SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1606 (67), Friday, September 3, 2010
**************************************************************************


TITLE: LG In Pirated Software Probe
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police have opened a software piracy investigation into the Russian branch of LG Electronics, in the first anti-piracy case against a major foreign company.
Pirated software is widely used in companies and homes across the country, and the LG investigation, triggered by an anonymous tip, could carry serious implications if expanded beyond the South Korean firm.
“For the first time in Russian legal practice, a criminal case over counterfeit software has been opened against a big foreign company,” the Interior Ministry’s economic crimes department said Wednesday in a statement.
The statement did not identify the company. But the Business Software Alliance, a global intellectual property rights watchdog, confirmed that it was LG.
The Russian branch of the Business Software Alliance asked police to check LG’s computers after receiving an anonymous letter last year that the company was using pirated software, said Anna Petrova, a legal expert with the alliance.
“We sent a warning to the company, asking it to provide us with the licenses for the programs, but didn’t hear back,” Petrova said in a telephone interview.
She said pirated software included Adobe and Corel, graphic design programs whose makers are part of the alliance.
Police raided LG’s Moscow office on Nov. 30 but only announced that they had opened an investigation Wednesday.
LG, a leading global producer of consumer electronics like televisions, cell phones and vacuum cleaners, confirmed that police investigators had searched its office on Nov. 30, but denied that any software was pirated.
“All the software used by the company is licensed,” company spokeswoman Anna Fedotovskikh told The St. Petersburg Times, adding that it was corporate policy to only use licensed software.
Petrova stressed that the investigation involved the software that LG used at the time of the raid, not today.
Police posted footage on YouTube of officers with blurred-out faces checking computers in LG’s offices and two dozen hard drives stacked in a hallway.
Police said they seized 44 hard drives and 17 laptops with allegedly pirated software used by the company’s 60 employees in the raid. The software was worth more than 2 million rubles ($65,000), they said.
No one has been charged with wrongdoing. Charges for using pirated software in a company carry a punishment of up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 500,000 rubles ($16,250). 
The police regularly report cracking down on pirates distributing disks with counterfeit software, films and music, but this week’s raid marks the first time that a big company has been checked.
“I can’t recall any similar criminal cases against an international company in Russia or similar police searches,” said Petrova of the Business Software Alliance.
She said big international companies usually install licensed products.
Sixty-seven percent of the country’s software was unlicensed in 2009, down from 68 percent the previous year, according to a report by International Data Corp. and Business Software Alliance released in May.
Police have regularly raided small and medium-sized Russian business in a hunt for pirated software, and the LG case could lead to bigger companies being targeted, said Yana Yakovleva, head of Business Solidarity, a group that defends the rights of entrepreneurs.
“Now that they have targeted a big international company, that will give them the opportunity to create a legal precedent for further actions,” Yakovleva said.
She said the raids paralyze a business, and police are indiscriminate in seizing computers. She said several business owners had told her that police confiscate computers regardless of whether they hold licenses for the software, paralyzing work for a week or even longer. She said business owners sometimes have to pay bribes to reach settlements with the police.
Despite the Kremlin’s promises to protect intellectual property rights, President Dmitry Medvedev himself set a dubious example by owning an iPhone long before the cell phone could legally be used on local networks.
Poor enforcement of anti-piracy laws is a key hurdle blocking Russia from gaining membership in the World Trade Organization, and efforts to clamp down on pirated software have been halfhearted at best. In addition to the occasional raids on shops selling pirated discs, law enforcement officials have used allegations of pirated software as a pretext to crack down on opposition-minded media outlets like Novaya Gazeta and nongovernmental groups like the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.
In January, police confiscated several computers in a search for unlicensed software at the office of Baikal Wave, a Siberian environmental organization that criticized a government plan to reopen a pulp plant on Lake Baikal.
A Perm court last fall ordered the government to pay 250,000 rubles ($8,000) in damages to a village schoolteacher for falsely accusing him of using pirated Windows software. The teacher maintained his innocence, saying the software had been installed on computers when they were delivered by a subcontractor and that he had not known it was pirated.

TITLE: Dozens Arrested at Latest Strategy 31 Demos
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Despite Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s warning, hundreds more people than ever before took part in the banned pro-constitution demos in Moscow and St. Petersburg that are part of the Strategy 31 campaign started on July 31, 2009. Attempting to disperse the meetings, the police arrested scores of people in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but there was no repeat of the beatings that marred the July 31 demo in St. Petersburg. 
Despite the police’s efforts, the protests in Russia’s two main cities lasted longer than before. In St. Petersburg, where last month’s rally was dispersed within 40 minutes, the Tuesday event lasted over two hours. Many ordinary people joined the activists this time, Strategy 31 leaders said.
In St. Petersburg, the OMON riot police in bulletproof vests and black helmets charged into the crowd pushing and detaining people, but another group of protesters quickly formed up on the site near Gostiny Dvor metro to carry on shouting slogans such “Russia Will Be Free,” “Constitution”  and “You Won’t Intimidate Us.”
The police officers shouted into megaphones declaring the rally “illegal” and ordering people to disperse, but at one point a protester with a megaphone retorted that it was the police’s actions that were illegal, as they were violating Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to assembly, and the law on the police.
One protester climbed on a kiosk and addressed the public using a megaphone, citing Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees “citizens the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons,” and shouting slogans such as “We Want a Russia Without Putin” and inviting the police to join the demonstrators. It took some time and effort for the police to drag him down from the kiosk and carry him to a police bus. 
In a bizarre twist, a firefighter truck, an OMON anti-bomb unit and an ambulance arrived at the scene some 80 minutes into the event, while the police blocked a large part of the site on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, announcing that the metro was closed “on technical grounds.” Later, it was announced that the metro had been closed because of a terrorist threat.
Activists estimate the number of participants of the Gostiny Dvor demo at around 1,000, 72 of whom were detained at various points during the event and taken in six buses to six different police precincts in the city’s outskirts. Most of them were charged with violation of the law on public events and failing to obey police orders, although they were released several hours later, some after midnight.
Two to three hundred took part in a separate pro-constitution event held by Solidarity, the United Civil Front and the St. Petersburg Civil Rights Council on the Palace Square, just over a kilometer from the Gostiny Dvor site. 
Local Solidarity leader Olga Kurnosova, who was detained on Palace Square, said 300 to 400 people took part, bearing posters and shouting slogans.  Twelve were detained there. They face the same charges as the demonstrators detained near Gostiny Dvor.
The St. Petersburg police’s spokesman said he was “not ready” to comment on Tuesday’s demos when called Thursday.
Matvei Krylov, an activist with Strategy 31 in Moscow who was on the movement’s hotline Thursday, said 2,000 to 3,000 took part in the Moscow rally, 103 were detained, including author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov and Solidarity leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov.
The Moscow police said that there were only 400 people at the demo, most of them journalists. The Russian police are known for routinely underestimating the number of participants in protest rallies. 
Smaller rallies were held in 50 Russian cities. Events demonstrating solidarity with Strategy 31 were held in New York, London, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Helsinki and Kiev. For related article, see page 2. 
Police in Moscow were instructed to take Putin’s words in a Kommersant interview on Monday that the demonstrators should be beaten on their heads with truncheons if they dare to rally without a permit as a “figure of speech,” Ekho Moskvy editor Alexei Venediktov told Kommersant Thursday. Venediktov is a member of Moscow City Police Public Council.
Nevertheless, four members of the European Parliament who were present at the rally in Moscow were shocked by the spectacle of how the Russian authorities treated the demonstrators.
“This is an amazing way of dealing with democracy, shocking,” Thijs Berman, a Dutch member of the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, a previously unidentified police officer on video hitting a young man across his face with a truncheon for no apparent reason during last month’s demo has been identified by the victim, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement Wednesday. A criminal case has been opened against the officer.
The officer was identified as Vadim Boiko, 35, a patrol officer. The statement said Boiko had no sufficient grounds to beat Dmitry Semyonov with a truncheon and was declared a suspect officially. Boiko was asked to give a written promise not to leave the city and behave properly.
However, an internal investigation launched by the St. Petersburg Department for Internal Affairs (GUVD) early last month yielded no results when completed on Thursday. 
Disciplinary violations on the part of the police officers employed for the protection of public order near Gostiny Dvor on July 31 were not found, the GUVD said in a statement.

