SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1634 (95), Tuesday, December 14, 2010
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TITLE: Rioting Breaks Out Near Kremlin Walls
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev praised Moscow police for a violent crackdown on shocking downtown rioting near the Kremlin’s walls Saturday, even as police sought information on who had led the mob of some 5,500 football fans in shouting racist phrases and attacking North Caucasus natives.
The unsanctioned rally demanding an investigation into the killing of a football fan on Dec. 5 erupted into violence after demonstrators spotted a group of dark-skinned teenagers and tried to beat them, news reports said.
A similar rally took place Saturday in St. Petersburg, where some 3,000 football fans clashed with police during an unsanctioned downtown march, RIA-Novosti said. About 50 were briefly detained.
In Moscow, thirty-two people were wounded, including two seriously, Interfax reported. At least three of those hospitalized were Caucasus natives, all with stab wounds. Eight police officers were also injured.
Police briefly detained 66 people.
The mood in Moscow was tense Sunday as rumors circulated in online football forums that Caucasus natives were planning counterstrike attacks, but police called the rumors a provocation by ultranationalists.
During Saturday’s rally, chants of “Russia for Russians” and “[expletive] the Caucasus” reverberated across Manezh Square, proving a major embarrassment for the Kremlin, which prides itself on allowing no unsanctioned public events and is accused by the liberal opposition of secretly sympathizing with nationalists.
The protesters came to the square to protest the death of Yegor Sviridov, 28, a member of a radical Spartak Moscow fan group who was shot dead during an interracial brawl with North Caucasus natives.
A suspect in the murder, Aslan Cherkesov, a native of Kabardino-Balkaria, was detained last week, but his companions were released after questioning, prompting speculation that they had paid off the police.
After the crowd attacked the group of dark-skinned teens, police whisked them into an ambulance, prompting the demonstrators to pelt officers with stones, flares, empty bottles and chunks of ice, and attack them with metal rods, news reports said.
Some protesters stamped on the head of a dark-skinned man and dragged the bloodied victim by the legs, Gazeta.ru said. Photos of the square by blogger Zyalt show some participants raising their arms in an apparent Nazi salute.
Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev personally negotiated with the protesters, with photos by Zyalt showing him talking to a man hiding his face behind a balaclava, which he refused to remove.
The crowd dispersed after Kolokoltsev promised to solve Sviridov’s murder, but then proceeded to run in packs through metro cars, chanting, “White carriage, white carriage!” as they hit and kicked people who appeared to be Caucasus and Central Asian natives.
More than 10 assaults on dark-skinned migrants were reported in the suburbs later Saturday, said Galina Kozhevnikova, who tracks xenophobia with the Sova watchdog, Gazeta.ru reported.
The protesters also toppled a New Year’s tree on Manezh Square.
Early reports said police had identified the organizers of the Moscow violence, but a law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti on Sunday that investigators remained unsure and were examining feeds from surveillance cameras in the area to identify people involved in the attacks on policemen and passers-by.
Ultranationalist organizations and football fan clubs — two communities known to overlap — denied involvement in the violence.
“It was no doubt a provocation by nationalists, who try to drag football fans into these showdowns,” the Russian Football Union said, Interfax reported Sunday.
Fratria, the football club to which Sviridov, the slain fan, belonged, also distanced itself, saying in a statement on its web site that it “opposes any actions that violate Russian law” and “supports law and justice.”
Dmitry Dyomushkin, leader of the banned radical Slavic Union group, said that “blaming nationalists is ridiculous,” Interfax reported. But he conceded that at least half of the rally’s participants were nationalists.
Three North Caucasus natives believed to have participated in the fight that killed Sviridov were detained over the weekend. News reports identified them as Khasan Ibragimov, Nariman Ismailov and Artur Alfibiyev.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Sunday that left-wing radicals had provoked Saturday’s rioting. He did not elaborate.
He also praised city police officers, saying they had prevented large-scale riots. He said police initially had refrained from cracking down on the unsanctioned rally because they had sought to shield tourists and Muscovites walking in the area from getting caught up in a brawl.
Medvedev said Saturday that city police handled the incident correctly. He did not elaborate.
Independent analysts were markedly less impressed, with Alexei Mukhin of the Center for Political Technologies calling the authorities’ reserved reaction “disgusting.”
“Our authorities often think everything will blow over by itself,” he said, warning that an ethnic confrontation in the capital could escalate if the instigators were not found and punished quickly.
Alexei Lebedev, a sports editor with Moskovsky Komsomolets, said the government has neglected the youth section of society, including sports fans, leaving them open to nationalists’ influence.
“Football fans are a part of the youth community — they haven’t arrived from the moon,” Lebedev told The St. Petersburg Times.
??

In St. Petersburg, 1,000 to 2,000 people, including nationalists and football fans, attended a memorial rally on Pionerskaya Ploshchad near the Theater of the Young Spectator (TYuZ), from where they marched through the city — some lighting flares and shouting nationalist slogans — ending up at Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street. 
OMON riot police tried to disperse the marchers, detaining dozens, but failed to stop the rally, with an estimated 500 reaching Gostiny Dvor metro station.
Eighty were arrested on Vvedensky Kanal and the Fontanka Embankment, the police force reported on its official web site Monday. Twenty were released after being cautioned, while 60 were charged with violating the rules for holding assemblies, blocking transport routes and failing to obey police officers. The offences are punishable by up to 15 days in prison.
Interfax reported that football fans started to fight with the police when officers tried to arrest several men, throwing pieces of ice, bottles and flares at them. The protesters blame the police’s actions for provoking the clashes.
The Other Russia, an opposition party that took part in the event, said in a statement Monday that the use of force on the part of the OMON was excessive. According to the statement, some of the football fans who took part in the rally “undertook aggressive actions” toward non-Russian passersby and damaged a number of cars belonging to non-Russians. “Such actions discredit the idea of civic protest,” it said.
According to Interfax, the initial presence of the police on the site was “minimal,” despite the fact that the rally was expected to be a major event. Some reports describe the police’s actions as contradictory, saying the officers acted as if they had not been given distinct orders.

Additional reporting by Sergey Chernov.

TITLE: 3 Parties Speak In Duma For 10 Minutes
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Talk about 15 minutes of fame. Or, in this case, 10 minutes.
Three political parties without representation in the State Duma were invited to participate in a parliamentary discussion Friday — but for only 10 minutes each. And the topic was restricted to labor conditions in Russia.
Yabloko, the liberal party shut out of the Duma in 2003 elections, joined the Kremlin-linked Right Cause and the leftist Patriots of Russia for the discussion thanks to a presidential bill giving registered parties not represented in the Duma or regional legislatures the right to speak at parliamentary sessions once a year.
But though the three parties tried their best to publicize their political views during Friday’s event, the first since President Dmitry Medvedev in June signed the bill allowing them to speak in the Duma, neither the lawmakers nor the public were likely to pay much attention to the speeches, analysts said.
A representative from each party was given 10 minutes at the microphone. No decisions were made by the Duma after the event.
Right Cause was the only party to at least partially support unpopular initiatives currently being considered by the Kremlin, while Patriots of Russia lambasted low salaries and poor working conditions in the country and Yabloko blamed labor problems on the country’s lack of democracy and dependence on natural resources.
Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin lashed out at the authorities for “eliminating political competition … and creating a monopoly of one party” in the country and criticized the oil-dependent economy for causing a “high concentration of property” in the hands of the elite and for an “extremely high level of corruption,” Interfax reported.
Mitrokhin linked labor issues, such as poor salaries and lack of rights for professional unions, to the dominance of an “authoritarian, corrupt, oligarchic bureaucracy” and said no progress in this area is possible until the political system is democratized.
Right Cause voiced cautious support for proposals to raise the retirement age and extend the working week. Senior party member Boris Nadezhdin told the Duma that “raising the retirement age in the next five to 10 years is absolutely inevitable because of demographic and economic trends,” Interfax reported.
Raising the retirement age, currently at 55 years for women and 60 years for men, will enable authorities to raise pensions to more than 10,000 ($320) rubles a month after 2012, Right Cause said in a statement on its web site Thursday.
Nadezhdin also spoke in favor of an initiative by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, which proposed last month to extend the working week, currently capped at 40 hours, to up to 60 hours for employees who agree to work overtime.
“Why prevent people from earning money if they are willing to work more?” Nadezhdin said.
But Andrei Isayev, head of the Duma’s Labor and Social Policy Committee and a deputy with the ruling United Russia, called raising the retirement age and extending working hours “unacceptable,” RIA-Novosti reported. Both proposals were rejected earlier by all four parties represented in the Duma.
Sergei Glotov, a senior member of Patriots of Russia, chose to focus on state-owned enterprises, accusing them of meager wages and poor working conditions.
“No modernization is possible if labor is unappreciated,” Glotov said.
Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, said the event confirmed that the June law only aimed at creating an appearance of political pluralism without actually giving the non-parliamentary parties a voice in politics.
The three parties had no say in choosing the topic to discuss Friday and were asked to leave the hall after having their say despite wanting to discuss a possible bill on labor issues, he said.
The political pariahs were “listened to because such is the law, and then they were dismissed,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, agreed that the occasion was aimed at boosting Medvedev’s image, not changing the political system. “Medvedev wanted to position himself as a liberal,” he said, adding that Friday’s speeches of the non-parliamentary parties were “politically insignificant.”

