SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1532 (94), Friday, December 4, 2009
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TITLE: Cause Of Luxury Train Crash Disputed
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Fierce debate continues over the possible cause of the Nov. 27 deadly crash on the Nevsky Express en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg that claimed 26 lives.
According to a new scenario voiced by the Emergency Situations Ministry on Wednesday, a group of terrorists had plotted to hit two trains at the same time. Leonid Belyayev, head of the ministry’s St. Petersburg branch, said another train traveling in the opposite direction on the St. Petersburg-Moscow route missed the explosion by sheer chance, as it happened to be one minute behind schedule. 
“One minute behind schedule meant a three-kilometer distance from the scene of the explosion,” Belyayev said, adding there is no reason to question terrorism as being the cause of the crash. 
However, Sergei Sokolov, a leading specialist with the Analysis and Security Federal Information Center, said he has serious doubts about the terrorism scenario. 
“From the terrorists’ point of view, it would be completely illogical to organize a second explosion,” Sokolov said, referring to what was described as a ‘minor explosion’ at the rescue operations scene on Saturday, Nov. 28. 
Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of Russia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office was injured by the second blast, which led to suspicions that the explosion was targeted at him or other top-ranking officials present at the scene.
“As someone who often traveled to Chechnya during the military campaigns there, I have seen many craters of blasts caused by explosive devices, so I have a fair idea of how a train explosion can be set up and what sort of crater it would make,” Sokolov said, defending his views on the crash. “The photographs [of the scene] and the other evidence relating to the Nevsky Express crash haven’t convinced me that the terrorism scenario is the right one.”
Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the killing, rebel web site Kavkaz Center said Wednesday. The attack was part of a broader strategy announced earlier this year by rebel leader Doku Umarov, Kavkaz Center said in a statement attributed to the rebels’ headquarters. Umarov had called to move terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage from the North Caucasus to the rest of Russia. 
The rebels pledged to continue attacks in Russia, but promised to limit civilian casualties. They have not produced any proof of their involvement. 
Earlier this week, Yevgeny Kulikov, head of the Russian Independent Labor Union of Locomotive Brigades of Railworkers, and a former train driver, suggested the train disaster was more likely to have been caused by a fault on the line or a train malfunction, rather than by an act of terrorism. Kulikov also maintained that the railway authorities tend to economize on safety and repair issues.
Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, spoke out against media reports questioning the safety of the railways and expressing doubts as to whether or not the train crash was orchestrated by terrorists. “All these so-called alternative versions sound plain stupid,” Yakunin told reporters in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Valery Tanayev, deputy head of the Oktyabrskaya Railway and its chief safety inspector, told reporters on Thursday that the stretch of railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg was in perfect condition, and rejected speculations that the Nov. 27 crash could have been caused by a broken rail.
“Until this tragic incident, everything went smoothly,” Tanayev said. “All safety aspects, including the quality of the rails as well as the operation of traffic lights and the traffic control network were absolutely reliable.”
According to Tanayev, security controls maintained on the Moscow-St.Petersburg route are generally tighter that on other railway lines in Russia. “Our equipment allows controllers not only to monitor anything out of the ordinary in any part of the system, but also to identify potentially hazardous situations which could lead to an accident,” he said. “It is so sensitive that we know which lamp to replace before it burns out.”
Several media reports have linked the train catastrophe to the Chechen guerrilla leader Doku Umarov, while others have speculated that Russian national Pavel Kosolapov, who is wanted by the police for allegedly carrying out a string of terrorist attacks, may be behind the crash.
According to the official investigation, 23 passengers on the Nevsky Express were killed instantly when the train went off the rails. Two more people died in ambulances on the way to hospital, and a woman died in a Moscow hospital days after the crash. One body remains unidentified due to the extent of the injuries sustained, and laboratory tests have to be held to complete identification. Nearly 100 passengers were injured in the crash. Seventy-seven victims of the train disaster who sustained various injuries continue to receive treatment in hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Putin May Consider 2012 Presidential Run
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — In an electric four-hour solo performance on live television, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he will think about whether to reclaim the presidency — one of the strongest signals yet that he may run again for Russia’s top office in 2012.
Putin, who also vowed that Russia would step up its efforts against terrorism, spoke during a question-and-answer show on television and radio that highlighted his dominance of Russia’s political scene.
“I will think about it, there is still enough time,” Putin said when asked whether he will run in the next election.
“Don’t hold your breath,” Putin told another person who asked whether he was planning to leave politics.
Putin added he wants to focus now on his job as premier and make sometimes unpopular decisions without having to take electoral considerations into account.
Putin had to shift into the premier’s seat in 2008 following two consecutive terms in office, but since then the presidential term has been extended to six years and Putin is eligible to run again in 2012.
Some 2 million questions were submitted by telephone or on the Internet to Putin’s marathon television show, which was similar to previous call-ins he did when he was president. It clearly demonstrated that he continued to call the shots, overshadowing his designated successor, President Dmitry Medvedev.
Analysts said no one could miss Putin’s desire to reclaim the presidency.
“While he coyly said it’s too early for a decision, it certainly looked like he has already decided” to return to the presidency in 2012, said Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow office.
“He’s too much of a professional to unveil his actual plans in such a format. But he did not reject the idea of returning to the presidency, and — unlike in previous comments — he made no mention of Medvedev,” Petrov told The Associated Press.
Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who studies the Russian political elite, said Putin had decided to run again even before he stepped down.
“I think it was decided in 2007, when strategy was being planned,” she told the AP. “I think it was decided that Putin should not seek a third consecutive term, but that after four years he could return to the presidency.”
The bookish Medvedev, who has never made a similar TV appearance since his March 2008 election, was in Italy on Thursday to meet with the Italian leaders and the Pope.
“If Putin doesn’t rule out running, neither do I rule myself out” for 2012 election, Medvedev told journalists in Rome when asked about Putin’s remarks.
Medvedev also said that he and Putin will act as “responsible politicians” and reach an agreement on the 2012 elections to avoid “elbowing one another” — echoing comments made previously by Putin.
Asked about his relationship with Medvedev, Putin said their common educational background and views allowed them to “efficiently work together.”
Putin, who has cast himself as a paternal figure protecting people from terrorism and economic upheavals, said Thursday that the threat of terrorism remains “very high” following a deadly train bombing that killed 26 people last week. He promised that authorities would act “very harshly” to root out militants.
“We have enough resolve and firmness for that,” he said.
The bombing last Friday of the Moscow-to-St.Petersburg express train fueled fears that Russia could face another wave of terror attacks. It was the first deadly terrorist strike outside the North Caucasus since the bombings of two airliners and a Moscow subway station attack in 2004.
Putin also focused heavily on economy during Thursday’s show, which featured televised links with workers from several industrial towns.
Putin said Russia has “overcome the peak of the crisis” and claimed credit for softening its impact. He added the government will have to spend more money to support the economy in the meantime.
Russia is weathering its worst economic downturn in a decade as commodities prices — the backbone of its economy — collapsed late last year. But it emerged from the recession in the third quarter, its GDP rising by a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent.
Putin used the show to further burnish his common-man appeal, chastising the Russian rich for arrogantly showing off their wealth, saying their fancy imported cars looked as grotesque as golden teeth.
He congratulated a 55-year-old caller on her birthday and promised to send computers to a provincial school in reply to a student’s plea. He promised more compensation to a widow whose husband was among 75 people killed in a disastrous accident at Russia’s largest hydroelectric plant, and offered wage hikes and more social benefits to others.
“If the situation demands it, I will come to you or to any other place in the Russian Federation, it’s my duty,” he said.
In a careful balancing act in response to a question about Josef Stalin, Putin credited the Soviet dictator for his industrialization drive and World War II victory but denounced the massive repressions under Stalin’s regime.
Putin angrily accused former billionaire oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other top shareholders in the Yukos oil company of ordering the killings of opponents and commercial rivals.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, is serving an eight-year sentence on fraud and tax evasion charges widely seen as a punishment for challenging Putin. Authorities long have alleged that Khodorkovsky and other top Yukos officials were involved in murders but failed to prove the claims.
Delving into foreign policy issues, Putin sharply admonished the United States for keeping “anachronistic” Cold War-era trade restrictions imposed to penalize the Soviet Union for its refusal to allow free emigration of Jews.
“The Soviet Union is gone, but they (restrictions) have remained,” he said.
Putin also accused the United States of hampering Russia’s accession into the World Trade Organization.
“Accession into the WTO remains our strategic goal, but some nations, including the United States, are impeding Russia’s WTO bid,” he said.

