SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1675 (37), Wednesday, September 21, 2011
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TITLE: Elections Contested in Court
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Human Rights Council asked the Federation Council in a telegram Tuesday to postpone voting to elect former St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko as its chair.
The voting in Moscow is scheduled for Wednesday, the same day that court hearings about the controversial “secret” Aug. 21 election in the Krasnenkaya Rechka municipal district — that made Matviyenko an elected deputy — are due to open in St. Petersburg.
By law, the Federation Council’s chairperson must be an elected deputy.
According to Tatyana Dorutina, whose organization, Liga Izbiratelnits (the League of Women Voters), is part of the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council, the court might cancel the results of the election because of multiple violations, thus making her ineligible for the seat.
Matviyenko won an unprecedented 94.5 percent of the vote at the election in the small municipal district in the city’s southwest, with 3,830 residents voting for her, the St. Petersburg Election Commission reported last month.
The lawsuit was submitted by Pavel Yeremeyev, a registered resident of Krasnenkaya Rechka who was one of the observers, but it lists every violation reported by all the observers at the election, Dorutina said Tuesday.
Only a registered voter of the district where the election was held has the right to file a complaint to the courts, she added.
The lawsuit calls for the election to be ruled illegal and for its results to be canceled because of multiple violations, Dorutina said.
The main violations, according to Dorutina, involve the concealing of information about the planned election.
“It became known about the election only after the registration of candidates was closed,” Dorutina said Tuesday.
“The City Election Committee didn’t know about it, and nor, as it happens, did the people.”
Dorutina added that the Krasnenkaya Rechka Election Committee acted illegally by closing its doors on the day of the election, which made it impossible to submit complaints regarding the way the election was conducted.
“I went there myself to submit a complaint from our public organization the League of Women Voters, but the [men at the door] said that the commission was closed and does not accept complaints,” she said. “My testimony is included in the lawsuit.”
Dorutina added that observers also reported cases of ballot stuffing.
The local elections committee, however, said there were no “significant” violations.
The opposition, which was unable to offer its own candidates because information about the planned election was not available, described the election as a “farce.”
President Dmitry Medvedev proposed to make Matviyenko, St. Petersburg’s governor since 2003, the new speaker of the Federation Council in June.
The federal government was keen to replace Matviyenko, who was unpopular with St. Petersburg residents, before the Duma elections, analysts said.
Matviyenko was criticized for the planned Gazprom skyscraper, the demolition of scores of historic buildings in the center and her failure to deal with snow and icicles during the past two winters, which were described by her as “abnormal.”
At her final press conference as St. Petersburg Governor, Matviyenko dismissed a question about the legality of the election with a joke.
The preliminary court hearing into the lawsuit is scheduled to be held at the Kirovsky District Court at 11.40 a.m. Wednesday.
TITLE: New Flight Set to Boost Russia-U.A.E. Tourism
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Emirates airlines is to launch a daily service connecting St. Petersburg and Dubai from Nov. 1.
The new flight will be the airline’s second gateway into Russia after Moscow, where the company started operating in 2003 and from where it currently offers a twice-daily service. St. Petersburg will become the company’s 115th destination, and the fourth new route to be opened this year, alongside Copenhagen, Basra and Geneva.
“There are many reasons for flying to St. Petersburg: It is an important and dynamic business region, and it is a city known for its rich cultural heritage,” said Richard Vaughan, senior vice-president of commercial operations worldwide for Emirates.
St. Petersburg has become the airline’s northernmost destination. “We have now earned the right to call the city our own ‘northern capital’,” Vaughan said, referring to St. Petersburg’s nickname as the northern capital of Russia.
In 2010, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) numbered among the top 10 most active foreign investors in the Russian economy, said St. Petersburg’s deputy governor Yury Molchanov. “We hope that the arrival of Emirates in the city will further boost the economic ties between our countries,” Molchanov said.
It is also expected that the influx of tourists from the East will grow after the launch of the new service. According to Vaughan, the Emirates Holiday, the company’s subsidiary tour operator, is getting ready to enter the Russian market, and Arabian Adventures, one of U.A.E.’s leading tour operators, is already busy working on its St. Petersburg packages.
The United Arab Emirates, and Dubai in particular have recently become one of the most popular travel destinations among Russian tourists. According to Dubai’s Tourism and Marketing Board, in the first quarter of this year, U.A.E. received more than 80,000 visitors from Russia, a 27-percent hike on the previous year. St. Petersburg’s travel industry players are convinced the flow of locals to Dubai will grow dramatically in the coming year.
“We have been working on the launch of the Emirates flight to the northern capital for several years; the project has been made possible with the substantial support of the St. Petersburg government and the Russian Union of Travel Industry,” said Sergei Emdin, head of Northern Capital Gateway, the consortium that operates Pulkovo airport.
“With the launch of the new flight to Dubai, the airport will significantly expand its route network.”
Salem Obaidalla, Emirates’ senior vice president of commercial operations for Europe and Russia, said it is estimated that at least 50 percent of the airline’s Russian passengers will travel to Dubai as their final destination
Yegor Plakhov, Emirates’ manager for Russia and the CIS, said the minimum cost of a St. Petersburg-Dubai flight, including all taxes, will start from 18,000 rubles ($574) for a return flight. Prices for business class start from 80,000 rubles ($2,550), while first class will set passengers back 122,000 rubles ($3,900).
From St. Petersburg, the flight departs at 6.45 p.m. and gets to Dubai at 12.40 a.m. the following day. The inbound flight will take off from Dubai at 10.40 a.m., landing in St. Petersburg at 5.15 p.m.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hotel to Get Facelift
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The facade of the Karelia hotel located in the east of St. Petersburg will be painted to make it look like a giant suitcase, Interfax reported this week.
The administration of the district where the hotel is located hopes the creation of a mammoth briefcase may be the biggest in the world and reach the Guinness Book of World Records. The bid to be included in the book is to be registered by an official commission at the official opening ceremony of the project.
The project is due to be completed in October and unveiled to the public in November.
The 16-story building located on Ulitsa Tukhachevskogo was completed in 1978, and is a plain Soviet-style building. A group of young contemporary artists have now suggested painting the building to make it resemble a suitcase.
The painting of the hotel will not just be a picture on the building, but an integral image that is a part of a new type of art — mural art — in the architecture of contemporary cities around the world, Interfax reported.
Hacker Sells Cars
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Local hacker Viktor Pleshchuk, who hacked into the network of Royal Bank of Scotland, has sold two apartments and two cars at an auction to compensate the victims of his cyber attack, Interfax reported this week.
Pleshchuk sold his Lada Kalina and BMW X5 at auction.
Earlier the city’s Kalininsky district court gave Pleshchuk, 29, a six-year suspended sentence.
The court established that in 2008, Pleshchuk and some of his accomplices in the crime illegally gained access to the computer network of the American corporation RBS WorldPay and copied the database of credit card owners and their pin codes.
The swindlers then made fake Royal Bank of Scotland bank cards and used them to withdraw funds totaling more than 275 million rubles ($8.7 million).
French Tourist Dies
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An elderly citizen of France died in a local hotel Saturday, Interfax reported.
The body of the 71-year-old Frenchman was found in the hotel room of the Trezzini hotel on Bolshoi Prospekt of Vasilyevsky Island. The man had arrived in St. Petersburg on a tourist visa.
The death is not being treated as suspicious, but a post-mortem examination will be carried out on the body.
TITLE: Museum Encourages Romance
AUTHOR: By Olga Panova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It is 7 p.m. on a Thursday evening inside the Erarta museum of contemporary art, and the air is heavy with expectation. Smartly dressed young men and women mill around nervously, as though waiting for something to happen. But these visitors to St. Petersburg’s biggest contemporary art center are not waiting for a celebrated artist to turn up, or for a brand new exhibition to open. They are here to take part in a speed dating event.
Every Thursday, starting from last week, Erarta is giving Petersburgers a chance to find a romantic interest, a new friend, a soul mate or simply to have fun during the chilly autumn evenings.
Speed dating, in which participants are given several minutes to talk to each participant before moving on the next, originated in Los Angeles in the late ‘90s as a way to help Jewish singles to meet each other, and has flourished in both Jewish and secular communities throughout the world.
During the last few years, speed dating parties have become a regular part of St. Petersburg’s social scene, having become a new and popular way to meet people and have fun.
Most of the participants who came to the first event of Erarta’s new autumn series of speed dating Thursday were in their mid 20s and 30s and seemed quite curious about the event, talking about it more as a “way to have fun” rather than looking for destiny.
“I read about it yesterday on my social network page where I subscribe to news from Erarta,” says Svetlana, a sales manager in her mid 20s. “I called my friend and now we are here together. It should be great fun — better than just going to a bar, for sure!”
Her friend, a young legal aide with model good looks, joins in: “However, besides being a good opportunity to meet new and interesting people, I guess that every one of us here tonight hopes to meet their second half, or at least have some kind of romantic continuation to the story.”
Her words are backed up by the fact that although everybody is smiling and trying to act relaxed, the atmosphere in the room is electric with hope and expectation. This feeling was perhaps even more palpable among the female participants: In keeping with a commonly held belief in Russia that there are more women than men, there were 25 women and 20 men at Thursday’s event, so the dating took place in two rounds, with the men remaining seated and some girls participating only once.
Among the participants were a pair of young managers of so-called pick-up workshops in St. Petersburg who specialize in coaching men to pick up women. They attended the event at Erarta to do some research.
“We have just come back from New York and it’s very interesting for us from a theoretical point of view to experience and compare the way it is done here to the way it is over there,” they said.
At last comes the moment that everyone has been waiting for: The organizer invites everybody to the “games room,” the participants are given numbers and a bell is rung to signal the start of the game. Armed with a nametag, a scorecard and, hopefully, a sparkling personality, couples are paired up to begin their first date.
They are allowed to discuss anything except their careers or where they live.
Following three minutes of conversation (compared to seven in the original U.S. version), the bell is rung and the men move on to meet their next date. The process resembles a flirty version of musical chairs.
Following each date, participants mark on their card whether they would be interested in meeting that date again. If a mutual interest is noted, the organizers of the event will give each party the other’s phone number.
Although the participants at times seem nervous, searching for a place to put their hands, the most comfortable way to sit or for a relaxed but beguiling pose to attract the attention of their new date, everyone seems happy by the end of the evening. While they might not have met their soul mate that evening, most have at least been on the receiving end of some smiles and compliments. Regardless of their expectations of the evening, the pleasure of simply holding someone’s full attention — even for three minutes — should not be underestimated.
“There have already been six events held at Erarta gallery, and they have been a great success: Dozens of couples received the contact details of each other and continued to communicate on a regular basis,” said Ivan Danyushkin, the event’s organizer. “And although the first speed dating party took place just six months ago, one couple who met during a speed dating evening at Erarta are busy preparing for their wedding,” he added.
Speed dating events are held at 7 p.m. on Thursday evenings at Erarta museum and gallery of contemporary art, 2 29th Line of Vasilyevsky Island. M. Vasileostrovskaya. There is an entrance fee of 200 rubles. To register, call: 324 0809.
TITLE: Rainy Month Results In Record Mushroom Crop
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This autumn Russian mushroomers are enjoying a bumper crop of the beloved fungi. Happy hunters have been returning from local forests with baskets brimming with ceps, red-cap boletes, birch boletes, and chanterelles. Some say this year Russia is enjoying its best mushroom season of the last 50 years.
The Russian people’s love of mushroom picking seems to be an inborn trait and equal to the passion for their sport felt by fishermen or hunters.
“It’s so much fun to find a cep or a red-cap bolete!” said Dasha Dorozhkina, 12, who regularly goes mushroom picking with her parents. “And I love the competition for who finds more mushrooms,” she said.
Her mother Alla Dorozhkina said she also appreciated the opportunity “to combine mushroom picking with a walk around the forest.”
Perhaps surprisingly, not all those who enjoy mushrooming like to eat what they find, preferring the sport of the activity over the actual taste.
For Russians, the tsar of all local mushrooms is the cep. Ceps grow in pine forests and their brown caps and thick stems make them look like the kings of the mushroom world. They are usually enjoyed fried with potatoes, or made into a mushroom soup.
Ceps, red-cap boletes, birch boletes are also hung out to dry or frozen to be enjoyed later in the year. Other types of mushrooms, such as the gruzdi (milk mushroom) are best for pickling or salting.