TITLE: Prime Minister Opposes Deripaska’s Dividend
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dipped a careful toe into the heated and high-stakes battle for control of Russia’s largest miner on Tuesday, telling Norilsk Nickel’s warring shareholders during a visit to the plant that it paid unusually high dividends last year.
The comments supported the position of billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s Interros, which fought off a proposal by rival owner United Company RusAl to pay 115 percent of last year’s profit in dividends.
“Following the year’s results, a decision was made to pay a dividend: It represented — attention — 50 percent of income,” Putin told management at a meeting in Norilsk, according to the government’s web site.
To drive home the point, Putin rattled off a list of other global miners’ dividends. Swiss-based Xstrata paid 7.6 percent of its net income, Britain and Australia’s Rio Tinto offered shareholders 18 percent. Australia’s BHP Billiton paid out 38.2 percent of profit, and Kazakhmys paid 6.6 percent, he said.
Putin reiterated that he was reluctant to get involved in the owners’ dispute, which has been simmering since RusAl became a Norilsk shareholder in 2008. But the prime minister has repeatedly said Potanin and RusAl CEO Oleg Deripaska must settle their spat amicably to prevent harming the strategic company.
He also ordered the mining company to do more for the heavily polluted city of Norilsk and asked it to submit ideas for taxes on nickel and copper exports, which were eliminated in 2008.  
The company’s shares closed down 1.7 percent in Moscow, worse than the MICEX Index’s loss of 0.1 percent on the day.
RusAl and Interros, which both own stakes of at least 25 percent in Norilsk, have made progress in resolving their dispute over the past week, Putin said.
The prime minister had planned to visit the company last week but was forced to postpone the trip because heavy fog prevented his plane from landing.
“At my request, the company’s shareholders, management and the government have worked together on the company’s complicated problems over this week, and it seems to me that there’s a certain movement forward,” Putin said without elaborating.
Both RusAl and Interros declined to comment on the issue.
But in a sign that tensions remain, Deripaska’s plane was initially denied permission to land in Norilsk late Monday. The local airport is owned by Norilsk Nickel.
Just an hour before his flight, Deripaska received a telegram from the airport’s director saying the airport had not cleared the landing, offering no explanation, RusAl said late Monday.
“Deripaska’s jet was cleared to land in Norilsk due to the public attention and intervention of the governmental bodies,” RusAl said in a statement.
Airport officials denied the accusations.
Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who oversees industry in the government, reiterated on Tuesday that the state does not plan to buy Interros or RusAl out of Norilsk. The government will not intervene in the dispute, he said, unless it begins to hurt the city of Norilsk, which depends almost exclusively on the nickel mine.
“The main shareholders will reconcile their positions. We don’t interfere in corporate processes. That’s the shareholders’ business,” Sechin said, Interfax reported.
He also said he “hadn’t thought” about having a third major shareholder enter Norilsk.
Alisher Usmanov’s Metalloinvest bought up close to 5 percent of the company in 2008 ahead of a possible merger, but it has since said it does not plan to boost its stake further.
Meanwhile, both Deripaska and Potanin said Tuesday that they saw no need for a third big owner at Norilsk, the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium.
“To make it even more fun?” Potanin asked reporters, following a question about the possibility of a third big shareholder.
Potanin also reiterated his readiness to buy out RusAl’s stake in Norilsk.

TITLE: City to Launch Own TV Channel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new TV channel, 100-percent owned by the City Administration and titled “St. Petersburg” will begin its broadcasting on Oct. 10.
Yuri Zinchuk, the channel’s general director said that the channel will focus on the city’s social issues with an emphasis being placed on informative programming. Zinchuk said the channel “won’t have Smolny’s [the City Administration’s] glamor”, the Vedomosti daily newspaper reported.
The channel is being operated by TKT, which will broadcast St. Petersburg on its cable network.  The network links up 1.3 to 1.4 million households in the city.
In its preliminary phase the broadcasting will not be large, but there are plans for programming to develop to 24-hour coverage in the future, Zinchuk said.
Financing of the new channel from the city budget from September through December will amount to 60 million rubles ($1.95 million), he said.

TITLE: Well-Known Emigres Rally At Foreign Demonstrations
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The opposition’s attempts to stage rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg got an unexpected boost this week when Russian emigrants took to the streets in several world capitals to express their solidarity.
The 31st rallies, which took place in London, Berlin, New York and Tel Aviv, attracted only a handful of people, but some well-known emigres were spotted among the protesters.
The London rally outside the Russian Embassy was the biggest of the four, attracting 10 participants, including Boris Berezovsky, the self-exiled tycoon once considered the Kremlin’s “gray cardinal” and instrumental in bringing Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2000.
Berezovsky carried a handmade poster reading, “I gave you life, I will also cut you short,” an apparently deliberate misquote of the famous line from Nikolai Gogol’s 19th-century masterpiece “Taras Bulba,” where Gogol wrote, “I gave you life, I will also kill you.”
Berezovsky was joined by Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and Yevgeny Chichvarkin, former owner of the Yevroset mobile phone retailer who is wanted in Russia on extortion charges but says he is the victim of corrupt police trying to seize his business.
Also attending was Marina Litvinenko, widow of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko who sided with Berezovsky against Putin in the early 2000s and died of radiation poisoning in London in 2006. Britain has unsuccessfully attempted to arrest a Russian businessman turned State Duma deputy on murder charges in the case.
Pavel Khodorkovsky, son of jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, took part in the New York rally, the opposition site Kasparov.ru reported.

TITLE: Heat, Hurricane Push Up Prices
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A number of regions in the European section of Russia are now facing shortages in eggs that will in turn lead to significant price increases. The shortages are largely the result of the exceptionally high temperatures experienced over the summer and the hurricane that hit the Leningrad Oblast in August, Interfax reported.
According to St. Petersburg’s Economic Development, Industry and Trade Committee, the price of eggs in St. Petersburg rose by 9.4 percent over the last week, giving a total price rise of 10.2 percent between July 26 and Aug. 30.
The press service of the northwestern branch of X5 Retail Group, which runs the Pyatyorochka and Perekryostok chains of stores, said the wholesale price of the eggs that it buys in rose by 5-10 percent over the last week, though retail prices for eggs at it stores have remained almost unchanged.  The chains have not yet observed any shortages in egg supplies, Interfax reported.
Meanwhile, the Lenta chain of supermarkets has not observed any rise in either the wholesale or retail prices for eggs in its chain.  Lenta has also not observed any shortages in supply, Lenta’s press service told the St. Petersburg Times on Thursday.
In the Northwest region, the consequences of the hurricane in mid-August have also been partially to blame, experts say.
The hurricane caused electric power to be lost in a number of districts of the Leningrad Oblast, with thousands of birds dying from suffocation as a result.  Thus, the Sinyavinskaya poultry factory lost 300,000 birds, amounting to 8.5 percent of its entire livestock. The Roskar poultry factory lost 200,000 birds (4.7 percent of its total livestock), and the Primorskaya factory lost 5,500 birds, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Building Collapse Causes Traffic Mayhem
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An eight-story building that until recently housed the city’s main police investigation department partially collapsed on Wednesday. 
The building, located in the city center at 145 Ligovsky Prospekt was under repair and there were no people inside apart from four employees of a store located on the ground floor.  One of the employees, a 23-year-old manager, received a light injury, Fontanka.ru reported.
As the city’s emergency service feared that people could be under the debris, 12 emergency rescue teams were sent to search for them, the press service of the St. Petersburg Emergency Service said.  
As a result of the collapse, a large section of Ligovsky Prospekt was closed to give emergency and other services free access, causing substantial traffic jams.  The residents of the neighboring building were evacuated, the press service said.
According to preliminary investigations, the collapse was caused by the dismantling of safes that previously belonged to the investigation department, Fontanka.ru reported.
On Monday the safes were dismantled, and on Tuesday cracks appeared in the building, with the ceilings collapsing on Wednesday, the Russian State Construction Watchdog said, Fontanka reported.
The investigative department of the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal investigation into the collapse of the building under Article 216 of the Russian Criminal Code, concerning infringements of safety regulations during construction works, the organization’s website said.