TITLE: Museum Workers Protest Removal of 14th-Century Icon
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian Museum’s Toropets icon of the Virgin Mary was secretly delivered to a newly built church in an elite gated community in the Moscow Oblast on Thursday, despite strong resistance from a number of the museum’s experts.
“We kept silent about the transportation of the icon only to ensure the icon’s safety,” said Ivan Karlov, deputy head of St. Petersburg’s renowned State Russian Museum, at a press conference on Thursday, Interfax reported.
“Last night, the icon was taken to the church, where it will be kept temporarily, in a special climate-controlled Mercedes minibus,” said Karlov. “We were very afraid of vibrations and the effect of the temperature during transportation. However, the icon was placed in a special box, and the process went successfully.”
The icon will be kept in a special climate-controlled showcase in the church, said Karlov. The museum’s commission examined the conditions in which the church can keep the icon, and concluded that they meet the museum’s norms, he said.
The Alexander Nevsky church to which the icon was taken will also allow the museum’s experts to access a video image of the icon online at any time. In addition, the museum’s restoration workers will go to monitor the condition of the icon every month. If any of the museum’s conditions are violated, the icon will be returned to the museum, he said.
Vladimir Gusev, the head of the Russian Museum, said the icon had been given to the church temporarily, and that it would later return to the museum, Interfax reported.
“Of course, I am concerned that the icon may not be returned, for such precedents have been known,” said Gusev. “However, this time the church, state and museum have gone for a compromise on many questions, so I’m sure the icon will return to the museum.”
Meanwhile, a number of experts at the Russian Museum are angered at the Russian Culture Ministry’s decision to hand over one of the museum’s oldest icons to the church, particularly as they expressed their opposition to the move last week.
“The fact that the icon was removed from the museum in defiance of the opinion of experts and the public shows that we have a situation in which all the museum’s standards of preservation have been violated,” said Irina Shalina, the leading researcher of the museum’s Ancient Russian Art Department, on Thursday.
The 14th-century icon is in such fragile condition that any transportation could be risky for it, Shalina said Tuesday.  
The Ministry of Culture said Tuesday that the museum’s restoration council and the expert fund and purchase commission had taken the decision to allow the temporary exhibition of the icon in the church.
However, Shalina said that at the restoration council meeting held in the museum on Monday, many of the museum’s experts spoke against allowing the icon to leave the museum, though some agreed with the idea.
Irina Sosnovtseva, another research worker in the same department, said “a number of the museum’s research workers had shown real professional courage in speaking against the transportation of the icon, despite strong pressure they had experienced.”
Shalina said it was a principle of the museum not to lend an exhibit to anywhere if there was as much as the slightest risk to its condition. For this icon, any change in temperature, for example, could be deadly, she said.
“Besides, we really don’t understand why such a precious icon should go to a newly built church in an upmarket gated community that has no relation to the icon,” she said.
Shalina said that the icon had been leased to the church until Sept. 22 next year.
The request to give the icon to the Alexander Nevsky church for one year was issued to the museum by the Russian Culture Ministry last week. The ministry was in turn responding to the request of Russian Patriarch Kirill, who asked the ministry “to consider an opportunity” for the icon to be housed temporarily in the church, the ministry said. 
An expert group went to see the church and decide if its conditions were suitable for the icon, and concluded they were, the ministry said. 
The Russian Orthodox Church is known to believe that icons should serve their original purpose — that is, to serve worshippers. 
Shalina said the museum was often willing to meet the interests of Russia’s churches, and had given them 169 icons during the museum’s history.
“However, there are works that cannot be taken anywhere, under any circumstances,” she said. “It is difficult to imagine how, for instance, Rafael’s Sistine Madonna could be given to a church. The same applies to our icon — especially since we, as a state organization, bear full responsibility for the fate of our exhibits,” she added.
“Therefore we will fight for our icon to the end,” Shalina said. 
Meanwhile, the five-cupola Alexander Nevsky Church, as well as the gated community, are being built by Sapsan construction company, whose president Sergei Shmakov is known to sponsor the reconstruction of Orthodox churches. He has sponsored restoration work in the Korsunsko-Bogoroditsky Cathedral in the town of Toropets — where the icon in question was previously kept for two centuries.
The prototype for the icon of the Blessed Virgin of Toropets was brought to the Russian town of Polotsk from Asia in the 12th century. A Pskov icon painter made the current copy in the 14th century. Several centuries later, the icon arrived in the Russian town of Toropets, where it was kept in a church for two centuries. Later it was brought to St. Petersburg, and was handed over to the Russian Museum in 1936, Shalina said.
“Since that time the icon has never left the museum,” she said.
Gusev said that society should begin a discussion aimed at preventing the transfer of museum valuables to churches for permanent keeping.

TITLE: Courts to Form Agency to Win Public Trust
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The nation’s three top courts hope to build trust in the judicial system through a new agency that will distribute rulings and other legal materials, a top judge said Wednesday.
The Constitutional Court, the Supreme Arbitration Court and the Supreme Court will publish the information through the new Russian Agency of Legal and Court Information, or RAPSI, in cooperation with RIA-Novosti, the state-owned news agency, Constitutional Court chief justice Valery Zorkin said.
“If there is no trust, there is no legitimacy of the courts and, therefore, of the government in general,” Zorkin said at a presentation of RAPSI.
A law ordering more transparency in the courts has been signed by President Dmitry Medvedev and will come into force next July. The law aims to make courts more open to the public in order to overcome what Medvedev has dubbed as legal nihilism.
As part of its efforts to become more transparent, the Constitutional Court plans to broadcast its hearings on the Internet, Zorkin said.
Surveys carried out in recent years indicate that most Russians don’t trust the courts. Lawyers and human rights groups have frequently accused the courts of corruption and being obedient to the government.
Anton Ivanov, chief justice of the Supreme Arbitration Court, acknowledged Wednesday that judges, especially in regional courts, sometimes face pressure from local officials. But the courts are independent of the government, he said.
Zorkin said he could recall only one case of the Constitutional Court facing pressure from the authorities, when President Boris Yeltsin’s Kremlin rewrote the Constitution to give himself broad powers in 1993.

TITLE: Researchers Denied Entry
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Georgia on Tuesday denied entry to the head of the Russian State Archive and a Russian analyst as they arrived in Tbilisi to attend a conference, prompting four other Russians from their delegation to pull out of the event in protest.
Sergei Mironenko, head of the Russian State Archive and Nikolai Silayev, head of the Center of Caucasus Studies at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Affairs, were turned back by Georgian border guards at the Tbilisi International Airport.
Both researchers were invited to Georgia by the Georgian Institute of Russian Studies, a nongovernmental organization established soon after the Russian military conflict with Georgia in August 2008.
Silayev said that he had visited Georgia several times before and after the conflict.

TITLE: Car Packed With Explosives Seized
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A car packed with explosives and weapons was intercepted on Thursday near a railway station in Karelia, northwest Russia, a police official said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Northwest Russia’s acting police chief Vadim Kashirin said the car was detained near the city of Petrozavodsk by station security.
He did not provide any other details of the incident.
President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday ordered action to prevent terror attacks on Russia’s railways, in particular heightening security arrangements and setting tight deadlines for investigating such incidents.
The high-speed Nevsky Express train derailed last Friday killing 26 people and injuring over 90 en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg See story, page 1.

TITLE: OSCE Lukewarm on Medvedev Plan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS, Greece — Foreign policy chiefs from 56 countries said Tuesday that they hoped to reach a new security agreement that would cover much of the northern hemisphere but were lukewarm about a Russian proposal.
The United States said it was studying the Russian plan — changes billed by Moscow as a vital post-Cold War reform — but that it should not affect NATO.
The two-day meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe opened Tuesday amid efforts to reach OSCE’s first broad agreement on security since 2002, and Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said there was slight progress.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promoted a set of security reform proposals sent to Western leaders over the weekend by President Dmitry Medvedev.
“There is a need to undertake decisive steps to overcome remaining dividing lines in the Euro-Atlantic region,” Lavrov said. “[It] seemed so achievable right after the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. We can only blame remaining prejudices and inertia for the fact that it has not been achieved.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not attend the talks in Greece, nor did the foreign ministers of Britain and Canada.
James Steinberg, a deputy U.S. secretary of state who did, gave a measured response to Medvedev’s letter and said Washington was studying the document. “Like other leaders, President [Barack] Obama received President Medvedev’s letter containing a draft European security treaty on Saturday,” Steinberg said. “We are studying this proposal carefully and we welcome the opportunity to continue dialogue that has been taking place within the OSCE.”
However, Steinberg said reforms should not affect the role of NATO — a common concern expressed by some alliance members when discussing security changes.
Stubb said the Russian proposal did not figure prominently in the talks.
“People didn’t really talk about the new Medvedev proposal that much because it has only been distributed to us over the weekend, so in that sense it’s too early to discuss the matter,” he said.
Stubb was also cautious on the need of a new European security framework.
“My take is that European security has been very well managed by three organizations over the past 60 years — the OSCE, the European Union and NATO — so one would have to prove the value added of new security structures on top of this,” he said.
OSCE countries have a wide range of security problems to contend with, including the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Iran, and the aftermath of Russia’s war with Georgia last year.
“Security in our region remains a work in progress. The global crisis has affected all our countries,” said Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, whose country holds the annual rotating chairmanship of OSCE.
However, Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas said reaching a new security deal was “not very easy.”
Several foreign ministers held bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the conference, including talks between Lavrov and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Israel wants Moscow to back more international sanctions against Tehran unless Iran adheres to restrictions set by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Lieberman is to visit Moscow on Wednesday for an economic and trade meeting with Russia, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.
Ukraine has started a program to safely dispose of about 16,000 tons of a highly toxic Soviet-era chemical used in rocket fuel, acting Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Ivashchenko said Tuesday on the sidelines of the OSCE conference.
Ivashchenko said a first consignment of the liquid component, known as melange, was taken last month to Russia for recycling into chemicals for civilian use.
The disposal program, organized and mostly funded by the OSCE, will cost up to 14 million euros ($21 million) and should be completed by 2012, he said.

