SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1541 (2), Friday, January 22, 2010
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TITLE: Khloponin To Head Caucasus District
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Conflict-torn republics in the North Caucasus will be united in a new federal district overseen by newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin, President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday.
The surprise announcement redraws the seven so-called “super regions” established by then-President Vladimir Putin in May 2000 to reassert federal authority over provinces that had largely enjoyed autonomy in the 1990s.
The shift also serves as an indication of how seriously the Kremlin is treating the threat of escalating violence in the North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya.
But the appointment of Krasnoyarsk Governor Khloponin, a weathered politician with a past in big business, suggests that the Kremlin wants to shift its focus away from the seemingly never-ending fight against insurgents to building a more stable political system there, political analysts said.
“First, I’ve changed the system of federal districts that exists in our country,” Medvedev said in announcing the changes during a meeting with Khloponin in the Kremlin on Tuesday evening.
The president said the new North Caucasus Federal District would include the republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia and the Stavropol region — all of which were part of the Southern Federal District previously. The capital of the new district will be located in the Stavropol region’s resort of Pyatigorsk.
The Southern Federal District will encompass the regions of Krasnodar, Astrakhan, Rostov and Volgograd, along with the republics of Adygeya and Kalmykiya.
Medvedev also said he had signed a decree Tuesday appointing Khloponin as his envoy in the North Caucasus Federal District and, simultaneously, to the post of deputy prime minister. The government will now have seven deputy prime ministers and two first deputy prime ministers.
Medvedev also accepted Khloponin’s resignation as Krasnoyarsk’s governor and promoted his deputy Edkham Akbulatov to the post of acting governor.
Medvedev said Khloponin would have authority over economic issues related to the North Caucasus Federal District and oversee top personnel decisions and the activities of law enforcement agencies there.
Medvedev said North Caucasus authorities have learned how to fight insurgents and criminals but lacked experience in rooting out corruption, clamping down on economic crime and nurturing economic development. He said he hoped that Khloponin would use his experience as a successful governor to improve the social and economic situation in the North Caucasus.
The president also sent a bill to the State Duma on Tuesday allowing Khloponin to jointly serve as a Cabinet member and an official with the presidential administration.
Khloponin, a former chairman of the Norilsk Nickel metals giant who won gubernatorial elections in the Taimyr autonomous district in 2001 and in the Krasnoyarsk region the following year, said Tuesday that he would use “economic methods” to tackle the many problems that have accumulated in the North Caucasus.
Medvedev hinted that he would appoint a new North Caucasus tsar during his state-of-the-nation address in November. Political pundits named several potential candidates, but Khloponin was not among them. The Kremlin and Krasnoyarsk administration released statements ahead of Tuesday’s meeting that said Khloponin had been invited to the Kremlin to participate in a presidential meeting dedicated to education and demography with other senior officials.
Medvedev previously had never indicated that he might create an eighth federal district.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov expressed hope Tuesday that the creation of the new federal district would boost local economic development.
“It is a relatively small, compact territory, and we want to hope that this reform will help to solve problems of economic growth quickly,” he told Interfax.
Senior officials in United Russia, where Khloponin is a member of the party’s Political Council, made similar noises Tuesday.
While violence has surged in recent months in the North Caucasus, particularly in Ingushetia and Dagestan, Khloponin most likely will concentrate on other grave problems that contribute to instability there, including bad governance, corruption and a poor investment climate, said Nikolai Silayev, a Caucasus analyst at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations.

TITLE: President Tries to Boost Population
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday promised to step up the fight against the country’s dramatic demographic decline, boosted by the news of the first annual population increase since 1995.
But Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova warned that a host of negative factors need to be tackled, including a looming drop in women in their fertile years and sky-high abortion rates.
Golikova said Monday that preliminary statistics for last year showed that the country’s population of 141.9 million had either remained stable or increased by 15,000 to 25,000 people.
The country’s population has shrunk by 6 million since the Soviet collapse in 1991 because of economic hardship, rampant alcoholism and other factors.
Speaking at a Kremlin meeting of the presidential council for national projects, Medvedev said the state would focus on reducing infant and mother mortality rates, fighting alcohol and drug abuse and improving support for families and children.
Part of the government’s effort is to build more maternity hospitals. The government promised back in 2008 to build 23 so-called perinatal centers by the end of this year. Medvedev said he would like to hear how construction has progressed.
Infant mortality — deaths under the age of 1 — has fallen to 8.1 children per 1,000 births nationally but still stands at more than 10 in impoverished regions like Chechnya, which had a rate of 16.7 last year, Golikova said in a statement on her ministry’s web site.
According to UNICEF, the infant mortality rate in 2007 was five deaths per 1,000 live births in Britain and seven in the United States.
Golikova said last year’s positive population figures were mainly achieved through an influx of immigrants, mostly from other former Soviet republics, while 1.76 million births could not replace 1.95 million deaths.
The minister told the council Tuesday that self-sustained population growth could only be achieved if the overall mortality rate were reduced by 5 percent annually through 2015, Interfax reported. Last year, she said, mortality was reduced by 4 percent.
Yet her ministry warned that the task would be complicated by an expected sharp drop in potential mothers. The share of women between 20 and 29, regarded as the most fertile age, is forecast to fall from a current 8.6 percent to 4.8 percent in 2020, the ministry said in an analysis posted on its web site.
Because of that, the ministry said, the country needs to significantly reduce the number of abortions, which is among the highest in the world.
Although abortion numbers have fallen by 23 percent over the past five years, they are still more than three times higher than in the United States. In 2008, Russia recorded 1.714 million births and 1.234 million abortions, which translates into a rate of 72 abortions per 100 births. Comparable U.S. statistics stand at 20 abortions per 100 births.
“Reducing abortions won’t solve the birthrate problem by 100 percent, but by about 20 to 30 percent,” Golikova told reporters Monday, Interfax reported.
Medvedev did not mention the abortion issue Tuesday, but he said the state should increase cooperation with and support for nongovernmental organizations that assist children and families.
The president also announced a 15 billion ruble ($0.5 billion) program to modernize the country’s education system.
Part of the initiative is to reform teachers’ salaries by adding performance-related pay, Medvedev said. “This is not just about increasing salaries but a whole set of measures to motivate those who achieve very good results,” he said.
Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko announced this week that the country’s pedagogical colleges, where teachers are trained, would be overhauled. “We have no shortage of teachers but a shortage of good teachers,” he was quoted as saying by Kommersant.
Teachers’ salaries average at 11,200 rubles ($378) nationwide and 36,000 rubles ($1,200) in Moscow, Fursenko said.
Statistics released by the Education and Science Ministry this week showed the dramatic effects of the demographic crisis on schools and universities.
While the number of first graders rose from 1.25 million in 2007 to 1.39 million in 2009 — the first increase in 12 years in 2009 — the overall number of high school students almost halved from 20.6 million in 1998 to 13.3 million last year.
The number of high school graduates fell from 1.25 million in 1998 to 900,000 in 2009 and is expected to drop to 700,000 in 2012.
As a consequence, university student numbers are expected to drop from the current 7.5 million to 4 million in the 2012-13 school year.
The country’s population decline has dampened economic growth projections.
U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said in a report last month that Russia’s economy could grow by 1.5 percent to 4.4 percent a year from 2011 to 2050, way behind the 3.6 percent to 7.9 percent annual growth projection for China or the 5.8 percent to 6.6 percent annual growth projection for India, Reuters reported.
The country’s economy contracted by at least 8.5 percent in 2009, the biggest annual decline in 15 years.

