SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1562 (23), Tuesday, April 6, 2010
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TITLE: Bomber Kills 2 As Insurgency Spreads
AUTHOR: By Shamsudin Bokov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAZRAN, Russia — A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police station in a troubled Russian province Monday, killing two officers and wounding two others as Islamic insurgency continues to spread across the region.
The bomber’s car exploded later, wounding an investigator.
The attack took place in Ingushetia, a primarily Muslim province in the impoverished North Caucasus area, in southwestern Russia. Ingushetia, Dagestan and other Caucasus provinces have been plagued by attacks and bombings by Islamic militants who have spread across the region after two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya.
The violence is increasingly being described as a civil war between Kremlin-supported administrations and Islamic rebels. Widespread abuse of civilians by police, including abduction, torture and killing, have swelled the militants’ ranks.
Dagestan, wedged between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, was the site of two suicide bombings last Wednesday that killed 12 people, mostly police officers. Another explosion there Thursday killed two suspected militants. On Sunday, two powerful explosions derailed a cargo train, but no one was injured.
Last Monday, two suicide bombers killed 40 commuters and wounded 121 on the Moscow subway — the city’s first terrorist attack since 2004. Authorities have blamed militants from the North Caucasus.
In Ingushetia, the attacker detonated his explosives at police headquarters in the town of Karabulak, said regional prosecutor Yury Turygin.
More officers were lining up for roll call inside the compound, and investigators believe they may have been the target. But the attacker set off his explosive belt when the police at the entrance demanded his ID.
About half an hour later, a vehicle he had parked outside the headquarters exploded, wounding an investigator inspecting the area after the first blast. 
The explosions damaged the police headquarters and nearby residential buildings and destroyed several cars.
There have been several previous suicide bombings at police stations in the Caucasus.
In the deadliest, in August, an assailant crashed a bomb-laden van through the gates of the police station in Nazran, Ingushetia’s main city, killing 24 people and injuring more than 200.
Another suicide bomber blew up a car at a police station in Dagestan in January, killing six officers and wounding at least 16 people.
Last week’s bombings of the Moscow subway may also be linked to Dagestan: One of the two suicide bombers has been identified as the 17-year-old widow of a slain Islamic militant from Dagestan. (See story, page 1.) 
The Moskovsky Komsomolets daily newspaper quoted residents of her home village as saying that she and her older sister had grown up without a father. The paper quoted an elementary school teacher, Vagidat Musafayeva, as saying Abdurakhmanova was the best in her class.
“Dzhanet tried to be the best in everything,” the paper quoted the teacher as saying. “She read verses and danced very well.”
Moskovsky Komsomolets said Abdurakhmanova was deeply in love with her rebel husband, who “replaced both father and mother for her,” as a neighbor put it.
A Russian newspaper reported Monday that the second Moscow suicide bomber may have been a 28-year-old schoolteacher, also from Dagestan. Novaya Gazeta quoted the woman’s father as saying he recognized her in a photograph.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the Moscow subway bombings, saying they were retaliation for the killing of civilians by Russian security forces. (For related story, see page 11.)

TITLE: Article by Jailed Oligarch Sparks Extremism Enquiry
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow prosecutors on Monday began a check into allegations of extremism lodged against Nezavisimaya Gazeta, after the opposition newspaper published an article last month by jailed former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The check was initiated following a complaint by State Duma Deputy Sergei Abeltsev. The Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker said he found elements of extremism in Khodorkovsky’s March 3 commentary, the newspaper said on its web site.
Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion convictions in 2005, is set to testify this week in a second case that could see him sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
In the Nezavisimaya Gazeta article, titled “Authorized Violence,” Khodorkovsky harshly criticized Russia’s judicial system, which he said threatened the government’s stability.
In an open letter to Khodorkovsky published March 10 on his web site, Abeltsev wrote that the imprisoned tycoon insulted the people working in the Federal Prisons Service and called for violence.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta said the allegations were ungrounded and that Abeltsev’s complaint misleadingly extracted quotes from the article.
Konstantin Remchukov, Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s editor, told Interfax that he thought the check was directed mostly against Khodorkovsky.
“Prosecutors want to figure out how, while in prison, he can give interviews, write articles and then publish them,” he said.
The complaint was not Abeltsev’s first against journalists. In 2008, he filed a defamation suit against satirist Viktor Shenderovich, who called him a “Yahoo animal” on his talk show. Shenderovich was cleared of the charges last summer.
If prosecutors find Khodorkovsky’s article extremist, it could lead to a third criminal case against him.
Meanwhile, Khodorkovsky was expected to testify as early as Tuesday in the second Yukos trial in Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court. After more than a year of hearings, prosecutors have rested their case.
On Monday, defense lawyers for Khodorkovsky and his former partner, Platon Lebedev, filed several petitions, including one asking to replace presiding judge Viktor Danilkin for bias. He refused to dismiss himself.
Separately, the Moscow City Court on Monday rejected an appeal against former Yukos manager Alexei Kurtsin’s conviction. He was sentenced in January to 15 1/2 years in jail for embezzling 49 million rubles ($1.7 million) from the oil company.

TITLE: Teenage Widow Named As Bomber
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators said one of the two suicide bombers who struck the Moscow metro last week was the 17-year-old widow of an Islamic militant killed on New Year’s Eve.
The woman, Dagestani native Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, died when explosives she was carrying detonated at the Park Kultury metro station last Monday, the Investigative Committee said in a statement Friday.
The two bombers killed at least 40 commuters on the metro’s Red Line, including a 51-year-old man who died in hospital on Friday. The Emergency Situations Ministry on Sunday raised the number of injured to 121.
Abdurakhmanova was the widow of senior Dagestani rebel Umalat Magomedov, also known as Al Bar, who was killed by the security services in a spaecial operation on Dec. 31, a source in the National Anti-Terrorism Committee told Interfax.
State television on Friday broadcast a photo of Abdurakhmanova with her husband. Abdurakhmanova is wearing a black Muslim headscarf and clutching a Makarov pistol. Her husband is embracing her and holding a Stechkin gun.
The second suicide bomber, who struck at the Lubyanka metro station, has not been officially identified yet. But Novaya Gazeta reported Sunday that she was a 28-year-old computer science teacher from the Dagestani village of Balakhany, Maryam Magomedova.
“My wife and I immediately recognized our daughter Maryam. When my wife last saw our daughter she was wearing the same red scarf we saw in the pictures,” her father, Rasul Magomedov, told the newspaper after being shown photos of the bomber’s remains.
He said his daughter had told him that she did not have links to Islamic militants, as claimed by local security forces when one of her brothers was detained on suspicion of being a militant and allegedly tortured before most charges were dropped.
Kommersant earlier identified the second bomber as Markha Ustarkhanova, the missing 20-year-old widow of Chechen rebel Said-Emin Khizriyev, who was killed in October after law enforcement agencies received a tip that he was preparing to assassinate Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. But a Chechen law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti that Ustarkhanova was not one of the bombers.
Investigators have found an apartment near Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge in south-central Moscow where the bombs were assembled by two male accomplices, Interfax reported. The two men met the female bombers near the Vorobyovy Gory metro station — which is on the Red Line in the south of Moscow — and accompanied them on their last ride, the report said.
“These two accomplices detonated the explosives remotely,” an unidentified law enforcement official told Interfax.
A commuter injured in the Park Kultury explosion, a 23-year-old Malaysian medical student, said Abdurakhmanova was standing alone near the door of the train car, wearing a bulky purple jacket and no scarf. “Her eyes were very open, like on drugs, and she barely blinked, and it was scary,” the student, Sim Eih Xing, told The Moscow Times in an interview last week.
Initial reports identified Abdurakhmanova as the bomber at the Lubyanka station.
Investigators believe a suspected associate of the suicide bombers might be Pavel Kosolapov, a Volgograd native accused of masterminding a series of deadly bombings, including an explosion on a train traveling between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya metro stations in February 2004, a suicide attack outside the Rizhskaya metro station in August 2004 and Nevsky Express train bombings in 2007 and 2009, Gazeta.ru reported.
Kosolapov remains at large.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has claimed responsibility for the Moscow metro bombings and said they were retaliation for the killing of four garlic pickers by special forces in Ingushetia in February. (See <a href="/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=31150">related story</a>.)
President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday called on the State Duma to support tougher measures against terrorists but was firm that a moratorium on capital punishment would not be lifted despite calls to the contrary.
“Those who committed the terrorist attacks will be held responsible, but as for the death penalty — here we have our obligations,” Medvedev said at a Kremlin meeting with the heads of the Duma factions. Russia introduced the moratorium in 1997 as part of its obligations as a member of the Council of Europe.
Medvedev said law enforcement agencies should adopt a “merciless” attitude toward those who help terrorists. “I believe that for terrorism we need to create a model where anyone who helps terrorists — be it cooking soup for them or doing their laundry — will have committed a legally defined crime,” he said.
Medvedev said he might consider proposing amendments to the Criminal Code to change the legal definitions of terrorism.
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, who leads the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction in the Duma, expressed a willingness to support the tougher measures. “Those who plan bombings, including in the metro, should be destroyed without any doubt,” he said.
Meanwhile, the authorities are finalizing a three-color terror alert system similar to those used in the United States and Britain, said Anatoly Safonov, a special presidential envoy for international cooperation in fighting terrorism. Green would signify “dangerous,” orange would mean “high,” and red would mean “threatening,” Interfax reported.