TITLE: Natural Monopolies Off Sale List for 2011
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The state will not privatize stakes in its natural monopolies or defense firms next year, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters Tuesday in the latest sign of skittishness in the government to part with key assets.
In late July, Nabiullina and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin put together a list of 11 state-run companies in which stakes should be privatized through 2013. Several companies, notably state rail monopoly Russian Railways, were dropped from the initial list.
The Finance Ministry has called the sell-offs — which could raise at least $29 billion — a way to patch budget deficits in the coming years, while Nabiullina has said it will reduce the state’s “excessive” role in the Russian economy.
“I won’t say what exactly will be privatized in 2011. We intend to offer fairly major stakes and stakes in major companies,” she said, adding that natural monopolies and defense firms would not be offered next year.
Selling more shares in oil giant Rosneft may also be discussed, Nabiullina said.
The privatization targets currently include at least two natural monopolies: oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, in which the state owns 78.1 percent, and the Federal Grid Company, or FSK, where the government controls 79.11 percent.

TITLE: Robbers Break Into Investigators’ Office
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Masked intruders broke into the Moscow region branch of the Investigative Committee early Tuesday, rifling through 18 offices and cracking open 25 safes after tying up the sole security guard, investigators said.
But the Investigative Committee’s main office insisted that the mysterious break-in was a run-of-the-mill robbery, fueling speculation that the incident was an attempt to undermine a high-profile criminal investigation.
Three masked intruders broke into a building belonging to the committee’s Moscow region branch on Rusakovskaya Ulitsa in northeast Moscow at about 4 a.m. Tuesday, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
It said the assailants only took a television set and a video camera.
“No criminal files and no evidence were taken,” the statement said.
It said the intruders were probably looking for valuables and linked the incident to a similar break-in at a neighboring pharmaceuticals company the same night.
National media were rife with speculation that the intruders had other motives.  
The contents from all 25 safes were strewn over the floor except for one safe, whose documents were missing, Lifenews.ru reported, quoting a source in the committee’s Moscow region branch.
The same news site reported later that an unspecified amount of jewelry and stacks of stationery with official letterhead were missing. The jewelry had been kept in an envelope belonging to an ongoing criminal investigation, it said.
The blank letterheads were used for official communication with police, the report said, quoting an unidentified local Investigative Committee official.
The office’s sole guard was unarmed, national media reported.
A branch spokeswoman denied reports that the robbers might have made off with documents about a corruption case against Yury Sleptsov, mayor of Voskresensk, a town southeast of the capital.  
Interfax quoted an investigator working at the scene as saying material from “one high-profile case” was missing.
“I do not exclude that the culprits were looking for a certain criminal case,” the investigator said, adding that it might be a case against Sleptsov.
The mayor was detained in July on accusations of extorting a bribe of more than $17,700 for a permit. On Monday, the Moscow regional branch of the Investigative Committee said it had opened another investigation into Sleptsov, for possible abuse of office.
Sleptsov faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted on the graft charges.
Branch spokeswoman Yulia Zhukova said no files on the case were held in the burgled office. Rather, Sleptsov’s files are stored in the branch’s headquarters on Maly Kiselny Pereulok, she said by telephone.
The burgled office houses the committee’s “important cases” department, which deals with serious crimes like murder, rape and organized crime, Zhukova said.
The Moscow region has seen a string of unsolved attacks on journalists, including Mikhail Beketov, editor of Khimkinskaya Pravda, who regularly wrote about corruption among local officials. Beketov was left brain-damaged after being severely beaten outside his home in 2008.
National media reported Tuesday that the robbed office had dealt with Beketov’s case. It also worked on the case against Lieutenant-General Vladimir Shamanov, who has been accused of dispatching his commandos to block a criminal investigation into his son-in-law, the reports said.
 Moscow region Governor Boris Gromov, who commanded the 40th Army during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, has helped many fellow Afghan war veterans obtain posts in the local government, including Sleptsov and Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko.

TITLE: Jailing of Pregnant Mother of 4 Sparks Protest
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A mother of four who is pregnant with a fifth child has become a cause celebre after a court jailed her for three years even though it could have waived the sentence under a legal provision allowing leniency for mothers with young children.
Former Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, a mother of three who failed to receive leniency when jailed on politically tinged charges in 2006, is spearheading a campaign to secure the release of the mother, Yulia Kruglova, a regional director for a Dutch-owned insurance company who was jailed in July on embezzlement charges.
The campaign has won the support of children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov and the Public Chamber. Even prosecutors have filed an appeal.
“I was so amazed by the story that I decided to help,” Bakhmina said in a telephone interview.
It is not unusual for a mother to be sent to prison in Russia, but Kruglova, a mother of four little children, was ordered by a judge to immediately start serving three years in prison just two months before her fifth child was supposed to be born by Caesarean section.
Kruglova, 36, who ran the Oranta insurance company’s Tolyatti branch, was found guilty of embezzling 16 million rubles ($520,000) from the company and ordered jailed by Tolyatti’s Central District Court on July 19.
The mother, who is now hospitalized in a prison clinic, is scheduled to undergo a Caesarean section on Sept. 20.
Three days before that, on Sept. 17, the Samara Regional Court is scheduled to consider separate appeals from prosecutors, who want the prison sentence lifted, and Kruglova’s lawyers, who want the mother moved to a better-equipped hospital outside the prison.
Astakhov, who in addition to serving as children’s ombudsman is a prominent lawyer, said he would travel to the Samara region next week to try to intervene in the case.
“I think that even if a crime is proven, the children’s fate can’t be put on the same level as the money, even all the money in the whole country,” Astakhov said by telephone Wednesday.
He noted that Kruglova was charged with an economic crime — an area where President Dmitry Medvedev has softened penalties this year.
The case against Kruglova was filed by Oranta, which was founded in 1995 and acquired by the Netherlands-based Eureko Insurance Group after Kruglova’s arrest. Oranta declined to comment on the case Wednesday. “We rely on the court to rule a just decision, and we can’t comment on the pending case because we don’t want to put pressure on the court through public opinion and mass media,” it said in an e-mailed statement.
Oranta filed the case in 2008, accusing Kruglova of falsifying expenses the previous year and pocketing 16 million rubles in company funds. It asked the court to sentence Kruglova to seven years in prison, Bakhmina said.
In her closing speech to the court, Kruglova maintained that she had never stolen anything from the company and that the case against her was falsified.
The judge, Irina Kharkhan, ruled that her children could be cared for by their father and grandmother.
Kharkhan could not be reached for comment on her ruling Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Criminal Code allows judges at their discretion to delay the sentences of pregnant women or mothers with small children until the child reaches 14. Moreover, a court can revoke the sentence altogether if the convict does not commit any crimes in the interim.
Bakhmina, who herself was paroled last year after spending more than four years in prison and giving birth to a third child in a prison hospital, initiated the campaign for Kruglova after hearing about it from a LiveJournal friend.
Bakhmina said she sent written appeals and made phone calls to Oranta’s office in Russia but to no avail.
“The only message I got was from their parent company in the Netherlands, Eureko, saying that the case is not relevant to them because it dates back to 2007, before Oranta was purchased,” Bakhmina said.
She conducted her own investigation — including interviews with former Oranta employees — which she said found that Kruglova might be a scapegoat.
Bakhmina highlighted the case on her LiveJournal blog and called for other people to come forward to support the mother’s release.
Shortly afterward, in early August, a Tolyatti prosecutor, Dmitry Golenkov, appealed to the court to replace the prison sentence with a penalty that did not involve incarceration.
After his intervention, state-run media joined the loud public outcry, incidentally putting Bakhmina’s name in a positive light for the first time since the beginning of the state’s legal assault against Yukos and its former owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003.
The Public Chamber this week pressed local prison officials to transfer Kruglova from the prison hospital to a regular one by early September.
Public Chamber members are planning to appeal to the Samara regional court’s top judge, Lyubov Drozdova, asking that she postpone Kruglova’s sentence until her soon-to-be-born child turns 14, as prescribed by the Criminal Code, said Maria Kannabikh, a senior member of the Federal Prison Service’s public council.
“We are not saying that she is innocent. We just see that the rights of her children are being strongly violated,” Kannabikh said by telephone.
She said the prison warden has given her a personal promise to transfer Kruglova to a regular hospital before the scheduled birth.
Doctors have advised that the child be born by Caesarean section, just like Kruglova’s previous four children, and advised against performing the operation in the prison hospital because of possible complications.
A weeping Kruglova said in televised comments from the prison hospital that she was so depressed that she could not even talk to her unborn baby.
“I don’t think that the state gains any benefit in isolating me from my children,” Kruglova said in a recent interview with Channel One state television.
Highlighting the arbitrariness of the law, just a month after Kruglova’s conviction, an Irkutsk court sentenced the daughter of a local official to three years in prison for killing a pedestrian and injuring another in a traffic accident — but ruled that she would not begin serving the sentence until 2024 when her infant son turns 14.
The accident, in which the daughter of the chairwoman of the Irkutsk regional election committee said she lost control of her car after mixing up the gas and brake pedals, sparked considerable anger after surveillance camera footage emerged that showed the woman examining her car and then making a phone call rather than showing concern for the pedestrians.