The height of the mushroom season is the end of August, though it usually begins in late July and ends in early October, when the first frosts arrive. Mushrooms grow best after several days of rain have soaked the ground, followed by warm and sunny weather.
Most Russians follow certain rules regarding mushroom picking such as gathering mushrooms in the morning rather than later in the day, and the use of a wicker basket to carry the mushrooms rather than a plastic bag, where the delicate flesh tend to spoil much more quickly.
Experts advise that mushrooms be harvested by cutting near the root to preserve their root system and avoid too much soil finding its way into the basket. They also advise that it is better to choose only young mushrooms that have not yet been attacked by worms. When brought home, mushrooms should be cleaned as soon as possible, peeled when necessary, and cooked or dried for winter. The longer mushrooms stay uncooked, the faster they deteriorate.
As popular a pasttime as mushroom picking is, it may also be an extremely dangerous one, with poisoning and losing one’s way in the forest very real threats that must be taken seriously.
The problem is that while some poisonous mushrooms obviously look like toadstools, others may appear dangerously similar to the edible variety. Therefore the first rule by which a mushroom picker must live is to never pick even vaguely unusual looking mushrooms.
The most dangerous poisonous mushroom is the death-cap. Its ingestion is almost always fatal as it severely affects the kidneys and liver, experts say. There are also hallucinogenic mushrooms that can cause serious disorientation.
So far this month, local doctors have already registered a number of instances of mushroom poisoning, including one deadly case that claimed the life of an elderly man.
Doctors say the most vulnerable victims of mushrooms poisoning are children, the elderly and migrant workers who come from other countries. Migrant workers are at particular risk because they are unfamiliar with local vegetation. Children and elderly people are weaker physically than healthy adults, and as a result succumb more quickly to the effects of poisoning.
Another danger that plagues mushroom hunters is the risk of getting lost in the forest. This season alone, more than 340 people have gone missing in the forests of the Leningrad Oblast, according to regional emergency services reports.
TITLE: Prokhorov Weighs Options Following Controversy
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — After his dramatic resignation from the Right Cause party last week, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has backtracked by saying he is not challenging the country’s leadership but just one of two competing Kremlin camps.
“There was no personal conflict with anyone. … In the end it was a conflict of ideologies,” Prokhorov wrote in a blog post published late last Friday. “At this stage the conservatives won. I wanted change, but the system was not ready.”
Last Thursday, the metals magnate-turned-politician had accused first deputy Kremlin chief of staff Vladislav Surkov of being a “puppet master” in national politics and vowed to personally fight for his removal.
The unprecedented attack on Surkov, widely seen as the architect of the system of “managed democracy” built during Vladimir Putin’s eight-year tenure as president, immediately raised concern that Prokhorov would become the target of the Kremlin’s wrath.
Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said Friday that Prokhorov might put his life in danger if he wages a political battle. “If he becomes a real opposition figure, he risks repeating Khodorkovsky’s fate,” Nemtsov told Interfax.
Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 after showing political ambitions. His business empire was broken up, and he remains in prison.
Prokhorov has said he has no fear, but state media coverage since his resignation signaled strongly that he has fallen out of favor.
His comments about Surkov, made at what was supposed to be a party convention, were widely ignored even by some privately held news outlets like the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily, and the main television channels switched that day to covering the convention of his Kremlin-friendly opponents.
Over the weekend, two state-controlled channels, NTV and Rossia 1, aired damning reports about controversial anti-drug campaigner Yevgeny Roizman, whose inclusion on the Right Cause party list had sparked last Wednesday’s rebellion against Prokhorov.
On Friday, Prokhorov said he was ready to stand the heat. “I know already that they are trying to create problems for me and for my followers. … They will crack down hard and uncompromisingly. I am prepared,” he wrote in his blog.
But he suggested that he might not carry on with politics, saying he does not know yet “how everything will go on.”
In an interview with the BBC Russian Service, published Saturday, he said he needed time to analyze the situation. “After I have weighed and thought through everything, I will make a decision,” he said.
Prokhorov said he had requested meetings with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and was now waiting for a slot in their schedules.
Asked how he planned to achieve Surkov’s ouster, Prokhorov said he would fight for the victory of progressive against conservative ideology. “If [my] side wins, staff changes will be unavoidable,” he said.
He also claimed that he had allies in the Kremlin. “Various people work in the presidential administration. There are those … who have called me to express their support,” he said, adding that he would not reveal their names to protect them from reprisals.
Not everybody was convinced by his argument.
“Is it so hard to understand that the political decision of [Prokhorov’s] expulsion was made by Putin and Medvedev, not by Surkov or Khabirov?” Nemtsov wrote in his blog Saturday.
When the party rebellion unfolded last week, Prokhorov accused Rady Khabirov, deputy head of the Kremlin’s domestic affairs department, of orchestrating it.
Nemtsov said Prokhorov’s example proved that no independent party could exist as long as Putin’s political system demanded total servility. “You must admit that the leader of your party is Surkov and that you are his errand boy.”
Prokhorov himself conceded that he had been naive when he earlier this year agreed to lead the party, which has been seen as a Kremlin project since its inception in 2008.
In an interview with The New York Times published Saturday, he said he had agreed to do so after a meeting with Medvedev this spring. “It never came into my head that some staffers would impose some limits,” he said.
Leonid Gozman, a co-founder of Right Cause and a prominent liberal, accused Prokhorov of failure. “Did he not know what country we live in? Did he not know who Surkov is?” Gozman told reporters Thursday.
Gozman, who held no party position after Prokhorov took over in June, argued that the billionaire should have found a common language with the Kremlin to ensure that a “relatively independent” party got into the Duma.
Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information, suggested that the whole affair had been orchestrated from the start and speculated that Right Cause and Prokhorov could come together again.
TITLE: Sapsan Route to Be Axed
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian Railways have announced that the high-speed Sapsan route between St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod will be canceled in November primarily due to poor passenger demand, Kommersant reported, citing sources within the company.
Only 8 percent of passengers arriving in Moscow from St. Petersburg continued to Nizhny Novgorod. “In practice, the entire train emptied in Moscow,” an anonymous source said, Kommersant reported.
High passenger turnover also meant that crews had to clean nearly the entire train in 15 minutes. Furthermore, Russian Railways would have had to build an additional platform and disrupt dozens of other trains to inspect passengers arriving simultaneously from opposite directions.
The company has promised to launch more trips between Moscow and each city.
TITLE: Alcohol Blamed in Petrozavodsk Crash
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A drunken flight navigator contributed to a June plane crash in Petrozavodsk that killed 47 people, with his authoritative instructions leading a less-experienced pilot to attempt a fatal landing in heavy fog, investigators said Monday.
The navigator, Aman Atayev, would seem the least likely culprit in the incident, having logged more than 13,000 hours — 541 full days — on Tu-134 jets. But the Interstate Aviation Committee said his intoxication was one of the factors that caused the crash of the RusAir jet on June 20 in Karelia’s capital.
Medical examiners found that Atayev, 50, had a blood alcohol content of 0.081 percent — slightly above the legal limit in Britain and the United States but a violation of Russian piloting rules.
Atayev’s recent divorce had driven him to drink, though he never drank before flights, his former mother-in-law, Assya Shumakova, told Rossia-1 television on Monday.
The booze — the rough equivalent to a glass of vodka — caused Atayev, who had worked in civil aviation for more than 30 years, to become more distracted, talkative and assertive, investigators said.
“Normally on a Tu-134, the navigator doesn’t do anything during landing,” Roman Gusarov, editor-in-chief of Avia.ru, an aviation news web site, said by telephone Monday.
But Atayev’s “heightened activity” in the cockpit is clear from the cockpit voice recorder, cited by the aviation agency, which wrapped up its investigation into the incident Monday.
“Sasha, come on, turn it faster!” Atayev told the pilot five minutes before the crash. “I’ll lead you right in,” he then reassured him. Trusting his navigator, the pilot refused a suggestion from air traffic controllers to abort his first approach.
Atayev also failed to instruct him to search for ground markers at an altitude of 140 meters, and at 110 meters he failed to warn the pilot that he was losing his last chance to pull up, according to the crash report, which is posted on the Interstate Aviation Committee’s web site.
The co-pilot was “effectively” absent from the cockpit during the landing, the report said, without elaborating. It also said the crew’s decision not to use certain navigational instruments was among the factors that contributed to the pilot’s decision to land.
The pilot was also misled by weather reports that said the clouds would break at 130 meters to 140 meters, when in reality land-based beacons were only visible at 70 meters or less — below the airport’s minimum for incoming aircraft, the report said.
Just six seconds before the crash, the pilot calmly said, “I don’t see [the beacons] yet, I’m looking.” Then the plane hit trees and plowed into a highway 830 meters from the runway. It quickly burst into what one witness said looked like a “pillar of fire.”
Locals managed to pull eight people out of the wreckage before the blaze, including a mother and her two children, aged 9 and 14. But the 9-year-old boy and a female survivor later died in the hospital.
The committee’s report sheds light on why Russian airlines are the world’s most deadly this year, surpassing the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, with 119 deaths in eight fatal crashes, including this month’s crash that killed most of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team.
The Karelian crash prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to partially suspend Tu-134 flights. Similar bans have been considered for other Soviet-built planes, including the An-24, after subsequent accidents this summer.
But industry experts and analysts have insisted that the structural problems of Russian aviation are not limited to obsolete aircraft, with poor pilot training and insufficiently enforced safety regulations also serving as contributing factors. The Kremlin recognized these issues after the Lokomotiv crash, ordering a sweeping reform.
The Lokomotiv incident is still being investigated, but pilot error remains among the main versions for the crash. It remains unclear what could have prompted the error.
Drunken crew members have tarnished the safety and reputation of Russian airlines in recent years. In 2009, an S7 pilot was removed from a flight from Germany on suspicion of being drunk.
Later that year, an Aeroflot pilot was removed from a New York-bound plane in Moscow after passengers, including socialite Ksenia Sobchak, accused him of being drunk. The airline later said tests revealed no signs of intoxication and the pilot might have suffered a stroke.
The Investigative Committee confirmed last year that a drunken pilot was to blame for the 2008 crash of an Aeroflot-Nord 737 jet in Perm that killed all 88 people on board.
TITLE: Smolensk Official Faces Charges
AUTHOR: By Alexey Eremenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SMOLENSK — Smolensk’s city manager was led away in handcuffs by masked officers toting automatic weapons Tuesday after his deputy was caught red-handed accepting a bribe on his behalf, police said.
Konstantin Lazarev, a native Muscovite who was appointed city manager by the municipal legislature last year, was questioned at the police station while his office was searched by an investigator Tuesday, judicial news agency Rapsi reported, citing a city police spokesman.
“After the investigator finished his work in his office, the official was led from the city police building in handcuffs and driven away to an undisclosed location,” the spokesman said.
Video footage posted on local news site SmolCity.ru showed Lazarev walking to the building’s exit, escorted by masked men with automatic rifles.
Smolensk Mayor Alexander Danilyuk said late Tuesday that Lazarev and his deputy Nikolai Petrochenko were shipped to Moscow, where they would be charged with graft, RIA-Novosti reported. He did not elaborate.
His detention appears to be the latest in a pre-election crackdown on corruption that saw Tula Governor Vyacheslav Dudka resign and then charged with bribery earlier this month.
The investigation in Smolensk, located some 400 kilometers west of Moscow, began Monday when police searched the city administration building and detained Nikolai Petrochenko, Interfax reported.
Petrochenko had been caught accepting a bribe, and he told investigators that the money was intended for Lazarev and another deputy city manager, Alexander Pogulyayev, Interfax said, citing an unidentified city official. He did not elaborate on the size of the bribe or what it was for.
Petrochenko, who had held his job since 2002, was responsible for communal utilities, a notoriously corrupt industry in Russia. He was also overseeing preparations for the celebration of the city’s 1,150th anniversary in July 2013.
Petrochenko’s lawyer said he did not know the whereabouts of his client and whether he had been charged, Interfax reported.
The bribery investigation is being handled by the anti-corruption department of the Interior Ministry in Moscow, RIA-Novosti reported. City police confirmed that they were not involved in the case, according to SmolCity.ru.
The Interior Ministry did not comment on the investigation Tuesday.
Smolensk has seen corruption cases before. In April, Mayor Eduard Kachanovsky was jailed for four years on charges of extorting an apartment from a real estate developer in exchange for construction permits.
