular artist forever more.
“I would like to find a career that I can do for the rest of my life,” he said. “It is very difficult to run and jump on the stage when you are 60 years old. I would like to become a composer as soon as possible. I would compose all kinds of music, I could write for everyone and I could be more diverse.”
Alexander Rybak performs at GlavClub, Kremenchugskaya 2, Tel: 905 7555, M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya on Sunday.
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Gogol Bordello, the multi-ethnic folk-punk band from New York that mixes punk rock, Gypsy folk music and cabaret, returns to the city for a one-off show this week.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times before his first visit to Russia (that time the band only played Moscow) in 2006, Ukraine-born frontman Eugene Hutz, said his band was originally called Bulgakov Bordello, taking its name from the Kiev-born author of “The Master and Margarita.”
“It was really much more in the spirit of the band than Gogol, but I quickly found out that in the West they have a vague idea about who Gogol is and they don’t know Bulgakov, so I had to go with another compatriot,” he said back then.
“I just wanted a symbol of something that is Western European, but at the same time is not nationalistic — [something that is] very rooted in the culture, yet speaks in a cosmopolitan way. And Gogol is a perfect candidate for that.
“Ethno avant-garde is the direction here. It’s also like film director [Sergei] Paradzhanov, or Bela Bartok in classical music. It’s just an accumulation and reinterpretation of original culture to the level of original artwork. It’s totally void of any actual quotes or playing traditional numbers, it’s not anything like that.”
In 2006, Hutz was radically punk in some of his statements, dismissing the New York band The Strokes, which was big at that time, as “boys from a modelling agency.”
Oddly, the following year saw Hutz and the band’s violinist, Sergey Ryabtsev, join Madonna on stage for “La Isla Bonita / Lela Pala Tute.” The performance at the London Live Earth concert on July 7, 2007, added to the band’s publicity, if not to its integrity.
Nevertheless, for many, the band’s upcoming concert eclipses anything else going on in St. Petersburg on a musical level. Gogol Bordello will perform at Glavclub on Tuesday.
The Antipop Consortium, an alternative hip-hop group from New York, appears to be a central point at the two-day Electro Mekhanika electronic music event this week.
According to the band’s biography, it formed in the fall of 1997, united under the credo “disturb the equilibrium.” The Anti-Pop Consortium came together as a “divergent force to resist the evil empire Hip Hop was slowly becoming.”
Promoted by and held at the Sergei Kuryokhin Modern Art Center, Electro Mekhanika was launched last year as an annual electronic music event in addition to SKIF, the Sergei Kuryokhin International Festival, a celebration of left-field music genres held annually in April.
Dozens of electronic acts, local and international (including Great Britain’s Anti-Social Entertainment, Germany’s Gudrun Gut and Australia’s Lawrence English), will perform on the three stages of the former Soviet film theater for two nights on Friday and Saturday. See Gigs, page 9-10 for the schedule.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Finland on the big screen
AUTHOR: By Elmira Alieva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An annual festival of Finnish cinema returns to the city for the 20th time this weekend, presenting the best Finnish movies of the season.
The history of the week of Finnish cinema in St. Petersburg began twenty years ago, when Scandinavian cinematography was unfamiliar to Russian viewers. Since then, the festival, which is organized by the General Consulate of Finland along with radio Europa Plus, has been held every year to showcase the best innovations of Finnish cinema created during the season.
“As usual, the festival program in 2009 includes seven films that were carefully selected in Helsinki,” said Alexei Dunayevsky, the festival’s organizer. “The selection of films is something of which we are very proud. Usually the committee responsible for the films’ selection consists of one Russian and one Finnish representative. We watch about 20 to 25 movies and choose those that in our opinion will be the most interesting and comprehensible for Russian viewers, because some of the movies — especially comedies — could be too exotic for our viewers,” he explained.
This year, every genre of Finnish cinematography except for horror films is to be screened at the festival. There will be comedies, crime dramas, melodramas, teen movies, historical costume dramas and one Christmas fairytale that won great acclaim in cinemas in Finland, and which were presented at international film festivals in 2009. The program includes works by well-known Finnish film directors such as Mika Kaurism?ki, Aleksi M?kel? and Klaus Hyare.
The festival will open with Mika Kaurism?ki’s The House of Branching Love, a tale of divorce described in a humoristic and satirical manner. The opening ceremony will be attended by Finnish cinematographers and actors.