TITLE: Experts Suggest Radical Solutions to Tackle Corruption
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The confiscation of all assets belonging to anyone found guilty of a serious case of corruption, along with those of their close relatives, and “political death” for any law enforcement official caught in the act of corruption were just some of the possible measures against graft discussed at an international conference on anti-corruption strategies held at the city’s Legislative Assembly on Friday.
The controversial proposals came from Alexander Plyasovskikh, head of the Russia Without Corruption non-governmental group. In his speech, Plyasovskikh argued that only such a heavy-handed stance, which some of his opponents compared to Stalin-era measures deployed against “enemies of the state” and “families of enemies of the state,” could save the country.
The conference, which is held every year to mark the United Nations’ International Anti-Corruption Day on Dec. 9, had legal measures used to counteract graft as its central theme.
Some less radical although no less controversial solutions discussed at the event included wage raises for civil servants and shifting the remit for tax violations from the Criminal to the Administrative Code.
“The existing tax policy makes it virtually impossible for a businessman to make a profit,” argued Alexander Pochuyev, president of the Consultum International Advisers’ Association, and one of the conference’s organizers. “For mid-range businesses, for example, taxes account for up to 84 percent of total turnover. Tax reductions are essential if we want to develop small and medium-sized business.”
Most of the speakers, who included local lawmakers, politicians and members of non-governmental organizations, as well as foreign criminologists and experts from the State Duma, focused heavily on economic instruments for tackling graft, rather than connecting the issue to the country’s political environment.
Accordingly, such internationally recognized anti-corruption cures as boosting media freedoms and the encouragement of political competition were missing from the speakers’ agenda. The only voice that rose to speak up on the topics came from the audience, rather than from the panel.
“There’s far too much hot air spoken on this topic, if we take into account the simple fact that political competition is non-existent in Russia,” said Nikolai Grikurov, the leader of the Yevropeisky Petersburg (European St. Petersburg) non-governmental organization. “Essentially, what is happening is that an extremely corrupt government machine is trying to create a scheme that would heal it of corruption, which is nonsensical. In order to make such a scheme work, the ruling elite would have to destroy itself.”
“To combat corruption, we first need  to make the processes of government and administration much more transparent,” Grikunov stressed, adding that the laws that Russia already has simply need to be implemented. “At the moment in Russia, reality and the law seem to belong to totally separate worlds,” he said. “On their own, tougher laws stand little chance of improving the situation. As every lawyer here will tell you, 
Russian laws may be tough, 
but they fail due to slack and highly selective implementation.”
It’s not that Russia doesn’t have the laws, human rights advocates say. As Vladimir Vishnevsky, a member of the political council of the democratic party Yabloko points out, anti-corruption clauses that already exist are withering due to neglect. “In 1996, President Boris Yeltsin decreed that that any media report alleging corruption by a state official must result in a prompt investigation, supervised by top officials in the relevant ministry,” Vishnevsky said. “This useful measure would surely help in the fight against corruption, if only it wasn’t widely ignored.” 
President Dmitry Medvedev has made a series of bold pledges to combat corruption. Fighting graft, he said, is a top priority for the Kremlin. 
Over the years, current prime minister and former president Vladimir Putin has also made promises about fighting bribery and corruption. In 2006, Russia ratified the UN Convention Against Corruption and the Council of Europe’s Criminal Law Convention on Corruption. The State Duma has since made progress on incorporating these measures into Russian legislation.
Nevertheless, critics say there is still no real sign of a coherent anti-corruption policy. 
Worldwide perceptions of Russia in this regard have gone from bad to worse, according to the campaign group Transparency International. In its Corruption Perceptions Index released in November, Russia ranks as one of the most corrupt countries, tying for 154th place of 180 nations featured.

TITLE: Ex-Drug Official Pleads Guilty
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A former senior Federal Drug Control official charged with fraud and abuse of office has pleaded guilty, and the Moscow City Court is set to sentence him Tuesday, Interfax reported.
Alexander Bulbov had repeatedly denied wrongdoing but apparently succumbed to “severe pressure” exercised on him and his family members by the authorities, one of his former lawyers said on condition of anonymity, Kommersant reported Monday. The lawyer did not elaborate.
The closed trial of Bulbov opened Monday and will be fast-tracked because the defendant pleaded guilty, court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova told Interfax.
Bulbov faced up to four years in prison on fraud charges and 10 years for abuse of authority, but he cannot get more than two-thirds of the maximum term because he pleaded guilty, the report said.

TITLE: Banksy, Human Rights Activists Back Voina
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Human rights activists have criticized the imprisonment of two members of the radical art group Voina as illegal, while British graffiti artist Banksy has joined the international campaign demanding the release of the artists.
Banksy pledged to donate the proceeds from the sale of a limited series of his prints to Voina. The 175 prints in the “Choose Your Weapon” series were sold Monday via the web site Picturesonwalls.com, reportedly generating 4.5 million rubles ($147,000) for the artists and their families. 
Artists Leonid Nikolayev and Oleg Vorotnikov were arrested in Moscow last month and taken to St. Petersburg, where they were placed in a pretrial detention center. 
Nikolayev and Vorotnikov reportedly took part in a stunt that involved overturning several police cars at night — some of which had police officers inside — and have been charged with criminal mischief motivated by political, racial, national or religious hatred or hostility, or motivated by hatred or hostility toward a particular social group. The offence is punishable by up to five years in prison.
Called “Palace Revolution,” the stunt was meant to demand, “metaphorically, the reform of the Interior Ministry and an end to police arbitrariness,” art critic and philologist Alexei Plutser-Sarno, described as Voina’s “ideologist,” told The St. Petersburg Times late last month. Within days, he fled to Tallinn, Estonia for fear of arrest.
The artists’ lawyer, Anastasia Yekimovskaya, said at a press conference Monday that the charges cannot be proven because the police lack credible sources of information, with the charges mainly based on a video that Voina uploaded onto the Internet.
The imprisoned artists, who have been in custody for more than three weeks, are refusing to speak to investigators, citing the constitutional right of suspects not to give evidence against themselves, Yekimovskaya said.
Analysis presented by the Moscow-based Sova watchdog at the press conference argued that the law being used against Nikolayev and Vorotnikov is poorly formulated and being incorrectly applied, a fact that poses a threat to society.
According to Sova, Voina’s members did not commit a crime that could be qualified as criminal mischief or anything for which they could be persecuted under anti-extremist laws. It also argued that the imprisonment of the artists is not proportionate to their danger to society, pointing out that a suspect in the beating of a Cameroon citizen in St. Petersburg was released earlier this year after pledging not to leave the city before the court hearing.
Stefania Kulayeva of the Memorial rights group described Voina’s case as “political.” 
“They expressed their protest — whether artistically or not — and they have been accused of committing a crime for this protest,” Kulayeva said. “It’s a political case. If they are sentenced to prison terms, we will all be guilty and pay with not only their freedom, but with ours too.” 
Voina also hit the headlines earlier this year when they painted a giant penis on Liteiny bridge opposite the FSB headquarters in St. Petersburg back in June.

TITLE: Annual Christmas Market To Open on Ostrovskogo
AUTHOR: By Yana Voitsekhovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The annual Christmas market on Ploshchad Ostrovskogo opens its doors Tuesday and runs through Jan 7, offering visitors the chance to browse traditional Russian crafts, ice-skate in the open air in the center of the city, or simply warm themselves with a glass of mulled wine.
“This year, there will be about 69 stalls,” said Polina Vavilina, press secretary of the Tsarskoselsky Carnival foundation that organizes the fair.
“Petersburgers will be able to buy souvenirs and folk crafts from various regions of Russia, as well as sample traditional food — blini, pies, roast chestnuts and honey drinks,” she said. 
As well as the bazaar itself, the square will host a cultural program, including puppet shows and performances by folklore ensembles, Vavilina said, adding that traditionally, a children’s Orthodox theater from Vyborg brings its performance of the Nativity story to the fair. 
As in previous years, a small open-air ice rink will also be set up on the square in front of the Alexandriinsky Theater. This year, for the first time, free skating classes will be given on the rink by the trainer of SKA 1946, the youth team of the local ice hockey club SKA St. Petersburg. 
An important part of the fair for the past few years has been the Christmas Alphabet charity event, in which eminent cultural figures, politicians, businesspeople and sportmen join forces with professional artists on the square to create canvases  illustrating the letters of the Russian alphabet. Previous participants in the project have  included veteran ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and choreographer Boris Eifman, while St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and home-grown politicians Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev also traditionally help to create pictures for the event. The paintings are then sold at a charity auction, from which the proceeds go to local social projects. 
The tradition of Christmas markets first came to St. Petersburg in the winter of 2006 to 2007, when the market on Ploshchad Ostrovskogo was held for the first time.

TITLE: Suspect Was Love-Struck Woman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A two-day police hunt for an Ingush woman believed to have arrived in Moscow to carry out a terrorist attack ended in farce Friday when it was revealed that she had fled to the capital to meet her Internet lover.
Law enforcement sources initially said Bella Barkinkhoyeva, 22, was suspected of being involved with extremist groups, including Muslim radicals and ethnic gangs.
The details of Barkinkhoyeva’s case were passed by Ingush law enforcers to Moscow police on Wednesday evening. She was identified through a phone call to her parents on Thursday and detained in the early hours of Friday morning.
But Ingush president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov said later Friday that Barkinkhoyeva, a resident of the Ingush town of Karabulak, had fallen in love with a man on the Internet and decided to join him in Moscow, Gazeta.ru reported. A source within Ingushetia’s law enforcement agencies said she gathered her possessions, wrote a note for her family and left.
Law enforcement authorities remain on alert after two female suicide bombers from the North Caucasus bombed the Moscow metro in March, killing at least 40 people.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Medvedev on 2nd Term</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Kremlin economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich said he believes President Dmitry Medvedev wants to seek a second term in the 2012 presidential election, the BBC reported Friday.
When asked whether the president wanted another term in the Kremlin, Dvorkovich answered: “I believe he does.”
He also said he believed Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had not yet decided who will run.
“I think that from what anyone can see when they look at what President Medvedev does … he wants to continue his term and continue the agenda he started in 2008,” Dvorkovich told the BBC in English, according to a transcript BBC supplied.