TITLE: Chichvarkin Says Mother Was Killed
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Self-exiled tycoon Yevgeny Chichvarkin said Sunday that he believed his mother, found dead in her Moscow apartment, was murdered, Reuters reported.
Chichvarkin, a flamboyant former mobile phone retailer fighting extradition from London, contradicted official reports of a domestic accident after Lyudmila Chichvarkina was found dead with a head injury on Saturday.
“I think it was a murder. The whole apartment is stained with blood. My father saw it, and our housemaid also saw it,” Chichvarkin told Russian News Service radio.
“I’m not accusing anyone, I don’t have any grounds for that,” Chichvarkin said, with an audible tremble in his voice.
Prosecutors have charged Chichvarkin with extortion and kidnapping while part of an organized criminal group. Chichvarkin denies the charges, which are linked to his former business empire, Yevroset, and has said in the past he would be killed if he returned to Russia.
Law enforcement officials said Sunday that Chichvarkina, 60, had slipped and hit her temple on the corner of a table.
“The woman tripped on a tile in the kitchen. The apartment door was locked from the inside,” an unidentified official told Interfax. The Investigative Committee said it was conducting an inquiry but had found no signs of a crime.
“If there are signs of foul play, a criminal case will be opened. If Chichvarkin’s mother’s death was the result of natural causes, a criminal case will be rejected,” said Anatoly Bagmet, head of the Investigative Committee’s Moscow office, Interfax reported.
Chichvarkin faces arrest if he returns to Russia for his mother’s funeral.
A British court has delayed hearing a Russian request to extradite him until August. Chichvarkin could be the first person to be extradited from Britain to Russia if he loses his legal battle.

TITLE: Senator Buys News Corp. Assets
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media holding has sold its Russian radio stations to Senator Vitaly Bogdanov, the company said Friday.
News Corp. and Bogdanov reached agreement on the sale of Russian radio stations Nashe Radio, with branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Best FM and Ultra, the company said in a statement released Friday. Under the terms of the agreement, Bogdanov will acquire 100 percent of each station.
Bogdanov, a senator from the Kursk region, sold a 39 percent stake in Russian Media Group two years ago. Last winter, he purchased Moya Semya and 95.2 FM. The cost of the deal has not been disclosed.
Last fall, News Corp. began trying to unload its radio assets, which were then valued at $16 million, and Vladimir Potanin’s Prof-Media and AF Media Holding, owned by billionaire Alisher Usmanov, were courted as potential buyers.
In 2008, News Corp. announced its intention to unload all of its Russian assets, which include News Outdoor, the biggest outdoor advertiser in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Murdoch pointed to the investment climate in Russia, saying, “The more successful we become, the more vulnerable we’ll be to have it stolen from us, so we’re going to sell.”

TITLE: Ad About Gays in United Russia Pulled Down
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A nine-story banner featuring the cover of the April issue of the men’s glossy magazine Esquire was removed from a central Moscow street last week for posing the question, “Why do ballet dancers and gays join United Russia?”
The reason, said advertising agency Sunlight Outdoor, which sells advertising space for Esquire, was that it did not want a confrontation with United Russia, which is led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The banner depicts rock musician David Bowie saying “Shh” with a finger over his lips and features the contentious question, which is a teaser for a cover story in which actors, filmmakers and showmen explain why they joined the country’s ruling party.
Personalities interviewed for the article include filmmakers Stanislav Govorukhin and Vladimir Menshov, ballet dancer Anastasia Volochkova and flamboyant pop singer Boris Moiseyev.
Sunlight Outdoor dismantled Esquire’s banner covering a side of a building on Ulitsa Obraztsova, near Savyolovsky Station, on March 31, just a day after placing it there.
“People could consider the banner as an act of provocation, especially coming a day after the tragedy,” Sunlight Outdoor CEO Natalya Valiyeva said, referring to the twin suicide bombings in the Moscow metro that killed at least 40 people on March 29.
An early version of the banner provided by Esquire and accepted by Sunlight Outdoor differed from the one that appeared on the building, Valiyeva said Friday.
“Esquire provided a draft where there was no sentence about gays and ballet dancers, and we agreed on this draft. After that, the client’s representatives brought another banner that did not match the one that we had accepted. If we had seen this draft in advance, we wouldn’t have agreed to place it,” she told The St. Petersburg Times.
She accused Esquire of purposely providing the wrong draft. “I suppose that they didn’t give us the [right] draft because they realized that we would refuse to place it,” she said.
Philipp Bakhtin, editor in chief of Esquire, said the magazine had submitted the incomplete draft by mistake, adding that publishing these kinds of statements was normal in democratic societies.
“We have the right to publish anything we think is right. This is very weird. It’s a wild story,” Bakhtin said.
Esquire’s Russian edition is owned by Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times.
Bakhtin said the advertising agency had refused to hang a banner that replaced the controversial question with a link to the magazine’s web site.
He also said Sunlight Outdoor had not provided an official explanation for why it broke the terms of the contract.
Esquire’s banner was placed on the headquarters of Atlas, a federal state unitary enterprise that creates information security technology.
Atlas’ representatives ordered Sunlight Outdoor to remove the banner and threatened to ban the advertising agency from placing further ads on the building, Bakhtin said, citing private conversations between the staff of Esquire and the advertising agency.
Anatoly Beskaravainy, an aide to Atlas’ chief executive officer, denied that Atlas had ordered the banner’s removal. “We haven’t even seen it. Our guard desk is on the other side,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
A number of television channels, including Rossia, Ren-TV and 2x2, have refused to broadcast Esquire’s latest commercials, saying they did not want to deal with United Russia, Bakhtin said.
United Russia spokesman Dmitry Polikanov said the party would not respond to the issue because it did not consider it to be a big deal. “The party today has many strategic and much more important problems to solve,” he said, adding that United Russia would not “react to insulting statements in glossy magazines with a limited audience.”
The Moscow Advertising Committee, which oversees outdoor advertising in the capital, said in an e-mailed statement that it “had nothing to do with placing and dismantling the banner” because it had been secured on a commercial basis.
A number of celebrities have joined United Russia, including boxing champion Nikolai Valuyev, who became a member of the party’s St. Petersburg branch on Friday, and Nikolai Rastorguyev, the lead singer for Putin’s favorite rock band Lyube, who took a vacant United Russia seat in the State Duma in January.
Esquire’s editor said he was not losing any sleep over the banner. “I absolutely don’t feel unlucky because we have gotten more PR than a single banner could provide,” Bakhtin said.
Esquire has faced problems before. In 2007, the agency News Outdoor refused to place ads for Esquire that contained the words of rock musician Bono, who had compared politics with the production of sausages.
In November, major outdoor advertising agencies in Moscow and St. Petersburg refused to carry a Russian Newsweek campaign for fear that it was too provocative or violated the country’s law on advertising. The satirical spots each featured a positive slogan — such as “The officials have stated their incomes,” or “Trust in the courts is growing in Russia” — with a pair of hands somehow mocking or discrediting the statement. Each ad ended with the words: “Everyone knows. We understand.”

TITLE: Theater Denies Claims It Censored Performance
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Estrada Theater denied accusations of political censorship Monday, claiming that a literary performance by Viktor Shenderovich scheduled for April 18 was canceled due to renovation work at the theater and not because the Moscow satirist is a known Kremlin critic.
“The theater will close for major renovation work from July 1, and it turned out that the commission coming from Moscow to inspect the premises regarding the renovation work can come only on these days — that’s why not only a concert by Shenderovich was canceled, but performances on April 17 and 19 as well,” program director Nina Podpalova said Monday.
“Our ceiling is sagging and falling down, so we need to find out urgently whether we’re able to work for another two months before we close on July 1 for major 14-month renovation work.
“What they’re writing in the newspapers today is a vile insinuation.”
Shenderovich reacted to a cancelation of his planned solo concert in St. Petersburg with an open letter to City Governor Valentina Matviyenko, while a group of protesters picketed the Estrada Theater on Monday.  
Speaking by phone Monday, Shenderovich expressed doubts about the real motives behind the cancelation.
“For several days we have faced censorship, lies, and hints of some superior powers that demanded the cancelation of our concert,” he said. “But of course, 7 p.m. on Sunday [the time of the scheduled concert] is the most popular time to start ‘planned works,’” he added with irony.
Shenderovich said he was planning to come to the city in any event.
“My plans are to come to St. Petersburg, but the genre of my performance will be determined by the city administration,” he said.
“If they resume the sale of tickets to my concert, it will simply be a concert. If political censorship and an anti-constitutional ban on me performing persist, it will be a political event.”
The promoter said about 100 tickets had already been sold to the 506-seat venue. Mikhail Yeliseyev of Nevograd, the company that promoted the concert, said Monday that the contract with Estrada Theater was signed on March 3, and the advertising campaign was in full swing when the concert was canceled, with posters up around the city and tickets on sale. 
On March 30, however, Yeliseyev received a call from the venue’s manager asking whether it was a concert or a political event. He was asked to submit a written answer, he said.
“I wrote: ‘There will be a concert by author Viktor Shenderovich in your theater on April 18, not a political action,’ then stamped and signed it,” Yeliseyev said. “I couldn’t think of anything cleverer to write.”
On Friday, he was called again and informed that the concert had been canceled due to “a planned inspection of the premises regarding upcoming renovation work.”
In February, a benefit concert titled “For Your Freedom and Ours” whose proceeds went to Russian political prisoners, with Shenderovich headlining, was nearly canceled due to an alleged “water leak.” But when Shenderovich told the story on air from the local studio of Ekho Moskvy radio station on the eve of the show, the venue’s administrator gave the concert the go-ahead.

TITLE: Medvedev Fetes Disabled Athletes
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev couldn’t resist taking a jab at Russia’s Olympic team as he handed out state awards to the country’s victorious paralympians during a Kremlin ceremony Friday.
“We all were very glad to support you, even though the Olympic Games held earlier gave us mixed emotions,” Medvedev told the disabled athletes, according to a transcript published on the Kremlin’s web site.
Russia placed 11th at the Vancouver Olympics in February, winning only three golds and 15 medals overall in its worst-ever Winter Games performance. The country’s paralympic team placed first in Vancouver last month, nabbing 38 medals, including 12 golds.
Among the athletes who received the state awards Friday were Irek Zaripov, a 27-year-old native of Bashkortostan who won four golds and one silver in sitting biathlon and cross-country skiing, and Maria Iovleva, 20, who won two golds and a silver in sitting biathlon and cross-country skiing.
“She was very proud about her victories,” Tatyana Lindt, Iovleva’s private teacher, told The St. Petersburg Times. “After she won, she showed me two thumbs up while chatting on Skype.” 
It was the first paralympics for Iovleva, who is deaf and paralyzed from the waist down, and she plans to use prize money awarded by the government to buy her own apartment in her hometown of Syktyvkar in the Komi republic. She currently shares a room with 12 other young women in a home for disabled people. The paralympians will be awarded 100,000 euros ($135,000) for gold medals, 60,000 euros for silvers and 40,000 euros for bronzes.