“Finnish cinema has changed radically during the last few decades,” said Dunayevsky. “When we started our festival, the viewers didn’t understand what was screened. There were stories that were interesting and understandable only for the Finns, such as long dialogues in nature, village stories, stories about weddings, fishermen and reindeer breeders. Since then there has been a real breakthrough in Finnish cinematography; it has become international and much more comprehensible.
“Today one of the most popular topics in Finnish films is young people, their problems, relations between parents and children, and the criminalization of youth,” Dunayevsky continued. “However, we shouldn’t say that cinematography is a direct reflection of the trends in a society. For instance, the popular film director Aleksi M?kel? specializes in the crime genre. But when we watch his movies, we shouldn’t think that Finland is a very criminal country.”
One of the festival’s traditions is to screen a children’s movie. This year, it will be “Christmas Story” by Juha Wuolijoki. This is based on a true story about a boy who lost his parents and became a son of the village he lived in, moving from one family to another. Later the boy becomes a real Santa Claus, making his own toys to leave secretly on the doorsteps of houses in the village.
“This is a story for all the family,” said Dunayevsky. “The Finns are in fact world leaders in producing children’s films; they spend more on children’s movies than many other countries,” he said.
“We’ve had different moments in our festival’s history. We’ve seen both indifference and misunderstanding, and delight in anticipation of future festivals. The audiences who used to smile ironically when they heard the phrase ‘Finnish cinema’ have disappeared. Finnish cinematography has changed, and viewers have changed. Now there are many aficionados who look forward to attending our festival every November,” said Dunayevsky.
The annual Finnish film festival opens Friday and runs through Wednesday at Rodina Cinema, Karavannaya Ulitsa 12. Tel: 571 6131. M: Nevsky Prospekt. A full program is available at www.rodinakino.ru/events/khkh-nedelya-kino-finlyandii
TITLE: Culture wok
AUTHOR: By Alex Dizer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There is much speculation in the West about the possible results of China’s rise in economic power and global influence. Russia seems to have mixed views toward it: On the one hand last month’s announcement of $3.5 billion worth of trade agreements across the border seems to suggest a positive mutual understanding, but the spectacle ads scattered around St. Petersburg that read “cheaper than Chinese glasses” and have an illustration of a squinting Asian man seem to suggest that perhaps this understanding is not quite so deep. Chinese food is, however, undeniably popular in Russia, and new Chinese restaurants continue to pop up all over the city.
Newcomer Tszao Van has a higher quality ambiance than many of the local cheap and cheerful Chinese eateries. Gilded dragon wallpaper, Chinese paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and wooden tables and chairs arranged in stalls create a cozy oriental atmosphere. On one of the walls hangs a large plasma TV screen that on a recent visit was showing a cartoon about ping-pong followed by a documentary about the Chinese military. This does not perhaps help to remove two stereotypes — sport and military might — that are strong in many minds in the wake of the Olympic Games and parade celebrating 60 years of Communism.
Tszao Van’s menu is very broad, and covers every style of mainland Chinese cooking. There are vegetarian dishes, including mapo doufu, a tofu dish known for being very rich and decadent, and a vast array of meat, from the familiar Beijing roast duck in pancakes to frog dishes for the more adventurous.
The meal got off to a good start with a friendly greeting from the waitress, and the prompt arrival of a generous serving of dumplings (120 rubles, $4.) They were fried to a crispy, crunchy, golden perfection while the pork and celery filling was soft and flavorsome. The serving was very generous.
This was followed by the hotpot (357 rubles, $12.50), or Huoguo — a kind of East Asian stew. Although there are many different types of hotpot, whose origins span from the north of China, Beijing and Inner Mongolia to as far south as Thailand and Vietnam, they generally have a few common traits. There is usually a choice of different flavorings and spices for the sauce, a selection of meat and vegetables, and an array of sauces into which to dip the cooked food. Tszao Van’s hotpot was a disappointment, as it was in fact just a small soup, and had little in common with its name.
Beef cooked in pepper (287 rubles, $10) is a traditional Uighur Muslim dish from the far west of China. While at present the ethnic minority is known for its recent conflicts with the Han population, it deserves to be better known for its fantastic kebabs. In every city in China, there are countless makeshift portable barbeques often run by people from the Xinjiang province, where meat is cooked on the spot on sticks known as chuanrs, with a choice of spicy or sweet seasonings. Tszao Van served the meat a little too heavily sauced, as it is normally quite dry. However, the familiar smoky, flame-licked, peppery flavor was there and it was readily eaten to a background of Cantopop classics, including a track by the Taiwanese heartthrob often described as the Chinese Justin Timberlake — Jay Chou.
