SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1611 (72), Tuesday, September 21, 2010
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Campaign To Release Protesters
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg has joined a series of rallies as part of the international campaign demanding the release of the “Khimki Hostages.” 
The two activists were imprisoned after an anarchists’ protest in front of the headquarters of the Khimki administration, which is instrumental in destroying the Khimki Forest to make way for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-backed toll highway project to connect Moscow and St. Petersburg.
On Sunday, an estimated 150 St. Petersburg anarchists, Antifa activists, environmentalists and residents gathered to demand the release of Alexei Gaskarov and Maxim Solopov, who were arrested a day after the much-talked-about July 28 demonstration in Khimki in which several hundred participants firing pellet guns and setting off flares left graffiti on the walls of the administration building and broke several windows.
The protest in Khimki was a surprise for the authorities, who have deployed massive police forces to the forest, where preservationists held a vigil to put pressure on them. The few police patrols at the scene drove away, apparently discouraged by the number of protesters, and did not detain anyone.
Gaskarov and Solopov, high-profile Antifa activists, were detained in Moscow a day after the July 28 rally in what their fellow activists describe as an act of revenge. Their guilt has not been proven. Charged with disorderly behavior, they face up to seven years in prison.
“It’s not that they were targeted by chance; they were targeted deliberately, because they were anti-fascist movement activists who did not hide their faces, appearing constantly on television, at rallies and other social events,” said Dmitry, an activist with Autonomous Action and an organizer of the St. Petersburg rally. He asked for his last name to be withheld.
“Because the police failed to detain anybody during the demo when the Khimki administration building was damaged, they wanted to arrest somebody as a scapegoat,” he said. “They were there, but the police are trying to present them as the event’s organizers. It’s not clear why they’ve been held in prison for two months; nobody gets put in pre-trial custody on charges of disorderly behavior.”
Gaskarov and Solopov are not allowed to see their relatives, Dmitry said, adding that the police investigation has been declared “closed,” forcing the activists’ first lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin to resign over the investigators’ demand that he sign a written oath promising not to speak about the case.
“Trepashkin had to resign in order to help the public campaign for their release,” Dmitry said.
Activists say that the rally in which the administration building in Khimki was damaged was held when they felt that all other measures taken to save the forest during the three-year struggle had proved ineffective in stopping construction.
“There has been a struggle which lasted for three years against the corruptors, the crooks who were destroying the Khimki Forest, but it didn’t yield any result — quite the opposite, several ecologists and journalists have suffered, such as Mikhail Beketov who has been left permanently crippled after an attack on him, while the OMON special task police and neo-Nazis have been deployed against the environmentalists,” Dmitry said.
“Having tried all methods, there were people who decided that they must show their strength, if the authorities can’t understand any other language.”
The campaign’s rallies were held between Sept. 17 and 20 in anticipation of a court hearing on the activists’ case due later this month.
“A wave of repressions against anti-fascists has begun,” Dmitry said.
“Several people are on a federal wanted list and have had to go into hiding or leave the country, while all the young people who participated in the rallies and were included in the Center E databases (Center for the Prevention of Extremism) have been visited by uniformed and plainclothes men.” 
Dmitry said that several activists were beaten and injured during interrogations in Moscow and the Moscow Oblast. “The campaign is also against the repressions that are raging now, mostly in Moscow,” he said.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to construction of the Khimki highway on Aug. 26, after a substantial portion of the forest had already been cut down. Tree-felling could be resumed at any moment.
Events in support of Gaskarov and Solopov were also held in Moscow, Irkutsk, Tyumen, Kaliningrad, Kiev, London, Paris, Dusseldorf, Stockholm, New York and Seattle, among other cities.

<i>Information about the campaign is available in several languages at www.khimkibattle.org.</i>

TITLE: Putin Welcomes Arab Cash in Sochi
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SOCHI — Foreign investors on Friday lauded Russia’s stability and openness at an economic forum headlined by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who oversaw the signing of deals to attract $800 million of investment from the United Arab Emirates.
Officials and executives gathered in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the fourth annual Sochi International Investment Forum in hopes of drawing new cash to the region and halting a slide in foreign direct investment.
The meeting is also Russia’s second attempt this month to bolster its international profile, following a political forum in Yaroslavl hosted by President Dmitry Medvedev.
The investment arm of Russian Technologies, a state-run industrial conglomerate, signed agreements Friday with two companies from the United Arab Emirates: the ports and logistics unit of Crescent Group and real estate developer Damac.
Prominvest, a Russian Technologies subsidiary, and Gulftainer, a Crescent Group unit, agreed to set up a $500 million fund to acquire ports and logistics assets in Russia and in other former Soviet states.
“This is another major demonstration by the Crescent Group of its commitment to building strong economic ties with our Russian brothers,” vice chairman Badr Jafar said in a statement.
Crescent Group has other business with Russia. Its energy arm, Crescent Petroleum, and state-run oil producer Rosneft jointly began developing an oil and gas field in the United Arab Emirates in June.
Under the other agreement signed Friday, luxury developer Damac will invest $300 million in a joint real estate fund, whose projects will include facilities for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
Hussain Sajwani, chairman of Damac Properties, said in a statement that his company had a “strong capital position” and was entering a market that features a “strong regulatory and transparency framework.”
The praise came as Putin pledged to streamline obstacles to construction, which officials are regularly accused of using to draw bribes.
The Cabinet will issue a decree standardizing the contract for businesses to connect to electricity supplies to prevent arm-twisting by suppliers, Putin told the forum in his opening speech.
The government also decided that state agencies would eventually stop issuing compliance certificates for products and services, handing over the often business-unfriendly process to specially accredited private laboratories and experts, Putin said.
Assembled in the Winter Theater building on a hill above the Black Sea, forum guests were unable to see any of the major projects around the city, which has become Russia’s largest construction site ahead of the Olympics.
But guests arriving by air were able to see the new Sochi airport, which Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element officially opened a day before the forum. Even a short tour around Sochi revealed work to build huge bridges, tunnels and overpasses — efforts that largely began after last year’s forum.
Speaking at the forum, Jafar said the Gulftainer investment owed to Russia’s lack of major political turbulence.
“Political stability in the country I think has been a major attraction for Middle Eastern countries,” he said.
He also stressed that 80 percent of Russian exports leave through ports, and 50 percent of that is from just four of Russia’s 41 ports, meaning that the others have a long way to go in developing. Great potential also lies in the handling of inland container traffic that is need of depots and logistics centers, he said.
Last week, state-run Transneft and a partner announced plans to acquire the Novorossiisk oil port. If approved, the deal would give the investors — who also own the Baltic port of Primorsk — control of most oil loaded for export in European Russia.
Putin said creation of the fund showed how Russia is friendlier to Arab investment than the United States.
He appeared to be referring to Dubai Ports World’s aborted attempt in 2006 to purchase a firm that manages six of the largest ports in the United States, including in New York, Miami and New Orleans. The deal was scrapped amid heavy political pressure in the United States.
“Incidentally, unlike other countries, say, the United States, we don’t place any restrictions on attracting foreign capital in ports infrastructure,” Putin said in response to comments at the forum. “We don’t say we won’t allow Arab capital there. Go ahead, please!”
The government does have restrictions on foreign investments in the many sectors and companies that it considers strategic. Companies seeking to acquire significant stakes in such companies must receive approval from a government commission chaired by Putin.
Foreign direct investment declined an annual 11 percent in the first half to $5.4 billion, the State Statistics Service said last month. The continued decline came after FDI slid 41 percent last year to $15.9 billion, although it was an improvement over the 18 percent drop in the first quarter.
Also at the forum, French builder Vinci made its first comment on the delayed construction of a politically contentious road from Moscow to St. Petersburg through the Khimki forest.
Yves-Thibault de Silguy, deputy chairman of Vinci, said the company considered it “normal” that the government wanted more studies of the environmental impact after a public outcry.