TITLE: European Court Delays Ruling on Yukos
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STRASBOURG — The Russian government violated the rights of Yukos, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday, but added that it was not yet ready to decide on a claim for nearly $100 billion in damages.
Russian authorities were unfair in meting out punishment to the company over tax violations and did not give the defunct oil company enough time to prepare its defense, said the court in Strasbourg, France.
The nine-judge panel found that the state violated three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, but it rejected several other claims filed by Yukos such as a contention that the prosecution of Yukos was politically motivated. It also dismissed the state’s argument that the case should not be heard by the European court at all.
Mikhail Barshchevsky, a high court lawyer for Russia, said the Strasbourg court’s rejection of political motivation is “an indisputable victory for Russian envoys in the court,” RIA-Novosti reported.
The finding could still embarrass Russia and hurt its efforts to win back international investors scared off by Yukos and other legal cases in recent years. But its weight on the investment climate is unlikely to be lasting, analysts said.
Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Troika Dialog, said in a note to investors Tuesday that a negative ruling “would be a PR nightmare rather than a financial disaster.”
“The saving grace is that investors are more focused on more substantive global events, for example, Greece and the Fed meeting, so any knee-jerk negative reaction should be relatively short-lived,” he said.
Yukos sought $98 billion in damages, the largest claim in the court’s 50-year history and one of Russia’s biggest legal challenges to date.
The company — whose primary subsidiary once produced as much oil as all of Libya — was dismantled by authorities after the 2003 arrest of its founder and owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. His supporters say then-President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin mounted an orchestrated effort to destroy the tycoon, seen as a threat to Putin’s rule.
Khodorkovsky offered his view on what happened in 2003 in an opinion piece published in Kommersant Vlast on Monday: “Those who made up criminal cases against me and my colleagues simply wanted to take for free the country’s most profitable oil company with a market value of $40 billion.”
The European court found that the question of damages “is not ready for decision” and gave both parties three months to reach a settlement. If they do not, the court will rule later on whether to order any damages.
The court has repeatedly found Russia in violation of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, and deals with more cases involving Russia than any other country.
The Yukos case was unusually high-profile and is being watched by investors hungry for profits from Russia’s highly lucrative oil industry and other markets but wary of the country’s legal system, as well as by Western diplomatic observers and human rights activists.
Russian authorities had accused Yukos of using shell companies to hide revenue from tax authorities, and through the courts they ultimately froze its assets, forced it to sell its shares in other companies and declared Yukos insolvent in 2006 before the company was finally liquidated a year later. Its most lucrative assets ended up in the hands of state-run Rosneft.
Those representing Yukos want the state to pay back the taxes, fines and penalties that the company was charged, arguing that they were unlawful. The bulk of the $98 billion claim, however, is for a full refund of the value and the loss of subsequent profits from assets sold in the liquidation of Yukos.
TITLE: Case Opened in Road Death Of Construction Migrant Workers
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow region police are investigating a road incident in which four Moldovan men were struck and killed by a pair of luxury vehicles, possibly owned by a large bank, news reports said Tuesday.
The victims, all construction workers, were crossing the road leading to Domodedovo Airport early Monday when they were rammed by a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Mercedes S-600, Gazeta.ru said.
The impact scattered the men, killing three on the spot. The fourth died hours later in a hospital in the nearby town of Vidnoye, Interfax said.
The identities of the cars’ owners, drivers and passengers were unclear late Tuesday. But activists with Blue Buckets, a motorist group that opposes the abuse of road privileges by VIPs, said the license plates on the cars suggested VIP status.
Blue Buckets claimed to have tracked the Land Cruiser’s license plate number back to a leasing company called Avangard-Leasing, owned by Avangard Bank.
Bank representatives said they “had no information that the bank’s vehicles were involved in this accident,” Gazeta.ru reported. Regional police refused to confirm or deny the report.
The Mercedes featured the rare and highly coveted letter combination “MMR,” which police treat like a flashing blue light, giving users the right to ignore traffic rules, Blue Bucket coordinator Pyotr Shkumatov told Dozhd television.
Another Blue Bucket activist speculated on the group’s LiveJournal community that the Land Cruiser was being used as a security escort, but a police spokesman denied that the vehicles had formed a VIP convoy, RIA-Novosti reported.
LiveJournal user Alienoraa, who drove by the crash site, wrote that the two cars did not have flashing blue lights, but added that their license plates were covered after the crash.
A case was opened on charges of involuntary manslaughter of multiple people, which carries a maximum punishment of seven years in prison, RIA-Novosti reported, citing local police.
TITLE: 90-Day Visa Rules Enforced
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Authorities have stepped up checks on expatriates using multi-entry business visas to make sure they do not overstay their visits, the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia said Tuesday.
Customs and border officials started to use a database this month that allows them to quickly check the total number of days a foreigner has stayed in the country, AmCham said in an e-mailed statement.
Under the law, people with multi-entry business visas are only allowed to remain in Russia for 90 days in any 180 days period. Multi-entry business visas are issued for periods of six months to five years.
Expatriates who stay longer than 90 days will be stopped at the border and directed to the nearest branch of the Federal Migration Service to pay a fine of 2,000 rubles to 5,000 rubles and receive a transit visa allowing them to leave the country.
TITLE: Prosecutor’s Assistant Arms Rebels
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An Ingushetia prosecutor’s assistant was arrested Sunday night on suspicion of forming and supplying weapons to a rebel group, investigators said Monday.
Ali Dobriyev, 26, formed the gang in 2010 to “destabilize conditions in the region,” the Investigative Commitee said in a statement on its web site.
Investigators said he bought two automatic weapons, two Kalashnikov rifles and a Makarov pistol with abundant ammunition and gave them to the gang, which used them to carry out attacks in the Nazran region.
Dobriyev began working at the prosecutor’s office in 2009 after finishing law school in Vladimir, Kommersant reported. One year later, he was promoted to senior prosecutor’s assistant.
TITLE: Hilton to Open 2 Hotels At Convention Center
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The first two Hilton hotels in St. Petersburg are due to open in a convention center built by Gazprom subsidiaries in the Shushary district.
Hilton’s partnership with the company Expoforum, which is currently building a convention and exhibition center with two hotels in Shushary, was made known to Vedomosti by an employee of a partner company to Expoforum. Two real estate agents confirmed the information.
Anatoly Yerkulov, the general director of Expoforum, confirmed last week that the company has signed a management agreement with Hilton, adding that the two hotels will be opened under the brands of Hilton and Hampton by Hilton, containing 241 rooms and 210 rooms respectively.
The Expoforum complex will be built in the Pushkinsky district of the city. In addition to the two hotels, the first stage of the project will include a congress center with a maximum capacity of 3,000 people, 50,000 square meters of exhibition space and two business centers occupying a total of 25,000 square meters, to be completed by 2013. The second stage, to be completed by 2018, will include an additional 50,000 square meters of exhibition space. The total cost of the project could reach $1 billion, said Yerkulov in August.
According to Yerkulov, about a third of the cost will be covered by investor partners of Expoforum, while the rest will be raised via loans. Spark-Interfax reports that the main investor in the project is Gazenergoprom Development, 67.5 percent of which is owned by the Gazprom subsidiary Mezhregionteploenergo, according to the state register of legal entities.
“Many wanted to bring Hilton into the market, but the company agreed to partner with Expoforum because it was confident that its hotels would be built in accordance with Hilton standards, and shared our assessment of the exciting prospects for the convention and exhibition business in St. Petersburg,” said Yerkulov. He declined to reveal information about investment in the construction of the hotels.
The cost of investing in one Hilton room is $180,000 to $200,000, while a room in the Hampton is $120,000, says the general director of Cromwell Management, Alexei Musakin. The Hilton is a luxury-brand five-star hotel, while the Hampton by Hilton is a three-star hotel, he explained.
This is a case of a place choosing a hotel operator rather than an operator choosing a place, said Oleg Gromkov, head of the real estate market research department of Knight Frank St. Petersburg. On the one hand, the project is conveniently located close to the airport, on the other, this is a major investor and the hotel operator can be confident that there won’t be problems in financing and that the project will be realized, he said. Attracting a large foreign hotel operator will open access to foreign loans for the investor, said Musakin.
Hilton has been searching for a location for a long time, even negotiating with investors whose properties are located in the center of the city, but finding a building that corresponds to their standards is difficult, as when dealing with the city center, it is not new construction, but renovation that is usually discussed, says Gromkov.
The convention and exhibit business is a prospective sphere, and if an investor has governmental support, then their project has the potential to attract a large number of events, he added.
TITLE: O’Key Counts Cost of Tragedy
AUTHOR: Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The hypermarket chain O’Key is scheduled to reopen a store whose roof caved in last winter at the end of this month. The retailer may have lost up to 1.8 billion rubles ($60 million) in earnings because of the temporary closure.
The hypermarket located at 3 Vyborgskoye Shosse will open by the end of September, O’Key’s press service said. On Jan. 25, 462 square meters of the roof collapsed over the sales floor, killing an employee and injuring 15 customers. According to the press service, the cost of repairs and renovation, modernizing the engineering and communications infrastructure, and the total replacement of sales equipment and technology of the Ozerki hypermarket will comprise 150 million rubles ($4.8 million).
The store closure probably cost O’Key from 6 to 6.5 million rubles ($191,000 to $207,000) per day, said Investkafe analyst Anton Safanov. In the eight months that the store was closed, the retailer could have lost 1 to 1.2 billion rubles ($32 million to $38 million), he estimated.
Ivan Kush, an analyst at VTB Capital, believes the chain lost approximately 2 percent of its forecasted annual revenue, which he estimated at 94 billion rubles ($3 billion) for this year. O’Key’s press service did not comment on the data.
In 2010, the chain’s net revenue totaled 81.69 billion rubles ($2.6 billion), increasing by 11.9 percent in the first half of the year to 42.8 billion rubles ($1.4 billion). After the tragedy, O’Key closed 25 hypermarkets and supermarkets in St. Petersburg for a week while snow was cleared from the roofs as a precautionary measure. Revenue losses could have totaled 90 million rubles ($2.9 million) a day, said Safonov.
The retailer operates 61 stores in Russia, 31 of which are in St. Petersburg.
According to O’Key’s press service, the company expects turnover of the store to recover in two to three months, after being 20 percent less than other stores in the chain in the first month. Safonov believes that in the first few months after the opening, the turnover of the Ozerki store will be down by 10 to 15 percent.
O’Key is a brand leader on the Russian market, and remains the most effective in turnover per square meter, said Mikhail Burmistrov, director of Infoline Analytics. He said it would probably take five to six months for sales to reach 70 to 80 percent of what they were before the roof caved in, while they would reach 90 percent only after a year, with a complete recovery unlikely to happen. Competition in St. Petersburg is fierce, and part of the customer base has already gotten used to going to other stores during the eight-month break, Burmistrov explained.
One retail chain representative said that the hypermarket should not have problems with recouping sales, as customers will quickly return to a store that is conveniently located for them.
The retailer paid out 6.3 million rubles ($201,000) in victim compensation after the roof collapsed.
TITLE: If You Can’t Beat Other Parties, Absorb Them
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: The scandal about how Mikhail Prokhorov was first recruited and then cast out of the Right Cause party calls into question whether there is a place for political parties in an authoritarian political system. If there is, can those parties be the initiators and leaders of peaceful or revolutionary democratic change? Does it make sense to vote for Kremlin-approved parties in the December State Duma elections in the hope that they will loosen the power of the current authoritarian regime?
Paradoxically, authoritarian regimes are often multiparty systems, although that pluralism is only nominal.
China is a good example of a nominally multiparty system. Aside from the Communist Party that holds a monopoly on power, there are eight political parties that were created before the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949 and implicitly accept the commanding role of the Communist Party. All the parties are combined into a common front headed by the Communist Party and play a purely consultative role as part of a special institution called the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Another example was East Germany, as it had a nominally multiparty system under a Communist dictatorship. As in China, East Germany inherited its multiparty system from the country’s democratic period before the war. The Communist Party of Germany ruled the country with assistance from the Soviet Union right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Social Democratic Party of Germany was re-established in East Germany immediately after the war’s end. In fact, by late 1945 the Social Democratic Party was the largest political party in the Soviet occupation zone. In addition, East Germany had the Christian Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Party.
These techniques enable a ruling party to turn formerly independent political parties with their own traditions into satellites or subordinates of the dominant party. Many of those same tricks are employed in today’s Russia.