TITLE: Coca-Cola Acquires Juice Maker Nidan
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft-drink maker, said Wednesday that it had acquired one of Russia’s biggest juice producers, Nidan Soki, as part of its plans to expand in the fast-growing market.
The company bought a 75 percent stake in Nidan from London-based investment firm Lion Capital, as well as the remaining 25 percent held by Nidan’s founders. The juice maker has facilities in Novosibirsk and the Moscow region town of Kotelniki.
Analysts said the deal was aimed at strengthening Coca-Cola’s position after its biggest rival, PepsiCo, acquired more than 75 percent of juice maker Lebedyansky in 2008 — giving it an upper hand on the local market.
“Coca-Cola’s leadership became less clear after PepsiCo’s acquisition of Lebedyansky. Acquiring Russian brands is a way to compete,” said Ilya Plakhinas, head of the marketing division at Soldis Communications.
The deal shows Coca-Cola’s confidence in Russia’s big potential and its commitment to invest more in the future, Ahmet Bozer, president of The Coca-Cola Company’s Eurasia and Africa Group, said in an e-mailed statement.
“This acquisition represents our continued belief in Russia and commitment to provide a wide array of beverage choices to Russian consumers,” Bozer said. “We will grow as Russia grows through ongoing investments and building a sustainable business model.”
Coca-Cola, which has invested $2 billion in Russia over the past two decades, plans to invest another $1 billion in its facilities in the coming three to five years, the company said in a statement.
The sides declined to disclose the value of the deal, but analysts said it was probably no more than $450 million, including Nidan’s debt.
“The value of the deal could be eight to 10 times Nidan’s 2010 expected earnings before interest, taxation and depreciation and amortization, which we estimate at $45 million,” said Natalya Zagvozdina, an analyst at Renaissance Capital.
“Coca-Cola is unlikely to have paid more than $450 million, including $220 million for the equity and $230 million of Nidan’s debt,” she told The St. Petersburg Times.
The U.S. beverage giant may have paid up to $300 million excluding debt, Kommersant reported Wednesday, citing sources close to the deal.

TITLE: Knauf Wins Piracy Lawsuit
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Moscow court awarded 5 million rubles, or $160,000, in damages to Knauf in a case against a counterfeiter, the German building materials manufacturer said Wednesday.
For nearly a year, Vladimir Potekhin ran two pirate factories that made and packaged plaster, cement and other products of market leaders, including Knauf, Unis and Vetonit, the statement said.
Potekhin bought special equipment for manufacturing, used packaging with fake trademarks, and distributed the goods to retailers and wholesalers in Moscow and the Moscow region, the court found, according to the Knauf statement.
This is the largest amount Knauf CIS said it has won in court against a counterfeiter, though it has been working on the problem for many years.
“Knauf has been battling with counterfeit products for nearly 10 years on our own,” said Gerd Lenga, general manager of Knauf CIS. “We spend millions of euros every year on this effort in Russia.”
Potekhin was also sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison on charges of trying to bribe a representative of a private security firm, which was involved in uncovering his operation, and illegal possession of firearms, Knauf said.

TITLE: Aeroflot Sues Moscow for Traffic Jam
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Aeroflot has filed a lawsuit against the Moscow city government, seeking compensation for losses caused by a days-long traffic logjam on a highway leading to Sheremetyevo Airport, court documents showed Wednesday.
City Hall denied any wrongdoing.
Traffic on the busy Leningradskoye Shosse all but came to a standstill at the end of June after city authorities closed off four of its six lanes, citing the need for urgent repairs. They reopened two more lanes after five days of gridlock, following a reprimand from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Aeroflot is suing for 113 million rubles ($3.67 million) in damages, according to the lawsuit. The airline has said it lost 700,000 euros ($893,000) on the first day of the congestion and 400,000 euros per day during the next four days.
The first day of the traffic collapse was “disastrous” for the company, as it had to refund 75 percent of the ticket cost to 1,300 passengers who were late for their flights, Aeroflot deputy chief Andrei Kalmykov has said, Interfax reported. The Moscow city government rejected responsibility for the gridlock.
“We haven’t seen this lawsuit so far, but if it really exists, it is the work of a truly sick mind,” said Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s spokesman, Sergei Tsoi. “The authors of the lawsuit must give better scrutiny to what actually caused the situation.”
He did not elaborate, but the General Prosecutor’s Office blamed City Hall and the Federal Road Agency after an investigation into the matter.