TITLE: Soyuz Spacecraft Docks at Station
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A U.S.-Russian space team sent their Easter greetings down to Earth on Sunday after their Soyuz spacecraft docked flawlessly at the International Space Station.
“Happy Easter to you all,” Soyuz captain Alexander Skvortsov of Russia said in a broadcast from the station shortly after the ship hooked up with the orbiting station using an automatic docking system.
His teammates, California native Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russian Mikhail Korniyenko, joined him in greeting the world’s Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians who celebrated their belief in Jesus’ resurrection on the same day this year because of a coincidence in the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
The docking finished at 9:26 a.m. Moscow time. The Soyuz was launched Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and the three joined the station’s current inhabitants, U.S. astronaut Timothy Creamer, Soichi Noguchi of Japan and Russia’s Oleg Kotov.
Within three days, a seven-person crew aboard the Shuttle Discovery will dock at the station for a 13-day mission. During this period, four women will be in space at the same time, which is a first in history.
Before the pre-launch briefing Friday, Caldwell Dyson — a lead vocalist in Houston-based all-astronaut rock band Max-Q — drew on her musical talents by regaling her friends, colleagues and relatives with a solo rendition of Garth Brooks’ country hit “The River.”
In a final statement to a commission of international space officials, Caldwell Dyson said in Russian: “As our captain said, we are ready.”
Well-wishers and family crowded the bus taking the astronauts to the launch pad where Yury Gagarin began the first human trip into orbit in 1961, taking pictures and pressing their hands against the window in final greetings.
Speaking at the observation platform after liftoff, William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, praised how the launch had gone, calling it “super.”
“This is an extremely positive crew, and they’re looking forward to their work,” he said. 
The expedition led by Skvortsov, a seasoned military pilot who is making his maiden flight to space, will end in September, just as the United States’ last-ever shuttle flight launches from the Kennedy Space Center.
With the winding down of the shuttle, the Soyuz — which launched the world’s first satellite into space in 1957 — is set to take on the burden of carrying astronauts to and from the space station.
Baikonur also has been at the heart of a heated controversy in recent weeks with Russian officials claiming that Kazakhstan has been hindering Russia’s space activities.
Russia has a lease on the space center until 2050 and has paid about $115 million to Kazakhstan in rent since the agreement took effect in 2004.
Speaking after Friday’s launch, Kazakhstan space agency chief Talgat Musabayev dismissed talk of any major differences with Russia.
“There is no crack in relations between us. If anyone can see a crack, they should get some cream and give that place a good smearing,” he said.

TITLE: UN Chief Pushes for Rights in C. Asia
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has pressed Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan on human rights issues during his first tour of Central Asia.
Just days before Ban’s visit, Kyrgyz police seized equipment in a raid on a local television channel, effectively taking it off the air in what the opposition said was an attack on press freedom.
On the sidelines of Ban’s closed-door meeting with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Kadyrbek Sarbayev, a senior UN official said the UN chief had particularly stressed that he was “troubled” by steps taken by the authorities to limit independent reporting.
The UN official quoted Ban as telling Sarbayev: “How do I answer such questions from the media, and how do you answer the world?” The official said Ban delivered a similar message in a separate meeting with Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Speaking in Turkmenistan on Friday, Ban said he had won concessions from Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to invite a United Nations human rights special rapporteur focusing on education — an issue of concern after the country’s educational system severely deteriorated under Berdymukhammedov’s predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who made his book of spiritual wisdom required reading.
On Sunday in Uzbekistan, Ban called on Central Asian states to work together to tackle the disastrous effects of the shrinking Aral Sea. It shrank by 70 percent after Soviet planners in the 1960s siphoned off water for cotton irrigation projects in Uzbekistan. “I was so shocked,” Ban said after viewing the damage by helicopter, describing it as “clearly one of the worst environmental disasters in the world.” 
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Gryzlov: Two Dailies Linked to Terrorists
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov has linked Vedomosti and Moskovsky Komsomolets to terrorists for publishing articles that he called “suspicious.”
Gryzlov told a meeting between President Dmitry Medvedev and Duma faction leaders on Friday that the two newspapers had sided with Chechen rebels rather than consolidate society by publishing critical articles between the March 29 attacks and March 31, when Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility.
“If we analyze these three sources, then we will see that in fact they are stewing in the same juices. The connection between the publications and the terrorists’ actions evokes suspicions,” Gryzlov said.
Gryzlov, who heads United Russia’s Duma faction, did not elaborate on the three sources, and he mentioned only two specific articles, a news report with the headline “Revenge for Caucasus” in Vedomosti and a column by Alexander Minkin in Moskovsky Komsomolets. Both articles, which were published Tuesday, linked the attacks to the North Caucasus.
Gryzlov’s criticism was backed by Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov, who serves as speaker of the Federation Council.
“Some mass media basically played into the terrorists’ hands, trying to convince our citizens that the fight against terrorists was ineffective and the government is unable to protect citizens,” Mironov said in televised remarks.
Medvedev played down the politicians’ criticism, saying critical media reports after terrorist attacks “are normal” but journalists should not side with terrorists.
Both newspapers dismissed Gryzlov’s allegations.
Minkin, whose article was particularly critical of law enforcement agencies and the Kremlin, said he would wait a week for Gryzlov to apologize and then file a defamation lawsuit.
“A libel case won’t add positive accents to his biography,” Minkin said Saturday on Ekho Moskvy radio. “I’ll give him a week because of the holiday.”
Christians celebrated Easter last weekend.
“The only connection between Doku Umarov’s statement and Vedomosti’s article is the fact of the metro attacks,” said Tatyana Lysova, editor-in-chief of Vedomosti, which is published by the parent company of The Moscow Times, Independent Media Sanoma Magazines.
Senior United Russia official Andrei Isayev said the party was surprised by the newspapers’ reaction to Gryzlov’s criticism.
“Some of the press — primarily Moskovsky Komsomolets — reacted to the tragic circumstances … in an absolutely irresponsible way,” Isayev said, Interfax reported.
He added that United Russia might file a countersuit.
At least one United Russia deputy, however, has also said the corrupt law enforcement system failed to protect people from repeat attacks.
“If we don’t stop it [corruption], if corruption isn’t stopped in law enforcement agencies … this won’t be the last terrorist attack,” Duma Deputy Lyubov Sliska said last week, United Russia reported on its web site.

TITLE: Rebel’s Claim Not So Simple
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov says the Moscow metro bombs were in retaliation for the special forces’ killing of “poor” civilians picking garlic on Feb. 11.
But the events that transpired on Feb. 11 and 12 were not so simple.
The four civilians, who were picking wild garlic shoots to sell at local markets, died along with 18 suspected Islamic militants during two days of gunfights in mountainous forests near Arshty, Ingushetia.
Soon after the clashes, a spokesman for Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, Kaloi Akhilgov, confirmed that four civilians “were caught by crossfire and were killed” in an operation along with 18 militants.
Ingush prosecutor Yury Turygin said Feb. 13 that among the slain rebels was a former personal bodyguard of Umarov, identified only by his last name, Israilov.
Activists with the Memorial human rights group and Human Rights Watch visited Arshty and the surrounding area a couple days later.
According to a Memorial report released Feb. 15, law enforcement agencies announced a counterterrorism operation after detecting a large group of suspected rebels near the village on Feb. 11. Citing eyewitnesses, the report said the four slain civilians had come from neighboring Chechnya and had not been warned about the operation in the area.
Memorial published photographs of the dead bodies of the garlic pickers, all of whom were under 21. 
One of them, Movsar Tatayev, was found lying in bloodstained snow with a bag of garlic on his shoulders. His relatives told Memorial that his body had three gunshot wounds and several knife cuts.
Memorial, which interviewed dozens of residents, concluded that several civilians remained missing after the Feb. 11 clashes.
Umarov said in a video posted on a rebel web site Wednesday that Federal Security Service commandos had intentionally attacked four civilians gathering wild garlic outside the Ingush village of Arshty on Feb. 11 with knives and then made fun of the corpses.
“These people were mercilessly destroyed,” he said.
“That shooting was just lunacy,” Memorial spokesman Alexander Cherkasov said Saturday, The Associated Press reported. “And that lunacy was used to justify terrorism.”

TITLE: Former Boxing Champ Valuyev Joins United Russia’s St. Petersburg Branch
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Boxing champion Nikolai Valuyev has turned into a United Russia political heavyweight, joining the party’s St. Petersburg branch.
Valuyev, 32, whose height of 2.14 meters has earned him the nickname “the beast from the East,” said Friday that he was not planning to give up boxing but had joined the ruling party to expand his range of activities, RIA-Novosti reported.
He said he would oversee the construction of boxing schools for children in his native St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg legislature Speaker Vadim Tulpanov, a United Russia member who presented Valuyev with his party credentials, said Valuyev might take part in elections.
Stanislav Bukhlov, a boxing promoter who worked as a political strategist in the 1990s, said Valuyev could help attract votes to United Russia and that the party could provide Valuyev with a life after boxing.
“With his boxing career at an end, the image of a party activist is better for him than the status of a retired former champion,” Bukhlov said, adding that Valuyev has good communication skills.
Valuyev lost the World Boxing Association champion title to British boxer David Haye last year.
In 2008, a St. Petersburg court convicted Valuyev of assaulting a parking attendant and ordered him to pay several thousand dollars in fines and damages. The assault occurred after the elderly attendant chastised Valuyev’s wife for parking in a zone reserved for buses at St. Petersburg’s Spartak arena in 2006. A higher court overturned the fine last year.
Valuyev has tried his hand at acting, playing the lead role of a boxer who lost his memory in Russian director Filipp Yankovsky’s 2008 film, “Stone Head.”
  United Russia’s faction in the State Duma already has several sport celebrities, including gymnastic champions Alina Kabayeva and Svetlana Khorkina.
The first celebrity boxer to join United Russia was former champion Konstantin Tszyu in 2006. “I joined United Russia because it is the party that helps children,” Tszyu told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview in 2007, explaining that he used the party affiliation to promote children’s boxing.