As early as July 1945, four parties inside the Soviet occupation zone in East Germany formed an “anti-fascist democratic bloc” with the aim of working together to rebuild their country. As with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front, that bloc enlisted a variety of civil organizations such as women’s and cultural groups. The bloc’s leader, Walter Ulbricht, once said, “Everything has to look democratic, but it should be under our control.” You cannot help but think about Russia when reading this quote.
The system of “co-participant parties” in East Germany did not become the engine moving the country toward democracy and the fall of the Communist dictatorship in 1990. Instead, these parties moved in the wake of revolutionary events. The turning point was the elections held on May 7, 1989, when 10 percent to 20 percent of people voted against the unified list of the “anti-fascist bloc,” although official statistics claim that 98.89 percent of the population voted for it. Also that year, 120,000 East German citizens applied for emigration. Dissidents operating underground became leaders of the revolution and the masses rallied around them. In the end, the authorities were forced to sit down at the negotiating table with them.
As a second step, the smaller Communist Party of Germany forced the larger Social Democratic Party into a merger that essentially swallowed the latter. By April 1946, the two had combined into a single party — the Socialist Unity Party of Germany — that immediately held hegemony over the political system of the country.
In similar fashion, the Unity party swallowed up the Fatherland-All Russia party headed by then-Mayor Yury Luzhkov to form United Russia. Later, United Russia swallowed up a number of other minor parties as well, including the Agrarian Party. Similarly, in 2006 the pro-Kremlin Life Party headed by Sergei Mironov absorbed the Rodina party and Pensioners’ Party through mergers. Forcing independent parties to merge with larger pro-government parties helps the Kremlin monopolize political power.
The techniques of replacing disloyal leaders with loyal ones and creating artificial puppet parties are widely practiced in Russia today. It is interesting that in East Germany, Social Unity Party officers would handpick the entire leadership of the new parties they created — strikingly similar to what happened with Right Cause and its short-lived chairman, Prokhorov.
History demonstrates that satellite or subordinate parties in an authoritarian system cannot be the initiators of change. On the contrary, they either disappear or change completely with the collapse of the ruling regime. Real change is brought on by society itself. The leaders of that transition are individuals who enjoy the public’s confidence and not those who are responsible for the crimes committed by the failed regime.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is co-founder of the opposition Party of People’s Freedom.
TITLE: FROM A SAFE DISTANCE: A Viking State
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: The origins of the Russian state and its early history help explain the country’s modern political makeup.
According to the Kievan Primary Chronicle, compiled around 1110, Slavic tribes invited Scandinavian prince Rurik to rule over them in the 9th century. But the history of the Viking expansion in Western Europe suggests that an “invitation” was hardly necessary. In the West, the Vikings began by raiding settlements, pillaging them and dragging their inhabitants off to slavery. They set up outposts to collect tributes, gradually becoming feudal lords. They adopted the local language and customs and eventually melded with the local population.
The Norsemen followed the same pattern in Britain, France and Sicily. The Varangians, as they were known in Russia, became feudal lords and the name of their tribe, the Rus, gave Russia its name just as Normandy was named after the Normans.
Soon Rurik’s descendants and other Varangians adopted the Russian language and merged into Russian society, creating the Russian state. Assimilation occurred in the West as well, but the difference in Russia was that the division between “foreign” rulers and the people was never erased, persisting through the ages. Most of the time, the rulers and the people lived at peace, but in the 16th century, Ivan the Terrible waged a war on his people that was just as brutal as his campaign against the Tatars.
Peter the Great reasserted Russia’s origins as a Viking state by gaining access to the Baltic and establishing St. Petersburg in the land of his ancestors. The new capital has often been referred to by Russian authors as a foreign city. Peter also ushered in a new foreign invasion. Over the next century, Russia had three foreign-born rulers and a steady stream of foreign aristocrats, artisans, farmers and adventurers seeking work, profits and favors from the court.
Of course, the aristocracy and royalty were often foreign in many other countries in Europe. The fact that Russian rulers came from abroad or that in the 19th century the aristocracy spoke mostly French does not mean much. But the Russian people have always shown not only a strange alienation from their rulers, but also a complete disengagement from their state. They have behaved like an occupied nation, never demanding a voice in their own affairs and implicitly recognizing the right of the Varangians to rule. Gentler rulers were never popular. Especially despised were those who tried to find common ground with the people or were “too Russian,” such as Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev. The most respected leaders were harsh — and frequently foreign, such as Catherine the Great and Josef Stalin.
On the other hand, the only major popular rising in Russian history — the 18th-century Pugachyov rebellion — bore the hallmarks of a war of liberation, with its leader styling himself as a truly Russian tsar.
The Bolshevik regime was established along the same lines. Based on an imported ideology, Marxism, it initially considered Russia a steppingstone toward a worldwide proletarian revolution. This did not pan out, and later Soviet elites were drawn from the Russian people. But the ruling elite remained a separate, foreign caste. Stalin unleashed a brutal war on his own people that was far more destructive than the German invasion.
Today’s Russia, though ruled by Russians, is another variation on the Varangians. The ruling bureaucracy — starting from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the members of his clan — act like voracious invaders, stripping Russia’s assets and sending them offshore. Anyone trying to stop or expose this despoliation risks going to jail or worse. The massive neglect of investment, infrastructure, education and other aspects of Russia’s future can only be understood by accepting Russia as a Viking state.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The art group Voina has asked international artists to boycott the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art that opens on Friday, Sept. 23 for exhibiting a work that does not belong to the group under its name.
The work in question is the “Kiss the Cops” stunt, which was staged in Moscow by former Voina members Pyotr Verzilov and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and a number of volunteers earlier this year. During the stunt, female activists forced kisses on policewomen on duty in the Moscow metro.
The video documenting the stunt was uploaded onto YouTube on Feb. 28, four days after Leonid Nikolayev and Oleg Vorotnikov, who did three months in prison, were released on bail — paid by British graffiti artist Banksy — in St. Petersburg.
On March 1, Voina made a statement denouncing the stunt and denying any involvement with it.
Alexei Plutser, who documents every Voina stunt with photos and text descriptions in his Livejournal.com blog, said then that “Verzilov and his girlfriends” had been kicked out of Voina for allegedly handing in a Kiev activist to the Ukrainian police in November 2009.
(The activist, Alexander Volodarsky, spent six weeks in prison and three months in a penal colony in Ukraine before he was released on July 22.)
Plutser also noted that the “Kiss the Cops” stunt appeared to have been timed to coincide with the much-publicized release of Nikolayev and Vorotnikov in order to draw maximum attention from the public.
The video and photographs of the stunt are scheduled to be part of “Media Impact. International Festival of Activist Art,” an exhibit within the biennale.
In a statement Friday, the real Voina wrote that the activists have been deprived of the opportunity to take legal action against the Moscow curators because they are still under investigation, while Vorotnikov and his wife Natalya “Kozlyonok” Sokol are on a police wanted list and in hiding.
In their response to Voina posted on the Internet on Sunday, the organizers refused to withdraw the work, saying that Verzilov and Tolokonnikova claim they have the same right to the name Voina as the other members, and that the organizers have no way of influencing the names of participants.
Meanwhile, the media appears to be confused — again — as many preview articles for the Biennale mention Voina’s award-winning “Dick Captured by the KGB” stunt on Liteiny Bridge in St. Petersburg in June 2010, the group’s criminal charges and Banksy’s support.
These are in fact what Voina is best-known for, and none of this has anything to do with Verzilov and Tolokonnikova.
Meanwhile, footage of the real Voina’s stunts was included last week in an official video for the protest song “State Bulldozer” by the Moscow band Center. The video is available on YouTube and the band’s web resources.
TITLE: Musical linguistics
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Nina Karlsson, a St. Petersburg singer-songwriter and keyboard player who has generated a cult following through her captivating songs with a touch of soul, funk, jazz and cabaret, inventive English-language lyrics and plenty of charisma, will this week premiere a number of her new songs that she has written in Russian.
“At first I used to tell myself that I’d think carefully about every word, and it was like that for a while, but now I’ve written so many, by my standards, that it became pretty clear to me that I’ve entered some new stage in which I write without giving it much thought, only bare emotion,” Karlsson says.
“It happened with English a while ago, and now it has also happened with Russian — when it feels like you can write a whole song in one stroke.”
Karlsson is sitting in Ryumochnaya, a small artistic cafe on Pushkinskaya Ulitsa, where, she says, she does not get recognized and frequently bumps into friends.
This time, however, two men sitting at the next table with a carafe of vodka start to pay her attention and compliment her looks as soon as she takes a seat by the window.
They do not apparently realize that the face on the poster around the corner advertising her upcoming concert at Mod and the young woman sitting near them are the same person.
They leave, eventually, but one of them then becomes glued to the window from the outside, staring at Karlsson until she decides to go to the bar to order a latte. Later, she admits to being shy.
A graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory’s composition faculty, Karlsson, 25, who previously worked as a model, says she started performing by chance.
Having started playing piano at the age of three, in early 2008 Karlsson played piano accompaniment for a young man who called himself Paul Savitsky at a series of charity gigs held at small local clubs like Cheshire Cat and Stirka.
She met Savitsky via a fashion designer whom she met at an Oi Va Voi concert in November 2007.
“I thought I was being stalked by a maniac, but he turned out to be a fashion designer, and he said, ‘I’d like you to try out to be a model,’” she says.
“I’d always rejected offers like that for every reason possible, but then I thought ‘I have a disc of my music, so I’ll give it to him and maybe he’ll use it at a fashion show.’
“It turned out that he gave it to his friend Savitsky, who was in need of an accompanist, but I began to work a bit as a model — through inertia — until, after a few months, I started to get out of there, because I was already playing concerts, and finally parted ways with everybody.”
Savitsky, who played guitar, sang mostly David Bowie covers, from “Space Oddity” to “Modern Love,” while Karlsson accompanied him on the piano. She also wrote the arrangements.
Karlsson’s version of the Irish folk song “Carrickfergus,” which is still in her repertoire, dates back to those early days.
“He played the recording to me and I said, ‘OK, now I’ll figure out the notes,’ but then I forgot it and wrote it anew,” she says.
“I still perform it — the original lyrics and my music, [which is] completely different.”
When, one day, Savitsky failed to appear, she quickly penned a number of songs and performed them on her own that same night. Karlsson says the choice of English was coincidental.
“I had a book of James Joyce poems [in English] with me, so I opened it, stuck a finger into two places, and then I had some chaotic thoughts, like ‘I have to write some more songs, what am I thinking about? Well, yesterday I was thinking about this and that...’ So English happened just like that.”
Karlsson says that she attempted to recreate the ambience of songs by Zhanna Aguzarova, who started out as a singer with the Moscow-based band Bravo in the 1980s.
“I’ve always liked Zhanna Aguzarova, and when I started writing those remarkable English-language lyrics… They are not enormously complex, they’re based on an emotion or a feeling, but they’re soulful and powerful. I wanted the same feeling, but in English. Then came musicians, arrangements, and so on.”
Karlsson then continued to write English-language songs that, she felt, she could not stop writing.
“My friend witnessed the process, she kept telling me, ‘Why don’t you get some sleep?’ But I couldn’t stop; I kept putting them down, playing them in my head,” she says.
“I’m really happy that it happened to me. It’s like learning to swim, I think; you may succeed or you may not.”
Later the same year, she was already performing with a guitarist and drummer as Nina Karlsson, her name also becoming the band’s name.
“Karlsson” is actually a nickname, coming from Karlsson-on-the-Roof, a mischievous, short, fat character with a propeller taken from a book by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, which became hugely popular in the Soviet Union and Russia both in the translation of the book and in a cartoon version.
She says she got the nickname when she arrived at a party wearing an overall with straps that reminded her friends of the garment worn by the character.
Karlsson says her real last name is no secret, yet somehow fails to reveal it, talking instead about the maiden name of her great-grandmother after whom she was named (Nina Migitskaya, a “beautiful Polish name”) and revealing that her last name will soon be Vasina, after she marries Vasily Vasin, frontman of the local band Kirpichi, next month.
Earlier this year, she sang a duet with Vasin on a track by Kirpichi, a band that blends alternative rock and hip-hop, and from time to time appears as a guest singer at Kirpichi concerts.
“We met when we decided to do a song together at the showcase concert for my CD [in September 2010] and fell in love,” she says.