TITLE: State May Cut Stake in VTB Bank to 50%
AUTHOR: By Peter France and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government may sell more than 35 percent of VTB to bring its stake in the bank to just over 50 percent, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in comments released Monday, a move that may force the lender toward greater transparency.
“I think it makes sense to privatize a stake of any size, in this case, up to a controlling stake,” Kudrin told reporters over the weekend. “The bigger the stake, the more liquid it will become.”
A source close to VTB said earlier this year that the bank wanted the government to sell a stake that would be more than 10 percent, Interfax reported.
The state now owns 85.5 percent of VTB, the country’s second-largest bank. As the financial system struggled last year, the government injected 180 billion rubles ($5.84 billion) into the company by buying up an additional share issue and increasing its stake from 77.5 percent.
But now, the government is looking to unwind the bailout and more.
Western or Middle Eastern investment funds may snap up a stake in VTB, said Ruslan Yunusov, an analyst at Rye, Man & Gor Securities. That would improve the bank’s reputation by forcing it to show more transparency in dealing with investors, he said.
“The market will support any steps toward greater transparency,” Yunusov said. “I don’t think a local investor will be supportive of the bank’s reputation.”
VTB may gain some clout on markets outside Russia, depending on the potential buyer, he said.
The lender, which returned to profitability in the first quarter after a $2 billion loss last year, said in May that it would seek to double its share price to 15 kopeks over the next three years.
The shares closed at 7.98 kopeks on Monday, up 0.4 percent on the day, roughly in line with the broader MICEX Index. That’s up from a low of 2 kopeks in February 2009, and 4.8 kopeks when the state bought up the additional share issue in September 2009.
At Monday’s close, VTB’s market capitalization was $27.2 billion, meaning that a 35 percent stake could bring the state $9.5 billion.
With a budget deficit slated to hit 5.4 percent of gross domestic product this year, the government is looking toward its massive asset portfolio to help bridge the gap. Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina has also cast the sales as an important step toward reducing the state’s “excessive” role in the economy.  
In July, the Finance Ministry said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had approved a plan to sell off $29 billion worth of stakes in 11 high-profile firms, including Sberbank, Transneft, Rosneft and VTB.
Kudrin said, however, that the asset sales — the largest since the controversial loans-for-shares privatizations in the mid-1990s — were unlikely to begin this year.
“Fundamentally, this is a program for covering the budget for the next three years — that is why it is here. Most likely, we will not privatize stakes in big companies this year,” Kudrin said. He added that the outlines of the privatization plan will be completed in September, while the details would only be ready by the start of next year.  
The share sales will line government coffers with 290 billion rubles ($9 billion) in 2011, 276.1 billion rubles in 2012 and 309.4 billion rubles in 2013, Finance Ministry officials said in July.
In addition to the list of the 11 large companies’ stakes that are going up for sale starting next year, the Economic Development Ministry developed a similar list of smaller firms in which the government hopes to reduce its role.
Earlier this year, the ministry said it expected to raise more than $3.4 billion by selling assets this year, including 13 percent of insurer Rosgosstrakh, 25 percent of utility TGK-5 and 25 percent minus one share in shipping giant Sovkomflot.
The Federal Property Management Agency said in a statement Monday that it aimed to raise at least $283 million from a sale of 13.1 percent of Rosgosstrakh in a bidding that will last from Monday to Sept. 23.
The government isn’t selling stakes in the 11 large companies immediately because it has decided in favor of domestic borrowing to cover the deficit, said Dmitry Polevoi, an economist at ING Bank’s Moscow office.
A decline in the anticipated price of oil over the next three years may speed up the sales, he said.
On the contrary, if the oil price is higher than expected, there will be fewer motives to put the assets on the block, Polevoi said.

TITLE: The Summer of Extremes
AUTHOR: By Stefan Rahmstorf
TEXT: This summer has been one of weather-related extremes in Russia, Pakistan, China, Europe, the Arctic — you name it. But does this have anything to do with global warming, and are human emissions to blame?
While it cannot be scientifically proven — or disproven, for that matter — that global warming caused any particular extreme event, we can say that global warming very likely makes many kinds of extreme weather both more frequent and more severe.
For weeks in late July and early August, central Russia suffered its worst-ever heat wave. As a result of drought and heat, more than 500 wildfires raged out of control.
Meanwhile, Pakistan is still struggling with unprecedented flooding that has killed more than 1,600 people and affected millions more. In China, flash floods have so far killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed more than a million homes. On a smaller scale, European countries like Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have also suffered serious flooding.
Meanwhile, global temperatures in recent months have been at their highest levels in records that go back 130 years. Arctic Sea ice cover reached its lowest recorded average level for the month of June ever. In Greenland, two huge chunks of ice broke off in July and August.
Are these events connected?
Looking only at individual extreme events will not reveal their cause, just like watching a few scenes from a movie does not reveal the plot. But viewed in a broader context and using the logic of physics, important parts of the plot can be understood.
This decade has been marked by a number of stunning extremes. In 2003, the most severe heat wave in living memory broke previous temperature records by a large margin and caused 70,000 deaths in Europe. In 2005, the most severe hurricane season ever witnessed in the Atlantic devastated New Orleans and broke records in terms of the number and intensity of storms.
In 2007, unprecedented wildfires raged across Greece, nearly destroying the ancient site of Olympia. And the Northwest Passage in the Arctic became ice-free for the first time in living memory. Last year, more than 100 people were killed in bush fires in Australia, following drought and record-breaking heat.
This cluster of record-breaking events could be merely an astonishing streak of bad luck. But that is extremely unlikely. This is far more likely to be the result of a warming climate — a consequence of this decade being the hottest worldwide for 1,000 years.
All weather is driven by energy, and the sun ultimately provides this energy. But the biggest change in Earth’s energy budget by far over the past 100 years is because of the accumulation in our atmosphere of greenhouse gases, which limit the exit of heat into space. Owing to fossil-fuel emissions, there is now one-third more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in at least a million years, as the latest ice drilling in Antarctica has revealed.
The changes in the planet’s energy budget caused by solar variations are at least 10 times smaller in comparison. And they go in the wrong direction. In recent years, the sun has been at its dimmest since satellite measurements began in the 1970s. So when unprecedented extreme weather events occur, the prime suspect is naturally the biggest atmospheric change that has happened over the past 100 years — one that has been caused by human emissions.
The fact that heat waves like the one in Russia become more frequent and extreme in a warmer world is easy to understand. Extreme rainfall events will also become more frequent and intense in a warmer climate, owing to another simple fact of physics: Warm air can hold more moisture. For each degree Celsius of warming, 7 percent more water is available to rain down from saturated air masses. Drought risk also increases with warming. Even where rainfall does not decline, increased evaporation dries out the soils.
The events of this summer show how vulnerable our societies are to weather-related extremes. But what we see now is happening after only 0.8 C of global warming. With swift and decisive action, we can still limit global warming to a total of 2 C or a bit less. Even that much warming would require a massive effort to adapt to weather extremes and rising sea levels, which needs to start now.
With weak action, like that promised by governments in Copenhagen in December, we will be on course for a global warming of 3 or 4 C. This is bound to outstrip the ability of many societies and ecosystems to adapt. With no action at all, the planet could even heat up by 5 to 7 C by the end of this century — and more thereafter. Knowingly marching down that road would be insane.
We must face the facts. Our emissions of greenhouse gases probably are at least partly to blame for this summer of extremes. Clinging to the hope that it is all chance and all natural seems naive. Let us hope that this summer of extremes is a last-minute wake-up call to policymakers, the corporate world and citizens alike.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics at Potsdam University and a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, is author of “The Climate Crisis.” © Project Syndicate

TITLE: Putin’s Ticking Time Bomb
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Moscow’s horrendous daily traffic jams and this summer’s wildfires have something in common: The roots of both of these problems can be found in the government’s gross incompetence.
First, there were the Communists. They moved the capital from St. Petersburg to a large Asian village known as Moscow. Unlike St. Petersburg, Moscow grew in circles linked by radial lines, resulting in maximum chaos for drivers trying to maneuver around the city.
What’s more, Moscow developed large industrial zones in the first half of the 20th century.  During the Soviet era, land had no price value, and industrial zones close to the city center created serious logistical problems for transportation.
Then the Soviet state fell apart. In the chaos that resulted, the dominant principle was that everything that could be sold should be sold.
In June, the inevitable happened: The Moscow authorities shut down a vital artery — an underpass on Leningradskoye Shosse — which meant that it took more than four hours to reach Sheremetyevo Airport by car from the center.
A similar thing happened with the fires. The Communists drained the country’s expansive peat swamps, and as a result, wildfires broke out in Russia in 1972. But the Communists did get one thing right: They at least knew how to put out fires. Moreover, the authorities did everything possible to prevent a recurrence. The government created a nationwide firefighting service equipped with a fleet of aircraft capable of suppressing almost any fire before it could spread.
After the Soviet collapse, new leaders came to power. The country fell into a protracted period of corrupt privatization and asset grabs.
In 2007, the government adopted a Forest Code that served the interests of the pulp and paper mills owners. The code gave corporate interests — rather than the state — the responsibility for conserving and protecting the forests. Every forestry expert warned that there would be catastrophic fires during the first extreme heat wave.
The authorities have yet to tell us how many people died in the fires and smog, as well as what long-term health affects the smog will have on the tens of millions of people who inhaled the poisonous gases.
The vertical power structure under Prime Minster Vladimir Putin is notorious for not taking preventative measures to avoid disasters. Moreover, as the Forest Code so clearly showed, it often makes decisions that directly lead to a major disaster.
The next catastrophe could easily be nuclear. Take, for example, the Mayak nuclear weapons facility near Chelyabinsk. This facility has a storage facility that contains 25 tons of weapons-grade plutonium and 200 tons of uranium. In contrast to standard practice by other nuclear states, Russia’s enormous stockpile of radioactive material is not housed in multiple sites to reduce the risk of a massive disaster. What’s more, the repository is not buried deep under a mountain. It is simply enclosed by concrete walls.
During the Soviet period, Mayak had a horrific record of nuclear disasters, which resulted in roughly 500,000 people in the Chelyabinsk region receiving radioactive contamination that was many times worse than what Chernobyl disaster victims suffered. Far too little has been done to prevent another disaster.
The next disaster could mean the end of Russia.