<strong>Police Kidnapping</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Three Moscow policemen were detained in connection with the kidnapping and robbery of a businessman in the capital, investigators said, Bloomberg reported.
The suspected mastermind of the crime, the head of a detective unit in the Troparevo-Nikulino district of western Moscow, was taken into custody Thursday, the Investigative Committee said in a statement on its web site. The police major, born in 1971, wasn’t identified by name.
Two other policemen were arrested Dec. 1 for carrying out the Aug. 4 kidnapping, the investigators said. They are suspected of stealing a briefcase containing 90,000 rubles ($3,000) and a cell phone from the unidentified entrepreneur, who was sitting in his car. After that, the police lieutenants drove him out of the city and passed their hostage to three accomplices, investigators said.
The businessman was freed two weeks later by a different group of police.

<strong>Leopard Reserve Mooted</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov suggested creating a joint nature reserve with China to help prevent the extinction of the Amur leopard, Reuters reported.
“We have sent our proposals to China,” Ivanov, who is in charge of a state-sponsored program to save the Amur leopard, told the Russian Geographical Society on Saturday.
Ivanov said the leopards’ habitat has halved in the last 20 years with only 30 to 35 remaining in the Russian Far East and about 10 in neighboring China and North Korea.
Ivanov outlined some of the measures, including construction of a $100 million railroad tunnel under a hill where leopards live so that the wild cats can roam freely.

<strong>Madonna’s Gym</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Queen of pop and health guru Madonna will open a gym early next year near Red Square for Moscow’s designer-clad elite, who spend exorbitant sums on a fitness frenzy that has gripped the capital, Reuters reported.
The state-of-the-art gym, to open in mid-March, will be the second of Madonna’s Hard Candy Fitness gyms. The 52-year-old opened the gym in Mexico City last month.
“I know that we will create the ideal workout environment in Moscow,” the American singer said in a statement.
The spacious 3,250-square-meter gym is a partnership between Madonna, the U.S.-based private equity firm New Evolution Ventures and Irina Razumova, founder of Russian luxury gym chain Planet Fitness.

<strong>Gorbachev Warns</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (AP) — Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that Russia’s undemocratic political landscape is threatening its stability.
Gorbachev said in an article published Friday in Novaya Gazeta newspaper that the lack of political competition, flawed elections, shrinking media freedom and rampant corruption have slowed down Russia’s development.
“If we fail to overcome undemocratic trends, all our achievements of the previous years will come under threat,” he said. “Not only the democratic process, but stability as well.”
Gorbachev is part owner of Novaya Gazeta, along with Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire who owns two British papers.

<strong>Tracking Litvinenko</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A Kremlin official told a U.S. diplomat that Russian authorities had been tracking the suspected killers of former spy Alexander Litvinenko before his death by poisoning in London four years ago, but had been warned off by Britain, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks on Saturday, Reuters reported.
Litvinenko, who lived and worked in Britain, was poisoned in November 2006 using polonium-210, a rare and highly toxic radioactive isotope. 
Litvinenko’s killing sent relations between Britain and Russia to a post-Cold War low, and London wants Moscow to extradite State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi to stand trial for murder.
Russian prosecutors have refused, and Lugovoi denies any link to the death.
According to the leaked secret U.S. cable published on the Guardian newspaper web site, Russian special presidential representative Anatoly Safonov said shortly after Litvinenko’s death that Russia had been tracking the dissident’s assassins and also indicated that the Kremlin had not been involved in the murder.
The memo, dated Dec. 26, 2006, recorded details of a dinner meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Paris between Safonov and U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Henry Crumpton.
The memo gave no indication as to Crumpton’s or the U.S. government’s view of Safonov’s comments.

TITLE: Belgians Dub President’s Wife ‘a Nuisance’
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — First lady Svetlana Medvedeva was dubbed the “biggest nuisance in years” by annoyed staff and officials in Bruges after behaving capriciously during a lightning visit to the Belgian city last week, a local newspaper reported.
Medvedeva kept city officials waiting for two hours in the city’s town hall on Tuesday afternoon, Het Nieuwsblad reported on its web site.
When she finally arrived at 5:30 p.m., they were told by members of the Russian delegation that she had wanted to “have a rest and eat something” before meeting Mayor Patrick Moenaert, the report said.
Medvedeva was in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday together with her husband, President Dmitry Medvedev, who attended an EU-Russia summit and held talks with the Belgian government.
During a tour of Bruges’ famous gothic town hall, Medvedeva made a tactless remark to Mayor Moenaert, telling him that “the winner takes it all” after he congratulated her on Russia’s winning the right to host the 2018 football World Cup, the paper reported.
Belgium had also bid to hold the tournament, together with the Netherlands.
She then tried to haggle with the owner of a traditional lace store after “laying her eyes upon a scarf in the shop’s window,” only to be told that it was a priceless single item from the 18th century. “I explained that I would never sell it,” shopkeeper Magda Boyekens was quoted as saying.
“I understand,” Medvedeva said when she finally backed down, according to the report.
The Dutch-language reports, published Wednesday and Thursday, triggered several national media reports Friday after being translated into Russian.
But Bruges city spokeswoman Greet Verleye dismissed the reports as exaggerated and partly untrue.
“We were a little shocked when we read that,” she told The St. Petersburg Times on Friday.
The spokeswoman explained that Medvedeva was late “simply because she had left late from Brussels.”
Verleye said that while Medvedeva’s town hall quote about the World Cup was true, it was taken out of context. “The mayor had been bragging a little about the gothic hall before mentioning the [Belgian] World Cup bid and said, ‘You cannot win them all,’” she explained.
“Her retort, ‘The winner takes it all,’ was actually very witty,” the spokeswoman said by telephone from Bruges.
The report also said Medvedeva never showed up in De Karmeliet, one of Bruges’ most famous restaurants, although tables had been reserved for her delegation.
Restaurant owner Geert van Hecke explained Friday that the Russians had actually booked “an option” for 17 people, but never called to cancel or confirm it.
Instead, Medvedeva chose to dine at the Duc de Bourgogne restaurant, located right on one of the city’s famous canals.
Staff there were not amused afterward. The menu was changed six or seven times in advance, and the first dish served was returned immediately. “Mrs. Medvedev wanted something else,” the newspaper quoted a staff member as saying, adding that members of her delegation complained about the towels in restroom.
The Kremlin’s press service directed all enquiries to Medvedeva’s spokesman Renat Abdeyev, who did not answer repeated calls Friday.
No account of Medvedeva’s Bruge visit was published on her web site, http://firstlady.kremlin.ru, by late Sunday.

TITLE: Chernobyl Declared Safe For Tourists, Sightseers
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Want a better understanding of the world’s worst nuclear disaster? Come tour the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Beginning next year, Ukraine plans to open up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors who wish to learn more about the tragedy that occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago, the Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday.
Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation over a large swath of northern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people were resettled from areas contaminated with radiation fallout in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Related health problems still persist.
The so-called exclusion zone, a highly contaminated area within a 48-kilometer radius of the exploded reactor, was evacuated and sealed off in the aftermath of the explosion. All visits were prohibited.
Today, about 2,500 employees maintain the remains of the now-closed nuclear plant, working in shifts to minimize their exposure to radiation. Several hundred evacuees have returned to their villages in the area despite a government ban. A few firms now offer tours to the restricted area, but the government says those tours are illegal and their safety is not guaranteed.
Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova said experts are developing travel routes that will be both medically safe and informative for Ukrainians as well as foreign visitors. She did not give an exact date when the tours were expected to begin.
“There are things to see there if one follows the official route and doesn’t stray away from the group,” Yershova told The Associated Press. “Though it is a very sad story.”
The ministry also said Monday it hopes to finish building a new and safer shell for the exploded reactor by 2015. The new shelter will cover the original iron-and-concrete structure hastily built over the reactor that has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse.
The new shell is 105 meters tall, 260 meters wide and 150 meters long. It weighs 20,000 tons and will be slid over the old shelter using rail tracks. The structure will be big enough to house the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris or the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The overall cost of project, financed by international donors, has risen from $505 million to $1.15 billion because of stricter safety requirements, according to Ukrainian officials.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which manages the project, said a final estimate of the project’s cost will be released after the French-led consortium Novarka finalizes a construction plan in the next few months.