TITLE: Snow, Ice  Cleanup To Cost $33 Mln
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Clearing up the consequences of the recent heavy snowfalls in St. Petersburg will cost a billion rubles ($33 million), City Hall announced on Wednesday.
Clearing courtyards of snow and removing icicles from roofs will cost about 420 million rubles, while clearing streets and roads will require a further 600 to 800 million rubles, St. Petersburg Vice Governor Alexei Sergeyev said, Ekho Peterburga radio station reported.
The city will have to pay for numerous commercial services, mainly construction companies that provide equipment and staff for the clean-up operation, he said. 
Meanwhile, deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly have called upon City Hall to pay compensation to residents for shortcomings in dealing with the heavy snow.  
On Wednesday, deputies approved a request submitted by A Just Russia party deputy Oleg Nilov and addressed to Governor Valentina Matviyenko for compensation to be paid to residents who have suffered as a result of delays in clearing the snow. 
Nilov said the city’s utilities services should foot the bill for repairs to apartments damaged by leaking roofs.
“It could be done in two stages: First people should be compensated and then, through the courts or in some other way, the utilities services should be fined for failing to fulfill their obligations,” Nilov said in an interview on 100TV television channel. 
Nilov said the compensation should be calculated using rates already established by insurance companies, with one-off payments amounting to tens of thousands of rubles. 
People who have suffered injuries as a result of the poor response to the heavy snowfall would have to provide documentation from accident and emergency wards and supply eye-witnesses, Nilov said. 
Meanwhile, the governor’s comments on ineffective measures taken to clear the city of snow, in which Matviyenko said ominously that certain bureaucrats would be sent home “to knit socks” if the city wasn’t restored to normal by Feb. 1, appear to have had an impact on the utilities services.
Every night, dozens of roads and streets in the city are being closed to traffic whilst they are cleared of snow. Much of the Petrograd Side will be closed to vehicles during the coming weekend, leading to fears among locals that traffic jams will become an even more frequent occurrence.
In early January, more than 700 people were injured as a result of falling on ice, exposure to the cold and ice falling from above, the city’s Ambulance Service said on Tuesday, Interfax reported. One woman was killed by a falling icicle.

TITLE: Murder of Ghanaian Investigated
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The recent murder of a Ghanaian man, which appears to be racially motivated, is under investigation in St. Petersburg, while the police prevented two anti-fascist rallies in the center this week. 
Solomon Attengo Gwajio, 25, was stabbed to death near his home on Prospekt Veteranov in the southwest of the city at around 9 p.m. on Dec. 25, according to the web site of the prosecutor’s investigative committee. 
He was stabbed more than 20 times.
On New Year’s Eve, a video purportedly depicting Gwajio’s murder was uploaded to a web site allegedly run by extreme nationalists. A New Year greeting speech by a masked man standing against the background of the Nazi flag is followed by a poorly lit sequence of two unidentifiable men apparently stabbing the third.
“The investigation is underway, there are no suspects yet,” a spokesman for the prosecutor’s investigative committee in St. Petersburg said on Thursday.
Protests against fascist violence and in memory of the human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, who were shot to death in Moscow on Jan. 19 last year, were curbed by the authorities this week.
A large painting dedicated to the memory of Markelov and Baburova pasted by an anarchist art group on the brick wall of the Museum of Political History late on Monday was scratched off by unknown people before the museum’s staff arrived at work on Tuesday morning, according to the museum’s press officer.
A group of anarchists and left-wing activists tried to unfold a banner and distribute leaflets near one of the entrances to the city’s central Nevsky Prospekt metro station on Tuesday, but were stopped by plainclothes policemen, who appeared to have known about the planned event in advance. Four activists were detained.
On Wednesday, around 100 anarchists and anti-fascist activists attempted to hold a march on Nevsky, but due to large police presence both at the planned site and on the Petrograd Side, a downscaled version of the march eventually took place on Ulitsa Marata later that day. 
A much-publicized anti-fascist rally in Moscow on Jan. 19, which was partly authorized after an initial ban, drew an estimated 1,000. Dozens of detentions were reported.
Activists say the authorities ban and thwart anti-fascist protests because those in power benefit from nationalism.
“We believe that it is the authorities who profit most from fascism, because it divides society and prevents people from trying to solve society’s problems,” anti-fascist activist Olga, who didn’t want her last name to appear in print, said by phone on Thursday. 
“Everyone’s attention is therefore refocused on other people, people who aren’t to blame for what is happening in the country. On the contrary, it is precisely our homegrown bureaucrats who are to blame. For some reason, however, the public’s attention is shifted away from real problems to made-up problems like immigration.”
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko called for measures to fight illegal immigration and for the “more effective” expulsion of those who violate immigration laws. She made the comments while speaking on the board of the City Department of Internal Affairs on Wednesday, Interfax reported.

TITLE: EU Optimistic on Visa Regime
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Spanish initiative to ease visa requirements for Russians and EU citizens alike has enough political support among European leaders to continue even after Madrid’s six-month EU presidency ends this summer, EU officials said.
“In Europe we appreciate the Russians, and we would be happy to see more Russians,” Spanish Ambassador Juan Antonio Pujol told reporters Wednesday.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos announced during a visit to Moscow last week that Madrid would push for a road map toward easier visa rules for both sides.
Pujol said the plan was broadly supported among the EU’s 27 member states, explaining that no country voiced opposition to Moratinos’ initiative during an earlier meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
Past pledges by European and Russian officials to lift cumbersome visa restrictions have led to little results, and deficiencies in Russia’s security and border guard systems have fueled security concerns among EU members.
Fernando Valenzuela, head of the EU delegation to Russia, said this was a long-term project and “technical difficulties” needed to be overcome.
Pujol, the Spanish ambassador, did not offer a time frame Wednesday but merely said the objective was “to reach the horizon” of visa-free travel. “We want a large European Russian space extremely friendly to citizens,” he said.
As a sign of his country’s willingness, he pointed out that the number of Spanish multiple-entry visas given to Russian citizens rose from 10,000 in 2006 to 250,000 in 2009. For the same years, the total number of Spanish visas for Russians grew from 380,000 to 400,000, he said.
Spain is the last country to hold the old-style rotating EU presidency because it had been planned before the Lisbon Treaty was ratified last fall. Future presidencies, starting with Belgium in July, will focus on internal EU affairs, while external relations with countries like Russia will be managed by the new permanent president of the European Council and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Valenzuela said.
In an indication that Madrid is keeping a low profile as president, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Louis Zapatero will not travel to the next EU-Russia summit in May, an EU official said Wednesday. “It is even unclear, if [Foreign Minister] Moratinos will come, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because a final decision had not been made.
As such, council President Herman van Rompuy and foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton might come to the summit alone. The May 30 summit was originally planned in Rostov-on-Don but is now slated for Moscow, the official said.
Valenzuela said the Lisbon Treaty reform would probably make EU foreign policy easier because it allows shorter, less formal contacts. “Formerly, everything had to be officially agreed with the national presidency. Now we can be more flexible,” he said.

TITLE: NATO Military Chief Seeks Russian Backing
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO’s military chief said Wednesday that he would like to explore the possibility of expanding the alliance’s military cooperation with Russia, especially regarding the war in Afghanistan.
Admiral James Stavridis said this could include Russian help in maintaining the large fleet of Soviet-built helicopters being used by the alliance and Afghan security forces, as well as other logistical assistance.
Russia has no forces in Afghanistan, but it has kept open a land and air route through its territory and through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan — an alternate to NATO’s principal supply route through Pakistan, which often has been attacked.
Russia also has trained hundreds of Afghan government anti-narcotics officers.
“There are many zones of cooperation that we can explore,” Stavridis said during an interview in Kabul at the conclusion of his three-day visit to NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The alliance’s relations with Moscow have largely normalized since they were frozen in the aftermath of the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. Regular contacts at the ministerial level resumed last year.
At their summit with Russia in April, NATO leaders emphasized the need for cooperation with Moscow on issues of common interest. These include the war in Afghanistan, counter-piracy, and combating terrorism and drug trafficking.
In December, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen traveled to Moscow for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The meetings ended without specific undertakings on military-to-military cooperation, but both sides said they were encouraged by the progress in political relations.
Some analysts have suggested that the next step should be a meeting between Russia’s and NATO’s top commanders that would look at boosting military cooperation.
“I do not have a planned trip, but I’m always open to conversations with my military counterparts,” Stavridis said. NATO’s secretary-general “has taken the first step, and I am waiting for his guidance on this.”
Moscow has been critical of some aspects of the Afghan war, but Russia has repeatedly noted concern about the possible expansion of Islamic militancy in Central Asia and the large expansion of heroin and opium smuggling that it says would result from a Taliban victory.
Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, this month urged NATO to remain committed to Afghanistan until that nation’s security forces are able to handle the Taliban insurgency on their own.
“I’m open to any discussion of Russian assistance to Afghanistan,” Stavridis said. “They have been helpful in our northern supply routes, and the next step would be some form of logistics support.”
In Moscow, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry refused an immediate comment Wednesday, saying foreign military affairs were outside his area of expertise.
Stavridis mentioned the possibility of helping NATO security forces maintain the Soviet-built helicopters being used by both the alliance and the Afghan army and police. 
“A lot of equipment of the Afghan security forces is of Russian design, and possibly the Russians could help,” he said.
In November, Moscow sold four Mi-17 transport helicopters to Afghanistan — the first new aircraft delivered to Afghanistan in two decades.
Russia also has sold small arms and other weapons systems to the internationally backed Afghan government for several years and provided $220 million worth of military aid, including aviation equipment, an air-defense system for the Kabul airport, communications gear, vehicles, repair equipment and spare parts.
Russia currently is helping train 21 Afghan drug police officers at a facility outside Moscow in a joint project with NATO, and next year it will train 220 Afghan policemen, Russian officials say.
Stavridis said other areas of military cooperation could include a dialogue on the lessons learned from the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan. The disastrous 10-year conflict ended with a Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
“We need to understand their experience, Russia’s experience. There is something we may be able to learn from,” he said.
Stavridis pointed to other fields in which NATO and Russia were cooperating closely, including naval anti-piracy patrols in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, and a similar counterterrorism operation in the western Mediterranean.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Budget Airline Launch</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The budget airline Ryanair, which last December announced the opening of a new route from Lappeenranta in Finland to Dusseldorf in Germany from April 1 of this year, announced this week that it would be bringing the launch forward to March 4.
The company decided to switch to an earlier launch date due to unexpectedly high demand for tickets, Fontanka news portal reported.
The route has been billed as being tailored to Russian passengers, since there are good transport links between St. Petersburg and Lappeenranta, which is located just across the Finnish border with Russia, about 200 kilometers from St. Petersburg. The planes will fly to Weeze Airport, an hour’s journey from the center of Dusseldorf. Prices for a one-way ticket to Dusseldorf from Lappeenranta with Ryanair start from as little as 8 euros. 
St. Petersburg’s tourist agencies have been quick to react to Ryanair’s offer. One company has already set up a transfer service to Lappeenranta’s airport from St. Petersburg, a return ticket costing 25 euros, Fontanka reported.