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

TITLE: Celluloid dreams
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The history of the “Dream Factory” takes center stage at this year’s Open Cinema international short film festival which kicks off at the Dom Kino cinema on Friday.
Open Cinema, arguably Russia’s premiere short film and animation event, is celebrating Hollywood’s 100th anniversary with a string of exciting offerings, from the screening of D.W. Griffith’s movie “In Old California” (1910), which was shot in the north-west of Los Angeles, to a thrilling photographic exhibition showcasing more than twenty images of Hollywood icons such as Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. The display, which opened on Sept. 2 at the Mikhail Shemyakin Foundation, can be seen until Sept. 12.
The Hollywood anniversary has influenced the whole concept and style of this year’s rendition of Open Cinema.
According to the festival’s ideologists, Open Cinema-2010 is rolling back the decades and exploring the connections between classical cinema and new forms of cinema art.
For the first time in its history, the festival has joined forces with the U.S.’s  Turner Classic Movies (TCM) TV Channel which boasts more than 5,000 American and European films in its extensive Classic Movies collection, covering a vast period from Hollywood’s Golden age up to the end of the 20th century. But there are more than well-known masterworks on offer. The channel will also present a program that incorporates a series of unique documentaries and rare interviews with some of the founders of the Hollywood industry and the most important figures in its history.
Founded in 2004, Open Cinema traditionally features open-air concerts and film-screenings for the general public on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The event has quickly gained fame for its pioneering spirit in vigorously fusing styles and genres, and offering its audiences cutting edge works from around the world.
Every year open-air beach-show is attended by more than 10 thousand people and further more than 8 thousand spectators come to watch festival programs to the movie theatres. 
This year, the open-air festival on the beach will be held on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11 and feature the award ceremony.
The festival will also have two indoor venues — the Dom Kino Cinema Center and Mirage-Cinema — where the competition screening and events will take place.
The festival’s jury has reviewed more than 900 short and animation films from 30 countries and has selected almost 100 works which will compete in the official program in four categories, including fiction, documentary, animation and experimental films.
Jury members have included film director Boris Khlebnikov, producer Vyacheslav Telnov, film critic Mikhail Ratgauz, philosopher and writer Alexander Sekatsky, documentary filmmaker Pavel Medvedev, and filmmaker ?tienne Desrosiers. 
A special “Panorama 360” screening which will run concurrently with the competition presents the best collections from the world’s leading short film festivals, including the Oberhausen International Film Festival (Germany), the Recontres Henri Langois International Schools Film Festival (France), the Brussels Short Film Festival (Belgium), the ECU European Independent Film Festival (France), the Suzdalfest — Open Russian Festival of Animated Films (Russia), the Brest European Short Film Festival (France) and the Anifest International Festival of Animated Films (Czech Republic).
The Oberhausen festival, which will present a selection of six fiction and animation works, is one of the oldest film events in the world and is widely regarded as being one of the most respected short film festivals in the world. The event served as a springboard for such internationally acclaimed filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Wim Wenders. 
“There can be no doubt that the Oberhausen Short Film Festival has written film history...The short film has kept itself young, and so has Oberhausen. This atmosphere, this creative power, are what continue distinguishes short films today,” said former German Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der in a statement now posted on the festival’s website.
Traditionally, the festival offers a Parallel Competition which consists of movies that haven’t scored enough points to enter the main contest. This time, these works are divided into three programs subtitled, Great Expectations, Other Lands and No Anesthetic.

For more information, 
visit: www.artbereg.ru

TITLE: Word’s worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ìîëíèÿ: a lightning bolt, a news flash, a zipper

Everyone knows that during a thunderstorm, you wait for a bolt of lightning (ìîëíèÿ) and then count the seconds until you hear the clap of thunder (ãðîì). If you’re in Russia and there are five seconds between light and sound, the storm is five kilometers away. If you’re in the United States, the storm is five miles away (about eight kilometers). This shows how much our two great nations have in common. It also shows that our folk storm-tracking systems are pretty lousy.
Long ago in Russia, folks seem to have been a bit confused about thunder and lightning. In some expressions ãðîì means ìîëíèÿ. For example: Îäíàæäû â ñèëüíóþ ãðîçó óáèëî ãðîìîì íåñêîëüêî ÷åëîâåê. (Once during a heavy storm several people were killed by lightning.) Or: ß îñòàíîâèëñÿ, êàê ãðîìîì ïîðàæ¸ííûé. (I stopped as if I’d been struck by lightning.) When you want to swear to the truth of your words, you can say: Ðàçðàçè ìåíÿ ãðîì, åñëè áóäó íå ïðàâ. (May lightning strike me if I’m wrong.) And finally, there is the expression êàê ãðîì ñðåäè ÿñíîãî íåáà (like a bolt from the blue). Apparently all of our ancient ancestors believed that lightning only strikes during a storm, and so a bolt of lightning in a blue sky described something utterly unexpected. For example: Òåëåôîííûé çâîíîê ðàçäàëñÿ, êàê ãðîì ñðåäè ÿñíîãî íåáà. (The telephone call came out of the blue.)
But sometimes thunder is just thunder, as in the common expression ïîêà ãðîì íå ãðÿíåò, ìóæèê íå ïåðåêðåñòèòñÿ (literally, “until there is a clap of thunder, a man doesn’t make the sign of the cross”). Many commentators insist this is the essence of Russian mentality:  Ðîññèè ýòà èñòèíà ïîäõîäèò ïðàêòè÷åñêè ê ëþáûì ñèòóàöèÿì. (In Russian this truth can be applied to almost any situation.) But others assert that this is just part of human nature. I vote for the latter assertion. 
The adjective ãðîìêèé means loud or noisy, but ãðîìêîå èìÿ (literally “a loud name”) is a famous person. Ñðåäè ÷ëåíîâ îðãêîìèòåòà íå îêàçàëîñü ãðîìêèõ èì¸í. (There weren’t any celebrities on the organizational committee.) When the adverb ãðîìêî (loudly) is combined with the verb çâó÷àòü (to sound), the result is not so much an increase in decibels as an increase in significance. Äîêòîð íàóê — çà ðóáåæîì ýòî çâó÷èò ãðîìêî. (Outside Russia the title Doctor of Science sounds really important.) Ìîëíèÿ also undergoes some metaphorical transformations. It can be the sharp glint of anger in someone’s eye:  åãî ãëàçàõ ñâåðêíóëà ìîëíèÿ. (His eyes flashed with anger.) 
If you are furious, you can throw around bolts of lightning and thunder clouds. Ïðàâèòåëüñòâî ìå÷åò ãðîìû è ìîëíèè, à öåíû ðàñòóò. (The government rants and raves, but prices are rising all the same.)
Where’s Zeus when you need him?