TITLE: Two Senior Judges Quit Over Dispute
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two Constitutional Court judges are stepping down from senior positions after giving interviews that denounced mounting pressure on the country’s judicial system.
Judge Anatoly Kononov will resign from the Constitutional Court at the end of this month, while judge Vladimir Yaroslavtsev has handed in his resignation as a member of the country’s Council of Judges, court spokeswoman Yekaterina Sidorenko said Wednesday.
She stressed that Yaroslavtsev would remain at his job in the Constitutional Court.
Valentin Kovalyov, a lawyer who served as justice minister under President Boris Yeltsin, said both resignations were unprecedented.
“I know both of them personally as highly professional and principled. The fact that they made this difficult decision means that they saw no possibility to do their job right,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
The move comes after the judges publicly accused the Kremlin of crushing the independence of the country’s judiciary.
Yaroslavtsev told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in an interview published Aug. 31 that judges were increasingly subjected to pressure from the executive branch of government and the security services were running the country like in Soviet times.
“I feel like I have ended up on the ruins of justice,” he was quoted as saying.
As an example of the security services’ sweeping powers, Yaroslavtsev mentioned a Constitutional Court decision in May to dismiss a complaint from journalist Natalya Morar, who was barred by the Federal Security Service from entering the country after she published critical reports in the New Times magazine.
Her case was dismissed without any request for evidence from the FSB, Yaroslavtsev said.
“Nobody knows what [the FSB] will decide tomorrow. There is no consultation or discussion,” he was quoted as saying.
The interview infuriated fellow judges at the Constitutional Court, which has a total of 19 judges, and they accused him of breaching the ethical code for judges and a federal law on judges at its first plenary session after the summer recess in October.
Yet instead of issuing a formal warning that could lead to his impeachment, the judges decided to ask him to resign from his post as the Constitutional Court’s representative in the Council of Judges, a body that oversees judges’ discipline throughout the country.
Yaroslavtsev has confirmed that he complied with the recommendation but declined further comment.
Kononov later defended Yaroslavtsev in an interview with Sobesednik magazine, saying he had been “whipped in the best tradition” at the plenary session. Kononov told his fellow judges in the Constitutional Court that the magazine had improperly published off-the-record quotes, but the judges insisted that he step down to avoid a disciplinary hearing, Kommersant reported Wednesday. “The interview was the last straw. … Kononov had always behaved more like a human rights campaigner than a judge,” one judge told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.
Constitutional Court chief justice Valery Zorkin said Wednesday that Kononov had cited health reasons in his resignation letter. But Zorkin noted that judges had complained about Kononov’s public criticism in the past, and he suggested that they had disapproved of the tone of Kononov’s numerous dissenting opinions.
“It is not true that judges are ousted because of a dissenting opinion,” Zorkin told reporters. “But it is one thing if he argues over whether something is constitutional and another if he only serves the purpose of saying that Auntie Manya speaking about the Constitution on the street is a fool.”
Both Yaroslavtsev and Kononov were unavailable for comment Wednesday. Kremlin spokespeople were also unavailable for immediate comment.
Political analysts have speculated that control of the Constitutional Court is part of a Kremlin plan to help Prime Minister Vladimir Putin return to the presidency if elections are called earlier than 2012, when President Dmitry Medvedev’s term expires. Critics have lambasted a Medvedev-backed reform that replaces the current system in which the court’s judges elect the chief justice and his two deputies with a system in which the president nominates the trio and doubles their terms to six years, from the current three.

TITLE: Anti-Terror Rally Fails to Draw Governor
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The local leg of “Russia Against Terror,” the United Russia state-sanctioned rallies held in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Wednesday in the wake of the Nevsky Express crash, did not live up to its billing, as the party’s leading members failed to appear, the announced LED-screen television link with Moscow was canceled and the whole event lasted only 15 minutes. 
Governor Valentina Matviyenko and visiting State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov both failed to attend the meeting on Sennaya Ploshchad, despite it having been previously announced that they would be present.
“It remains a mystery, why Gryzlov didn’t come, it probably had something to do with Moscow,” United Russia’s local spokesman Alexei Sobolev said by phone on Thursday.
“As for Matviyenko, I think that the absence of Gryzlov was decisive in her not coming.”
Sobolev explained the absence of  the television link as being due to a last-minute cancellation by the Moscow rally organizers. “It’s a mysterious thing, because solid preparation work had been done, but an order came that there was no need for it shortly before the rally,” he said.
Although debate about the cause of the crash continues, the rally supported the official version of a terrorist attack, the main slogans displayed at the meeting reading “Terrorists Are Not People” and “Search and Destroy,” while speakers said that those gathered should “Crush the Vermin,” a quotation from the Stalinist prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky’s speech at a 1938 political trial. 
Of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people in the crowd, many were bussed in from distant districts such as Kronshtadt, while university and college students reported that their lectures had been cancelled in order for them to attend. Sobolev denied that university administrations had been ordered to send their students to the rally.
Meanwhile, Alexander Shurshev of the Yabloko political party sent an inquiry to City Hall regarding whether the rally contravened the law of assembly, according to which organizers should apply 10 to 15 days before the event for permisssion.
“I wouldn’t object if it had been a civil rally, as was the case for the rally following the Beslan terrorist attack in 2004, but this one was clearly a United Russia party meeting, with party flags and symbols — this is something different entirely,” Shurshev said by phone on Thursday.

TITLE: TV Ad Giant Accused of Competition Violations
AUTHOR: By Ksenia Boletskaya 
and Dmitry Kazmin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom-Media has thrown down the gauntlet to Video International, the country’s largest seller of television advertising, accusing it of coordinating its actions with TV channels and limiting competition.
The holding filed a complaint with the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, Sergei Piskarev, the head of Gazprom-Media’s sales house, told Vedomosti. He said he thought that Video International and the channels it serves were secretly agreeing on their pricing policies and violating Article 11 of the law on competition.
Gazprom-Media’s complaint was received Nov. 25, service spokeswoman Irina Kashunina said. The letter did not include any evidence, and the service has asked for more information so that it can decide what to do, she said.
Piskarev said he would provide the evidence after he receives a response.
Video International is essentially Gazprom-Media’s only competitor on the television advertising market. Another prominent television seller, Alkasar, frequently works as a partner with Gazprom-Media.
Video International sells advertising on Channel One, the state VGTRK holding, CTC Media and Prof-Media, covering a total of 12 channels. Next year, its portfolio will also include the channels owned by National Media Group: Ren-TV and St. Petersburg’s Channel 5. NMG’s channels are now serviced by Gazprom-Media.
Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti said they believed that Gazprom-Media turned to the anti-monopoly service because it lost the NMG contract.
“They took Ren-TV away from Piskarev. It’s a channel that’s in high demand among advertisers. So you can understand where he’s coming from,” said Artyom Donets, chief operating officer at Sorec Media.
But all of the market participants interviewed by Vedomosti said Gazprom-Media had been losing market share for some time. When the crisis began, companies began slicing their marketing budgets, and some big advertisers kept their TV advertising only on Video International’s channels.
The decision was based on the company’s portfolio, as well as the fact that Video International signs multiyear contracts, which are harder to break than Gazprom-Media’s one-year agreements. Video International also gave big bonuses to companies that gave them all of their TV budgets, executives at two ad agencies told Vedomosti.
Federal Anti-Monopoly Service deputy head Andrei Kashevarov said the service has been conducting an investigation into Video International’s possible dominating position on the market for the past two weeks after it learned of the contract with NMG.
He said the investigation would take at least three months because of complications in calculating Video International’s market share for television advertising.
The company could be declared a monopolist if its share is above 35 percent. Television ads are sold by gross rating points, or GRPs, which measure total TV viewers seeing an advertisement. According to Media Logics, Gazprom-Media sold 23.6 percent of all GRPs on national TV in October, down from 26.5 percent in October 2008. Video International had 67 percent, up from 62.7 percent.
But what that means in terms of money is unclear, since CTC Media is the only company serviced by Video International that releases its earnings. Video International only releases its sales, which were $4 billion in 2008, but that also includes all media and the group’s sales outside Russia.
According to industry association AKAR, television channels earned 137.6 billion rubles ($4.7 billion) from advertising last year. If you subtract Gazprom-Media’s 38.8 billion rubles and assume that other sellers had at least 10 percent, Video International’s share would still be more than half.
Spokespeople for television channels denied that they were coordinating with Video International and other stations.
“We don’t coordinate our actions with other channels. Gazprom-Media’s accusations are baseless,” CTC Media spokeswoman Yekaterina Osadchaya said.
The head of one TV station said he thought that Gazprom-Media’s war with the country’s largest advertising holding wouldn’t lead to anything good. Once the state starts seriously regulating the ad market, the biggest advertisers — local branches of Western companies — will start pulling their money out of TV advertising, he said.
The heads of three large ad agencies also said it did not make sense to fight Video International, since it is essentially acting as a regulator, which stabilizes the market.
But one of Vedomosti’s market sources took Gazprom-Media’s side. “Everyone knows that Video International is a monopolist, virtually all channels work through it, which clearly contradicts the law.”

TITLE: Ministry Readies Tax Haven Curbs
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Kazmin 
and Filipp Sterkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — On orders from the president, the Finance Ministry has proposed changes that would increase oversight of Russian companies’ foreign beneficiaries and significantly limit the use of offshore companies to minimize tax payments.
President Dmitry Medvedev has requested legislation that would prevent Russian businesses from reducing their taxes through companies registered in countries with which Russia has double-taxation agreements. Specifically, he wanted to prevent the ultimate beneficiaries from being nonresidents in the country with the double-tax agreement.
Vedomosti has obtained a copy of the Finance Ministry’s proposed changes to Article 7 of the Tax Code, which have been sent to the Justice Ministry for approval.
If it is determined that an individual or organization is the actual beneficiary of a Russian company and is not a tax resident of the country with which Russia has a double taxation agreement, the individual or organization and the earnings received would be subject to the Tax Code rather than the bilateral agreement.
The Economic Development Ministry did not respond to the changes within a month, meaning that it is considered agreed, the Finance Ministry said.
Sergei Belyakov, an Economic Development Ministry official, said the ministry supported the bill’s concept, which addresses a request made by the president. “Strengthening the law regarding one’s own citizens who are reducing taxes through foreign companies is an international trend,” he said, adding that the Russian initiative did not look particularly aggressive.
The bill’s main targets are dividends, royalties and interest payments from loans, said Alexander Zakharov, a partner at the Tsentr USB collection agency. He said those types of payments were typically the ones that businesses are able to decrease offshore.
Rustam Vakhitov, a senior manager at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners, said using the double-taxation agreement with Cyprus, a business can pay 5 percent on dividends, instead of Russia’s 15 percent, and nothing for royalties and interest, compared with 20 percent in Russia.
Typically, a shell company with a nominal owner, such as a lawyer or accountant, is set up in a country where Russia has a double-tax agreement, while the actual beneficiary lives in Russia, Zakharov said. In some cases, the owner does not hide and registers in a true offshore, such as the British Virgin Islands, with which Russia does not have a double-tax agreement, he said.
Cyprus is by far the favorite jurisdiction for Russian business. According to State Statistics Service data, Russia received $56.9 billion in foreign investment from companies registered there last year, or 22 percent of the total. For the first nine months of this year, the figure is $5.2 billion, or 10 percent of the total.
Russia has agreements to avoid double taxation with 75 countries, Vakhitov said, but only Cyprus and a few others — the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium — are frequently used to reduce tax payments.
If tax officials start aggressively using the proposed changes, businesses will have it tough, Zakharov said.
Given how the proposal is framed, there is a risk that the authorities will start “nightmaring” Russian companies that pay dividends or interest to companies abroad, an executive at a major holding company said. Big business is already transparent in terms of which foreign companies belong to whom, he said, while the higher taxes would come in the middle of a crisis year.
Additionally, the executive said, it is often difficult to determine who will be the ultimate beneficiary in a deal. Dividends paid in Cyprus could be spent on the island, paid to another company or returned to Russia as new investments.
A tax official told Vedomosti that determining the ultimate beneficiary would be difficult, except in cases where the company has disclosed the information to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service or the state’s commission on foreign investments. It will be easier, however, after changes to the double-tax agreement with Cyprus are approved by the Russian government, he said. Russian tax officials will be able to request information from their Cypriot colleagues without any additional approval.
Severstal’s Alexei Mordashov, MMK’s Viktor Rashnikov and NLMK’s Vladimir Lisin control their companies through firms registered in Cyprus, and Mikhail Prokhorov’s main Onexim holding is registered there.
Spokespeople for Severstal, NLMK, En+ and Onexim Group declined comment.

