SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1705 (16), Wednesday, April 25, 2012
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TITLE: Gay Teen Forcibly Taken to Drug Rehab Clinic Released
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A 16-year-old boy was released Wednesday night from a drug rehabilitation clinic where he had been taken after his father threw a fit over his announcing he was gay.

Ivan Kharchenko was taken by his grandmother to a psychiatric clinic in the Moscow region on April 11, after Kharchenko's father learned he was gay, Novaya Gazeta reported.

The boy fled the facility and returned home the next day. On April 13, Kharchenko's father took him to the Marshak Clinic, a drug rehabilitation center.

At the rehab center, Kharchenko was barred from using the telephone and given pills that he said affected his memory. A doctor at the clinic told Kharchenko's mother that no traces of drugs were detected in his system.

Television cameras gathered outside the clinic earlier this week, and State Duma deputy from the Just Russia party Ilya Ponomaryov said he was ready to help the boy, BBC Russian Service reported. Lawyer Violetta Volkova, who also represents a jailed member of punk band Pussy Riot, took on Kharchenko's case.

The boy's friends complained to police that only people above the age of 18 could be held at the clinic. A clinic official showed journalists a document saying that Kharchenko was 19 years old, Novaya Gazeta reported.

On Wednesday night, the clinic released Kharchenko into his mother's custody.


TITLE: 15 injured in 4 blasts in eastern Ukraine city 
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine -- Four blasts within minutes rocked the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk Friday, injuring at least 15 people in what prosecutors believed was a terrorist attack, officials said.

Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova said the first blast occurred at a tramway stop in the center of Dnipropetrovsk, injuring five people. The second injured seven people outside a movie theater, while the third wounded three near a railway station.

A fourth blast was also heard in the city center, the Interior Ministry said. It was unclear whether anybody was injured.

Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko and other top law enforcement officials were flying to Dnipropetrovsk. Prosecutors' spokesman Yuri Boichenko said investigators are treating the blasts as a terrorist attack.

In January 2011, two pre-dawn explosions outside an office of a coal mining company and then a shopping center in the eastern city of Makiyivka caused no casualties.

The authorities said they received letters from unknown assailants demanding money in exchange for not causing any more blasts, and they treated those explosions as acts of terrorism.

TITLE: Lugovoi Passes Lie Detector in Litvinenko Killing 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Andrei Lugovoi, a State Duma deputy wanted by British authorities in the 2006 killing of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, took a lie detector test Tuesday, the results of which said he was telling the truth when he claimed he was not involved in Litvinenko's death.

The test was administered by British firm U.K. Lie Tests and lasted three hours, Interfax reported Wednesday. As is standard procedure in polygraph tests, the questions regarding Lugovoi's involvement in Litvinenko's death were scattered among neutral questions on other topics.

The report said Lugovoi was not lying when he said he did not do anything that led to the death of Litvinenko, was not in any way involved in his death and never had anything to do with polonium.

"After careful analysis of all the diagrams received as a result of the test, it has been determined that the answers given to these questions were not lies," the report said, Interfax reported.

Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who became a vehement critic of Vladimir Putin, died in London from polonium poisoning in November 2006. Lugovoi, also a former KGB member, had met with Litvinenko in a cafe shortly before he fell ill, and Lugovoi was named a suspect in Litvinenko's murder by British police.

Russia has refused British requests to extradite Lugovoi. He currently serves as a Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party.

On Wednesday, he told Interfax that he hopes the polygraph test results will help prove his innocence to British authorities.

"I have on multiple occasions called on the British side to conduct a polygraph test. I received this opportunity and took advantage of it, to prove my innocence once again in Litvinenko's death," Lugovoi said.



TITLE: St. Petersburg Gets New Top Cop
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A former senior criminal police investigator was nominated by President Dmitry Medvedev Thursday to become the new chief of the St. Petersburg police.

Konstantin Vlasov, who previously ran the local police's criminal division, will now oversee the St. Petersburg and Leningrad region police, read the decree, which was published on the president's website.

Vlasov, 52, a career police colonel, has been described in media reports as a protege of Sergei Umnov, the acting St. Petersburg police chief.

Umnov took charge after the previous St. Petersburg chief Mikhail Sukhodolsky — a former deputy interior minister — was fired in February amid a scandal surrounding the death of a teen while in police custody.

Under Russian law, the president oversees all appointments of regional police ministers and they directly report to him.


TITLE: Putin Spokesman Responds to Guardian Article About Dry Cleaning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov weighed in Wednesday on an article published in Britain's The Guardian titled "The hell of Russian bureaucracy," saying the author's tale about her experience at a dry cleaner's did not say anything meaningful about the country.

In the article, The Guardian's Moscow correspondent Miriam Elder, a former reporter at The Moscow Times, wrote about spending hours to process sweaters at a dry cleaner's and said the experience was prototypical of excessive bureaucracy in Russia.

"The frustration stems not just from the loss of time but from the knowledge that despite Russians' love of documents, stamps, identification procedures and painstaking handwritten note-taking, it all means nothing," Elder wrote.

"The country's endless bureaucracy spreads its tentacles everywhere," she wrote.

In a letter to the editor, Peskov shot back that the U.K. had work to do on this front as well, giving the example of what he said was a 10-page application required for Russians to receive a British visa.

"By all means, the Russian government understands there is work to do in cutting red tape: it is a high priority and we have seen substantial progress in recent years, as foreign businessmen operating here testify," Peskov wrote. "Moreover, other countries, the UK included, have room for improvement on this front too."

"Let me remind British readers of the thousands of hours that are 'stolen' from Russian citizens when they complete the UK's visa application forms, which are a whopping 10 pages," he wrote.

Peskov frequently responds to media reports about Russia and about Putin, occasionally in the form of a letter to the editor. In January 2010, he wrote one to The Washington Post, criticizing the newspaper for an editorial about Russian-Belarussian oil negotiations.


TITLE: Novosibirsk Region Latest to Pass Anti-Gay Law 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Novosibirsk's regional legislature passed a new law banning "homosexual propaganda" among youth Thursday, making Russia's third-largest city a part of the emerging national debate about anti-gay legislature.

"Today we are talking about protecting the majority of people who are not associated with homosexuality, to keep them from having to explain to their children that things like this happen," regional deputy Alexander Ilyushchenko said, RIA-Novosti reported.

"We are speaking about first and foremost all kinds of gay pride parades, because there is no overt propaganda, but most of it comes to promotion in places where there could be minors," he said.

The law limits promoting homosexual activity among minors, backed up by fines from 1,000 ($30) to 3,000 rubles for private citizens, 3,000 to 5,000 for officials, and 10,000 to 50,000 for legal entities, Interfax reported.

The debate on such laws is beginning to shift towards the federal level. At a meeting earlier this week in which the Moscow City Duma accepted a law banning all forms of sexual propaganda to minors, City Duma Speaker Vladimir Platonov said it was necessary to "address to the Federation Council in order to prepare a good federal legislative initiative that would protect minors from all the negative information."

Ilyushchenko said the Novosibirsk law was just a temporary measure until such a federal law was enacted.

Novosibirsk joins the St. Petersburg, Ryazan, Kostroma and Arkhangelsk regions in banning homosexual propaganda to minors


TITLE: Trial of the Twelve Starts to Disintegrate
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The charges against 12 local The Other Russia activists began to look shaky Tuesday as the Vyborgsky District Court interrogated prosecution witnesses in the criminal case — dubbed the Trial of the Twelve — during a seven-hour hearing.
The activists’ claim that the criminal case was a provocation by the counter-extremism Center E police department — which infiltrated the local branch of the oppositional party with an undercover agent known as Mikhail Sazonov and through him offered them a surveillance-equipped apartment for party meetings — found some ground during a cross-examination of Center E officer Dmitry Gryaznov.  
Gryaznov said that the apartment was found and rented by the activists themselves, but was confronted by a document detailing his own earlier resolution to conduct an “operative experiment” in the same apartment. The point of the experiment was “to create an artificial situation” of “concentrating” activists in one place and making them “expose their criminal activities,” according to that resolution.
When asked how it happened that the document earlier signed by him mentions the same apartment that the activists “found” for their meetings, Gryaznov said it was a “coincidence.”
“In essence, the law enforcers organized our meetings themselves,” The Other Russia’s local leader Andrei Dmitriyev said.
“It was the informers who found the premises for The Other Russia activists’ meetings, which as it turned out were equipped with surveillance cameras.”
The activists hope to prove in further hearings that Sazonov was a Center E agent all along.
The prosecution wants to prove that the meetings of The Other Russia activists were in reality meetings of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) that was banned by the Moscow City Court in 2007 as “extremist.”
The defense says that the former NBP activists acted legally as part of The Other Russia opposition coalition and, after it dissolved, as members of The Other Russia party, launched by the former NBP leader Eduard Limonov in July 2010.
Apart from meetings, “illegal activities” of the defendants, according to the prosecution, included Strategy 31, the campaign of rallies in defense of the right to assembly that in St. Petersburg was launched in January 2010. The prosecution claims that the activists used the NBP’s banned symbols at the rallies.
But Center E officer Anton Sokolov, another prosecution witness, admitted at the hearing that the Strategy 31 rallies were non-partisan events where no party symbols were used.
The indictment lists every minor offense, such as participating in an unauthorized rally or failure to obey police officers’ orders during a demo, but the defense argues that the activists have already been punished for those violations and that it is against the law to punish them again for the same offense as part of a criminal case. 
All 12 defendants — who face from up to two or up to four years in prison — dismissed the charges as “unclear” Tuesday and pleaded not guilty.
The Other Russia’s leader Limonov arrived from Moscow to offer the activists moral support from outside the court.
“The indictment is the ravings of a madman and the investigators should be sent back to primary school,” Limonov said outside the court Tuesday.
“The NBP was banned in 2007 and we obeyed this ruling. We formed another political organization, The Other Russia. Why should people pretend that they belong to the NBP? There’s no proof.”
Local Yabloko Democratic Party leader Maxim Reznik, who also came to the court Tuesday, described the trial as “political persecution.”
“These accusations are absolutely meaningless and absurd,” Reznik said. 
“I often disagree with [these activists’] methods or ideology, but I don’t understand why they could be banned from acting as part of The Other Russia. Essentially, it’s a signal to all of us who call ourselves oppositional parties, movements or activists. If the trial is more or less fair, it will definitely result in a full acquittal. 
“On the other hand, we live in Russia, so absolutely everything is possible.”

TITLE: Art Center Celebrates Cycling
AUTHOR: By Ronan Loughney
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Loft Project Etagi will herald the beginning of the cycling season Sunday with the unveiling of the city’s biggest bike parking facility in the courtyard of the art center on Ligovsky Prospekt. 
Bike lovers will be able to repair their bikes in preparation for a summer of action, as well as buy and sell bikes and cycling accessories.
Visitors will have the opportunity to buy both new and second-hand bikes and accessories, including models made by local bike designer Igor Baronas. Those who have registered their goods in advance by sending a photograph and description to Loft Project Etagi will also have the opportunity to sell unwanted bikes and accessories.
Employees of Elektra bikes — Etagi’s partners for the event — will be on hand to provide free services, from pumping up flat tires to doing minor repairs from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Although cycling exhibitions and bike rides have been organized by Loft Project Etagi for the last two years in conjunction with the Danish Consulate as part of the “Dreams on Wheels” project — a European initiative to develop cycling in places where it is not yet widely popular, such as Russia — this will be the first event in this format. For the first time, Etagi will host an exhibit called “Iron Wheels,” where people will have the chance to look at and ride various bike models, from choppers to foldable bikes and everything in between, some of which will be for sale. 
According to Loft Project Etagi’s deputy PR director, Valya Vasilyeva, the main principle behind the event is to raise awareness of cycling in St. Petersburg, in the hope that it will inspire other similar events in the city. The long-term aim is to exert influence on the government to set up infrastructure for cyclists, which is distinctly lacking at present. 
Vasilyeva added that St. Petersburg is a perfect location for cyclists, as it is predominantly flat and has a relatively mild climate in comparison to most other Russian cities.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Unilever Factory to Close</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — British-Dutch company Unilever will stop manufacturing sauces at its Baltimor factory in the St. Petersburg suburb of Kolpino, Interfax reported.
The factory will close as a result of the company transferring production of its Calve- and Baltimor-brand ketchup and tomato sauces to an area in the Tula region, Interfax reported. The transfer is to be completed by September this year. 
Unilever does not plan to use the factory for further production, and the transfer is expected to cost about 190 people in Kolpino their jobs. The fate of the factory and its land will be decided later by the company.
Unilever bought Baltimor Holding in July 2009.
Unilever, which has branches in more than 100 countries, started operating in Russia in 1992. The company owns eight large manufacturing companies here that produce margarine, sauces, ice-cream, perfume, cosmetics and other products.