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator. A collection of her columns, “The Russian Word’s Worth,” will be released by Glas in October.

TITLE: In the Spotlight: Sex Shows
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Every night, TNT airs a show called “Sex With Anfisa Chekhova,” whose curvaceous host promises that she knows “everything about sex.”
In a show this week, a man confessed to replacing his wife with a rubber doll, a stripper called Cleopatra took a barking man for a walk on a leash, and a focus group of men explained why women should wear see-through underwear.
This month, a woman from Moscow sued the show for 3 million rubles ($97,404) in moral damages, saying it used footage of her semi-naked without her permission.
The woman, Natalya Melnikova, thought that she was taking part in a casting session to be a double for bombshell actress Zhanna Friske, Life News reported.
It posted a video of the prank, filmed on the bustling tourist street Arbat, an unlikely spot for a real audition.
The news caused a bit of confusion as journalists phoned up the television channel for comment and found out that “Sex With Anfisa Chekhova” in fact closed last year. Since then, the channel has been fobbing viewers off with repeats, but no one has really noticed.
Chekhova began hosting the show in 2005, gamely showing off her impressive cleavage and becoming one of the nation’s favorite pin-ups. Lately though, her performance had become somewhat perfunctory. In a show aired this week, she typed on a laptop as she read the intro for each section, seemingly with little enthusiasm for her subject.
That did not put off viewers, who sent in badly spelled messages of love and passion to run along the bottom of the screen, at 75 rubles ($2.40) per time.
“Girls, I want sex,” one wrote bluntly, managing to spell the word “girls” wrong.
The show’s co-host, Denis Morozov, got all the best lines. He showed off a horrifying cheap sex doll that looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “You need either very poor eyesight or a very good imagination,” he said.
Nerdy Viktor stroked his sex doll, Anzhelika, whom he said had consoled him after his wife left him.
“I’ve gotten used to her. I can’t say she’s like my wife — that’s a different feeling — but I don’t have to worry about her,” he confessed, sitting in front of a cupboard full of dusty china.
My only comfort is that I used to read the casting ads for “Sex With Anfisa Chekhova” on TNT’s web site, and there is a sporting chance that Viktor was just an actor down on his luck.
In another section, Cleopatra, a 19-year-old stripper from Uzbekistan, revealed how she takes part in S&M role games with a client who crawls and barks in a dog collar. Despite her lack of citizenship, she managed to find work at “one of Moscow’s best erotic clubs,” the voice-over boasted.
Finally, three men eyed two girls as they picked out seductive underwear. The girls went for unrevealing flowery combos, while the men chose some scratchy net underwear, which the women then had to pose in.
Men prefer underwear that is transparent and covers the least possible area, Chekhova concluded, sipping a margarita.
The show is a far cry from the groundbreaking show about sex on Russian television, “About That,” which was hosted by Yelena Khanga in the late 1990s. Its title shows the buttoned-up attitude to sex that was prevalent at the time.
Nowadays, such shows are not so much about breaking taboos as mildly titillating late-night male viewers. Another long-running show, “Naked and Funny,” shows busty women losing their clothes at inappropriate moments as male passers-by — really actors — drop their jaws in amazement.

TITLE: All around the world
AUTHOR: By Tobias Kuehne
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Many of St. Petersburg’s restaurant owners have the curious habit of mixing various kinds of cuisines in their establishments. Combinations such as Chinese and European food, or Japanese and Traditional occur frequently without any apparent rhyme or reason. Okean, a restaurant in a ship floating on the Neva near the Birzhevoi Bridge, is one of the few that manages to justify its potpourri of cuisines through conveying an illusion of relative mobility: Every country that has a coastline qualifies as a supplier for Okean.
The day we chose to visit Okean saw a moody alternation between sunshine and rain, with gusts of wind and a slightly disturbed Neva. This setup infused an extra note of authenticity into our dining experience, as the restaurant ships (one smaller ship constituting the more open, bar area, the other a floating 3-story cruiser with a “banquet hall”) rocked back and forth. An ashtray tumbled from the bar. 
We seated ourselves on the smaller of the two conjoined vessels to enjoy the splendid view across the Neva. Small two-person tables, separate lounge chairs that offered seating for roughly 40 (20 more could find space in the open terrace area), a bar, summery music and the occasional faint smell of hookah tobacco wafting over from the waiters preparing it, made for a relaxed cruise-ship feel. Champagne costing up to 36,000 rubles ($1,220) a bottle and a television screen in the bathroom mirror complemented the atmosphere with a hint of luxury.
As the menu featured three separate sections — “Traditional,” “Chinese” and “Italian/European” — we decided, inspired by our barge’s rocking desire to break loose, to cover all of these culinary corners of the world. The journey began with Chinese dumplings (290 rubles, $9.50), arranged on a long, slim plate, and pumpkin soup with mascarpone cheese (260 rubles, $8.50). While the meat-filled dumplings gave occasion to high expectations, the pumpkin soup’s taste fell surprisingly flat, despite the abundant mascarpone, cream and oil to be detected in it. A bottle of Corona beer (200 rubles, $7) provided the proper refreshment.
To order our main course, the menu had to be retrieved from the quirky waiter, who, in his light blue polo shirt sporting the Okean’s sea star logo, displayed a droll mix of silent composure and ardent zeal to seize empty plates and refill our half-empty glasses from the bottle of water on our table. Notwithstanding his apparent reticence, he became surprisingly chatty when it came to advising us on meal choices.
We followed his recommendation with the Azerbaijani Qutab (despite the fact that Azerbaijan has no oceanic coast line) (280 rubles, $9.50), which was a stiff, egg-based dough with cheese and spinach on the inside, with a side of smetana. The spinach balanced the dough’s heaviness, making the Qutab a novel and pleasant experience. Similar things could not be said of the chicken cutlets (330 rubles, $11), which came with mashed potatoes and an excruciatingly salty pickle — the cutlets were weeping oil and quite heavy, while the mashed potatoes roused our suspicion (although it couldn’t be confirmed) that they were made from a powder.
The quality of the food hovered between delectable and disappointing, as did our vessel on the agitated Neva. When my companion began to display signs of uneasiness, our original waiter produced an inconspicuous pill for her, which alleviated her nervousness at once.
For dessert, we found ourselves back on European shores, as we chose a Scottish palm cake (160 rubles, $5.50) and an Italian tiramisu (230 rubles, $8). The former, warm, rich and steeped in caramel, rounded off the meal quite nicely, especially since a torrential rain had begun to pour, allowing the palm cake to supply a soft, homey atmosphere. The tiramisu, on the other hand, fell behind the palm cake — the cream tasted flat and the bottom was far too mushy.
While coming down with a final judgment of Okean may be too difficult a task to fulfill after just one visit, one thing can be said with certainty — there is nothing dull about it.