TITLE: President Chases Prime Minister in Vintage Sedan
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Viktor Yanukovych drove a pair of vintage Pobeda sedans across the border between Russia and Ukraine on a sunny Friday afternoon in what analysts say looked like a second-hand publicity stunt.
The presidents took to the road for a car rally commemorating a similar event held exactly 100 years ago by Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. Medvedev did not neglect to point out that they bested the emperor by actually driving the vehicles.
“We are more democratic. We drive ourselves,” Medvedev said before getting behind the wheel of his own 1948 white Pobeda. Yanukovych drove a beige and dark-red 1951 model.
The rally, which included 16 vintage and 20 modern vehicles, set off from the town of Pushkin near St. Petersburg on Sept. 13 and traveled to Kiev by way of Moscow.
The drivers included celebrities from both countries, such as actor Bogdan Stupka, actress Anastasia Zavorotnyuk, pop star Dmitry Malikov and former junior welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu.
Medvedev led the column of cars on the Russian side, passing the lead to Yanukovych after crossing the border.
The two presidents set off from Bryansk, a city about 25 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and drove more than 60 kilometers to Ukraine’s Glukhov, where they visited a vintage car show, posing before the cameras in a 1957 Silver Raid Rolls Royce.
Medvedev also visited the Partisan Meadow memorial, 10 kilometers east of Bryansk, dedicated to the 8,500 partisans who fought Nazi forces in the region during World War II, and met with local war veterans for a cup of tea.
He and Yanukovych pledged after the trip to make rules for crossing the border less “insulting and nerve-wracking” for ordinary people, RIA-Novosti reported.
Yanukovych said the idea of a joint road trip was first brought up by Medvedev during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to Russia for the Victory Day parade in May, when Medvedev gave him a ride in his Pobeda.
“He just infected me [with the idea], and I had no other choice,” Yanukovych told reporters in Glukhov on Friday.
But the rally looked like a carbon copy of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s road trip in a Lada Kalina sedan last month along the new Amur highway, which got wide media coverage. On top of that, Putin visited a car rally on Friday, stopping by the camp of drivers participating in the Silk Way race, part of the Dakar series, between St. Petersburg and Sochi.
Medvedev might be trying to drum up public support through safe, tried-and-true methods, said Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.
“Putin needs to affirm his reputation, while Medvedev has to gain one,” Makarkin said. “It looks like they both don’t exclude the possibility of running in the 2012 presidential election.”
Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Center for Political Information, said Putin’s Amur adventure boosted his public image, but Medvedev’s Pobeda trip was unlikely to succeed because of its lack of originality.
“Medvedev’s PR activity is doomed to fail by the rules of the genre,” Mukhin said by telephone.
Road tripping is not the only area where Medvedev seems to have followed Putin’s PR template recently. Over the past few weeks, the president has stopped by stores in Saratov, Orenburg and Voronezh, and he even bought a loaf of bread in a grocery store in Murmansk on Wednesday.
This show of unity with the average customer appears to be a dead ringer for Putin’s surprise visit to a Perekryostok store in Moscow last year when he inspected meat prices and told the supermarket chain’s chief executive to lower pork prices.
Analysts noted that Medvedev was taking charge of relations with Ukraine, a sphere of activity previously supervised by Putin.
“Apparently, Medvedev doesn’t want to fall behind Putin in any way,” Mukhin said.
During a meeting Friday at Medvedev’s residence in Zavidovo, Yanukovych presented Medvedev with a memento that Putin almost certainly doesn’t own: a miniature model of a Soviet-era Pobeda car on a stand together with a photo of the two presidents.

TITLE: Domain Hints at Putin 2012 Bid
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A government agency registered the domain name Putin-2012.rf last week only to revoke its application two days later, stirring speculation in the media over the possible start of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s presidential campaign.
No similar domain name was registered for President Dmitry Medvedev, which some observers viewed as an indication that he will not run for re-election in 2012. 
But canceling the registration was interpreted as a sign that he and Putin have not yet determined who of the two will be the candidate for — and the likely winner of — the presidential race.
The Federal Guard Service, whose duties include providing information security for state bodies and officials, said Saturday that it was calling off applications for nine web site names, including Putin-2012.rf, in the new Cyrillic domain zone because it might be considered electioneering.

TITLE: Snubbed Nashi Calls Off Case Against Le Monde
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nashi, the outspoken pro-Kremlin youth group, said Friday that it had withdrawn a defamation lawsuit against French newspaper Le Monde that it filed last year.
Nashi decided to drop the case because Le Monde had refused to participate in a dialogue with the youth group both in and out of the courtroom, said Nashi’s lawyer, Sergei Zhorin.
“We decided to withdraw the lawsuit because, unfortunately, we didn’t get what we expected — a constructive dialogue with Le Monde,” he said by telephone, adding that newspaper representatives had declined to come to court or get in contact with Nashi.
The only newspaper representative who took part in the hearings was Le Monde journalist Mari Jego, but Nashi said it had no claims against her personally.
Jego expressed surprise with Nashi’s decision, saying the group had demonstrated its commitment with its yearlong struggle, but she added that she was glad the case was over.
“I’m glad because it was a big waste of time,” she said.
A hearing was scheduled for Thursday, but Nashi representatives didn’t come and the judge announced that they had withdrawn the lawsuit.
Jego said she had not been notified about the reason behind Nashi’s decision. “Probably they have other, more important problems,” she said.
Nashi has been fighting speculation in recent weeks that its relevance is waning. The group is embroiled in a high-profile fight with Moscow district prefect Oleg Mitvol, who has demanded that it vacate its headquarters. Auchan, a French supermarket chain, called law enforcement authorities last week to complain that Nashi activists were rallying outside its stores in a fabricated campaign to expose expired goods on its shelves.
Nashi lawyer Zhorin said he was sure that the court would have ruled in his favor in the defamation lawsuit but the decision would not have been enforced, which he said happened in the case of France’s Le Journal du Dimanche.
Nashi filed defamation lawsuits against four foreign newspapers last year, including Le Monde, Le Journal du Dimanche, Britain’s Independent and Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, for reports comparing the group to Hitler youth, bandits and nationalists.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Avenue Opened</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg companies marking the 20th anniversary of their activities in Russia this year planted oak trees in the city’s suburb of Pushkin last week to launch an avenue titled “20 Years of Business in the Russian Federation.”
The jubilee list of companies includes Bank St. Petersburg, EGO Translating, Neste St. Petersburg, Neva travel agency, ANCOR holding, ASK insurance group and many others.
The oak trees symbolize the prosperity and might of Russian business, said EGO Translating, which initiated the event.

<strong>Bones in Ministry</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — A large stash of 100-year-old bones was discovered by workers renovating the Finance Ministry building on Birzhevaya Ploshchad in central Moscow, Interfax reported Sunday.
The skeletons probably belong to people buried in a church cemetery that was located on the site prior to construction of the building in the late 19th century, a law enforcement source told Interfax, without elaborating on the fate of the bones.

<strong>Daimler Dismayed</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Intel and Daimler may sever links to a government-backed youth camp at Lake Seliger after the likenesses of former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Russia critics were impaled on stakes at the event, Bloomberg reported.

TITLE: Reputed Crime Boss Attacked
AUTHOR: By Alexey Eremenko and Alexandra Taranova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Reputed crime boss Aslan Usoyan, 73, and his bodyguard were hospitalized in stable condition after being shot by an unidentified assailant on Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow late last week, police said.
Usoyan — who is thought to be the most influential crime boss on former Soviet soil and is known as Grandpa Khasan — and his bodyguard Artur Bagramyan were shot by a Kalashnikov assault rifle equipped with a silencer as they entered a building late Thursday, police said, according to national news agencies.
Usoyan had been staying in his son’s apartment in the building, Lifenews.ru said.
In order to prevent more attempts on Usoyan’s life, police intentionally reported Friday that both men were killed, while in fact they were only hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, Interfax reported.
The location was selected because it was one of the few places where Usoyan could be ambushed, Interfax said, citing a law enforcement source. Usoyan lives in a Moscow region settlement closed to outsiders, avoids public places and travels in armored cars, the source said.