<b>Olympic Countdown</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russian Olympic champions and the British Consul General in St. Petersburg ran 100 meters on the city’s Palace Square last Wednesday to mark 100 days before the start of the Olympic Games in London.
One hundred British diplomatic missions held similar events around the world, Interfax reported.
The Consul General of Great Britain, Gareth Ward, ran the distance with Russian Olympic champions including Lyudmila Muravyova (basketball), Tatyana Kazankina (track and field), Vera Lantratova (volleyball), Alexander Aksinin (track and field) and many others.

<b>Treasure to Be Moved</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Naryshkin treasure trove found last month during the restoration of a historic palace in central St. Petersburg is being transported to the city’s Konstantinovsky Palace in the suburb of Strelna for temporary storage, Interfax reported.
The treasure will remain in the palace until it has been examined and valued by experts, and until all legal details regarding the right to ownership of the treasure have been clarified.
More than 2,000 pieces of tableware and other items were found in the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi mansion that once belonged to one of Russia’s most high-profile noble dynasties, the Naryshkins.

<b>Communists Regroup</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A new communist party called Avrora is being organized in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
“Russia needs a new Communist party. There is a demand for it nowadays,” Vladimir Fyodorov, a former deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said at a press conference last week.
Fyodorov said that the current Communist party tends to repeat the mistakes of the party that existed in Soviet times. There is no rotation among its authorities and the party has stopped defending the interests of the working class, Fyodorov said.

<b>Internet Usage Climbs</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The number of Russian Internet users continues to increase, according to a recent sociological study, Interfax reported.
Fifty-eight percent of Russians said that they use the Internet, while in 2008 this number stood at 30 percent.
The most noticeable changes included the number of those who use the Internet daily, which increased from 11 to 38 percent, and of those who use the Internet several times a week, which went up from nine to 13 percent.
The most active Internet users are young people, who use the Internet every day (79 percent), and those who have completed a degree in higher education (56 percent).

<b>Search for WWII Dead</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 1,500 people from different parts of Russia will take part in “Dolina” (Valley), a spring search expedition in the Novgorod Oblast aimed at finding the remains of Soviet soldiers who were killed during the World War II.
The search will be conducted from April 24 to May 8 in areas where battles took place, Interfax reported. 
Last year, more than 2,000 people from Russia, Kazakhstan and Latvia participated in searches in the Novgorod Oblast. They found the remains of 2,440 Red Army soldiers, and established 75 of their names.
Since the Dolina project was launched in 1988, the remains of almost 100,000 soldiers and officers have been found, 20,000 of whom have been named.

TITLE: City Hall Backtracks On Plans for Island, Bridge
AUTHOR: By Alla Tokareva, Anatoly Tyomkin and Maria Muravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: City Hall intends to change the city’s overall development plan in order to build the Novo-Admiralteisky Bridge.
The St. Petersburg government on April 13 canceled the planning project for the territory of Novo-Admiralteisky Island that it passed in December 2010, City Hall announced on its website. According to one city official, the document was declared invalid after a court found it to be illegal. 
In the middle of 2010, City Hall agreed with the United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK) that Admiralteiskiye Verfy (Admiralty Wharves) shipyard would vacate the 17-hectare island, which is located in the Admiralteisky district of the city, close to New Holland Island. It was expected that two hectares would be occupied by a bridge to Vasilyevsky Island, while the city government planned to sell the rest of the territory at auction for no less than 3 billion rubles ($102 million). In July last year, deputy Alexei Kovalyov took the case to court, and the City Court declared the island’s planning project to be illegal: The location of the bridge would have contradicted the city’s overall plan, and its construction could have infringed on secure zones of the island.
Officials plan to introduce changes to the city’s overall development plan, moving the location of the bridge to correspond to the overall project and re-classifying the island’s territory from industrial to public and commercial, one official said. After this, the planning project will be approved once again; the agreement with OSK remains valid, he added. 
City Hall’s Town Planning and Architecture Committee, which devised the plan, declined to comment.
Admiralteiskiye Verfy is adhering to the terms of the agreement, and one of the three plots of land has already been handed over to City Hall, a company representative said. An official at City Hall confirmed his words. 
In April last year, a tender for the construction of the bridge was won by Pilon company, which promised to build it by the end of this year at a cost of 3.9 billion rubles ($133 million). At the end of last year, City Hall froze the state tender contract until 2015. The commission for city development at the Legislative Assembly has not yet received any documents relating to Novo-Admiralteisky Island, said Boris Vishnevsky, the commission’s deputy head. Unlike the corrections made to the city plan in order to accommodate the alluvion in the suburb of Sestroretsk, which took a couple of weeks, the current process will not be quick — the legal adjustments are unlikely to be confirmed before the parliament’s autumn session, he said.
The cancelation of the project means that the development that it stipulated cannot be realized, and that means that for some time, the territory of Novo-Admiralteisky Island will remain in its current state, said Dmitry Lobachev, a lawyer at Yukov, Khrenov and Partners law firm.

TITLE: Food Store Sets Green Example
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More than 600 St. Petersburg residents brought recyclable materials to a Perekryostok supermarket in St. Petersburg on Saturday for a recycling drive organized by the environmental group Greenpeace.
The event aimed to convince local supermarkets to set up separated trash facilities on their premises.
People brought for recycling about 800 kilograms of waste paper, 400 kilograms of glass, 120 kilograms of plastic bottles and 20 kilograms of Tetra Pak carton during a seven-hour period Saturday. 
They also brought almost 1,000 used batteries, several dozen mercury thermometers, more than 10 kilograms of household chemicals and several kilograms of medicine that had passed its use-by date, as well as broken home appliances and tires, Greenpeace’s press service said.
City residents came to the store on Prospekt Prosveshcheniya from all over the city in cars filled with various kinds of waste. Some came by bike or on foot, carrying large backpacks and bags. Many of them came with children to teach them how to dispose of waste responsibly.
Yevgenia Tarasova, 29, an architect who brought various kinds of recyclable waste from her home to the event, said she had been willing to separate trash “for a long time.”
“If we had those special containers for separate kinds of garbage in our courtyard, I’d always do it, because I want garbage to be recycled, not pollute our environment,” Tarasova said.
Dmitry Artamonov, head of Greenpeace’s St. Petersburg office, said that if the recycling process worked well in Russia “it would be possible to recycle up to 80 percent of household waste.” 
Artamonov said many people were ready to make the effort to sort their trash at home, and that recycling enterprises were ready to recycle the waste, but that the missing link in the cycle was organizing separate trash bins at public skips and their subsequent transportation.
Artamonov said that Greenpeace has made numerous attempts to convince city government bodies to play an active role in organizing the separate collection of waste and its transportation to recycling facilities, but that the group’s efforts had not been effective. The organization therefore decided to appeal for help to the city’s supermarkets, which provide recycling services in many Western countries, including Finland. 
“The volume of the collected waste and active participation of city residents who came to the waste collection spot near Perekryostok supermarket demonstrates that the selective collection of waste near supermarkets is effective and convenient for city residents,” Greenpeace said.
“If today, people are prepared to come for this event from different parts of the city, that means that if similar places appeared on a permanent basis in supermarkets in their neighborhoods, the number of people willing to participate would increase,” Greenpeace said.
“Greenpeace calls on the city’s supermarkets to organize separate waste collection for their customers. Most packaging materials come from food stores, and it would be convenient for people to bring it back there so that the waste goes not to waste dumps but for recycling,” the organization said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Burnt Body in Park</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg police are investigating a suspected murder after the body of a man was found in the ashes of a bonfire in one of the city’s parks, a source from the law enforcement authorities told Interfax on Tuesday.
According to the source, the burnt body of an unidentified man was found in Yekateringof park, which is located near Narvskaya metro station. 
“The badly burnt corpse of a man was found lying in a pile of ashes. The circumstances of his death are still being investigated,” the source told Interfax.

<b>Sapsan Stowaways</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Officers from the St. Petersburg traffic police and riot police together with Oktyabrsky Railways employees caught and removed two people who were hoping to hitch a free ride to Moscow on the outside of the Sapsan high-speed train, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Interfax reported the press service of the police department specializing in transport crime as saying that in order to catch the offenders, employees allowed the two fare-dodgers, born in 1987 and 1989, to climb onto the outside of the train at the Moscow Railway Station, and approached them only after the train had begun to move. 
Employees had agreed with the conductor beforehand to stop the train immediately after it started to leave the station.
According to Interfax, the detainees’ aim was to express their dissatisfaction with the price of high-speed train tickets. They had reportedly invited media representatives to visit the train station in order to make their stunt more public.
The two have been charged with petty hooliganism and with behavior that endangers the safety of traffic on railway transportation.

<b>Killer Cop Suspected</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Investigators suspect that a police officer who caused a car accident in which a mother and child were killed last week in St. Petersburg may be involved in the car-jacking business.
Off-duty police lieutenant Nikolai Miroshkin drove onto a sidewalk last Sunday in a Honda Accord and hit the two pedestrians, who died at the scene. He then crashed into an Opel, injuring the driver and a female passenger, both of whom sustained serious injuries.
Miroshkin was fired from the police force following the incident and is currently awaiting trial in a detainment center on charges of vehicular manslaughter.
Investigators found a second Honda Accord with the same license plate number as the one driven by Miroshkin, a prosecutor said at a hearing Friday, Interfax reported. An inquiry will be opened to find out whether Miroshkin was involved in stealing cars, the prosecutor said.

TITLE: Over 50,000 Pray to ‘Defend Faith’
AUTHOR: By Ken Martinez
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — More than 65,000 people gathered at Christ the Savior Cathedral on Sunday for a mass prayer service and procession that was large enough to even rival the mass opposition protests this winter.
Russian Orthodox leaders called for nationwide prayers Sunday to “defend the faith” amid what they see as a spate of attacks, including over their harsh stance on female punk rockers’ political performance in the cathedral in February, the church’s close ties to the state and the ostentatious lifestyles of some priests.
The church says it has seen an increase in the desecration and vandalism of religious relics since the Pussy Riot band protested Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin.
Priests carrying relics damaged in various attacks followed Patriarch Kirill in a possession around the cathedral. One priest carried a cross slashed by a vandal with a knife at a church in Nevinnomyssk, in the Stavropol region, in March, while another had an icon from Veliky Ustyug riddled with bullet holes in the 1920s.
“I vow to never restore these icons under any circumstances,” Kirill said.
“Let the marks inflicted on them constantly remind us of the unseen warfare that every Christian should lead, above all with themselves and with their sins,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Thousands of people pressed close to Christ the Savior Cathedral to watch church leaders on two large television screens. Some people held banners or waved flags, while many covered their heads with newspapers or umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun. With the temperature peaking at 21 degrees Celsius, several people required medical attention after fainting from standing for long periods in direct sunlight, news reports said.
A St. Petersburg Times reporter saw police confiscating water bottles from people as they passed through metal detectors surrounding the cordoned-off area around the church.
The church said more than 50,000 people attended, roughly the same number of people who gathered in December for the first of a series of mass protests over disputed election results. Police later pushed attendance numbers up to 65,000, RIA-Novosti reported.
Large numbers of people were bussed in from neighboring regions.
“We came from the Leningrad region in 15 buses,” one believer told Gazeta.ru. Another group from Nizhny Novgorod included 1,100 people.
Smaller prayer services were held in 17 other dioceses around the country.
Outside the Moscow venue Sunday, a woman staged a one-person picket to support the three detained Pussy Riot members, RIA-Novosti said. The demonstrator held three balloons, each with the name of one of the three young women in custody. At a hearing Thursday, the women were denied bail and ordered to remain in jail at least until June. They face up to seven years in jail if convicted on charges of hooliganism.  
Russian Orthodox leaders say the women must be punished — a call that has resulted in additional criticism of the church.

TITLE: Tons Of Oil Spill At Field
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Up to 2,000 tons of oil have spilled from a major field in northern Russia after workers struggled to contain the leak for two days, officials said.
The accident happened at the Trebs oil field in the Nenets Autonomous District on Friday following work on an exploratory well. The oil had been gushing for nearly two days before the workers finally capped the well Sunday morning, Emergency Ministry officials said.
Vladimir Bezumov, chief of the Russian Environmental Agency in the area, said the weekend spill could have produced between 800 and 2,000 tons and contaminated at least 8,000 square meters of land. Another 6,000 square meters  of land are believed to have been slightly damaged.
Bezumov said it was too early to speak of the causes of the accident, but he said it was likely a combination of technical issues and human error.
The oil field is developed by a joint venture between Russia’s largest private company Lukoil and another Russian oil major Bashneft. It holds some 153 million tons of oil.
Russian environmental officials will be preparing a lawsuit against the oil companies after the clean-up is over, Bezumov said.
The area around the oil field is largely unpopulated but the oil spill has damaged pastures used by local reindeer herdsmen.
Russia has not seen major oil spills for years. But maintenance of pipelines in old fields is poor, and oil leaks from rusty pipes and poorly sealed wells daily, experts say. An AP investigation last year showed that at least 1 percent of Russia’s annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled into the environment every year.