<strong>Georgia Flights Barred</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian authorities have refused a request from Georgia’s national airline to resume regular direct flights between Moscow and Tbilisi, 17 months after the two neighbors went to war.
“We have received an official refusal to both requests, on charter flights as well as on scheduled ones,” Nino Giorgobiani, a spokeswoman for Georgian Airways, said Wednesday. “The explanation from Russia was the need for more negotiations.”
A Georgian plane flew from Tbilisi to Moscow on Jan. 8, marking a brief restoration of air services after the two countries fought in August 2008 over the disputed territory of South Ossetia. Several other charters flew during the holiday season in January, Giorgobiani said. President Dmitry Medvedev said Dec. 9 that he saw “no particular impediments” to restoring air links with Georgia.

<strong>Dymovsky Charged</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Former Novorossiisk police Major Alexei Dymovsky, who accused senior officers of corruption in a YouTube appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in November, has been charged with abuse of office, investigators said Wednesday.
Dymovsky faces up to six years in prison if convicted, the Krasnodar regional branch of the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

<strong>Gagarin Top Idol</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, who became the first man in outer space in 1961, tops a list of Russians’ idols of the 20th century, a poll showed.
Thirty-five percent of respondents named Gagarin as their “main idol,” up 5 percentage points from 10 years ago, according to the poll conducted by state-run VTsIOM.
Vladimir Vysotsky, a Soviet singer, poet and actor, placed second in the poll with 31 percent, unchanged from a decade before. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, a leader of the Soviet military in World War II, ran third with 20 percent, followed by writer Leo Tolstoy, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
The poll of 1,600 people was conducted Jan. 9-10 and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

TITLE: Economy Rated Next To ‘Repressed’ States
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economy ranks 143rd in a list of the world’s freest economies, just one spot higher than countries with “repressed” economies like Vietnam, Ecuador, Belarus and Ukraine, according to a report released Wednesday.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank, gave Russia a freedom score of 50.3, 0.5 points down from last year, in its index of economic freedom in 183 countries.
The index uses a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being the most free, and is based on 10 indicators, including trade freedom, fiscal and monetary freedom, government spending, investment freedom and freedom from corruption.
“The Russian economy scores above the world average only in fiscal freedom, in part because of a reduced corporate tax rate that became effective in January 2009,” the report said.
Analysts concurred that it was more difficult to do business in Russia than in other European countries, but Russian politicians derided the report as unfair.
“The report is trying to say that it’s more difficult to do business in Russia than in Western Europe because there are more regulations in Russia and there may also be concerns about corruption,” said Nigel Rendell, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London.
The report said corruption remained rampant “in the size of bribes sought” and warned that government involvement hindered the economy.
“There’s always tension between state and market, and in the case of the Russian economy, unfortunately, the state seems to be winning,” said Anthony Kim, a researcher at Heritage Foundation who contributed to the report.
“That’s the reason why Russia’s economy is losing flexibility and competitiveness,” he said by telephone from Washington.
Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov declined to comment on the report.
But Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman of the State Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee, said the findings were far from reality. “This evaluation certainly has nothing to do with reality. It’s based on the notion that Russia’s economy is mostly supported by big companies that have a privileged status,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
He also said the post-Soviet, raw materials economy was fashioned on the advice of U.S. and European experts in the 1990s, and those experts were responsible for any lack of freedom.
“There was no authentic Russian base for this type of economy, so it was formed artificially,” he said. “The evaluation we have now is based on this artificial model.”
Bureaucratic obstacles for small businesses are among the other problems in Russia’s economy, the report said. Obtaining a business license in Russia takes much longer than the global average, it said.
Fyodorov conceded that small businesses faced startup barriers. “There’s no place for small business in Russia’s aggressive economic climate,” he said.
The list is topped for the third straight year by Hong Kong, with a score of 89.7. Singapore and Australia hold second and third place, respectively.

TITLE: RZD Seeks Cash Via IPO
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Railways, operator of the world’s longest rail network, may seek to raise as much as $4 billion from proposed initial public offerings of two units.
The state-owned company is seeking dual listings of TransContainer and Freight One Co. in Moscow and either London or Hong Kong, Dmitry Novikov, an adviser to the president of Russian Railways, said Thursday while attending a conference in Hong Kong. There are no plans to sell shares in Russian Railways itself, he said.
Emerging markets will produce the biggest increases in IPOs as global sales almost double to $200 billion this year, according to Matthew Johnson, the head of the global-equities syndicate at Barclays in New York. 
The share sales of TransContainer may raise $1 billion, and Freight One $2.5 billion to $3 billion, Novikov said, citing preliminary estimates yet to be approved by the company’s supervisory board. The company is still conducting an official valuation study, he said.