TITLE: Film: 147 Infected in Uzbek HIV Outbreak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — An AIDS outbreak at two children’s hospitals in Uzbekistan has killed at least 14 children and left 133 infected with HIV, according to a documentary recently posted on a web site.
The editor of Ferghana.ru said the 2007 outbreak was first reported in an official documentary produced by Uzbek prosecutors for government television. 
But, he said, the video never aired because authorities had second thoughts about broadcasting it, fearing that it would provoke a public outcry and unfavorable international publicity. 
The documentary, posted on Ferghana.ru, reported that 12 doctors and nurses at two hospitals in the eastern city of Namangan were convicted of treating the children with contaminated medical equipment. 
According to the narrator, the health workers were sentenced to prison terms of from five years to eight years and eight months.
Uzbek officials, including prosecutors, did not return repeated phone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.
The AP could not verify the authenticity of the documentary, which would be the first official confirmation of the long-rumored outbreak, but a former Uzbek television producer said it appeared authentic.
Daniil Kislov, editor of Ferghana.ru, said his site obtained the video from an Uzbek health official after authorities canceled plans to broadcast it.
Several outbreaks of hospital-transmitted HIV have been reported among children in Central Asia in recent years. Doctors in the region have sometimes prescribed transfusions for routine illnesses. Similar incidents in Kazakhstan in 2006 and Kyrgyzstan in 2007 left dozens of children infected.
The Uzbek documentary shows a series of men and women, identified as health workers, confessing and saying they deserved harsh sentences. All the interviewees spoke into a microphone with the logo of Uzbek state television.
“I am 1,000 times sorry,” one of the nurses said through tears. “I would not want a single nurse or doctor to repeat those mistakes.” There are also interviews with the mothers of some of the infected children, as well as with a prosecutor.
Ferghana.ru first reported the HIV outbreak in Namangan in October 2007, but at the time officials denied that it had occurred.
Kislov said the video was produced in January 2009 and was obtained from a Health Ministry official who demanded anonymity because he feared persecution by authorities.
“This is a genuine product of Uzbek television,” said Alisher Komolov, who worked for the Yoshlar television channel until he left the country in 2006. “The editing layout, the choice of words and the overall denunciatory tone resemble other propaganda videos, especially the ones on Andijan.”
In 2005, government troops killed hundreds of mostly peaceful protesters in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, according to eyewitnesses and human rights groups. Authorities said fewer than 200 died and blamed the violence on Islamic militants. Uzbek television showed several documentaries that supported the official viewpoint and slammed Western nongovernmental organizations and reporters for allegedly funding the uprising and providing biased coverage.
The United Nations says Uzbekistan has one of the world’s fastest-rising HIV infection rates. About 16,000 cases of HIV/AIDS were reported in 2009 — more than an 11-fold increase from 1,400 cases in 2001, a World Health Organization report said.
For many in the predominantly Muslim nation of 27 million, HIV and AIDS are taboo subjects. At the same time, infection rates are rising because of a sharp deterioration in medical services, as well as a growth of intravenous drug use and sexually transmitted diseases since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Kislov said the video could not have been made without government cooperation, calling the documentary’s style “typical” of Uzbek state television.
“It glorifies the country’s leaders and law enforcement agencies and degrades the hand-picked scapegoats,” he said.
In late February, Uzbek activist Maxim Popov, who distributed brochures saying condoms and disposable syringes can help prevent HIV, was convicted of corrupting minors by promoting homosexuality, prostitution and drug use. He was sentenced to seven years in jail.

TITLE: Waste Plant Proposals Flood In
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Five companies, including three foreign ones, will take part in a tender for the construction of a new domestic waste processing plant outside St. Petersburg.
The foreign firms include companies from Singapore and Austria, as well as a Greek consortium.  The Russian subsidiaries of German and Swiss companies will also take part in the tender, Kommersant daily reported.
The cost of the project, which is to be completed as a private-public partnership, has grown from 200 million euros to 300 million euros. The plant will be built on six hectares of municipal territory in the village of Yanino just outside the city.
The winner of the tender is to be announced by the end of the summer. The successful company should see a return on its investment in the project within 10 to 12 years, and will run the plant for 25 years before it is handed over to the city.
Experts are warning that waste disposal charges may double to cover the expense of the project. 
Among the companies that have announced their plans to build the plant are Keppel Seghers Engineering Singapore (Singapore); Strabag (Austria); a consortium of Greece’s Helector, Aktor Concessions and Aktor; St. Petersburg’s Essential 812 (a subsidiary of the German structure Essential Technologie); and TDF Ecotech Yanino (a subsidiary of the Swiss company TDF Ecotech).
The applications are currently being considered by the tender commission. The final decision on the winning project is due to be made on August 9, and construction is due to begin in 2010.
The city authorities resolved to solve the problem of waste processing in St. Petersburg last year. The city currently processes 25 percent of the two million tons of solid domestic waste produced every year. The processing is done using outdated technologies.
Alexei Chichkanov, head of the city’s Investment and Strategic Projects Committee, said the new public-private partnership project would enable the city to attract private capital and use modern ecological waste processing technologies. The city will not incinerate waste at the new plant, Kommersant reported.
Chichkanov said the commission would first of all evaluate technology, which should be capable of processing at least 70 percent of the city’s waste. The second most important factor is the cost of processing one ton of waste.
“If this parameter leads to a serious growth in utility charges, including those paid by local citizens, the proposal will be at a disadvantage,” Chichkanov said, RBC newspaper reported.
The city guarantees to pay the winning company for processing 350 tons of waste per year. The city’s two existing plants currently process about 500,000 tons out of two million tons of waste that the city produces every year.
Deputy Governor Yury Molchanov said that after the plant opens in Yanino, three or four more plants will be built under the same scheme, depending on their capacity.

TITLE: Share Sale Brings New Co-Owner to Lenexpo
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva and Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: A merger with Yury Kovalchuk’s Bank Rossia has given a subsidiary of Gazenergoprombank co-ownership of Lenexpo, site of the annual Petersburg Economic Forum. 
Lenexpo’s general director, Sergei Alekseyev, announced Friday that he and the exhibition center’s managing director, Leonid Krasnikov, have sold 25 percent of their shares in Lenexpo to Gazenergoprombank Development. Yekaterina Bogolyubova, a representative of Gazenergoprombank’s subsidiary Expoforum, confirmed the transaction. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
As the largest exhibition center in the northwest, Lenexpo has been hosting the St. Petersburg Economic Forum for years. The complex is located on 15 hectares of land on Vasilyevsky Island on the Gulf of Finland; it includes a convention hall, conference rooms and nine exhibition pavilions with a combined area of 40,000 square meters. According to Lenexpo’s reports for the third quarter, the company earned proceeds of 382 million rubles ($12.7 million) and a net profit of 26 million rubles ($861,800). At the end of last year, Alekseyev and Krasnikov owned 33.5 percent and 14 percent of the company, respectively.  
Igor Leitis, president of the Adamant shopping center development holding and owner of 30 percent of shares in Lenexpo, could not be reached for comment. Alekseyev and two other sources said Leitis was not involved in the transaction. 
According to Interfax’s professional market and company analysis system, 65 percent of Gazenergoprombank Development is owned by Gazenergoprom-Invest, which in turn belongs to Gazenergoprombank. “Gazenergoprombank Development is interested in increasing its shares in Lenexpo in the future,” said Bogolyubova. 
Alekseyev confirmed that negotiations were underway, adding that his shares are being sold under the condition that he will remain in charge of the exhibition center. 
“Lenexpo’s senior management has experience which will help Gazenergoprombank Development realize a second project as well,” said Alekseyev. 
Expoforum is currently planning the development of a new billion-dollar exhibition complex on the Petersburgskoye Shosse. The new center will comprise 100,000 square meters of exhibition space and 25,000 square meters of office space, as well as two 450-room hotels and a conference center large enough to hold 3,000 people. 
“Some exhibition projects may be moved from Lenexpo to Expoforum’s facilities,” said Expoforum’s general director, Anatoly Yerkulov. 
As a business, Lenexpo is not the most appealing asset, according to Denis Demin, the assistant managing director of Lenmontazhstroi investment firm. “At the end of the third quarter, the company’s debt and borrowing stood at about 450 million rubles ($14.9 million). The center is likely to be valued for its real estate,” he said.

TITLE: Inflation Falls to Lowest Level in 12 Years
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s inflation rate fell to the lowest level in 12 years as a stronger ruble made imports cheaper and a sluggish recovery damps consumer demand, allowing the central bank to continue cutting rates.
The rate dropped to an annual 6.5 percent last month from 7.2 percent in February, the Federal Statistics Service said in an e-mailed statement Monday. Bank Rossii has cut its benchmark refinancing rate 12 times in the last year to 8.25 percent to help the economy recover from its worst slump on record. Interest rates will fall further if the government meets its inflation target of between 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent for the year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in March.
“A steady decline in inflation was one of Russia’s main economic achievements last year,” Alfa Bank economists in Moscow said in a research note on Thursday. “By keeping real interest rates in positive territory, the Russian central bank is helping to generate retail deposit inflows to banks.”
Even so, banks are unable to take advantage of slowing consumer-price growth as loan demand remains weak and companies struggle to pass on producer-cost increases, Alfa said.