TITLE: City Takes First Place For Salary Growth This Year
AUTHOR: By Maria Buravtseva and Alla Tokareva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Salaries in St. Petersburg increased more from April this year than in other Russian cities, research carried out by the personnel management firm Case shows. Local enterprises are gradually making up the cuts brought about by the crisis, analysts say.
St. Petersburgers earn on average 7.74 percent more than they did six months ago, while in Moscow incomes increased by 4.5 percent. Case and Ancor recruitment company surveyed 589 companies in 10 cities from August to November this year. Sixty-seven of the companies were in St. Petersburg.
The fall in wages in St. Petersburg during the economic crisis was one of the most severe, and now a correction is taking place, said Natalya Danina, development director at Case. In September 2009, local respondents spoke of an average salary decrease of 5.5 percent compared to September 2008, though in some regions of Russia, salaries had already begun to grow. A lot of St. Petersburg manufacturing companies took part in the research, and salaries at these firms rose by 12 to 15 percent due to the lack of qualified personnel, Danina said.
Salaries in St. Petersburg increased by seven to 15 percent, depending on the sector and position of the employee, said Svetlana Sokhatskaya, recruitment director at Kelly Services employment agency. Salaries have returned to pre-crisis levels in St. Petersburg and Moscow, she said.
Growth in the average salaries offered by St. Petersburg employers for open vacancies did not exceed 1.5 percent from April to November, while wages for job offers in Moscow increased on average by 6.5 percent, said Yegor Alexeyev, head of the marketing and PR department at HeadHunter.
Climate-control and engineering equipment supplier United Elements Group raised the salaries of about 25 percent of employees, according to the company’s personnel director, Olga Yakovleva-Zavalyevskaya. The employees were mainly from the back office and technical departments, where salaries were lower than the market average, she added.
Salaries at the Petersburg branch of Globex bank rose by 15 percent this year compared to 2009, with pay rises given both at the start of the second quarter and at the end of the first half, according to the branch’s manager, Yury Kraskovsky. Managers whose work is connected with client sales saw their incomes increase by 60 to 80 percent, he added.
Baltika brewery increased the salaries of all of its staff by 8 percent in the spring, said Alexei Kedrin, the company’s corporate relations and information director. At Petrovich construction company, employees’ wages rose due to growth in the number of the company’s projects and business, said the company’s HR director, Larisa Gritsenko. 
According to Yelena Kolkova, director of Staffwell recruitment agency in St. Petersburg, a range of new enterprises were launched this year in the automobile industry, which led to a 15 to 20-percent increase in specialists’ salaries.
In 2011, 78 percent of St. Petersburg companies plan to increase their employees’ salaries by an average of 10 percent, according to research conducted by Case. Alexeyev said that employers are continuing to develop motivation systems closely linked to the effectiveness and actual productivity of employees.
Gritsenko said that Petrovich would test run a new system next year, in which salaries would increase by 10 percent in the peak sales season.

TITLE: Allegro May Prompt New Visa Rules
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Finnish President Tarja Halonen traveled to St. Petersburg on the first high-speed Allegro train launched between the city and Helsinki on Sunday.
“That was super. It was so fast that the President of Finland and I barely had time to discuss anything,” said Putin, who joined Halonen on the new train in the Russian border town of Vyborg.
Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russian Railways (RZhD) who also arrived in St. Petersburg on the Allegro, said the government would consider the possibility of waiving visa requirements for tourist groups coming to St. Petersburg on the Allegro.
“We have a visa-free system for tourists arriving in St. Petersburg for up to 72 hours from Helsinki on the ferry Princess Maria, so why not offer a similar chance for tourists who come to the city on the Allegro train?” Yakunin said.
The new train — a joint project between Russian Railways and the Finnish state train operator — will make two round trips between St. Petersburg and Helsinki per day. Traveling at speeds of up to 220 kilometers an hour in Finland and 200 kilometers an hour in Russia, the train will cut the journey time to three-and-a-half hours — three hours less than previous trains between the two cities.

TITLE: Audit Finds Emergencies Ministry Misspent $27M
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber has found that Emergency Situations Ministry officials improperly spent millions of dollars of federal money in the past three years, Interfax reported Friday, citing the chamber’s recent report.
The chamber found that several regional authorities had misspent emergency assistance and rebuilding funds. The authorities in the Caucasus republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, as well as in the east Siberian Sakha republic and southern Stavropol region, were reported to have misappropriated 700.6 million rubles ($22.7 million) between 2008 and 2010.
The chamber said the ministry’s international humanitarian assistance department misspent some 122 million rubles between 2008 and 2010, Interfax reported.
The report, which was unavailable on the chamber’s web site Friday afternoon, apparently said the government spent 3.54 billion rubles on humanitarian assistance in that period.
Interfax reported that copies of the report were to be sent to the authorities of the regions concerned and both houses of parliament. A spokeswoman at the chamber reached by phone Friday refused to confirm this.
The ministry’s press official reached by phone Friday said she could not comment on the news because her boss was on vacation.
Last month the Audit Chamber praised the regional authorities for their handling of emergency fire funds, saying that the 11.2 billion rubles ($363 million) allocated to deal with the aftermath of the massive fires during the summer had been spent in a “timely and effective” manner.

TITLE: Governor Defends Navalny
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Kirov Governor Nikita Belykh said on his blog Friday that he has no complaints against lawyer and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, despite the fact that the latter is now being probed by the Investigative Committee.
Navalny, who is now in the United States on a fellowship with Yale University, is being investigated for allegedly causing more than 1 million rubles ($32,000) worth of damages to KirovLes, a state-owned timber company.
“Alexei, when working for the Kirov region, was a member of a working group to reorganize KirovLes and was dealing with the issue of increasing transparency in the timber industry,” the governor wrote on his blog, pointing out that Navalny was volunteering as his advisor and was not a government employee.
“Neither the Kirov regional office of the state unitary enterprise KirovLes, nor its founder — the government — has any issue with Alexei. We do have an issue, however, with the former director of KirovLes … whose testimony, according to the media, is what the case against Navalny is based on,” Belykh wrote.
The case concerns an accusation by Vyacheslav Opalyov, former director of KirovLes, a state-owned timber company now approaching bankruptcy — due in part, the governor says, to incompetent management by Opalyov.
According to Opalyov, Navalny had promised to aide him in securing profitable state contracts in exchange for a loss-making contract with a company called Vyatskaya Lesnaya Kompania, according to Internet portal The Marker.
A lawyer by trade, Navalny is a minority shareholder in many of the country’s biggest companies, including Transneft and VTB, and has been filing lawsuits against these companies in a crusade for increased transparency and better corporate governance. He even launched the web site Rospil.info to expose incidents of corruption.
Navalny sees Transneft, the state-owned pipeline company, as the force behind the sudden investigation of something that happened more than a year ago.
He wrote on his blog Friday that late last month, after writing a post about Transneft allegedly embezzling more than $4 billion during the construction of a pipeline connecting east Siberia and the Pacific, several of his clients were approached by people who were fishing for any “interesting information.”
Policemen hired by Trasneft could not come up with anything better than to reanimate a case from a year and a half ago, Navalny wrote.
A Transneft spokesman could not be reached on Sunday to confirm or deny the allegation.
The KirovLes accusation was “cooked up by policemen hired by VTB” right before the company’s shareholder meeting, Navalny said.

TITLE: Afghan Pipeline Garners Support
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — The leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan on Saturday agreed to move forward with a complicated and risky plan to build a natural gas pipeline across rugged territory plagued by war and terrorism.
The pipeline, which would terminate in India, would bring huge amounts of gas to underdeveloped regions and could earn impoverished Afghanistan hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees.
The route for the 1,700-kilometer TAPI pipeline from Turkmenistan would cross Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, where the Taliban and international forces are locked in battle, as well as some of Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas. Concerns about security for the pipeline itself and for the workers who construct it have cast doubt on the project’s near-term feasibility, but proponents say it would calm the chaotic region.
“Along with commercial and economic benefits, this project will also yield a stabilizing influence on the region and beyond,” Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said after the leaders signed a document supporting the project.

TITLE: Joint Venture Seizes Demolition Market
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new joint venture created by St. Petersburg’s CrushMash and the U.K.’s Keltbray, a specialist in the field of demolition, aims to introduce a range of new technologies on the local market that will reduce damage to the environment and allow for greater levels of recycling. 
The St. Petersburg group CrushMash began by focusing on the recycling of building waste, before expanding into demolition services.
According to Alexander Vasilyev, managing director of the CrushMash group, two key players on the demolition market — the Demolition Association and Terminator — went bankrupt in the wake of the current financial crisis, having accounted for 90 percent of a market estimated at 3 billion rubles ($97 million).
As a result, CrushMash now accounts for 50 percent of the local market for demolition work, Vasilyev said, noting that there is a huge potential market for the modernization or demolition of old constructions in Russia. 
“The first thing we have changed is the attitude to the work involved in demolition,” Vasilyev said.
“We provide a comprehensive approach and help customers to avoid certain risks. For example, we take responsibility for the payment of taxes incurred through negative influences on the environment. On top of that, we draw up all the necessary planning and ecological documentation and we can demonstrate that we recycle 80 to 85 percent of building waste. That allows us to decrease the negative impact on the environment and reduce the resulting expenses,” he said.
Further innovation is being introduced onto the local market through the application of Keltbray’s international experience and technology, with higher standards in safety and efficiency. New techniques and technologies enable the group to demolish sophisticated sites using new excavators with 40-meter shovels. “We recycle reinforced concrete and brick, converting them into materials that can be reused in the building process. This greatly reduces costs,” Vasilyev said.
In Europe, 98 percent of waste produced during demolition work is recycled, and this is a level of recycling that CrushMash hopes to attain. 
“All these factors allow us to reduce prices for work by 50 percent or even more, with absolutely no risk to the customer,” Vasilyev said. 
The first site to be demolished in collaboration with Keltbray will be the Sinyavskaya Poultry Farm. Among other projects, CrushMash has already carried out reconstruction work on the Alexandrinsky Theater and the Passenger Ship Terminal and has begun the reconstruction of the Pulkovo-2 airport terminal.
The company is the first on the demolition market in Russia to include the participation of a Western partner. 
According to Steve Foster, the managing director of Keltbray Group, the company has plans to increase its turnover on the Russian market to about 5 to 6 billion rubles ($163 million to $195 million) per year, putting it on a level with its turnover in the U.K. Foster said, however, that the joint venture would not be seeking to win all tenders, preferring to limit itself to the most attractive.