TITLE: British Court Defends ‘Vodka’ Brand
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A British court has ruled that the word “vodka” can only be applied to products meeting characteristics spelled out in European law, with Justice Richard Arnold saying it deserves the same legal protections as champagne and Swiss chocolate.
The decision was cheered by some in Russia, who said it was a step closer to protecting the coveted “Russian vodka” brand in lucrative foreign markets, where many producers use Russian-sounding names.
Vodka, a diminutive form of the Russian word for water, is widely believed to be a Russian invention, with one theory crediting chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev for nailing down 40 percent as the perfect alcohol ratio at the end of the 19th century.
The High Court ruled in favor of Diageo, the multinational holding behind Smirnoff and dozens of other alcohol brands. Arnold said he agreed that Vodkat, a clear beverage made by InterContinental Brands with 22 percent alcohol content, was deceiving “a substantial number of members of the public into believing that the product is vodka,” Sky News reported Wednesday.
“In this case, the court is required for the first time to decide whether a producer of vodka has the same rights as a producer of champagne, sherry, advocaat, whisky or Swiss chocolate,” he said.
Vodka is defined in European law as a drink with at least 37.5 percent alcohol content that is made from 100 percent distilled alcohol.
Russian state-run vodka maker Soyuzplodoimport, which makes Stolichnaya vodka and is one of the largest vodka exporters, applauded the decision.
“The decision will help differentiate the concept of ‘vodka’ and protect it from fakes or free-handed interpretations often used by dishonest producers,” spokeswoman Nelly Pugachyova said. The company’s other brands include vodkas named Russkaya and Moskovskaya, as well as Sovietskoye Shampanskoye.
Vodka has been a frequent source of litigation in the past, including a successful suit filed by Diageo in 2007 to defend its Ciroc grape vodka, provided that it list nontraditional ingredients on the package.
Many producers in Eastern Europe argue that only vodka made from wheat or potatoes should bear the name.
Some experts even called the decision a potential precedent for further litigation on behalf of Russia’s vodka makers.
“In general, this is a step toward recognizing vodka as a product from Russia,” Pavel Shapkin, an alcohol expert for the Federation Council’s Economic Policy Committee, told The St. Petersburg Times Times. “In Britain they make vodkas like Orlov and Suvorov branded to hint at Russian provenance, which is also disorienting to consumers since most vodka on the British market is made in Britain,” he said.
The decision may “be a precedent for contesting rights for usage of the word.”
Russia has attempted to gain control over the Smirnoff brand since the Soviet period. The post-Soviet round of litigation between Smirnoff and Boris Smirnov Trade House ended in 2006 when both brands came under control of Diageo and can only be distributed by a joint venture between Diageo and Alfa Group.
Soyuzplodoimport has battled in court over the Stolichnaya brand and has lobbied to make the term “Russian vodka” patented and tied to geographic provenance. “We insist on a clear division between the terms ‘vodka’ and ‘Russian vodka,’ Pugachyova said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Fight Against Fraud</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — The Federal Migration Service and the Association of Russian Banks agreed on Wednesday to step up cooperation to fight fraud, including measures to alert banks to fake passports.
They also proposed drafting legislation that would eliminate the requirement for banks to get migration card and visa information when opening accounts for foreigners, the ARB said.
The data “have no practical significance for identifying a client and is confirmed by the lack of analogous demands” by the Financial Action Task Force and the European Union, the association said in a statement.
The agreement affects anyone who has or is opening a bank account in Russia, said Yelizaveta Pankratova, a spokeswoman for the service.
The service will seek to give banks information on fake and fraudulently obtained passports the same way the Federal Financial Monitoring Service alerts financial organizations of links to “extremist activity,” the statement said.
ARB president Garegin Tosunyan said after the signing with Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky that the agreement would help fight financial crime and “make the system maximally accessible for normal clients and maximally inaccessible for swindlers,” Interfax reported.

<strong>Sberbank to Help RusAl</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, plans to help United Co. RusAl refinance a $4.5 billion loan the aluminum maker must repay to Vnesheconombank by October, Chief Executive Officer German Gref said.
Sberbank has agreed with Vnesheconombank, or VEB, Russia’s state development bank, to refinance the loan jointly on a “fifty-fifty basis,” Gref told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. Both banks have “no problem with resources” for the refinancing, which will be completed on “market terms,” he said.
The VEB loan, given in October 2008, was the only borrowing Moscow-based RusAl couldn’t extend over four years as part of the company’s $17 billion debt restructuring. In its prospectus for an initial public offering in Hong Kong this month, RusAl said Sberbank “has taken on the responsibility of buying out the $4.5 billion loan,” according to the company’s web site.
Sberbank’s agreement includes extending the repayments from RusAl to at least Dec. 7, 2013, according to the document. Sberbank may syndicate the loan and has held talks with Russian banks and other institutions on the matter.

<strong>Venezuela in Demand</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — TNK-BP and Russia’s four other largest oil producers may spend $900 million to start developing the Junin-6 heavy oil field in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt during the next three years.
The cost would be split equally among the five members of Russia’s National Oil Consortium, which is negotiating a joint venture with Petroleos de Venezuela to develop and operate the field. The information was contained in a bond prospectus from TNK-BP, BP Plc’s Russian venture, obtained by Bloomberg News. TNK-BP spokesman Nikolai Gorelov declined to comment.

TITLE: Poaching the Law
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: A year ago, on Jan. 9, 2009, Alexander Berdnikov, governor of the Altai republic, escorted a group of poachers that included presidential envoy to the State Duma Alexander Kosopkin and Altai Deputy Governor Anatoly Bannykh on a hunting trip. The “hunters” onboard the Mi-171 helicopter owned by Gazpromavia flew in the direction of the Mongolian border in the Kosh-Agach district of the Altai republic. At about noon, as the helicopter descended dangerously close to the slopes of Black Mountain in order to retrieve the carcasses of animals that the men had shot from the air, the spinning blades struck the ground, causing the craft to crash. Seven people died in the accident, including Kosopkin and Viktor Kaimin, who, strangely enough, headed the committee in charge of protecting the republic’s wildlife and for many years organized hunting parties for top officials. The poachers were shooting endangered argali sheep with automatic weapons from the helicopter — a criminal offense in Russia.
What did Berdnikov know about this poaching incident? He accompanied all members of the hunting trip to the Tursib recreational center on the banks of the Katun River the night before the expedition. (Berdnikov had reportedly planned to join his colleagues and friends on the ill-fated helicopter hunt, but he got sick the night before.) Given his direct contact with the participants who were armed with weapons, Berdnikov had to have known that they were on a poaching expedition and not simply “observing nature.” Moreover, since poaching trips were a weekly event in the republic, it is hard to imagine that this illegal activity could have gone on for so long without the knowledge — and perhaps consent — of the governor. At the very least, Berdnikov had direct responsibility to make sure that the poaching law was not being violated in Altai.
The poaching by high-ranking government officials evoked a strong public response. The World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace sent appeals to the prosecutor general demanding that a separate criminal case be opened against those who had illegally hunted the argali sheep. In February, the Association of Native and Minority Communities of the Kosh-Agach district appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to make sure that this case would be thoroughly investigated and the guilty parties prosecuted in accordance with the law. Local residents gathered in the city of Gorno-Altaisk on Feb. 22 to protest the incident. Several rallies were also held in Moscow.
From the very beginning, law enforcement agencies were reluctant to investigate the scandal. On April 21, however, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case concerning the illegal hunt, citing Article 256 of the Criminal Code. That was combined with the additional charge of aircraft safety violations. But after that, we heard nothing more about the case.
Then, on Nov. 6, another scandal erupted. In answer to an official inquiry sent by deputies from the Altai’s legislature, Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin revealed that the committee’s criminal case had actually been closed Aug. 11 because “all of the individuals who might have been charged with criminal responsibility in this criminal case … died as a result of the helicopter crash.” Thus, according to the investigative committee’s official version, there was nobody directly involved in the case who were still alive to file charges against.
This is blatantly false. Why has not a single government official — including Berdnikov and Bannykh, who the media has linked to a private company that paid for the rental of the helicopter that crashed on Jan. 9 — been investigated and charged with criminal negligence?
After the poaching case was closed, the Altai legislature filed another request to have the case investigated. In response, the Investigative Committee, looking like the Keystone Cops, was forced to reopen the criminal case on Nov. 11. But Altai residents have little hope left that justice will be done. Natural Resources and Environment Minister Yury Trutnev believes that the fact that the criminal case was delayed and then closed and that key facts in the case were ignored points to a “coordinated cover-up.”
Perhaps the strongest evidence against the likelihood that a criminal case will be brought against the poachers is that on Jan. 12 the Altai legislature confirmed Berdnikov to a new term as governor. This was the same legislature that lodged the complaint in the fall against Berdnikov, asking the Investigative Committee to look into allegations of complicity in the poaching incident. In the fall, the legislature filed a request that Berdnikov be investigated for alleged abuses because the deputies thought that he was a political corpse. Then, to the deputies’ and many others’ surprise, Medvedev in late December nominated Berdnikov for a second term — after which the deputies quickly changed their stance on Berdnikov and confirmed his nomination by an overwhelming 33-6 vote.
On Wednesday, Berdnikov was sworn into office for his second term. What an excellent opportunity to celebrate Medvedev’s success in his campaign against corruption and legal nihilism. It is also a good opportunity to remember Putin’s motive in canceling direct gubernatorial elections in 2004 — to kick out all of the rotten, corrupt governors and replace them with the country’s best, brightest and, most important, honest and law-abiding public officials he could find. On Feb. 4, we can celebrate again, when Sergei Darkin, who has been linked to corruption, will be inaugurated for his second term as the appointed governor of the Primorye region.
Berdnikov and Darkin are two shining examples of Medvedev’s “Golden 100” presidential reserve. One tried-and-true method of guaranteeing that governors remain loyal to the Kremlin is to appoint people who have a large dossier filled with criminal allegations. One false step by a governor against the Kremlin, and a criminal case is initiated. Is this how Medvedev plans to modernize Russia’s political institutions and fight legal nihilism?