TITLE: Duma Wants Anti-Sex Law To Be Federal
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Deputies of the Moscow City Duma discussing the creation of an anti-gay law similar to the one in St. Petersburg have decided to broaden its scope to ban all kinds of “sexual propaganda,” and they said they plan to push the initiative on the federal level.
City Duma speaker Vladimir Platonov proposed the idea and stressed its importance during a roundtable meeting attended by representatives of regions where laws restricting homosexual propaganda among minors have already been enacted.
But the legislation would also ban the spread of materials of a heterosexual nature. Representatives of parental organizations said the law was not aimed at people of non-traditional sexual orientation, but a necessary step to protect children from information that would produce psychological harm, a news release about the discussion on the City Duma website said.
Platonov was adamant about the need to protect children’s rights.
“If we talk about the simple writing of the law, it would be possible to limit distribution of the material and harvest already-existing experience,” he said, adding that it would be possible to just “take up the pen and write the same law accepted by four subjects of the Federation,” the news release said.
Platonov also said it was necessary to “address to the Federation Council in order to prepare a good federal legislative initiative that would protect minors from all the negative information. “
One demonstrator stood outside the City Duma in a one-man picket to protest the discussion, holding a sign reading “Stop homophobic crooks! Moscow is behind us,” Moskovksy Komsomolets reported.
Under the law that took effect in St. Petersburg in March, anyone found guilty of promoting homosexuality among minors can be fined from 5,000 ($170) to 50,000 rubles, or up to 500,000 rubles for legal entities.
The Ryazan, Kostroma and Arkhangelsk regions have also enacted similar legislation.

TITLE: Tajikistan, Russia Inch Closer To Deal on Troop Presence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Russia and Tajikistan are getting closer to a deal that would extend the presence of Russian troops in the Central Asian nation beyond 2014, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday.
It is expected that the lease for the three Russian-controlled garrisons in the former Soviet republic neighboring Afghanistan will be extended by 49 years — a prospect first floated by outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in September.
The deal would allow Russia to maintain a stronghold in the volatile Central Asian region. Tajikistan has been dragging its feet over the lease for the Russian garrisons in the hope of securing enhanced financial terms.
Tajikistan’s ambassador to Russia hinted this week that his government would seek $300 million annually in cash or equivalent in military assistance for the bases. Moscow is expected to seek a much lower fee.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that no date for the deal’s signing has been set yet, but added that Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon had given the necessary instructions to “speed up the negotiation process.”
Lavrov said he also discussed security in Afghanistan during talks in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, with Rakhmon and other senior officials.
He reiterated his concerns that Afghan security forces would not be up to the task of maintaining order by the time of NATO forces withdrawal in 2014. Tajikistan and other ex-Soviet neighbors of Afghanistan fear a spillover of violence in the event of a renewed outbreak of civil conflict.
The Russian 201st Motorized Rifle Division deployed in Tajikistan numbers 7,500 servicemen and is the largest current deployment of Russian troops abroad. It is based  near Dushanbe and in the southern cities of Kulyab and Kurgan-Tube.
Russia’s military presence helped negotiate an end to the five-year civil war that devastated Tajikistan in the 1990s.

TITLE: Moscow Hosts Caviar-Eating Competition
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The first speed-eating world championship for black caviar was held over the weekend in Moscow.
Hundreds of guests attended the competition, held at a Moscow restaurant called The Apartment. Twelve people were chosen to compete by lottery. The competitors were to consume half a kilogram of black caviar as quickly as possible.
Alexander Valov, a stocky 49-year-old won the competition. He devoured his half-kilogram in one minute, 26 seconds, Ridus.ru said. As a prize, he won 10,000 rubles ($340) and more caviar to take home.
After the competition the rest of the people at the restaurant were allowed to sample the caviar as well. The entire contest reportedly cost organizers 2 million rubles ($70,000). 
Most black caviar in Russia comes from the black market. Only 19 tons of the 244 tons sold in 2010 were sold legally, Vedomosti reported last year.

TITLE: Medvedev Pardons Opposition Icon Mokhnatkin
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday pardoned a man who had become a lightening rod for the opposition movement after an accident of history led to his imprisonment following a 2009 protest rally.
Sergei Mokhnatkin, 58, has served two years of a 2 1/2-year sentence stemming from a New Year’s Eve rally in Moscow at which he stepped in when he said a cop was shoving an elderly female protester.
Medvedev pardoned Mokhnatkin alongside 13 others, saying he was following “principles of humanity,” but some analysts saw it as a public relations move by an outgoing leader.
Mokhnatkin’s lawyer Valery Shukhardin said Monday that despite the president’s order, the head of the Tver region prison colony where Mokhnatkin is held has refused to let him go, saying the original pardon decree is required and not just a faxed copy of it.
Shukhardin said he believed that Mokhnatkin would be freed in two days, Russian News Service radio reported.
Mokhnatkin’s name was included on a list of prisoners submitted to Medvedev by human rights activists who suggested that their detentions were improper.
The list contained 40 names, including those of former Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev. Neither were among the group pardoned.
Medvedev had earlier declined to pardon Khodorkovsky, saying he had never requested one. Under Russian law, a prisoner appealing for a pardon must ask the president directly.
Aside from Mokhnatkin, none of the other prisoners from the list presented by opposition leaders was freed. The prisoners pardoned were largely jailed for ordinary, nonpolitical crimes.
One of them, Sergei Dikaryov from the Belgorod region, was sentenced in December 2010 to two years and 10 months for selling 70 grams of marijuana.
Mokhnatkin, a native of Izhevsk in the republic of Udmurtia with no political affiliation, claimed that he had not been a participant in the Strategy 31 demonstration on Dec. 31, 2009, on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad and was just passing by when he saw an officer roughing up an older woman and decided to intervene.
Police say the cop ended up with a broken nose. Mokhnatkin ended up in jail and his case became a rallying cry for the opposition who dubbed him a political prisoner and a human rights icon.
An amateur musician and an engineer by training, Mokhnatkin told The St. Petersburg Times during a prison visit earlier this year that he had been victimized by the colony’s administration. He wrote several complaints and demanded his basic rights be met.
“They bully me when they can,” he said in February.
The news of Mokhnatkin’s pardon was met with a cheerful reaction from the opposition blogging community who praised his fight against the system.
But the news received a mixed reaction from human rights activists and political experts who accused the outgoing president of using the case as a publicity stunt to paper over other human rights abuses.
“It was a clear public relations stunt. Medvedev took a path of least resistance,” said Pavel Salin, an analyst with the Center for Current Politics.
He pointed out that Mokhnatkin was also eligible for parole as he had already served most of his prison sentence.
“Today we have a person who lost two years of his life, and his case won’t be reconsidered,” Salin said.
He noted that Medvedev didn’t pardon Taisia Osipova, the wife of a radical activist who was jailed over drug charges some say were fabricated. In February, Osipova’s sentence was overturned and the case sent back for retrial soon after Medvedev asked prosecutors to look into it.
Human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov noted that Mokhnatkin was not a “prisoner of conscience.”
“He was not critical of the authorities, but just got punished — he became collateral damage,” Ponomaryov told Russian News Service radio on Monday.
Mokhnatkin was not a political activist before he was jailed, although those who have visited him in prison said he might now become one because of his character and hunger for justice.

TITLE: Astrakhan’s Shein Breaks 40-Day Hunger Strike
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — After going 40 days without food, former Astrakhan mayoral candidate Oleg Shein has stopped his hunger strike by drinking a glass of juice.
Shein had said he would end the strike once election officials agreed to review footage of vote violations in the Astrakhan mayoral elections — which they did last week — and his supporters who had been arrested were released from jail.
“The court has just called — the last of our arrested comrades has been freed. As such, the hunger strike is finished,” he wrote Tuesday on his LiveJournal blog.
The ex-State Duma deputy from the Just Russia party, who claims to have lost 14 kilograms during the hunger strike, said he and his fellow protesters are restricting their diet to liquids upon a doctor’s orders.
“We have just drunk some juice. We are first of all only going to take juices and children’s puree, as per dietitians’ recommendations,” he told Interfax.
Shein said he is now concentrating on preparation for Thursday’s court hearing about the potential annulment of the election results, for which he is feeling confident.
“We are actively preparing for the hearing,” he said. “We have all the necessary video materials to achieve the cancelation of the results.”
Shein and his supporters had been protesting alleged violations in the Astrakhan mayoral election last month in which he officially received 30 percent of votes, compared with 60 percent for his opponent, United Russia candidate Mikhail Stolyarov.
Last week, the Central Elections Commission reviewed web camera footage from polling sites at Shein’s request. Elections commission head Vladimir Churov said violations had been spotted in 128 of the city’s 202 polling stations, though he said there was no evidence of falsification.
A first hearing in the court case brought by Shein is scheduled for Thursday.

TITLE: White Orca Found in Bering
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The first-ever all-white killer whale seen in the wild has been sighted by Russian scientists near the Commander Islands east of Kamchatka.
Scientists from universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg spotted the orca bull, probably an albino, when its 2-meter white dorsal fin appeared above the surface of the Bering Sea near the set of 17 islands, located about 175 kilometers off the coast of Kamchatka. The sighting was reported by the Far East Russia Orca Project, or FEROP, started in 1999 by three scientists to study the endangered animals off Russia’s coast.
The white killer whale, whom scientists have called Iceberg due to his coloration, lives in a family with 12 relatives, according to a statement by FEROP.

TITLE: Eni Gas Company Enters Arctic Market
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SAMBURGSKOYE FIELD, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District — Blown by a chilly wind, snowflakes attacked Eni chief Paolo Scaroni on Friday, landing on his bare head and beating softly against his glasses, as he took to an open-air stage here, several kilometers above the Arctic Circle, to announce something the Italian company had never done before.
For the first time in its history, Eni has begun producing natural gas in Russia, at this Arctic field, joining the scrupulously vetted cast of international energy majors operating in the country, such as ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Total.
“The Yamal Peninsula is becoming one of the production footholds that are the most important for us,” Scaroni said in a ceremony at a gas treatment hub where steel pipes arched and bent in a rectangular profusion.
As is standard practice, Eni has Russian partners in developing this field that used to belong to the fallen Yukos. Russia’s second-largest gas producer Novatek has been at the forefront of the effort. It and Gazprom Neft hold equal shares that total 51 percent of the joint venture, called SeverEnergia, which is operating the field.
There’s also a junior Italian partner, electricity producer Enel.
The Italian companies bought Yukos’ gas assets at an auction in April 2007, committing to the option of taking Russian partners later on. The Samburgskoye field is the first of these assets to go into operation.
Novatek chief Leonid Mikhelson on Friday praised the fields for being close to roads and pipelines, which reduces the cost of their development.
“We consider this investment highly profitable,” he said at a news conference at the gas facility that sits about 15 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, according to an employee there.
About 90 percent of Russian gas comes out of this and other Yamal-Nenets fields.
Eni had to navigate the shoals of the domestic natural gas business. Gazprom owns all pipelines and holds a monopoly over the lucrative exports. The domestic market is regulated.
Scaroni said Eni reached a deal to sell its share of the project’s natural gas, which will eventually grow to 9 billion cubic meters, and gas condensate to Gazprom at a reasonable price. It is a blend of the domestic and export prices, he said.
Eni’s revenue will depend on the volume of its gas sold inside and outside the country after a deduction of Gazprom’s transportation costs.
“We believe it’s a fair calculation at the end of the day,” Scaroni told The St. Petersburg Times on the sidelines of the event.
Eni retains the rights to buy back its gas and market it in the country.
Enel plans to burn its share of the gas at the power plants it owns in Russia. Eventually, the supplies will cover at least 80 percent of its needs for the fuel, the company said in a handout.
The operation that started Friday has the capacity to produce 6 bcm of gas, Mikhelson said. A second phase, with the same potential, will open at the end of the year, he said.
The field employee who gave reporters a tour around the facility said the field would produce 2 bcm of gas this year. The facility separates the gas from liquids before pumping it into the pipeline.
Gazprom Neft will provide its expertise in extracting oil from the fields, its deputy chief Vadim Yakovlev said. With time, the partners aim to raise output to 5 million tons of oil per year — after state oil pipeline monopoly Transneft completes the Zapolyarye-Purpe link through the area, he said. The link could come online in 2016, he said.
Wrapping up the visit, Scaroni hopped into a black Toyota, and it whisked him to the airport through about 1 1/2 hours of white tundra lying under a thick gray mist, with gas rigs looming on the wayside like castles of some evil snow queen.