“He wrote a song about me, I composed the harmony, he wrote the lyrics and I wrote the chorus. I like the music and how he raps on it.”
The showcase concert for the CD — “I Deny,” released on Moscow music critic and promoter Artyom Troitsky’s label Voskhod in August 2010 — was also issued as a DVD titled “Nina Karlsson Live.”
Born into a family of medics, Karlsson, who studied at the Anichkov Lyceum (a high school with a focus on advanced math), says she was taught English from an early age, and also watched films and read books in the language and mixed with native speakers, so singing in English came naturally to her.
“Now it’s the same with Russian,” she says. “I sometimes wonder why I didn’t do it earlier. But I am all for being natural; it happened by itself, so it’s OK.”
Her Russian songs deal with her thoughts about Russia (“Ballet”), unrequited love for her from an artist (“Seryozha”) and her own love for Vasin, she says.
“I called it ‘Ballet’ but I use the image of Gogol’s troika that is speeding … to where? No one knows,” she said.
“That’s what Russia is for me, too. It’s interesting to live in such a complex world, if you’re relatively healthy, have brains and so on. But if you’re a lonely old woman and you have no work anymore and are maybe even disabled… Let’s take an old woman in England and one in Russia, and it’s obvious what I am talking about.
“Young people can talk about how they love living in Russia as much as they want. You love it while you can walk around on your own legs, but what about afterwards? But [the song] isn’t finished yet, maybe it’ll be about something else.”
Karlsson, who criticized the St. Petersburg authorities for mishandling city issues in an interview, says she is not afraid of being critical, either in interviews or on her Livejournal.com blog.
“People are scared, nothing has changed here,” she says.
“When I studied at a higher educational institution, it was a fear-based system. If you said or did anything wrong, you’d get what was coming to you afterwards. That’s why I started to arrange my life in such a way that I wouldn’t come into contact with that system.”
Karlsson’s musical interests stem from her classical background.
“My favorite music of all time is Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for violin and orchestra,” she says.
“There are two arias in it, that’s what I love about it. That’s like a land of magic to me.”
Karlsson admits to not listening much to pop music.
“I am a fan of silence and chance sounds,” she says. “Of songs heard by chance at friends’ houses or outside.”
Karlsson says that there are only three pop songs that she ever puts on the stereo to listen to: Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and “The Passion of Lovers” and Cocteau Twins’ “Sugar Hiccup.”
“That’s all. I can listen to any of those 20 or 30 times in a row, probably, although I don’t do that anymore,” she says.
“It’s different with classical music. When nobody’s watching, I like to put something on and dance to it. Slowly, so slowly.”
Nina Karlsson will perform at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24 at Mod, 7 Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova. Metro: Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 712 0734.
TITLE: the word’s worth: Mad About Mushrooms
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ëåíèí – ãðèá: Lenin is a mushroom
What’s the best thing about a week of pretty much nonstop rain in September? Well, if you’ve held out at the dacha, when the rain lets up, you can go mushroom hunting (õîäèòü ïî ãðèáû) and score a huge, perfect cep (áåëûé ãðèá) right in your own backyard.
It goes like this: Your neighbor comes over and demands: Äàé íîæ! (Give me a knife!), which in other months and circumstances might sound alarming, but on a damp fall day means that he wants to scavenge in your garden for edible fungi. Carrying supermarket bags instead of the traditional êóçîâ (birch bark basket), eyes to the ground and knife at the ready, you and your ãðèáíèêè (mushroom hunters) begin to circle slowly around the yard, nudging shrubs to the side while scolding the excited dogs, who are racing around and potentially trampling dinner.
Lest you think too highly of my mushroom-hunting abilities, I must confess that I’m like a truffle pig with a stuffed-up nose. That is, I can spot mushrooms, but since I can’t identify them with any certainty, I just stand stock-still and shout Ãðèá! (Mushroom!) and wait for an experienced hunter-gatherer to make the call.
Sometimes it’s a good call, and I can savor the thought of soup and enjoy the expressive names: îï¸íîê (honey mushroom, named for the ïåíü — stump — it grows by); ãðóçäü (milk mushroom); ÷¸ðíûé ãðóçäü or ÷åðíóøêà (ugly milk cap); ñûðîåæêà (Russula; literally, “eaten raw”); ëèñè÷êà (chanterelle); ìàñë¸íîê (slippery jack or butter mushroom); ïîäáåð¸çîâèê (birch bolete; literally, “under the birch”); and áåëûé (porcini or cep).
The poisonous ones that I point out with the same enthusiasm are usually just dismissed as ïëîõîé ãðèá (bad mushroom), although sometimes my friends will clarify them as ìóõîìîð (fly agaric) or ïîãàíêà (toadstool). At one point, we paused nostalgically by a patch of gray-brown mushrooms on long, delicate stems — ïñèëîöèáà (psilocybin). Sighing that we no longer had any interest in hallucinogenic mushrooms, we moved on.
Part of the ritual as we fill up our sacks is reciting Russian mushroom expressions. Ãðèáîâ îáúåñòüñÿ (literally, “to eat your fill of mushrooms”) means to go crazy — an expression recalled by those hallucinogenic mushrooms. We quoted äåòè ðàñòóò êàê ãðèáû ïîñëå äîæäÿ (children are sprouting up like mushrooms after rain), and áåç ñ÷àñòüÿ è ãðèáà íå íàéäåøü (without luck you can’t find a mushroom — that is, skills aren’t enough). And my all-time favorite: íàçâàëñÿ ãðóçä¸ì, ïîëåçàé â êóçîâ (if you call yourself a milk mushroom, jump in the basket) — that is, if you say you can do something, keep your promise and do it.
Then someone recalled that masterpiece of absurdist television: Ëåíèí — ãðèá (Lenin is a mushroom). On a show aired in 1991, the musician Sergei Kuryokhin spun out pseudo-scientific and fake scholarly evidence proving that after decades of eating mushrooms, Lenin had turned into one. The next day, a delegation of apparently humorless old Bolsheviks went to the Party headquarters and asked: Ïðàâäà, ÷òî Ëåíèí — ãðèá? (Is it true that Lenin was a mushroom?) The flustered Party worker replied: Íåò! Ïîòîìó ÷òî ìëåêîïèòàþùåå íå ìîæåò áûòü ðàñòåíèåì! (No! Because a mammal can’t be a plant!)
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Figuratively speaking
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At one point in the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “The Loved One,” the hapless hero finds himself alone in the presence of a marble statue of a beautiful nymph. Taking advantage of the situation, he steals a surreptitious kiss, giving in to a temptation that many experience while in the presence of the classical beauties of antiquity but few dare act upon. In a similar vein, a new exhibition that opens at the State Hermitage Museum on Friday and, quite literally, brings work of classical sculpture down to the same level as the viewer, may well entice some art lovers to indulge in a bit of transgressive behavior of their own.
For his exhibition at Russia’s biggest museum, the distinguished British sculptor Antony Gormley has been granted authorization by the museum to sink the plinths of nine classical sculptures into the gallery floor, offering a fresh perspective on some familiar works. In order to achieve the effect without damaging the museum’s historic parquet, a temporary floor has been built at the level of the statues’ feet. In addition to the unprecedented permission to relocate precious objects from the museum’s collection, he is also the first contemporary artist to be exhibited within the precincts of the Ancient Art galleries. For someone whose work is dismissed out of hand by some critics, it is a testament to his standing with the Hermitage, which agonizes over every nail driven into its hallowed walls.
Born in 1950 to a wealthy London family, the artist studied anthropology at Cambridge before turning to sculpture in the 1980s. He rose to prominence following an important show curated by Nicholas Serota at the Whitechapel Gallery before going on to win the Turner Prize in 1994. Part of a circle of British sculptors who emerged in the 1980s and included Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon and Anish Kapoor, Gormley is probably best-known for his monumental sculpture “Angel of the North,” a 20-meter-tall steel figure with the outstretched wings of an airplane overlooking a motorway in Gateshead, England. For the past 25 years, the artist has populated landscapes around the world, both urban and rural, with replicas cast from his own body.
Arguably Britain’s most famous living sculptor, Gormley’s popularity has been both a blessing and a burden. Either because of their scale, or their sheer numbers, his works rarely fail to attract attention, drawing equal amounts of condemnation and praise. The artist is regularly derided by connoisseurs for whom the ease with which his work is accepted signifies a facile project without much edge. The general public, however, has embraced the artist along with his legion of sculpted surrogates and welcomed them into the community, sometimes dressing them up and including them as part of their everyday lives.
Earlier this year, a particularly uninformed candidate for political office in the northwest of England mistakenly attacked his 2005 installation “Another Place,” a group of 100 life-sized figures set along a three-kilometer stretch of the English coast and extending almost one kilometer out to sea, for being a waste of taxpayers’ money. (In fact, “Another Place” is maintained entirely by a fund set up by the artist.) Criticism concerning the costs involved in installing and mainting Gormley’s work often dogs the artist’s projects. But the immediate and vociferous defense of “Another Place” that the charges prompted echoes a similar pattern found wherever his figures have appeared: Initial resistance followed by wholehearted adoration.
For his Hermitage project, Gormley is taking a two-pronged approach. In addition to removing classical works from their pedestals and changing the way in which museum visitors experience the galleries, he is also placing 17 figures of his own within an interior “courtyard” of the New Hermitage. Looking for all the world like three-dimensional representations of pixilated images off a computer screen, the abstract volumes and rough, oxidized surface of Gormley’s figures are in sharp contrast with the grandeur of the neoclassical architecture, and with the idealized bodies of ancient sculptures in the next room.
By creating a dialogue between the different groupings, Gormley addresses how space is experienced visually and corporally within the Euclidean geometry of architecture, while examining the ways in which we negotiate that space. Like all of Gormley’s work, the exhibition is meant to pose big questions and highlights the artist’s ongoing interest in the changing role of sculpture over time, as well as the relationship between the individual and the museum. That the work might also tempt some to random acts of affection has always been of interest to Gormley. How the museum feels on the subject remains to be seen.
“Still Standing: A Contemporary Intervention in the Classical Collection” is on view from Sept. 23 to Jan. 15, 2012 at the State Hermitage Museum, 34 Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya.
Tel: 571 3420.
www.hermitagemuseum.org
TITLE: Coming of age
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Message To Man, Russia’s only international festival of documentary, animated and short non-documentary films kicks off on Sept. 23 at Avrora cinema with Viktor Kossakovsky’s much-discussed Russian-Spanish documentary “Vivan Las Antipodas” (Long Live the Antipodes!) that was shown at this year’s International Film Festival in Venice.
In search of people and places to feature in his 105-minute film, Kossakovsky embarked on a breathtaking journey that took him to contrasting environments on different continents. The resulting movie, described by critics as a “feast for the senses,” shows the lives of eight people living in parts of Argentina and China that are antipodes — that is, directly opposite each other on the globe.
The festival’s venues include Avrora movie theater, Dom Kino and the Erarta Museum of Modern Art.
The festival was originally established to provide Russian documentary makers with a stepping-stone to the international film scene, and has been a springboard for young and up-and-coming film directors since it was first held in 1988.
The 21st Message To Man event continues to focus on documentaries. Many of the films shown at the festival have rarely been screened and cannot easily be found anywhere else in Russia. During its history, the festival has created a fascinating collection of more than 28,000 films that have been shown at it.
Italian and Spanish connections abound on the program of this year’s festival in recognition of the Russia-Italy and Russia-Spain cross-cultural festivals that are being held this year. Italian and Spanish filmmakers will sit on the jury, and special screenings of Italian and Spanish films have been arranged.
One of the most keenly anticipated events this year is the screening of Bulgarian-American director Tchavdar Georgiev’s film “The Desert of Forbidden Art” about the dramatic life of the Russian artist Igor Savitsky, who rescued more than 40,000 works by the country’s avant-garde artists from the KGB and moved them to Uzbekistan to create a unique art collection.
The event’s anthropocentric philosophy has been carefully preserved by the festival’s president, Alexei Uchitel.
For the people behind Message to Man, individual humans and human life are sacred. The project’s ideologists are convinced that the more personalities there are in the world, the better a place it will be.
“The name of the Message to Man festival has also become its mission,” said Angelina Lee, a spokeswoman for the film festival. “It refers to the Bible and reflects the essence of the festival’s purpose: Faith, hope, love, grace and compassion — eternal human values that we always need in life, as well as in films.”