TITLE: U.K. to Scrutinize Firms With Russian Ties Under New Law
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — International companies doing business in Russia will be subject to greater scrutiny by the United Kingdom beginning in April, when a draconian anti-corruption law enters into force, lawyers warn.
The U.K. Bribery Act will apply to any company that has an office in Britain or sells its products there. It applies a “zero tolerance” principle, making companies liable for their own and their partners’ corrupt practices, even if there is no connection with the British part of the business or the companies are not aware of the corruption.
Justin Williams, a partner in the Akin Gump international law firm, said the law differs in significant ways from the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, under which companies such as Siemens, Daimler and Shell have been prosecuted.
For example, the U.K. law applies to private citizens as well as companies, and to both the giver and receiver of a bribe. Furthermore, it criminalizes failure to prevent bribery. Plea bargaining will not be allowed in the law’s enforcement.
Punishment includes unlimited fines for companies and individuals, and prison terms for up to 10 years.
“Companies need to know where to draw the line of resistance and how far to push back,” Williams said.
The law is written to be broad and vague, Williams said. The only defense under the law is the presence of “adequate procedures” to counteract corruption. Guidelines are being drafted to define those procedures, but only in the form of a general outline. Companies are expected to be aware of the environment they operate in and use their own judgment, and be accountable for their actions.
The law also includes the concept of prosecutorial discretion, meaning that it can be applied “sensibly,” Williams said, adding that the extent of the “political appetite” to apply the law is not yet clear.
The fight against global corruption is succeeding, said Edward Rubinoff, another Akin Gump partner.
He said U.S. companies have been placed at a competitive disadvantage by the American Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which led the U.S. Justice Department to lobby the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development over the last five years for greater international enforcement.
The goal of the law is to “force change organically, in spite of long-standing customs and cultural norms,” Rubinoff said.
Corruption is driven by financial conditions, he said. The collective economic power of the United States and its allies is felt on local markets even where their laws do not apply, and that is key to the success of anti-corruption efforts.
A series of anti-corruption laws came into force in Russia at the beginning of 2009, as an element of the National Plan for the Counteraction of Corruption, passed by President Dmitry Medvedev soon after he assumed office.
“[The Russian laws] do not apply to legal entities,” said Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee. It will be necessary to extend the anti-corruption system being created by the president to companies, he said.
Kabanov criticized the slow and passive implementation of anti-corruption measures in Russia.

TITLE: Chips Go Full Cycle at Pepsi’s New Plant
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — PepsiCo is setting up a $250 million ecosystem of farming and production in the southern city of Azov, opening a new potato chip plant and laying the cornerstone for a beverage plant in close cooperation with Rostov regional authorities.
Ramon Laguarta, president of PepsiCo Eastern Europe and Russia, said at the ribbon cutting Wednesday that the company chose the site with the idea of building the two plants next to each other.
The chip factory was built at a cost of $110 million and will produce potato chips under the Frito Lay brand name.
PepsiCo will also give a boost to local agriculture. Laguarta said the company has agreements with six large farms in Rostov and the neighboring Krasnodar region.
The farms are provided with seed, financing, equipment and consulting to improve efficiency, Laguarta said. He said the farms that provide potatoes to the company’s other chip plant, in Kashira, outside Moscow, doubled their productivity in five years thanks to PepsiCo’s attention.
The Azov beverage plant is expected to open at the end of next year, after a $140 million investment. It will reach its planned capacity of 500 million liters per year of soft drinks, water and iced tea by spring 2013.
Laguarta praised the regional administration for its cooperative spirit.
He said construction costs would be entirely covered by PepsiCo, while the regional administration worked with the company to create the necessary support infrastructure — expanding and improving local roads, rail links and utilities.
Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev said the region spent $1.67 million on improvements.
Cooperation “is what brought us here in the first place,” PepsiCo Russia general manager Paul Kiesler told The St. Petersburg Times. “They continue to invest with us and keep us here.”
The PepsiCo plants in Azov will pay an average salary of $930 a month to its workers, the governor said.
“That’s not bad for our region,” Golubev said.
He said the regional administration is working with other foreign companies, including French concrete producer Lafarge, to make investment more attractive.
The chip plant will supply markets in southern Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus and the Russian Far East, while the plant in Kashira supplies the other regions of the country.
The two Azov PepsiCo plants will eventually employ 1,000 people. Azov, located 16 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don, has a population of about 80,000.
The Azov plant is 30 percent more efficient than the Kashira facility, Laguarta noted, using fewer resources, recycling water used in production and producing less waste.
The company’s long-term plans, Laguarta said, include the construction of a large warehouse in the Rostov region and the opening of another snack plant in Russia. He thought the new plant would be needed by 2015.
Kiesler said 85 percent of the potatoes the company uses — 200,000 tons at present — are grown locally. Imports from Central Europe and the Middle East supply production between harvests in Russia. This year imports have been higher because weather conditions reduced the quality of domestic potatoes.
Developing agriculture is a gradual process, Kiesler said. “It’s not like building a factory.”
He said the company wants to extend its assistance programs to farmers who supply fruit and vegetables for Lebedyansky juices, which PepsiCo acquired in 2008.
PepsiCo announced plans last week to acquire a controlling share in Russian juice and dairy producer Wimm-Bill-Dann, which will make it the country’s largest food and beverage producer.
PepsiCo Russia Snacks general manager Marc Schroeder said in an interview that the company has a 30 percent market share.
“We are the market leader in Russian snacks, although it is still a fragmented market,” he said.
Schroeder said local taste preferences are carefully considered. Among the company’s products that are exclusive to the domestic market are crab-, dill pickle- and barbecue beef-flavored potato chips.
It also sells a dried fish snack and hard brown bread cubes resembling traditional sukhariki. Sold under the brand name Khrus (Crunch) Team, the bread snacks come in flavors that include mushroom, tomato and sour cream.

TITLE: Siemens Plans Pilot Projects
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Siemens will most likely do its initial projects at the Skolkovo technology hub in the areas of bio or nuclear medicine, and could show results by late 2011, Siemens Russia vice president Martin Gitsels told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday.
Similar projects elsewhere have had budgets of up to to $4 million, Gitsels said.
Siemens said the Skolkovo Foundation, headed by Viktor Vekselberg and Craig Barrett and responsible for the birth of the innovation hub in Moscow’s suburb, is now conducting a European roadshow to attract parters, investors and managers.
On Wednesday, the foundation’s top management met with a score of top European companies and academic institutions in Munich to discuss possible projects, Dietrich M?ller, president of Siemens Russia, told reporters in Moscow on Thursday.
Among the companies in attendance were energy giant E.On, Austria’s largest construction company Strabag, and Robert Bosch, M?ller said.
While no deals were signed on Wednesday, M?ller expects a few to go through over the next couple of months.
“There was a lot of excitement over Skolkovo in Munich, and after being at a panel for just a few minutes you could hear a lot of ideas for potential cooperation floating around,” he said.

TITLE: Wiki Drives a Wedge Into the Tandem
AUTHOR: By Victor Davidoff
TEXT: Russia’s blogosphere has always been a treasure chest for people who love conspiracy theories. On Runet, Holocaust and 9/11 denial are moderate views. So it’s no surprise that after the latest batch of documents were published by WikiLeaks, Runet began spreading the theory that Julian Assange was a secret agent of the CIA and that the publications were a controlled leak of information designed to cause trouble for regimes the United States doesn’t like.
Like all crazy theories, this one has an ounce of truth at the bottom of it. Although the initial target of WikiLeaks publications was the U.S. government, the first victims were corrupt government leaders, like the heads of the Persian Gulf states, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
According to diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, Putin is the richest man in Russia — and in Europe as well — with $40 billion in secret off-shore accounts. He is reputed to be the co-owner of Gunvor, which exports Russian oil. If that didn’t make Putin angry, the derogatory nickname “alfa-dog” given to him in one of the cables must have sent him up the wall. A highly placed anonymous source in the Foreign Ministry seemed to reflect that anger when he warned WikiLeaks that Russia “has a way of turning off this resource forever.”
Now WikiLeaks has become a pawn in the “cold war” that is intensifying between the Putin and Medvedev clans. With undisguised pleasure, another “highly placed anonymous source” — this time in the Kremlin — suggested that: “Nongovernmental organizations should consider nominating Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize.” The blogosphere believes this statement was made by Natalya Timakova, Medvedev’s press secretary.
Russia already has its own “Russian Assange” — the lawyer Alexei Navalny, aka blogger Navalny. Navalny first garnered attention when he defended minority shareholder rights in state corporations. Several weeks ago, he published materials that he obtained from the Audit Chamber regarding Transneft. The leaked materials showed that when Transneft laid the East Siberian-Pacific Ocean pipeline, more than $4 billion disappeared. Navalny calculated that this was the equivalent of 1,100 rubles from every adult in Russia.
The response — albeit indirect — to Navalny’s expose came swiftly. Charges were brought against him. Prosecutors claim that when Navalny was an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, he “used deception to force” the state company Kirovles to sign unprofitable contracts that cost it $1.3 million. Navalny denies this allegation and insists that, to the contrary, he was trying to stop corruption in Kirovles. Navalny, who is now in the United States as a fellow at Yale, wrote: “The main idea behind the lawsuit is to keep me from returning to Russia. But I don’t think they will really try to bring those charges against me. They’re too obviously a setup. I’m not afraid, and I’ll come back to you, my dear corrupt officials.”
The plethora of Internet exposes was dubbed “the Navalny effect” in a Dec. 7 comment in Vedomosti by Aleh Tsyvinski and Sergei Guriev, who wrote: “Why are Navalny and other bloggers who expose corruption by the authorities so popular right now? There is a real demand in society for something to counter corruption. More and more people see not only that Russia has no future without victory in the war against corruption, but that corruption costs each of them dearly.”
Anonymous followers of Navalny have already appeared. A Russian analogue of WikiLeaks, Rospil.info (the name is based on Russian slang for “kickbacks”), publishes materials on suspect state contracts. For example, the Agriculture Ministry put out a request for bids for a computer database system to store satellite images. It was for 30 million rubles ($972,000), and the system had to be up and running nine days after the contract was signed. The site suggests that these constraints were put in to limit the bidding to one company with close ties to ministry officials. But who knows, maybe Russian programmers are that talented and quick. If science in Russia developed as quickly as corruption, the sky would be the limit.