TITLE: Business Climate Upgrade Plans Ready
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two road maps to improve the country’s investment climate are ready for review by Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin.
The plans addressing the construction sector and energy infrastructure — which are in line with Putin’s statement to the Duma on April 11 that the government will embark on 100 steps necessary to increase Russia’s Doing Business rating by the World Bank — were formulated by working groups of businessmen, under the auspices of the Strategic Initiatives Agency.
Russia occupies 178th place out of 183 for getting construction permits, but the road map promises to bring the country to 34th place by 2020, with the total number of permission processes dropping from 51 to 11 and the average amount of time spent on obtaining them going from 423 days to 56 days. The plan includes a proposal to move from the need to get permission in advance of building to one in which builders issue a notification and then start.
In terms of energy access, Russia is in last place, but the intention is to move up to position No. 20 by 2020. As of now, connections to electricity and gas networks average 281 days, 10 separate steps and 1,852 percent of per capita income. By 2020 the road map foresees reducing this to 40 days, five steps and 25 percent per capita income.
A spokesman for a Moscow construction company said the current procedure works as follows: Those running the networks say the soonest possible time for a connection is two years from now; but if an “agreement” is made, the bribes paid — costing from 10 percent to 100 percent of the cost of connection, reaching up to 10 million rubles ($340,000) — things can be done much faster.
The construction-working group was led by Barkli chairman Leonid Kazinets and included representatives from Sistema Hals, SU-155 and MR Group. The energy discussion was lead by Siberian Generating Company chief Sergei Mironosetsky and included representatives from En+, MRSK and the retail chain Magnit.
Though they were joined by officials from the Economic Development Ministry, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, the Regional Development Ministry and the government administration, one of the businessmen confirmed that there were no limitations placed on their work. “We wrote what we thought,” he said.
The road maps could be confirmed by Putin as early as May 3, or shortly after May 7, via executive order.

TITLE: U.S. Seeks Claim in Car-Parts Klondike
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government’s drive to make more automotive parts locally isn’t thwarting a U.S. trade mission that seeks to expand American exports of these same products.
Led by Commerce Department Deputy Under Secretary Michelle O’Neill, executives from 13 American companies will explore the market and potential partners for five days starting Monday.
“Surely we appreciate that the Russian government has interest in growing domestic capacity and encouraging localization,” O’Neill said in an interview. “But we also see significant opportunity for U.S. exports as the market grows.”
Russian car ownership jumped to 244 cars per 1,000 people in 2010, an increase of about 70 percent since 2001, the Commerce Department said. O’Neill said that proportion was “relatively low.”
The dense traffic in Moscow, however, may have produced a different impression on the mission members.
“As you can see from the traffic here, Russians do like automobiles,” Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, AmCham, said in a speech to the visiting executives Monday.
Somers agreed that the Russian effort to develop local production of auto parts leaves much room for imports.
“It’s not an obstacle. It’s just something you need to be aware of,” he said.
The government encouraged more domestic production in the automotive industry in 2005 by launching a program that reduced import duties on auto parts for foreign companies producing at least 25,000 cars per year in Russia and using at least 30 percent local content.
The requirements to qualify for lower import duties increased last year. Carmakers that signed up for the new agreements need to produce 350,000 cars annually and use 60 percent local content.
However, Russia is obliged to end this program by 2018 under the terms of its accession to the WTO.
Russia last year ranked as the world’s 12-th largest manufacturer of vehicles, according to the Paris-based International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.
The mission members seek to sell to both domestic Russian car manufacturers, such as GAZ and AvtoVAZ, and their foreign rivals and partners that have established production in the country, O’Neill said.
The effort comes as trade between Russia and the United States is picking up amid President Barack Obama’s ‘reset’ policy.
Russia moved up to No. 31 on the list of America’s biggest trade partners last year from No. 37 the year before. It could climb higher, O’Neill said, pointing to Russia’s top ranking among the largest emerging economies in terms of per capita income.
“To me, that’s an indicator of untapped potential,” she said.
She was referring to the group of emerging economies known as BRICS that also comprises Brazil, India, China and South Africa.
In yet another sign that commercial ties are gaining momentum, another trade mission is at the planning stage for early 2013, O’Neill said. It will target exports of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, she said.
The previous trade mission took place in October 2010. It brought U.S. aerospace industry executives from about 10 companies to the country and resulted in $8 million to $10 million in export sales, O’Neill said.
“The number continues to grow and our expectation is for similar success in this mission,” she said.
AmCham’s Somers also updated the mission on perceived negative sentiments to the United States that appeared in recent news coverage during the Russian elections.
“There’s no anti-Americanism here. Russians greatly respect American technology,” he said. “They want your expertise, and they like you.”
O’Neill sounded the same note, saying her experience working with Russians failed to reveal any hard feelings.
“No one’s ever expressed to me any anti-Americanism at any of my meetings,” she said. “In fact, it’s been quite the contrary.”

TITLE: Russian Men Have Grown Up
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: At a banking conference in the mid-1990s, I had lunch with a Russian banker. In the course of an hour, I learned that he was married but had numerous affairs and one-night stands — not to mention prostitutes whom he liked better because of their “skills and lack of commitment.”
“Russian women are the most beautiful in the world, and Russian men are the smartest,” he declared.
“And what about Americans?” I asked disingenuously.
“Americans no longer have a sex drive. Their women are ugly and stuck-up. America is finished.”
Indeed, few American bankers would proudly discuss extramarital affairs with a chance acquaintance or brag about hiring prostitutes. Recent scandals involving U.S. public figures and celebrities, and the grief they got for it, only go to show that such behavior is rather an aberration, not the norm.
But Russian biznesmeny cavorting with scantily clad beauties has long been a global cliche. Apparently, the numerous fancy boutiques in Moscow cater mainly to rich men’s mistresses. Moscow prices are sky-high, but paying for their purchases there is still cheaper and less troublesome than taking them on shopping trips to Paris or London.
But while early post-Soviet stereotypes persist, the reality is changing. Russia’s wealthy are beginning to develop interests that are similar to their Western counterparts, whereas middle-class men are becoming more interested in maintaining stable family relationships and raising kids. There are important social and economic forces that are coming into play.
The Soviet Union had a remarkably prudish, staid facade. Ironically for a society that had rejected bourgeois morality and traditions, the ideal Communist was a monogamous family man who was supposed to be interested in sex only inasmuch as it produced future defenders of the motherland and textile factory workers. Sex, we were told, was a vice of the decaying bourgeois West.
Under the surface, of course, sex was everywhere. Foreigners who knew Soviet society well were often amazed and scandalized by its loose morals. Marital infidelities were pervasive. A summer vacation, which many couples took separately, were considered a waste if it didn’t result in a seaside romance. Even though most women worked and were equal before the law, they were seen as inferior. Their role was to look good, perform all of the home duties, and, in general, do what they were told.
There were plenty of explanations for this. First, communism rejected religion and the concept of sin. Second, wars and repressions took a heavy toll on men, so in many generations a large number of women could not find a partner. Third, crammed living quarters, with families sharing a single room or, at best, a tiny apartment, led to early, hasty marriages. Finally, since Communist propaganda dominated all aspects of life, there were few ideologically neutral, private activities outside the bedroom.
Writer Tatyana Tolstaya provided another explanation in her 1990 essay in the New York Review of Books. She pointed out that repressive regimes can tolerate a strong woman, but a strong man poses a real threat. The Soviet regime regularly eliminated men who could stand up to it, and the rest camouflaged themselves as “not real men.” Interacting with the authorities, it was safer to seem a permanent adolescent or a clown.
Such a self-preservationist mechanism is typical of many oppressed groups. Irish men displayed this kind of behavior during British colonial rule, and African-American men presented a similar facade to whites. Males from oppressed groups often engage in adolescent behavior, including drinking too much and engaging in casual sex. The Soviet government, moreover, owned everything and paid its employees just enough to last from one payday to the next. Thus, Soviet men couldn’t protect or provide for their families.
Soviet men, frightened and humiliated in public, took revenge in private. They became domestic tyrants at home and tried to assert their manhood in bed with as many partners as they could get. This, too, is a typical behavior pattern for oppressed groups.
Now, however, in post-Soviet Russia men have the opportunity to take responsibility for themselves and their families. They can make a decent living and control their own lives. They have become liberated, and their attitude to the family has changed. A “real man” is no longer embarrassed to shop, do housework and play with the kids. Having a strong family is now becoming more important than having a beautiful mistress. Achieving professional success and growing one’s business is more interesting than hanging out with girls at a ski resort.

<i>Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.</i>

TITLE: always a dissident: Protest Genie Is Out of the Bottle
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: Supporters of the ruling regime interpreted the results of the March presidential election as a victory for the once-conservative, loyal provinces over the protest-ridden capital. But some regions have joined Moscow’s battle.
Astrakhan has led the pack by holding a hunger strike and protests in support of Oleg Shein, who claims that his victory in the city’s March mayoral race was stolen in favor of the United Russia candidate. But Yaroslavl, Kaluga and the republic of Bashkortostan have also joined the battle, albeit in a less dramatic form.
The opposition is jubilant, convinced that the provinces have finally awakened and will now continue the work begun by the earlier protests in the country’s major cities. But the situation is more complicated.
The authorities have hammered home the message that if the opposition were to come to power, this would lead to a repeat of neoliberal reforms and the deterioration of education, health care and other social services. In response, opposition leaders co-opted several left-wing activists into their movement to try to show that they have formed a “broad democratic bloc.”
Against such a backdrop, it is not surprising that even many voters who are critical of President-elect Vladimir Putin’s policies still preferred him to the unknown. But as soon as the election ended, rulers resumed the same course that had frightened voters earlier — something they had undoubtedly planned to do long before the election was held. The large protests forced leaders to delay implementing some of their more unpopular measures, but the conservative voters, who most fear such measures, have made it possible for the regime to pursue them.
But they needn’t blame themselves for this. If they had voted differently or if billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov or even someone from the street opposition had come to power, the result would have been exactly the same. It turns out that Russia’s brand of capitalism cannot function normally without making a sweeping attack on workers’ rights or taking away the remnants of the social safety net for the sake of “reducing business expenses.”
The situation will not improve even if the authorities fulfill the social-spending obligations they promised during the election campaign. The resulting drain on federal and local budgets will only force leaders to further cut back on social services.
Now that election is over, the assault on the education system has resumed at full force. In addition, Russian Railways is planning to raise prices, and the government-controlled utilities companies are preparing to wring more money from Russians than ever before.
By provoking the wrath of the lower classes against the liberals, the authorities hoped to use popular discontent to their own advantage, without bothering to think about how they would channel it later. Now they have no idea how to put the genie back in the bottle and cannot imagine how powerful that force really is.
This discontent will inevitably be directed against the government itself as soon as it implements its programs. This time, however, the street protesters will not be educated middle-class citizens carrying iPads and smartphones, but a very different group of people.