Gongbao chicken (197 rubles, $7) is a tourist favorite in China. The dish comes from the Sichuan province in central-western China, but has since spread throughout the country. Chinese emigrants who settled abroad created a kind of Gongbao chicken that lacked the Sichuan peppercorns, reducing the mala (extremely spicy) tongue-numbing effect and making it more suitable for the Western palate. Tszao Van’s Gongbao chicken was in the Western style. The chicken was diced, marinated and served with peanuts, chili and bell peppers in a rich, thick sauce. The flavor comes in distinct waves, from the initial taste of chicken to the rich and ever so slightly sweet hit of peanuts to a spicy kick at the end — a delicious end to an inexpensive, relaxed and filling meal.
TITLE: Philippines Murder Suspect Held
AUTHOR: By Aaron Favila and Jim Gomez
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AMPATUAN, Philippines — A scion of a powerful pro-government clan suspected in the massacre of 57 people in an election caravan in the southern Philippines turned himself in Thursday amid mounting pressure on the president to crack down on lawlessness and warlords.
The dead from Monday’s massacre included at least 18 journalists and the wife, family and dozens of supporters of a gubernatorial candidate who wanted to challenge the rival Ampatuan clan, which has ruled Maguindanao province unopposed for years.
Andal Ampatuan Jr., a town mayor who allegedly stopped the convoy with dozens of police and pro-government militiamen, surrendered to presidential adviser Jesus Dureza in the provincial capital, military commander Lieutenant General Raymundo Ferrer said.
“The family voluntarily surrendered him and they agreed that he will be investigated,” Ferrer said.
Asked by reporters if he was involved in the killings, Ampatuan, who tried to hide his face with a scarf, replied: “There is no truth to that. The reason I came out is to prove that I am not hiding and that I am not guilty.”
Prosecutors have 36 hours to decide whether to file charges.
“Within 36 hours the prosecutors will resolve the case,” Justice Secretary Agnes Devanedera told reporters in Manila after she arrived with Ampatuan and other officials on board two air force planes from southern General Santos City.
Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said he had warned Ampatuan’s family they risked a military attack unless they turned him over by midday Thursday.
As a helicopter carrying Ampatuan took off from the Maguindanao capital for General Santos, shots rang out but the aircraft was not hit, Ferrer said. It wasn’t clear who fired the shots.
The Ampatuan clan helped President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her allies win the 2004 presidential and 2007 senatorial elections by delivering crucial votes.
Arroyo’s ruling party, in an emergency meeting late Wednesday, expelled Ampatuan, his father and a brother.
Ampatuan’s surrender followed days of discussions between his family and Dureza, apparently in a bid to prevent hostilities between the clan’s followers and government forces.
The area around the provincial capital was tense after troops disarmed nearly 400 pro-government militiamen loyal to the Ampatuans. Such militias are meant to act as an auxiliary force to the military and police in fighting rebels and criminals but often serve as politicians’ private armies.
The military deployed tanks and truckloads of troops throughout the province under a state of emergency to hunt down the attackers and prevent retaliatory violence from the victims’ clan.
Police and soldiers on Wednesday found 11 more bodies at the site of the attack, bringing the death toll to 57. Six of the bodies were discovered in a large pit, buried alongside three vehicles, and five were found in a nearby mass grave.
The vehicles — a sedan and two vans — were crushed by a large backhoe that ran over and buried them, investigator Jose Garcia said.
Police Chief Superintendent Felicisimo Khu said they did not expect to find any more bodies.
Arroyo has come under intense pressure at home and abroad to seek justice for the victims of the massacre, with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and media and human rights watchdogs voicing their concern over the scale of the killings.
TITLE: China Announces Plans To Cut Carbon Output
AUTHOR: By Cara Anna
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING — China announced plans Thursday to cut its carbon emissions by up to 45 percent as measured against its economic output — a target aimed at keeping its surging growth while still reining in pollution.
The State Council announcement comes ahead of next month’s Copenhagen climate summit. China pledges to cut carbon intensity — carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with levels in 2005.
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases believed to cause global warning.
The goal does not mean that it will cut its total carbon emissions by 2020. In fact, given the expected huge increases in its economy over the next decade, its global warming emissions should increase — but at a much slower pace than if China had made no changes.
India, the world’s fifth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has proposed a similar policy to link emissions to growth in gross domestic product, defined as a broad measure of the value of the nation’s total output of goods and services.