Victor Davidoff is a Moscow-based writer and journalist whose blog is chaadaev56.livejournal.com

TITLE: Seething Cauldron of Corruption
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: On Thursday, the world marked International Anti-Corruption Day. President Dmitry Medvedev, who has declared that combatting corruption is one of his most important political and economic programs, should declare it a holiday for all government officials. This way, there will be at least one day a year in which no stealing or bribe taking occurs.
The decision by the world football authorities to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia got a mixed reaction from Russians. True, many people also objected when South Africa splurged on last year’s World Cup, declaring that the billions of dollars it spent on building stadiums, tourist facilities and infrastructure would have been better used to fight poverty. In Russia, nobody talks about poverty relief. Instead, most people fear that preparations for the World Cup will turn into another orgy of pilfering. The construction budget for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi has been blown out of the water with massive cost overruns, which have been blamed entirely on pilfering by politically connected bureaucrats and businessmen.
All government-run construction projects in Russia feature rigged contracts and outright theft by those who control their budgets. Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny recently wrote how officials at the state-owned pipeline monopoly Transneft appropriated some $4 billion during the construction of an oil pipeline to China. In return, authorities opened a criminal investigation against Navalny for fraud that he allegedly committed a year ago as an adviser to Kirov Governor Nikita Belikh. Strangely enough, the case was opened at the same time that Russian officials, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, criticized the jailing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Secret diplomatic cables show that U.S. diplomats regard Russia as a mafia state presided over by the Kremlin. It is a dim view, but it is only partly true. The Kremlin seems to control only the top layer of the pyramid, ensuring access to petrodollars for the bureaucratic, security and business elites. Beyond this relatively thin layer, there is utter chaos in which gangs and factions wage clandestine wars over assets and money. Thuggery is used rarely precisely because government officials are directly involved and they are able to use the state security apparatus to settle scores. Nevertheless, gangland murder does take place as well, the latest example being the November slaying of 12 people in Kushchyovskaya in the Krasnodar region. Officials have said there are gangs like this that control towns all across Russia, seamlessly integrated into the power structure.
Corruption appears to be a factor in the ugly riot of nationalists in Moscow on Saturday. Football fans protested the murder of one of their own, reportedly committed by a North Caucasus native. The suspect’s friends who had taken part in the fatal fight were inexplicably released from police custody — not because they were from the Caucasus, but because they either had powerful protectors in government or criminal structures or simply because the cops got a handsome bribe.
Medvedev has compared the current political situation to the stagnation during the last dying years of the Soviet Union. But back then, the Soviet people had been browbeaten and impoverished. Today, Russia is a seething cauldron of lawlessness, greed, impunity and pent-up hatred. Unlike the collapse of the Soviet Union, a change now could bring that ugly mixture to the surface. Looking at the pictures from Saturday’s riots in Moscow, it almost seems better for the stagnant and corrupt rule by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to go on.

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

TITLE: In the Spotlight: Kirkorov Pleads Mental Health Defense
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: The flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov dominated the tabloids last week after he reportedly hit a director’s assistant at a concert rehearsal. She showed off a large bruise on her thigh, while in a bizarre twist, Kirkorov complained he suffered from “fits” and fled to a psychiatric hospital in Israel.
Kirkorov, a towering figure with a taste for black eyeliner and flashy Roberto Cavalli outfits, has never left the headlines since marrying the nation’s favorite pop diva Alla Pugachyova in 1994, although they divorced in 2005.
His most memorable ballads, delivered with oodles of showmanship, also date back to those years. “I Lift My Glass” and “My Little Hare” are engraved on the memory of anyone who lived through the 1990s, whether they like it or not.
He has had several public temper tantrums, including one in which he told a journalist that he did not like her “tits,” but this is the worst by far.
Marina Yablokova, a director’s assistant for the Golden Gramophone song contest, told the Tvoi Den tabloid on Monday that Kirkorov hit her in the face, then kicked her and dragged her by the hair. She rolled up her dress to reveal a bruise on her thigh.
Moscow police confirmed on Tuesday that they were investigating the incident, and Yablokova’s lawyer said Thursday that she had filed a suit at a magistrates’ court.
In a very odd message posted on his web site on Tuesday, Kirkorov wrote that he wanted to apologize to Yablokova “personally and publicly” and called his behavior “inappropriate.”
He blamed some unspecified malaise. “Probably I am seriously ill,” he wrote. “Twice a year I have serious fits, as a result of which I don’t remember anything and don’t realize what I’m doing.”
“Only now do I realize that I need serious treatment,” he said.
Kirkorov’s press secretary told Gazeta.ru on Thursday that the singer was in a psychiatric hospital in Israel.
Lawyer Leonid Olshansky told Komsomolskaya Pravda that a possible defense in such cases is that the client could not control his actions. He added that Kirkorov would have to be pronounced mentally unbalanced by Russian psychiatrists, something unlikely to go down well with his fans.
The incident happened as Kirkorov rehearsed with Anna Netrebko, the Mariinsky soprano, who is taking ill-advised steps into the world of pop.
Kirkorov complained about the lighting and argued with Yablokova before attacking her, the show’s director, Andrei Sychev, told KP.
Singer Valery Meladze told KP that Kirkorov broke an unspoken rule that the stars should respect behind-the-scenes staff. “No one is allowed to humiliate another person,” he said.
Only Netrebko told Komsomolskaya Pravda that Yablokova “was lying” and she saw no fight. She has recorded a warbling duet with Kirkorov called “The Voice,” a somewhat ironic choice given Kirkorov’s frequent use of lip syncing.
Periodically, people come forward to say Kirkorov has treated them badly — usually staff in the provincial theaters where he tours.
In the most notorious case in 2004, Kirkorov abused a journalist in Rostov-on-Don who asked him why he sang so many cover versions. “I’m sick of your pink top and your tits,” he said.
The bad publicity could hardly come at a worse moment for Kirkorov. The New Year’s holidays are the time for pop stars to earn money, lip syncing for television extravaganzas and performing at big companies’ Christmas parties.
Other pop stars have distanced themselves from Kirkorov.
Singer Valeriya told Tvoi Den that she was “horrified” by what she called a crime.
“Kirkorov has done everything to ruin his career. The public is unlikely to forgive his beating a woman,” pop-opera singer Nikolai Baskov told Tvoi Den.

TITLE: Concert Highlights Ravel’s Russian Links
AUTHOR: By Jacob Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The most important aspect of Maurice Ravel’s music is the sheer diversity of its influences. He is most often compared to Debussy, and it is true that an inattentive listener could mistake some of his early piano music for the work of the older Frenchman. But Ravel was astonishingly versatile and open-minded: In addition to Debussy, he was inspired at various times by Liszt, Mozart, Russian nationalism, Schoenberg, Spanish folk music and jazz. Among 20th-century composers, only Stravinsky tried on more hats.
In opening this year’s Arts Square Winter Festival with an all-Ravel program Tuesday, Yury Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic have naturally sought to underline the composer’s Russian influences, with the concert being part of the “France in Russia” program that Russian cultural institutions have been promoting this year. Much of the music on the evening’s program is connected with Russia in one way or another, but it is also varied enough to display several different facets of Ravel’s style.  
The modal harmonies prevalent in the two ballet suites — the “Mother Goose Suite” (1908-10) and the second suite from “Daphnis et Chloe” (1909-12) — recall Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. But while “Mother Goose” is delicate and nostalgic, “Daphnis” is erotic and lushly scored. It opens with a depiction of sunrise that may be the most beautiful sixty seconds in music: A long-breathed, soaring string melody gradually makes itself heard through the mist conjured up by the woodwinds and harps, eventually bursting forth in all its glory. After languishing for a while in this nature scene, Ravel ends the ballet with an orgiastic dance.
This ballet’s connection to Russia goes beyond the notes. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes troupe. This is also true of “La Valse” (1919-20), which concludes the evening’s program. But although Diaghilev had been happy enough with “Daphnis,” he rejected “La Valse,” in one of his rare misjudgments. Perhaps he was expecting something in the same uplifting mode as “Daphnis”: “La Valse” is a far darker work than its innocuous title suggests. The piece is dominated by a relentless waltz rhythm rather than waltz melodies. When melodies do appear, they sound strangely off-kilter, as if the dancers were too drunk to waltz properly. Like the finale of “Daphnis,” “La Valse” suggests excess, but while the excess in “Daphnis” is ecstatic, here it is decadent.
The Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929-31), which fills out the program, is at least as great a work as “Daphnis” or “La Valse,” though nowhere near as well-known. This performance will be particularly noteworthy as the great, underrated Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze will be performing the piano part. The piece was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein (the philosopher’s brother), who had lost his right hand in the First World War. Ravel had served in the French army during World War I, and was deeply affected at the time by the senseless destruction he had witnessed.  Although he and Wittgenstein had technically been enemies, Ravel clearly sympathized with the pianist: A touching sense of loss hangs over this piece, particularly the lyrical second theme, one of Ravel’s most beautiful melodies. The jazz-influenced middle section has some of the sinister drive of “La Valse,” and the modality of “Daphnis” is also present in the main theme. In perhaps no other work did Ravel combine so many different aspects of his style.