In the 15 years since it was launched, Message To Man has been diverse enough to incorporate films about aged Eskimo hunters, Swedish authors and refugees starting new lives. In 2001, the controversial German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s documentaries on the Nazis, “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” were shown, with Riefenstahl, then aged 98, coming to St. Petersburg to enjoy a standing ovation during one screening.
The festival was initially held once every two years, but has developed into an annual event. Since 1995, the debuts have been shown at a separate competition.
Uchitel admits that the festival is surviving against the odds. “To say that we are going against the grain is not enough: Every year I get the impression that we are teetering on the edge of a financial catastrophe,” the filmmaker said. “Raising funds for a non-commercial film event is a Herculean task. Very sadly, in Russia, art house films as well as original domestic films interest hardly anyone, from producers to the authorities, and from potential sponsors to potential spectators. The appetite for what we have been doing is, unfortunately, scarce.”
Message to Man is divided into international and national competitions. The international jury, which always features a winner of one of the previous events, awards the Golden Centaur Grand Prix and several Centaur prizes.
Nearly 3,000 films representing 74 countries were sent to the festival’s jury for pre-selection, and more than 350 films will compete for the Golden Centaur in both sections.
This year, the top prize comes with a cash award of $10,000. Additionally, winners in best documentary film, best short documentary film, best short feature film and best animated film categories will get $2,000. The three best films in the debut category will also be awarded $2,000 prizes.
The jury features an array of internationally established professionals: Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi, Russian documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky, Polish film critic Mariusz Frukacz and Armenian director and producer Harutyun Kachatryan.
Message to Man runs through Sept. 30 at venues around the city. For a full program, visit the festival’s web site at http://m2m.iffc.ru
TITLE: in the spotlight: When Pop Stars Try Their Hand at Opera
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: This month, Channel One has a new show called “Phantom of the Opera,” in which pop singers have to sing operatic arias live. Russian stars have already skated, waltzed and done trapeze acts, but this is maybe the most terrifying reality format — because, after all, pop stars are supposed to be able to sing.
The show echoes a format that aired in Britain, called “Popstar to Operastar.”
There is definitely less of a cultural gulf between pop and opera in Russia, with opera tickets quite affordable here and singers often performing in their native language. On the other hand, Russian pop practically prides itself on its reliance on miming and unchallenging vocal ranges, a world away from the discipline and slog of opera. What was intriguing about the show was the way it made old troopers suddenly look like insecure human beings on the stage.
I expected that the show would have to rely on obscure girl group members, but on Saturday the show had a truly top star lineup, including singers such as raven-haired “king of pop” Filipp Kirkorov, doe-eyed Eurovision winner Dima Bilan and veteran Soviet crooner Lev Leshchenko, known for his hit “Den Pobedy” (Victory Day).
The judges certainly are intimidating — soprano Lyubov Kazarnovskaya and tenor Zurab Sotkilava as well as arts-loving bureaucrat Mikhail Shvydkoi.
When I’ve seen it, Kirkorov’s flamboyant stage act has been stronger on ostrich feathers and eyeliner than live vocals. But surprisingly, he seemed to be in his element on the show — after all, opera loves over-the-top stage makeup and outrageous costumes even more than he does. He sang an aria of an Indian envoy from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Sadko” with convincing swagger. His ex-Bolshoi opera-turned-pop rival, Nikolai Baskov — has nothing to worry about, though.
He beamed when given top marks, artlessly saying he would have hit the high notes better if the costume team had not laced him into a corset.
Meanwhile old pro Leshchenko sailed through the test of singing Rubinstein’s complex “Demon” ballad, saying it was one of the first songs he learned at music school.
But I’ve never seen the usually bland Bilan look so uncomfortable, his eyes bursting with indignation and whole face twitching with suppressed emotion.
Bilan sang the aria of Prince Yeletsky from Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades,” only to get some discouraging comments from the judges.
“You really need to work on your breathing, Dima,” said Kazarnovskaya, who is the voice of sanity on the lineup, while Shvydkoi said he did not look princely enough.
To rub salt into the wounds, Dima’s heartthrob rival Sergei Lazarev, who also battles for the primary-school audience but is actually a good live singer, got much better marks with Lensky’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.”
“I’m sorry he did not train his voice for the real big stage,” said Kazarnovskaya, comparing him to accessible singers like Enrico Caruso. Sotkilava called him a “revelation.” Only Shvydkoi demurred that he did not sound enough in love with the girl — a complaint that could also be fairly leveled at his overly smooth pop songs.
The comedy item was Ani Lorak, a voluptuous protege of Kirkorov who represented Ukraine at Eurovision in 2008. Performing an aria from Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanthe,” she came across as sweet with her hot-pink blusher, but about as unoperatic as you can get.
“This doesn’t feel like singing, but more like doing math,” she commented afterward.
TITLE: THE DISH: Le Menu
AUTHOR: By Ciara Bartlam
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Aiming High
Just a short stroll away from the Peter and Paul Fortress and with the most spectacular views of the Winter Palace right on its doorstep, Le Menu is enviably located. Despite its name, it is not a French restaurant. In fact, it is neither French nor a restaurant, but a cafe with a predominantly Italian menu where you order at the till, canteen-style.
The inside is attractively decorated with green wallpaper and exposed opposing walls. The menu is not particularly large, but is as green as the walls, comprising a selection of vegetarian and fish dishes. Unfortunately, when compared with other vegetarian cafes in the city such as Botanika and Idiot, the food at Le Menu is rather bland and uninspired. It is, however, extremely reasonably priced.
To start, the minestrone soup with lime (109 rubles, $3.50) was more of a vegetable broth, and lukewarm at that. Lacking any distinct flavor and with no pasta to speak of, it is difficult to imagine this soup as the minestrone with lime advertised on the menu, but it couldn’t be described as awful — simply no more than average.
The salad section was marginally better labeled, but did come with excessively large plates. The mussels (99 rubles or $3.20 per 100 grams,) were inoffensive enough and the herring (42 rubles, $1.40), while brimming with bones, would have been more or less decent had it not been quite so salty.
Of the main courses, the fettucini with mushrooms (129 rubles, $4) was satisfying, although rather on the small side. Having been forgotten — along with a glass of mors — by the waitress to begin with, when the lasa-gne (129 rubles, $4) did eventually arrive, it was small, uninspiring, and still not quite warm after a measly 60- second stint in the microwave. The gnocchi (129 rubles, $4) would have been better described as potato cutlets, and the tinned tomatoes with which they were served were nothing short of disappointing. A major reason these dishes were such a let down was that they had been described as something much more than they were. Perhaps, instead of giving every dish an Italian name that the meals do not match up to in reality, the people behind Le Menu might fare better by describing the menu more modestly, thus saving their customers from any unwelcome surprises.
The hot dishes, however, were heroically surpassed by the selection of cakes and pastries baked on site. With a selection ranging from marzipan sticks (55 rubles, $1.80) to an incredibly delectable mango cake (80 rubles, $2.60), the cakes are all reasonably priced and are definitely worth a try.
Le Menu is a great place to drop in for a coffee in an area that, despite its numerous attractions, does not have much in the way of cafes. It is a cafe with plenty of quirks, not least the library in the restroom, but also its wide range of fresh juices, ranging from your regular orange and apple juices to kiwi, pumpkin and pomegranate at only 55 rubles ($1.80) per 100 milliliters. Without wishing to conjure up a comparison with a garden
pea, Le Menu is probably best summed up by the words petite and green. The staff are friendly, albeit a little forgetful, and it is a great place to sit and relax with friends or to rest your weary limbs after hours spent trekking around the fortress. It is not a gourmet restaurant and nor does it pretend to be. It does, however, offer simple, healthy food and a cozy, welcoming atmosphere. So, if you’re looking for a cafe that is reasonably priced, with a bit of flair and a large range of fresh juices, Le Menu may be the place for you.
TITLE: Business Schools See Stable Student Numbers
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Decreased student numbers, an increase in the popularity of part-time MBAs and a focus on forging contacts and gaining practical skills dominate the local business education market, analysts say.
The MBA market in St. Petersburg is still recovering from the crisis. In 2009, the number of students decreased by 60 to 70 percent compared with enrolment in 2007 to 2008, according to data from the city’s Open Business School.
“In 2010, the number of students halved (compared to pre-crisis times), and now I expect that figure to be the same as last year,” said Sergei Fyodorov, director of the Open Business School.
“More flexible payment systems exist now,” he said. “Once I even saw an advertisement for one school containing the word ‘discount’ — this was never the case before the crisis. The price was always a symbol of the quality of the program.”
The city’s business schools have faced strong competition from the Moscow School of Business, which, according to representatives of the Open Business School (OBS), has taken 20 to 30 percent of the St. Petersburg market.
Analysts have, however, identified a trend of stabilization on the local business education market.
“Compared with the last two years, the situation is much better,” said Dmitry Volkov, head of MBA programs at St. Petersburg University Graduate School of Management (GSOM). “We can say that there are more applications and more interest from medium and large-sized businesses.”
“It will only be possible to talk about the final number of students enrolled on MBA programs in late November, when enrollment is closed,” said Anna Izmailova, head of market communications at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) in St. Petersburg.
While the local business education market offers a diverse range of MBA programs at various schools, the number of business schools in the city with a steady reputation is still limited, according to education specialists, who say there are about eight to ten trustworthy establishments in the city.
“Among these schools, most of them are higher educational establishments that are focused on the education of young people — their students. Only the Stockholm School of Economics, IMISP and the Open Business School do not provide a primary degree in higher education, but work only with adults who already have work experience,” said Fyodorov.
When selecting a business school, prospective students should talk to graduates of that school and consult global ratings, such as the Financial Times rating, advise specialists from the Stockholm School of Economics.
“[Potential students] should pay attention to the status of the university, the international accreditation of its programs, how it is evaluated by the global community, and, of course, its position in the rankings, as at the end of the program, the student will get a diploma from that school,” said Volkov.
Confidence in the teachers is also important, as, if they work in business in addition to teaching, they should be able to answer the students’ questions about both practical and theoretical business issues.
Analysts say that the potential student’s main focus should be not on a specific program, but on the school. St. Petersburg offers a wide variety of trends in business education. The most popular among them are marketing, personnel management, project management, strategy and International Financial Reporting Standards.
“If the student plans to continue doing business in Russia, a Russian-language program is the one they need,” said Volkov. “If they are going to devote themselves to global management, the English-language programs offer more opportunities.”
Most students want to obtain an internationally recognized education without leaving Russia and having to take time off from their career.
“There is a tendency to favor modular programs, which allow students to combine studying at a business school while continuing to work, over full-time MBA programs,” said Anastasia Korshunova, sales and marketing director for Russia at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.
“This tendency can be explained by the fact that this format allows students to apply new knowledge and skills in practice straight away and does not require them to leave the business environment for a long period,” she explained.
“At our school, upon completion of the Double Degree Executive program in English, students receive two degrees: An MBA from St. Petersburg University and an EMBA from HEC Paris,” said Volkov.
Some schools offer foreign programs with simultaneous translation that can be useful for students who are not confident in their level of English.
“Such Executive MBA programs that includes various modules in strategy, marketing, finance and quality management and gives a broad-based business education are becoming more and more popular among managers who want to get a European business education,” said SSE’s Izmailova.
The EMBA is more popular among individual students, according to GSOM specialists. Seventy to 80 percent of EMBA students pay for their education themselves, according to data from the Stockholm School of Economics.
“These are programs for top managers who want to formulate a new strategic view of their personal development and that of their organization,” said Volkov. “These diplomas help them to climb the career ladder or move on to another place of work.”
On MBA programs, the numbers of corporate and individual students are almost equal. The individual students are mostly owners of small or medium-sized businesses who want to expand and improve their enterprises.
“Corporate clients are mostly mid-level managers of transnational companies aiming to get a Western education that allows them to ascend the international career ladder,” Korshunova said. “There may also be top-managers of Russian companies who lack the knowledge necessary to improve their professional competence.”
Career development is one of the main factors in prompting students to apply for MBA courses. The necessity of developing effective management is also a popular reason.
“Requirements such as ‘systematization of experience’ from an MBA are losing popularity, as a lot of senior managers already have a business education, and young people rely on the knowledge they obtained at university,” said OBS’s Fyodorov.