TITLE: Government Program Helps To Develop Entrepreneurs
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The number of people who have started their own businesses with the help of the government’s self-employment program will reach 120,000 by the end of this year, Federal Labor and Employment Service chief Yury Gertsy said Wednesday.
“As concerns, the self-employment support, there will be, according to preliminary estimates, some 120,000 formerly unemployed by the end of the year who have decided to start their own small business in Russia,” he said, Interfax reported.
Gertsy added that the program would boost employment, as the small businesses created will help generate jobs.
“One should take into account that the number mentioned is the entrepreneurs themselves. Each of them can hire at least three people more,” he said.
As part of the self-employment program, Moscow’s Labor and Employment Department held a contest last month awarding grants to prospective entrepreneurs to use as seed capital to start their own business.
The grants were up to 261,000 rubles ($8,900) and those eligible to take part in the contest included the disabled, single parents, graduates looking for their first job, discharged servicemen and people facing retirement.
A total of 2 million rubles were appropriated in the Moscow budget this year to subsidize small business startups, according to the department’s web site.
“There were 17 business plans presented for the contest, and eight of them won,” said Yevgeny Yurchenko, an inspector at the employment center of Moscow’s northeastern district.
In order to get the grant, candidates had to present a business plan for a sector deemed a priority for the city. A committee of independent experts considered each business plan and chose the most promising.
“I quit my last job six months ago and have been living on unemployment support of 850 rubles [per month] since then,” said Marina Kapitanovskaya, 53, one of the winners of the contest.
Kapitanovskaya, a psychologist by training, plans to start a business as a consultant of feng shui — a Chinese aesthetic used to decorate living spaces to increase the spaces’ positive energy. She plans to offer interior design advice as well as provide photographs for decorations.
“I’m going to provide photos I took myself, as well as those taken by some of my friends. I will probably hire employees within a year,” she said.
Muscovites are now warming to the idea of entrepreneurship — a concept that they formerly approached cautiously, if at all.
“People are ready to start up their own businesses now, and we don’t have to convince them that it’s beneficial like we did before,” said Tatyana Maduntseva, head of the employment center.
The new grants come in addition to other incentives that the city has used to boost entrepreneurship. Moscow employment centers currently reimburse an entrepreneur’s registration expenses for up to 25,000 rubles.

TITLE: United Russia to Save AvtoVAZ
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has approved a plan to send managers from United Russia to work at troubled carmaker AvtoVAZ, but the party is promising that they won’t force out the company’s current executives.
United Russia “has formed a group of managers from people on the party’s ‘personnel reserve’ who are ready to go to work at AvtoVAZ,” a high-ranking party official and a member of the personnel reserve told Vedomosti.
The United Russia leader said the 10 candidates proposed by the party were discussed with the government and approved by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, who is managing anti-crisis measures for the plant. The only remaining question is when they would start, the source said.
A spokesperson for Shuvalov declined comment.
A different government official said the party members would most likely work on development strategy for the company and creating effective production at the plant. The high-ranking United Russia official said the managers could also be tasked with overseeing how bailout funds from the budget are spent.
The government is working on a development strategy for AvtoVAZ, the United Russia official said, but it is too early to say which of several options will be proposed or what the managers’ role would be.
Yury Kotler, who oversees the party’s personnel reserve, said proposing new management for AvtoVAZ was among their priority projects. He stressed that the current management would not have to leave but said new people were needed.
A source in the Samara regional government said the presidium of United Russia’s general committee was planning to hold a meeting soon in Tolyatti, where the plant is located, to unveil the party’s program “Tolyatti — A City to Live In.” A member of the presidium said they were discussing a possible trip but neither the date nor the agenda had been decided.
A source in the company’s management said United Russia member and State Duma Deputy Yury Isayev could become the vice president overseeing AvtoVAZ subsidiaries created to hire laid-off workers. The idea was discussed during Shuvalov’s last trip to AvtoVAZ, company spokesman Igor Burenkov said.
A source close to the Duma’s leadership said a decision had not been made on whether Isayev would leave the post.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said during his address to United Russia’s party congress that the government’s program to reform single-industry towns would begin with Tolyatti.
He suggested that United Russia make efforts to revitalize such towns one of its top priorities. 
In mid-June, the party’s presidium created a working group on single-industry towns.
The anti-crisis managers sent to Tolyatti will be the first step in the party’s “Renewal” program, which was started in May. Under the plan, managers selected by the party would be sent to socially significant factories, create anti-crisis programs and introduce concrete mechanisms for their implementation.
In essence, members of the personnel reserve will be anti-crisis consultants, Kotler said. The working group on AvtoVAZ was led by Lada-Servis vice president Leonid Kachalov, and it also included VTB Capital vice president Igor Mankov and ValueTech Advisers managing partner Alexei Gostomelsky.
Several of them could be among those sent to Tolyatti. Russian Technologies and Sberbank have expressed interest in the project, as have the Industry and Trade and Regional Development ministries, Kotler said.
Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Stanislav Naumov said the ministry had begun looking into the party’s reserve list. 
The ministry wants to have the managers help modernize state-controlled industrial enterprises and other companies, he said.
There’s no particular reason to assume that United Russia has a lot of plans or proposals for AvtoVAZ yet, said Igor Nikolayev, an analyst at FBK. 
He said he thought that all of the company’s shareholders — not just the state and the party — should decide on whether to take in managers from United Russia.

TITLE: Revised Oil Prices Drive Up GDP Forecast
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Higher oil prices have prompted the Economic Development Ministry to upgrade its forecasts for economic growth while moderating its planned eurobond issue, the ministry said Tuesday.
The economy will likely grow by at least 2.5 percent next year, more than previously expected, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said.
It could grow as much as 3.1 percent at best, he said, bringing the figure in line with the latest estimate by the World Bank.
The ministry’s current forecast is for the economy to expand by 1.6 percent. The World Bank said last month that the growth would reach 3.2 percent.
Klepach didn’t say why prospects for economic expansion improved, but his slides at a banking conference in London showed that oil prices — a key factor in the resource-based economy — would also climb to levels that exceed previous government expectations. A barrel of Urals crude, the country’s main export blend, will average $65 to $71 over the next three years, up from the $58 to $60 in the current scenario.
“The overall forecast for Russia in the next few years looks more optimistic than we assumed,” Klepach said at a banking conference in London, Interfax reported.
The Economic Development Ministry will submit revised forecasts for 2010-2012 to the Cabinet by Dec. 10, he said.
Klepach singled out high interest rates as one of the main threats for the economy, saying they by far exceed the rate of return for most businesses.
“If we don’t remove this gap, we won’t be able to speak of any sustainable growth,” he said.
Central Bank first deputy chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said at the same conference that the average interest rate on loans to nonbank firms stood at 13.9 percent in October. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called for bank loans not to exceed three points higher than the refinancing rate, which is currently 9 percent.
Despite the high rates, Ulyukayev expects lending to grow by 15 percent next year.
As oil prices remain high, Russia may reduce a planned eurobond sale next year by as much as 50 percent, Klepach said, Bloomberg reported.
The government may limit debt sales to $8 billion to $10 billion, compared with an official target of $18 billion, Klepach said. The reduced borrowing need is based on an assumption that oil will average about $60 to $65 a barrel, he said, adding that the figures were based on his own calculations.
Next year’s bond sale will be Russia’s first foreign bond issue since its 1998 default on $40 billion of domestic debt.
The Economic Development Ministry is forecasting a 2010 budget deficit of 6.2 percent to 6.6 percent of gross domestic product.
The forecast for this year’s budget shortfall has improved, however, with the Finance Ministry now predicting a 6.9 percent deficit, down from the 7.5 percent to 7.7 percent that it predicted in October.
Higher oil prices will have buoyed federal budget revenues this year by 300 billion rubles ($10.3 billion) by the end of the year, Federal Tax Service chief Mikhail Mokretsov said Tuesday.
The service collected an additional 60 billion rubles after the economy began showing signs of recovery in the summer and through better administration, Mokretsov said in a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev.
The total tax collection will be 14 percent more than the 2.6 trillion ruble target in the federal budget, he said.
As of Nov. 1, the service collected 95 percent of that amount, he said.
The Federal Customs Service also expects to raise more revenues from import and export duties than planned. Its chief, Andrei Belyaninov, said at the end of October that it would collect 3.4 trillion rubles, up from the target of 3.26 trillion.