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic will perform Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite,” Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (soloist Eliso Virsaladze), “Daphnis et Chloe” suite no. 2, and La Valse at 8 p.m. on Tuesday at the Shostakovich Philharmonia Hall.  Yury Temirkanov conducts.

TITLE: Report: Majority Weary 
Of Graft
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A majority of Russians are weary of rampant corruption, with 52 percent ready to report graft, according to an annual corruption report by Transparency International released Thursday.
But this dissatisfaction has yet to translate into action, said Yelena Panfilova, head of Transparency International’s Russia office.
“We don’t know whether they would dare to actually do that [report graft],” Panfilova said.
“Only 7 percent have actually faced corruption and thought it necessary to contest it,” she said.
Tellingly, the number of people who have to pay bribes remains unchanged at 26 percent, placing Russia on par with Belarus, Thailand, Turkey and Papua New Guinea, according to the new report.
Comparative data from last year’s report on the number of people ready to report graft is unavailable because Transparency did not include that question in its previous survey. Last year’s report did say, however, that only 37 percent of Russians had faith in the government’s anti-corruption crackdown.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who has made the fight against corruption one of the key goals of his presidency, said in his state-of-the-nation address last month that corruption remained a major problem and proposed fining bribe takers 100 times the amount of money they accept.
This year, bribery grew in health care, education, land deals and the judicial system, but the increase was compensated for by a slight decline in corruption in state business regulators, law enforcement agencies and utilities companies, says the Global Corruption Barometer Report posted on the watchdog’s web site.
The study indicated that 48 percent of Russians doubt that Medvedev’s fight against corruption is effective, while 24 percent believe that it is making progress.
The Russian part of the survey was conducted in July by Gallup International at the watchdog’s request and covered 1,500 people. The report did not say which regions were included or indicate a margin of error.
Russia was ranked in the group of countries where 20 to 29.9 percent of the populace had to pay bribes this year, the report said. The group is dominated by developing countries, with Romania and Hungary being the only EU members on the list.
The world’s most corrupt countries, where more than 50 percent of the population is involved in graft, are Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cameroon, India, Iraq, Liberia, Nigeria, the Palestinian territories, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Uganda, the report said.
The top-tier group of countries, with fewer than 6 percent of the populace involved in graft, includes the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany and Switzerland, among others.

TITLE: Preservationists Protest Revisions to Existing Heritage Law
AUTHOR: By Nick Dowson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s leading preservationist campaign group Arkhnadzor called on the public last week to gather Saturday in protest of what they say is an attack on the country’s cultural heritage.
Meetings for the “day of unity for the defense of cultural heritage” were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Kazan, Tula and Pskov to protest two proposed amendments to Russia’s heritage law that the State Duma Cultural Committee will consider on Dec. 22.
The proposed changes would make it easier to demolish historical buildings, preservationists say. One amendment would legalize the “reconstruction” of architectural monuments, and the other would make it possible for the Culture Ministry to delist a protected building, which can currently only be done by a special act of government.
More than 20 leading restorers, preservationists and architectural historians wrote in a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev that the amendments “place tens of thousands of monuments of cultural heritage under threat of irreversible distortion and even destruction.”
Russia loses 250 historical and cultural monuments ever year, Arkhnadzor says.
Former Mayor Yury Luzhkov was widely criticized for allegedly employing crude reconstruction techniques on major buildings, such as the Tsaritsyno palace in southern Moscow.
One typical technique in Moscow is to expand a protected building by adding extra floors or in some cases even putting a new building around it.
Although the country’s conservation laws are strict, such illegal cases often happen. The proposed amendment would appear to legitimize this approach, said Natalya Samover, a coordinator at Arkhnadzor.
Moscow lost 2,000 buildings during Luzhkov’s 18-year tenure, at least 200 of which were listed as architectural or newly declared monuments, Arkhnadzor said.
“We are against reconstruction; we are for restoration of these monuments,” said Rustam Rakhmatullin, a coordinator at Arkhnadzor.
Architects criticized reaction to the amendments at a round table organized by the Izvestia newspaper last Wednesday.
“Personally I don’t see anything horrible in the word ‘reconstruction.’ For example the Bolshoi Theater has undergone a reconstruction combined with a restoration,” said Yakov Sarkisov, former head of reconstruction at the Bolshoi Theater, questioning how much a building protected by the state can be changed. “Can we close off a courtyard? On one hand, we are changing the face of a listed building. On the other, we are physically protecting [it].”
Preservationists have fiercely criticized the work on the Bolshoi Theater.
The amendment on reconstruction was put forward by Viktor Pleskachevsky, chairman of the State Duma Property Committee. Arkhnadzor’s Rakhmatullin said he believes that the St. Petersburg city administration is behind the initiative.
The wording of the amendment was softened earlier this week with the removal of the word “reconstruction,” but campaigners say they still consider it dangerous.
“We see the state refusing to fulfill its constitutional duties to protect [our heritage]. We see many architects acting only as agents for investors. They need to become agents for society,” said Galina Malanicheva, head of the central council of the Russian Council for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments.

TITLE: Keeping the City’s Children Off the Streets
AUTHOR: By Sophie Gaitzsch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Just inside the entrance, a placid well-fed cat lounging in the surprisingly warm corridor looks up at visitors. A small boy sits on a sofa, knitting from a ball of pink wool with extreme concentration. In the next room, children do their homework with the help of an older girl. Three boisterous kids rush past noisily, heading to the ceramics workshop. It is 2 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and the children’s daycare center on Angliisky Prospekt is starting to fill up. 
“This place is quite unique — it was the first of its kind in St. Petersburg, and in its long existence, it has had a great influence on many children,” said Anna Koudria, program officer for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which gives the center financial support. “Several of the center’s ‘graduates,’ as we call them, still come by to say hello to the people who work here and to talk with the children.” 
The daycare center was founded in 2000 by the St. Petersburg-based non-governmental organization Children’s Protection. Since that date, its doors have been open daily from noon to 8 p.m., giving children with difficult family backgrounds a place to go to after school, free of charge, where they can do their homework, have computer lessons, participate in various workshops, such as ceramics, theater, carpentry and cartoon animation, or simply have a meal. Weekends are also quite busy: The center usually offers excursions to the city’s theaters and museums, as well as outdoor activities such as biking or walking tours and trips to parks.
The reasons that children visit the center are very diverse, according to the center’s management. But mainly, the children come from large families that face severe financial problems. Typically, the parents — of whom there is often only one — have to work a lot, in many cases at several different jobs, in order to make ends meet, meaning that the children are left alone most of the time. 
“They have no idea what to do with their days, and end up spending a lot of time outside,” said Koudria. “For UNICEF, the center represents an alternative to the streets and their dangers.” 
Children get to know about the center through various means. Some of them are sent there by social services. “Sometimes a child’s school notices that something is not right and gets in touch with us,” says Tatyana Voronina, chairman of Children’s Protection. “Other children hear about the center from a classmate, a neighbor or friend and decide to come and have a look for themselves.” 
“Although they may be neglected, these children have a family whom they love,” says Voronina. The philosophy of the center is therefore to help the children and at the same time try to preserve their precious connection with their parents. 
“Usually, the children are pleased to come here. The biggest challenge is to win their parents’ trust. We can say our mission has been accomplished once they start visiting the center and taking part in its activities, several of which are open to them, or simply when they ask us for advice. But there are cases when we do not manage to make that happen.”
Today, two moms are present at the ceramics workshop. Lena, a young mother of five, her hands deep in the clay, looks thrilled to be here. Her daughter Yekaterina, 12, and her son Nikolai, 10, are sitting next to her. The goal of the afternoon is to mould small hares, a task that all the children present seem to be taking very seriously. Around the room, shelves are heavy with hundreds of previous works. A ceramic scene picturing the ideal family — colorful and smiling — decorates one of the only free spots on the wall. 
“During Communism, we had the Pioneers organization. Parents knew where their children went after school and what they were doing,” said Lena. “In that regard, the center plays the same role. My kids have been coming here for five years. I know that they are safe while I am at work, not hanging out on the streets, taking drugs or smoking. This place is good for their development, they have fun and they learn a lot. I am extremely happy that it exists. I wish there were more such opportunities, that the government would open similar places.”
Voronina said that workshops and classes represent very concrete help for the children, who often have difficulties imagining their future, and help them to find a path in life. “Some of the center’s previous visitors have enjoyed the ceramic lessons so much that they decided to make it their profession,” she added.
If ceramics, the oldest of the center’s workshops, is a big hit, then the other activities on offer are not far behind. In the tiny carpentry workshop, two boys appear to be having great fun sculpting wood. No rehearsal is taking place in the theater study today, but the homemade costumes and d?cor on display once again reveal the children’s zeal. The young actors take their work very seriously, confirms a UNICEF representative. The studio has already gained popularity, and residents of neighboring apartment blocks attend their performances. The troupe also tours hospitals and orphanages. 
But, though it offers multiple artistic and leisure activities, the goal of the center remains quite simple.
“We try to give the children an opportunity to socialize and develop, to be able to find a job and have their own family one day. What we want for them is simply to have a normal life,” says Nina Polyakova, the center’s manager. 
It is 5 p.m. The center has filled up and is noisier than three hours ago. In every room, children are learning, having fun and fighting, away from the troubles of the outside world. On the way out, the cat is still lying in the same place in the warm corridor. Regarding outgoing visitors lazily, the animal is as placid as ever, and, it seems, even a little better fed.