“The necessity of eliminating ‘management illiteracy’ is also a commonly cited reason,” he said. “But nowadays, people are beginning to understand that using an MBA to teach management from scratch is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” he added.
According to analysts from Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, the rewards of attending any business school are only 60 percent knowledge, while the other 40 percent are business contacts.
“While completing a business education program, top managers are in a homogeneous society consisting of people aimed at the further development of themselves as individuals and of their companies to occupy the leading positions on the market,” said Olga Serebrennaya, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Ancor recruitment agency. “An MBA program is an excellent place to meet new people from other areas of business.”
The MBA diploma in itself is no longer a reason for students enrolling on business education programs, and its significance for both prospective students and employers has decreased. Regardless of the benefits it may bring, it is not a key factor for employers.
“For many international corporations, the EMBA degree is an indicator of the particular level of business knowledge that a manager possesses,” said Izmailova. “But in Russia, not all companies have the same attitude to the MBA. Some of them give preference to a candidate’s experience.”
“Education is expensive, while an MBA diploma does not increase the value of candidates on the labor market,” said Serebrennaya. “The salary expectations of candidates with an MBA degree do, however, increase.”
“Employers, first of all, value professional qualifications, successful work experience, the tasks candidates have solved during their work, result-oriented motivation and the skill to lead the team,” she added. “An MBA diploma is not a competitive advantage in this sense.”
According to statistics from Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, the average age of MBA students in St. Petersburg is 34, the average period of work experience that they possess is 11 years, and 65 percent of students are male.
The average cost of an MBA program in St. Petersburg is 500,000 rubles ($16,000), according to data from the Open Business School.
TITLE: Supply and Demand on the Local Labor Market
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It’s a sad fact of life that what one loves to do does not always translate into a viable career.
And while it is true that those who are most passionate about their professions are usually better professionals, the realities of the market often narrow the field to the point that it is sometimes more sensible to look for a career that can provide a living wage rather than relying solely on criteria such as job satisfaction. When ideas of prestige motivate people in their choice of career, such as in Russia where lawyers and economists are seen to be the most authoritative professions, the market becomes saturated reducing both demand and wages.
“All of the professions are in demand. It’s wrong to say that one profession is more sought after than another,” said Yury Virovets, president of the HeadHunter.ru recruitment company. “I think that claims about the abundance or lack of certain specialists are doubtful. More likely it’s an abundance of people with higher education and elevated salary demands lacking the knowledge and skills to be awarded such compensation.”
“Nonetheless, there are objective market demands and, in general, fewer pilots will always be needed than programmers or sales managers,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Government officials, however, admit that Russia lacks qualified workers: Fitters, factory workers and technicians.
“Highly qualified professionals are in demand now,” Virovets said. “And not only office workers, but also blue-collar workers.” But with an average monthly salary of about 20,000 rubles ($720) in St. Petersburg, the government won’t see many young people willing to become an assembly line worker. Moreover, these professions are not considered to be prestigious by youngsters and their parents. Yet having these specialists is, along with white-collar workers, essential for the country’s sustainable development.
The demand for highly qualified engineers is also growing. According to HeadHunter research from August 2011, there were 80 percent more vacancies in the sphere of the extraction of raw materials than a year ago. They are not only offered a good salary but, in some cases, the opportunity to travel if the company has foreign partners.
Arina Medvedeva, a senior consultant with the Avrio Group Consulting recruitment agency, said that sales professionals have been in demand for the past several years. And since high sales figures are always needed, the companies monitor the recruitment market and try to retain valuable specialists, according to Medvedeva.
“Here we can see efforts to ‘poach’ employees,” she said. “The main incentive is, of course, material motivation. Those who offer better packages always win.”
The employment situation in St. Petersburg has its own peculiarities. “We are seeing demand for technical and engineering specialists grow,” Medvedeva said. “Young and active professionals who know English are also sought as foreign... companies rapidly develop a presence in the city.”
Marketing and PR specialists are some of the least viable professions in St. Petersburg, according to Medvedeva. “The number of specialists is several times higher than demand,” she said. “The main reason is that many companies have their head offices in Moscow. Thus the major demand for marketing analysts, advertising agents and PR specialists is in Moscow.”
TITLE: Disappointed Students Turn to Foreign Schools
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: According to a survey carried out by Career.Ru, a recruitment company helping young professionals to find a job, as many as 44 percent of graduates from Russian universities are unsatisfied with the quality of the education they receive.
Having lost belief in the Russian education system, many parents send their children abroad for an education in the hopes that this might be their ticket to a successful career.
“British education is highly valued all over the world, and especially in Russia,” said Kathleen Bull, academic coordinator at Carfax, which helps Russians prepare to enter British universities.
“A degree from a British university will definitely improve your chances of getting a job back in Russia. Many Russian students who integrate well into society decide to remain in the U.K. and receive great job offers from the most successful U.K. and overseas companies.”
The fact is that the chances of a graduate from a Russian university getting a well-paid job overseas are slim, with only programmers and some other highly qualified technical specialists able to count on finding productive employment abroad. For most other professions, a diploma from even Russia’s most renowned universities doesn’t rate very highly. Another important reason that an overseas education is popular is that it is prestigious. According to Bull, some Carfax clients “see the intrinsic value of a good education, something that develops the intellectual capacity of young minds and equips young men and women with everything they need to enjoy the lives ahead of them as adults more thoroughly.”
Most foreign applicants are required to demonstrate sufficient background and language proficiency to be accepted. At most Western schools the application process involves creative tasks such as writing a statement of purpose and getting recommendations. It is at this stage that companies like Carfax come in to help assist with the admissions process and university interviews and to deepen the candidate’s knowledge of their chosen subjects with tutors.
“We always advise our students to choose subjects that they have most interest in and feel most passionate about rather than those they feel might be ‘useful’ for some future career,” Bull told The St. Petersburg Times. “Studying a subject you genuinely enjoy as opposed to one you feel you should study helps you achieve better academic results and a better degree.”
Studying abroad is a decidedly costly affair. However, the most outstanding, passionate and intelligent students have a chance of winning one of the numerous grants and scholarships sponsored by various foundations, or directly by the universities themselves. The European mobility grant Erasmus Mundus, the British Chevening grant, Germany’s DAAD, the American Fulbright and many other programs welcome young people from all over the world and enable thousands of them to get a good education for free every year. One of the most common conditions for grant recipients, however, is that they return to their homeland after graduation and apply the unique knowledge and experience they received.
Britta Piel of RWTH Aachen University said that there are many international students from about 120 countries enrolled in post-graduate programs at RWTH. She added that students who obtain Master’s degrees or PhDs there “are highly sought after by employers, since they have in-depth knowledge of their subject matter… have a proven record of self-reliance, excellent language skills and intercultural competence. Therefore, they can easily work in international settings — either back in Russia, in Germany, or in any other country.”
While RWTH Aachen is mostly known for its engineering, computer science, physics and chemistry programs, humanities are also very popular among Russian students. According to Bull, Carfax has students “studying in a wide range of disciplines from math and physics, to art courses and Master’s degrees at Sotheby’s.
“We are currently advising a very talented young singer on applying to the top conservatoires in the U.K.,” she added. “As well as this, business and economics remain extremely popular among many of our students.”
Although a foreign diploma alone cannot guarantee a better job or huge salary rise when back at home, the knowledge, experience and language skills gained are undoubtedly a great benefit, and are likely to be noticed by progressive employers.
TITLE: Soviet Relic to Be Phased Out
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Look at the CV of a Russian jobseeker and any mention of references will be conspicuously absent. That is because up until now, that function was reserved for the labor book, or trudovaya knizhka, a record of an individual’s education, specialization, past employers and the post and duties associated with each job they have held. That may all change soon, however, with plans by the Ministry of Heath and Social Development to introduce new rules governing labor relations and the abolition of the work record in 2012.
Typically, the work record is kept by the human resources department of an employee’s current employer until the post is resigned. Now, with the development of new technology, this archaic system of labor relations appears to be the vestige of a bygone era. The data required to calculate pensions is set by the social security system and the qualifications and professionalism of the employee can be proven by copies of their degree certificate and work experience.
According to Alexander Safonov, deputy minister of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, the work record is no longer essential in a modern market economy where labor relations are defined by contract. The trudovaya knizhka is a holdover from the Soviet period when the state was both the employer and the main consumer of labor.
Questions remain, however, about what life will be like without the obsolete document. For example, where will personal information that was collated in the trudovaya knizhka now be kept? There is as yet no unified database available that includes complete information about the past experience of a potential candidate or present employee.
“Unfortunately, we still don’t have a conclusive answer to these questions,” said Svetlana Yakovleva, head of Ancor recruitment agency for northwest Russia. “As long as there is no transparency in the alternative ways of finding information about past work experience and confirmation of a person’s occupation in previous jobs, it is impossible to say that the trudovaya knizhka is a relic or unnecessary.”
“From a recruiter’s point of view, the absence of the work record and other documents confirming both employment and the position held is a great disadvantage,” said Michael Germershausen, managing director of Antal Russia recruitment agency. “Not every candidate can provide their new employer with a copy of their labor contract, as this information is often confidential.
“There are widespread situations in which candidates claim to have held the post of marketing director at an interview when in fact they were little more than the marketing director’s deputy or assistant. With the elimination of work records, the number of such cases will increase,” he said.
The absence of an established list of predetermined reasons that an employee would choose from when leaving a position is also a disadvantage of the innovations.
“But even now, a note in the work record saying ‘resigned’ does not always mean that the employee really left the job of their own volition,” said Germershausen.
Currently, candidates provide employers with their trudovaya knizhka only on the first day of work with the new company. The employer therefore makes a decision on the candidate without investigating their past employment record.
“At the same time, the candidate realizes that they will have to hand over their work record on entering the new post, so it’s not in their best interests to give the wrong information,” said Yakovleva.
There are many ways to find out about a candidate’s work for any organization, and the easiest one is getting oral or written recommendations.
“Employers rely on the CV, impressions from the interview and recommendations. The abolition of work records will improve the practice of recommendations,” said Germershausen.
“We already verify every candidate by calling their former employers. Gathering references allows us to not only confirm the truth of the data given by a candidate, but also to corroborate the impression formed during the interview,” he said.
Written recommendations, however, are more widely used in Europe than in Russia, where employees are not in the habit of asking for letters of recommendation when leaving a post.
“Moreover, giving written recommendations is prohibited in some companies by their internal policy,” said Yakovleva.
According to specialists at Ancor, existing work records are more useful for employees as they allow them to confirm their work experience, which plays an important role in assessing the amount of social benefits they are due.
“With the abandonment of the trudovaya knizhka, employees will be forced to find another way of confirming their work experience,” said Yakovleva.
Modern work records were introduced for the first time in Germany, in 1892, and represented a form of identification. Later, in 1918, a similar document appeared in Soviet Russia. These are the only countries in the world where the trudovaya knizhka was used. After the book disappears from Russia, it will only continue to exist in a few of the former Soviet republics.
TITLE: Gustav Leonhardt, Baron of the Baroque
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Gustav Leonhardt, the living legend of baroque music, does not leave anything in his life to chance. Ask this unfailingly elegant, somewhat austere, aristocratic-looking Dutchman in his mid-80s about his car preferences, and he offers a knock-out answer as to why he orders individually-designed cars exclusively from Alfa-Romeo.
“Well, it makes a nice noise,” he smiles. “But on a more serious note, I would say that I hesitated between BMW and Alfa-Romeo, and chose Alfa because it’s racier and more individual,” Leonhardt goes on to explain.
“Why those two? They are both old, respected, pre-revolutionary brands, and they both have an important connection: BMW’s famous blue and white quartered logo echoes the colors of the Bavarian royal family in the 17th century, while Alfa-Romeo has a sign inspired by the coat of arms of the city of Milano and Biscione, the emblem of the Visconti House back in the 15th century.”
Leonhardt spoke to The St. Petersburg Times ahead of his organ recital on Sept. 15, part of the program of the Early Music festival, of which he has become a loyal friend and regular headliner. The Dutchman is revered around the globe as a maestro of authentic baroque music.
The musician has gained a reputation as a virtuoso performer on three instruments: Harpsichord, organ and hammerklavier. He boasts an enviable collection of period instruments, including a superb 1790 hammerklavier that would be ideal for playing Mozart. Yet Leonhardt admits that his only real passion has always been baroque music — the earlier, the better — and the harpsichord.