TITLE: Retailers May Be Forced To Put Markups Online
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Retail chains and their suppliers may be required to publish their prices and markups, according to proposed changes to the bill on trade, which State Duma deputies hope will help stop middlemen from driving up inflation.
But the changes, introduced ahead of the bill’s key second reading on Dec. 9, are opposed by retailers because they would be required to release their commercial secrets.
The Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee wants to force retail chains and their suppliers to publish the prices of the goods they have sold and the size of the markup quarterly on the Internet. The changes to the proposed law on trade, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti, have been sent to the presidential administration and the Cabinet for approval.
The changes, which essentially force a company to disclose its purchase prices, will apply to a long list of items — everything from socially important goods to technologically sophisticated home appliances, everyday chemicals, furniture and cars.
Technologically sophisticated goods will include virtually all electronics, said Anton Guskov, a spokesman for the Ratek trade association, which includes computer and appliance makers.
The initiative was proposed by United Russia’s Institute for Economics and Legislation, said Deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov, who chairs the Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee.
The changes are intended to fight middlemen, since it will be immediately clear from the information posted online where the biggest price hikes are happening, Fyodorov said. “The logic is simple: If you want to be involved in commerce, you should understand that it should be transparent in terms of information.”
The presidential administration and the Cabinet will state their official positions on the changes Wednesday, he said.
The government has already indicated that it will come out against the proposal, since information about markups is a commercial secret, said a different member of the Duma committee. Fyodorov said he was aware of this but it was possible that deputies would nonetheless consider the amendment.
“Approval and discussion with the interested parties is ongoing. There have been cases where we’ve put to a vote legislative initiatives that weren’t approved by the government,” he said.
The office of First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who is overseeing the passage of the law, is not yet familiar with the deputies’ proposal, a spokesman said, adding that Zubkov was expected to discuss the changes with lawmakers Tuesday.
Officials in the presidential administration reached by Vedomosti said they had not heard about the proposal. The Kremlin’s press service declined comment.
Businesses, however, came out against the plan. “So what happened to commercial secrets? Has the whole idea of a market ceased to exist here?” said Dmitry Maslov, chief executive of the Spar supermarket chain.
He said he hoped that the bill would be kicked around for a while longer until it reaches the point of complete absurdity and everyone realizes that no one really wants it to pass.
Leonid Tyukavkin, Tekhnosila’s vice president for strategy, said the terms of deliveries were confidential and that he was categorically opposed to the proposal. Besides, publishing the price without other contract terms, such as the exclusivity of a model and bonuses for volume, would say little about a company’s actual profit from selling a given product, he said.

TITLE: Russia’s Renegade Puppet
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Shlapentokh
TEXT: Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov in July proposed to Akhmed Zakayev, a leader of the nationalistic and comparatively moderate Chechen opposition, that he return to Chechnya. Kadyrov promised Zakayev amnesty and various positions ranging from director of the local theater to culture minister.
Zakayev looked ready to accept the proposal. His position in the nationalist opposition was weak. There seem to be few, if any, fighters in Chechnya who recognize him as commander. His recent attempt to send an emissary to create a fighting unit directly under his command was not successful.
At the same time, Zakayev maintained rather friendly relations with Kadyrov. These relations were warmed after Zakayev implicitly acknowledged Kadyrov’s main achievement: making Chechnya “independent,” or at the very least self-ruling within the Russian Federation.
But although Zakayev was one of the most moderate members of the Chechen resistance, an amnesty for him needed the Kremlin’s approval, and he does not seem to have received it. This is probably why he refused Kadyrov’s offer. But the reason that the Kremlin balked at offering Zakayev an amnesty is unlikely to be related to him personally, but rather to Kadyrov.
The return to Chechnya of an amnestied Zakayev would have greatly increased Kadyrov’s prestige. But the Kremlin wanted to avoid this, owing to an unease with Kadyrov’s increased power and a growing Muslim elite that, while formally acknowledging Russian suzerainty, increasingly demands a redistribution of power within Russia.
For most of the past two decades, jihadists in the Caucasus and Central Asia were a major source of concern for the Kremlin. Fear of “Talibanizing” the Caucasus prompted the Kremlin’s recent announcement that the country’s Muslims should be protected from extremist propaganda from abroad and that Muslim education and spiritual life within Russia should be controlled to direct them away from extremism.
It was fear of extremism, as well as a more general increase in violence, that led to the rise of the Kadyrov clan in 2004, when the Kremlin decided to engage in a “Chechenization” of the conflict. The plan implied that the Kremlin would provide the Kadyrovs — first, former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and then after his death, his son Ramzan — broad autonomy and huge sums of money.
Moscow closed its eyes to Kadyrov’s amnesty of former guerrillas and their inclusion in his paramilitary units. In exchange, Kadyrov was to wage war against the remaining Islamist resistance and thus relieve Moscow of the burden of shedding Russian blood.
The plan initially worked. Kadyrov was able to create a strong force that could fight the guerrillas, basically on its own. Kadyrov’s efforts can also be credited with ending major terrorist attacks in Russia’s heartland, such as those that occurred in a Moscow theater in 2002 and in Beslan School No. 1 in 2004.
Kadyrov seemed an effective antidote to the jihadists. Still, the logical conclusion of the Kremlin’s Kadyrov policy appears to be precisely what it sought to prevent — Chechen independence — when it engaged in the first Chechen war almost a generation ago.
Receiving from the Kremlin a virtual carte blanche to do whatever he wants in Chechnya, Kadyrov made genuine efforts to transform himself into a popular leader. It is clear that he has not brought down the unemployment rate and has no intention of ending corruption. Still, he can be credited for some tangible results in bringing Chechnya a modicum of normality.
The restoration of the capital, Grozny, was one of his clear achievements. Grozny was totally destroyed during the first Chechen war; both Russian and foreign observers compared it with Stalingrad after World War II and assumed that it would be impossible to restore. It was suggested that a new Chechen capital be built. Yet, having enjoyed a huge subsidy from Moscow, Kadyrov has rebuilt Grozny and provided it with some security.
Kadyrov also catered to the spiritual aspirations of the Chechen majority. He rejected Wahhabism, the ideological framework of the jihadists, but maintained that Islam is an essential part of the Chechen tradition and presented himself as a leader who fully understood this. So he encouraged an Islamic dress code and built a huge mosque — one of the biggest in Europe.
All of this brought Kadyrov wide support among the Chechen population. Even those who dislike him sometimes conclude that he is the best of all the possible options, and he has improved his position by persistently weeding out Chechen military forces that are not directly under his command. His most recent effort was the liquidation of the Vostok battalion, despite its being an integral part of the Russian army.
It was probably inevitable that Kadyrov’s increasing power would worry the Kremlin, especially after the Kremlin itself created a precedent for secession by recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the Russia-Georgia war in 2008. Allowing Zakayev’s return would have worsened matters by increasing Kadyrov’s prestige at home, as well as his international visibility and legitimacy. That would have pushed Kadyrov even further away from Russian control at a time when the Kremlin has become increasingly unable — and now, perhaps reluctant — to purchase his loyalty.

Dmitry Shlapentokh teaches history at the University of Indiana, South Bend. © Project Syndicate