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Haiti’s Voodoo Rescue Mission
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The earthquake in Haiti serves as a disturbing reminder that the number of victims in an earthquake depends less on the magnitude of the quake and much more on the social conditions in the country.
Three things are most striking about the disaster. First, Haitian President Rene Preval has no idea how many corpses there are — 50,000 or 500,000. Nonetheless, in the 2006 presidential election, he knew with amazing precision how many Haitians voted for him, although protesters claimed widespread voting fraud and paralyzed the capital with burning barricades.
Second, the earthquake that struck Haiti measured 7 on the Richter Scale. That puts it at the lower limit of quakes capable of causing serious damage over large areas. It was a very strong earthquake, but it should not have been catastrophic. The earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985 measured 8.1 on the Richter Scale and caused about 10,000 deaths. That is no small figure, but it is nowhere near Haiti’s estimated 200,000.
Third, Haitian authorities have not been able to cope with the logistics of receiving humanitarian aid. Airplanes are forced to circle for extended periods before landing. It took six full hours to unload aid brought in by China. And during that time, the people of Port-au-Prince protested the lack of humanitarian aid by building a barricade of rotting corpses.
Haiti, with a nominal per capita gross domestic product of $790, is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is a territory that from the moment of its discovery by Christopher Columbus in 1492 has had a stable, normal government for only 19 years — from 1915 to 1934, when it was occupied by U.S. forces.
In addition to its extreme poverty, Haiti is perhaps best known for its voodoo; the Tonton Macoutes, the country’s notorious former secret police squads; and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the highly corrupt dictator who was overthrown by a popular uprising in 1986.
Now the world is sending humanitarian aid to Haiti, but there is almost no hope that it will provide significant relief. If Preval retains power, he will use most of the aid to feed his own police and military forces. Meanwhile, the chaos in the country is an excellent opportunity for the anti-government forces, known as the “Cannibal Army,” to eat its way — literally — at Preval’s forces and seize power. One way to prolong the chaos and increase anti-Preval sentiment is to try to block humanitarian aid from getting to the people. As long as hundreds of thousands of Haitians remain hungry, homeless and sick, the more likely that they will be willing to support another coup.
The only force with the material and logistical resources required to help the earthquake victims is the U.S. military. The 10,000 troops whom Washington has deployed will have to tread lightly, even while struggling to maintain order on the streets of Port-au-Prince. This is because the minute that a U.S. sergeant shoots a voodoo rebel building, a barricade of corpses or a member of the Cannibal Army intent on eating that barricade, then angry protesters shouting “Down with the U.S. colonizers!” is all but certain in the streets.
Natural disasters test the strength of societies. Wherever social order is well-developed, the suffering that follows a calamity can be alleviated. But in countries like Haiti, where there is a daily struggle to survive even when there are no major natural disasters, the negative consequences of a strong earthquake can be lethal for the entire country.

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

TITLE: Danish directors hit the big screen
AUTHOR: By Elmira Alieva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Danish cinema is not depressing; it can be positive and fun, according to the organizers of the first festival of Danish cinema in St. Petersburg, which opened Thursday and runs through Sunday. The festival aims to showcase the best films produced by graduates of the National Film School of Denmark during the last 30 years.
“The peculiarity of Danish cinema is that it knows how to surprise viewers,” said Alexei Dmitriev, the festival’s curator. “Quite often at some moment of the film when a viewer expects to see a logical d?nouement of the story, some drastic changes in the plot take place. For instance, an action movie can suddenly turn into a comedy, but with a philosophical context,” he said.
The festival’s program comprises 17 films, including work by prominent Danish directors such as Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Christoffer Boe and Dagur Kari. The genres range from comedy, drama and melodrama to black comedy and animated films. 
“There are three main topics — love, death and finding oneself,” said Dmitriev. “Danish cinema is no exception. There are movies about going on a blind date, about a man who spends the last day of his life with his friends, and about a woman who fears daylight, but nevertheless flies to Argentina,” he said.
The most remarkable films of the festival include “Nocturne” (1980), one of Lars von Trier’s early works; “The Last Round” (1993) by Thomas Vinterberg; “Anxiety” (2001) by Christoffer Boe and “Lost Weekend” (1999) by Dagur Kari. 
Each day of the festival has an individual program consisting of films of various genres. “We selected different movies made during the last three decades to show that Danish cinema is very diverse,” said Dmitriev.
All films are screened in Danish with Russian subtitles. 
The first festival of Danish cinema in St. Petersburg runs at Rodina cinema, Karavannaya Ulitsa 12. Tel: 571 6131. 
M: Nevsky Prospekt. A full program is available at www.rodinakino.ru/

TITLE: The Word’s  
       worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ìóëüò Ëè÷íîñòè: Cartoon of Personality, a series of short animation, wordplay on êóëüò ëè÷-íîñòè (personality cult)
If you missed it, the big news in Russia over the holidays was a short cartoon of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin singing ÷àñòóøêè (irreverent rhyming ditties). Medvedev plays the accordion, Putin taps a tambourine on various body parts, and the two of them dance and twirl, interspersed with chummy comments like Ìîëîäåö! (Attaboy!) — mostly Putin to Medvedev — and Ñîãëàñåí! (I agree!) — mostly Medvedev to Putin.
Since everyone is talking about it, you might want to check it out on the Internet. And just in case your Russian has slipped a bit over the long holiday season, here’s some prosaic help deciphering it.
It begins with a little pun on the word ïîäâîäèòü, which means both to let someone down and to tally something up: Ðàç ïîøëà òàêàÿ ìîäà / ïîäâîäèòü èòîãè ãîäà / Âîò è ìû íå ïîäâåä¸ì / è ñåé÷àñ èõ ïîäâåä¸ì. (Since today it’s all the fashion / to assess the year’s results / We won’t let you down / We’ll tally them up right now).
In another passage, they joke about Ukraine’s failure to pay a gas bill with a punning reference to Nikolai Gogol’s “The Government Inspector.” In Gogol’s play, one of the characters says: ß ãîâîðþ âñåì îòêðûòî, ÷òî áåðó âçÿòêè, íî ÷åì âçÿòêè? Áîðçûìè ùåíêàìè. (I tell everyone outright that I take bribes, but in what? Borzoi puppies.) Russia’s leaders sing: Ïðîñèì Êèåâ, ÷òî â ýòîò ðàç / Îïëàòèòü äåíüãàìè ãàç / À íå áàéêàìè, áëèíàìè / È áîðçûìè Þùåíêàìè (This time we request that Kiev / Pay for gas with cash / Not with stories or with blinis / Or with Yushenko’s puppies).
At another point, they sing about Sberbank’s unsuccessful bid to buy Opel. Medvedev: Êàê Ñáåðáàíê íàø íè ñòàðàëñÿ / Îïåëü òàê è íå ïðîäàëñÿ (No matter how hard our Sberbank tried / Opel just wouldn’t sell). Putin: À òåïåðü õâàë¸íûé Îïåëü / îêàçàòüñÿ ìîæåò — (And now much-vaunted Opel / might find itself —). Here Medvedev cuts in: — â ãëóáîêîì êðèçèñå, Âëàäèìèð Âëàäèìèðîâè÷! (In deep crisis, Vladimir Vladimirovich!) The joke here is that the rhythm and rhyme suggest a different ending for Putin’s line. Let me just check The St. Petersburg Times style guide … Nope. Can’t print that. Let’s just say that Opel might find itself where the sun don’t shine.
Most of the humor is in the visuals of the dancing-in-tandem leaders and their comments to each other, especially when they sound like slangy 15-year-olds. When Medvedev boasts about his blogging, Putin responds in Îëáàíñêåé (Albanian, aka, Internet slang): ß çíàþ. ß âåäü íåò äà íåò / Âàì ïèøó: Ïðåâåä, Ìåäâåä! (I know. From time to time / I write you: Hi there, Bear!). And Medvedev responds in kind: Äà, ÿ ïîìíþ. Ïðèêîëüíûé ñëó÷àé! (Yes, I remember. That was a riot!)
Well, it seemed funny at the time. Pass the vodka, please.

Michele Berdy is a Moscow-based translater.