TITLE: Luzhkov Growls and Takes a Vacation
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Under the fire of a smear campaign, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov lashed out at the federal authorities over migration laws, promised new metro stations and then announced that he was leaving for vacation in Austria.
An unidentified Kremlin official told RIA-Novosti that Luzhkov “needs time to think.”
NTV television, which initiated the smear campaign by airing a program accusing Luzhkov of corruption on    Sept. 10, suggested in its “Russian Sensations” program on Saturday that City Hall was “living off the hand of” businessman Telman Ismailov, owner of the closed Cherkizovsky Market, and said Inteko, the construction company owned by Luzhkov’s billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina, “began its ascension” after Luzhkov became mayor in 1992.
Luzhkov told reporters Saturday that he would leave for Austria this week for a family vacation and celebrate his 74th birthday there Friday. Luzhkov’s birthday is on Sept. 21.
Luzhkov did not elaborate on the date of his departure or the duration of the vacation, but a source close to Luzhkov told RIA-Novosti on Sunday that Luzhkov was already in Austria, where he owns a chalet.
The Kremlin authorized Luzhkov to take a weeklong vacation, RIA-Novosti reported, citing a Kremlin source. “It is clear that Yury Mikhailovich is going through a difficult period in his life, and he certainly needs time to think,” the source said.
Amid speculation that President Dmitry Medvedev was behind the smear campaign, State Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin suggested that the instigator might instead be Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government.
“I don’t think that these attacks are coming from Staraya Ploshchad, but from the embankment,” Ilyukhin, a Communist, told Svobodnaya Pressa, referring to the locations of the Kremlin offices and the White House. “It’s there where all the contenders for the post of Moscow mayor work.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, seen by some observers as a possible replacement for Luzhkov, denied speculation that he might become the next Moscow mayor.
“I am staying to work in the government,” Ivanov said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Luzhkov’s council of elder statesmen, comprised of former city officials who advise the mayor on his policies, wrote an open letter Friday accusing national television channels of participating in the “unprecedented hounding” of Luzhkov, “evidently on the order of powerful forces,” RIA-Novosti reported.
Luzhkov struck a populist note during a trade union meeting Saturday, accusing the Federal Migration Service of impeding his plans to reduce the number of migrants in the city by allowing migrants to buy work licenses.
The migration service “doesn’t give a damn about the quotas” that City Hall sets for migrant workers, Luzhkov told the Federation of Independent Professional Unions of Russia at a meeting also attended by Putin.
The work licenses were introduced by amendments to migration law that took effect in July.
Suggesting that migrants take jobs away from Muscovites, Luzhkov said City Hall reduces its quota for migrant workers by 70,000 to 100,000 people every year. He did not elaborate.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Luzhkov said several new metro stations would be constructed in Moscow’s eastern Kozhukhovo and southeastern Zhulebino districts in the next few years.
He praised unions for contributing to “the lowest unemployment level” in Moscow, compared with the rest of Russia.
Luzhkov also suggested that the State Duma introduce quotas on disabled employees at factories.
Separately, a feud erupted between City Hall and the Duma on Friday when the Duma challenged a 40,000 ruble ($1,300) fine for parking violations.
City Hall accuses the Duma of illegally cordoning off parking lots on Georgiyevsky Pereulok and Ulitsa Okhotny Ryad for Duma deputies.
Also Friday, Luzhkov took a step toward dealing with the city’s traffic problem — a feature of the smear campaign — by submitting a bill to the City Duma that would allow municipal workers to evacuate cars parked on sidewalks, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Why Moscow Lacks Air Conditioners
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW —  The heat and smog are gone, but many people have made a purchasing decision for next summer: to buy an air conditioner.
Still, they all face a vexing problem. There are very few air conditioners for sale these days.
Stocks of air conditioners and fans have been depleted since early July, when frenzied customers bought any cooling device they could find. In August, when the stifling heat was aggravated by biting smog, desperate buyers could not even find relief at the city’s appliances markets, where traders had sold out their last stocks at inflated prices.
But a month after the heat finally receded, major retailers’ shelves that used to contain them are either empty or have been filled with electrical heaters — demand for which is up because September kicked off with unusually low temperatures.
So what’s the problem?
For one, it takes more than a day to produce an air conditioner, and two to three months will pass between the time that an order is placed and the unit reaches a store, industry representatives said.
“The units sold during the summer heat were those ordered in May,” said Vitaly Boryets, a senior supervisor for air conditioners at Panasonic Russia.
He said the production cycle was the same for all major producers, most of which are located in China, Japan or South Korea.
Those May orders, Boryets said, were “very cautious.”
After all, private air conditioners are a luxury item for most Russians. Few households have them, and prices for the most popular — split-systems with separate cooling units outside the apartment — begin at 7,000 rubles ($230) and can reach more than 30,000 rubles ($1,000).
Unlike commercially ordered devices for offices and industrial facilities, demand for household air conditioners has proved very volatile. “The market depends totally on the weather,” said Artyom Kushneryov, deputy director of the Association of Climate Industry Businesses, an industry group.
Apart from the fact that nobody predicted the fires and the heat, this summer’s shortage can also be blamed on last year’s weather and economic conditions, Kushneryov said.
Last year saw both the climax of the economic crisis and a cool summer, resulting in a roughly 40 percent drop in sales in the country’s total air conditioning market compared with the previous year, he said.
As a result, industry representatives decided at a meeting of the business association in January that 2010 orders for the country should be just 10 percent to 15 percent more than 2009 orders.
“That’s how we went into this year,” Kushneryov said in an interview.
When demand exploded during the summer heat, both producers and retailers scrambled to find air conditioners. “We not only sold everything we had, but we also sold all our old stock left over from 2009,” Panasonic’s Boryets said.
Eldorado, the consumer electronics chain, sold 120,000 fans in its Moscow stores in July alone, spokesman Sergei Pavlov said.
Yulia Sorokina, a spokeswoman for the M.Video chain, explained that stocks ran out at the end of July after being hastily replenished from extra supplies hauled west from the Urals and Siberia.
“Then it was just impossible to get anything more,” she said.
Industry insiders interviewed for this article agreed that consumer orders for air conditioners would go up significantly after this summer’s soaring sales.
“Rising incomes and living standards plus the fear of more hot summers will result in robust business,” said Tigran Hovhannisyan, a senior analyst at UralSib.
He said the growth potential was big because so few households own air conditioners.
An increase in air conditioners also poses a challenge to the authorities because they gobble up a lot of electricity. During this summer’s heat wave, electricity consumption jumped by 10 percent in Moscow, and some regions outside the capital suffered power shortages during peak times, said Vladimir Chuprov, an energy expert with Greenpeace Russia.
“This largely destroys energy savings achieved thanks to the warmer climate during the winter heating season,” he said.
In addition, at least in Moscow, the situation is complicated by local bureaucracy. To place an air conditioner’s external unit on the outside wall of a Moscow apartment building takes up to six months, and obtaining the necessary permits can cost up to 100,000 rubles ($3,250), national media reported last month.
While Hovhannisyan conceded that the permit problem might pose a barrier, other industry experts said the reports were exaggerated.
Kushneryov from the Association of Climate Industry Businesses said permits in some city districts cost just 20,000 rubles ($650) and are valid for the entire side of an apartment building.
He added that it is usually legal to place units on a balcony, where permits are not needed.
While most industry players are banking on an increase in orders next year, Boryets of Panasonic said the increase would probably not pass 10 to 20 percent because many consumers are skeptical that the heat wave will repeat itself next summer.
“In the end, people might just decide to save the money,” he said.

TITLE: City Declares War On Street Banners
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In an effort to improve views in downtown Moscow, City Hall is pushing to eliminate banner advertisements within the Garden Ring over the next three years, significantly damaging a market worth $50 million last year.
Advertisers and architects have criticized the plan as a half-measure to bring order to the city’s cluttered streets. Without a clear set of advertising rules and an aesthetics committee empowered to enforce them, they say, downtown Moscow will remain dotted with promotional disorder.
“There are approximately 3,000 banners on Moscow streets and banners draw the most complaints from architects and the citizens,” said Vladimir Makarov, the head of Moscow’s advertising committee.
About 18,000 contracts for outdoor advertising space are set to expire between 2011 and 2013, and when they do, “ugly” banners strung across roads in the center will be gone, Makarov told The Moscow Times.
The advertising committee, along with colleagues from the city’s -architecture committee, developed a plan last year that would exclude street banners from the list of advertising mediums allowed in central Moscow.
City Hall’s master planning -committee, chaired by Mayor Yury Luzhkov, discussed and approved the plan in June. Earlier this month, -Makarov began promoting the move in interviews to Russian media outlets.
“If you have contracts for these [advertising] platforms, we won’t touch you. Do your business. But we, the city, will decide whether to allow this type of advertising in new tenders,” Makarov said.
Alexei Klimenko, a campaigner for city beautification and a member of the Moscow chief architect’s expert council, said the city’s approach should be more transparent and organized.
“Instead of seriously discussing the subject, they come up with projects like this every once in a while. Let’s make it a matter of public discussion,” he said in an interview.
“The city’s image should be put in the hands of professionals — those with the experience and the eye to work on it,” Klimenko said. “Luzhkov is an absolute virgin in issues of culture.”
He said there should be a systematic approach to improving the city, including a dedicated body in charge of “what the city looks like,” with professional architects, artists and designers working alongside Muscovites and the city’s administration.
The banners, part of the city’s Soviet legacy, gained new popularity as a place for commercial advertising in the 1990s, Makarov said. Now, he argued, they’re an eyesore obscuring Moscow’s architecture.
Makarov also contested claims that the plan infringes on advertisers’ rights to choose their platforms.
“Imagine you have an apartment and decide to rent it out to a family of two. And then they let 15 Gypsies move in, start making belyashi [meat pies] and tell you that you’re violating their right to use your apartment. They put up ‘apartment for one hour’ type ads in the paper. Your friends start to call you and ask, ‘What’s going on in your apartment? It smells like marijuana, etc.’ Most likely you’ll get agitated,” Makarov said.
“It’s the same with companies that rent the city’s property,” he said.
Not everyone shares Makarov’s zeal.
Getting rid of banners that block historic buildings and monuments may be a good initiative, but it is -nothing but a “shield for other things the officials are doing,” Klimenko said.
Advertisers also want to see a more organized approach to the city’s policy. Moscow companies have brushed off the upcoming ban, which only covers the city center.
“The demand will remain, and if all banners are removed, the prices will soar, “ said Igor Rybkin, an account manager at Mediakom CG, which matches advertisers with ad space across town. Banners, he said, are among the most effective ways to advertise, despite a higher price than billboards.
Renting a billboard costs 50,000 rubles to 60,000 rubles ($1,600 to $1,950) a month, while a banner will cost 40,000 to 50,000 rubles for 10 days, Rybkin said, adding that the numbers vary greatly based on the size and location.
“Banners constitute about 11 percent of Moscow’s nearly half a billion dollar advertising market — including above-ground transport and the subway,” said Sergei Shumovsky, chief expert at Espar Analitik, a Moscow firm specializing in advertising market analysis.

TITLE: Gay Activist Spirited Away to Belarus
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A leading gay rights activist was detained at a Moscow airport and resurfaced in Minsk in a bizarre case that his supporters linked to his campaign to pressure Moscow’s City Hall to allow gay pride rallies.
Nikolai Alexeyev was held by police shortly before the departure of his flight to Geneva from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on Wednesday evening, gay activist Nikolai Bayev said.
“He was sitting in the airport’s waiting hall when he was approached by border guards and customs and police officers,” Bayev said, citing a text message from Alexeyev.
Alexeyev also sent out text messages saying he was being taken 600 kilometers from Moscow in an unspecified direction, Solidarity opposition activist Alexei Davydov told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Alexeyev said in his messages that unspecified officials were pressuring him to cancel an upcoming rally against Mayor Yury Luzhkov and to call off lawsuits filed in the European Court of Human Rights over gay pride rallies banned by City Hall, Bayev said.
An airport spokeswoman, Yelena Galanova, said Alexeyev had refused to obey security measures.
“He refused to remove his shoes during a check. The airport security service informed his air carrier about it, and the company removed him from the flight,” Galanova told RIA-Novosti.