TITLE: Murder on the Nevsky Express
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: On Friday, as more than 650 people —including a significant number of government officials — were traveling to St. Petersburg from Moscow, the Nevsky Express luxury train was bombed, killing 26 people and wounding more than 100. Most frightening is that this might not be an isolated terrorist act but the start of a series of attacks.
One of the most striking features of this incident is how Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made no public comments for two days after it happened. Putin — who likes to display his strength by posing shirtless while on vacation — shows a conspicuous lack of strength after terrorist attacks occur in Russia. Usually, he remains silent. Remember how he kept silent during the Dubrovka theater siege and the terrorist attack on Beslan School No. 1.
The Wahhabists are one group suspected in the Nevsky Express bombing. After Yunus-Bek Yevkurov replaced Murat Zyazikov as president of Ingushetia in October 2008, he denied Islamists their safe havens and strongholds in the republic. This sent the insurgents on the offensive, resulting in a string of terrorist attacks in the region: the suicide bombing of police headquarters in Nazran, an assassination attempt against Yevkurov, the murder of Dagestani Interior Minister Adelgirei Mogamedtagirev and the attempted assassination of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
The chaos and lawlessness has led to a sharp increase in the number of insurgents. To make matters worse, federal officials and siloviki who are ostensibly battling extremism are directly subsidizing the terror using money stolen from the national budget to pay for their personal safety. According to Ruslanbek Zyazikov, Murat Zyazikov’s cousin and former head of personal security when he was president, in Ingushetia alone the president’s relatives paid Wahabbists 30 million rubles (roughly $1 million) every month in protection money.
The Wahhabists until recently were only a marginal force in the Caucasus, but they have gained enough power to demand protection money from the federal budget and the business community.
Sooner or later, the extremists were bound to realize that it is far cheaper and simpler to place a bomb on a remote stretch of railway near Tver than to try to kill Yevkurov or Kadyrov with suicide bombers.
The other, but less likely, possible group behind the train bombing are fascists. After Nikita Tikhonov and Yevgenia Khasis were arrested on murder charges in the deaths of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, it turned out that the suspects had close ties to Russian Image and Russian Verdict, two radical nationalist organizations that have been inspired by the conservative Kremlin ideology known as “managed nationalism.” But managed nationalism, the brainchild of Vladislav Surkov, President Dmitry Medvedev’s first deputy chief of staff, turned out to be completely unmanageable. Surkov’s ideological project has inspired radical groups to commit violent acts, the latest incident being the fatal shooting of anti-fascist activist Ivan Khutorskoi on Nov. 16.
Whether it was the Wahhabists or the fascists who committed the train bombing, this demonstrates a complete loss of control in the country and a collapse of government authority. The collapse in Russia’s law enforcement structure, in particular, has become so bad that it is just as easy for terrorists to commit an attack as it is for a disgruntled police officer to shoot shoppers in a supermarket.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Legacy of Laura
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vladimir Nabokov’s final, fragmentary novel went on sale Monday in two versions in Russia, more than 30 years after he asked that it be burned upon his death.
The emigre Russian wrote “The Original of Laura” on index cards from 1975 to 1977, the last years of his life.
He asked his wife and son to burn the cards after his death, said Tatyana Ponomaryova, director of the Nabokov museum in St. Petersburg, where the versions were presented on Monday.
One version contains reproductions of the 138 English-language index cards on which Nabokov wrote the draft, while the other, in Russian, puts the words into conventional text form.
In the U.S., where the book went on sale two weeks ago, the publisher allowed readers to put the index cards in the order of their choice, by perforating the images so that they can be removed and reassembled in any order.
The fragmentary book may be frustrating to many readers accustomed to the polished writing of Nabokov, whose novels, including “Lolita” and “Pale Fire,” are regarded as some of the best English prose ever written. But scholars at the presentation found it intriguing.
“Now we have a unique opportunity to play Nabokov as a Rubik’s Cube. That is, we can try to decide ourselves how the plot should go,” said Valery Timofeyev, a Nabokov expert at St. Petersburg State University.
“In fact, we now have a sample of the author’s laboratory, where all the stages of the writer’s work can be seen. It is great material for teaching philology students, too.”
“Today, when every word of Nabokov is worth its weight in gold, this book is like finding a treasure,” Russian writer Sergei Kibalnik said.
The book was published in the West in early November, and reviewers took note of its postmodernist conceits, in which the narrator tells of an affair with a young woman that later became the basis for a best-seller purportedly written by him.
“It’s not a novel. It’s a plot of a plot. But it is very interesting from that point of view,” said Boris Averin, a Russian literature historian at St. Petersburg State University.
The decision by Dmitry Nabokov to publish the book against his father’s wishes was controversial in literary circles, with many opposing the move.
Ponomaryova said Nabokov did not leave any written will instructing his family to burn the draft, but asked his wife and son Dmitry to do so in conversation not long before he died, she said.
“However, it’s understandable that it was very hard for Dmitry to burn something written by the hand of his father. And I’m personally very glad that Nabokov’s son still decided to publish his father’s work. He did it now also because of his advanced age of 75,” Ponomaryova said.
Dmitry Nabokov wrote in his preface to the book that publication of the book was caused not “by his frivolity or to seek profit.”
“I think my father, or his shadow, would not be against giving Laura her freedom if [the draft] has already lived for so long,” he wrote.
Nabokov wrote the draft from December 1975 through the spring of 1977, the year in which he died. An early version of the novel had the title of “Dying Is Fun.”
The novel revolves around two characters: Promiscuous Flora and her obese husband, Dr. Philip Wild, “a brilliant neurologist, a renowned lecturer and a gentleman of independent means.” The readers learn that Flora has had lovers, and that in her childhood she was pursued by her stepfather, a Mr. Hubert H. Hubert.
“She was often alone in the house with Mr. Hubert, who constantly “prowled” around her, humming a monotonous tune and sort of mesmerizing her, enveloping her, so to speak in some sticky invisible substance and coming closer and closer no matter what way she turned,” Nabokov wrote in his notes.
“For instance, she did not dare to let her arms hang aimlessly lest her knuckles came into contact with some horrible part of that kindly but smelly and ‘pushing’ old male,” the author wrote.
However, the focus of the draft later switches to Wild, who is determined to kill himself. What he has in mind is a strange process of subtraction: He imagines himself as a kind of stick figure on a mental blackboard, then slowly erases parts of his body, starting with his toes. Dying, he imagines, will be fun, since “auto-dissolution afforded the greatest ecstasy known to man,” wrote James Marcus, an editor at the Columbia Journalism Review.
Nabokov was 77 years old and in failing health when he wrote the draft, so it is perhaps understandable that death seemed a more pressing theme to him than Flora’s sexual betrayal and metaphoric malleability. He was staring at the end of himself, wrote Marcus.
Nabokov and his family fled the chaos of the Russian Civil War, and he lived in Europe until moving to the United States in 1940.
He became an American citizen in 1945 but returned to Europe in 1961 after the great success of “Lolita,” settling in Montreux, Switzerland, where he died.

TITLE: Word’s worth
TEXT: By Michele A. Berdy
Êîå-, -íèáóäü, -ëèáî, -òî: Prefix and suffixes added to adverbs and pronouns to convey levels of indefiniteness in ways that are universal but highly idiosyncratic, making it almost impossible to categorize them in a meaningful way.
Once you start to master a particular usage in a foreign language, you can’t remember why you had trouble in the first place. It just “sounds right.” But you also can’t remember the rule behind the usage, and you discover that what sounds right to one Russian speaker doesn’t always sound right to the person next to him.
The suffixes -íèáóäü, -ëèáî and -òî are cases in point. The usage rules in grammar books are clear, but hard to apply at first. You add -òî to adverbs like êàê (how), êóäà (where), ïî÷åìó (why) and pronouns like êàêîé (which) when you are referring to something you don’t know but that is objectively definite or known by someone. Classic examples are statements like: Êíèãà ëåæèò ãäå-òî â øêàôó (The book is somewhere in the bookcase). That is, I don’t know exactly where it is, but it’s definitely there. Or: Îí ïî÷åìó-òî îïàçäûâàåò (For some reason, he’s late). That is, I may not know why he’s late, but he does.
You add -íèáóäü and -ëèáî when you are speaking of something indefinite and unknown to everyone, or when what’s unknown is of no particular interest to you. Ïîëîæè êíèãó êóäà-íèáóäü (Put the book anywhere). That is, I don’t give a hoot where you put the darned thing. ß êàê-íèáóäü ñïðàâëþñü (Somehow I’ll manage). That is, no one knows how I’ll get through this, but somehow I will.
At first, I’d have to grimace in concentration to figure out which variety of indefiniteness I wanted to express. Then it got easy. But now I’ve begun to notice that everyday usage is more varied and idiosyncratic than the grammar books would have it. For example, it’s proper to say: Åñëè îí ïî÷åìó-íèáóäü îïàçäûâàåò, òî ìû íå áóäåì æäàòü (If for any reason he’s late, we won’t wait). But in my set, no one says that: they’d use ïî÷åìó-òî. Or take this: ß ÷òî-íèáóäü ïðèíåñó (I’ll think of something to bring, but right now I don’t know what). How does that differ from ß ÷òî-òî ïðèíåñó? Russians disagree on the meaning of this phrase. Some say it means, “I know what I’ll bring, but I’m not saying.” Others say that here ÷òî-òî is a colloquialism. A third group thinks, “It just doesn’t sound right.” I’ve come to the conclusion that -òî is the default indefinite suffix. Like the little black dress, it might not be perfect, but it’s nearly always serviceable.
Êîå-êàê can mean “somehow or other, any old way” and êîå-ãäå can mean “here and there, in various places.” But the prefix êîå- can also have the neat connotation of “I know, but I’m not telling.” For example: ß êîå-÷òî ïðèíåñó (I’ll bring something, but I’m not saying what). It can indicate the importance of something: ß õî÷ó êîå-÷òî òåáå ñêàçàòü (I have something interesting to tell you). Or it can add a bit of intrigue or a frisson of suspense: Êîå-êòî ñïðîñèë î òåáå (A certain someone asked about you — wink, wink).

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.

TITLE: Indecent exposure
AUTHOR: By Sasha de Vogel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Throughout the history of art, the nude has been a universal symbol. Nudity embodies both classicism and scandal, eroticism and innocence, intimacy and histrionics. 
 A new exhibition at the Museum of City Sculpture examines what the modern evolution of this classic subject holds. Bringing together photography and sculpture produced between 1909 and 2009 by more than fifty Russian artists, “Obnazheniye Sporno” (“Controversial Exposure,” complete with a play on the universal word “porn” in the Russian word for “controversial”) presents a thought-provoking look at how we have seen each other and ourselves during the last hundred years.
Drawing heavily from the museum’s permanent collection as well as new acquisitions and loans, the exhibition covers two floors with pieces representing a broad assortment of styles and mediums, ranging from bronze casts to contemporary digital photography. The focus of the exhibit, however, is squarely on the latter. Much of the photographic work is post-1970, and several pieces were produced this year. Although the exhibition is billed as a combination of nudes and portraits, visitors should not expect to see a history of portraiture here. The art at “Obnazheniye Sporno” is all about the different ways to bare it all.
 In a statement about the exhibition, curator Enver Baikeyev explains that in the last century, there were several major artistic upheavals in Russia, from the Silver Age to Perestroika, to the modern media-saturated era. The result, Baikeyev writes, is that “the modern public is misinformed by the volume of visual media — the answer is in art.” The goal of the exhibit is the “humanization of public taste,” he claims.
Nude photography is, perhaps, the perfect medium to achieve that goal. Both traditional and modern, nude photography strikes a fine balance between intimacy and public indecency. 
Many of the works address changing concepts of individuality, such as Sergei Falin’s photography, which captures naked women in crowded, cramped Soviet apartments. “Akt,” from 1979, features a young woman defiantly posed atop a pile of broken furniture; her nudity as much as her proud stance seems to trumpet her individuality. 
Likewise, Valentin Samarin’s three silver prints from 1988 and 2005 layer the female form over an urban skyline, literally separating a single person from the urban masses. Several other works likewise suggest that by removing our clothes, we can reconnect with humanity.
At times, the nudes remind us of what goes unseen. “Sfumato,” Vladimir Larionov’s image of a curvaceous woman through a window partially obscured by condensation, creates the feeling that the viewer is glimpsing the honesty and frankness of a personal moment. 
Several of the portraits feature people in heavy make-up, such as Anastasia Peshacheva’s “Glamurichka,” a 2008 photo of a female clown. Such works suggest that the accumulation, rather than the shedding, of layers allows the individual to present themselves to the world. 
Nude photography is particularly well suited to exploring themes of sexuality. A set of photos by Enver, the exhibition’s curator, addresses voyeurism and taboo by positioning young women on rooftops, in window frames and in public parks. One disturbing image shows a topless girl kneeling, her legs almost completely obscured by the tulle of a ballerina’s tutu. The half-naked girl seems to be nothing more than a powerless toy, simultaneously childish and sexual. Other images play with our tendency to sexualize and objectify naked women, like Olga Matsayeva’s pair of photos from the series “Why Not?” which show full-figured women looking invitingly at the camera.  
“Obnazheniye Sporno” does not delve into the nuances of the nude male form, despite the artistic tradition that includes the sculptures of Ancient Greece and Michelangelo’s David. Clothed men frequently appear alongside nude women, alluding to questions of power that the exhibition does not fully explore. The male absence is telling: While we are comfortable with the modern sexualization of the female body in photography, we remain intimidated by the complexities of the nude male form. 
Compared with the striking photography, the sculptures included in the exhibition fall flat. These more demure works lack the immediacy of the photography, and tend toward traditional forms, such as the bust, or toward a more abstract style that at times seems difficult to connect to the rest of the exhibition. Nonetheless, the art showcased at “Obnazheniye Sporno” provides a compelling glimpse of our minds and bodies, past and present.