<i>Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.</i>

TITLE: Summer clubbing
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Glavclub, one of St. Petersburg’s leading music venues, which has brought hundreds of Russian and international acts ranging from Iggy Pop to Ian Brown to the city since its opening in 2008, is set to undergo substantial renovation work during the summer, and will move its activities to a summer stage on Krestovsky Island.
“We’ve organized a massive upgrade of the club,” said Igor Tonkikh, Glavclub’s Moscow-based CEO and one of Russia’s pioneering promoters.
“As a result of natural development, it has come to a point where we bring in artists that have very high performance fees, and we should be prepared to greet them not only with our knowledge, but also with the technology and interior our club has to offer. 
“When people pay a lot of money for a ticket, they expect good service in every aspect — even in the smallest detail,” he added.
Glavclub is about to replace its sound and light systems with state-of-the art ones and install a climate control system, while the VIP area is to be replaced with a VIP balcony with improved service, Tonkikh promised.
During the summer, Glavclub will be located in a large tent near the Karl & Friedrich restaurant on Krestovsky Island. The tent is large enough to house Glavclub’s stage without it having to be decreased in size and can hold the same number of people — up to 2,500.
Since it will not be located in a residential area and there will be no noise restrictions, the summer venue will introduce all-night dance parties on Fridays and Saturdays. 
Glavclub, whose name means “Main Club,” opened with a splash on Nov. 7, 2008. The opening was scheduled to coincide with the main Soviet holiday — the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution — while the act to launch the club was the hugely popular local band Leningrad. 
Tonkikh, 50, admitted that the choice of the city came by chance — as a suitable defunct industrial facility happened to be on sale in St. Petersburg, rather than in Moscow.
“I’ll remind you that in 2008, before the crisis, it was a so-called ‘seller’s market,’ when all factory directors sat in anticipation of multi-million-dollar investments because the development business was the most popular and most profitable, and every site was the object of some gigantic development plan.
“Everybody was dreaming of briefcases filled with millions of dollars. Now they have all got their feet back on the ground. But at that time this property [where Glavclub is located] had to be taken as soon as possible —  they are such large premises with such a good location — good both for artists, because it was near the Moscow Railway Station, and for the public, because it was a ten-minute walk from either Ploshchad Vosstaniya or Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo metro stations.”
Tonkikh said he spent most of his time in St. Petersburg during the venue’s development period.
“I spent three weeks out of every four here, because everything needed fine-tuning, there was a new team and the need to pass on knowledge,” he said.
“Now it runs like clockwork and I don’t even come to concerts by major artists because it doesn’t require any additional control anymore. I come only for negotiations that require the director to be there. 
“Now I come here often again, because we basically have to build two clubs — the summer one and the winter one — in two months’ time. There’s more work than usual.”
According to Tonkikh, Glavclub is “simply a venue,” with no music philosophy, and is open to all styles of music.
“Since we hold a hundred concerts a year, no style can cover that many artists; a venue is a venue,” he said. 
“I can only complain about the fact that visits by Western artists stopped being a unique event long ago. People don’t go to concerts simply out of interest now, I think they go to see bands that they already know and like.”
However, there are specific aspects of international acts that tend to require higher fees in Russia than in Europe.
“That’s a fact,” Tonkikh said.
“Sadly, nothing can be done about it. There’s close competition, especially in Moscow, which leads to offers being made by new, one-off players, and these are often overpriced. 
“They don’t become regular promoters for this very reason, because they bear losses, but it affects the general situation of the market, putting Russia in the category of well-paying clients, and causing agents’ expectations to become considerably higher.”
Russia is also famous for its corporate and private parties that leave international artists with hefty sums, but they do not affect the general concert scene much, according to Tonkikh.
“Private concerts are a separate story, and agents understand that if [oligarch Roman] Abramovich paid $1 million to the late Amy Winehouse [in 2008], it doesn’t mean that she will be paid the same amount of money for a regular concert,” he said.
He dismisses popular showbiz talk about international artists not wanting to perform in Russia.
“To be honest, that’s the kind of myth that sets my teeth on edge,” he said.
“They always say that Tom Waits will never come to Russia because of humanitarian and political reasons, but let’s wait and see. Never say never.”
According to Tonkikh, the biggest act to perform at Glavclub so far will be Californian nu metal band Korn, scheduled for Aug. 23. Out of the bands that have already performed at the club, he cites the Wu-Tang Clan, a hip-hop collective from Staten Island, New York, as the most popular. “After the upgrade, there will be considerably more artists from that top league performing at the club,” he said.
Tonkikh’s concert agency and record label FeeLee (named after Fili, the historic Moscow district where its offices were located) was one of the first privately-owned music enterprises in the late Soviet Union. 
He put together his first concert, which was by Moscow metal band Chyorny Kofe, in 1986. Formed two years later, the FeeLee agency made its debut with a concert by Rock Artel, a creative union between bands Vopli Vidoplyasova, Kollezhsky Assesor and Rabbota Kho from Kiev, Ukraine.
The first international band that FeeLee brought to Moscow was the 1980s English indie rock band World Domination Enterprises, but the most important and influential was its second — Sonic Youth. They both performed there in 1989.
“Everything is more interesting the first time, rather than the hundredth,” Tonkikh said.
“World Domination Enterprises was interesting too. That was a classic case of the fact that it was a concert by a Western artist being enough. Sonic Youth played two concerts in Moscow, two days in a row.
“[Sonic Youth guitarist] Lee Ranaldo’s set of guitars alone counted for a lot! Musicians walked around looking at them as if they were an icon that works miracles, but multiplied into ten pieces. That was very effective.”
In 1992, FeeLee released its first record, an eponymous album by Russian rock band Voskreseniye originally recorded in 1981, but never released under the Soviets. The following year saw its first release by an international act, which was Dead Can Dance’s “Into the Labyrinth” under a license from 4AD. 
The label grew to release best-selling albums by The Prodigy, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave for the Russian market, while the FeeLee agency brought Cave, David Byrne and the White Stripes, among many others, to Russia.
St. Petersburg’s own Tequilajazzz released almost its entire catalogue with FeeLee. The label’s most recent release dates back to 2009, with Tonkikh attributing the hiatus to the drop in CD sales.
“I am planning to resume the record label activities now,” he said.
“The market of digital sales has become active, and it has started bringing in money. There are also 360-degree deals, which are when the company signs an agreement with the artist for every possible profit that can emerge in connection with the name of the artist, rather than only recordings. 
“Because the music industry is now centered around concerts, it includes concerts, merchandise, advertising and, to an extent, films.”
In 2008 Tonkikh launched Ikra, a club in Moscow that he managed for the next two years with artistic director Gregory Goldenzweig, whom he poached from Afisha magazine.
“It had a medium capacity of 700 people with a quite advanced music policy that included concerts and night parties,” he said. “It was a good place.”
Ikra closed in January last year, shortly before its fifth birthday. 
“There’s a strange situation in Moscow at the moment; [the club] 16 Tons is reaping the harvest [of performing bands],” he said.
“On the one hand, it’s one of the oldest clubs and has a very good manager, Pavel Kamakin, and with the closing of Ikra, which was geared toward a more sophisticated public, and Tochka, which was for the fringe fans of all the heavy styles and the adepts of narrow, sectarian directions, 16 Tons has become the most desirable venue. So they exploit the situation at full capacity, holding a flukey and temporary monopoly.”
Originally conceived by Tonkikh as a network of venues across Russia, so far St. Petersburg’s Glavclub is the only one, although a Moscow branch existed for about a year on the premises of the Gorbunov Palace of Culture in 2009/2010.
Now the Moscow section of Glavclub’s website announces: “We are in the process of finding new premises.”
“The idea has not been buried, it’s alive and, moreover, is developing,” Tonkikh said.
“One day it will be realized, no doubt about it. It might not all happen quickly, but everything will happen in due time.”
Tonkikh said he was not planning anything special for the reopening of the renovated venue in September.
“Glitzy presentations only work for some posh new restaurant,” he said. “Our goods speak for themselves — I mean not the club, not its walls, but the man at the microphone.”

<i>Glavclub is located at 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa, M. Ploshchad Vosstaniya. Tel. 905 7555. www.glavclub.com.</i>

TITLE: Silent witness
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The turmoil that shook Libya last year can now be seen through the eyes of one Russian photographer, whose images of the country can be seen at Loft Project Etagi in an exhibit titled “Libya. Sirocco. War photographs.”
Originating in Northern Africa and the Middle East, the wind known as Sirocco, also sometimes called the “Libyan flautist,” brings atmospheric changes to Europe as fast as the Arab Spring wave of uprisings made differences to the world. For one year, the uprisings engulfed North African and Middle East countries and touched the lives of thousands of people, involving even those not living inside the war zones.
Having sparked changes in the state of international relations and media, the Arab Spring made the protester a symbol of the world in 2011. Presented in different ways in the media, the wave of overthrown governments produced speculation and misunderstanding, including in Russia, where the events were often interpreted in a different way to in the West.
Sergey Ponomarev is a war photographer for the Moscow bureau of the Associated Press news agency who arrived in Libya in March 2011, a month after protests engulfed the country. Having spent some time in Benghazi where the protests began, he had to tack between the city and the country’s border in order to avoid being caught in a trap. After leaving Libya for several months after his first visit, he came back at the beginning of the summer and stayed there until September, witnessing the fall of Tripoli, Gad.
 “Of course I read different sources before coming to Libya in order to get a complete picture, but nevertheless, what I saw made a really big impression on me,” Ponomarev told The St. Petersburg Times. “The revolution was brought about not by NATO or Americans, but by ordinary people, and they were fighting only on their enthusiasm.”
Ponomarev saw a world in which the only topic of every discussion was how to overthrow Gadhafi.
“My first question [to people] when I came to Libya was ‘who were you before the revolution?’ and they all replied that they had been anything except militants — doctors or businessmen. I also met a painter, a former interior designer who due to a lack of orders began to make caricatures of Gadhafi. He was stoned every night, he was trembling just because of a reference of Gadhafi. At some point, these people had to make their choice: To live under a dictatorship, or to take a gun in their hands and be prepared for an uncertain future — victory or death.”
The exhibition at Etagi shows more than 40 photographs by Ponomarev, and introduces a picture of the Libyan uprising, together with images from the lives of people who were not fighting.
“Except associations with Gadhafi, we don’t know anything about Libya,” said Ponomarev. “That is why when I had free time, I searched and uncovered stories of ordinary people, such as the story of a person living with AIDS, and the lives of fishermen, and when fighting broke out, I went to those places.”
Ponomarev said that he stayed wherever he could during his time in Libya. Sometimes he had to sleep in the car, but every night was different. 
“When you’re going to war, you have to be prepared for the fact that you won’t have clean sheets every night,” he said.
Visitors to the exhibition can also see — and sample — typical war food of the kind that Ponomarev ate while living there — tea, water crackers, water and canned tuna. 
“Since then I haven’t been able to eat tuna,” he joked.
The exhibition also features a multimedia music improvisation created by students of theater and film director Kirill Serebryannikov.
A separate part of the exhibition is dedicated to the fall of the Libyan capital Tripoli, which was one of the pivotal points in the revolution.
“Just before the city fell, lots of journalists came to the border of Tripoli, but we were caught in a trap,” said Ponomarev. 
The photographer recalls this incident as the most frightening moment during his work in Libya. 
“Some of my colleagues’ cars were fired at, the lens of another photographer was broken. Lots of journalists went 50 kilometers outside of Tripoli after that, but we decided to stay at the border of the city. In the morning we were on the territory of the city with the front-line rebel troops. When they attacked Bab Al-Azizia, the main compound of Muammar Gadhafi, we went in there together with them.” 
Pictures of destroyed and devastated houses belonging to Gadhafi and his relatives comprise a significant part of the exhibition.
“I’ve got lots of good friends there, I put down roots, so to speak,” says Ponomarev. But he does not miss it. 
“I see it as another assignment. I was gutted after I saw how Gadhafi was killed. Those people who were sharing their last food and cigarettes and sitting in the trenches together — it was like brotherhood — and after that what I saw was some kind of cave atrocity”.
“Photo journalism is a document that makes it possible to record what happened,” said Ponomarev. “At the same time, we’re trying to interpret it creatively, so it could be not just a photo document, but a piece of art. Photos that are part of visual art but shot in a war zone give people more information and a stronger message, and produce more emotions. In such a way, it helps to draw attention to the topic and make people see the situation more clearly.”
When asked about his attitude to the level of danger he had to face, Ponomarev answered: “It is a part of work; there are people who have to do it.
“If there were not war correspondents, people would have completely different emotions and ideas about the war,” he added. 

<i>“Libya. Sirocco. War photographs” runs through May 20 at Loft Project Etagi, 74 Ligovsky Prospekt. M. Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel 458 5005. www.loftprojectetagi.ru</i>

TITLE: the word’s worth: However you want to look at things here...
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Îäíàêî: however, but, all the same, apparently, wow

Îäíàêî seems like a pretty straightforward word. And it is — most of the time.
In many cases, it can be translated as “however.” Like “however,” îäíàêî is used to show some kind of contrast with a previous statement. It’s a great qualifier in scientific and scholarly papers that signals: Having just made my case, now I’m going to hedge it or contradict it outright. Ìû ïðåäïîëàãàåì, ÷òî ýòè âûâîäû ìîãóò ðàñïðîñòðàíÿòüñÿ è íà äðóãèå ãðóïïû äåòåé, îäíàêî òðåáóþòñÿ äîïîëíèòåëüíûå èññëåäîâàíèÿ. (We believe that these conclusions might be valid for other groups of children, too. However, we need to conduct additional research.)
Sometimes îäíàêî can be a synonym of íî (but): Îí âûæèë, îäíàêî ïîòåðÿë äàð ðå÷è (He survived, but he lost the ability to speak).
In other cases, it’s a synonym for òåì íå ìåíåå (all the same): Äåòè çíàþò î Ñíåãóðî÷êå, îäíàêî îíè çàäàþò âîïðîñû î å¸ ðîäèòåëÿõ, î òîì, ãäå îíà æèâ¸ò (Kids know about the Snow Maiden, but all the same, they ask about her parents and where she lives).
In still other cases, it might be “although”: Êîëîêîëü÷èê áûë ÷àñòüþ êîííîé óïðÿæêè, îäíàêî äàëåêî íå êàæäûé õîçÿèí ìîã ñåáå ïîçâîëèòü êóïèòü äîðîãîå ëèòîå èçäåëèå (A bell was part of a horse’s harness, although far from every owner could afford such an expensive metal work).
But in colloquial Russian, îäíàêî gets tricky. It can be used as an interjection to express surprise, often of the unpleasant and unwanted sort. It’s as if the notion of contrast between expected reality and actual reality got distilled into just one outburst: Îäíàêî!
A good example of this usage can be quoted by almost every Russian who has read or seen screen versions of Ilf and Petrov’s “The Twelve Chairs.” The impoverished nobleman Ippolit Vorobyaninov picks up the menu in a restaurant: Îäíàêî,&#8239;— ïðîáîðìîòàë îí,&#8239;— òåëÿ÷üè êîòëåòû äâà äâàäöàòü ïÿòü … (“Will you look at that,” he muttered. “Veal cutlets — 2 rubles and 25 kopeks … “).
Îäíàêî can also be added on to a piece of information to indicate that it is unexpected or surprising. A newspaper article about the ethnic makeup of Muscovites, which cited that more than 90 percent were Russians, was called: Ìû ðóññêèå, îäíàêî (It turns out we’re … Russians). Or a comment on the high salaries of cops began: Õîðîøî æèâóò,&#8239; îäíàêî (Life’s pretty good — who’d have thought it?).
Sometimes when îäíàêî is coupled with a word, it is like a marker signaling: This sums it all up. There is a kind of dry, understated humor to this usage. For example, when the staff is shooting paperclips out of rubber-band slingshots, the boss might say: Ïÿòíèöà, îäíàêî (It’s Friday, after all.) Or when someone is complaining about the snow flying in their face, his friend might deadpan: Çèìà, îäíàêî (In a word — winter).
And then there’s the Siberian îäíàêî. Although in Russian jokes Chukchi uses îäíàêî a lot, in fact it seems that îäíàêî is a feature of the local Russian dialect. As far as I can tell, it usually means “I guess,” or “I’d say” or “looks like” — that is, “I’m not committed to this, but it seems to be true.” Âû îäíàêî åäåòå? (So does it look like you’re going?) Îäíàêî äîæäü áóäåò (Looks like rain). Ãäå ìóæ? (Where’s your husband?) Îäíàêî äîìà. (Home, I guess.)
Ðóññêèé ÿçûê, îäíàêî (That’s Russian for you).