TITLE: Police: Stockholm Attacker Had 3 Sets of Bombs
AUTHOR: By Malin Rising and Jill Lawless
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — The suicide bomber who killed himself in Stockholm carried three sets of bombs and had sent threats referring to “jihad” in an e-mail shortly before his death, a prosecutor said Monday.
Prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand identified the suicide bomber behind Saturday’s blasts as 28-year-old Taimour al-Abdaly, a Swedish citizen who had lived in Britain for the past 10 years.
Parts of the explosives probably detonated by mistake before al-Abdaly reached his final destination, he said.
“He had three sets of bombs and I don’t think his intention was to blow himself up only,” Lindstrand told The Associated Press. “It was a failure, luckily.”
He said al-Abdaly had bombs strapped to his body, more in a backpack and also carried “something that looked like a pressure-cooker.”
Al-Abdaly was also the registered owner of the car that exploded in Stockholm shortly before the suicide blast Saturday that also wounded two people, and e-mail threats sent to police and the Swedish news agency TT before the blasts have been linked to his cell phone, Lindstrand said.
“He was well-equipped with bomb material, so I guess it isn’t a too daring guess to say he was on his way to a place where there were as many people as possible, maybe the central station, maybe Ahlens,” Lindstrand said, referring to a nearby subway station and department store.
Al-Abdaly, who had roots in the Middle East, had been a Swedish citizen since 1992. Although he apparently had harbored radical ideas for some time, Lindstrand said he was completely unknown to Swedish security police before the blasts.
The prosecutor said it was difficult for Swedish police to keep track of him since he had lived in Britain for the past 10 years and was only in Sweden to celebrate his father’s birthday.
“To read, to analyze, to understand, to make correct assessments from Facebook, I mean, we don’t have a Stasi organization, it’s a free country,” Lindstrand told the AP.
Al-Abdaly apparently had several ties to Luton, a town of 200,000 about 50 kilometers north of London, which has a large Muslim community and has seen tensions rise in recent years.
Farasat Latif, secretary of the Luton Islamic Centre in Britain, told The Associated Press that al-Abdaly had gone there “for a couple of months” in 2006 or 2007, but left after being challenged for his radicalism.
The University of Bedfordshire in Luton also confirmed that he had studied there between 2001 and 2004.
On his Facebook account, al-Abdaly had posted comments against Shiites, whom Sunni Muslims consider heretics, as well as a link to a video showing a dying man, who may have been injured in Chechnya, praying to God to die as martyr.
Al-Abdaly commented on the video, writing: “Taimour likes Abu Dujana, the death of a shaheed (martyr).”
Latif, the Luton mosque secretary, said al-Abdaly was “very friendly, bubbly” and “well-liked” when he started coming to the mosque, but later started to preach extremist ideas.
“It was fed back to the committee of the mosque who explained that his ideas were incorrect. He seemed to accept it. We thought we had led him back to the truth,” he said.
But the radicalism continued. 
“One day during morning prayers in the month of Ramadan — there were about 100 people there — the chairman of the mosque stood up and exposed him, warning against terrorism, suicide bombings and so on. He knew it was directed at him. He stormed out of the mosque and was never seen again,” Latif said. 
He said the extremist statements focused on “suicide bombings, pronouncing Muslim leaders to be disbelievers, denouncing Muslim governments,” but added “nothing pointed to the fact that he was going to do something stupid.”

TITLE: Hostages Freed in French School
AUTHOR: By Angela Charlton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Masked French gendarmes detained a 17-year-old who took a class full of preschoolers hostage Monday, releasing all the children safely after hours of tense negotiations that drew nationwide attention.
“The hostage-taking is over,” Jean-Marc Magda, aide to the mayor of the eastern French city of Besancon, told The Associated Press by telephone. All 20 children who had been taken hostage were released safely along with their teacher, he said.
The hostage-taker was detained, and remained inside the school with officers from a specialist gendarme force brought in to deal with the situation, Magda said.
French television showed a wide-eyed girl being draped with a green blanket and carried away from the school. Police and worried families had surrounded the school since early in the day.
The motives of the hostage-taker were unclear.
Besancon Mayor Jean-Louis Fousseret said the teen had been treated for depression but had not taken his medication in recent days. The mayor did not confirm reports that the youth had requested a gun in order to commit suicide.
The hostage-taker initially seized a class of 20 children but released 14 throughout the morning, including one who “more or less escaped,” said Besancon Mayor Jean-Louis Fousseret.
Five or six children and the teacher were believed to be still in the preschool when the officers entered around lunchtime, Fousseret said on i-tele television.
The masked gendarmes pointed their firearms at the school’s windows and doors as they entered, in images shown on French TV. They were in contact by telephone with the hostage-taker before the last group of children was released.
Families huddled around the school, with children bundled against the cold. Emergency workers draped a blanket over one woman’s shoulders as she wept, in images shown on i-tele television.
The hostage-taker did not threaten the children and allowed them to go to the bathroom throughout the ordeal, Education Minister Luc Chatel said from the scene.
The incident took place at the Charles Fourier preschool in Planoise, a neighborhood of housing projects with a big immigrant population on the western edge of Besancon.
Pupils were still inside the adjacent elementary school while the events unfolded.

TITLE: Dutch Detain Suspected Serial Child Molester
AUTHOR: By Toby Sterling
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AMSTERDAM — Amsterdam police called for the public to provide information on a possible child pornography ring Monday after a teacher was arrested on suspicion of molesting dozens of very young children.
The 27-year-old suspect in the Amsterdam case worked as a substitute teacher for at least two preschools in the city and also offered babysitting services online in what is feared to be one of the worst cases of sexual abuse in the Netherlands, the city’s mayor said at a late-night press conference Sunday.
Eberhard van der Laan said more than 50 parents had been informed that the suspect arrested last week after a tip from U.S. authorities has either confessed to abusing their children, or was thought to have done so.
“This is about a serious suspicion of grave abuse by a man who was arrested Tuesday and has been held since then,” Van der Laan said at a news conference with the city’s police commissioner and chief prosecutor.
“I see it as my most important job to inform parents as well as I possibly can,” he added.
Joannes Thuy, a spokesman for European law enforcement cooperation agency Eurojust, declined comment on whether the tip-off is linked to an international investigation into the sexual abuse of minors and the production and distribution of child abuse images.
The agency said in a press release Monday that a worldwide pedophile network has been uncovered as a result of the efforts of the countries involved.  Offenders have been arrested and numerous victims have been rescued.
Eurojust plans two separate press conferences in Los Angeles, California, and The Hague this week to announce developments in the investigation, which has been running since 2008.
The suspect in the Amsterdam case was arrested Dec. 7 after a Dutch police television program aired what it said was an image of an unidentified victim of child pornography. The program said U.S. authorities had seized the image in a separate investigation, chief prosecutor Herman Bolhaar said.
U.S. law enforcement officials had informed Dutch authorities they believed the image had been manufactured in the Netherlands.
The victim’s parents identified their child from the image and called police, leading to the suspect’s arrest the same night, Bolhaar said.
The man’s computers containing child pornography were seized and he has since confessed to dozens of sex crimes allegedly committed over the past year and a half, Bolhaar said.
The victims were boys and girls under four years old, he added.
Amsterdam police spokesman Rob van der Veen said Monday police were still seeking more witnesses and information in the ongoing investigation, with more arrests possible.
Mayor Van der Laan urged media not to publish photographs of the children possibly affected, and to be reserved in contacting their parents.
Police identified the man as a Dutch citizen originally from Riga, Latvia, and also published his photo — an unusual step, as privacy laws usually prevent publication of photographs of suspects in the Netherlands.
Van der Laan said that the photo had been released in part to reassure the thousands of parents in Amsterdam whose children were not affected.
“At the same time we want to alert others that it indeed was their babysitter,” he said. 
Prosecutors said in a statement Sunday they have also arrested the man’s 37-year-old partner on suspicion of possession of child pornography. 
Bolhaar noted the 27-year-old main suspect was a specialist in encryption and his computers had sophisticated protection. 
A 39-year-old employee of one of the day-care centers where the man worked was also arrested Sunday after allegedly attempting an “indecent” online chat, the prosecution statement said.

TITLE: S. Korea Boat Sinks in Antarctic, 22 Feared Dead
AUTHOR: By Ray Lilley and Hyung-Jin Kim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A South Korean fishing boat sank in the Antarctic Ocean’s frigid waters Monday, with 22 sailors feared killed in the open sea where vessels trawl for deep-water fish.
Five sailors were confirmed dead and 20 survivors were rescued shortly after the 614-ton vessel went down some 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) south of New Zealand, about halfway to Antarctica, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry and coast guard said. Seventeen sailors were missing.
Anyone who fell into such waters would typically be dead in 10 minutes without special suits or lifejackets, though nearby fishing boats searched frantically in hopes that some may be in a life raft, New Zealand’s rescue coordination center said.
“We were fortunate that there were a number of vessels in the general area (where the boat sank), so they were able to provide assistance,” said Ross Henderson, a spokesman for the center.
It was unclear why the vessel sank in light winds and a relatively mild 1-meter swell.