TITLE: Israel, Palestine Relaunch Talks
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Israeli and Palestinian leaders are set to resume direct talks on Thursday, seeking to clinch an elusive peace deal for the Middle East within a year against a backdrop of renewed violence.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas prepared to sit down for their first direct talks in 20 months, Hamas claimed responsibility for the West Bank shooting of two Israelis.
That attack came just a day after four Jewish settlers were killed in a shooting on Tuesday also claimed by Hamas, which is vehemently opposed to the peace negotiations.
Despite the attacks U.S. President Barack Obama called on both sides not to let slip a fleeting opportunity for peace, a Palestinian state and a secure Israel within a year, as he gathered the two leaders, with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the White House on Wednesday.
“This moment of opportunity may not soon come again,” said Obama, who met the leaders separately, and then hosted a dinner that also included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and diplomatic Quartet representative Tony Blair.
Netanyahu vowed to forge a “historic” peace with the Palestinians and Abbas met hawkish Netanyahu’s conciliatory rhetoric by calling for an end to bloodshed after the latest Hamas attacks, but also demanded a halt to Israel settlement activity.
Netanyahu’s dramatic opening gambit came during a press appearance in the East Room of the White House that saw the leaders promise to search in good faith for peace after decades of strife.
“President Abbas, you are my partner in peace,” Netanyahu said.
“I came here today to find an historic compromise that will enable both our peoples to live in peace and security and dignity.”
But Netanyahu’s warm words did not disguise the steel of his position.
After two Hamas attacks on Israelis in the West Bank within as many days, Netanyahu vowed he would secure assurances on security, warning “terrorists” would not block the path to peace.
“We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, we got terror. We want to ensure that territory we concede will not be turned into a third Iranian-sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel.”
His office said the Israeli position remained unchanged on letting a partial moratorium on West Bank settlement construction expire at the end of the month.
Turning to Netanyahu, Abbas condemned Tuesday’s attack by Hamas that killed four Israelis and Wednesday’s strike in which two more were injured.
“We do not want at all that any blood be shed... one drop of blood on the part of Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.
Obama had earlier branded the first attack as “senseless slaughter” and warned it was an example of how opponents of the peace effort would try to halt progress.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, is opposed to the peace talks and is a rival of Abbas’s U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority.
Abbas also demanded a total freeze on settlement activity — without which Palestinians have threatened to walk out of the peace talks.
Obama pronounced himself “cautiously optimistic” about the day’s events, though many analysts have commented that prospects for progress seem dim, given the fierce divides and lack of popular momentum for a new era of peacemaking.
“We are under no illusions. Passions run deep. Each side has legitimate and enduring interests. Years of mistrust will not disappear over night,” Obama said.
Thursday’s direct talks, the outcome of painstaking US diplomacy, will take place with few participants or observers predicting success amid widespread regional distrust.
The issues on the table at the US-mediated talks — the status of Jerusalem, security, the borders of a Palestinian state and the right of return for Palestinian refugees — have confounded all previous mediation attempts.

TITLE: Pakistan Aid Hit by Stall In Funding
AUTHOR: By Hasan Mansoor
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: THATTA, Pakistan — Relief efforts in flood-ravaged Pakistan are being stretched by the “unprecedented scale” of the disaster, with the flow of international aid almost at a standstill, the UN said Thursday.
A month of catastrophic flooding has now killed 1,760 people and affected more than 18 million, including eight million who are dependent on aid handouts to survive, it said.
Although the initially slow pace of aid had improved since a visit by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in mid-August, the UN said it has “almost stalled” since the beginning of last week, rising from 274 million dollars to 291 million dollars — about two thirds of funding needs.
“Given the number of those in need, this is a humanitarian operation of unprecedented scale,” Manuel Bessler, head of the UN’s coordination agency OCHA said in a statement.
“We need to reach at least eight million people, from the Karakoram Mountain Range in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south.”
Thousands of people were trapped by floodwaters in towns in the southern province of Sindh, while others are complaining of going without food or water for days, some forced to live in the rubble of their ruined homes.
The World Bank raised its emergency funding for Pakistan to one billion dollars amid dire warnings about the threat to the country’s food supplies.
The floods have ruined 3.6 million hectares of rich farmland and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said farmers urgently needed seeds to plant for next year’s crops.
“Unless people get seeds over the next few weeks they will not be able to plant wheat for a year,” Daniele Donati, director for FAO emergency operations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, said on Wednesday.
“Food aid alone will not be enough. If the next wheat crop is not salvaged, the food security of millions will be at risk,” Donati warned.
The World Food Program has warned that Pakistan faces a triple threat to food supplies — with seeds, crops and incomes hit.
In southern Pakistan, hundreds of hungry and desperate families from a relief camp in the city of Thatta blocked the highway to Karachi for three hours Wednesday, demanding the government provide more food and shelter.
“No food or water has been provided to us for the past two days,” Mohammad Qasim, a 60-year-old resident of the flooded town of Sujawal, said.
The protest came as under-fire Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani warned the country faced inflation of up to 20 percent and slower economic growth because of the floods, warning of job losses and social unrest.
Gilani said an inflation target of 9.5 percent for 2011 would now likely be in the range of 15-20 percent, spurred by food shortages, while GDP growth would also slide to 2.5 percent from the predicted 4.5 percent.
World Bank chief Robert Zoellick announced an extra 100 million dollars to add to an existing 900 million dollar loan as he met Pakistan’s Finance Minister on Wednesday.

TITLE: Evacuations Start as Hurricane Earl Closes In on U.S.
AUTHOR: By Rick Mercier
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: RALEIGH, North Carolina —Tens of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate North Carolina’s barrier islands as Hurricane Earl closed in on a large part of the US east coast on Thursday.
The strongest Atlantic storm of 2010 was on course to lash the coast of North Carolina and then move north, wreaking havoc on the end-of-summer Labor Day holiday weekend that usually draws millions to the beaches.
At 1:00 am eastern time, Earl, a powerful category four storm, had sustained winds of 220 kilometers as it sped toward the eastern seaboard, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The eye of the storm was 740 kilometers south-southeast of Cape Hatteras in the Outer Banks — a narrow band of North Carolina barrier islands.
Tropical storm force winds then hurricane force winds were expected to reach the state’s coast later Thursday and a “dangerous” storm surge was due to raise water levels by up to three to five feet above ground level in the hurricane warning area, the NHC said.
“The surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves,” it warned, noting that large swells associated with the storm “will likely cause dangerous surf conditions and rip currents” through the weekend.
In a sign the hurricane season was heating up, the fourth storm in the past 11 days, Tropical Storm Gaston, formed in the Atlantic.
Gaston had winds of 65 kilometers per hour and was centered 2,550 kilometers east of the Lesser Antilles.
But forecasters warned the storm’s track could well put it in the path of Haiti, a worst-case scenario now threatening to become reality for a nation still struggling to recover from a January earthquake.
Thousands of quake survivors remain in flimsy, makeshift, open air camps in and around the capital Port-au-Prince, and observers warn of a further humanitarian catastrophe if the area is hit by a major storm.
US officials meanwhile ordered a mandatory evacuation for tens of thousands of visitors plus the estimated 800 residents on North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island, where ferry service is the only transport link with the mainland.
President Barack Obama signed a declaration of a state of emergency for North Carolina, opening the door to federal assistance.
“The timing is not good for folks trying to enjoy the last good summer weekend, but safety and protection of personal property comes first,” said Cyndy Holda, public affairs officer at Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
The storm was expected to pass about 80 kilometers to the east of Hatteras Island, North Carolina’s easternmost point, early Friday.
Earl was speeding north-northwest at 30 kilometers per hour, prompting watches and warnings along a wide area of the coastline as far north as Massachusetts.
A hurricane warning, meaning hurricane-force winds are expected, was in effect from the Bogue Inlet in North Carolina to the Virginia border.
A hurricane watch, which means dangerous conditions are possible, was in effect from the North Carolina-Virginia border to Delaware and further north to Massachusetts, including the tourist islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

TITLE: Australian PM Wins Key Backer
AUTHOR: By Talek Harris
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard won the support of a key independent MP on Thursday, leaving her close to breaking the worst political deadlock in decades after elections failed to produce a winner.
Former Iraq war whistle-blower Andrew Wilkie said Gillard’s centre-left Labor party was most likely to deliver “stable” and “competent” government, an endorsement that put her within just two seats of a parliamentary majority.
“I have judged that it is the Australian Labor Party that best meets my criteria that the next government must be stable, must be competent and must be ethical,” Wilkie told journalists in Canberra.
Wilkie’s vote gives Gillard 74 seats in the 150-member lower house, just shy of an absolute majority.