“The hammerklavier has a different touch; most importantly, the harpsichord is a much more sensitive instrument, and that is why I remain faithful to it,” Leonhardt explains.
Leonhardt, who was born into a musical family, first touched a harpsichord when he was about 10 years old. Having encountered the new instrument, he says he simply did not feel like he could escape it. The old instrument was an unorthodox choice, especially at that time, decades before baroque music began to enjoy a renaissance and get back in vogue.
“My parents were not musicians, but they genuinely loved music, and so everyone, including my brother and sister, regularly played a fair amount of chamber music, with a strong inclination toward Bach and his contemporaries,” Leonhardt recalls. “An impromptu performance would happen about every other night.”
A few years later, with the start of World War II, life in the Netherlands came to a standstill in many ways, studies included. “Not having to go to school was fun, but that was the only bright point in years filled with horror: There was no electricity, no hot water; starvation and fear reigned in Holland,” he remembers.
At that time, Leonhardt, who now occupies a magnificent 17th-century mansion on the banks of a canal at the heart of Amsterdam, lived in the countryside. It was then that his harpsichord studies began to absorb him. Musical discoveries followed, and the music of Bach has been his Bible ever since.
“Bach has always been an icon,” Leonhardt says, though he refrains from discussing his emotional involvement with any piece of music he performs — or even his best-loved instrument, the harpsichord. “That is a personal matter that I feel I should keep to myself.”
A very private person, Leonhardt learned the art of perseverance and determination early on. His choice of the profession of harpsichord player came as a shock to his parents, who understandably felt that such an occupation could hardly guarantee their son a stable income, and quite probably cursed themselves for some time for introducing the young Gustav to the instrument.
Leonhardt was allowed — although not blessed — to follow his heart, which led him to study at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and later in Vienna, where he would spend months on end at the music library making copies of old manuscripts containing precious baroque scores.
“When I go on stage, I do not want to reflect myself at all in the pieces that I play,” Leonhardt says. “I am not a composer and I do not have the urge for self-expression. What I always strive to do is to come as close to the essence of each work as possible, trying to penetrate the score and play it as the composer themselves wanted it to be performed. I have a lot of insecurities about this. Because whatever we think, we just do not know exactly what the composer had in mind. Even the author of the piece could perform it in different ways depending on the occasion.”
The veteran harpsichord player contrasts the work of a musician with the art of a sculptor or a painter. “Our art is not static, it is both fragile and ever-changing; unlike a sculpture or a painting that was created once forever, a piece of music has a new incarnation every time it is performed,” Leonhardt said. “Even when you perform the same score, each concert is like a new painting, a variation on a certain theme.”
The owner of a vast library and a reputation as a “Google of baroque music,” Leonhardt admits that even if one devours hundreds of books when rehearsing, for example, Telemann, the books only help the musician to get a better feeling of an era.
“But looking at the marvelous, early 18th-century Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg cannot help me to read the mind of any composer of that time, either from Russia or otherwise; it does not work like that,” he explains.
In his students, to whom Leonhardt has been loyally devoted for several decades now, he seeks to develop both independent thinking and reverence for the composer.
“There is no contradiction between these two goals,” he said. “Respect for the author does not set any limitations for the musician; this confrontation is artificial. Indeed, the worst student is the one who tries to become a living copy of their mentor. So in my class I would not tolerate a clone of myself!”
TITLE: Abbas Presses Bid for UN Membership
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was pressing ahead Tuesday with his diplomatic campaign to gain full UN membership, as the divisive issue of Palestinian statehood takes center stage ahead of the opening of the UN General Assembly session.
Abbas had meetings scheduled with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, among leaders, as he sought to line up support ahead of his speech Friday to the General Assembly when the Palestinians vow to submit a letter formally requesting UN membership.
Envoys of the Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., the UN, the European Union and Russia — planned to meet again Tuesday in an effort to avert a showdown over Palestinian statehood by crafting a way forward that would be enough to persuade the Palestinians to drop their bid and have enough caveats for Israel to get its support.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, in New York on Tuesday for high-level meetings, told Europe-1 radio in Paris that his country is still working to get Mideast peace talks restarted before the United Nations faces a decision over whether to recognize a Palestinian state. “The status quo is untenable,” Juppe said. “The only way to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem is direct negotiations.”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, meanwhile, told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a Sept. 17 letter circulated Tuesday that his country backs the push for Palestinian statehood, and that recognizing it would be “an act of historic justice.”
As the Palestinians edged closer to seeking statehood recognition from the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for Abbas to meet with him in New York. The Israel leader said he wanted to resume peace talks, upping the pressure on Abbas and building on the frenzied diplomacy swirling around the Palestinians’ bid.
Regardless, Abbas said he had not been swayed by what he called “tremendous pressure” to drop the bid for UN recognition and instead to resume peace talks with Israel. Senior aides to the Palestinian leader said Abbas was undaunted by threats of punitive measures.
“Abbas says to every one: It’s enough, 20 years of negotiations are more than enough, the world should intervene and end the Israeli occupation as long as the U.S. can’t,” said Mohammed Ishtayeh, an Abbas aide.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, however, there was still time to find a solution to the diplomatic crisis.
Clinton told reporters in New York that the U.S. is talking with all sides to defuse the standoff, noting that there were still several days to seek a compromise before Abbas’ speech.
She joined Netanyahu in calling for new talks and repeated the U.S. position that the only path to a separate state for Palestinians is through negotiations with Israel.
Nabil Shaath, senior aide to Abbas, told The Associated Press that the Palestinian leader informed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during their meeting Monday that he would present him with a letter requesting full membership on Friday, ahead of Abbas’ speech to the General Assembly.
Any candidate for UN membership must submit a letter to the secretary-general stating it is a “peace-loving” state and accepts the UN Charter. Ban is expected to examine the Palestinian letter and then send it to the 15-member UN Security Council, which must give its approval before a vote in the larger General Assembly.
Ishtayeh said the letter will state: “Palestine is a peace-loving state and has contributed to human civilization, that it has succeeded in building state institutions.” It would also cite the need to consider the pre-1967 Mideast War borders as those of the Palestinian state, he said.
Although any submission by the Palestinians could wait weeks or months for UN action, it has sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity with Mideast mediators scrambling to find a way to draw the sides back to the negotiating table.
Shaath said last ditch efforts to dissuade the Palestinian president from approaching the Security Council had failed. He said Palestinians had been threatened with harsh punitive measures but had decided to move ahead nonetheless.
The comment appeared to refer to the warnings by some in the U.S. Congress that current and future financial aid to the Palestinian Authority could be in jeopardy if they move ahead with the membership bid. The U.S. gives some $500 million a year in aid to the Palestinians.
Israel has not said how it would respond to a Palestinian declaration of independence, though hardliners in Netanyahu’s government have called for a variety of measures, including annexing the West Bank or withholding tax funds that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that by going to the U.N., the Palestinians are violating “the spirit and the word of signed commitments” that pledged to resolve disagreements through negotiations. “Israel reserves the right to respond,” he said Tuesday, refusing to elaborate.
Each side in on-again-off-again Israeli-Palestinian talks has accused the other of being an untrustworthy and intransigent participant in the peace process.
TITLE: Terrorist Bomb Blamed For Deaths in Turkish Capital
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey — A car bomb went off near a high school in the Turkish capital on Tuesday, killing three people in a nearby building and wounding 34 others, authorities said. The prosecutor’s office said the blast was a terrorist attack.
“The explosion occurred in a place where car and people traffic is intense. It looks like the intension was to inflict as much harm to people as possible,” Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said.
The parked car was purchased a week ago but it was not yet registered. Police detained a woman at the scene who shouted “Long live our struggle!” as she was escorted away by police, Dogan news agency video showed.
Kurdish rebels fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey have recently escalated their attacks on Turkish targets. Islamist and leftist militants have also carried out some bombings in this NATO member and U.S. ally.
Kurdish rebels were blamed for a small bomb attack in the Mediterranean resort town of Kemer that wounded 10 people, including four Swedes on Aug. 28. Turkish warplanes bombed suspected rebel hideouts in northern Iraq last month in response to the escalation of attacks by the guerrillas.
The bodies of three people were found in a building near the car that exploded in downtown Ankara, Sahin said.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said police had information that a bomb was planted on the car. The explosion sparked a series of blasts in adjacent vehicles.
Reyhan Altintas, a neighborhood administrator, said she rushed outside after hearing a loud blast. It was followed by three other blasts, apparently caused by cars catching fire.
“I had never heard anything like it in my life,” witness Adnan Yavuz said of the initial blast. “Then came another explosion and parts of a car dropped from the tree.”
The wounded were initially treated in the schoolyard before medics rushed to the scene and whisked them away to hospitals, NTV television said. Authorities evacuated the school as worried parents rushed to pick up their children.
TITLE: Japan Suffers Cyber-Attacks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO — Japan’s defense chief said Tuesday that the country’s largest arms contractor has suffered a cyber-attack, but that no sensitive information is known to have been lost.
Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa urged Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Ltd. to strengthen its data security systems.
“We are not aware of any important data having leaked to the outside,” Ichikawa said.
The company makes ships, submarines, missile parts and other weapons for Japan’s military.
Mitsubishi Heavy said it had been attacked in August with viruses apparently programmed to breach its computers and servers to gain unauthorized access to protected data. It did not say why it waited until this week to disclose the attack.
“We discovered that there had been a possible leak of system information such as network addresses from some of the computers at the company,” it said in a statement Monday.
It said it has been working with police and independent experts to contain the damage.
The attack involved more than 80 servers and computers at 11 of the company’s facilities related to nuclear power, missiles and submarines, the Nikkei business newspaper said Tuesday.
Attackers allegedly used simplified Chinese characters — the writing system used in mainland China — to remotely control the infected computers, and authorities are investigating the case as suspected spying, the nationwide Yomiuri newspaper reported Tuesday, quoting unidentified sources.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei denied China was involved. “Criticism that China initiated a cyber-attack is not only groundless, it goes against development of international cooperation on cyber-security,” Hong told a daily briefing.
An annual U.S. assessment of China’s military in August said a number of computer systems, including U.S. networks, were the target of intrusions in 2010 that appeared to originate in China. The breaches were aimed at stealing data, but also exhibited the kinds of skills needed for more destructive network attacks, it said.
Another Japanese defense contractor, shipmaker IHI Corp., also reportedly came under cyber-attack in recent months, receiving a number of emails with virus-loaded attachments.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the series of computer problems underscored the need for the government to “further strengthen its information security measures.”
TITLE: American President Wages Tax Battle
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Drawing clear battle lines for next year’s elections, a combative President Barack Obama on Monday demanded that the richest Americans pay higher taxes to help cut soaring U.S. deficits by more than $3 trillion. He promised to veto any effort by congressional Republicans to cut Medicare benefits for the elderly without raising taxes as well.
“This is not class warfare. It’s math,” Obama declared, anticipating Republican criticism, which was quick in coming.
“Class warfare isn’t leadership,” House Speaker John Boehner said, in Cincinnati.
Obama’s speech marked a new, confrontational stance toward Republicans after months of cooperation that many Democrats complained produced too many concessions. While the plan stands little chance of passing Congress, its populist pitch is one that the White House believes the public can support.
The president’s proposal, which he challenged Congress to approve, would predominantly hit upper-income taxpayers and would also target tax loopholes and subsidies used by many larger corporations. It would spare retirees from any changes in Social Security, and it would direct most of the cuts in Medicare spending to health care providers, not beneficiaries.
Benefit programs wouldn’t be unscathed. Obama’s plan would reduce spending for those, including Medicare and Medicaid, by $580 billion. But with Republicans calling for massive cuts in entitlement programs, Obama said he would veto any legislation that cut Medicare benefits without raising new revenue.
His plan also would save $1 trillion over 10 years from the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The deficit-reduction plan represents Obama’s longer-term follow-up to the $447 billion in tax cuts and new public works spending that he has proposed as a short-term measure to stimulate the economy. The new proposal also inserts the president’s voice into the legislative discussions of a joint congressional “supercommittee” charged with recommending deficit reductions of up to $1.5 trillion.
In calling for sizable tax revenue, Obama gave the committee a choice: It could generate $1.5 trillion in new revenues through changes in the tax code, or it could adopt his recommendations, most of them recycled from his previous budget proposals, which were largely ignored by Gongress. They include tax increases on high-income families, oil and gas companies and U.S.-based corporations that earn profits overseas.