<i>Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.</i>

TITLE: Homegrown design talent
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Forty collections from Russia’s finest fashion talent in the caliber of Tatyana Parfionova, Lilia Kissilenko and Leonid Alexeyev shared the podium with premier designers from the U.S., Denmark, Syria, Lebanon and Brazil at the Aurora Fashion Week that was held in mid-April at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall.
 For those who missed the shows, The St. Petersburg Times presents a guide to some of the most inspired and impressive shows of the AFW.
 <b>Igor Gulyayev</b>
Decadent charm at its inspired best is what the designer’s new collection, titled La Femme Magnifique, is about. Luxurious textures meet retro cut in this glamorous collection.
Fur features prominently in La Femme Magnifique, in the form of tall astrakhan hats, muffs, stoles and short jackets, alongside tight maxi dresses with emphasized waists and long pencil skirts in glossy red, black, white and yellow.
 <b>Tatyana Parfionova</b>
Undoubtedly the most enigmatic yet disarmingly witty event of this year’s AFW, Tatyana Parfionova’s collection “Twelfth Night” made for a dizzying experience. Shakespeare’s verse soared freely over the hall as pale, somewhat effeminate young men with wavy hair and angel-like features flittered along the square-shaped podium that surrounded the audience. Parfionova’s signature satin-stitch embroidery scarves, flowing maxi skirts — at times worn over trousers — and short fluffy jackets got a fresh twist in this rather unorthodox presentation that emphasized the theatrical and playful elements of fashion. The ease and boldness with which the male models indulged in the cross-dressing experience reminded audiences that role-playing and provocation are in vogue.
 <b>Lena Vasilieva</b>
Intelligent fashion is what this Moscow-born and Krasnoyarsk-bred designer calls her laconic body-conscious dresses of various lengths. Lace meets leather, and silks flow liberally in this low-key collection. Simple cuts, almost entirely absent of any ornamentation, with fur muffs often serving as the only decoration, define the essence of the display. A transparent lace maxi dress was the most openly erotic garment in this otherwise demure collection, featuring high collars, floor-sweeping garments and soft colors, in which gray, coral, cream and black were favorites.
 <b>Anne Sofie Madsen</b>
This aspiring recent graduate of the Danish Royal Fine Arts Academy, who already has experience as a junior designer at Alexander McQueen, took Eskimo epic tales and folklore as her inspiration to create “Sedna,” a collection that the designer named after the Inuit sea goddess. True to its name, the collection was generously enriched with marine fauna imagery, from whales to crabs to sea lions. One of the key dresses in the collection looked as if it had been constructed from octopus tentacles. The models wore rough-looking high male boots, dark narrow trousers and leather jackets.
An impressive range of jewelry toying with the marine theme in a somewhat in-your-face manner — such as massive necklaces resembling walrus tusks — completed the look. Madsen created her own brand only last year, and already made a splash during the most recent London Fashion Week.
 <b>Thom Browne</b>
By far the most anticipated collection of the Aurora Fashion Week, Thom Browne’s Russian premiere of his ready-to-wear fall 2012 collection exceeded expectations. The AFW headliner, whose fine tailoring has won him international recognition, offered a mix of men’s and women’s collections that have already been shown at fashion weeks in Paris and New York.
Checked trousers and short jackets in various shades of gray, one of the designer’s favorite colors, dominated the male looks. The women’s collection — new territory for Browne — offered striking asymmetrical dresses with pyramid-shaped inserts in the shoulder area. Black, white and gray reigned on the podium.

TITLE: in the spotlight: A tale of two talk shows
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, Channel One’s star presenter Ivan Urgant got his own talk show, “Evening Urgant,” which is a direct imitation of the American late-night talk show format, with its jokes about the day’s news along with famous guests and live music.
The start of the first show had a joke about a nervous Urgant asking for a blessing from channel chief Konstantin Ernst, who, love him or hate him, has made real efforts to try riskier formats and produce television that at least gives a nod to what’s going on in the West.
It was a pretty bold move on Channel One’s part, since Russian television barely has talk shows or topical jokes about the news or even live music. And Urgant is used to hosting lighter shows, from his start on MTV to celebrity talent shows and working in a team of comedians on the closest to edgy that Channel One gets, “ProjectorParisHilton,” where some of the jokes are about fluffier news stories. He’s great at entertaining the crowds and reacting quickly to keep a show going, although he’s far from open about his real thoughts on anything, usually giving only comedic answers in interviews.
This month’s Russian GQ magazine listed him as the 23rd most influential person on Russian television (out of 30), but included a damning anonymous comment from someone at Ostankino television center saying “What can you say bad about Vanya? Nothing, except that he doesn’t have a heart. That’s why he’ll never be a good interviewer, by the way. He isn’t interested in the person he’s talking to.”
It’s early days for a show like this, and the first episodes showed a lot of nerves, with Urgant lacking his usual comfortable knack of talking to an audience. There were some sketches that just fell flat, such as an elaborate joke about inviting on the actor Sergei Bezrukov for an in-depth interview and then asking him just one question: Did he play singer Vladimir Vysotsky under all the prosthetic makeup in “Vysotsky. Thank You for Being Alive,” a docu-drama film that did not credit the main role. Yes, he did.
At least the show looks glossy and right. Urgant has a new coiffed haircut and a bow tie, and he sits in front of a backdrop of the Novodevichy Convent and the towers of the Moskva-City skyscraper. Hopefully the backdrop isn’t live, so as to avoid any sight of flames shooting out of the top. He even has a coffee cup with the name of the show.
But the political jokes were far too soft, hitting familiar targets such as bureaucrats slaving away in Italian pig farms on their holidays. And it’s not even a question of political stance. Surely a pro-Kremlin channel should come up with a more cynical joke about hunger striker Oleg Shein than that it was hard for him to talk to Central Elections Commission chief Vladimir Churov because his beard smelled of Easter kulich. After all, I heard Vladimir Putin had them rolling in the aisles of the Duma last week.
Then again, free speech, Kremlin-style, doesn’t necessarily make for very entertaining television. Last week, breaths were bated for the first episode of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s talk show “The World Tomorrow,” a title I cannot see without thinking of “The Day Today,” on RT. The channel warned us that the first guest would be an outrageous choice, likely to offend. But in the event, while it was theoretically shocking to see the leader of Hezbollah holding forth via video link, in fact, it was rather dull. As he explained why everything is America’s fault, I found my attention straying to Assange’s choice to wear cuff links on a crumpled shirt and his surprisingly chintzy taste in curtains.

TITLE: Dances with cocoa
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Nothing is better at putting people in a spring-like mood than dancing and chocolate. The Spring Chocolate Ball, to be held April 28 at the city’s History Hotel, promises just this, as well as fashion shows, lotteries, and a good time for those with a sweet tooth and lovers of pre-revolutionary Russian culture.
The ball aims to revive imperial Russian traditions, which is partly why it is being held this year at the History Hotel, the former palace of princess Yekaterina Dolgorukova, who is best known for being the mistress and later the wife of Alexander II. Guests are to dress as people did at the end of the 19th century, to help create the sensation that time has stood still at this historic palace. Full-length evening gowns for ladies and tailcoats and tuxedos or military dress uniforms for gentlemen are encouraged.
The Spring Chocolate Ball traditionally consists of two parts. The first is organized for children from large families. During the ball they will be able to learn historical dances and about the cultural period, as well as taste a wide assortment of chocolate treats and receive presents. A fashion show will parade a selection of dresses with city sights hand painted on them to add another layer of interest to the children’s ball.
The fashion show also introduces the second, evening part of the ball, which is geared toward adults. Ball-goers will have the chance to see a display of children’s hats, connecting the two programs, as well as a collection of cocktail dresses in chocolate hues. 
The polonaise, waltz, quadrille, gallop and many other traditional dances will all be performed at the ball. Before the event, free dance lessons will be offered to help people learn or simply brush up on their steps. Those who aren’t interested in dancing are invited to play board games or socialize during the reception, which will also feature a chocolate fountain.
The evening’s events will be accompanied by a musical program that includes live music and vocals from Mariinsky Theater artists. 
The idea of holding such balls in contemporary St. Petersburg was born a year ago. Since then, four balls have been held, one in each season: The Chocolate Ball in spring, the Flower Ball in summer, the “Die Fledermaus” Carnival Ball in autumn and the White Ball in winter. The second annual Spring Chocolate Ball will kick off the new dancing season. 

<i>The Spring Chocolate Ball will be held on April 28 at the History Hotel,
46 Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya. 
M. Admiralteiskaya. Tel. +7 911 217 5140. For more information visit 
www.korolevskieigru.com.</i>

TITLE: THE DISH: Moskva City
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Panoramic provender</b>
It is a sad fact that most panoramic restaurants tend to serve food that is simply boring. Or undercooked. Or uninspired. I had fallen into this trap on quite a few occasions in several European cities before I made the decision to discard the view aspect if I wanted a good meal. 
Arriving at Moskva City restaurant, which sits on the top floor of a 6-story business center on Petrogradskaya embankment early on a Saturday afternoon, all we were after was a relaxed lunch — with a good view. It was one of the first sunny days after an exhaustingly long winter, and our sun starvation was overwhelming. We craved to see the Neva River lit by the spring sun and our main gastronomic ambition was not to get poisoned.
What we discovered was a laid-back restaurant that is not likely to bring customers any gastronomic revelations, but will not result in disappointment or cause them to curse the owners for shamelessly living off a prime location.
The restaurant was surprisingly deserted — we and two other couples had almost no competition for the plum window tables. The vast menu is divided into three sections: European, Japanese and pan-Asian. Multi-genre menus often create the impression that the chefs are going for the cuisine half-heartedly, but this is not the case at Moskva City. 
The Japanese part of the menu looked pretty standard, while the European side seemingly caters to clients who favor elegantly rendered home-cooked meals with a Russian-Italian bent. The hot dishes include, for example, chicken cutlets, game soup, Minestrone soup, cep risotto, spaghetti Carbonara and Cesar salad.
The pan-Asian menu can hardly be considered experimental or daring either. The choices consist of international bestsellers and safe bets in the caliber of Tom Yam soup and a handful of wok dishes.
Tom Yam soup (350 rubles, $11.50), one of the world’s most popular Thai dishes, was a spicy one: Clearly, the chefs here do not support the trait of most of their local counterparts of giving Oriental dishes milder treatment. The soup won high praise for its mighty combination of herbs and spices. Sweet and sour soup with vegetables, chicken and coriander (240 rubles, $8) was thick, aromatic and substantial enough to be a meal in itself.
Staying within the borders of pan-Asian cuisine, a portion of wok egg noodles with prawns (290 rubles, $9.50) was commendably hot, crisp and filling.
Moskva City radiates a somewhat restrained glamour yet, unlike at many local glitzy venues, the staff do not give you measuring looks. The waiter was cordial and helpful, which added to our overall pleasant dining experience. We followed his recommendations for desserts, and went for the airy banana petit fours (270 rubles, $9) and rolls inspired by Esterhazy torte (290 rubles, $9.50). Topped with zesty lime jelly, the almond and meringue rolls made a delicate final touch to the lunch.
Spacious, designed in beige colors, fitted with soft chunky sofas and panoramic windows, Moskva City has quiet lounge music during the day, but on weekends turns into a busy cocktail bar, complete with guest musicians, mainly in the jazz and lounge direction, and even karaoke, though in slightly better taste than at most local venues — the list includes Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone, alongside some old Soviet hits. The man responsible for the musical element here is Vladimir Kristovsky of the band Umaturman.