TITLE: Petersburg ballet looks east
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MACAU — After making its China debut in Shanghai last October, the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre, directed by the impresario Konstantin Tachkin, in early January toured Macau. Neighboring on Hong Kong, Macau is the Chinese equivalent of Las Vegas. The company brought its fine production of “The Nutcracker” which is based on the 1934 version by Vasily Vainonen which was created for the Mariinsky Ballet.
I first saw this entirely privately-funded company directed by its impresario Konstantin Tachkin in 2000 during its long annual winter tour to Britain. Since then, the troupe has toured most of the world’s ballet capitals, including Tokyo and Paris. Most of the company’s publicity is centered on its resident star ballerina, Irina Kolesnikova, though it does also have a well-schooled corps de ballet. 
Vainonen’s production is stretched into three acts instead of the two acts that are customary in most other versions. The first act ends with the departure of the party guests, and the second act begins with Clara returning to the ballroom at night to retrieve her nutcracker doll. St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s production also has some additional choreography in the snowflakes scene by Svetlana Yefremova, a former ballet mistress of the company, including a solo for the Snow Queen set to music from Tchaikovsky’s “Mozartiana.” The best addition is a beautiful duet for Clara and the Nutcracker Prince in the snowflakes scene which ends spectacularly with Clara balancing on pointe on a long white veil dragged across the stage by the Prince, recreating an image from historic photos of this ballet.
On the first night in Macau, Irina Kolesnikova was a delightful Clara. Her dancing in the final act’s grand pas de deux was very joyful, though perhaps not as sparkling as in the past. Dmitry Akulinin was a handsome Nutcracker prince. He was a solid partner for Kolesnikova, but his solo classical dancing was unsteady and had some rough edges in phrasing. Astkhik Ogannesyan was technically impressive in the Snow Queen’s solo. 
The corps de ballet were in unison in the snowflakes scene and in the waltz of the flowers. The national dances, however, were unevenly performed. The absence of their fine orchestra for this Macau tour and the use of taped music as an alternative, however, was a great pity. 
The St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre will tour Beijing, the third and final stop of their China tour this season, from Feb. 16 with “Swan Lake,” during the Chinese New Year holidays. The venue will be the National Theatre in Tiananmen Square, which was opened for the Beijing Olympics. The Mariinsky Theater was the first overseas troupe to tour there, as reported in this newspaper two years ago.

TITLE: In the spotlight: Back to school
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Last week, Channel One started showing a drama series set in a school, called — appropriately enough — “School.” After the first episode, a Moscow education official voiced the opinion that such shows should not be on television. The next day, the show was discussed in the State Duma. And it’s not hard to see why it shocked people.
In the first episode, which has been the most outrageous so far, the first few minutes crammed in a teenage girl boasting in a chat room that she has “absolutely no hang-ups,” two boys having a fight in the school corridor with blood dripping on the floor and a scene in the urinals, where the graffiti helpfully reads, “Don’t flatter yourself, you loser.”
Nothing really offensive there, but the series, made by young film director Valeria Gai Germanika, doesn’t look like anything else on Russian television. The start of the show looked like a documentary, with students simply chatting in the classroom. There’s no music, none of the usual thick makeup, and lots of choppy camera angles.
The plot is quite conventional for a school drama: A new boy starts at a school and shakes things up. Ilya slouches in smoking a cigarette and immediately gets beaten up for the apparent crime of wearing a hat indoors. Little deterred, he goes on to make trouble wherever he goes.
When the curvy physics teacher flirts gently with students during a lesson on oscillations, Ilya refuses to enjoy the in-joke and points out to her with mock bafflement, “You seem to be talking about sex and hinting that you have lots of experience.” Then he chats up the granddaughter of the ancient history teacher and jokingly offers to do him in. The emo granddaughter, who is kept at home by her grandfather and spends her days in Internet chat rooms, immediately likes the look of Ilya.
But in a nasty twist, Ilya pilfers a handful of her topless photos and quietly shows them to her grandfather as he sits on stage at a party for his 70th birthday. He drops to the floor with a stroke and is now lying paralyzed in hospital.
I suspect it’s the way that teachers are portrayed in the show that has really annoyed officials. A middle-aged literature teacher pockets a bribe from a mother who is worried about her daughter’s marks. The sexy physics teacher aside, the staff are dowdy and sit in the staff room grumbling about the students. “I can’t stand the ones hitting puberty,” one says. And the white-haired history teacher complains that he “last saw a personality in the 1980s.”
School looks like a frightening place to be — despite the security guard at the front door. There’s Darwinian competition among the students, with “school beauty” Olga refusing to be seen with her ugly-duckling former best friend and ruthlessly snogging any boy who shows an interest in other girls.
At break time, the boys don’t just sneak out for cigarettes, but also get in the beers, although I did notice that the show used generic cans, missing a prime opportunity for product placement among a key consumer group. The school dinners seem to be another danger: A boy vomits copiously in class after eating the cutlets as his classmates jeer.
Some critics have said the show is too “black” without a single sympathetic character, and that is largely true so far — although there are a couple of nerdy boys who seem to have a spark of humanity. And it looks as if things will get worse. Without giving too much away, the trailers involve an AK assault rifle.

TITLE: Hungry hippos
AUTHOR: By Hardie Duncan
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Entrance to Begemot, which was opened last year by the ever-growing Ginza Project in the former premises of the holding’s glamorous Tiffany Caf?, is via a metal detector. Immediately after passing through the detector, guests are greeted by a team of security guards, coat checkers, hostesses, and an immense stone hippopotamus, which on a recent visit was dressed up in a Santa Claus costume.
The hippo makes sense — Begemot is the Russian for hippopotamus.
An immaculate and elegant hostess leads visitors from the front section of the restaurant, with its long wooden bar, DJ set-up (roped off with men’s ties) and spinning club lights, through an area with rustic mismatched doors and windows on the walls. Gone are the shiny red sofas that adorned Tiffany’s; the eclectic assortment of chandeliers that fill the ceiling are now the dominating interior feature. 
An additional back room with elegant book-lined walls is also available, but seemed almost too dark to see the food. As evening turns into nighttime, those wishing to let off some steam can do so by joining in the karaoke on offer. 
Despite our friendly waiter’s markedly youthful appearance, service was prompt and professional. The mozzarella with tomatoes (380 rubles, $12.50) was elegantly arranged on its rectangular plate, but, more importantly, the ingredients were vibrant. The reddest tomatoes in Russia — all the more remarkable in deep winter — did not disappoint. They were perfectly ripe and beautifully matched with the wonderful, slightly melted mozzarella. Bittersweet pesto sauce ran down one side of the plate, a drizzle of vinegar down the other.
The arugula salad with smoked salmon, avocado, and cherry tomatoes (380 rubles, $12.50), was simply presented in an oversized translucent glass bowl, but the tastes were anything but simple. The arugula and avocado were as luscious in taste as they were in color, and the smoked salmon was the perfect counterpoint to their crisp flavors.
The menu offers a wide variety of meat and seafood dishes, including turkey cutlets with mashed potatoes (350 rubles, $11.50) or Chilean sea bass with broccoli puree (1,290 rubles, $42). 
The veal escalope (490 rubles, $16) was quite daunting, blanketing the entirety of its massive plate. Paired with a fresh raita-like yogurt sauce, however, the meat took on a lightness in flavor that made tackling the oversized dish a breeze. The wok-tossed shrimp with masala sauce (550 rubles, $18) was palatable, but the usually flavorful masala lacked complexity. 
After setting such high standards with the starters and mains, dessert, in the form of berry and custard pie (220 rubles, $7), with its overly airy cream and dense, dry crust, was a disappointment.
Begemot boasts a commendable wine list, ranging from a satisfactory glass of house merlot (160 rubles, $5) to finer wines likely to please even the most discerning guests. It also offers a wide selection of beer and cocktails, including the brilliantly decadent Kir Royal (340 rubles, $11.) Gin and tonic (360 rubles, $12) came curiously deconstructed into a shot of Beefeater, a bottle of Schweppes and a glass of ice.
Besides a few hostesses in exceedingly tight clothing and a small group of women who may have been “paid companions,” the clientele on our visit was strictly male, in sharp contrast to its predecessor, Tiffany’s, which was beloved by glamorous female yuppies. Still, despite all the testosterone, the atmosphere remained relaxed, making Begemot a comfortable place to share a quiet conversation with a significant other or to celebrate your company’s latest takeover with a dozen of your closest allies.