China’s State Council, or Cabinet, said it “is a voluntary action taken by the Chinese government based on its own national conditions and is a major contribution to the global effort in tackling climate change.”
It said the improvements would come through better research and development, clean coal technology, advanced nuclear energy and better transportation systems. Tax laws and regulations will also be changed to encourage energy efficiency.
China announced earlier Thursday that Premier Wen Jiabao will take part in the Copenhagen meeting to show the country’s commitment to the global effort to reduce greenhouse emissions.
That followed the announcement Wednesday by the White House that President Barack Obama will attend the start of the conference to personally commit the U.S. to a goal of substantially cutting greenhouse gases. He will lay out his goals for reducing the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
Yu Jie, head of policy and research programs for The Climate Group China, a non-governmental group, welcomed both announcements. She described China’s 45 percent target as “quite aggressive.”
“For the climate community, of course we welcome so much this kind of effort. Before Copenhagen, we desperately need this good news. We got two pieces within a day,” Yu said.
Still, the Dec. 7-18 conference is unlikely to produce a binding agreement. The original goal of the conference was to produce a new global climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. But in recent weeks it became clear that delegates were likely to produce at best an outline for an agreement to be considered late next year.
Despite setting a target on carbon emissions, it does not mean China will accept an international treaty that sets a binding target for it.
China has said repeatedly it will seek binding pollution targets for developed countries and reject similar requirements for itself at Copenhagen.
TITLE: Torrential Rains Cause 48 Deaths During Hajj
AUTHOR: By Hadeel Al-Shalchi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia — Muslim pilgrims holding white umbrellas against the blazing sun clambered up a rocky desert hill for prayers Thursday during the annual hajj, following a day of deadly torrential rains.
After Wednesday’s sudden, unexpected downpours, the heat was scorching as the nearly 3 million pilgrims traveled to Mount Arafat, a desert plateau about 20 kilometers outside Mecca.
Throughout the day, the faithful climbed up the Mountain of Mercy, a rocky hill at Arafat, and prayed for God’s forgiveness of their sins in what Muslims consider the spiritual high point of the pilgrimage.
Flooding from Wednesday’s downpour killed 48 people in western Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials said. None of the dead were hajj pilgrims, said Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry. The rains tapered off Thursday but meteorologists predicted further showers.
The four-day event, which opened Wednesday, is one of the most crowded in the world, with the masses of Muslims from every corner of the globe packed shoulder to shoulder in prayers and rites.
TITLE: Gatecrashers Manage to Get Into State Dinner at the White House
AUTHOR: By Douglass K. Daniel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Michaele and Tareq Salahi didn’t look out of place at Tuesday’s White House state dinner. They were all smiles as they rubbed shoulders with Vice President Joe Biden, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty and CBS News anchor Katie Couric.
No one suspected the Salahis were a couple of brazen party crashers — and wannabe reality TV stars.
The Secret Service is looking into its security procedures after determining that the Virginia couple managed to slip into Tuesday night’s event even though they were not on the guest list, agency spokesman Ed Donovan said.
President Barack Obama was never in any danger because the Salahis went through the same security screening for weapons as the 300-plus people actually invited to the dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Donovan said.
Donovan confirmed the identities of the couple. The Washington Post, which first reported on their evening out, said the Salahis were well-known in the Virginia horse-country set and were being considered for the Bravo reality TV show “Real Housewives of D.C.”
In an interview with CBS’ “Early Show” in September, Michaele Salahi said, “President Obama has made it very accessible for anyone to visit the White House, so that’s like a big thing right now.” The CBS interview was part of a segment on potential candidates for “Real Housewives of D.C.” but never was aired.
The Secret Service learned about the security breach Wednesday after a media inquiry prompted by the Salahis’ online boasts about having attended the private event, Donovan said.
One of the many photos from the dinner posted on Michaele Salahi’s Facebook page shows the couple with a smiling Biden. In other photos, they appear alone or together with Emanuel, Fenty, Couric, Republican Ed Royce, and three Marines in their dress blues.
Donovan would not comment on whether the couple had been contacted by the Secret Service, how long they were on the White House grounds or other details of the investigation.
The Post said uninvited guests who got in could face a potential trespassing charge unless someone from inside the White House staff slipped them in.
Donovan would not comment on possible legal violations.
The agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility was reviewing what occurred. An initial finding indicated that a checkpoint did not follow proper procedures to ensure the two were on the guest list, Donovan said.