TITLE: The Rise of the Caucasus Tiger
AUTHOR: By Sigrid Lupieri
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: YEREVAN, Armenia — A first glance of Yerevan from the imposing central train station may appear uninspiring — bleak empty buildings flank the large square in the gray light of dawn, merchants setting up their stalls stare warily at passersby, and the grandiose monument of a rider on a horse pays tribute to the country’s Soviet past. But as the bustling city gradually awakens, it soon becomes clear that there is much more to Armenia’s capital than meets the eye.
From the ghostly view of Mount Ararat’s snowy peaks looming over the city to the vibrant colors and sounds of the Vernissage flea market, Yerevan possesses a subtle beauty. Yerevan’s citizens have been particularly resilient despite the devastating effects of an earthquake in 1988, dire economic hardship and a war with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from 1988-94. Over the past decade, a booming economy and flourishing business environment has given Armenia the well-deserved epithet of the Caucasian Tiger.
Yerevan has also proven its mettle. The capital, which contains over a third of the country’s entire population, produces more than half of Armenia’s gross domestic product. The city center, stretching beyond the vast expanse of the Republic Square, offers an abundance of restaurants and coffee bars and, especially during the long summer evenings, residents stroll in the streets or lounge in the outdoor cafes to meet with friends and family. The Opera House, with its renowned theater and symphony orchestra, and a plethora of local museums, create a lively cultural scene for aficionados of history and music.
According to locals, the recent changes in Yerevan have been dramatic. “The ‘90s were dark years where people were sitting in candlelight in the evenings, all packed in one room for heat,” said Ruzanna Tantushyan, a freelance writer and photographer who grew up in Yerevan. “But in the 2000s, living conditions improved. There is electricity and travel, and the city is a lot livelier.”
Tantushyan, who currently lives in Chicago but returns regularly to Armenia, said the most visible changes have occurred in central Yerevan. When she left the city in 2005, buildings were gray and covered in dust. Today, recent business investments and construction work give the city a more cheerful appearance.
Despite the city’s rapid transformation, Yerevan has not eluded the far-reaching grasp of history. On the contrary, modernity has crept around the stunning ancient churches, with their cool and somber interiors, the Armenian stone crosses — called khachkar — with engravings as delicate and intricate as embroidery, and sobering genocide memorials, a tribute to the country’s past of bloodshed.
From the cuisine, a distinctive blend of Arabic, Russian, Greek and Persian influences, to its architecture, an eclectic mix of Soviet-style monuments and ancient traditional buildings, Yerevan’s uniqueness lies not only in its position at the crossroads of the East and West, but in its ability to effortlessly merge the past with the present. As Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda wrote about his trip to the city in 1957, “I think Yerevan is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen; built of volcanic tuff, it has the harmony of a pink rose.”

<b>What to see if you have two hours</b>
As heavy traffic creates Moscow-style congestion in many parts of the city, Yerevan’s center is most accessible on foot. Starting from the circular, stately Republic Square, formerly known as Lenin Square, where imposing Soviet architecture meets elegant Armenian-style buildings, walk down Abovyan Street, the city’s main thoroughfare. On Abovyan Street, you will pass cafes, souvenir shops, restaurants, cinemas and, finally, the miniature 13th-century Katoghike, a chapel so small its congregation has to stand in the yard.
In the northern part of the center, about two blocks west from the chapel on Abovyan Street, visit the grand Opera House, surrounded by a lush park. The cafes and restaurants near the park are a great place to stop for lunch or a snack. Toward the end of the walk, stop to admire the colossal Cascade, a flight of stone steps leading to the monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of Soviet Armenia. If you take the escalator to the top of the Cascade, you will be rewarded with a breathtaking view of Yerevan.
During the weekends, the Vernissage flea market is well worth visiting. Only steps away from Republic Square, the market offers just about anything under the sun, from plumbing fixtures and remote controls to Soviet memorabilia, hand-woven carpets and, according to vendors, antique religious icons. The Vernissage market, however, is more than a shopping experience. The vivid colors, the lively atmosphere as customers and vendors haggle and bargain for a deal, the intent chess-players whiling away the long hours of the afternoon, offer a glimpse into the culture and traditions of Armenia and its people.

<b>What to do if you have two days</b>
After visiting Yerevan’s main attractions, there are a number of worthwhile day trips that provide a deeper understanding of Armenia’s rich history and culture. Transportation via public bus or the ubiquitous minibuses known for their reckless drivers is very cheap and relatively easy. Tickets average 100 dram or 200 dram ($0.30 or $0.60). However, if comfort is a priority, taxis are also inexpensive and will deliver you safely to your destination. Most taxis do not have meters but charge about 100 dram ($0.30) per kilometer.
About a half-hour minibus ride from Yerevan, Garni Temple lies at the end of a dusty, winding road, nestled among the rugged Caucasus Mountains. Though the Hellenistic Temple has been rebuilt, it is one of the few structures commemorating local pagan religions. With its gray, stone pillars, the temple brings to mind ancient Greek architecture. On clear, sunny days, the view of the surrounding craggy cliffs and valleys is stunning.
Though buses do not continue onward from Garni, a taxi — or, alternatively, a 10-kilometer walk — will take a visitor to Geghard Monastery, which is attributed to the fourth century. Most of the churches from the monastery have been carved into the mountains. Within the deep, cavernous rooms, the air is quiet and cool. Candlelight illuminates intricate engravings on the walls, while locals say a spring of water in one of the chapels can keep skin looking youthful.
Another half-hour minibus ride from Yerevan will take you to Etchmiadzin (+3 7410-51-71-10; armenianchurch.org), the seat of the Catholicos, patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Cathedral of Etchmiadzin was built by St. Gregory the Illuminator at the beginning of the fourth century. St. Gregory claimed to have had a divine vision in which Christ descended from the heavens to indicate where the cathedral should be built. The museum, located in the back of the cathedral, is small but packed with religious artifacts ranging from elaborately embroidered ecclesiastical garments emblazoned with valuable gems, to relics of various saints and even purported fragments of Noah’s Ark. Be sure to see the lance that supposedly pierced Christ’s side during crucifixion.
The majestic monastery of Khor Virap is situated about 35 kilometers from Yerevan. Built upon a hill and an important pilgrimage site, the monastery offers a breathtaking view of the biblical site of Mount Ararat. According to legend, St. Gregory was imprisoned in a deep well (khor virap means “deep well” in Armenian) by the pagan King Trdat III. Twelve years later, King Trdat freed St. Gregory, who had miraculously survived. The king then converted to Christianity, making Armenia the first Christian nation. Within St. Gregory’s chapel, it is still possible to climb into the well and imagine the long years of St. Gregory’s confinement.

<b>What to do with the family</b>
When temperatures begin to climb, Water World (40 Myasnikyan Ave.; +3 7410-64-97-30; waterworld.am) offers respite from the summer heat. Parents can sip fruit cocktails and lounge in the park’s hot tubs, while children splash in the adventure pools, complete with water games, wave effects, and water slides. The restaurant offers fresh seafood and Armenian as well as western dishes.

<b>Nightlife</b>
If your ideal night out involves listening to the dreamy notes of a symphony or watching acrobatic pirouettes, the imposing circular Opera House (54 Tumanyan Poghots; +3 7410-52-79-92) hosts the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater. Billboards around the Opera House and on Abovyan Street advertise upcoming events.
Or you can descend into the bowels of the Opera House to dance to the beat of Russian pop or MTV at the club Opera (54 Tumanyan Poghots; +3 7410-54-12-22). The entrance fee is 3,000 dram ($8).
With first-rate DJs, a large bar and quality food, Relax (105 Teryan Street) is located in the Citadel Business Center and attracts the young and trendy. The club is also popular among expats and members of the Armenian diaspora. Admission averages 2,000 dram ($5).

<b>Where to eat</b>
The Color of Pomegranates (15 Tumanyan Poghots; +3 7410-58-52-04) is a small, charming restaurant decorated with artifacts from the Vernissage market. Its somewhat whimsical name is a tribute to the Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov, whose eponymous film “The Color of Pomegranates” appeared in 1968. The menu offers a mix of European, Georgian and Armenian cuisine for an average check of 3,500 dram ($9) without alcohol.
One of the classiest restaurants in Yerevan, The Club (40 Tumanyan Street; +3 7410-53-13-61; theclub.am) includes a wide range of offerings, from concerts, film nights and art galleries, to French, Italian and Armenian cuisines. You can relax in the simple yet elegant dining room for a hearty meal with an extensive choice of wine pairings for about 10,000 dram ($25). For a more leisurely experience, you can sink into the downy embrace of cream-colored pouf cushions in the tea room, while you sip teas cultivated by a traditional Buddhist family in China.
Old Erivan (2 Tumanyan Poghots; +3 7410-58-88-55; olderivan.am) serves Armenian cuisine amid lively folk music and somewhat gaudy decor. The cave-like venue, overflowing with antiques and traditional arts and crafts, has welcomed illustrious guests, from local artists and celebrities to President Dmitry Medvedev. The average entree costs about 2,500 dram ($6).

<b>Where to stay</b>
Built by the American entrepreneur James Tufenkian in 2001, Avan Villa Yerevan Hotel (13th Street; +3 7460-50-10-10; tufenkian.am) offers a spectacular view of the bustling capital from its hilly vantage point, only a 10-minute drive from the city center. The hotel’s 14 guest rooms present an eclectic mix of modern and traditional styles — from wrought iron bed fixtures to hand-woven 19th-century carpets — conveying an atmosphere of elegance as well as comfort. Prices range from 31,200 dram to 52,000 dram ($80 to $133) per night.
If you’re looking for greater luxury, Denmark’s national women’s football team gave the Golden Tulip Hotel (14 Abovyan Street; +3 7410-59-16-00; goldentulipyerevan.com) a glowing review. The elegant hotel is located in the heart of Yerevan, within walking distance of the Republic Square and the National Art Gallery. Whether basking by the open-air pool or savoring an Italian or Armenian meal at the award-winning Rossini Restaurant, you might just bump into distinguished guests such as actor Gerard Depardieu or musician John McLaughlin and his band the 4th Dimension. Prices hover around 89,000 dram ($228) per night and can soar up to 150,000 dram ($385) for a Senior Suite during the summer season.
The Marriott Armenia Hotel (1 Armiryan Street; +3 7410-59-90-00; marriott.com) is conveniently located on Republic Square. Originally built in the 1950s as the main tourist accommodation during the Soviet era, this international hotel offers classic, comfortable rooms within walking distance of Yerevan’s main attractions. Its meeting rooms and large ballroom are ideal for business gatherings. Prices, which almost double between April and May, start at 65,000 dram ($166) and reach 290,000 dram ($744) for a suite.

<b>Conversation starters</b>
A joke in Armenia says that “if you want to know if you’re a real Armenian, you have to talk about Armenian history, culture and identity three to five times a day.” To win the hearts of Armenians, locals suggest that you begin by praising the country and its rich culture. If you also raise a glass of Yerevan’s famous cognac, you have set the basis for a lifelong friendship.

<b>How to get there</b>
The easiest and fastest route to Yerevan is by plane. Yerevan’s Zvartnots International Airport (zvartnots.aero/en), is located 12 kilometers from the city center and has recently been renovated to include duty-free stores and Wi-Fi connections. There are no direct flights from St. Petersburg to Yerevan, but including a short layover in Moscow, the whole journey takes about six hours, with prices for a round trip starting at 13,500 rubles ($460). Once at the airport, you can buy a single-entry visa for 120 days for 15,000 dram ($39), or a single-entry visa for 21 days for 3,000 dram ($8). All children under 18 years of age are free of charge.
To get to the city center, the fastest and most practical route is via taxi. Taxis provide 24-hour service and cost about 2,800 dram ($7) for a trip to the city.
International travel to Armenia by train is limited. While there are no direct routes from Azerbaijan or Russia, there is a good connection with Tbilisi, Georgia. You can buy tickets on the second floor of the Tbilisi train station where the staff speak Georgian, Russian and limited English. Trains from Tbilisi only run every two days, departing in the afternoon and arriving in Yerevan early the next morning after a 15-hour trip. Costs depend on whether you prefer to ride first, second or third class and range from 12 lari ($7) for a bench seat to 45 lari ($27) for a first-class compartment. You can obtain a visa from the border patrol when you reach Armenia.

<hr />
<b>Yerevan</b>
Population: 1,091,235
Main industries: Carpets, chemicals, primary metals, machinery, plastics, alcoholic beverages, and processed food
Mayor: Taron Margaryan
Founded in 782 B.C.
Interesting fact No. 1: Armenia is considered the first nation to have adopted Christianity as a state religion in 301 A.D. According to biblical accounts, Armenians are the direct descendants of Hayk, the great-great-grandson of Noah, whose ark landed on Mount Ararat after the flood. 
Interesting fact No. 2: Yerevan is famous for its brandy. The Yerevan Brandy Company, not far from Republic Square, was founded in 1887, and its cellars contain one particular barrel of brandy that will only be opened when the conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region comes to an end.
Sister cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Montreal, Canada; Marseille, France; Nice, France; Tbilisi, Georgia; Isfahan, Iran; Carrara, Italy; Venice, Italy; Beirut, Lebanon; Antananarivo, Madagascar; Chisinau, Moldova; Rostov-on-Don, Russia; Bratislava, Slovakia; Damascus, Syria; Odessa, Ukraine; Cambridge, U.S.; Los Angeles, U.S.
Helpful contacts: • Eduard Nersisyan, director of Yerevan City Hall’s development and investment programs department (1 Argishti Street; +3 7410-51-42-27; 
yerevan.am).