TITLE: Vasari Archive at the Center of a 150M Euro Dispute
AUTHOR: By Peter Spinella
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mystery surrounds the future of a 16th-century Italian painter’s archive after it was bought by a Russian engineering company for 150 million euros ($225 million), even though the archive cannot legally be taken out of Italy.
The archive, a collection of sketches, paintings, as well as letters by Michelangelo and a series of 16th-century popes, once belonged to Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter, architect and writer from the Renaissance period.
The archive was purchased by Russian company ROSS Engineering, causing an outcry in Italy over the sale of the archive that many consider a national treasure.
“We are quite surprised by the fact that Russians are so interested in an archive so linked to Tuscan and Italian history,” Diana Toccafondi, Archival Superintendent of Tuscany, said in an e-mail interview late last year.
Vasari was famous in his lifetime for his paintings and architecture, but today he is best known for his book about the lives of the artists of his day, including Botticelli, Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci, which is considered one of the first books on art history.
Vasari’s archive had disappeared from view for more than three centuries before appearing at the start of the 20th century in the ownership of a Count Spinelli, the descendant of the executor of Vasari’s will. The archive was housed at Vasari’s ancestral home in Arezzo, 80 kilometers southeast of Florence, but still belonged to the descendents of Spinelli, the Festari family.
It was the Festari family that sold the archive to ROSS Engineering last autumn. When news of the deal broke, it was greeted suspiciously by the Italian media.
Local authorities in Arezzo attacked the deal and called for the archive to be protected.
Newspapers questioned why so much money was paid for the archive when, even if sold, it must remain within the Vasari estate, according to an Italian legal decision.
The outcry prompted one government body to step in.
The archive’s owners, Tammaso, Antonio, Francesco and Leonardo Festari were selling the archive to cover tax debt accrued by their father Giovanni, so the Italian tax collection agency, Equitalia, citing the back taxes, was able to seize the archive and place it under care of the Superintendent for Arts and Historical Heritage of the province of Arezzo, which had previously overseen care of the works.
“Giorgio Vasari was Arezzo’s most important artist during the Renaissance. It is quite natural that Arezzo’s local government is very interested in keeping the archive in the town,” Toccafondi said.
The seizure is only a temporary measure, as the heirs have the opportunity to get the rights for the archive back as soon as the debt is paid.
Nothing has changed in the archive’s situation since the New Year, Toccafondi said in a telephone interview.
Vasily Stepanov, CEO of ROSS Engineering, said at a news conference in Moscow in November that the company was buying the archive because it is a “good investment.”
A lawyer for ROSS Engineering, Alberto Marchetti said the price tag could be recouped over five years by exhibiting the works.
However, experts have questioned the high price paid.
“There is more to understand about what’s behind this, because the price offered is way beyond its real value, by at least eight to 10 times,” former Culture Minister Walter Veltroni told Italian reporters after his visit to Casa Vasari, the museum housing the collection, late last year.
ROSS Engineering refused to disclose the company’s plans for the archive and whether or not the works would be publicly displayed.
Muddying the waters even further was an Italian media report that quoted Stepanov as saying he was buying the archive for an oligarch friend of his for whom 150 million euros was only a minor sum. But then later he said the transfer to the oligarch was cancelled after the man was killed in a car crash Sept. 9, Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported him as saying. But the paper could not find any report of a death of an oligarch on that date.
Stepanov did not mention an oligarch at the news conference, and ROSS Engineering could not answer any questions about the matter this week.

TITLE: After Warning, Historic Dacha Burnt Down by Mystery Fire
AUTHOR: By Aaron Mulvihill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A line of schoolchildren, bundled up against the biting cold, followed their 11th-grade teacher, Sergei Brel, as he picked his way through a yard littered with charred books and photographs. “We’re reading Venedikt Yerofeyev’s essay ‘Vasily Rozanov: Through the Eyes of an Eccentric’ in class, and I wanted to show my students where the poet composed the piece… while there is still something left of it,” Brel said.
The last remaining wooden dacha in the historic Tsaritsyno neighborhood was gutted by a fire close to two weeks ago, but fine, white flakes of ash still mix with the snowflakes that billow around its blackened frame. A smell of charred pine hangs in the air.
The dacha housed a museum of artifacts that belonged to its previous occupants. A sturdy typewriter, owned by the dacha’s first occupant, Sergei Muromtsev (1850-1910), who oversaw the enactment of the first Russian constitution as chairman of the first State Duma, was salvaged from the blaze. Also recovered were some heavy tomes that might have graced the bookshelf of poet and Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), who met his future wife in a garden lane nearby.
But countless sketches and diaries by the artists who lived in the house since its construction toward the end of the 19th century — as well as the almost completely new building built in the 1930s — were destroyed by the blaze. One of its 25 or so permanent residents and embattled custodians, physics Ph.D. candidate Kirill Boldyrev, 24, seemed less fazed by the loss of his research materials than by the destruction of the historical legacy.
In the early hours of Jan. 3, the few residents remaining in one of the dacha’s flats during the holidays noticed smoke coming from another, unoccupied, flat. They immediately notified the fire department and struggled in vain to control the blaze themselves with an ice-clogged hose.
The firefighters refused to tackle the blaze when they arrived, Boldyrev said, and instead, pilfered memorabilia from the house. Apparently under orders from their superiors, they only began dousing the flames when they were already beyond control, and the dacha’s occupants were left on their own to extinguish small fires that burst sporadically from the smoldering ashes. One inspector at the scene told the occupants, off the record, that the blaze had all the signs of a deliberate attack. An investigating police officer could not be reached for comment on the allegation.
“The fire broke out in an unoccupied apartment with no electricity connection. And the window had been opened. Who would open a window in January?” Boldyrev asked rhetorically.
Boldyrev told The St. Petersburg Times last year that local police warned that if they didn’t move out, “the house might ‘accidentally’ burn down.” Local authorities have been trying to evict the residents for years, saying they want to build a car park in its place.
Perched on the edge of the stunning snow-quilted Tsaritsyno Park, it’s easy to understand the dacha’s role as a creative retreat for generations of artists and writers. And its potential real estate value, with a main highway flanking its entrance, is equally obvious.
It is the latest in a series of suspicious fires that have gutted prime realty locations in Old Moscow. A month previously, a listed building was gutted on Potapovsky Pereulok close to Chistiye Prudy, and just over a month before that, Dom Bykova, one of Moscow’s finest examples of Art Nouveau, was hit by a fire near Mayakovskaya metro station.
In some cases, hasty reconstructions, with added commercial value and scant regard for historical authenticity, have swiftly followed fires in the city. The most prominent example is the Central Manezh Exhibition Hall near Red Square, which was rebuilt in just thirteen months after a fire in 2004. The result was a liberal reinterpretation of the original plans, including the addition of an extra underground floor and a starkly different ceiling design.
Other buildings — like the private residence, in Kitai-Gorod, of neoclassical architect Matvei Kazakov, who built some of Moscow’s most impressive late 18th-century buildings including Petrovsky Palace — are awaiting demolition after having been damaged by successive fires and then neglected.
Over 20 years of lobbying the government to grant the Tsaritsyno dacha protected status and to officially register its occupants seemed on the cusp of bearing fruit when the fire broke out, writer and campaigner Rustam Rakhmatullin said. A hearing in the Supreme Court to consider the status of its residents was scheduled for Jan. 20, and last year a renewed application to have the building listed was filed; no demolition or construction work is allowed while applications are under review.
On Jan. 11, the Communist Party in the Moscow City Duma demanded an investigation into the dacha fire and called for tougher measures to protect the city’s architecture.