TITLE: Putin, Chavez Boost Ties in Oil, Nuclear Power
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin oversaw the signing of 31 agreements in oil, nuclear power and trade on Friday during his first visit ever to Venezuela, while President Hugo Chavez said they even held talks on joint space exploration.
The announcement — and Putin’s visit more generally — raised eyebrows in the United States, which has had tense relations with Chavez. The former paratrooper regularly denounces what he calls “U.S. imperialism” in Latin America, including close cooperation with his longtime rival, Colombia.
Chavez was on hand at Simon Bolivar International Airport to greet Putin, even though he arrived half an hour early, at 6:30 a.m.
The two immediately set out for the National Panteon to lay flowers at the tomb of Simon Bolivar, a national liberation hero. They then visited the Kruzenshtern, a German-built ship that the U.S.S.R. received after World War II, which was docked in Caracas and housing an exhibit on the war.
Putin was later welcomed with an honor guard at Miraflores Palace, where Chavez awarded him the Orden del Libertador — also named after Bolivar — and gave him a replica of the revolutionary’s sword. In return, Putin offered a framed letter from Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan revolutionary who proceeded Bolivar.
The one-day trip, which Venezuelan state television called Putin’s “first official visit,” was listed as a working visit on the Russian government web site.
The sides signed a deal under which Russian oil companies will help explore the massive Junin-6 oil field in exchange for a $1 billion “entry ticket” from Russia. The total cost of the project is estimated at $30 billion.
“I’m happy to transfer the first tranche of $600 million,” Putin told Chavez during the signing ceremony, the local Globovision television channel reported. “We will not deceive you.”
A source in the Russian delegation said the rest would be transferred this year.
A consortium of Rosneft, LUKoil, Gazprom-Neft, TNK-BP and Surgutneftegaz received a 40 percent share in Junin-6, Venezuela’s largest oil field with 52.68 billion barrels of oil.
State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela will own the rest.
Putin said the project would take three decades to develop and could produce 400 million to 450 million barrels of oil per year. The five Russian companies will invest $950 million in the first stage of the project by 2012.
Moscow and Caracas also agreed to include the Russian consortium in the planned development of the Ayacucho-2, Ayacucho-3 and Junin-3 oil wells.
“Russian companies participated in [the development of] these oil fields separately. What we did was sign a document that passed these rights to the consortium,” Venezuelan Energy and Petroleum Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters.
Venezuela could get another $1 billion in bonuses for other oil projects “if all goes well” with Junin-6, Putin said, without elaborating.
In other energy deals, the sides signed a letter of intent to create a nuclear power station with a capacity between 200 megawatts and 500 megawatts.
“We are not going to make a nuclear bomb, but we will develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” Chavez said. “We should prepare ourselves for the post-petroleum era.”
Venezuela has had blackouts in recent years because of undeveloped infrastructure. Last fall, Chavez called on his countrymen to limit showers to three minutes, stay out of Jacuzzis and take flashlights to the bathroom at night instead of turning on the lights.
Moscow and Caracas also signed agreements on science, culture and education, and Chavez even said they discussed space exploration and the possible joint construction of a launch pad — drawing snickers from Washington.
“To the extent that Venezuela is going to expend resources on behalf of its people, perhaps the focus should be more terrestrial than extraterrestrial,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Friday.
The Russian side made no mention of space cooperation.
In other deals, AvtoVAZ will supply 2,250 Lada cars under a deal with state-owned Suvinca, while aircraft leasing company Ilyushin-Finance signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a joint enterprise to make aircraft equipment there. Sovkomflot and Venezuela’s PDV Marina said they intended to build tankers together.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, a Chavez ally, also traveled to Caracas to meet with Putin, who gave him a $100 million loan to buy helicopters to fight drug trafficking. Bolivia also agreed to cooperate with Gazprom to develop three gas fields, Morales said Saturday.
Abkhaz Foreign Minister Maxim Gvindzhia, who was also in Caracas, said Friday that the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia may win recognition from Bolivia and Ecuador.

TITLE: Pay Terminals Go Offline As Regulations Take Effect
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russians have been finding it more difficult to pay their mobile phone and housing bills after thousands of instant payment terminals missed government deadlines for re-equipment and went out of service across the country over the past few days.
In an effort to tighten control over the growing market of instant payments, the government enacted a law requiring the terminals to have a built-in machine to register payments and provide tax authorities with records of transactions as of April 1.
A delay in issuing bylaws for exactly how to make the changes caused at least 20 percent of the country’s 200,000 pay terminals to suspend operation as their owners take steps to comply, said Andrei Romanenko, president of market leader OE Investments. The situation will come back to normal within two weeks, he predicted in an interview with radio Finam.
OE Investments — in which a blocking stake belongs to a Russian company that invested in Facebook, Digital Sky Technologies — owns the Qiwi and E-Port brands that account for half of the market, which was valued at 649 billion rubles ($22.2 billion) last year. Just 25 percent of the operator’s machines meet the new requirements, said Yulia Mansurova, a spokeswoman for an OE Investments subsidiary that runs the two biggest terminal networks.
As terminal operators seek to recoup their investment in the new equipment, they are likely to start charging a commission larger than the current average of 4.5 percent, Mansurova said. In what has the potential to damage the popularity of the ubiquitous pay terminals, the commission fee may grow to an average of 7 percent, she said.

TITLE: Stocks See Modest Q1 Improvements
AUTHOR: By Peter France
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Stocks finished the first quarter of 2010 ahead of where they started, having weathered a correction and subsequent rally, and are poised to continue their rise well into the second quarter, driven by high oil prices and good news from abroad.
The ruble-denominated MICEX Index finished off the quarter at 1450.15, up 5.9 percent from its Dec. 31 close, while the dollar-denominated RTS Index closed at 1572.48, having gained 8.9 percent in the same period.
Both indexes suffered a correction in the first part of the quarter as flagging prices for oil, Russia’s main export, brought down stocks, which subsequently regained their buoyancy on the rising tide of oil. Crude started the year at about $80 per barrel and fell to about $70 before regaining its losses by the end of the quarter.
The indexes continued their upward trend through the first two days of April, with the RTS breaking through the 1,600 barrier to close the week at 1,614.45, its highest level since September 2008. The MICEX edged closer to the 1,500 mark, finishing the week at 1,480.17 — a 20-month high.
The numbers were helped by a U.S. Labor Department report Friday saying the United States witnessed a 162,000 increase in jobs last month, the largest jump in three years.  
Russia-focused equity funds ending in March showed net inflows for seven consecutive weeks, as investors flock to the country to take advantage of expected profits once the economy’s recovery takes hold.
More than $1.3 billion has flowed into Russia-focused funds throughout the first quarter, according to data from EPFR Global, putting Russia in first place among developing economies.
The performance of Russian equities has justified such flows, Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib, said in a research note.
“Year to date, Russia is the best performing BRIC country,” he said, referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China. “Partly that is due to the rising price of oil, partly it is because Russian equities are amongst the cheapest in the asset class, especially taking second half of 2010 and 2011 numbers, and partly it is because of the growing volume of new money coming to Russia funds.”
That sentiment will likely continue to be felt well into the second quarter, analysts said, especially as crude is expected to hold its price or rise.
“The growth in oil prices will continue, and investors will continue to buy Russia securities accordingly,” Mark Rubenstein, an analyst at Metropol, said in a note. “First and foremost, this concerns big institutional investors: Fund flows onto Russian markets from them will strengthen, following from the increased oil prices.”

?? Equities in Russia are “mispriced” relative to the country’s bonds more than in any emerging market, and Russian stocks are set to outperform debt and other share indexes as earnings grow, JPMorgan Chase said Friday.
Russian stocks have underperformed bonds in the first quarter, with the MICEX Index gaining 5.9 percent in the first three months of 2010, compared with a return of 19 percent on sovereign bonds, according to JPMorgan’s EMBI+ Index.
(Bloomberg)

?? The ruble gained for a fifth day against the dollar on Friday, the longest winning streak in seven months, and advanced against the Central Bank’s target basket to the strongest position since December 2008 as oil traded at a 17-month high.
The Russian currency added 0.4 percent to 29.22 per dollar in Moscow trading, bringing its gain on the week to 1.4 percent. The ruble gained 0.4 percent to 39.51 versus the euro, leaving it at 33.85 against the euro-dollar basket, the highest since Dec. 23, 2008.
(Bloomberg)

TITLE: Lower Drug Prices Go Into Effect
AUTHOR: Maxim Stulov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The Health and Social Development Ministry will maintain a list of producer prices and monitor price markups.
The government began restricting markups for essential drugs Thursday in a change that will reduce profit margins on a large segment of the multibillion-dollar market.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued a stern warning for governors to enforce the new pricing rule, which came in response to a surge in prices last year that angered many Russians.
“I want to warn regional heads that if some regions don’t mange to hold on to the parameters that have been set, it will be a noticeable black mark for these heads,” he said Thursday at a meeting about the measure.
Under the rule, regional authorities will each set a limit for wholesale and retail markups on imported drugs, on top of the price declared at customs. For domestically produced drugs, the markup will be calculated from the producer’s price.
The Health and Social Development Ministry has drawn up a list of essential drugs, which make up a third of the market, and has been collecting price statements from producers since the beginning of this year. So far, the ministry has registered 98 percent of producer prices for essential drugs, Minister Tatyana Golikova said.
Pharmacies in Russia changed their price tags in accordance with the new pricing policy without any major disruptions to their work, said David Melik-Guseinov, director of market researcher Pharmexpert. Even so, he warned that cheap medicine could disappear from the shelves.
“Regulated prices might not allow for normal profits,” he said.
The government ordered the measures last year after the ruble’s devaluation dramatically reduced consumers’ purchasing power. Imported medicines account for 80 percent of the market in terms of value, according to an estimate given by Putin last year.
Prosecutors have threatened to launch criminal charges and withdraw licenses after discovering that markups on some drugs reached 380 percent in a nationwide probe last year. Average drug prices increased by 47 percent over the first 10 months of the year, prosecutors said in November, while the ruble lost about 30 percent of its value.
Some manufacturers conceded that the drug sales market had enjoyed an exceptionally favorable environment in Russia.
“We have had, as an industry, a very good seven to eight years,” Swiss drug maker Nycomed’s chief for Russia, Jostein Davidsen, said at a recent pharmaceutical conference. “Profit margins here have been higher than in all other emerging markets.”
“It cannot last,” he added later on the sidelines of an event devoted to the implications of the new rule.
But at least some international market players are still game. Finland’s wholesale and retail distributor Oriola-KD Group announced expansion plans last week after it increased its ownership of two Russian subsidiaries to 100 percent in February.
The company — which operates the Stary Lekar chain of 175 pharmacies, Moscow’s third largest — saw the most significant improvement in its operations to take place in Russia, its chief executive Eero Hautaniemi said in an annual report released last week.
It wants to open new distribution centers this and next year to cover the entire Russian market, he said.