TITLE: Airport  Terminal Opened
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new Sochi airport terminal intended to serve passengers arriving for the 2014 Winter Olympics and built by Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element at a cost of 6.2 billion rubles ($200 million) officially opened Thursday.
The terminal is the first major facility commissioned for the games and ticks off a box on Russia’s long to-do list in preparation for the event.
The new terminal is fully operational and services both domestic and international flights. It boasts the latest know-how in ecological and resource efficiency and the most modern equipment, the company said in a statement.
“This is a major event not just for Basic Element … but also for the main Russian resort city of Sochi and the Krasnodar region, as a modern airport is a key element of the region’s future prosperity,” Deripaska said.
“The new air gateway is what will give our guests — the tourists, sportsmen and women, official delegations and spectators who fly in from all over the world — their first impressions of the Olympic Sochi,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee.
Analysts say the construction cost is surprisingly low compared with similar projects. The expansion of St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo, for example, is a 1.2 billion euro ($1.6 billion) endeavor.

TITLE: Yeliseyevsky Store Lease Won at Auction
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Companies belonging to Arkady Novikov, Igor Leitis and Yevgeny Prigozhin battled it out at an auction last week for the right to a ten-year rental agreement for the former Yeliseyevsky delicatessen store on Nevsky Prospekt. The price soared 70 percent to $710 per square meter per year.
The annual rent for the 1,000-square-meter premises at 56 Nevsky Prospekt, which have stood empty for the last few years, was set at 12.5 million rubles ($403,000) but rose to 21.2 million rubles ($684,000) at Wednesday’s auction. The lot comprises three sections, including a basement, which the terms of the deal stipulate must be used to house a caf?. The second story is to host an office, while the lessee is obliged to open a grocery store on the first floor.
A representative of Paritet company, which won the auction, declined to comment. According to SPARK Interfax data, Paritet was registered one month ago and belongs to its general director, Andrei Karavayev. The winning company is connected to Adamant holding, according to a source close to one of the auction’s participants. Igor Leitis, Adamant’s president, denies the connection.
Five companies took part in the auction. Adamant’s vice president, Yevgeny Gurevich, said that Adamant Service took part in the auction, but stopped bidding before the end. He said that the winning company offered a price that was too high and in his opinion, economically unjustified. 
Restaurateur Arkady Novikov said his company also took part in the auction for the Yeliseyevsky rental agreement, but declined to give further comment, saying he did not know the details of the auction’s outcome. Garant Plyus company, which is connected to restaurateur Yevgeny Prigozhin, also took part in the bidding. Irina Mukhina, general director of Garant Plyus, is the director of several companies founded by Prigozhin, according to SPARK Interfax data. A representative of Prigozhin declined to comment.
Representatives of Ginza Project restaurant group and the French chain Hediard (which belongs to Senator Sergei Pugachyov), who had previously announced their intention to invest in the Yelivseyevsky store, said last week that they had not taken part in the bidding.
According to the City Property Management Committee, the premises at 56 Nevsky Prospekt are not eligible for sale. The auction winner is obliged to carry out security and preservation work on the federal monument: Two years will be required to repair the building’s facades, and a year to restore the interior. 
Exceeding the starting price by 70 percent is a good result, considering that the lessee will have to invest in the building’s restoration, said Andrei Stepanenko, director of the St. Petersburg Property Fund.
Without additional obligations, such premises could be sold for twice or 2.5 times as much money, but taking into consideration the security requirements and limitations on the building’s use, the price of $710 per square meter per year is objective, said Nikolai Kazansky, general director of Colliers International in St. Petersburg. Rent prices for ready-for-use premises on Nevsky Prospekt range from $4,000 to $5,000 per square meter per year, he said. According to him, interest in such properties has begun to increase again. In the first half of this year, rental rates for the most attractive premises on the city’s main thoroughfare grew by more than 60 percent compared to June 2009. 
The historic Yeliseyevsky store was previously rented from the city by Yelivseyevsky Magazin company. In April 2007, the company stopped paying its rent, and City Hall went to court to annul its rental contract with the company. Since then, the local landmark has stood empty.

TITLE: Spending on Roads Is Growing
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SOCHI — The market for the construction of roads, bridges and tunnels may grow at least 4 percent to 730 billion rubles ($23.5 billion) this year, the head of a builders’ association said Thursday.
Sergei Mozalyov, executive director of the Russian Bridge Builders Association, based his estimate on rising spending in the sector by regional governments. The market expanded 5 percent to 701 billion rubles last year, he said.
Spending to build roads and bridges for the 2014 Sochi Olympics has already peaked, he said, as the projects are slated to be operational in 2012.
Despite the impressive size of Russia’s road construction market, it has no foreign contractors because of the high entry barriers, Mozalyov said.
“One has to obtain registration and permits from so many organizations that it’s a bit of a scare for them,” he said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
For example, a contractor has to certify its welding expertise with the National Welding Control Association, including equipment, technology and every welder by name, Mozalyov said.
He estimated that Chinese construction companies would be the first foreigners to try to enter the market. They may gain a competitive advantage if the Russian government allows them to bring a cheap work force from China, he said.
Foreign road construction companies now only provide their expertise and investment in joint concessions with Russian companies, Mozalyov said. France’s Vinci is a partner in one such plan to build a road from Moscow to St. Petersburg that was supposed to run through the Khimki forest. President Dmitry Medvedev recently suspended the work following a public outcry over possible environmental damage.
Russia’s main nonconcession road construction projects include the construction of the M-4, or Don highway, from Moscow to Novorossiisk, as well as the Chita-Khabarovsk highway that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected recently. Of the total spending on roads, 40 percent is for maintenance, Mozalyov told reporters.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Kopeks Face the Chop</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia may stop minting 1 kopek and 5 kopek coins because increased prices mean they now cost more to produce than the value of their metal, Vedomosti daily reported. 
The central bank has submitted proposals to parliament, the newspaper reported, citing a letter from the bank.
The Duma will support the proposals, Vedomosti said, citing Pavel Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Duma’s financial committee.

<strong>Toll Road Tenders Won</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Allies of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will build the country’s first major toll roads, Bloomberg reported, citing Vedomosti daily.
Arkady Rotenberg has won a government concession to build the new Moscow-St. Petersburg route and Yury Kovalchuk will build the Moscow-Minsk link, Vedomosti reported Monday.

TITLE: Business Model for 4G Technology Raises Questions
AUTHOR: By Justin Lifflander
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Communications and Press Ministry has its finger on the trigger of the starter’s pistol, but no one knows when the race will begin or who is actually participating.
Once they are off and running, the players, who have already spent billions of dollars to get in shape, will have to overcome large hurdles, while the prize money keeps going down.
The race is all about winning market share for high-speed broadband mobile Internet. It will start when the Communications and Press Ministry issues the rights to use new radio frequencies, perhaps by the end of this year.
But even more important than the technology, industry players say, is whether operators will be able to create a viable business model to build the fourth-generation, or 4G, network.
Sky Link, an operator who targeted the mobile Internet market exclusively from its start seven years ago and now makes more than 50 percent of its revenue from Internet services, is cautious about future returns of the market as a whole.
“Its clear from the example of 3G that the growth of mobile data traffic doesn’t bring a noticeable improvement to the industry’s bottom line,” Sky Link general director Gulnara Khasyanova told The St. Petersburg Times. “The tariffs offered now for mobile Internet are even lower than those for fixed Internet.”
Mobile phones are not just for talking anymore. People use them to read e-mail, check traffic and view truncated web sites. What might look like bells and whistles now will soon enough be taken for granted by everyone, just like the cell phone itself, said officials with Russia’s leading mobile operators. People will demand even more speed and quality.
4G initially promises to offer a connection 10 times faster than 3G, and eventually speeds will be more than 300 times faster than today’s fastest mobile data link. What will people do with so much speed? Anything they can do today with a good PC hooked up to a fast network.
The likelihood of consumers taking more speed and services for granted might be the very reason why no one seems to be questioning whether there is a need to invest billions of dollars in a technology that most people have not even tried.
Before investing, however, operators will have to make the right technical decisions to support a challenging business model.
Network construction in a country as vast as Russia is not cheap. MegaFon has spent 8 billion rubles ($260 million) in 2010 so far on 3G network construction. By its estimate, building a modern mobile network from scratch to cover most of Russia would cost up to $7 billion, although MegaFon spokeswoman Tatyana Ivanova said the company feels it can leverage up to 80 percent of the existing infrastructure in an “evolutionary” migration to 4G.
That would still leave in excess of $2 billion to be spent by each major operator to upgrade to 4G. Multiply that by four, and overall investment will reach $8 billion to $10 billion.
Contrast that with the fact that total gross revenue from mobile data in 2009 was just $1.4 billion, according to ComNews Research. Mobile Internet traffic is forecast to grow 2.4 times between 2009 and 2010, and 4G will likely eat into the fixed Internet market, but it’s still a marathon.
For Mobile TeleSystems’ 3G network, company chief technology officer Andrei Ushatsky estimated a return on investment of four to five years. The average revenue per user is not likely to increase in such a competitive market, even with impressive new services, industry experts confirm. Currently, unlimited mobile Internet tariffs from the leading operators average about $15 per month.
Base stations for 4G are about 30 percent more expensive than those for 3G, according to VimpelCom. At the same time, though, the cost per square kilometer of coverage for 4G could actually be less than 3G if lower frequencies are used, since they have a greater coverage range.
VimpelCom and MegaFon representatives said they would prefer to get frequencies in the lower range to cover less densely populated areas and are likely to use a higher range in bigger cities.
In any case it is essential for roaming that the operators locally implement the standard technologies being rolled out abroad, otherwise there will be no mobility.
A bundle of money is at stake, with the domestic mobile market approaching $20 billion in annual revenue and 200 million subscribers by the end of 2010, according to statistics released by the Communications and Press Ministry earlier this month. So it is no wonder that there is controversy around a major step such as the launch of a next-generation network.
The initial standard for 4G transmission favored by operators in Russia and Europe is called Long Term Evolution, or LTE. It has been deployed on a small scale in a half-dozen countries since the end of last year. MTS launched an LTE network in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in August, and pilot projects have been done in Russia by Rostelecom and MegaFon in Sochi and Yota in Kazan. Here, the road to full deployment is characteristically Russian: long and poorly lit.
The radio frequencies needed by the operators to start deployment are now controlled by various internal government communications organizations, digital television, older mobile phone technologies and the Defense Ministry. They are just below the current 2G range of 900 megahertz and above the 3G range of 2.1 gigahertz. Getting access to these frequencies is proving difficult.
The State Committee for Radio Frequencies, the responsible body in the Communications and Press Ministry, was to have considered frequency distribution at a meeting last month, possibly giving frequencies to two entirely new players, industry sources said. The topic never made it to the agenda, thanks in part to a strongly worded joint letter from MegaFon, MTS and VimpelCom sent earlier in the summer to the government, demanding fair and transparent distribution.
On Wednesday, Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, told The St. Petersburg Times that he had received a letter from his U.S. counterpart, Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, expressing concern that American investors in MTS and VimpelCom might be hurt if Russia did not hold an open tender for 4G licenses.
A Communications and Press Ministry spokesman said in an e-mailed statement that the timing and agenda for the next meeting of the State Committee for Radio Frequencies was still being determined but it was expected to take place this year.
All the major operators say 4G is a question of “when,” not “if.” Khasyanova said Sky Link would “quickly upgrade the network to 4G” once the frequency issue is resolved.
MegaFon’s Ivanova said it was realistic for her company to complete its 4G network within two years from starting work.
Once the network is built, consumers will need telephones that operate in the new frequency ranges. Leading component and handset manufacturers are getting ready. Qualcomm has chipsets for LTE equipment in the works. Samsung launched an LTE device for notebooks.
Samsung hopes to be the first to market a 4G mobile phone in Russia, said Marina Doronina, Samsung’s corporate PR manager for Russia.
But Russian companies do not intend to be left behind. Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov demonstrated a prototype of a Russian-designed 4G telephone to President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday. The phones initially will be made in Taiwan, but eventually the manufacturing will move to Russia, Chemezov said on NTV television.
The operators are tracking 4G handsets closely. VimpelCom expects its first 4G handsets sometime next year. MegaFon is looking for a vendor partner for joint branding and distribution. So perhaps by next winter Ded Moroz will be taking requests for 4G telephones.

TITLE: Transneft, Summa 
To Buy Sea Port
AUTHOR: By Anastasia Dagayeva and Natalya Kostenko
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Transneft and Ziyavudin Magomedov’s investment group Summa Capital are purchasing a controlling stake in Novorossiisk Commercial Sea Port to merge it with their Primorsk port, giving the partners control of almost all crude loaded for export from European Russia.
The deal will be in two phases, NCSP said in a statement Wednesday. NCSP will buy 100 percent of Primorsk Oil Terminal, also known as PTP, from Transneft and Summa Capital. The partners will then buy a controlling stake in NCSP, the statement said.
The terms of the deal have not yet been agreed upon, and NCSP’s board of directors will need to meet. Both deals require approval from the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and the government’s commission on foreign investment, the port said.
Based on NCSP’s market capitalization, a controlling stake would be worth $1.5 billion. Analysts interviewed by Vedomosti were unable to estimate what the Primorsk port is worth, but in an interview with Kommersant in December, Transneft president Nikolai Tokarev valued it at “something like $5 billion.”
At that price, Transneft and Summa Capital would leave the deal with additional cash.
Finalizing the purchase could take three to six months, a source close to NCSP told Vedomosti. Transneft and Summa Capital will own equal stakes in the 50.1 percent of NCSP, Interfax reported.
Currently, the 50.1 percent of NCSP belongs to Kadina Ltd., while the state owns 20 percent, and units of Russian Railways own 5 percent. Kadina is 80 percent owned by family members of NCSP chairman Alexander Ponomarenko and State Duma Deputy Alexander Skorobogatko. The remaining 20 percent in Kadina belongs to companies controlled by Arkady Rotenberg.
Rotenberg is a childhood friend and judo partner of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The businessman also heads the St. Petersburg judo club Yavara-Neva, whose honorary president is Putin and whose board of trustees includes First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov.
Rotenberg acquired a stake in NCSP in 2008, in part thanks to Transneft. Tokarev had just become president of the oil pipeline monopoly, which was trying to get NCSP to sell its infrastructure for the Sheskharis oil-loading terminal. Loading crude for export provides the port with at least half of its revenue.
The conflict ended once Rotenberg became a shareholder.
Transneft has long been unhappy with the tariffs it pays for oil loading at NCSP, said Kirill Kazanli, an analyst at Troika Dialog. Now, the state company will be able to set the rates itself, he said.

TITLE: Made (Up) in England
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: British journalist Mary Dejevsky, whose Sept. 5 ode to St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko in Britain’s The Independent newspaper shocked many with its rapturous, one-sided tone and crude factual errors, responded to critics last week with another article published on openDemocracy.net.
Described as one of Britain’s most respected commentators on Russia, the EU and the U.S. on her newspaper’s web site, Dejevsky suggested in her original article that Matviyenko might become the next Russian president, comparing her to Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel. Matviyenko’s press service immediately responded by denying any presidential ambitions but nevertheless thanked Dejevsky for her high estimation of Matviyenko’s work as governor.
Dejevsky is a member of the Valdai Discussion Club, an organization created in 2004 to bring Western journalists and experts to Russia and present them with the Kremlin’s views on various issues (critics say, to “brainwash” them.) From the town of Valdai, Dejevsky and other members of the club were taken to St. Petersburg at the beginning of this month to meet Matviyenko at her Smolny headquarters and then to Sochi to meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“For the first time in my more than 30 years of visiting, people on the streets of St. Petersburg seem confident and content with themselves,” Dejevsky wrote after this brief visit, claiming that “the city has changed conspicuously for the better” during Matviyenko’s seven years as governor — improvable statements that sound suspiciously like an uncritical reproduction of the PR that Matviyenko’s office issues in huge quantities. In Dejevsky’s article, Matviyenko is presented as an effective administrator and corruption fighter, which is exactly the opposite of how her local critics and opponents see her.
Defending her first article on openDemocracy.net, Dejevsky admitted that her characterization of Matviyenko’s presidential potential was an attention-grabbing device to make her article, entitled “Valentina Matviyenko: Meet Russia’s Thatcher, the chemist who could end up in the Kremlim [sic],” interesting to British readers. She wrote that nobody, including Matviyenko herself, had suggested this idea to her. “The idea was to point out that there were other impressive Russian politicians around, not to nominate her for President,” she explained.
Dejevsky did not back up her claim, made in the original article in The Independent, that Matviyenko had been “convincingly elected.” Gubernatorial elections were abolished by then-President Vladimir Putin in 2005, and Putin reappointed Matviyenko to her current job in 2006.
Supported by Putin and the Kremlin-controlled media, Matviyenko (who was Putin’s personal representative to the Northwest Russia Federal District at the time) was elected by Petersburgers only once, in 2003, but only after the far more popular Vladimir Yakovlev, her predecessor as governor, was prevented from running for re-election by the Kremlin and appointed to a ministerial position in Moscow. Only 17.8 percent of Petersburgers who were eligible to participate in the elections voted for her then, against a total turnout of around 28 percent, according to the Central Election Commission’s web site. The majority of Petersburg voters ignored the election, many of them unhappy about the trick played on them by the Kremlin.
A revealing point in Dejevsky’s second article is her defense of her erroneous assertion in the first article that Gazprom’s notorious 403-meter skyscraper for its planned Okhta Center was designed by Norman Foster. In fact, the project’s architect is the U.K.-based firm RMJM.
“[Matviyenko] mentioned Foster as the architect, and I checked that this was so,” Dejevsky wrote imperturbably.
In reality, Foster chaired the project’s jury in the early stages of the design competition. He publicly resigned from the jury along with two other prominent international architects in 2006 after Gazprom and Petersburg officials made clear their preference for RMJM’s proposal. Since then, City Hall has promoted and supported the controversial project with all the means at its disposal, despite the fact that the design contravenes many local and federal planning and heritage preservation laws and has provoked strong opposition from the city’s architects and residents, including high-profile figures.
Some Russian critics, including the U.K.-based Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, have suggested that the article was “commissioned” or is somehow connected with Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev’s purchase of The Independent in March. This does not seem to be the case: Dejevsky has written articles favorable to the Russian authorities for years, and her arguments have often been uncritical repetitions of Kremlin propaganda.
In 2005, Dejevsky dismissed the opposition to Putin, writing that it consisted only of communists and nationalists. In another article, she suggested that renegade FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko was not murdered in 2006, but had come into contact with polonium because he was involved in a radioactive materials smuggling scheme. In 2008, she defended the much-criticized Russian presidential election as “not a charade,” and complained that Western media coverage of the war between Russia and Georgia was “wrong.”
“The British image of Russia is extremely negative, unfairly negative, and in many respects quite inaccurate and distorted,” Dejevsky said at a debate at the London-based INSTID (Institute for State Ideologies) in March. Dejevsky’s reporting is certainly positive, albeit to the Russian authorities, rather than to Russians themselves, but is it accurate and unbiased?
Dejevsky may have gotten one thing right in her article in The Independent. Judging by how the obscure Dmitry Medvedev was named Putin’s successor and installed in the office of president in 2008, just about anyone could become president if he or she suits Putin and his backers. That is, of course, if Putin’s regime lasts until the next presidential elections, now scheduled for 2012.

Sergey Chernov is a journalist at The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: Controlling People Through Language
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: While in England traveling with a British friend, I was speaking to a cashier at a railway station when I was dumbstruck by the look of frightened amazement on the woman’s face at my use of the word “passenger.” Seeing my perplexity, my friend explained: “We don’t use that word in Britain. Railway employees are on strict orders to say ‘client’ instead of ‘passenger.’”
In that sense, the privatized British railway differs from the Russian and French where they still remember that transportation exists not for “providing services to customers,” but for the very specific and mundane purpose of transporting passengers. But the new “Corporatese” is popping up everywhere. A journalist who asked me to comment on the new health-care bill phrased her question in that same annoying way: “In your opinion, how does that document influence the availability of medical services?”
“What medical services are you talking about?” I snapped. “You mean ‘medical assistance.’ Services are when I buy something I want at the market. But when a person has a heart attack or a broken leg, he doesn’t need services. He needs assistance.”
There are many examples like this. The new vocabulary hides behind the mask of political correctness, although it long ago lost any connection to it. Thirty years ago in the United States, people started to clean the language of racist and stereotypical terms that were offensive to women and minorities. In this way, they hoped to create a culture of equality and tolerance. It was a noble goal that never went beyond the level of language. The social problems themselves did not improve.
Worse, by fiddling with the language, participants in the debate increasingly lost sight of the goal and became mired in a discussion of linguistics. Meanwhile, the social aspect of the problems was regarded as taboo.
Market reforms have given rise to new revisions of the language. The content and meaning of all personal activities are now expressed in terms of buying and selling, providing services or upholding contractual obligations. We are witnessing the systematic dehumanization of the language, with the individual reduced to nothing but a consumer in the market system.
Totalitarian regimes of the 20th century showed that control of the language is one element in maintaining control over the people. Deprived of an adequate complement of words, the people are unable to express thoughts contrary to the standards imposed on them and become helpless and easily managed. Even if they are unhappy or dissatisfied with conditions, they are unable to put that discontent into words, much less actions. Control is more easily maintained at the linguistic level than through police repression and brute force.
In British writer George Orwell’s anti-Utopian book “1984,” this new language was called Newspeak. Fortunately, much has changed since 1984. The Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes are gone, but not the totalitarian methods of exercising control over the people. The fewer options the ruling regime has of achieving sweeping political control, the more it will resort to indirect methods of control, such as the manipulation of language, to preserve the existing order.
The best, albeit banal, defense against this insidious weapon is to speak the plain truth as much as possible.

Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

TITLE: The End Is Near for Luzhkov
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: The biggest news story by far last week was the scandal surrounding Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov. After NTV aired its “Delo v Kepke” program on Sept. 10, which included serious allegations of corruption against him and his wife, Yelena Baturina, there were more anti-Luzhkov reports in the following days on Channel One, Rossia One and NTV.
Many had expected that there would be attacks on Luzhkov in one form or another, particularly after two other heavyweight governors — Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel and Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev — were removed last year. Luzhkov now is the very last of the Mohicans.
But why did the attacks occur at this particular moment? When someone as important as Luzhkov is publicly targeted, the exact timing of these hunting campaigns is usually tied to the political calendar. It would have been too early to target Luzhkov prior to what turned out to be the dirty Moscow City Duma elections in October 2009. And once the campaigning begins soon for State Duma elections in 2011, it will be too late. This explains why the authorities set the dogs on Luzhkov last week instead of any other time.
The most-cited reason for the timing was that it was in retaliation for Luzhkov’s supposed attempt to drive a wedge in the ruling tandem by voicing critical comments in a Sept. 7 interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta against President Dmitry Medvedev. In the article, Luzhkov criticized Medvedev’s decision to suspend construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway through the Khimki forest. But this explanation for the timing of the anti-Luzhkov attacks is not the most compelling.
Although a similar campaign was unleashed two months ago against Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov, the anti-Luzhkov campaign is much larger in scale and severity. In a typical Russian region, only one or two local business groups want to put their man in the governor’s seat, but in Moscow, all of the country’s top business groups have a direct vested interest in who is the mayor.
To be sure, there is no shortage of influential business groups that are itching to replace Luzhkov and, most surprisingly, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin apparently gave them the green light to initiate the media campaign against Luzhkov — or at the very least, he did not object. At the same time, however, it is easier for Putin to keep the controversial mayor in place than to search for a replacement.
But now the stakes are too high. Too much effort has been made attacking and defending Luzhkov for the scandal to simply evaporate over time. It is possible that Luzhkov will be replaced when the affair settles down and immediately after his 74th birthday on Tuesday. Or he might be given the pink slip shortly after the regional elections on Oct. 10. After these elections, the model for the next election campaign will become clear: Either the authorities will tighten the screws by stepping up administrative pressure on elections, or they will strengthen United Russia’s allies.
All the forces that Luzhkov mobilized to fight the attacks against him were not very effective. He used the Moscow branch of United Russia and the Moscow City Duma — both fully under his control — as well as veterans’ organizations and the aging Communists, including Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. None of these forces is willing to follow Luzhkov to his political grave, but as long as United Russia and government leadership remain silent, they are willing to defend Luzhkov.
United Russia, of which Luzhkov is one of the founding fathers, has been an important but absolutely paralyzed factor in the conflict. At the outset, the party promised to sort out all of the problems, but it has offered nothing but empty words. This demonstrates the complete bankruptcy and failure of the so-called party of power.
The most difficult task in this whole affair will be to find Luzhkov’s replacement. His successor will have to meet at least three main requirements. One, he must be lacking in ambition or have some limiting factor, such as old age or political obscurity, that would prevent him from being too aggressive. Second, he must lack direct ties to any of the powerful business groups. Third, he must have a good working knowledge of the Moscow political machine and the ability to assume command quickly. Of all the candidates currently under discussion, none fulfill these requirements except perhaps Nizhny Novgorod Governor Valery Shantsev, who also served as deputy mayor to Luzhkov before his gubernatorial appointment.
The Luzhkov affair underscores how the current leadership is unable to build a consensus or reach a compromise among the leading business groups. But more importantly, this scandal delivered a heavy blow to the legitimacy of both the mayor and to the entire system of governance under Medvedev and Putin.

Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

TITLE: The Business of Russia Is Corruption
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Not long after the smoke from the summer’s fires had cleared away from Moscow streets, the city awoke to the amazing spectacle of multi-channel television attacks on Mayor Yury Luzhkov. The Russian bureaucracy has begun devouring its own kind, targeting one of the country’s purportedly most corrupt officials.
Like everyone in Russia, I have my own opinion on what is happening. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has worked hard since 2008 to shape President Dmitry Medvedev into his bona fide successor, which will allow Putin to retire into private life in 2012 and enjoy his reportedly vast fortune. Putin trusts Medvedev not to go after him when he relinquishes power, but Medvedev lacks authority to stand on his own two feet in the Byzantine corridors of the Kremlin.
How Medvedev handles the Luzhkov affair will test Medvedev’s ability to take on a formidable opponent. Moreover, if Medvedev could dump Luzhkov and place his own loyalist as the new Moscow mayor, the country’s most powerful post after prime minister and president, Medvedev would have a formidable power base of his own. But if Medvedev proves too weak for the task and Luzhkov holds on to his seat, Putin could fire Medvedev and take back the presidency in 2012.
Whether my interpretation of the Kremlin intrigues — or anybody else’s for that matter — is correct makes no difference. What matters is that knocking down Luzhkov presents a danger to the entire political and economic structure in Russia.
In summer 1990, I helped put together a documentary on a coal miner strike in the Donbass region. Two labor historians who taught at New York University had brought back priceless footage of spontaneous rallies, meetings with mining representatives and strike leaders and scenes at the mines. While we worked on the film, which was called “Perestroika From Below,” the Soviet economy continued its sharp deterioration. Things only got worse in 1991, and after an abortive military coup in August 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated.
It was then that I realized that those strikes might have caused the collapse of the Soviet economy and the state. The planned Communist economy was a rigid structure in which every enterprise got its input from a designated supplier and shipped its products to a predetermined customer. When a large enough link in the chain — such as the Donbass mines — stopped producing, its customers had no mechanisms to find other suppliers. The strikes caused insurmountable disruptions, which gradually paralyzed the entire economy.
Nothing I have read since then has provided a more convincing explanation for the sudden Soviet economic breakdown.
In the 1920s, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge famously said, “The business of the United States is business.” To restate this expression to reflect Russia, “The business of Russia is government corruption.” For the past decade, Russia has been producing massive corruption, successfully turning top government officials and well-connected entrepreneurs into Forbes’ A-list billionaires.
Russia’s system of political corruption is rigid and tightly interlinked. Moreover, it is wedded to a highly inflexible and narrow political system. The system is diametrically opposed to democracy and a free market, which possess considerable flexibility to accommodate economic and political shocks. The real danger in the Luzhkov scandal is that if such an important, huge link in the corrupt chain as the city of Moscow is tinkered with, the entire state edifice might come tumbling down.

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

TITLE: Mariinsky Theater Celebrates 150th Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Mariinsky Theater looked to the future as it celebrated its 150th birthday with a gala night that included segments from the ballets “Swan Lake” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” featuring ballerinas Ulyana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva, and talk of the new stage that is set to open in 2012.
Legendary Bolshoi Theater ballerina Maya Plisetskaya was among the guests Friday who saw an exquisite performance by Lopatkina as the dying swan. Artistic director Valery Gergiev conducted, with pianist Denis Matsuyev accompanying.
Both the opera and ballet troupes are in desperate need of more space, Gergiev said in an interview. After years of delays and changes, the new stage, designed by Canadian architect Jack Diamond, looks to be on schedule to open the year after next.
“We’ll have more world premieres, more foreign companies invited, more visitors,” Gergiev said. “It’s embarrassing to say, but sometimes we even have to keep stage scenery outside,” because there’s no room for it elsewhere.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended a performance of “Swan Lake” on Saturday, a day after the gala, before attending a meeting of the theater’s board of trustees.
“I congratulate all friends, trustees and partners of the Mariinsky Theater on its 150th anniversary,” Putin said, Interfax reported. “There is really a very good troupe here, with a brilliant tradition, which has developed successfully under the leadership of Valery Gergiev.”
Diamond was chosen to design the new theater after Parisian-architect Dominique Perrault, who won an international competition in 2003, backed out of the project in 2007.
Diamond’s design is more inclusive with transparent facades so that passers-by can look into the theater itself.
“The social dimension is always important in architecture, and in a public building like this, it’s even more important. To my mind, it’s significant that people passing in the street see the crowds gathering inside,” Diamond said in an interview. “Old opera houses were blank; you had to go through the wall, and there was a mystique. But now, especially with youth who are coming less [to the theater] … it’s important for them to see people in jeans or dressed up or having a party in such places. It removes the mystique, so the transparency of a building today gives people the confidence to go.”
Diamond, a big fan of classical music, specializes in acoustics for concert halls and said he realizes that excellent acoustics are always “more important for opera houses than architecture.” 
Gergiev said that Diamond’s experience in building concert halls was the determinant in his choice for the architect and expressed his approval of the design. 
“Jack Diamond built an opera theater in Toronto, and it was important for us to hear how voices and orchestra sound there, how convenient it is to rehearse there and even how quickly the participants can get to the stage, as one of our famous singers could not get to the stage from her dressing room in London for 10 minutes and even missed one of the major scenes,” Gergiev said.
The Mariinsky Theater traces its history back to 1783, when it was founded by Catherine the Great. Its current main building was designed by architect Alberto Cavos after the original theater burned down.
The theater opened on Oct. 2, 1860, with Mikhail Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Tsar,” and was given its present name in honor of Maria, wife of Tsar Alexander II.
The Mariinsky brought the world the premieres of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades,” Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” and other notable works. Its ballet company has included Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
“The current building gave the young Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky a great chance to shine, as well as Wagner, Verdi and Berlioz,” Gergiev said. “It will be great if in five to seven years, contemporary living composers will gain the same fame thanks to the new building.”
Gergiev added at a news conference Wednesday that the Mariinsky might stage opera versions of two Russian classics — Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls” and Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog” in the forthcoming season, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Mikhailovsky Theater Opens Season With ‘Laurencia’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s internationally renowned Mikhailovsky Theater opened its 178th season last week with two of its most recent premieres: Vakhtang Chabukiani’s ballet “Laurencia,” which played on Wednesday, followed the next day by a new production of Verdi’s opera “Un Ballo in Maschera.” 
The latter was staged for the company by the highly acclaimed Latvian director Andreis Zhagars, general director of the Latvian National Opera.
Prominent baritone Leo Nucci, who had been scheduled to appear in the role of Renato on Thursday, had to cancel his performance owing to a health problem.
On Nov. 9, 10 and 12, the theater will host the Days of Perm Culture festival, featuring performances by leading theater companies from the city of Perm, located near the Ural mountains.
This season, the Mikhailovsky Theater plans to stage the operas “Katya Kabanova” by Leos Janacek and a new staging of “Carmen” by Georges Bizet, as well as organize a contemporary ballet festival.
The company has signed a contract with a new artistic director, the internationally renowned Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato, who was previously at the helm of the National Dance Company of Spain and will join the Mikhailovsky later this season. 
“Engaging an internationally known choreographer at the peak of his strength and talent is incredibly significant, not only for the Mikhailovsky Theater, but for Russian ballet as a whole,” said Vladimir Kekhman, general director of the Mikhailovsky Theater.
The choreographer is due to start at the Mikhailovsky on Jan. 1.
“I will start working in St. Petersburg with energy and enthusiasm. It is a challenge for me,” Duato was quoted by the Agence France Presse news agency as saying.
Duato started out as a ballet dancer before moving on to choreography in 1988. He has choreographed ballet productions at the most prominent theaters around the world.
He had been invited to take charge of four or five ballet companies around the world, RIA Novosti reported.
According to Kekhman, Duato’s contract will last for five years, with the possibility of extending its duration. However, Duato said at a news conference in Moscow that he had an open-ended contract.
The Spanish choreographer also nurtures plans to hold a modern dance festival at the Mikhailovsky Theater in the spring of 2011.
Duato was born on Jan. 8, 1957, in Valencia. He began his dancing career at Stockholm’s Cullberg Ballet in 1980, and the following year, Netherlands Dance Theater balletmeister Jiri Kylian invited Duato to join his troupe, where he was promoted to the position of choreographer in 1988. Duato’s works have been staged across the globe by some of the world’s leading ballet companies, including the American Ballet Theater, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Deutsche Oper, Finnish National Opera, Stuttgart Ballet and the Australian Ballet. 
“Today you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of the world’s master choreographers — meaning choreographers with their own, fresh dance idiom, who think in choreographic images,” said Kekhman. “The opportunity to work under such a master is both a privilege and a responsibility: Our troupe will take on the style, idiom and choreographic vision of a great artist whose work is set to shape the future of international ballet,” he said.
Kekhman said he hoped that Duato’s work in St. Petersburg would serve as a catalyst for fostering home-grown young choreographic talent in Russia.
“It is no secret that as things stand, we have, to all intents and purposes, no new big names,” he said.

TITLE: Vote in Afghanistan Marred by Violence
AUTHOR: By Sardar Ahmad
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: KABUL — Concerns were growing Monday about intimidation and fraud in Afghanistan’s parliamentary election as allegations of voting irregularities filtered in from outlying parts of the war-torn country.
Millions of Afghans voted Saturday in their second parliamentary poll since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime, against a backdrop of insurgent threats and attacks.
With counting underway and the first preliminary results expected on Wednesday, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) was compiling reports of irregularities so that final results can be certified by Oct. 31.
Afghanistan’s main election observer body, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), which fielded almost 7,000 observers across the country, said some were prevented from carrying out their duties.
In its first report since the vote, FEFA said fake voter cards were found in 352 polling centers, multiple voting was witnessed at 1,228 sites and underage voting took place in 1,259 places.
Election officials said 5,355 polling centers opened on election day but that around 1,200 remained shut because security was poor.
Some polling centers opened late, and there were widespread allegations of bias by election workers, as well as problems with indelible ink — supposed to guard against a person voting more than once — that could be washed off.
FEFA called on the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to cooperate fully with the ECC into “investigations of fraud and coercion and to resist political pressure to announce the final results early without full verification of legitimate votes.”
President Hamid Karzai, whose own re-election last year was mired in fraud, has cancelled a trip to the UN General Assembly in New York to monitor the outcome of the polls, his spokesman, Waheed Omer, told reporters.
Omer said it was “too early” to judge the polls, adding: “Violations have surely taken place but we are awaiting the relevant authorities to address these problems.”
Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and irregularities had been expected after last year’s presidential poll in which more than a million votes were cancelled as fraudulent.
Western officials have said that with 2,500 candidates vying for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, thousands of complaints could be expected before the deadline of 72 hours after the close of voting.
The IEC said early figures showed four million people had voted, putting turnout at 40 percent of those able to vote — where polling stations opened.
In last year’s presidential election, turnout was estimated at 38.8 percent, according to IEC figures. The ECC said it invalidated more than 1.2 million votes, mainly on the basis of fraud and many in favor of Karzai.
NATO said at least 22 people were killed in polling day violence. The IEC said bodies of three election workers were found Sunday in Balkh, one of the provinces in the north where violence has increased over the last year.
Insurgents bombed polling stations and fired rockets in several cities. The governor of Kandahar, the Taliban’s southern stronghold, said he escaped a bomb attack on his convoy, and officials said several more attacks were foiled.
NATO figures showed a total of 294 insurgent attacks on Saturday, which the military compared favorably to 479 insurgent attacks on August 20 last year, the day of the presidential election.
The Taliban released a statement saying it had disrupted the poll enough to cause it to “fail.”
“The Afghan Islamic Emirate congratulates this achievement,” said the statement, using the name of the Taliban’s shadow government.
The United States and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have around 150,000 troops in the country fighting to bring an end the war, dragging towards its 10th year.
U.S. General David Petraeus, commander of the international force in Afghanistan, has commended the role played by Afghan forces, who were supported by ISAF troops in providing security for the vote.

TITLE: 29 Dead In Twin Car Bombings In Iraq
AUTHOR: By Sabah Arar
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Two near-simultaneous car bombs rocked the Iraqi capital on Sunday, killing at least 29 people and wounding 111 in the city’s deadliest day in a month.
The violence, which saw 38 people killed across the country, was the worst to hit Iraq since U.S. troops declared an official end to combat operations on Sept. 1, and comes with no new government yet formed since a March poll.
The twin blasts struck near the Aden junction in north Baghdad and in the residential district of Mansur in the west at around 10:10 am, security officials said.
An interior ministry official put the death toll at 29 — 19 in Aden and 10 in Mansur.
“It was a minibus — the driver stopped and told people nearby that he was going to go see a doctor,” said Abu Abdullah, 40, who was near the site of the Aden bombing. “A few minutes later, it exploded.”
An imbedded journalist said the blast, at a National Security department office building, left a crater three meters in diameter.
He reported blood, torn scraps of clothing and shards of blackened metal littered across the street, adding that the building had collapsed in on itself and several houses nearby had been badly hit.
In Mansur, another journalist reported seeing several bloodied bodies on the street, with many cars burned out and two buildings destroyed, while nearby houses were also badly damaged.
The explosion was outside an office of mobile phone company Asiacell, he said, but it was unclear if the office itself was the target.
“When the bomb exploded, all of our papers and chairs were thrown into the air and we were flung to the floor,” said one Asiacell employee who did not want to give his name.
“Everybody wanted to run away from the building, but fire and smoke was blocking our way,” he said, adding that two of his colleagues were killed in the blast and more than 10 were wounded.
The man, in his 20s, himself suffered head wounds, his clothes were covered in blood and dirt, and his car was badly burned.
A medical official at Al-Yarmuk hospital in west Baghdad said it had received 10 dead bodies and treated 59 people, including 11 women and two children.
Also on Sunday, a father and son were killed by a magnetic bomb attached to their car in Ghazaliyah, west Baghdad, the interior ministry official said.
He said three mortar rounds were fired into the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to many foreign embassies and government buildings, but they had not caused casualties or damage.
West of Baghdad in the Sunni Arab town of Fallujah, a suicide bomber killed six people, including three soldiers, near a popular restaurant in the city center, a doctor and an interior ministry official said.

TITLE: Australia Warns of Terrorism at Games
AUTHOR: By Talek Harris
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SYDNEY — Australia said Monday there was a “high risk of terrorism” during next month’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, in a stark travel warning after gunmen wounded two tourists outside a famous mosque.
The foreign affairs department urged visitors to pay close attention to their safety “at all times” during the Games, after a tour bus was sprayed with sub-machinegun fire at Delhi’s Jama Masjid.
“There is a high risk of terrorist attack in New Delhi,” the department said in an updated bulletin.
“Australians in New Delhi should be aware that the Commonwealth Games will be held in a security environment where there is a high risk of terrorism,” it added.
Two Taiwanese tourists were wounded, one seriously, after attackers on a motorbike opened fire Sunday, heightening security fears for the October 3-14 Games involving 7,000 athletes and officials, and fans from all over the world.
Two years ago, Islamist guerrillas from neighboring Pakistan killed 166 people in a sustained attack which paralyzed Mumbai, while India’s parliament in Delhi was also overrun by armed extremists in 2001.
The Australia warning said Delhi had suffered “at least 14 major terrorist attacks” since 2000, causing “hundreds of deaths and injuries.”
New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key said sports chiefs would decide this week whether to send athletes to the Games, acting on the advice of security experts.
“We are providing the best advice we can to the New Zealand Olympic Committee who have to make that decision by September 24 whether to travel to Delhi or not,” he said.
“One always takes these things seriously but we are also very hopeful that the Commonwealth Games will proceed, that New Zealand will go and do very well,” he told reporters.
Australia on Sunday said it would not withdraw its athletes from the event and described the risk as “acceptable,” in comments released before the Delhi shooting.
The assessment ran counter to the view of consultants from Homeland Security Asia-Pacific, who reportedly said dangerous failings at Delhi’s major hotels, airport and public transport system meant an 80 percent chance of an attack.
Organizers of the Games, the most expensive in the history of the event and also far behind schedule and mired in corruption allegations, attempted to play down any threat.
“The shooting incident this morning in Delhi will have no impact on the Commonwealth Games,” organizing committee secretary general Lalit Bhanot said in a statement on Sunday.
“The ministry of home affairs and Delhi police have made elaborate arrangements to provide the Commonwealth Games athletes and officials a safe and secure environment.”

TITLE: U.S. Officials Declare BP Well ‘Dead’
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: WASHINGTON — U.S. officials finally declared BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico “dead” on Sunday, five months after the deadly oil rig explosion that set off one of the costliest and largest environmental disasters ever.
Retired admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. point man for the response to the disaster, said the operation to intersect and cement the deepwater well had been successfully completed.
“With this development, which has been confirmed by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, we can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead,” Allen said.
“Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” he added.
The announcement marked an anti-climactic end to a five-month battle to cap a busted undersea well that gushed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the largest maritime spill ever.

TITLE: Hong Kong in the Viewfinder
AUTHOR: By Alexander Belenky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: To those who have never been to Hong Kong, the city seems distant, mysterious and other-worldly. When you visit it, however, you can’t help but fall in love with this fantastical city, this seething anthill of activity, this mixture of East and West, this Asian New York. 

Getting There
You can fly to Hong Kong from Moscow. Aeroflot has regular flights, and Cathay Pacific also began offering direct flights timed to give convenient connections to other destinations in the East from Hong Kong.  

Airport
The first thing to impress tourists upon arrival is the Chek Lap Kok Airport’s vast size and spaciousness. The airport has for several years been recognized as one of the most convenient in the world, with excellent infrastructure. Today, it’s also one of the biggest in Asia and the world. We were whizzed right from the plane to passport control on a special electric-powered train. Since 2009, Russian tourists have been able to enter Hong Kong without visas, so the documents are also over in a flash. Our group was picked up by three Rolls Royces, which silently sailed through tunnels and over cable-braced bridges on our way to the hotel. That’s how the legendary Peninsula Hotel greets its guests. 
Location

The center of Hong Kong is located on the Kowloon Peninsula and on the opposing shore of Hong Kong Island. Construction is so dense, as a result of the shortage of land (and its great expense), that it’s even referred to as “Hong Kong’s forest” by the locals. You can get from one side of town to the other by metro or on small ferries. There are also three toll tunnels for cars, the prices varying on each. Many of the locals make do without cars, due to the high taxes on them and the high cost of use — parking is an issue. The tube, trams and buses run like clockwork, and the taxis come in two different colors: red for trips around town, and blue for trips out into the sticks. And remember, they drive on the left, as Hong Kong was until recently a British colony. 

Accommodation
Finding a good place to stay at a reasonable price in Hong Kong isn’t easy. This is not a particularly cheap city. If you’re on a low budget, you can stay in a high-rise on Nathan Road, where you can get a very modestly furnished room for $15-$30 in one of the 8- to 10-story hotel blocks. They’re cramped, but cheap and in the center. 
If your budget allows it, you can opt for the Mandarin Hotel, or, even better, the Peninsula, with its English traditions, history and fleet of Rollers and Mini Coopers in its underground parking area. Guests can take one of the minis for a spin around town, and the traditional five o’clock tea in the hotel’s caf? attracts the city’s beau monde, who are even prepared to stand in line for the pleasure. On top of all that, there are panoramic views from every room. The downside is that a large, three-room luxury suite will set you back $1,300. Through the windows (they could more accurately be described as glass walls) you get breathtaking views of the skyline of Hong Kong Island.
Shopping

Hong Kong is not rich in historical or architectural monuments. It wins out, however, with its atmosphere, the rhythm of the hustle and bustle of its street life, its mixture of skyscrapers and tiny shops, its multi-colored, glittering advertisements, its aromas of delicious food and its incredible shopping. 
The golden mile of Nathan Road on the Kowloon Peninsula is spectacular, both in terms of the way it looks and the way it sounds: a sea of lights, people hurrying, double-decker buses, signs at crossings for dazed pedestrians telling them to look right, and building fa?ades ascending ever higher into the sky. Be careful, however, as the traders here are sharp, and well-off tourists are best advised to stick to the department stores in the Central neighborhood or the vast shopping mall on the local Times Square. 
 
What to see
Peak Victoria is a must — you reach the top in small cable-trams with steps inside to help you deal with the 30 degree angle you’ll be traveling at. The force of gravity pushes you back into your seat, and skyscrapers suddenly appear through the clouds. Sometimes, the rain and the clouds block the views of the skyscrapers below, but the impression created is nevertheless breathtaking. 
Trams. You should definitely take a trip on a tram in the Central neighborhood or in Wanchai — it’s not expensive, but it’s a real thrill, particularly in the evening. On the first floor you can open a window and relish the views of the street life below.
Buddha Statue.  This vast, 24-meter high bronze statue was built on Lantau Island in 1993, and you can reach it by taking a 25-minute cable-car ride — the Ngong Ping cable car — which is an adventure in its own right. The panoramic views of Hong Kong, the airport and the figure of Buddha itself against a backdrop of mountains and the sea are spectacular. Next to it stands the Po Lin monastery, built in the traditional Chinese style.
Ocean Park. This is a great example of the scale on which things are done in Hong Kong. It’s one of the three biggest theme parks in the world, and the only one of its kind. Make sure to ride the cable gondolas and say hi to the pandas!
Aberdeen. Once a little fishing village, this is now a residential area and major port, renowned for its seafood restaurants. Here, you can not only have a delicious bite to eat, you can also take a look at some incredible sea monsters before sending them on their way to the chef. 
Symphony of Light. Every night at 8 p.m. the Hong Kong Symphony of Light laser show gets underway. It’s in the Guiness Book of Records as the biggest permanent laser show in the world. 

What to Eat
It would be impossible to describe the vast quantity of privately owned kitchen cafes and restaurants serving street food in detail — suffice to say that you can easily find delicious and very reasonably priced food here. For those prepared to splash out, try the more upmarket Cantonese or Japanese restaurants, and definitely try the local  Dim Sum dumplings made of transparent rice pastry with meat and vegetable fillings. 

The St. Petersburg Times was a guest of Cathay Pacific Airlines, the Peninsula Hotel and the Hong Kong Tourism Board.