“Obnazheniye Sporno” runs at the New Exhibition Hall of the Museum of City Sculpture through Dec. 20. Nevsky Prospekt 179/2, lit. A. Tel: 274 2635. M: Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo.

TITLE: All steamed up
AUTHOR: By Hardie Duncan
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The popularity in Russia of labeling one’s cafe with the inane “art” prefix is somewhat mystifying, but if forced to come up with an example of what this marker is supposed to convey, one could do worse than the Kipyatok art cafe. 
Situated beside a chilly-sounding neighbor, the Arctic and Antarctic Museum, Kipyatok (Boiling Water) is a welcome respite at the bustling intersection of Ulitsa Marata and Kuznechny Pereulok.
The small but welcoming rectangular space is part living room, scattered with low-lying leather couches, and part eclectic jazz club, with half brick walls, dim lighting and an abundance of photographs of musical instruments and musicians complementing a small stage.
The friendly and helpful waitress seated us promptly, though the food itself was slightly slower in coming and when it eventually did arrive, came all at once: Soup, sushi and entrees.
The sushi — a six-piece tuna roll (200 rubles, $7), one-piece yaki with eel (80 rubles, $3), and one-piece nigiri with salmon and cream cheese (50 rubles, $2) — was fresh and tender and the definite standout of the meal. 
The miso soup (70 rubles, $2.50) itself was decent, but the replacement of the usual tofu with small cubes of soft cheese was anything but informed. The Japanese noodles with salmon (190 rubles, $6.50) were suprisingly flavorful, owing largely to the assertivness of the fish flakes sprinkled atop the dish, providing it with flavor entirely missing from the dish’s bland salmon slices, which were overcooked. 
The giant mussels in wasabi sauce (270 rubles, $9.50) were plentiful and palatable, but the usually piquant sauce added surprisingly little flavor to the lukewarm mollusks’ meat, meaning it was hardly a dish worth revisiting. 
The menu featured a small selection of other hot dishes, ranging in price from 170 rubles ($6) for Japanese rice with vegetables to 420 rubles ($14.50) for the schnitzel — one of the few meat hold-outs on an otherwise ocean-centric menu.
The atmosphere was most enjoyable when the meal was complete and it was possible to slouch back into the depths of the low leather couch while sipping a Hoegaarden (140 rubles, $5) or one of the cafe’s many other spirits and cocktails, such as a strong gin and tonic (180 rubles, $6).
Glancing around the room, a couple could be observed who seemed to be preparing the stage for some sort of musical performance — or possibly an experimental theater piece was already transpiring: Drape black sheet over chair; un-drape chair; sit in chair; turn chair slightly; re-drape chair; etc. Another young couple could be said to have been taking a little too much advantage of the comfortable surroundings (let’s just say they weren’t sitting across from one another.) But what really caught the eye was a seductive dessert being devoured by a fellow customer. 
So we ordered it. The large slice of lemon tart (160 rubles, $5.50) was a delightful mixture of rich and creamy textures and sweet and sour flavors that made the immense effort required to sit upright to eat it well worth it — though standing up to leave proved near impossible.

TITLE: Trojan virus spreads to Mariinsky
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Warriors come out of a Trojan horse, carrying the eponymous virus; the construction of a Hadron Collider and work on the production of a “divine molecule” are developing at full throttle in Carthage; the survivors of a clash between two civilizations don space suits and fly to Mars to begin a new life. 
Experimental Catalonian director Carlus Padrissa, whose Barcelona-based troupe La Fura dels Baus is internationally renowned for its vast extravaganzas, will premiere his unorthodox rendition of Hector Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens” at the Mariinsky Theater on Dec. 25 and 27.
The opera is a joint production between the Mariinsky Theater, Poland’s Opera Narodowa and Spain’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, where the show had its world premiere on Oct. 31, 2009. The Mariinsky is already very much at home with the score of Berlioz’s titanic work, which the company has performed several times in concert version. The opera, which lasts more than five hours, is very rarely staged. The Mariinsky premiere marks Padrissa’s first collaboration with a Russian company.
Although some of the more conservative members of the audience may find Padrissa’s idea of incorporating a computer virus into a classical Greek myth tough to swallow, this enfant terrible of European theater’s bold artistic experiments have been well-received around the globe. The director’s name has become synonymous with provocation, while the company’s trademark style of acting as an artistic testing ground, juxtaposing cutting edge video-art with acrobatics has earned it worldwide recognition.
In 2005, when the international literary community celebrated the 400th anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes’s epic novel “Don Quixote,” Padrissa produced a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek take on the romantic tale, turning the courageous yet errant knight and his sidekick Sancho Panza into two Japanese tourists hooked on computer games. The show was bravely titled “I Have Not Read Don Quixote.”
Neither audiences, nor critics took offence to Padrissa for transforming what is arguably Spain’s favorite literary character into an Internet-addict and setting Cervantes’s prose to rap and hip-hop rhythms.
“All tourists, when they visit Spain, talk about Cervantes, but very few of them have actually gone as far as opening the 900-page classic,” Padrissa said. “The production talks about the destructive effects of technocracy, aggressive advertizing and show business on the human consciousness. Yes, I made my point by turning Don Quixote into some sort of zombified mutant, but the point was worth making, and the price was worth paying. Too many people in the modern world have abandoned good old books for computer games and stupid gadgets.”
Padrissa’s take on “Les Troyens” received a rave reception from audiences in Valencia.
“Some stick-in-the-muds were displeased, of course, but the lion’s share of the spectators enjoyed the performance,” the director said of the show’s world premiere in October, 2009. “A large group of Berlioz aficionados from Lyon, who arrived on a big bus, made quite a lot of noise, stamping their feet and booing — they particularly hated our idea of presenting Mars as Berlusconi’s Italy — but, apart from that, everything went well.”
The show’s three parts are strikingly different in character, presenting two models of civilization in a state of conflict and a desperate attempt to build a new civilization on another planet. The first part shows a Western European type of society, which means, in this particular rendering at least, capitalism at its worst. The second part, set in Carthage, creates a tropical utopia that bears some resemblance to Cuba back in the 1980s. In this socialist paradise, scientists are busy constructing a Hadron collider and doing environmental studies, but the vicious Trojan virus puts an end to all research work as computers shut down. In the final act, the heroes set out on an expedition to Mars hoping to create a better world.
To Padrissa, the Trojan virus analogy was an obvious one.
“If you go to Google and type the world ‘trojan,’ what comes out first are multiple links to the sites and forums discussing the dreaded virus,” the director explains. “You have to flip through many links until you get to Greek mythology, Homer and Virgil, let alone Berlioz’s opera! In our interpretation, one model of civilization is destroying another, attacking and destroying it just like a deadly virus hits a human body.”
“Computers now control virtually all spheres of our lives,” Padrissa continues. “For example, all the traffic lights in Barcelona could go green with the blink of an eye, causing hundreds of road accidents, if the system suddenly gets hit by a virus. Similarly, if a vicious idea hits the minds of too many people, results can be catastrophic. All wars started with a vicious idea. I would say, for example, Hitler carried a virus of fascism inside him.”
For Padrissa, “Les Troyens” is a war story, an opportunity to explore the mechanisms of human conflict. In the director’s view, the escalation of a war resembles the progress of a virus inside a human body.
Padrissa founded his company in 1979 as a itinerant troupe of five musicians, where he played saxophone, and his fellow musicians played trumpet, trombone, clarinet and percussion. The street actors had no training and scarcely any skills, yet they craved the romanticism of a Medieval-style performing company and hated the idea of going to university.
“I was 19 then,” the director recalls. “We bought a mule and a cart and started wandering around the Catalonian villages entertaining locals with bits and pieces of music, singing and story telling,” he said. “We did not charge for our performances, which made the going tough, but we were never hungry. Grateful spectators would always bring us lots of home-made food.”
“La Fura dels Baus” translates into English as “Marmot From Baus.” When asked what marmots have to do with experimental theater, Padrissa said the title was a compromise. As members of the troupe were discussing possible names, one of them insisted on calling the theater “Marmot” — Spain’s third most popular domestic animal, after cats and dogs — while another one lobbied for the title Baus, the name of a tiny Catalonian village where the actors loved to perform and knew of a very useful garbage site — an immense source of tools and props for their performances.
“Spaniards love marmots for their lively and kind character, so this name appealed to us; at the same time we felt very close to Baus and its gorgeous garbage site, so we ended up combining the two into one,” the director explains.
The itinerant troupe developed into a full-blown theater five years later, when it took part in a performing arts festival and became an immediate success. Invitations and commissions were numerous and rewarding in many senses of the word.
During those five years of “street life” the actors mastered the three key elements that Padrissa says form the term “the language of Fura.”
“We learnt to be aware of the fact that the spectators watch us from all sides, and every single member of the audience has to see a good show,” Padrissa explains. “The use of space is also crucial to success. We didn’t limit ourselves to banal entrances from the left or the right. We sought to constantly surprise and amaze the audiences by unorthodox tricks, showing up from the least expected places. When choosing a square for a performance in a village, we would scrutinize every centimeter of it, checking every manhole, every tree, every streetlamp. And, finally, we wanted each and every one of our shows to be a fusion of arts and styles.”  