TITLE: Haiti’s Mass Graves Swell; Doctors Fear More Death
AUTHOR: By Paul Haven and Mike Melia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Workers are carving out mass graves on a hillside north of Haiti’s capital, using earth-movers to bury 10,000 earthquake victims in a single day while relief workers warn that people are still dying of their injuries.
Medical clinics have 12-day patient backlogs, untreated injuries are festering and makeshift camps housing thousands of survivors could foster disease, experts said.
“The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or nonexistent sanitation,” said Dr. Greg Elder, deputy operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.
The death toll is estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian government figures relayed by the European Commission, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. The commission now estimates 2 million homeless, up from 1.5 million, and says 250,000 are in need of urgent aid.
In the sparsely populated wasteland of Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, burial workers said the macabre task of handling the never-ending flow of bodies was traumatizing.
“I have seen so many children, so many children. I cannot sleep at night and, if I do, it is a constant nightmare,” said Foultone Fequiert, 38, his face covered with a T-shirt against the overwhelming stench.
The dead stick out at all angles from the mass graves — tall mounds of chalky dirt, the limbs of men, women and children frozen together in death. “I received 10,000 bodies yesterday alone,” said Fequiert.
Workers say they have no time to give the dead proper religious burials or follow pleas from the international community that bodies be buried in shallow graves from which loved ones might eventually retrieve them.
“We just dump them in, and fill it up,” said Luckner Clerzier, 39, who was helping guide trucks to another grave site farther up the road.
An Associated Press reporter counted 15 burial mounds at Clerzier’s site, each covering a wide trench cut into the ground some 25 feet (8 meters) deep, and rising 15 feet (4.5 meters) into the air. At the larger mass grave, where Fequiert toiled, three earth-moving machines cut long trenches into the earth, readying them for more cadavers.
Others struggle to stem the flow of the dead.
More than eight days after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake, rescuers searched late into the night for survivors with dogs and sonar equipment. A Los Angeles County rescue team sent three dogs separately into the rubble on a street corner in Petionville, a suburb overlooking Port-au-Prince. Each dog picked up the scent of life at one spot.
They tested the spot and screamed into the rubble in Creole they’ve learned: “If you hear me, bang three times.”
They heard no response, but vowed to continue.
“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and each day the needles are disappearing,” team member Steven Chin said.
One rescue was reported. The International Medical Corps said it was caring for a child found in ruins Wednesday. The boy’s uncle told doctors and a nurse with the Los Angeles-based organization that relatives pulled the 5-year-old from the wreckage of his home after searching for a week, said Margaret Aguirre, an IMC spokeswoman in Haiti.
A Dutch adoption agency said Thursday that a mercy flight carrying 106 adopted children was on its way to the Netherlands from Port-au-Prince. The children on board the plane were all in the process of being adopted and already had been matched to new Dutch parents before the quake.
At the Mission Baptiste hospital south of Port-au-Prince, patients waited on benches or rolling beds while doctors and nurses raced among them, X-rays in hand.
The hospital had just received badly need supplies from soldiers of the U.S Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, but hospital director John Angus said there wasn’t enough. He pleaded for more doctors, casts and metal plates to fix broken limbs.
U.N. peacekeepers and U.S. troops have been helping keep order around aid deliveries and clinics in the stricken city, which seemed relatively calm on Thursday, even if looters continued to pillage pockets of downtown.
Police stood by as people made off with food and mobile phones from shattered shops, saying they were trying to save stores that are still undamaged.
“It is not easy but we try to protect what we can,” said officer Belimaire Laneau.
Young men with machetes fought over packages of baby diapers within sight of the body of a young woman who had been shot in the head. Witnesses said police had shot her, but officers in the vicinity denied it.
Meanwhile, a flotilla of rescue vessels led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort has steamed into Port-au-Prince harbor to help fill gaps in the struggling global effort to deliver water, food and medical help.
Elder, of Doctors Without Borders, said that patients were dying of sepsis from untreated wounds and that some of the group’s posts had 10- to 12-day backups of patients.
Adding to the terror, a 5.9-magnitude aftershock shook Haiti’s capital Wednesday, sending people screaming into the streets. Some buildings collapsed and an undertaker said one woman died of a heart attack. Surgical teams and patients were forced to evacuate temporarily from at least one hospital.
At United Nations headquarters in New York, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said it was believed 3 million people are affected. Vast, makeshift camps and settlements have sprung up for survivors.
Joseph St. Juste and his 5-year-old daughter, Jessica, were among 50,000 people spending their nights at a golf course. 
St. Juste is afraid to stay in his home because of the aftershocks.

TITLE: Iraq Leader Seeks Ruling  On Body Behind Ban
AUTHOR: By Adam Schreck
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president said Thursday he has asked the country’s highest legal body to determine the legitimacy of a committee that banned candidates with suspected ties to Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led regime from running in parliamentary elections due March 7.
President Jalal Talabani said the three-member presidential council he leads has sent a letter to the head of the Higher Judicial Council requesting a ruling after the committee banned 511 candidates in a move that has dealt a setback to national reconciliation efforts and threatens to cast a shadow over the vote.
“I myself am not satisfied with the banning decision,” said Talabani, a Kurd who has strongly backed reconciliation between Iraq’s main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups. He told reporters he was seeking a ruling on “whether this committee that issued the decision is legitimate or not.”
The government-sanctioned body behind the ban — the Accountability and Justice Committee — is tasked with weeding out from the government and security forces hardcore supporters of Saddam’s outlawed Baath party. Like the government, it is dominated by Shiite Muslims and its decisions are seen as biased against the once-dominant Sunni Arab minority that prospered under Saddam.
The committee’s forerunner — the de-Baathification Commission — was created by U.S. occupation authorities following the American-led, 2003 invasion of Iraq. That body faced Sunni charges that it acted with excessive zeal in purging Baathists, many of whom had joined the party to promote their careers or protect themselves from the regime.
Critics say the purges have robbed the civil service, academic institutions and the armed forces of some of their best and more experienced employees and are blamed for the chaos afflicting government departments to this day.
The current committee has not escaped criticism either. It is led by Ali al-Lami, a Shiite once detained by the U.S. military over a 2008 attack in a Shiite district of Baghdad. The attack targeted U.S. forces and was blamed on Shiite militiamen.
Al-Lami is running in the March election, a fact that has raised questions about the motive behind the ban.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is expected to visit Baghdad to try to ease tensions over the ban.
Washington hopes the March election will be a significant step toward reconciliation between the majority Shiites and the once-dominant Sunni minority, and will help cement substantial but still tenuous security gains. American troops are expected to accelerate their withdrawal from Iraq soon after the election.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, a British security contractor accused of shooting two colleagues to death appeared briefly in court, where the judge accepted a defense request to have him examined by a medical and psychological committee, his lawyer said.

TITLE: U.S. Security Chief: Scanners Not Intrusive
AUTHOR: By Daniel Woolls
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOLEDO, Spain — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is seeking to allay concerns in some European Union countries over the use of body scanners in airports, saying that as the technology develops they will be less intrusive.
Napolitano says “some of the privacy issues that have been raised are dealt with effectively by the new iterations of the technology.”
Speaking after meeting Thursday with EU interior ministers, Napolitano denied the U.S. was pressuring Europe to deploy the scanners.
But she says better screening technology is crucial to protecting travelers from terrorism.
The U.S. homeland chief says al-Qaida “is using its best minds against the international aviation system. We must do no less.”
EU interior ministers met Thursday with the U.S. homeland security chief to discuss boosting airport security with full-body scanners after the failed plot to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.
Janet Napolitano was expected to press European countries to follow the Obama administration’s lead in ramping up aviation security. The EU is divided on the scanner issue amid concerns over whether the devices invade travelers’ privacy and pose health risks.
The ministers gathered in Toledo, just south of Madrid, for the informal session to gauge European sentiment. Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said no decision was expected at the meeting.
Spain and Germany are among countries which have expressed reservations about scanners, while Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and France have said they will either start installing them, add more or use them on a trial basis.
In the failed bombing attempt on Dec. 25, U.S. authorities say a young Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear during a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Some officials have said a full-body scanner, which can ‘see’ through people’s clothing to detect bombs or weapons, might have headed off the attack before it was attempted.
Thursday’s meeting came just a day after another airport scare, this time in Germany.
Part of Munich airport was closed Wednesday as officials searched in vain for a man who left a security checkpoint with a bag containing a laptop after it had triggered an alert for possible explosives.
The incident appeared to have been a false alarm, with the passenger unaware of the alert and having left the security area in a hurry to catch a plane.

TITLE: Ex-U.K. Minister Defends Decision To Fight in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Gregory Katz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the country’s Iraq Inquiry on Thursday that he agonized over the decision to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with force, but feels officials made the best decision they could.
“I believed at the time, and I still believe, that we made the best judgments we could have done in the circumstances,” Straw said in a written statement presented as evidence. “We did so assiduously and on the best evidence we had available at the time.”
Straw, a key figure in former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration, said the decision to go to war was the most difficult he has ever made.