<b>Major Businesses</b> 
• Yerevan Brandy Company 
(2 Tsovakal Isakovi Avenue; 
+3 7410-51-01-00; ybc.am) is one of the most successful brandy producers in the world and is now owned by the French group Pernod Richard. President Dmitry Medvedev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French composer Michel Legrand have taken tours of the building.
• Nairit Plant (70 Bagratunyats Street; +3 7410-44-95-11; nairit.am) produces chemicals such as chlorine and caustic soda and chloroprene rubber. The plant opened in 1933 and has recently begun expanding its operations in Moscow.
• Established in 1999, SPS Cigaronne (24 Hovhannisyan; 
+3 7410-66-14-32; cigaronne.com) is a cigarette maker that exports its high-end tobacco products to 35 different countries, including Russia and the United States.

TITLE: Athlete Takes Scenic Journey to Rugby World Cup
AUTHOR: Max de Haldevang
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vasily Artemyev is not like the average Russian sportsman; he speaks with a soft Dublin accent, has a law degree and plays rugby for one of the best clubs in Europe — Northampton Saints.
A few Russian players have been picked up by European sides in the last few years but, much like their higher-profile footballing compatriots, had struggled to make a significant mark. Artemyev, however, impressed instantly when he joined at the end of 2011, scoring six tries in his first three games and for a time keeping England regular Chris Ashton off the team.
Artemyev, who plays as a winger, is modest about his season so far, though.
“There’s been ups and downs, but it’s been good I think. It’s been hard at times to keep up with the pace with games every week at this intensity,” he said. “I think I’ve coped quite well.”
He started playing rugby as a 10-year-old in Zelenograd but furthered his career when he moved to Ireland, aged 15, for what was supposed to be a year to improve his English. By chance, he ended up at Ireland’s most prestigious rugby school, Blackrock College.
“It’s a big alma mater of lots of rugby stars in Ireland. Rugby is like a religion there, everybody plays it; out of 900 students, I’d say 800 play rugby,” he said.
As it turned out, Artemyev, now 24, stayed there for six years, completing a degree at University College Dublin and playing for Ireland under-19s along the way, but he has no regrets about not trying to play for the Ireland senior side.
“I’m not particularly frustrated about not staying in Ireland, I was really happy to get involved in the Russian team,” he said. “All my family is from here and lives in Russia, so it felt kind of right to play for Russia.”
Playing for Russia led Artemyev to the Rugby World Cup in September, where the Bears lost all their games but gave a good account of themselves against experienced opposition.
“It was massive, a massive experience. The exposure we got. We weren’t used to it. Some of the warm-up games were massive as well,” he said. “It was a massive training curve and practice for a lot of players to see what the intensity is like at that level. Hopefully next time we’ll be able to cope.”
The World Cup appearance, Russia’s first, is another point in the sport’s revival. Artemyev believes that the inclusion of rugby sevens, the shorter form of the game, in the 2016 Olympics has been important in this regeneration.
“I’ve been involved with the sevens team for the last couple of years as well, and I think they put more emphasis on the sevens now, as it is in the Olympics. Obviously from the point of view of the government, their priority is the Olympic sports,” he said.
This increase in funding has meant a surge in popularity on a grassroots level.
“There’s a lot more opportunities for kids to play rugby now than when I was playing. In the All-Russia Championships I played in, there were about five or six teams, whereas now there are more than 20,” he said. “There are regional championships, there’s the Russian championship, which has more than 15 teams, I don’t think they can even accommodate all the teams — they have to pick one or two from each region. It’s a big change.”
In the short term, Artemyev thinks it is important that more players follow him to Europe. Russia captain Vladislav Korshunov and fellow international Viktor Gresev recently signed for London Wasps until the end of the season.
“I hope they stay in England, whether it be at Wasps or other clubs. Hopefully it will raise the level of the national team, having players playing abroad,” he said. “There’s a lot of good guys going through the national team at the moment and hopefully they will get good exposure.”
He thinks that rugby has the potential to expand and that it suits the Russian temperament.
“I think it is quite appealing to Russian people; it’s physical in nature, it’s fast and it’s a team sport and character building,” he said. “Having it on the telly during the World Cup was a really good thing. A lot of my friends, who had only heard about it before, watched it and have fallen in love with it.”

TITLE: N. Korea Ups Aggressive Talk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea sharply escalated the rhetoric against its southern rival, claiming it will soon conduct “special actions” that would reduce South Korea’s conservative government to ashes within minutes.
Monday’s threat from the North’s military leadership comes amid concerns that North Korea may be plotting another provocation in the wake of an unsuccessful rocket launch condemned by the UN Security Council as a violation of a ban against missile activity.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged North Korea to refrain from “further provocative measures,” telling reporters in New York late Monday that such actions “will not be desirable for the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula.”
North Korea characterized the April 13 rocket launch as a failed bid to send a satellite into space — not a disguised test of missile technology as Washington and Seoul claim. Two days after the attempt, Pyongyang unveiled a new long-range missile at a military birthday parade for late President Kim Il Sung.
There are new concerns that North Korea may conduct a nuclear test as it did after rocket launches in 2006 and 2009. South Korean intelligence officials say recent satellite images show the North has been digging a new tunnel in what could be preparation for a third atomic test.
On the North Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone, a military guide told The Associated Press that he believes his country needs atomic weapons to defend itself against the threat of attack from the U.S.
“Nuclear weapons are not the monopoly of the United States,” Lieutenant Colonel Nam Dong Ho said. “It’s my personal opinion, but I think we’ll continue to conduct nuclear tests.”
On Monday, the military warned in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency that it would launch “special actions” soon against the South Korean government and conservative media.
For days, North Korea has railed against South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and conservative South Korean media for criticizing its rocket launch and the celebrations of the centennial of Kim Il Sung’s birth. But the military message, attributed to the “special operation action group” of the Korean People’s Army’s Supreme Command, was unusual in its specificity.
“Once the above-said special actions kick off, they will reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style,” it said.
The threat comes as North Korea’s new commander in chief, Kim Jong Un, makes a show of support for the “military first” policy championed by his late father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il. North Korea marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of its army Wednesday.
A South Korean Defense Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with departmental rules, said no special military movement had been observed in the North.
Seoul expressed worry that the threats were hurting relations.
“We urge North Korea to immediately stop this practice,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk told reporters, according to the ministry. “We express deep concern that the North’s threats and accusations have worsened inter-Korean ties and heightened tensions.”

TITLE: S. Sudan Calls Bombing A ‘Declaration of War’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya — Sudan continued with its aerial bombardment of South Sudan on Tuesday, dropping eight bombs overnight, an official said, as South Sudan’s president said the attacks amounted to a declaration of war by Sudan.
South Sudan’s military spokesman Colonel Philip Aguer said that Sudanese Antonovs dropped eight bombs overnight between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. in Panakuac, where he said ground fighting had been ongoing since Sunday. Aguer said he has not received information on whether there were casualties from the attack because of poor communications.
On Monday, Sudanese warplanes bombed a market and an oil field in South Sudan, killing at least two people after Sudanese ground forces had reportedly crossed into South Sudan with tanks and artillery.
South Sudan seceded from Sudan last year as a result of a 2005 peace treaty that ended decades of war that killed 2 million people. The countries have been fighting over the sharing of oil revenues and a disputed border.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir on Tuesday during a visit to Beijing told China’s president that attacks by rival Sudan amount to a declaration of war on his country.
There has yet to be a formal declaration of war by either of the Sudans, and Kiir’s remark, made during talks with President Hu Jintao, signals a ratcheting up of rhetoric between the rival nations which have been teetering on the brink of war.
Kiir arrived in China late Monday for a five-day visit lobbying for economic and diplomatic support. He told Hu the visit comes at a “a very critical moment for the Republic of South Sudan because our neighbor in Khartoum has declared war on the Republic of South Sudan.”
Talks over oil revenue and the border broke down this month after attacks started between the two countries, with South Sudan invading the oil-rich border town of Heglig, which Sudan claims it controls.
Following international pressure, South Sudan announced that it has withdrawn all its troops from Heglig but Sudan claimed its troops forced them out.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said Tuesday that the two countries “must not return to war,” adding that the bombings of oil fields should stop. Kenya helped mediate the peace treaty that ended decades of war. Kibaki welcomed the withdrawal of South Sudanese troops from Heglig.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to press ahead with his military campaign until all southern troops or affiliated forces are chased out of the north.
In a fiery speech to a rally Friday, after he declared the liberation of Heglig, al-Bashir said there would be no negotiations with the “poisonous insects” the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. At the time he also said he would never allow South Sudanese oil to pass through Sudan “even if they give us half the proceeds.”
Landlocked South Sudan stopped pumping oil through Sudan in January, accusing the government in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, of stealing hundred millions of dollars of oil revenue. Sudan responded by bombing the South’s oil fields.
Kiir on Tuesday told Hu that he came to China because of the “great relationship” South Sudan has with China, calling it one of his country’s “economic and strategic partners.”
Beijing is uniquely positioned to exert influence in the conflict given its deep trade ties to the resource-rich south and decades-long diplomatic ties with Sudan’s government in the north.
Both have tried to win Beijing’s favor, but China has been careful to cultivate ties with each nation.

TITLE: Rebels Target Security Officers in Damascus
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT — Rebels seeking to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad killed three regime officers in separate attacks Tuesday around Damascus, activists and state media said, the latest violence targeting the security forces used by the government to quash dissent.
A bomb hidden in an army truck also exploded in the capital, wounding several people.
The persistent bloodshed has tarnished efforts by a UN team of observers to bolster a truce that the international community sees as the last-chance to prevent the country from falling into civil war.
UN monitors visited the restive Damascus suburb of Douma on Tuesday, their second visit in two days. Activists reported shelling and gunfire in the area on Tuesday. Amateur videos posted online also showed smoke rising into the sky after an explosion as well as men and young boys dashing for cover as gunfire is heard nearby.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one intelligence officer was shot dead in the northeastern Barzeh neighborhood of the capital Damascus. Also Tuesday, the state news service said “terrorists” shot to death a retired lieutenant colonel and his brother, a chief warrant officer, in an area southwest of the capital.
Inside the city, explosives that were planted in an army truck blew up as the vehicle traveled through downtown. The blast in Marjah Square near the Iranian Cultural Center blew out the truck’s windows, leaving a hole in its roof and blood and shattered glass on the road. The truck’s driver and two passengers in a nearby car were injured and taken to a hospital.
The state news service said an “armed terrorist group” had sabotaged the car by planting explosives under the driver’s side.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The 11-person monitoring team is in Syria to observe the cease-fire and prepare for a total of 300 monitors to arrive later. But some areas that have welcomed the observers with anti-government demonstrations have faced apparent retribution from the regime. At least 55 people were killed across Syria on Monday — most in the central city of Hama, a day after a visit by the observers.
Tuesday’s attacks underlined the increasing militarization of the conflict, which began in March 2011 as peaceful protests calling for political reforms with inspiration from successful revolts in Egypt and Tunisia. The government cracked down with massive force, deploying troops, snipers and pro-government thugs against the opposition, while regime opponents armed themselves for protection and joined forces with army defectors.
The UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began.
The international community remains divided on how to stop the conflict.

TITLE: Amnesty Warns Europe Must Fight Anti-Muslim Prejudice
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — European laws on what girls and women wear on their heads are encouraging discrimination against Muslims and against a religion that has been part of Europe’s fabric for centuries, Amnesty International says in a new report.
Extremist political movements targeting Muslim practices for criticism have enjoyed a rise in several European countries — as witnessed by French far right leader Marine Le Pen’s surprisingly strong showing in presidential elections this week.
In that climate, the Amnesty report released Tuesday lists a raft of examples of discrimination against Muslims from Spain to the Netherlands and Turkey, spurred on by laws viewed as anti-Islam.
The report, titled “Choice and Prejudice,” pays special attention to national laws or local rules against wearing headscarves or face-covering Islamic veils. France and Belgium ban them outright, as do some towns in Spain and elsewhere.
“Amnesty International is concerned that states have focused so much in recent years on the wearing of full-face veils, as if this practice were the most widespread and compelling form of inequality women in Europe have to face,” the report says.
Proponents, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, say face-covering veils imprison women and violate France’s values of equality. France also bans headscarves in schools.
The niqab, a veil with just a slit for the eyes, and the burqa, with a mesh covering for the eyes, are worn only by a very small minority of European Muslims. But banning them creates an atmosphere of suspicion of anyone with visibly Islamic dress, the Amnesty report says.
It cites French Muslim women who wear headscarves, which cover the hair but leave the face exposed, as saying they have experienced epithets and public pressure since Sarkozy started calling for a face-veil ban.
The human rights group spoke to Muslims who have had trouble getting jobs or had to change schools because of discrimination over their head coverings.
The report says Spain and Switzerland, in particular, don’t have strong enough laws against discrimination. Switzerland has banned the construction of new minarets.
European Union officials warned this week against flirting too much with the extreme right and sacrificing European unity, built on the ashes of World War II.