Links: www.mariinsky.ru, 
www.lafura.com

TITLE: Italian Murder Trial of U.S. Student Nears End
AUTHOR: By Marta Falconi 
and Alessandra Rizzo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PERUGIA, Italy — Lawyers for American student Amanda Knox had their last chance Thursday to convince a jury she is innocent of the murder of her British roommate.
The session in the courtroom in Perugia was set aside for rebuttals by prosecutors as well as by lawyers for Knox and her Italian former boyfriend, who is also accused of murdering Meredith Kercher.
Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito insist they are innocent.
Kercher was found fatally stabbed in the neck in November 2007 in her bedroom at the rented home she shared with Knox in Perugia. Kercher, Knox and Sollecito were all students in the Umbrian university town.
A verdict by the eight-member jury, which includes two judges, in the nearly yearlong trial could come as soon as Friday.
Escorted by prison guards, Knox looked tense as she came to the courtroom, where one of the prosecutors, Manuela Comodi was opening the day’s proceedings with another appeal to the court to convict the two defendants.
Defense lawyers have a chance to counter the prosecutors’ arguments when they address the court on Thursday afternoon.
While often smiling during much of the trial, the weight of two years in jail and the possibility of a conviction and a life sentence appeared to have taken their toll on Knox. She recently wept as she proclaimed her innocence before the court.
Prosecutors have requested a life sentence for Knox and Sollecito on charges they sexually assaulted and murdered Kercher, who shared a rented house with the American and other students in Perugia.
Both Knox, a 22-year-old student from Seattle, and Sollecito, an Italian who was her boyfriend at the time, have pleaded innocent.
Knox’s eyes swelled with tears and her voice was broken when she stood up in front of the jury last month to say that accusations that she murdered Kercher were “pure fantasy.”
She insists Kercher was a friend whose death shocked her.
The prosecutors have told the court a different story, depicting Knox and Kercher as two people who had grown apart. Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said Knox was harboring hatred toward Kercher, whom Knox saw as a “smug girl.” He said Knox wanted to get back at Kercher for saying she was not clean and calling her promiscuous.
The murder, with its brutality and sordid details of sex and drugs among university students, has made headlines worldwide, bringing TV cameras to this usually quiet town.
The prosecutors contend that on the night of the murder, Nov. 1, 2007, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Ivory Coast citizen Rudy Hermann Guede.
Guede has already been convicted of murder and sexual assault in separate proceedings, receiving a 30-year sentence. He is appealing his conviction, acknowledging he was in the house the night of the murder but insisting he did not kill Kercher.
According to the prosecution, Kercher and Knox started arguing and then the three brutally attacked the Briton and sexually assaulted her. They were acting, Mignini said, under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol.”
Kercher’s body, her throat slit, was found in a pool of blood the next day at the apartment. Prosecutors say Knox and Sollecito broke a window in a bedroom to fake a burglary and sidetrack the investigation.
Prosecutors have failed to produce conclusive forensic evidence.
They have said that a knife with a 6 1/2-inch (16.5-centimeter) blade they found at Sollecito’s house could be the weapon. The knife has Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s on the handle, they say.
But defense lawyers argue that the knife is too big to match Kercher’s wounds and that the amount of what prosecutors say is Kercher’s DNA is too low to be attributed with certainty.
Prosecutors also maintain Sollecito’s DNA was found on the clasp of Kercher’s bra, although his defense team contends that the evidence might have been inadvertently contaminated during the investigation.
A bloody footprint found on a bathroom rug in the house was also attributed to Sollecito by the prosecutors, but forensic experts testifying for his defense have argued it doesn’t match the size and shape of Sollecito’s foot.
Knox and Sollecito were arrested shortly after the slaying.
The defense has largely focused on the lack of evidence and what they say is the absence of a clear motive.

TITLE: 15 Killed By Bomb In Somalia
AUTHOR: By Mohamed Olad Hassan
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: MOGADISHU, Somalia – A male suicide bomber dressed as a woman attacked a university graduation ceremony Thursday, killing at least 15 people, including three Cabinet ministers and three journalists.
The attack raised new questions about the ability of Somalia’s weak government to control even the small area of the capital it holds. African troops protecting the government wage near daily battles with Islamic militants who hold much of central and southern Somalia.
More than three dozen students had gathered to receive their diplomas at the ceremony at the Shamo Hotel.
The assailants hit one of Somalia’s most important efforts to extricate itself from anarchy and violence, explaining the presence of so many top government officials. The former medical students among the graduates came from only the second class to receive diplomas from the medical school.
The first class graduated a year ago. Before then, almost two decades has passed since anyone earned a medical degree in Somalia. In the December 2008 ceremony, held at the same hotel, the graduates proudly hoisted diplomas into the air. This year, there was mayhem as the bomb went off, leaving the dead and wounded in bloody heaps.
“What happened today is a national disaster,” said Somali Information Minister Dahir Mohamud Gelle, who confirmed that the ministers for education, higher education and health were killed in the blast. The ministers for sports and tourism were wounded.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell upon the militant group al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida, controls much of the country and has carried out past suicide attacks.
“A man who disguised himself as a woman, complete with a veil and a female’s shoes, is behind the explosion,” Gelle said. “We even have his picture.”
Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television said its Somali cameraman, Hassan Zubeir, died. Two other Somali journalists working for local outlets also died, said Bashir Khalif, a reporter for the Somali government’s radio service.
In total, 15 people plus the suicide bomber died, the Somali information minister said. However, a statement from the African Union’s mission in Somalia said 19 people were killed. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
Top Somali officials — including the president and prime minister — met for an emergency session at the presidential palace after the attack.
Several hundred people had gathered inside a decorated ballroom in the Shamo Hotel to celebrate the graduations of the medical, computer science and engineering students from Benadir University. The school was established in 2002 by a group of Somali doctors who wanted to promote higher education in a country where physicians have become the victims of the seemingly endless violence. Medical degrees are obtained after six years of study.

TITLE: U.S. Commander Sells Strategy to Afghans
AUTHOR: By Heidi Vogt
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL — The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan worked to sell the new American strategy for the country to Afghan parliamentarians Thursday, promising that international troops will not start leaving until national security forces are ready to take over.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal addressed about 30 parliamentarians in an ornate conference room two days after President Barack Obama announced he was sending 30,000 new U.S. troops in early 2010 to try to turn the tide against Taliban insurgents. Obama said he hoped to start drawing down in 18 months if conditions permit.
“We will not decrease coalition forces without the increase of Afghan national security forces capability,” McChrystal, in combat fatigues, told a room full of mostly men in suits — some wearing traditional felt hats and a few in turbans. The general is commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
He said that the 30,000 additional forces should be in place within a year and that by the summer of 2011 “it will be clear that the government of Afghanistan will be the victors,” McChrystal said, adding that a U.S. presence in the country would remain.
“It will not be over. It will take time after that. It will take years after that, together, to provide security and continue to secure Afghanistan,” he said.
His speech took a slightly different tack than Obama’s televised address Wednesday. Obama, speaking mostly to Americans, stressed the exit strategy. McChrystal emphasized to the parliamentarians that the U.S. will stay as long as necessary. He met with the parliamentarians after holding talks with President Hamid Karzai and key ministers on Wednesday.
The Taliban have said more Americans would die under the Obama plan, which would give them an opportunity “to increase their attacks and shake the American economy, which is already facing crisis.”
The Taliban statement issued Wednesday said that Obama only set a tentative pullout date for July 2011 to lessen the sensitivities of Afghans about the troop buildup and to decrease the American public’s opposition to the war.
Parliamentarians told McChrystal they were worried about a quick departure and about being deserted by international troops so soon, according to those who participated in a closed-door question and answer session with the general.
Daoud Sultanzai, a parliamentarian from Ghazni province, said the lawmakers were worried that the two-year deadline meant that U.S. forces were not committed to the country.
“It is interpreted that the United States and the international community will start leaving Afghanistan,” Sultanzai said. McChrystal told the group that the planned to start leaving in 18 months applies to the new troops being sent now, not to the full U.S. force.
The Afghan war has become increasingly hard to sell to Americans as troop deaths increase. More than 850 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. Of those, the military reports nearly 660 were killed by hostile action.

TITLE: 5 Sentenced In China for Riots
AUTHOR: By Scott McDonald
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced five more people to death Thursday for killing a police officer with a brick, kicking bystanders to death and other crimes committed during ethnic riots that rocked the western region of Xinjiang in July.
The Intermediate People’s Court of Urumqi also sentenced two others to life in prison, said a woman who answered the phone at the media center of the Xinjiang regional government. Like many Chinese officials, she refused to give her name.
China announced last month that nine Uighurs had been executed for taking part in the ethnic rioting that left nearly 200 people dead in July. It was China’s worst ethnic violence in decades.