TITLE: Investigators Say Searches at Mirax No Joke
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Interior Ministry investigators, escorted by 40 armed and masked riot police, raided Mirax Group’s offices in the Federation Tower on Thursday as part of a probe into the alleged theft of 4.1 million rubles ($140,000) in electricity.
Video posted on Mirax president Sergei Polonsky’s blog showed masked OMON riot police posted in the company’s hallways, while bewildered employees stood along balconies overlooking the office’s luxurious atrium.
“The search warrant said it was in connection with [an investigation into the possible] theft of electricity from our Zolotiye Klyuchi residential complex,” Polonsky told reporters in a video posted on LifeNews.ru. “I can’t understand why it’s necessary to bring gunmen to our office. We have an absolutely open position and we always offer all the necessary documents.”
The real estate mogul brushed off the investigation, saying “stealing 4.1 million rubles of electricity isn’t our business.” But Polonsky, who looked unusually nervous in the video interview, said it was possible that police might seek to have him placed in pretrial detention.
“The search warrant says electricity was stolen from a residential building developed by Mirax for a fitness facility on the premises [of Zolotiye Klyuchi], so in a way it appears that we stole the electricity from ourselves,” Mikhail Dvorkovich, an adviser to Polonsky, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Police were searching for information on former Mirax executive Maxim Privezentsev, Dvorkovich said. A copy of the warrant, posted by Polonsky on his blog, also indicated that investigators were interested in Privezentsev for allegedly stealing electricity.
The size of the alleged theft is too minor for police to paralyze a company’s operations, Dvorkovich said, adding that investigators had already visited Mirax’s office twice in relation to the case — without the armed escort.
“Four million rubles is just ‘kopeks,’ and 700 people were held in the atrium for several hours for that reason alone,” he said. “This is how the police congratulated us on April Fools’ Day.”
Andrei Pilipchuk, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s economic crimes department, said the raid was “of course” not a prank.
“The case was initiated in connection with a possible violation of Article 165, Part 3, of the Criminal Code,” he said. “And frankly, I don’t understand why this case is causing so much publicity now. This is the third and final visit by the police before the case goes to court.”
The charges, for causing property damage through deception or abuse of trust, carry a maximum punishment of five years in prison.
Pilipchuk declined to elaborate on the case or suspects, addressing further questions to Moscow city police, who were not immediately available for comment.
A source close to Mirax told Vedomosti in December that Privezentsev was the only one of Polonsky’s former partners who did not get shares under an options program that he created three years earlier. He left the company in September.
RBK Daily reported last month that Mirax had accused Privezentsev of an apparently unrelated theft during reconstruction work at Kursky Station.
The St. Petersburg Times was unable to reach Privezentsev for comment.
Apart from the Mirax Plaza and Federation Tower developments in Moskva-City, the developer also built residential projects such as Kutuzovskaya Riviera and Rublyovskaya Riviera.

TITLE: Strategic Law Ensnares Domestic Firms
AUTHOR: By Maxim Tovkailo and Yelena Mazneva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Major purchases by Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Novatek, Sistema and other companies could be ruled invalid because of a broad interpretation of the phase “a group of entities,” though officials are promising to fix the legal flaw.
The law on foreign investments in strategic sectors of the economy, in effect since April 2008, applies to all foreign investors (and groups of entities in which they participate) that want to buy stakes in Russian companies working in one of the 42 strategic sectors, such as oil, defense and the space industry.
But the phrase “group of entities” is interpreted according to the law on protecting competition, meaning that all Russian companies that have foreign subsidiaries, including those offshore, would count as a group of entities with foreign participation, said Igor Repin, deputy director of the Association for the Protection of Investors’ Rights.
Because the majority of big Russian companies would fit that bill, all of their purchases since spring 2008 would need to have been approved by the government’s commission on foreign investment in strategic sectors, he said. Otherwise, they could be invalidated.
During a presentation Wednesday to a conference on problems in applying the law on investment in strategic sectors, Repin gave several examples of problematic deals. They include the purchase by Gazprom (which has foreign subsidiaries) of 20 percent of Gazprom Neft from Italy’s Eni; the purchase by Novatek (the group of entities includes Swiss, Cypriot and Polish subsidiaries) of 51 percent of Yamal SPG; and the purchase by Sistema (the group of entities has several dozen foreign investors) of controlling stakes in Bashkir energy companies.
Prosperity Capital Management has sent a request to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service asking for clarification on the matter, said Denis Spirin, the investment fund’s corporate governance director.
According to the anti-monopoly service, the deals in question do require the government commission’s approval. The service’s deputy director, Andrei Tsyganov, conceded that there was a problem with how “group of entities” is defined.
“If you interpret it literally, then any Russian company with a foreign subsidiary that is purchasing an asset in a strategic sector should receive approval from the government commission,” he said.
The companies mentioned in Repin’s presentation declined to comment. But a source in a Gazprom-controlled company told Vedomosti that lawyers for the group and its subsidiaries were aware of the conflict and were studying it.
There are already instances where deals have been invalidated for this very reason, said Spirin, of Prosperity Capital Management.
Kores Invest, which is managed by Senator Leonid Lebedev’s Sintez Group, raised its stake in power generator TGK-2 to 50 percent but then refused to make a mandatory offer to minorities (including Prosperity Capital Management), citing the anti-monopoly service’s ruling that the deal would lead to Kores obtaining control of a strategic asset and therefore needed approval by the government, Spirin said.
A court backed Kores in the dispute, ruling that the deal with minority shareholders was invalid, even though Kores is a Russian company, it is not managed by a foreign company, it does not have any foreign beneficiaries and the foreign entity in the group was not part of the TGK-2 deal, he said.
“We disagree with the claims, and court hearings are ongoing,” a Sintez spokesperson said.
Since the anti-monopoly service required Kores to get the government’s permission, all similar deals by Russian companies violate the law, meaning that they are invalid, said Spirin, adding that “not even a court ruling is needed for that.”
If a deal was not approved, then under Article 15 of the law on strategic investments, it can be invalidated, Repin said, adding that it was difficult to determine the extent of the problem.
“We mentioned deals for which information is available from open sources, but there are very many unknown deals,” he said.
The anti-monopoly service believes that the current requirements are excessive and is preparing amendments to the law so that approval from the commission would only be required if the purchasing entity is controlled by a foreign investor, Tsyganov said.
“A specific formulation is being developed,” he said, declining to comment on the likelihood of whether deals that have already been concluded might be invalidated.
Under the current law, problems could emerge with several deals, so the anti-monopoly service’s actions are logical and the amendments fit in with their general trend of liberalizing anti-monopoly law, said a lawyer at an energy company.
For example, amendments to the law on defending competition are being developed that would lift requirements that deals within a group be approved by the anti-monopoly service.
Some Russian companies are already seeking clearance from the government commission before buying assets in a strategic sector. In the commission’s two years of work, more than half of all the deals it has considered were for Russian companies to buy strategic assets through offshore subsidiaries. One example was Gennady Timchenko seeking permission to raise his stake in Novatek to 23 percent.
Repin, of the investors’ rights group, said the anti-monopoly service was correct to make the changes. If no challenges are made before the amendments are passed, it will be impossible to invalidate the deals, he said, adding that it was essential that the bill be approved and passed as quickly as possible.
While the amendments are being developed, the anti-monopoly service and courts should change their legal practice and not interpret the phrase “group of entities” as broadly as they do now, Spirin said.
It is unlikely that any daredevils will try to challenge a Gazprom purchase, said Igor Nikolayev, director of strategic analysis at FBK. There will be very few or no contested deals, he said, attributing the problems with the law on investment in strategic sectors to the fact that it was developed on a tight schedule.

TITLE: New Plan For State Airline Champion
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has come up with a plan to create a national airline champion by merging Aeroflot with six other state airlines, according to a letter from the Transportation Ministry published Thursday.
Under the plan, state corporation Russian Technologies would transfer control of its six airlines to the federal government, which would in turn transfer them to Aeroflot in exchange for an increased stake in Aeroflot via an additional share issue, the Transportation Ministry said.
The ministry wrote to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, saying Russian Technologies would give the assets to the state “free of charge,” according to a letter published on Slon.ru.
The government has been mulling the merger since it became clear that Russian Technologies’ earlier plans, to jointly create a new national carrier with the Moscow city government fell through. Plans were also considered that would have seen Russian Technologies get a stake in Aeroflot in exchange for the six airlines.
Instead, Aeroflot has been chosen as the base with which to join the airline assets, which include Vladivostok Avia, Saravia, Sakhalin Airlines, Rossiya, Orenair and Kavminvodyavia.
The plan is fraught with legal complications, however. Three of Russian Technologies’ airlines technically are not yet owned by the conglomerate, as they are still registered as “federal state unitary enterprises” and have yet to be converted into joint-stock companies so as to be put under the control of Russian Technologies.
In July 2008, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered that the companies be reconstituted as joint-stock companies within nine months, but the order was never carried out.
The Transportation Ministry advised the government to reorganize the airlines and then transfer them to Aeroflot, bypassing Russian Technologies. Such a move would require making changes to several presidential and governmental decrees, the letter said.
Alternatively, the government could try to expedite the process of transferring the companies to Russian Technologies before giving them back to the state, a source in the government told Slon.ru. In any case, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will be the one to make a decision on how exactly the companies will be transferred to Aeroflot, the source said.
Aeroflot has also begun buying back its shares from Alexander Lebedev, who owns a 25.8 percent stake in the company through his National Reserve Bank. To finance the purchase, the airline has said it will issue 6 billion rubles ($204 million) in bonds on April 15.
National Reserve Corporation said Thursday, however, that it would not support the deal, because “the company’s financial situation has changed.”
The Aeroflot sale has already been approved on a very high level and has been partially completed, putting it off would not benefit anybody, aviation analyst Oleg Panteleyev said. “This announcement is very emotional. It almost looks like an April Fools’ joke,” he said.

TITLE: Deripaska Gets Norilsk Nomination
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Terentyeva and Dmitry Simakov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Company RusAl’s largest shareholder, Oleg Deripaska, could return to the board of Norilsk Nickel, perhaps to raise the question once again of a possible merger of the two Russian metals giants.
Wednesday was the final day to propose candidates for Norilsk’s board of directors, which will be determined at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting. The miner’s largest shareholders — Vladimir Potanin’s Interros holding and RusAl — proposed nine and 11 candidates, respectively, for the board’s 13 seats, two sources close to Norilsk told Vedomosti.
RusAl’s list was led by Deripaska, the aluminum producer’s largest shareholder and chief executive, the sources told Vedomosti. The list also includes Dmitry Razumov, president of Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group (a RusAl co-owner), and current Norilsk chairman Alexander Voloshin, they said.
Voloshin, a former chief of Yeltsin’s and Putin’s presidential administrations, was nominated under an agreement with Vneshekonombank, RusAl’s largest creditor.
Potanin was not in the list of Interros candidates, which was topped by the holding’s vice president, Andrei Klishas. Candidates from Interros also include current Norilsk board member Vasily Titov, a deputy chief at VTB, whose bank is a major Interros creditor, one of the sources told Vedomosti.

TITLE: Medvedev’s Fight Against Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: It was inevitable that a major terrorist attack would have a direct impact on Russia’s political landscape. Even before the victims have been laid to rest, politicians from every camp are using the tragedy to settle political scores and for PR stunts. This shows once again that Russia is more prone to discord and conflict than solidarity and social responsibility.
Several conservative United Russia members have made the absurd accusation that liberal, pro-modernization members of Medvedev’s inner circle have been “rocking the political boat.” Based on these statements, you would almost think that the liberals were the main inspiration for the female suicide bombers. Monday’s bombings have given United Russia a “perfect excuse” for lashing out at the liberal opposition.
In this adversarial political atmosphere, who would bother discussing whether it would be best to give the political parties that are not represented in the State Duma the opportunity to address the parliament once every quarter, or only once a year?
In addition, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov’s comment five days before the attacks — that the abolishment of the death penalty may be a bad idea — now has added relevance. Deputies are already preparing a bill that would allow the death sentence for convicted terrorists. Before, the moratorium on the death sentence was only discussed within the context of Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but now the people — and many deputies — want revenge.
Reforming law enforcement agencies might take a new direction. Before Monday’s bombings, the focus was on police abuse, such as the Moscow shooting spree by former Major Denis Yevsyukov. But now, strangely enough, there may be new calls to actually strengthen siloviki structures, not to bridle them. The proposal by Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin and others to fingerprint everyone from the Caucasus residing in Russia seemed so outrageous when it was first voiced, but it now appears rational and justified. Requiring that all Russians obtain a propiska —the internal registration document that was used during the Soviet era to track citizens’ movements within the country — will surely gain popularity.
After the horrors of the metro bombings, the authorities no longer need any false pretenses to disqualify dissenters’ marches. Now all they have to say is that mass gatherings could invite another terrorist attack. And the same argument can be used regarding rallies over utility rates. The authorities may very well sympathize with those who complain about the high cost of electricity, water and heat, but with the country under attack, they may say that now is not the time to increase the burden on the national budget by keeping rates below market cost.
Another issue is how the metro bombings will influence Moscow’s relationship with the North Caucasus in general. Many anticipated that the appointment of Alexander Khloponin as presidential envoy to the newly created North Caucasus Federal District would be met by military resistance from separatists in the region. But nobody imagined that this might take the form of a suicide bomber setting off a blast directly under Federal Security Service headquarters at Lubyanka in Moscow.
Terrorism might shape Medvedev’s presidency even more than the war with Georgia in August 2008. The main question is what extent these tragic events will influence Medvedev’s modernization proposals. Will he be forced to develop a completely different agenda?
Paradoxically, the success of Medvedev’s modernization program and the fight against terrorism both depend on whether the authorities are able to at least partially bridge the enormous gap between the government and the people. The country’s bureaucrats are most responsible for this abyss because of their corruption, arrogance, indifference to the hard realities of everyday life that most people endure and the large difference between their incomes and those of ordinary citizens. This gap engenders a deep distrust of the government that might even surpass the contempt that Soviets felt for their leaders and bureaucrats. This cynicism toward the government — and the security services in particular — has led to rumors that perhaps the FSB might have played a role in the recent bombings.
Without solidarity and a basic level of trust toward government institutions — above all, law enforcement agencies — it is impossible to win the fight against terrorism. For the authorities to gain that trust, they need to become closer to the people, learn to listen to them and answer to their concerns. And only then will the people stop thinking of the government as an adversary.

Georgy Bovt is a co-founder of the Right Cause party.

TITLE: A Vicious Circle of Black Widows
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: A suicide bombing is a special kind of evil. Its horror is intensified by the vision of a human being transformed into an explosive device, mingling in a crowd of strangers and tearing his or her own body with shrapnel while murdering and maiming as many chance bystanders as possible.
It reveals a sickening disdain for human life, both other people’s and one’s own. It goes against most religious beliefs because if a God or a Supreme Being has brought us into the world so that we could dismember ourselves and one another in this grotesque manner, then surely there can be no hope whatsoever for salvation or redemption.
Suicide bombings are now being used even when they aren’t, strictly speaking, necessary. A few conventional bombs planted in the Moscow metro would have done just as much damage. Yet, the terrorists — young women no less — opted for suicide to heighten the effect of the massacres.
Terrorism has always been repugnant, but old-style terrorism suddenly starts to look almost respectable compared with the Moscow metro bombings. In the 19th century, Russian political groups such as Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will) targeted individuals responsible for specific policies or those who personified the oppressive system. In the 1970s, Italy’s Red Brigades killed and kidnapped government officials and policemen to provoke harsh repressions by the authorities. They believed that the capitalist state would show its true face by establishing a fascist regime, after which the workers would stage a revolution.
IRA bombers targeted civilians in Britain to increase the cost of holding onto Northern Ireland, and early Palestinian factions blew up passenger airplanes to keep the world from sweeping their cause under the rug. The methods of traditional terrorists were ruthless and abhorrent, but at least there was some kind of logic behind their bloody actions, albeit a perverse one.
But the suicide bombings that hit Israel and Iraq have now come to Russia. Those who sent the two Chechen girls into the metro didn’t expect results. It was a simple act of vengeance that they knew would trigger reprisals by the Russian government. Thus the vicious circle: The harder Russia strikes back, the more widows there will be for future attacks.
Blaming Islam for encouraging such atrocities may be tempting, but it would be wrong. Until recently, suicide attacks were as rare in the Muslim world as anywhere else. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslims abhor suicide bombings no less than in other parts of the world, which is a normal human reaction.
Nor is it the work of a handful of deranged individuals. After suffering a series of astonishing suicide attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States declared a war on terrorism, promising to rid the world of this evil. But suicide bombings have since multiplied, and their geography has widened. There seems to be no shortage of volunteers to blow themselves up, suggesting that outside the confines of the rich, comfortable countries, and especially among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, hatred and despair have been steadily intensifying.
The start of the 20th century is often put at 1914. Inaugurated by a terrorist act, the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, it sparked World War I and paved the way for history’s bloodiest and repressive century. What can we expect of the new century, in which Sept. 11, Beslan, Dubrovka, Nevsky Express, Mumbai and last Monday’s metro bombings have become almost routine events?

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

TITLE: Dance Open 2010
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The gracious Lucia Lacarra of the Bavarian State Ballet has won the newly established Grand Prix of the Dance Open international ballet festival, which ended on Sunday with an international ballet gala concert.
The festival, which is in its 9th year, seeks to build bridges between contemporary ballet and the era of the Imperial Russian Ballet. The event featured four ballet evenings dedicated to the memories of four ballet legends of the 20th century: Galina Ulanova, Tatyana Vecheslova, Vakhtang Chabukiani and Konstantin Sergeyev. All of them would have turned 100 this year. 
The festival concluded with a gala tribute to the outstanding emigre ballerina Natalya Makarova, a living legend of ballet.
Makarova, whom the Russian-French choreographer and dancer Serge Lifar once presented with an abstract painting that he had signed, “To the Stradivarius of Dance,” was chosen as this festival’s icon. Some of the world’s finest young talents, including Marianella Nunez of London’s Royal Ballet, Natalya Osipova of the Bolshoi Ballet, Polina Semyonova of the Berlin Staatsoper and Daniil Simkin of the American Ballet Theater, took to the stage of the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall to honor the St. Petersburg-born ballerina.
Natalya Makarova was president of the festival’s jury, which, for the first time in the history of the festival, awarded a Grand Prix as well as prizes for virtuosity (won by Viktoria Tereshkina of the Mariinsky Theater, and Natalya Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev of the Bolshoi Theater), expressiveness (Herman Cornejo of the American Ballet Theater and Polina Semyonova of Berlin’s Staatsoper) and for the best duo (Jurgita Dronina and Luca Vetere of the Swedish Royal Ballet). The Viewers’ Choice Award went to Daniil Simkin of the American Ballet Theater.
Makarova also opened a photography exhibition at the city’s Russian Ethnography Museum. The exhibition contains images of the ballerina and other emigre stars with whom she danced, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev.
See photos at <a href="/index.php?action_id=147&i_number=1562" target="_blank">Photopage</a>.

TITLE: Mom: Son Helped Kill White Supremacist
AUTHOR: By Thomas Phakane and Michelle Faul
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VENTERSDORP, South Africa — The mother of a 15-year-old murder suspect said Monday that her son struck a notorious white supremacist leader with an iron rod after the farmer refused to pay him, a slaying that heightens racial tensions as South Africa prepares to host the World Cup.
“My son admitted that they did the killing,” the mother said in an exclusive interview with AP Television News conducted in the Tswana language from her two-room cement home in Tshing township on the outskirts of Ventersdorp town.
She said she spoke to the teenager at Ventersdorp police station on Saturday after he turned himself in along with his alleged accomplice, a 28-year-old farm worker, following the slaying of Eugene Terreblanche.
Police have refused to identify either of the suspects by name. Under South African law, a minor accused of any charge cannot be identified without permission from a judge.
Terreblanche, 69, was leader of the far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, which said it planned to march Monday on the police station to demand the police bring out the two suspects. Police say the two have been charged with murder and will appear in court Tuesday.
Officials appear anxious to show they are swiftly handling the crime, which comes just 10 weeks before South Africa becomes the first African nation to host the World Cup soccer tournament.
Terreblanche’s slaying also comes at a time of heightened racial tension in this country once ruled by a racist white regime that only gave way to democratic rule in 1994 after years of state-sponsored violence and urban guerrilla warfare waged by the now-governing African National Congress.
The mother said her 15-year-old son told her that when he and his co-worker asked Terreblanche for their money, he told them first to bring in the cows. After they had brought in the cows they again asked for their money, which he then refused to give them.
“He said that the (laborer) man told him to wait while he went to the storeroom. He came back with an iron rod. He started hitting Terreblanche, with four blows to the head. Then my son says he took the iron rod and hit him with three blows,” the mother said.
“My son was a person who doesn’t like to be in trouble,” she said softly, appearing a bit bewildered and scared.
At the farm Monday, a big grader was being used to dig a hole for Terreblanche in the family graveyard, where he is to be buried after a church service in Ventersdorp on Friday.
“This was such an unnecessary thing,” Terreblanche’s brother, Andries, told the AP, as he sat on a gray marble grave. “We are not racists, we just believe in purity of race.”
AWB’s members still seek to create an all-white republic within mostly black South Africa.
The group’s leaders have been using Terreblanche’s killing as a rallying point for their cause, with Secretary-General Andre Visagie claiming Sunday that Terreblanche’s brutal death was “a declaration of war” by blacks against whites.
He also warned countries against sending their soccer teams without protection to “a land of murder.”
Visagie and other members of the group have blamed African National Congress Youth Leader Julius Malema, saying he spread hate speech that led to Terreblanche’s killing.
Malema incited controversy last month when he led college students in a song that includes the lyrics “kill the Boer.” Boer means farmer in Afrikaans, the language of descendants of early Dutch settlers, but also is used as a derogatory term for whites.
The song sparked a legal battle in which the ruling ANC party challenged a high court that ruled the lyrics as unconstitutional. The ANC insists the song is a valuable part of its cultural heritage and that the lyrics — which also refer to the farmers as thieves and rapists — are not intended literally and are therefore not hate speech.
Visagie said the 15-year-old suspect was a casual worker and that the 28-year-old man was a full-time employee who had been taking care of the garden of the family home in Ventersdorp. Terreblanche had been spending most of his time there since he had heart surgery a few weeks ago.
Terreblanche had previously been convicted for a brutal attack on two black farm workers and was sentenced to six years in prison. He re-emerged in 2004 as a born-again Christian with renewed vigor for his cause.

TITLE: Over 100 Rescued From Mine
AUTHOR: By Gillian Wong
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: XIANGNING, China — More than 100 Chinese miners were pulled out alive Monday after being trapped for over a week in a flooded coal mine, where some ate sawdust and strapped themselves to the shafts’ walls with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept.
Rescued miners wrapped in blankets, some with their light-sensitive eyes covered but their feet bare, were hurried to waiting ambulances that sped wailing to nearby hospitals. One clapped on his stretcher and reached out his blackened hands to grasp those of rescuers on either side.
Rescuers in tears hugged each other at the scene, which was broadcast live on national television. The sudden surge in rescues was a rare piece of good news for China’s mining industry, the deadliest in the world. A rescue spokesman said 115 survivors had been pulled out as of 4:30 p.m. local time (0830 GMT; 4:30 a.m. EDT).
“A miracle has finally happened,” Liu Dezheng told reporters Monday morning, after the first nine miners were taken out shortly after midnight. “We believe that more miracles will happen.”
Of the 153 initially trapped, there are still 38 miners in the shaft. Rescuers expressed confidence Monday they could be saved but did not say whether there had been any contact with them.
Rescuers have been pumping water out of the flooded mine since last Sunday, when workers digging a tunnel broke into an old shaft filled with water. The first signs of life from underground came Friday, when tapping could be heard coming up the pipes. Divers first headed into the tunnels over the weekend but found high, murky water and emerged empty-handed.
As the water level continued to drop, rescuers with rubber rafts squeezed through the narrow, low-ceilinged passages late Sunday and pulled out the first nine survivors just after midnight. Eleven hours later, the large wave of rescues began.
The miners spent eight days underground and some were soaked through. Some had hung from shaft walls by their belts for days to avoid falling into the water when asleep. Later, they climbed into a mining cart that floated by.
One miner described eating sawdust and tree bark and drinking the murky water, the leader of one of the rescue teams, Chen Yongsheng, told a news conference Monday afternoon.
As the rafts approached the first trapped miners, one of them asked, “Can you get me out of here?”
Liu Qiang, a medical officer involved in the rescue, said the survivors had hypothermia, severe dehydration and skin infections from being in the water so long. Some also were in shock and had low blood pressure.
“This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere,” said David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government.
Chen said two or three of the underground mine platforms had not yet been checked for survivors. Conditions remained complicated by high murky water.

TITLE: Can a Swedish Woman Forgive? Ask Elin
AUTHOR: By Malin Rising
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — When Tiger Woods returns to golf at the Masters this week, the world will be watching to see if his wife Elin is at his side.
It may seem puzzling to many women that the 30-year-old former model hasn’t already left her cheating husband. She is, after all, from Sweden — a nation famous for its strong-willed and independent women.
In her homeland, too, there has been some bewilderment that Elin Nordegren hasn’t split considering the scope of her husband’s infidelity.
But relationship counselors in the Scandinavian nation aren’t that surprised. Sweden is still a champion of women’s rights, but in recent years a more conservative view highlighting the merits of an intact family has been making a comeback.
Like Nordegren, many Swedes have grown up with divorced parents, and are increasingly focused on building homes and keeping their families together, said Lena Gustafsson, a psychotherapist who works in relationship counseling.
Woods and Nordegren have two children, a daughter Sam Alexis, 2, and a 1-year-old son, Charlie Axel.
“Many of the couples I see continue to live together, they solve their problems,” Gustafsson said.
That was not the case for Nordegren’s parents, who divorced before she started school and separately developed their careers — her father, Thomas Nordegren, as a correspondent for Swedish Radio and her mother, Barbro Holmberg, as a politician.
In Sweden, divorces peaked at around 27,000 annually in the mid-1970s, at the height of the women’s liberation movement. Since then divorces have slowly declined to about 20,000 a year. Sweden’s population is about 9 million.
Gustafsson said a gradual return toward the family as a cornerstone in Swedish society has come as a reaction to a culture that many people viewed as too obsessed with individual self-fulfillment.
However, repeated infidelity is not something that is taken lightly, even in Sweden. 
When Woods crashed his car into a fire hydrant in November and the extent of his extramarital affairs was revealed, the message in Swedish media and blogs was close to unanimous: Dump him.
Many Swedish commentators praised how Nordegren handled the situation, and more than one reference was made to how she smashed the back window of the car with a golf club.
The couple told investigators she did so to unlock a door and pull her husband out of the car, and Woods has strenuously denied his wife abused him. Still, the incident was seen here as a strong-willed Swedish woman standing up for herself.
“Our Swedish hearts are brimming with pride,” Britta Svensson, a columnist for Swedish tabloid Expressen, wrote in December. “Our own Elin ... didn’t take any (expletive). Just like a tough Swedish girl shouldn’t. Elin is our heroine.”
Elin met Woods when she was working as a nanny for Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik in 2001. Before that she worked briefly as a model, but reportedly was never very interested in making that her career. Instead, she was interested in psychology, and according to her father’s web page, she studied the subject as recently as last year.

TITLE: South Korean Navy Pursuing Hijacked Tanker
AUTHOR: By Sangwon Yoon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean navy destroyer rushed toward a U.S.-bound supertanker believed to have been hijacked by Somali pirates with up to $160 million of crude oil on board, officials said Monday, the latest bold seizure in the Indian Ocean.
The tanker’s highly volatile cargo prevents crews from carrying guns on board or even lighting cigarettes while on deck. It was unclear what the warship would do once it reached the tanker since firing on the vessel would risk igniting the oil or leaking it into the sea.
The warship had been in the Gulf of Aden — one of the world’s busiest and most dangerous shipping lanes — on anti-piracy operations. The 300,000-ton-class tanker was about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) southeast of the gulf at the time of the apparent hijacking Sunday, according to the Foreign Ministry. It has 24 crew — five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos.