SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1718 (29), Wednesday, July 18, 2012
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TITLE: City Vows to Review Controversial Preservation Plan
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Program for the Preservation of St. Petersburg’s Historical Center will be completely revised, according to a press service representative from the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, which is in charge of the program.
The program, which is planned to be carried out between 2013 and 2018, has already produced multiple discussions concerning its expedience. The program was initially planned to be implemented in seven zones within the city’s Tsentralny (Central) and Admiralteisky districts in six different spheres: The restoration of cultural heritage sites and the renovation of buildings; planting and redevelopment of other sites; the reconstruction of engineering infrastructure; traffic mitigation; the reconstruction of bridges and embankments; and the enhancement of the areas’ appeal to tourists. 
“These spheres, as well as the funding of the program, are likely to be reconsidered,” the committee’s press service said. 
The initial amount of 400 billion rubles ($12.3 billion) estimated for the program to be completed was later cut to 300 billion rubles ($9.2). 
“There is no definite sum yet — amounts between 300 and 400 billion rubles were proposed as overall amount of necessary funds,” said a press service representative. 
“The proposed funds would be enough to cover only infrastructure and traffic projects,” said Alexei Kovalev, deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites. 
It was earlier announced that complete funding would comprise money from the federal budget and city and investment funding. Alexander Karpov, head of the ECOM environmental assessment center, said that St. Petersburg must apply to receive funding from the federal budget this September in order to be considered for the allocation of 2013 budget funds. 
“But there is a problem: If there is consolidated funding, then there will be the opportunity to implement the program, but if all of those billions are allocated in separate sums to every department, we won’t be able to accomplish the program as a joint complex of measures,” Karpov said.
The program is being planned as unified measures for the preservation and reconstruction of sites. Which measures should be used for a particular site are defined according to specific criteria.
“I think it’s quite reasonable to have the program operate in the city center as a whole and at the same time to divide it into model territories, as it allows us to test how the program should work within the areas of transport, ecology, housing, business, tourism and public spaces,” said Karpov.
Two areas — Konyushennaya (which includes the area around the Field of Mars and Konyushennaya Ploshchad) and North Kolomna (the area around New Holland Island) — were designated priority areas, and at the beginning of May, a contest for redevelopment ideas was announced. Eleven projects were submitted as part of the contest, whose winner will be chosen in September, taking into account public discussion. 
“It’s necessary to start with these areas because it is only in these areas that investors can be found,” said Nikita Yavein, head of the architectural firm Studio 44, which proposed projects for both the Konyushennaya and North Kolomna areas. 
Studio 44 proposes completely redeveloping these territories in a combined project, arguing that redeveloping the two areas separately would be pointless. Hence, their project would connect these areas and pay priority attention to the development of their cultural components. 
“If we talk about the problems in these territories, one of the main ones is that they haven’t been used to their full potential,” said Sergei Oreshkin, head of architectural design bureau A.Len, which also developed project ideas for both territories. 
“There are various interests for these territories — commercial, cultural and emotional — but there are also barriers that inhibit their implementation. Our main goal is to resolve this question. City Hall and other architects have the same goal,” he added.
According to A.Len’s project proposal, the architectural bureau would build a covered parking lot by the Field of Mars and make the traffic around it and along Millionnaya Ulitsa one-way. They also suggested making Konyushennaya Ploshchad a pedestrian area with cafes, museums, shops and an exit to the Church on the Spilled Blood, the Russian Museum and the Summer Gardens. 
“This part can be modified very easily: Traffic should be completely removed from the area, while a cultural aspect should be added to the territory,” said Oreshkin.
In the North Kolomna area, the bureau suggests fully reconstructing the English Embankment and the areas around it in order to turn the territory into a major tourist zone.
“We’ll try to restore destroyed [transportation] connections between sites of public interest and considerably enhance the quality of life in these areas, understanding that it’s just the first step toward preserving the city’s unique character,” Oreshkin said. 
“Without proper public transportation — the nearest subway station is several kilometers away and the tramlines here have all been shut down during the last decade — this area has begun to gradually decline,” said Philip Nikandrov, senior architect at the Gorproject design institute, which is participating in the contest for the North Kolomna development project. 
“Despite attempts by the federal government to revitalize this territory by investing in the development of cultural objects such as the Mariinsky Theater’s new stage and the new Naval Museum, the lack of interest from developers and operators is obvious: Just a couple of hotels, no class A or B business centers, no restaurants or boutiques whatsoever, very few shops and the strong presence of pharmacies already tells us that something is not really healthy here,” he said. 
Vsevolod Yakovlev, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Spectrum Holding construction company, which also proposed a project idea for North Kolomna, said it is not necessary to reconstruct the territory, but to revitalize it by making Ploshchad Truda and Konnogvardeisky Boulevard a pedestrian area, while traffic should be redirected through a tunnel under the square. 
“We want to connect two points of public interest: Teatralnaya Ploshchad and Ploshchad Truda,” said Yakovlev. “We need to bring back public spaces and open up the inner squares [to the public]. The courts in the Parisian district of Marais should be used as an example. This will form another quality of life in the city.” 
According to the Genproekt group of companies, both territories are about equal in terms of their historical basis. 
“The changes we have planned have local character and are aimed at improving the quality of the areas,” said Dmitry Verkhotin, general director of Genproekt. “We will preserve and emphasize existing town-planning structures and create new features key to improving the areas’ functionality and composition,” he added.
Other companies participating in the project proposal contests include the construction company Sodis Story and Litvinov Architectural Association. The latter has received the most criticism so far for its project, which proposes redeveloping the Field of Mars, which is currently classed as a monument of federal significant and is the burial place of those who died during the 1917 February Revolution, to resemble a Greek amphitheater. 
“Plaza Lotos Group, whose contractor is the Litvinov Architectural Association, has already bought the Pavlovskiye barracks next to the Field of Mars,” said Alexander Margolis, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the National Society for the Protection of Cultural and Historical Monuments. 
“Experts have determined that the area is of historical and cultural importance, but the company declined to accept this report. They want to build a five-star hotel on the land with a view of the Field of Mars. I have no doubt that they will succeed in carrying out their project.”
Experts agree that another area of criticism is camouflaging reconstruction by calling it preservation. 
“Every time we look carefully at the terminology, all of the insincerity becomes clear,” said Margolis. 
“There is a fundamental disparity between preservation and reconstruction. I think in this case we are talking only about reconstruction.”

TITLE: Increase in Motorcycle Accidents Prompts Talks
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Portnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the city’s traffic jams get worse and worse, increasing numbers of city residents are turning to more compact forms of transport such as scooters and motorbikes that enable drivers to bypass lines of cars and other larger vehicles. But as the number of two-wheeled vehicles on the roads increases, so is the number of accidents involving these alternative forms of transport.
As the State Duma considers amendments to the Road Traffic Safety Law, representatives of the traffic police and local legislators met with driving instructors and members of biker movements in the city Monday to discuss ways to improve road safety and traffic volumes.
According to statistics cited at the meeting, the number of road accidents in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast involving bikers increased in the past six months by 44 incidents to 336, in which 15 died and 160 were injured). In the same period, there were 206 accidents involving scooter-riders, in which six died — three more than in the same period last year — and 125 were injured). The number of accidents involving cyclists was 213.
Participants of the panel discussion talked about creating subcategories of vehicles and an individual M-category for scooter and moped-drivers, or creating an entire new system of training for them.
Alexei Vereshchagin, senior traffic police inspector for special assignments in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, said that existing training programs are at odds with real conditions on the city roads, and that it is therefore extremely important to introduce an exam on the real roads, not only theory exams and exams in test grounds. Both driving instructors present at the discussion agreed that these changes were necessary.
 Sergei Pekutko, the manager of a motorcycle driving school and an instructor, suggested a more concrete format for motorbike and moped driving tests. 
“Students could ride a practice motorcycle on the road, and an instructor would follow behind in a car, giving them instructions via radio communication,” he proposed. 
Pekutko also drew attention to the fact that there is not currently a rigorous training program for A-category (motorcycle) driving tests, like the obligatory 50-hour program for B-category licenses. “The unpreparedness of motorcycle and scooter drivers puts them in danger,” he said. 
“At our school we make safety videos for the Internet where we warn new drivers of basic dangers and rules of driving a motorbike on the roads, we organize free training sessions on large sites that are open to everyone, not only our students, and every week 50 to 100 people attend them, but it’s not enough. There needs to be an integrated database of training and educational materials.” 
The concept editor of the biker magazine Ride, Dmitry Gusev, who for the last 18 months has been working on his own project for a new federal road safety law, said that road safety should be based on at least five main factors: Road quality, adjacent infrastructure, traffic organization, driver training and the technical condition of vehicles. 
In the presence of all the discussion’s participants, Gusev submitted his draft bill to Alexander Kobrinsky, a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. Kobrinsky said that the State Duma is not very well-disposed to regional legislative initiatives. In response to questions from journalists regarding how long it could take for the bill to reach the State Duma, the deputy said that when the Legislative Assembly resumes work in September, the project will be examined and discussed, then sent to the State Duma by New Year at the very earliest. Kobrinsky declined to say how much time it could take the Duma to consider the project.
“The time periods involved are not short, but the goal is worth [the wait],” he said.

TITLE: 150 Race in Heels for Fashion
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At least 150 young women took part in St. Petersburg’s Stiletto Race, an annual sporting and entertainment event held by Glamour magazine, on Saturday.
Women from St. Petersburg and other cities came to show off their athletic abilities, favorite shoes and sense of humor.
According to the rules of the competition, the women had to run 50 meters on shoes with heels no less than nine centimeters high. 
It proved a difficult trek for some of the contestants, with some of them falling down and grazing their knees and arms. 
Ksenia Soldatkina, an 18-year-old student, said she had dreamed of taking part in the event for a long time.
“To prepare for this competition my two sisters and I practiced running in high heels starting July 5. I must say it’s difficult, but it’s thrilling to push yourself,” Soldatkina said.
Irina Buryak, a 23-year-old accountant and former dancer, who had her stilettos taped onto her feet, said she always wears high-heeled shoes and goes running every evening to keep in shape. She wanted to see if she could win the competition.
Young moms also participated in the event. One participant had a two-year-old child and a three-month-old baby who stayed with their father while he took photographs of his wife running the distance.
Maria Fyodorova, editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine, said the first high heel race was held in Amsterdam in 2006. Among the event’s first participants were 150 women and one man. Since that time the competition has been held all around the world, she said, including in Sweden, the U.S. and South Africa. In Russia the event was held for the sixth time in both Moscow and St. Petersburg this year, Fyodorova said.
Fyodorova said the aim of such events was not only to entertain, but also to encourage people to treat the idea of fashion with a bit of humor.
“We’re not calling for anyone to make a cult out of fashion. Instead we encourage people to regard both fashion and themselves with a healthy sense of humor,” Fyodorova said.
Fyodorova said that women had never sustained any serious injuries during Glamour’s competitions.
“We always have doctors on hand at our events and, unlike Holland’s Hooftstraat stiletto run, we make our tracks in Moscow and St. Petersburg even and cover them with a special athletic covering,” Fyodorova said.
Fyodorova said many women train for the competition in advance.
The competition does not focus on creating records, but a woman who ran the distance in Moscow this year completed the race in 6.75 seconds.
The doctors on duty during the local race said at least 12 young women received minor medical treatment after the event, primarily for grazes.
They added, however, that in general running in high heels is not very safe and could result in broken bones if one is unlucky.
Meanwhile, the winners of the event got not only the title of the fastest fashionmongers, but prizes as well. The winner received 100,000 rubles ($3,000) from Glamour to spend shopping online at LaModa. The two runners-up received 50,000- and 30,000-ruble ($1,500 and $920) prizes to shop online.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Manilova Gets New Post</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Former St. Petersburg deputy governor Alla Manilova was appointed deputy culture minister last week, Interfax reported.
Manilova left her position in St. Petersburg in 2011.
 
<b>Pulkovo Makes Top 100</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The new Pulkovo Airport terminal project made the list of the world’s top 100 best innovation projects meant to improve city infrastructure, according to the press service of Northern Capital Gateway, the consortium responsible for managing the airport.
The list of projects was published by KPMG audit and tax services company, in its Infrastructure 100: World Cities Edition report.
The projects were selected by independent boards of field experts from five different regions of the world including Asia and the Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Sergei Emdin, general director of Northern Capital Gateway, said Pulkovo’s new terminal was the only Russian project to make the list.
“This world recognition makes us sure that we have chosen the right direction for the development of the airport. At the end of 2013 passengers at the airport will be able to see the renovated airport, which will meet the highest service standards,” Emdin said. 
The Pulkovo reconstruction project was included on the list under the category of global connections. Among the other nominees in the same group were the Medina airport in Saudi Arabia, the airport in the Canadian city of Calgary and the tunnel project between Scandinavia and Central Europe.

<b>City Short on Blood</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg needs a program to encourage people to donate blood, the head doctor of the city’s Blood Transfusion Center, Vladimir Krasnyakov, said Monday.
“The city needs financing for social advertising. Today there are 15 donors in St. Petersburg for every 1,000 people. In Europe there are 50 donors for as many people and in the U.S. — 60 donors,” Krasnyakov said.
Krasnyakov said that in order to solve the problem of the lack of donor blood in the city, St. Petersburg would need at least twice as many donors as it has now, Interfax reported.
“If a person gets used to donating blood, a situation in which the person experiences emergency blood loss is not as dangerous for them,” Krasnyakov said.
Vladimir Zholobov, deputy head of St. Petersburg’s Health Committee, said that in the summer, the problem of a lack of donor blood is usually more pressing, since many donors go on vacation while operations continue to be performed in the city.
In Russia, people who donate through blood drives at work get an extra day of vacation and a day off on the day when they give blood, as well as financial compensation for a meal, Zholobov said.
Zholobov said they are currently considering replacing the financial compensation with an actual meal.

TITLE: Patriarch Kirill to Visit Poland
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland — The Polish Catholic church is preparing to welcome the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to Poland in August, a visit church leaders describe as a historic step toward healing wounds between Russians and Poles.
The two Slavic nations have been divided for centuries by religion, with Poles predominantly Roman Catholic and Russians largely Orthodox. Wars and occupations going back centuries have also left a legacy that still causes bitterness in political relations between the two countries.
The key moment in Patriarch Kirill’s four-day visit, from Aug. 16 to 19, will be the signing of a document appealing to Poles and Russians to forgive each other for past wrongs and injustices.
“We hope it will gradually lead to reconciliation between our nations,” said Rev. Jozef Kloch, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in Poland.
Russian-Polish ties remain burdened by a number of painful episodes. Those include the Soviet invasion and occupation of Poland’s eastern half during World War II. Early in the war, the Soviet secret police murdered 22,000 Polish officers in the so-called Katyn massacres, while the Soviets also deported about 2 million Poles to Siberia. Poles also resent the Soviet control of their country during the Cold War.
Officials said the document will be signed by Patriarch Kirill and Archbishop Jozef Michalik, the head of Poland’s conference of bishops, on Aug. 17 in Warsaw’s Royal Castle.
Kloch said it is almost certainly the first such document signed by the two churches. Representatives from both churches have worked for three years preparing it.
A Russian church spokesman, Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin, said in March that discussions between Catholic and Orthodox leaders in Poland will include recent and centuries-old problems between Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, which was precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.
The Vatican and Orthodox churches have worked in recent years to try to heal the 1,000-year split. They took a step forward in 2007 by agreeing that the pope has primacy over all bishops — but they could not agree on just what authority that primacy gives him.
Rev. Henryk Paprocki, a spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Poland, said he did not expect the Polish-Russian document to necessarily influence the larger disputes between the Orthodox Church and the Vatican.
Among issues causing tensions in recent years are Orthodox accusations that the Vatican has sought converts in traditionally Orthodox areas, particularly in Eastern Europe. Rome has denied those charges.
Property issues have also caused strains. Based on a 2010 Russian law regulating the restitution of church property, the Moscow Patriarchate has taken over hundreds of religious buildings that were never Russian Orthodox but belonged to other denominations before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Some of those buildings belonged to the Catholic Church, and most Roman Catholic clerics in Russia and the former Soviet republics are ethnic Poles.

TITLE: Former Cop Charged In Politkovskaya Murder
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Six years after outspoken journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in a Moscow apartment building, investigators announced Monday that charges would be brought against a former police officer suspected of conspiring to murder her.
According to investigators, former police Colonel Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov used his official powers to keep tabs on Politkovskaya, whose journalistic work exposed corrupt officialdom and brought to light atrocities committed by Chechnya’s Moscow-backed authorities.
Pavlyuchenkov found out the address of Politkovskaya’s apartment and the routes she usually took and passed this information on to other members of the group plotting her killing, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. He also instructed subordinates to monitor Politkovskaya, according to the charges.
Pavlyuchenkov also acquired the weapon and the ammunition that were later used in the murder, the statement said.
Investigators said Pavlyuchenkov and others rehearsed the Oct. 7, 2006, killing several times and planned an escape route, describing the organization of the murder as “cohesive” and “carefully put together.”
Pavlyuchenkov has been charged with murder for hire committed by a group and with illegal weapons trafficking. He will be tried using a “special procedure” because investigators have agreed with him on a plea bargain.
The statement did not specify what punishment Pavlyuchenkov could face under the deal.
Pavlyuchenkov has cooperated extensively with investigators since his arrest in August 2011.
Kommersant reported in February that he has accused billionaire Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev, both of whom live in exile in London, of masterminding Politkovskaya’s murder.
Pavlyuchenkov’s lawyer, Karen Nersesyan, responded to the charges Monday by saying she hoped for a lenient sentence for her client, citing his poor health and invaluable contribution to the investigation.
“I’m not willing to speculate, but I hope that his punishment will be as lenient as possible,” she told Interfax.

TITLE: Confusing NGO Bill To Impact Business Groups
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — As a disputed bill branding foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations “foreign agents” waits approval by the Federation Council, confusion reigned Monday over the bill’s effect on large international business groups.
Representatives of both the Association of European Businesses and the Russo-German Chamber of Commerce said they fear that their organizations will fall under the legislation, since many of their member companies are registered abroad.
The term “foreign agent” is strongly suggestive of spying in Russian and could cause considerable embarrassment for business lobbying groups forced to adopt the label.
Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, said his organization would be exempt because it is registered as a representative office of a U.S. organization.
“The draft bill explicitly limits the law to Russian noncommercial organizations,” he told The St. Petersburg Times, referring to the text published on the State Duma’s website.
But the Russo-German Chamber, which has more than 800 members, or about the same number as AmCham, said its legal status is that of a nongovernmental organization registered by the Justice Ministry.
“We expect that we will feel the brunt of it,” the chamber’s chief lawyer Vladimir Kobzev said by phone.
He explained that apart from mandating the use of the “foreign agent” title, the law will make for additional work for his group, since it stipulates that all foreign income be declared separately. “This means extra bookkeeping because so many of our members are based in Germany or other countries,” he said.
Frank Schauff, CEO of the Association of European Businesses, or AEB — which is also registered as an NGO — said he had sent a letter to the Justice Ministry asking for clarification.
“The question is whether our activities can be classified as political,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
The draft law, which passed by a wide majority in the Duma last Friday, has been lambasted by critics inside and outside the country as a punishment for pro-democracy NGOs, which Vladimir Putin has publicly accused of seeking to subvert the government with money from the U.S. State Department.
The bill is expected to be approved by the Federation Council on July 18, after which Putin could sign it into law.
But critics say that because the bill was rushed through the Duma, some obviously unintended effects have been overlooked, both for international and domestic business associations, who also have fee-paying foreign members.
Kobzev, of the German Chamber, said that the law amounts to harassing foreign investors.
“The same state that constantly trumpets the importance of Russia’s attractiveness to foreign investors practically brands their money as suspicious and sets extra strict controls and conditions that cannot be fulfilled for their use,” he said.
The heads of prominent business associations and other nongovernmental groups, including Alexander Shokhin of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists and Sergei Borisov of Opora, have signed a letter addressed to Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in which they ask both leaders to hold the bill for further discussion until fall. The letter was also signed by former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Igor Chestin, the head of the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, Interfax reported.
The text approved by the Duma exempts “employers’ associations and chambers of commerce and industry.” But experts said that while this excludes the country’s official Chamber of Industry and Commerce from the law’s effects, it was unclear if it extends to other national business associations.

TITLE: Ukraine Opposition Aims to Impeach President
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s biggest opposition group launched a campaign Monday to impeach President Viktor Yanukovych for what it called suspected constitutional violations, the stifling of democracy and the persecution of opposition leaders.
Yanukovych is under fire from the West over the politically tainted jailing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the country’s top opposition leader who he beat in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election. European Union leaders boycotted Euro 2012 soccer games in Ukraine last month over her imprisonment.
With the Oct. 28 parliamentary election only three months away, Tymoshenko’s party announced a campaign to sue Yanukovych for his alleged crimes and then impeach him. And while Ukrainian courts, which usually toe the government line, were unlikely to rule against Yanukovych, experts said the project could help mobilize support for the opposition ahead of the crucial vote.
The “Ukraine against Yanukovych” campaign, which has the crossed-out profile of Yanukovych wearing a royal crown as a logo, will collect signatures in support of a lawsuit against the president, and then try to launch the impeachment process in parliament.
“The aim of this campaign is to end the powers of President Viktor Yanukovych,” Tymoshenko’s top aide Oleksandr Turchynov told a news conference Monday. “Yes, this will not happen right away, but this task will be fulfilled.”
Democracy has suffered a major setback in Ukraine since Yanukovych came to power in 2010. The 62-year-old pro-Russia leader has tinkered with the constitution to boost his powers, sought to limit media freedom and curbed anti-government protests.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a prominent pro-Western opposition leader who joined forces with Tymoshenko’s party after she was imprisoned in October, said the opposition will ask Ukrainians to support a lawsuit against Yanukovych for abusing his office and act as co-plaintiffs.
“The opposition is launching an offensive against Viktor Yanukovych,” he said.
Yatsenyuk, a millionaire banker and former parliament speaker, said if a court finds Yanukovych guilty the opposition will be able to initiate a parliamentary investigation into Yanukovych’s alleged misdeeds and begin the impeachment procedure. If Ukrainian courts do not find him guilty, the opposition will turn to international courts, Yatsenyuk said.
Tymoshenko, the president’s main political opponent, was the charismatic heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution that promoted democratic reforms. After Yanukovych came to power, she was sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly overstepping her powers when authorizing a natural gas import contract with Russia in 2009.
The subject of a slew of other criminal charges and investigations, Tymoshenko maintains her innocence and says that Yanukovych threw her in jail to bar her from the parliamentary election. Yanukovych denies involvement in her case.

TITLE: Presidents May Serve Longer
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A senior State Duma deputy said the Constitution might be amended to allow the president to serve more than two consecutive terms, renewing speculation that even more power might be vested in the executive branch.
Vladimir Pligin, chairman of the Duma’s Constitution and State Affairs Committee, said during an informal chat with reporters at RIA-Novosti’s offices last Friday that such an amendment was “possible.”
“It depends on how our system is working at the time,” Pligin said in response to a question about the two-term clause from a reporter.
The term limit, introduced in the 1993 Constitution, allowed President Vladimir Putin to assume power in May after serving two terms as president from 2000 to 2008 and stepping aside for his prot&#233;g&#233; Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012. 
Under Medvedev, the Constitution was amended to extend the presidential term to six years from the previous four.
Putin has indicated he might consider changing the two-term limit but said he would still be able to run for president until 2024.
Pligin did not say when a constitutional amendment on term limits might be passed.

TITLE: Putin, Annan Meet to Discuss Syria Crisis
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s foreign minister on Tuesday said Moscow is ready to seek consensus in the UN Security Council on a new resolution aimed at ending Syria’s civil war, but gave no indication how it would resolve a disagreement over a Britain-sponsored resolution.
Moscow’s draft resolution calls for the “immediate implementation” of a peace plan from Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League envoy for the crisis, and the guidelines for a political transition approved at a meeting in Geneva last month, but it objects to the resolution that would be tied to Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which could allow the use of force to end the conflict in Syria.
Although Western nations appear to have little appetite for force, Russia adamantly opposes any prospect of international intervention in the 16-month-old conflict.
But after a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Annan on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “I don’t see a reason that we couldn’t agree in the Security Council. We are prepared for that,” according to Interfax news agency.
Annan in turn said “I would hope that the Council will continue its discussions and hopefully find language that will pull everybody together for us to move forward on this critical issue.”
There were no comments from Putin after the meeting, but at its opening he promised Russia would do all it could to support Annan.
Russia, which incurred international criticism by twice vetoing UN resolutions to increase pressure on President Bashar Assad and his regime, has staked its position on Annan’s six-point plan for ending the fighting that activists say has killed some 17,000 people.
The plan was to begin with a cease-fire between government forces and rebels, followed by political dialogue, but increasingly intense fighting has called into question whether the plan is obsolete.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday that implementing Annan’s peace plan is the “best hope” for ending the civil war in Syria.
He also insisted that a Chapter 7 resolution is required to implement the plan and urged Russia and China to get on board.
“Those nations that might block a Security Council resolution have to consider the fact that if they do so, they will be held increasingly responsible for the consequences, for that chaos and bloodshed that are even now becoming worse in Syria,” he said of Russia and China, who are standing by Assad’s regime.
“I hope that in Moscow and Beijing, they will take greater note of the scale of the bloodshed, the need to bring it to an end and the desperate situation of the sort of people that we met at the Syrian border today.”
The U.S. and many Western nations have called on Assad to leave power, while Russia, China and Iran continue to support him.
Hague cautioned that the situation in Syria “is so grave and unpredictable that I don’t think any option should be ruled out for the future.”
He said the first article in Annan’s six-point plan, which is to immediately halt violence, has not taken effect.
“This process is the best hope of averting even greater chaos and bloodshed in Syria in the weeks and months to come,” he added in a joint news conference with his Jordanian counterpart, Nasser Judeh.

TITLE: Opposition Activists Seek Asylum Abroad
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two opposition activists have fled the country and say they want to receive political asylum in Europe because of fear of imprisonment after being investigated for violence at a May 6 protest.
Anastasia Rybachenko of the Solidarity movement said Monday that she would file an asylum request in Germany after her visa was due to expire July 18.
“With the repressions right now, it is better not to return. But I am sure that I will be back in a year, when the political situation has changed,” she said, speaking by telephone from Munich.
Rybachenko, 20, and Alexander Dolmatov of The Other Russia, who applied for asylum in the Netherlands last month, are the first government critics to seek political refuge abroad amid a crackdown on the opposition after Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency on May 7.
Rybachenko and Dolmatov were detained along with hundreds of protesters after violent clashes with police at the opposition march on the eve of Putin’s inauguration.
Although they were subsequently released, both say they fear they will end up in jail again after investigators searched their homes.
Police have detained and questioned dozens of activists since raiding key opposition leaders’ apartments on June 11, the day before the last large protest march in Moscow.
About a dozen participants in the May 6 march remain under arrest or have been banned from traveling on grounds that they are suspected of committing acts of violence.
Dolmatov, 35, said he fears disproportionate punishment because he worked at Tactical Missiles Corp., a major rocket producer in Korolyov, outside Moscow.
Speaking by telephone from the Netherlands, he said he left the country June 8, when he was summoned for questioning by investigators.
He first went to Kiev, but when he learned that police searched the Moscow apartment where he lived with his mother two days later, he decided to go to the Netherlands, where he applied for asylum June 13.
Dolmatov said that the missile company, where he had worked for the past eight years, fired him in May and that his past work might negatively influence the investigation against him.
“I am not of little importance,” he said.
He added, however, that he was a laser engineer, not a rocket scientist, and that he had not had access to top-secret information.
“I worked as a general manager allocating other employees’ work,” he said.
Arms industry staff are often classified as bearers of state secrets, which imposes travel and other limits on them.
The Other Russia said in June that Dolmatov had been visited at work by officers of the Federal Security Service and the police’s anti-extremism department.
They issued unspecified warnings and told him to stop his opposition activities.
Dolmatov said his political views are widely known, and as a result his employer had reduced his security status over the years. But he suggested that authorities might seek to punish him harshly to protect the defense industry.
“In this atmosphere that is so reminiscent of the Brezhnev era, a person like me is probably unwanted,” he said.
He said that under Dutch law, authorities have six months to decide on his asylum request.
Unlike Dolmatov, Rybachenko, a student activist, said she had no intention of fleeing when she left the country last month.
In a telephone interview last Friday, Rybachenko said that she changed her plans to return when she learned that police had searched her parents’ apartment that Wednesday.
She said investigators officially treat her as a witness but may change their minds and regard her as a suspect.
“A police officer has signed a statement that I resisted his orders. So they could change my status very easily,” she said.
Opposition activists have vowed to carry on the protests during the summer and have set up the May 6 Committee to support those detained.
On Monday, the committee’s organizer, Solidarity activist Sergei Davidis, became the latest to be questioned by police in connection with the May 6 violence.
He told Interfax afterward that he was asked “ritual questions” about opposition leaders Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and Boris Nemtsov.
Davidis also said that a planned march for July 26 would be downsized to a rally on Pushkin Square.
Human rights activists have criticized the investigation as politically motivated and have called those arrested political prisoners.
While most Russian asylum seekers in Europe have claimed persecution in the wake of the conflict in Chechnya, some opposition supporters have been granted asylum as political refugees.

TITLE: Three Astronauts Arrive At International Space Station
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A trio of astronauts traveling onboard a Russian-made Soyuz capsule has reached the International Space Station, two days after launching from the Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.
NASA astronaut Suni Williams, veteran Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide of Japan docked Tuesday slightly ahead of schedule at 08:51 a.m. Moscow time. They will work at the orbiting laboratory until November.

TITLE: Election Activists Focus In On Small Towns
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: KASIMOV, Ryazan Region — Ever since disputed State Duma elections sparked an opposition revival beginning in December, activists have been paying more attention to Kasimov and other provincial towns where discontent is high and salaries are low.
Heeding a call by opposition leader Alexei Navalny on his blog, about 55 activists from Ryazan and Moscow drove to Kasimov to urge its 33,000 residents to vote in upcoming city legislature elections. Suspicions are high that the elections are being used to place a high-ranking United Russia official in the Federation Council.
The official, Andrei Chesnakov, has not commented on the rumors, and former city legislature Speaker Yevgeny Gerasimov said a May decision to dissolve the body was meant to “reflect new political realities,” according to RZN.info, a local news site. Gerasimov said the inauguration of President Vladimir Putin and election reforms to simplify the registration of political parties had compelled the legislature to “change with the times.”
But activists hope to expose what they call a dirty trick and at the same time dislodge United Russia from its dominant role in the legislature, sending a signal that the powerful ruling party can be beat in free and fair elections.
Nominees for the Federation Council must be elected officials, a requirement that inspired a snap-election in St. Petersburg in August 2011. That election saw former Governor Valentina Matvienko elected to two district councils with more than 90 percent of the vote, according to official results. Later that month, she was appointed to the Federation Council, where she currently serves as speaker.
Chesnakov, No. 2 on United Russia’s ticket in the July 22 elections in Kasimov, a town to which he had no prior links, is a virtual shoo-in for a vacant Federation Council seat.
“United Russia has done so many things wrong. If I had hair on my head, it would stand up and never come down,” Sergei Kochetkov, 47, an opposition activist from Moscow, told a resident as he and the others went door-to-door, distributing fliers reminding locals to vote.
They also handed out anti-United Russia fliers, including one designed to look like a leaflet from the ruling party and linking utility prices to support for the party.
“If turnout is less than 25 percent, they can scare and steal their way into a majority,” Kochetkov told a blind man sitting on a stoop beside a sleeping cat. “Observers from Moscow will make sure the vote isn’t rigged.”
The locals greeted activist Kochetkov with a smile and often an anti-government rant. None said they were voting for United Russia, and only one said he was voting for the Liberal Democratic Party.
Fliers spotted on and around crumbling apartment blocks showed that agitators from the Liberal Democratic Party and Yabloko had also been making the rounds, but aside from a bored teenage girl taking cover from the sun in a blue LDPR tent, none of them were encountered.
One group of opposition activists said they ran into pro-Kremlin youths handing out a flier that compared opposition leaders to performers in a circus led by “artistic director” U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul.
Three opposition activists were briefly detained for “illegally” pasting fliers to buildings, a charge that carries a fine of up to 1,000 rubles.
Activist Nikolai Levshchits, who helped organize the day under the aegis of Navalny’s “Good Truth Machine,” said it was a miracle that Saturday’s 4-hour trip from Moscow took place at all, given that opposition attention and resources are tied up on Krymsk flood relief.
“It could have been better organized,” he said. “Activists could have been better trained in what to say. But it’s quite obvious that these trips can be very effective.”
The trip could also serve as a dry-run for a gubernatorial election scheduled in the Ryazan region in October.
United Russia won 49 percent of the votes in the Kasimov region in the Duma elections in December, a figure that is similar to its nationwide haul.
But conversations with more than a dozen locals revealed seething anger toward the ruling party that appeared to be much more widespread than the election results would suggest. The grievances were many — corruption, education, health care, pensions, jobs — as was a sense that ordinary people were powerless to address them, including through elections.
Svetlana, a 72-year-old pensioner, said her 6,000 rubles ($185) per month pension wasn’t enough to support herself and four young grandchildren after her son was injured in an accident.
Nevertheless, she said she wasn’t sure she would vote because, like many locals, she believes all politicians are crooks and thieves.
“There are black dogs, and there are brown dogs. But they all have the same doggy soul,” she said.

TITLE: Party Wants to Label Media as ‘Foreign Agent’
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia wants to label media outlets financed from abroad as “foreign agents” and to gain the power to oust lawmakers without a court ruling, news reports said Monday.
The proposed crackdowns follow a week in which United Russia led efforts in the State Duma to pass legislation that brands “politically active” NGOs that receive money from abroad as “foreign agents” and drastically increases fines in defamation cases.
Dmitry Gudkov, a senior Duma deputy with A Just Russia, called the latest proposed measures a “continuation of this repressive policy.”
“This will not stop anything but will breed more hatred,” Gudkov said by phone.
The Duma may consider in the fall a bill that would brand as “foreign agents” media outlets that receive more than 50 percent of their financing from abroad, Izvestia reported Monday, citing United Russia Deputies Vladimir Burmatov and Ilya Kostunov as its sources.
“Many media receive financing from abroad and act as a mouthpiece for a foreign government,” Kostunov told the daily.
But Mikhail Fedotov, head of the Kremlin’s human rights council and a lawyer by training, called the bill about foreign-financed media “pointless,” saying that the country’s mass media law, which he co-authored, already bans media outlets from receiving more than 50 percent of their financing from abroad.
“Making the financing of all the media transparent would be the right thing to do, but this has not been proposed,” Fedotov said by phone.
Pavel Gutiontov, secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia, decried the measure as pure propaganda and an insult to some news outlets.
He also said he didn’t understand why the Duma’s recently approved NGO bill labels some foreign-financed NGOs as “foreign agents” but makes an exception for state organizations that are financed from abroad, noting that he was more concerned as a taxpayer about what the national budget was spent on, including in the field of mass media.
Meanwhile, a senior Duma source told Vedomosti in an article published Monday that parliament might consider a bill in the fall that would allow United Russia’s majority in the lower chamber to strip lawmakers of their mandates without a court ruling for a variety of offenses.
Grounds for such punishment could include making comments to media outlets that are deemed to discredit parliament or disparage state authorities; receiving citations by the ethics committee for persistently skipping Duma sessions; failing to publish income declarations; or using diplomatic passports for personal trips abroad.
Gudkov said the measure would violate the Constitution. “It is not they [United Russia] who gave us mandates but the people, while United Russia only stole mandates,” he said, referring to December’s disputed Duma elections.

TITLE: Poll: Drugs Are Top Problem
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: REUTOV — Nikolai Leonov was walking through this Moscow suburb with his 2-year-old daughter when the toddler bent down and picked up a bloodied syringe from the grass. “I snatched it away from her a second before she could hurt herself,” Leonov said, still shaken days later.
The computer hardware shop owner is one of millions of Russians horrified by a drug abuse epidemic that has turned Russia into the world’s largest consumer of heroin.
An Associated Press-GfK poll released this month shows that nearly nine out of 10 Russians (87 percent) identify drug abuse as at least a “very serious” problem in Russia today, including 55 percent describing the problem as “extremely serious.” The only other issue that worries as many Russians (85 percent) is the corruption that pervades Russian society, business and politics.
Russians living across the vast country, of all levels of education and income, differ little when it comes to the extent of the drug abuse problem, although 91 percent of urban dwellers see it as a serious problem, compared to 82 percent of rural residents. Unprompted, 10 percent of Russians cite criminality, alcohol or drug abuse as the most important problem facing the country today, on par with the share citing basic needs such as medical care, housing and education.
Some 2.5 million Russians are addicted to drugs, and 90 percent of them use the heroin that has flooded into Russia from Afghanistan since the late 1990s, according to government statistics. The nation with a population of 143 million consumes 70 tons of Afghan heroin every year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Heroin kills 80 Russians each day — or 30,000 a year — and is “as easy to buy as a Snickers” chocolate bar, Russia’s anti-drug tsar Viktor Ivanov said. Meanwhile, new drugs — such as highly addictive synthetic marijuana and a cheap and lethal concoction made of codeine pills known as “crocodile” — compete with heroin and kill thousands more.
Drug addicts are also the people Russians would least like to have as neighbors, according to the AP-GfK poll. They are seen as more undesirable than alcoholics by a margin of 87 to 77 percent.
The AP-GfK poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications from May 25 to June 10 and was based on in-person interviews with 1,675 randomly selected adults nationwide. The results have a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Leonov lives with his accountant wife and two children in a recently renovated one-bedroom apartment in Reutov, a suburb of Moscow known for its Soviet-era research institutes and defense factories. A statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin still stands on the town square. Their biggest problem is the addicts who live in the neighborhood.
Last year, he saw the body of an addict who apparently had overdosed right next to the playground where his children play. “He was there for a couple of hours before the cops showed up,” Leonov said, pointing at a wooden bench where a bespectacled elderly woman was sitting.
Leonov claimed that the heroin that killed the addict was sold by a neighbor, who was always dirty and dressed in rags but flaunted a collection of new cell phones. His customers, mostly skinny and chain-smoking youngsters, would leave used syringes on the asphalt and occupy the benches for hours after getting their fix. The neighbor was arrested this spring, but Leonov said little has changed because the addicts apparently found another source of heroin nearby.
The heroin epidemic caught Russia by surprise.
Before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of drug addicts who used intravenous injections was extremely low. But the rise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan opened a floodgate of cheap heroin, which flowed into Russia through the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
The arrival of NATO troops in Afghanistan only aggravated the situation, because coalition troops were instructed not to eradicate poppy crops for fear of driving the farmers into the ranks of the Taliban.
Moscow for years has been urging the U.S. military in Afghanistan to take stronger action against local drug labs and smugglers, but the production of Afghan opium since NATO’s arrival has increased 40-fold, according to anti-drug tsar Ivanov.
Most of Russia’s 2.5 million drug addicts are aged 18 to 39 — a generation of Russians lost to heroin.
“The only thing the government can do is save the new generation, because we cannot be saved,” said Valery, a former heroin addict from the Volga River city of Samara. He gave only his first name because his support group does not allow contacts with the media.
After a meeting with a dozen other recovering drug addicts, he recalled childhood friends who had overdosed, gone to jail or been infected with HIV after sharing contaminated needles. He remembered sharing a needle with a man who he knew had been in jail and thus had a high chance of being infected with HIV.
“I needed a fix that badly,” said Valery, now a barrel-chested body builder. “Only God saved me” from getting infected, he said.
Infection is a major concern for Leonov’s family. In the past decade, the number of HIV infections in Russia has tripled in one of the world’s fastest-growing epidemics of the virus that causes AIDS, according to the United Nations. An estimated four fifths of the 980,000 Russians officially registered as HIV positive became infected through dirty needles.
When Leonov’s wife, Yelena, was in a maternity hospital to give birth to their daughter, Nastya, she saw another pregnant woman injecting heroin brought in by her husband. Doctors at the hospital told her they would not isolate the woman because she might die or lose her child if she went through withdrawal, she said.

TITLE: Foreign Ministry Moves To Up Online Following
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry is taking steps to expand its online presence, with plans to open a Facebook account and increase the number of its Twitter feeds.
The Foreign Ministry’s move to attract online followers comes after President Vladimir Putin met last week with top diplomats and called on them to take up new approaches to transmit the government’s message.
“You must explain our points of view again and again, on various platforms and using new technologies until the message gets across,” Putin said, according to an official present at the meeting, Kommersant reported.
The Foreign Ministry is working on creating a Facebook page and wants to increase diplomats’ use of Twitter, a ministry official told the business daily. The ministry currently has more than 40 Twitter accounts and has told embassies to create more.
On July 7, the ministry launched a dedicated YouTube account, where users can watch the latest news briefings, interviews and television appearances by prominent diplomats.
Several high-ranking Foreign Ministry officials, such as Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov and Ambassador to Britain Alexander Yakovenko, are already active on social-networking sites.
But with roughly 2,500 followers between them, their popularity on social media pales in comparison to that of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who has more than 1 million followers, and Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, whose tweets are read by close to 150,000 accounts.
In an Agence France Press ranking [http://ediplomacy.afp.com/#!/countries] updated daily, Russia on Monday stood in 14th place out of 146 countries for the effectiveness of its e-diplomacy, with 2.64 million people reading Russian diplomats’ blogs.
The United States ranked first, with almost 44 million people following U.S. diplomats’ online comments. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Britain and Japan also featured in the top 10.

TITLE: Capello to Replace Advocaat
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The acting head of Russia’s football federation has announced that former England coach Fabio Capello has been chosen to lead the national team and is expected to soon visit Moscow to sign a contract.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted federation head Nikita Simonyan as saying the decision to appoint Capello was made Monday.
Simonyan said all that is needed is for a “final agreement on terms of the agreement.’’
Capello emerged last week as the clear favorite among 13 candidates to replace Dick Advocaat, who resigned after Russia failed to make it beyond the group stage of the European Championship.
Capello, who stepped down as England coach in February, has previously managed Real Madrid and Inter Milan.

TITLE: Ukrainian Gets Life for Trafficking
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA — A Ukrainian convicted of smuggling desperate villagers to the United States to work in bondage has been sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.
A prosecutor in Philadelphia says 52-year-old Omelyan Botsvynyuk’s  human trafficking operation was “modern-day slavery.”
A jury found Botsvynyuk and his brother forced crews to work long hours cleaning stores, homes and offices in Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states for little or no pay. It found he used sexual and physical violence to intimidate workers.
His brother Stepan Botsvynyuk faced up to 20 years in prison for racketeering and was due to be sentenced Tuesday. His sentence was not known when this paper went to press. He was  also acquitted of extortion.
The defense argued workers testified only to get special visas for trafficking victims and avoid returning to Ukraine.

TITLE: Owning a Car to Get Simpler, Costlier
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Drivers will find that servicing their cars is simpler but buying a new one is slightly more expensive, under legislation passed late last week.
Among the flurry of laws Duma deputies signed off on before retiring for their summer recess were two pieces of automobile legislation.
One abolishes separate checkups on vehicles that undergo compulsory technical inspection at an authorized dealership.
Instead it will be sufficient to produce a certificate from an authorized dealer that the car’s technical inspection is up to date.
The legislation is a finishing touch to a change in the law introduced in January that transferred responsibility for compulsory technical road-worthiness inspections from the Interior Ministry to the private sector.
The other, an amendment to the law on industrial and consumer waste, levies a salvage charge on both imported and locally produced vehicles. It is intended to cover the cost of disposal at the end of a vehicle’s lifespan.
The charge, which is set to come into force by Sept. 1, will be paid directly into the federal budget.
The levy has not yet been set, but preliminary figures from the Industry and Trade Ministry and Economic Development Ministry put the base charge at 20,000 rubles ($612) to 45,000 rubles for a new car or light vehicle, and 150,000 rubles to 400,000 rubles ($4,600-12,300) for heavy trucks, depending on the class.
The fee is expected to raise between 20 billion rubles ($615.8 million) and 70 billion rubles ($2.2 billion) annually for the federal budget, Vedomosti reported Friday. The money is meant to be spent on decommissioning old vehicles, including building infrastructure for that purpose.
Organizations that themselves assume responsibility for the safe disposal of cars at the end of their life cycle will be exempt from the charge.
Exemptions will also be given to vehicles that cross the border from Belarus and Kazakhstan as part of the Eurasian Economic Union, cars belonging to diplomats and refugees, and vehicles over 30 years old and with their original engines.
While the cost of the levy will likely be passed on to customers, industry observers say, it needn’t lead to an overall price rise if it is offset by lower import duties from Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organization.

TITLE: Liquor Production Hits 10-Year High
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian distillers last month produced the largest June output of liquor in the past 10 years, eclipsing previous records set for vodka and cognac production.
Russian vodka producers distilled 9.61 million decaliters in June, a 47-percent increase over last year’s volume, RBC Daily reported, citing State Statistics Service data.
Brandy production soared 80 percent over the same period, the RBC report said, while Russian winemakers also corked more bottles, producing 6.83 million decaliters of wine, doubling the output figure of June 2011.
June usually sees low output for Russian liquor producers, while November and December are the peak months, according to RBC Daily. 
Experts consulted by the business newspaper explained June’s record figures by producers’ desire to maximize profits before higher taxes on liquor entered into force July 1.
The largest increase was on vodka tariffs — up to 18.1 percent. Taxes on 0.5 liters of vodka reached 60 rubles ($1.85) compared with 50 rubles previously.

TITLE: Poll Says Most Russians Fear New Economic Downturn
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The majority of Russians are concerned about the onset of a new economic crisis but have taken few steps to prepare for the prospect of hard times ahead, a poll released Monday showed.
Pollsters from state-run VTsIOM found that 58 percent of those surveyed harbored fears of another downturn, while 85 percent had made no preparations for a worsening economic outlook, Interfax reported.
Among poll respondents, those most troubled by the country’s economic fate were people with low incomes (66 percent) and those close to retirement age (65 percent). A more optimistic assessment was given by people with mid-to-high income levels (40 percent to 42 percent) and youth (49 percent).
When asked to give a shorter-term prediction, 44 percent said they felt the next 12 months would see declining economic indicators. This compares with 32 percent in March who predicted a worsening economy.
VTsIOM pollsters consulted 1,600 respondents in the survey, which was conducted in June in 43 of Russia’s 83 federal subjects. No margin of error was cited for the poll in the Interfax report.

TITLE: Bank Predicts More Govt Action
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investment bank Renaissance Capital is predicting a tide of government takeovers in the oil and gas industry.
State-owned companies — a reference to Rosneft and Gazprom — and other players with strong connections to the government will be the most active buyers, after companies saw their value dip well below the fair market level, the bank said in a report Monday.
“The first and foremost reason is the government’s constant interest in increasing its presence in the largest and most strategic sector of the Russian economy, as greater control over the oil sector means a stronger fiscal position and ultimately more political power” for the government, analysts led by Ildar Davletshin said.
Income from the industry makes up 50 percent of federal budget revenues.
“This rationale for mergers and acquisitions does by no means imply greater efficiency and higher returns in the sector,” the report said.
Russian oil stocks are trading at a 35-percent discount to global majors and a 50-percent discount to their peers on the Hong Kong growth enterprise market, RenCap estimated.
The government now owns a third of equity in the sector, it said.
Another reason for consolidation in the industry is the imminent challenge to commit huge investment to developing more remote fields, the bank said.
“The urgently rising need for massive spending creates a need for players with bigger scale and, naturally, greater government interest in retaining control over the sector,” the report said.
The current fragmented playing field, where at least seven big vertically integrated companies compete for new resources and expand outside of Russia, is not the most efficient, according to the report.
The most likely scenario would be to have just two or three market leaders instead of seven, the bank said. That would allow the remaining companies to achieve economies of scale and give the government more direct control over the sector.

TITLE: Cabinet Tweaking Subsidies Under WTO
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Cabinet approved a new long-term plan to support farming, changing some approaches that could raise questions among WTO members.
Federal agricultural subsidies and spending are rising very moderately despite fears that Russia’s entry into the global trade group in the next few weeks will challenge the sector thanks to a surge in foreign competition.
As the support program starts next year, the government will terminate the long-term government-facilitated discounts farmers have gotten from suppliers of gasoline and fertilizers.
“That could bring us accusations of dumping ... from the other WTO member countries” when it comes to sales of farm products, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said. “It’s best to do away with these nonmarket mechanisms.”
Russia is one of the world’s largest grain exporters.
Instead of engineering favorable price agreements on some supplies for farmers, the government will introduce a subsidy seeking to ensure that they earn at least a 10-percent profit on every hectare of farmland, Dvorkovich said after the Cabinet session.
“We believe it’s a quite achievable target,” he said.
The profitability rate is now under 9 percent, he said.
The subsidy will amount to about 30 billion rubles ($923 million) per year, Dvorkovich said.
In the first half of this year, farmers saved 12 billion rubles through the 30-percent discount on some of their fuel, and they are set to save a comparable amount in the second half.
Fertilizer discounts from London-listed Uralkali alone, which produces a fifth of the world’s potash, amounted to $117 million last year, about two-thirds of its profit-tax payment.
The total federal funding for the farming program will rise by a mere 2 billion rubles, to 158 billion rubles ($62 million to $4.9 billion) next year, Dvorkovich said.
Another new measure will be a subsidy for every liter of milk that farmers actually sell. This will serve as an incentive to produce higher quality milk, Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov said.
Only 30 percent of current milk output complies with European Union standards, he said.
The spending on milk subsidies will climb from 10 billion rubles next year to 12.5 billion rubles toward the end of the program.
The eight-year program will draw 1.5 trillion rubles ($46.2 billion) from the federal budget. Another 770 billion rubles ($23.7 billion) will come from regional coffers.
The federal funding is much less than the program, which was largely developed under the previous agriculture minister, Yelena Skrynnik, initially sought.
Apparently fazed by the setback, the new minister, Fyodorov, took a jab at austerity-loving Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.
He placed the riposte into a phrase that thanked Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for his “understanding” of the sector.
“I can say that this circumstance not only supports but also inspires farmers,” Fyodorov said. “And through inspired labor, the government recovers its expenditures many times over, filling the budget and, I think, the table for Anton … and his family members.”
Recapping the current support program, which ends this year, Fyodorov said it has helped attract private investment to agriculture.
In a recent example, German firm Evonik last week decided to go ahead with a joint project in the Rostov region to produce an additive for animal feed.
In conjunction with Russky Agropromyshlenny Trest, owned by Vadim Varshavsky, the firm will build a 6.7 billion ruble ($200 million) plant that aims to start making the additive from local grain in 2014.
It would be the only plant of its kind in Russia, the regional governor has said.

TITLE: Forest Land Allocated for Nuclear Plant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has allocated 242.3 hectares of land from the forest fund to construct the Nizhny Novgorod Nuclear Power Plant, Interfax reported. According to a government order dated July 11, 242.3 hectares in the Nizhny Novgorod region included in the Navashino district forest area will be transferred to the category of land for industry, energy, transport, communications, broadcasting, television and informatics, land for space activities, land for defense and security and land for other special purposes for the construction of nuclear power plants.
Last November, the government signed an order to build the power plant with two energy-generating units and launch in 2019 and 2021. Preliminary data has the project estimated to cost 240 billion rubles ($7.38 billion). The plan is to build the facility in the Navashino district, one kilometer west of the town of Monakovo near the Murom — Nizhny Novgorod road.

TITLE: A Harmful Law Against the Internet
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: Just before it left for its summer recess, the State Duma passed legislation that will control the Internet. This is something authorities have been preparing for years. The first piece of legislation was adopted in 2007, which permitted courts to block access to specific Internet sites. Since then, regional courts have made occasional use of this option, but sites blocked in one region remained accessible in others. Now a legal mechanism has been created that enables the government to block “bad sites” throughout the country. For the first time, Russia will have an Internet censor on a national scale.
Lawmakers, of course, packaged the Internet legislation as a protection against child pornography, pedophilia and sites that propagandize terrorism and drug use. But this is only a pretext to crack down on other “harmful sites,” including opposition ones.
The registry of banned sites will be prepared by a special federal agency. And nobody should be fooled by the fact that a nonprofit organization such as the Internet Defense League will have the right to identify “harmful sites” that should be blocked. The league’s leadership has close ties to government structures and the ruling party.
The plan is for a special organization to monitor the Internet and then inform the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service if it finds harmful websites. That organization then calls on a special agency authorized by the Russian government. Next, the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service informs the owner of the site and the Internet provider hosting it. The site owner is given 24 hours to remove the dangerous content. If that is not done, the host is given one more day to do so. If neither comply, the pages or entire site in question, along with their IP addresses, are listed with the registry of harmful sites and blocked.
In addition, any Russian court can also add a site to this blacklist. In the past, there have been several court rulings against sites operated by opposition groups accused of extremism. What’s more, it is no secret that courts in the regions might have a different understanding of what constitutes a harmful site than Moscow courts. But regional courts will have the right to ban a site of their choice throughout all of Russia, effectively giving them federal powers to censor the Internet.
Critics of the new legislation see it as a tool by which the government can silence the opposition. Their fear is that any undesirable opposition website can be blocked if the authorities surreptitiously attach information to it that pertains to child pornography or drugs. There are numerous cases of government-friendly hackers who can easily attach pornography to an opposition site. Recall how easily these hackers attacked opposition Internet resources during the December and March elections.
It seems that the legislation against harmful sites is only the first step toward imposing censorship across the entire Internet. Sooner or later, the authorities will apply a wide censorship to social networks as well, possibly even blocking them completely during political crises. The Kremlin is determined to prevent an Egyptian- or Tunisian-style “Twitter revolution” from occurring in Russia.
According to the legislation, the registry will contain not only the domain names and Internet addresses of those sites, but the addresses of individual pages as well. This requires Internet providers to purchase expensive deep-packet inspection, or DPI, equipment that will enable them to block those pages. That technology makes it possible for the provider to separate Internet traffic into separate flows of audio, video, images and spam. By installing such equipment, an Internet provider can block not only searches from and to specific addresses, but can also disable specific services such as Skype that provide IP telephony.
The DPI technology also enables the authorities to maintain control over Facebook, the site that the Federal Security Service is so concerned about. Intelligence agencies in Uzbekistan, for example, force Internet providers to use DPI to change the addresses of undesirable discussion groups that appear on social networks.
With the introduction of the registry and the inevitable adoption of DPI technology, Russia will join other countries that have instituted Internet censorship, such as Pakistan, China, Iran and other countries in the Middle East. All of them make use of DPI technology, a product manufactured and sold by a leading telecommunications companies from Huawei in China and Cisco in the United States to Sandvine in Canada and Narus in Israel (now owned by Boeing).
According to Infonetics Research, the global DPI market totals $470 million annually and is expected to reach $2 billion by 2016. Now, thanks to the Duma, Russia’s contribution to that total will be very substantial.

<i>Georgy Bovt is a political analyst.</i>

TITLE: inside russia: Plain Stupidity Caused the Krasnodar Floods
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Ten days have passed since the floods in Krymsk, and we can already observe some interesting patterns connected with that tragedy.
The first, and most unpleasant for the authorities, is the persistent rumor that the flood was not caused by heavy rains but by a surge of water from the Neberdzhayevskoye reservoir above the town. The suggestion is that either the dam broke or a large quantity of water was released from the reservoir toward Krymsk in order to prevent flooding President Vladimir Putin’s palace in Gelendzhik, 60 kilometers away.
But the dam did not break, and the Naberdzhai River actually rose less than other rivers in the area. But that does not worry critics of the government. If you try to convince them of the facts, they just accuse you of selling out to the authorities.
It is noteworthy that rationally minded opposition members, such as independent environmentalist Suren Gazaryan, inspected the rivers in question and rejected the conspiracy theory outright. But the population of Krymsk, 95 percent of whom apparently voted for Putin in the March election, firmly believe it.
This is a well-known psychological phenomenon and very bad news for the authorities. It is common for victims of natural disasters to believe that they were victims of an evil plot of some sort. The famine of 1317 was blamed on Jews, and the black plague epidemic of 1347 was blamed on Jews and witches, who were subsequently burned at the stake.
This is bad news for the authorities because the people of Krymsk do not blame their troubles on Jews, witches, U.S. State Department, foreign agents or anti-government protesters. These once-steadfast supporters of Putin place the blame squarely on the Russian government.
The people of Krymsk also don’t believe the official death toll of 171. Whenever a conscientious journalist investigates rumors about “thousands of deaths” and says clearly that they are nothing but rumors, the response from Krymsk residents is usually: “It is your duty to prove the rumors to be true.”
As I have already written, the disaster that struck Krymsk was, in fact, more the result of human rather than natural causes. This is because natural disasters only occur in places where nature, not civilization, is the predominant force. As Napoleon once said, there is no point attributing something to evil intent that is actually the result of plain stupidity.
Many Russians gladly voted for Putin in March, despite knowing that he essentially forced his will on them by sending busloads of individuals to vote in multiple polling places and manipulating the electoral process as much as he could. The truth is, average voters don’t analyze deeply.
If baboons could vote, they would clearly vote for the alpha male. And the most subjugated baboons turn out to be the leader’s most enthusiastic supporters.
The problem for Putin is that the most powerless members of society voted for him. But they can withdraw their support for him just as irrationally as they gave it.
That is exactly what we are seeing in Krymsk. When it comes to disasters that personally affect them, average voters will not accept the stupidity of their elected officials as an explanation when they can instead attribute it to evil intent.

<i>Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.</i>

TITLE: Nabokov via the prism of butterflies
AUTHOR: By Luisa Schulz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fans of Vladimir Nabokov will know that the eminent Russian-American writer was not only a gifted writer, but also a passionate lepidopterist. A new exhibition at the city’s Nabokov Museum opening this Sunday pays tribute to this passion, attempting to see his works through paintings of his beloved butterflies.
“It is not impossible that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all,” Nabokov once said. He saw butterflies as his main interest, followed by literature. This has inspired more than 40 artists, most of them members of the avant-garde St. Petersburg Academy of Immortal Contemporary Art, to produce artwork on that theme in his honor.
“The idea for the project emerged a long time ago, but only materialized now,” said Felix Volosenkov, the project’s author. Due to the small space of the gallery, the width of the paintings is restricted to 50 centimeters, but vertically they can be as high as the ceiling.
Not all the paintings show butterflies, however. The theme has also been interpreted as a symbol for Nabokov himself, who, with his complex word games and synesthesia, was as volatile and metamorphosis-loving as the insects, and for his equally elusive characters.

<i>“Butterflies” runs from July 22 through Aug. 10 at the Nabokov Museum, 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. M. Sadovaya/Admiralteiskaya.</i>

TITLE: Mythical muses
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fashion designer Ianis Chamalidy thrives on challenges. He admires the Greek mythological hero Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give to mankind, and creates jewelry collections celebrating the courage of ancient Greek mortal weaver Arachne, who took part in a doomed contest with the goddess Athena, only to be forever turned into a spider. He creates some of the most sensual drapings on the Russian fashion scene, and credits his inspiration to the life stories of Orthodox female saints.
“The themes of knighthood, self-sacrifice and monasticism are present in virtually all of my collections,” the 36-year-old designer told The St. Petersburg Times this week. “It may sound shocking if I tell you that my muse is essentially a vestal, a nun, a chaste woman, a saint, but it’s true. One of my recent collections, Facing the Wind (Navstrechu Vetru) is a reverence to Mary of Egypt [the patron saint of penitents], who lived the life of a dissolute in a bustling megalopolis, yet she was able to discover a different part of herself — a serene and virtuous part. I admire people who have the courage to undertake these types of journeys — to be able to face the wind, so to say.”
There is always a strong spiritual backing behind the designer’s haute couture collections, which embody his reflections on the world around him. To be accepted and understood, the designer needs a strong perception of what is in the air and to be able to anticipate change.
In his latest collection, entitled Bird in a Cage, which was shown in June at Tsarskoye Selo as part of the annual Association project that sees leading local designers creating collections inspired by a specific artistic style, Chamalidy builds a bridge between the worlds of pagan antiquity and monotheistic Christianity. The collection was inspired by St. Thekla, who completely changed her life path after hearing St. Paul’s speech about chastity.  
Bird in a Cage leads audiences on a journey into their souls, exploring conflicting thoughts, searching for peace and darting between courage and escapism. 
“In this collection, I sought to explore the issue of freedom that the human soul is constantly seeking and the physical limitations that the body creates for it,” he said. “Millions of people seek to overcome themselves, to set their own records, and they want these records not only to make an impression, but to make sense.”
Chamalidy produced his first collection at the age of 17, and has run the Ianis Chamalidy fashion house since 1997. 
Costume design has been a natural environment for the designer since birth: His grandmother was a busy seamstress in the town of Novy Afon in the south Caucasian republic of Abkhazia. In a sense, his choice of profession was preordained, yet it was not until Chamalidy spent some time at a shipbuilding college that he realized that it was women’s dresses, not marine vessels that he want to create.
“The girl who sat next to me was getting married, and I entertained myself by drawing sketches of possible wedding dresses for her,” Chamalidy remembers. “And then, very suddenly, the realization flashed through my mind that this is what I should be doing with my life.”
There followed a prompt retreat from the shipbuilding college, and Chamalidy entered the Mukhina State Art and Industry Academy (now the Stieglitz Academy). His first collection explored the connection between color and shape, associating cold colors with sharp lines and a warm palette with soft silhouettes. 
“It was indeed brazen for a first-year student to come up with a whole collection, but I was not thinking like that. I got to know people from a design studio on Ulitsa Tukhachevskogo, and simply arranged for my collection to be made and shown there,” he said.
Born to a family of Greek origin, Chamalidy was brought up in an environment of warmth and cordiality. 
“It was important for my parents to give me a sense of being humane, compassionate, understanding — and I am convinced that this needs to be a core aspect for every parent,” he said. 
He was exposed to the Orthodox religion early on, as his grandmother took Chamalidy to church whenever she was going.
His home education included a strong humanities angle, from singing in a choir to Chinese gymnastics lessons. 
“We never missed an opera or ballet premiere, and, of course, Giselles, Scheherazades, Fountains of Bakhchisarai and Sleeping Beauties were coming out of my ears,” the designer smiles. A couple of decades on, Chamalidy has created costumes for ballet productions ranging from “Romeo and Juliet” to “Scheherazade.”
What possibilities does the theater give that are limited on the runway? Chamalidy does not look at it that way. 
“I am interested in creating a world,” he said. “A theater production throws you additional challenges because there are certain conditions that you cannot change and have to start from — the plot and the music, for example.”
The next collection that will hit the runway this coming fall has been tentatively entitled Labyrinth. 
“It is naturally rooted in the previous collection, Bird in a Cage, as it develops the ideas that I touched on there,” Chamalidy said. 
“What I sense is that more and more people are striving to find out what they themselves really want to be doing in their lives — not what is expected of them or what, say, their parents would like them to do or their partners may manipulate them into doing. And they seek to break free from cages and enter the labyrinth in the hope of finding the truth.”
“This is not an easy journey: There are betrayals, mistakes, dead ends, loss of energy … what you regard as your support and a stepping stone may collapse the next second, and you need to be prepared for that. The very attempt to go along that path is admirable,” he said. 
The image of a labyrinth alludes to the Internet, an ocean of delusions, fake promises and countless temptations. 
“A cynical giant-sized man who does not leave his apartment can easily pretend to be a charming outgoing petite blonde and flirt with dozens of admirers in an online chartroom — only to publish all that embarrassing content a few weeks later to ridicule the naivety of his correspondents,” the designer continues. “Trust is one of the most sensitive issues today, and for Russian people, after decades of living in a linear Soviet society where good and bad were very clearly demarcated, stepping into the abyss of the Internet with its multiple traps is naturally difficult. Making a choice is a challenge and trusting is a challenge, too.”
Chamalidy makes every client a co-author of their new image. The designer encourages them to think and see how they can express themselves — and discover themselves — through a particular look.
“If you do not think, you are unable to create, and therefore unable to live,” he explains. “It is like waking up and becoming more alive.”
Investing in one’s image is seen as a lost cause by many Russian women, who regard it as the privilege of the wealthy. Decades of the authoritarian Soviet rule resulted in a childish habit of adhering to standards. Personality is often sacrificed for a pattern that is believed to be attractive. 
Chamalidy spent eight years as a representative for Yves Saint Laurent in Russia. He traveled the country extensively, and was astounded by the vast numbers of frustrated women — regardless of the region — who were despondent because they did not meet the standards of a so-called “model figure.” A model figure — rather than talent, natural charm and personality — is seen by many in the country as a pass to success and prosperity. And the cries for help were as heartbreaking as they were many. 
“It never occurred to me that perhaps some of my collections were born out of compassion for these women — they became my response to their plea,” the designer said. “The more I think about it, the more true it seems.” 
Chamalidy sees his task in shifting his clients’ mindset from “whether this shape is right for my waist [legs, height, etc.]” into “what sort of emotion do I want to convey?” and “what sort of vibe do I want to give off?”
“In some cases I see a woman who has lost so much faith in herself that she requires what I would describe as en emotional resuscitation — and we all do our best to deliver it, when necessary,” he said. “To see their eyes sparkling is the best reward really. When they say that a dress has become a friend, a second skin, it means the world to me.”

TITLE: Teenage kicks
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The faceoff of lust and repression and the battle between hormones and morality are at the heart of Joven y Alocada (Young and Wild), which began screening at Dom Kino on July 12. 
Based on the real-life blog of a 17-year-old Chilean girl, the film tells the story of Daniela (Alicia Luz Rodriguez), a young woman repressed by her ultra-religious evangelical mother Teresa (Aline Kuppenheim). The film documents Daniela as she experiences her first sexual desires, which know no boundaries and cannot be restrained by forces regardless of whether they are external or internal. 
The tormented main character is first introduced to the audience as she experiences her first sexual urges. She is shown secretly pleasuring herself while lying among other teenagers who appear to be fast asleep. A few moments later viewers witness Daniela drop out of her strict evangelical school just a couple of weeks before final exams, because the shocking truth that the voluptuous sexually–starved teenager has seduced a classmate comes out.  
Daniela’s is a story of a freshly awakened libido gone deranged. Her biggest nightmare is that her mother might discover her top-secret, extremely popular Joven y Alocada blog.
The real-life blog was written between 2005 and 2007 by Santiago resident Camilla Gutierrez. Gutierrez co-authored the screenplay and inspired the director and co-author, Marialy Rivas, to turn the story into a film — which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance International Film Festival in January this year.
The 95-minute film is shot in a snappy, blog-type style, peppered with SMS-like verbal exchange and is in general somewhat reminiscent of a documentary drama. The effect is as if a cameraman had followed Daniela for a few weeks and then compiled the footage into a story. While the filmmakers left the arguments quick and concise, the love-making scenes, on the other hand, are much lengthier, with the idea to apparently allow for arousal — of heterosexual, homosexual or solo-sexual origin — to develop and reach its climax.
As much as she is becoming aware of the demands of her body, Daniela is ignorant of her emotional needs. Incredibly self-absorbed, the girl is enthusiastic about verbalizing her sexual needs on a blog — getting numerous invitations to explore them from both sexes. She does not realize, however, that she is hurting her boyfriend Tomas (Felipe Pinto), by being unfaithful to him with a young female colleague whom they both meet while working at a Christian propaganda television channel. When both of her lovers break up with her, Daniela cries like a child, not realizing what has gone wrong. Was she a bad lover? It does not occur to her that the very religious Tomas, who was initially reluctant to have pre-marital sex, took their relationship much more seriously than Daniela did, who saw their relationship as an exciting opportunity to explore the world of love-making and sexual pleasures.    
Although confessional in nature, Daniela’s story stops short of being remorseful. While the blogger’s dive into her own sexuality is in full swing, her emotional world is largely a terra incognita for herself — as well as for others. Emotionally, the closest person to Daniela is her fragile, emaciated-looking aunt (Ingrid Isensee), who is dying of cancer, and whose death is another loss for the girl — the first one that she cannot replace. It is the aunt who talks Teresa out of locking her horny daughter up at home for a year — without even an Internet connection. 
Stuffed with explicit, “soft core plus” sex scenes, including a passionate sex scene between Daniela and her attractive female co-worker Antonia (Maria Gracia Omegna), Young and Wild is Vitaly Milonov’s nightmare. The rage of Daniela’s mother, as shown in the film, would be humbleness personified compared to the reaction of the lcoal parliament deputy behind the city’s notorious “gay propaganda” law if he were to see the film.
The provocative film will and has undoubtedly graced LGBT culture festivals, and its appearance on the Dom Kino repertoire is nothing short of a miracle, considering the ever-tightening control of the authorities over cultural content, and growing homophobic hysteria.
Thankfully, Rivas avoids a preachy attitude, and simply tells the story, making it seem as realistic as possible. She does not ridicule Daniela’s remarkable apathy in anything she engages in, including sex, and rather appears above the conflict between the girl and her rigid, judgmental mother. The director leaves the main character during a time of loss, without either of her lovers or her aunt. Daniela is feeling lost, and, for the first time, is trying to get a sense of direction. It is during the frustration-charged finale that the heroine’s body and her emotions finally begin to communicate and come together as one.

TITLE: the word’s worth: Spies like us
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Èíîñòðàííûé àãåíò: spy

I never thought I’d write a column about the word àãåíò (agent). What’s there to write?
Both àãåíò and agent come originally from the Latin, although àãåíò probably entered Russian later than it entered English. Both àãåíò and agent share pretty much the same range of meanings. Àãåíò might be a representative of an organization or person who is empowered to act for them, like ñòðàõîâîé àãåíò (insurance agent) or ëèòåðàòóðíûé àãåíò (literary agent).
Or àãåíò might be a substance that causes some kind of change, like àêòèâíûé àãåíò (active agent) in a chemical process. And then àãåíò might be a spy, like äâîéíîé àãåíò (double agent). Interestingly, a dictionary from the 1930s lists the last meaning as ðàçãîâîðíîå, óñòàðåâøåå (colloquial, archaic). My, how things change.
But still — so far, so good. For once, the two languages are in perfect harmony.
And then in its recent legislative bacchanalia, the Russian parliament proposed that the term èíîñòðàííûé àãåíò (foreign agent) be used to identify any nongovernmental organization in Russia that receives foreign funding, insisting that this is a direct translation of the U.S. designation “foreign agent.”
And with that, harmony went out the window.
First, in the United States, “foreign agent” has a very specific legal meaning when applied to an organization or person, and the term is generally not applied to nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign funding. Those are simply called “really lucky.”
And then “foreign agent” is a bit of a connotational chameleon in English. In some contexts, the term might be quite neutral, simply describing someone acting on behalf of a foreign entity. At the other end of the spectrum, in a John Le Carre novel, “foreign agent” would be short for “foreign intelligence agent” and a very bad person indeed.
But in Russian, èíîñòðàííûé àãåíò is pretty much always just a synonym for “spy.” Ïðèçíàéñÿ, ÷òî òû èíîñòðàííûé àãåíò (Admit that you’re a spy).
So, in the United States, sticking “foreign agent” on the publications of the Russian Interest Lobbying Group (I made that up) means they were produced on behalf of the Russian government. But in Russia, sticking èíîñòðàííûé àãåíò on the site of the organization Ìåìîðèàë (Memorial; I didn’t make that up) means that it’s a den of foreign spies.
As they say in Odessa: Äâå áîëüøèå ðàçíèöû (literally “that’s two big differences,” something like, “That’s a whole other kettle of kasha.”).
I say: Why use a calque from the English and obfuscate? If the folks in the State Duma think they’re spies, well then, íàçâàòü èõ ñâîèìè èìåíàìè (call a spade a spade).
They could make foreign-funded NGOs put a banner on their sites that reads: Ìû — ïðåäñòàâèòåëè èíîñòðàííîãî ãîñóäàðñòâà (We’re representatives of a foreign state). Or: Ìû — óïîëíîìî÷åííûå èíîñòðàííîãî ãîñóäàðñòâà (We’re the authorized representatives of a foreign state). Or: Ìû — ïîâåðåííûå èíîñòðàííîãî ãîñóäàðñòâà (We’re acting on behalf of a foreign state).
If that’s too genteel, how about: Ìû — øïèîíû! (We’re spies!) Or: Ìû — ðàçâåä÷èêè! (We’re intelligence agents!) Or: Ìû — êðîòû! (We’re moles!)
Or, alternatively, Russia could just borrow U.S. legislation. My favorite is a law that “requires registration of persons who have knowledge of or have received instruction or assignment in espionage, counterespionage or sabotage service or tactics of a foreign country or political party.”
I wonder if you can register online.

<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: Napoleon’s fatal mistake
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An art exposition dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the 1812 French invasion of Russia opened at the Stroganov Palace last week. 
“The Year 1812 in Art From the Collection of the State Russian Museum,” features 100 pieces that reflect memories of the French invasion of Russia in many forms such as painting, graphics, sculpture, numismatics, porcelain, glass, furniture and more. Among the pieces are works by eminent Russian artists such as Orest Kiprensky and Alexei Venetsianov.
Due to the war, 1812 became a period of unusual patriotic enthusiasm and social unity in Russia. Both nobles and merchants donated large sums of money to the army and landowners and their servants signed up to fight.
It was a time when Russian art was at its prime of romanticism and there was an increase in interest in depicting military themes.
The exhibition features paintings depicting battles and heroic deeds from the war such as Mikhail Tikhonov’s “The Execution of the Russians by French Soldiers in 1812” and Kiprensky’s “Portrait of Colonel Yevgraf Davydov.”
The exhibit also includes an album of drawings and wash drawings done by English traveler John Thomas James between 1813 and 1814 while he was traveling around Europe. The Russian part of his trip largely followed the route taken by Napoleon’s army, allowing him to witness the results of the French military campaign. His drawings of a destroyed Moscow (1814) and the Borodino Field, where the main battle was held, are considered to be two of the most interesting pieces.
Crystal glasses produced at the Imperial Glass Factory and decorated with portraits of Tsar Alexander I and celebrated army general Mikhail Kutuzov are also on display. 

<i>The exhibition “The Year 1812 in Art From the Collection of the State Russian Museum” runs through Nov. 11 at the Stroganov Palace, 17 Nevsky Prospekt. M. Admiralteiskaya / Gostiny Dvor.</i>

TITLE: Nabokov via the prism of butterflies
AUTHOR: By Luisa Schulz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fans of Vladimir Nabokov will know that the eminent Russian-American writer was not only a gifted writer, but also a passionate lepidopterist. A new exhibition at the city’s Nabokov Museum opening this Sunday pays tribute to this passion, attempting to see his works through paintings of his beloved butterflies.
“It is not impossible that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all,” Nabokov once said. He saw butterflies as his main interest, followed by literature. This has inspired more than 40 artists, most of them members of the avant-garde St. Petersburg Academy of Immortal Contemporary Art, to produce artwork on that theme in his honor.
“The idea for the project emerged a long time ago, but only materialized now,” said Felix Volosenkov, the project’s author. Due to the small space of the gallery, the width of the paintings is restricted to 50 centimeters, but vertically they can be as high as the ceiling.
Not all the paintings show butterflies, however. The theme has also been interpreted as a symbol for Nabokov himself, who, with his complex word games and synesthesia, was as volatile and metamorphosis-loving as the insects, and for his equally elusive characters.

<i>“Butterflies” runs from July 22 through Aug. 10 at the Nabokov Museum, 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. M. Sadovaya/Admiralteiskaya.</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: The end of Sobchak’s Dom-2 era
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: On July 6, television personality-turned-opposition-activist Ksenia Sobchak made her last appearance on Dom-2, the reality show she began hosting eight years ago. There were tears and white ribbons in her hair.
Sobchak turned up for the daily discussion round a campfire of the participants’ relationship problems. Attention shifted briefly from whether Alexei and Elina could stop bickering and save their relationship.
Wearing a plait with white ribbons woven through and crimson lipstick, Sobchak said she had been nervous all day about appearing on the show and even got croaky with emotion as she talked about spending “a big part of my life” on Dom-2. Contestants wiped away tears as she emotionally said that “I think I am leaving here a much better person than when I came.”
Her final words of advice to the contestants were to “love unconditionally” and to stop arguing all the time. “I wish you would just live in the moment and understand that all these arguments, all these petty woes aren’t important,” she said. Wise words, although I’m not sure what else Dom-2 contestants would find to talk about.
Not politics, for sure. None of them seemed to be interested in Sobchak’s future activities at opposition protests. All their best wishes centered on her personal life. Blonde contestant Olga wished her “women’s happiness,” which in Russian means finding a man and having children, in case you had not guessed. And as she walked through the gates, someone shouted: “We’ll come to your wedding!”
The makers aired a montage of Sobchak’s moments on the show — wearing a mink coat, doing yoga, putting on a little crown. Her previous image, all blond highlights and orange makeup, was strikingly different from her more relaxed look now.
When Dom-2 started in 2004, Sobchak caught a huge amount of flack for presenting a show with open sexual content. Dom-2 became shorthand for everything that was wrong with society for Duma deputies who don’t catch much pop culture.
At the time, Sobchak seemed to revel in being identified with the trashy but very popular show and her public profile leapt, allowing her to make lucrative personal appearances as well as putting out style guides and a “How to Marry a Millionaire” perfume. But it hardly sits comfortably with her recent activities at opposition sit-ins and attempts to bring political debate to television, first on an MTV show that was pulled and now on her own shows on Internet channels Dozhd TV and Snob.ru.
Sobchak has barely been on the show for a long time now, with co-presenters Olga Buzova and Ksenia Borodina handling the daily grind of campfires and emoting.
Sobchak acknowledged her perfunctory appearances as she paid her farewells. “I ask your forgiveness if sometimes I was inattentive. I am now very sorry that I would come here and leave very quickly because I had other stuff to do,” she said.
Sobchak has said that it was her decision to leave the show, although the makers have not seemed overly devastated and announced they will not be replacing her. She said that she needed to “go further.”
That’s understandable, but she is walking away from high earnings as a presenter on the show, while her television career looks in doubt due to the channels’ fears of any subversive activities. Her MTV Russia talk show was pulled after the first episode pitted opposition against Kremlin supporters and she lost a long-term gig presenting MuzTV’s music awards when the posters had already been printed. The reason seemed to be her sally at a film awards ceremony shown on Channel One when she broke from the script to ask well-loved actress Chulpan Khamatova why she appeared in a campaign video for Vladimir Putin.

TITLE: THE DISH: Arcobaleno
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Taste the rainbow</b>
The city’s numerous five-star hotels, despite their best efforts, do not really attract a keen following among local residents. They may offer great views, haute cuisine and excellent service, but they are never exactly buzzing with diners. There is one reason for this: Their formidable prices. While people might be prepared to splash out on a medieval banquet-like Sunday brunch or book a table for a special occasion one evening, hotel restaurants in St. Petersburg are just not the kind of places most people pop into for a bite to eat.
This is a niche that the new five-star Domina Prestige Hotel, which opened back in March, is making a whole-hearted attempt to occupy. The hotel’s Italian-focused fusion restaurant, Arcobaleno, offers three business lunches from noon to 3 p.m. at astoundingly reasonable prices: 400 rubles ($7.90) for two courses, 500 rubles ($9.85) for three courses and 700 rubles ($13.80) for four courses — including tea or coffee and a complimentary bread basket.
Like many hotel restaurants, it has its own entrance as well as being accessible from inside the hotel. However, neither the hotel’s narrow (yet wheelchair-friendly) main entrance on the Moika, nor the restaurant’s separate entrance from Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa are overtly visible from the street, which may partly explain why the restaurant was deserted during a recent visit. 
The other most overt way in which Domina Prestige is setting itself apart from the plethora of other upscale hotels in the city is with its bold young vibe. It seems the hotel’s management wisely accepted that the five-star hotel scene here is dominated by palatial interiors and classical motifs (with the obvious exception of the year-old W hotel, with its internal lexicon of semi-intelligible names and slogans), and decided to venture into less well-trodden territory. 
Domina’s interior is therefore resolutely fresh and modern, despite the classical fa&#231;ade of the hotel building, and its Arcobaleno restaurant is no exception. The name (Arcobaleno means “rainbow” in Italian) is not taken lightly: Orange curtains, red tables and chairs, turquoise, blue, purple and pink walls may not make the most harmonious interior, but they certainly make a statement and create an atmosphere that is funky, if slightly reminiscent of a Lego house.
For a five-star hotel restaurant, prices seemed suspiciously good value, and despite the assurances of our extremely pleasant waiter, disappointment seemed a distinct possibility. Arcobaleno’s chef has worked abroad, but the first starter left no doubts as to his background: Only a Russian (or possibly a Ukrainian) chef could have added so much dill to the goat cheese and beetroot salad that it was the second most plentiful ingredient, after the beetroot. This, presumably, is what is meant by fusion. Apart from the onslaught of dill, which was at least left in large enough sprigs to be easily removable, the dish was a success, with firm mushrooms and juicy beets making a winning contrast with the soft goat’s cheese.
The other starter, an assortment of various cured meats served with several kinds of lettuce as well as boiled new potatoes and drizzled with aromatic olive oil, was an impressive appetizer, and fortunately dill-free.
Shoulder of lamb was a highlight of the meal, with the meat cooked to perfection, and complemented by crunchy carrots, tangy roasted tomatoes and root vegetables rarely found on local menus, such as rutabaga. 
The other entr&#233;e, gnocchi, was also served with rutabaga, and in a mercifully small portion, considering how heavy the dumplings were. 
The chef was back on form with the desserts, however: Pear strudel was satisfyingly crunchy and served with a generous egg-shaped dollop of ice cream. The cheesecake had been peppered in almonds almost as much as the salad had been doused in dill, which again might not be to everyone’s taste, but the cheesecake itself was otherwise good.
It’s unclear how much longer Arcobaleno will continue to offer three-course lunches for just 500 rubles, so those wishing to take advantage of this offer would be well advised to head down there for a bit of Italian fusion pronto.

TITLE: Adoption Pact Leaves U.S. Parents Excited, Wary
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIANAPOLIS — When they adopted their son from a Russian orphanage in 2007, veterinarian Dan Genatiempo and his wife, Nancy, endured a year filled with red tape, tens of thousands of dollars in travel costs and months of anxious waiting.
The suburban Indianapolis couple recently began the process of adopting a Russian sister for their now 6-year-old son, Max. But they aren’t overly optimistic that their second adoption will be any easier, despite the Russian parliament’s approval of a long-awaited agreement to simplify adoptions by Americans.
“I think it’s going to be a beneficial thing, but as far as changing the process real drastically, I honestly don’t expect it to,” Dan Genatiempo said.
The adoption climate between the two nations soured in April 2010, when a Tennessee woman put her 7-year-old son alone on a plane with a one-way ticket back to Russia. She said the boy had emotional problems and claimed she had been misled by a Russian orphanage about his condition.
Russian officials responded by threatening to halt all adoptions by Americans.
Adoption agencies and prospective parents hope the agreement ratified last week will ease tensions between the two countries over the abuse and deaths of Russian children adopted by U.S. parents. Russian officials say at least 17 adopted children have died at the hands of their American parents.
Opportunities for international adoptions have declined dramatically in recent years as countries such as China have tightened restrictions and begun promoting domestic adoption and foster care to keep more children in their native countries.
Russia was the third-most popular country for international adoptions in 2011. Many American families turn to international adoption after being frustrated by a shortage of healthy U.S. infants or long wait times for private adoptions. 
Although a shutdown of American adoptions of Russian children never happened, the Russian adoption process has slowed dramatically over the past several years. The State Department says 970 Russian children were adopted by U.S. families in 2011, down from 5,862 in 2004.
Part of that decline can be attributed to Russia’s recent embrace of a foster system allowing Russian families to care for children in exchange for compensation, said Inna Pecar, president and CEO of KidsFirst International Adoption Inc., an Indianapolis-based adoption agency. The high cost of traveling — Russia now requires adoptive parents to make three trips to Russia — also has been a factor, Pecar said.
In the wake of the incident involving the Tennessee woman, about a quarter of the nearly 25 American agencies that handle Russian adoptions stopped taking applications from parents seeking Russian children, said Tom DiFilipo, president and CEO of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services.
The 2010 episode rattled adoption agencies, the Russian government and adoptive parents, he said.
“It was an isolated incident, but it was definitely something that shook the adoption community,” DiFilipo said.
He hopes those agencies will resume taking applications now that an agreement between the two nations is nearly in place.
The agreement, which advocates said still needs the signature of President Vladimir Putin, stipulates that Russia will only work with U.S.-accredited adoption agencies — those recommended by the State Department. In addition, it establishes a central adoption authority in Russia, according to Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, a nonprofit adoption advocacy group based in Alexandria, Virginia.
Both he and DiFilipo acknowledged that it would take time for Russia to implement the new regulations, but they said the rules create a solid framework for international adoptions.
“It’s a huge step in the right direction,” Johnson said.
Jennifer Doane, clinical manager of the Russian adoption program at Wide Horizons for Children in Waltham, Massachusetts, said people are pleased the agreement has been ratified and hope “it will make adoptions go more smoothly and quickly.”
But Lowell Highby of Nevada, Iowa, doubts that will happen.
Highby adopted a 10-year-old boy from Russia in January 2010 but said his attempt to adopt a girl in July 2011 ended in heartbreak. When he traveled to Russia on the first of the required trips, he said it quickly became apparent that there was political pressure to avoid sending children home with Americans.
“They were going after the orphanage director and social services agency about not doing enough to find a home for her in Russia,” Highby said.
The Russian government is focusing on the small percentage of adoptions that don’t turn out well instead of the thousands that do, Highby said. Lost in the mix are children in orphanages longing for a home, he said.
Keith Wallace, CEO of the Evansville, Indiana-based Families Thru International Adoption, said he isn’t rushing to resume accepting applications for his agency’s Russian adoption program. He said his organization first wants to see how the adoption system is implemented before accepting new applications.
“In my opinion, it’s not a good decision to sit and think everything’s fixed just because the law has been passed,” he said. “The implementation of laws is different than the passage of laws.

TITLE: Reformer Stolypin Held Up as Model for Putin
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As Russia marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Interior Minister and Third Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, Pyotr Stolypin, country experts are scrutinizing his economic legacy. They have suggested that President Vladimir Putin must emulate Stolypin if he wants to successfully conduct economic reforms.
At a special roundtable at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, economists and politicians drew parallels between the two leaders: The political environment in Stolypin’s Russia and Putin’s Russia and the urge for reform.
As some experts pointed out, the country’s creative class is demanding the Kremlin’s attention, and the president’s ability to channel the protesters’ anger is being put to a difficult test.
“Putin needs to do the same for today’s misplaced creative class that Stolypin did for the peasantry: Stolypin’s resettlement program involved granting land to immigrants across the country,” said Sergei Karaganov, dean of the Moscow-based School of World Economics and Intellectual Affairs. “Because the creative class is feeling tangibly isolated in Russia — which is resulting in mass emigration on the one hand, and mass protests on the other — the task is to integrate them successfully and give them a sense of purpose.”
Putin and Medvedev have both attempted to increase the camp of loyal people outside of the working class. Putin has put in efforts with teachers, doctors and army officers, who have all seen a drastic increase in their salaries, while Medvedev is nurturing ambitious plans for the Skolkovo innovation center, which targets Russian scientists. These efforts are yet to pay off.
“Today’s Russian leaders have so far failed to unleash Russia’s intellectual potential in the way Stolypin unleashed economic potential in Russia by granting private landownership to the peasantry,” Karaganov said. “A possible solution would be to motivate the members of the country’s intellectual elite to relocate and work in far-flung places like Siberia and the Far East.”
It seems that Putin openly sees Stolypin, whom he has repeatedly praised for his stamina, wisdom, the ability to achieve transformation through gradual moves and patriotism, as a role model.
The ill-fated minister, who was assassinated in Kiev in 1911 at the peak of his career, possessed another quality instrumental to both his success as well as his downfall — loyalty to the throne. Many believe it is this quality that appeals to Putin, who has made loyalty a crucial requirement for entering state service in modern Russia. Stolypin was ready to carry out his reforms only in tsarist Russia. He was not prepared to consider a move away from the monarchy as he viewed it as a betrayal of the tsar, who had allowed him to manage the country. Stolypin’s inability to think beyond the existing economic model effectively made his departure inevitable.
Was Stolypin a successful politician? For Vadimir Mau, rector of the government’s Academy of National Economy and State Service, this question does not really have a coherent answer.
“Every new generation of Russians will perhaps offer its own view and its own judgment on the activities of people like Pyotr Stolypin or [post-Soviet Union collapse prime minister] Yegor Gaidar,” Mau said. 
“According to the logic of a bureaucrat, Stolypin was indeed successful, because out of all of the prime ministers of the Russian Empire, he became the most durable in the job. He halted revolution and launched deep reforms. Yet at the same time he fell victim to an assassin and failed to complete the reforms he had started. Most importantly, he never achieved his most ambitious goal, which was to turn Russia into a great country within the space of 20 years without going to war.”
What Putin apparently also likes about Stolypin is that the minister, who carried out his reforms during a systematic crisis and dealt with issues from land management to terrorism, never indulged in wordy self-justifications and no task appeared to humble him.
Responsibility was key to Stolypin’s rule. The minister possessed both the courage to adopt unpopular measures — he introduced courts-martial as a means of combating revolutionary terror — and the sense of responsibility to be held accountable for them. The chilling nickname of “the hangman” was perhaps the mildest of the consequences. It is no coincidence that Putin made responsibility the topic of his speech at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.
However, Pavel Pozhigailo, president of the Stolypin Foundation in Moscow, said that the key to the success of Stolypin’s reforms was that the minister always addressed a personality, rather than the nation as a whole. 
“Stolypin’s reforms were smartly conceived so that they created opportunities for different people to find their place in society and opportunities that allowed them to make money and build careers,” he said. 
“When he took office, 84 out of 88 Russian provinces were engulfed in riots. Stolypin helped these people to find a way out of their misery by opening up their creative potential and it worked.”
It is this very quality, however, that many believe Putin is lacking. He is often criticized for ignoring not only individuals, but whole segments of Russian society, namely the more radical wings of political opposition and non-governmental organizations that challenge the authorities.
“Perhaps the most important lesson that we can obtain from Stolypin’s life is that a reformer must not allow himself to become hostage to the interests of a certain political party, or to be identified with a particular group representing specific interests,” Mau said. “Rather, a reformer should stand above parties and factions, pursuing strategic goals with as much determination as they can muster.”

TITLE: Syria Unleashes Helicopters in Damascus
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT, Syria — Syrian government forces backed by helicopter gunships battled rebels in heavy clashes with rebels in Damascus, a clear escalation in the most serious fighting in the capital since the country’s conflict began last year, activists said.
The fierce clashes, which have raged over the past three days in at least four neighborhoods across the city, were the latest sign that Syria’s civil war is moving ever closer to the heart of President Bashar Assad’s regime. Government forces have already thrown tanks and armored personnel carriers into the battle in the capital, but the use of airpower reflected the intensity and seriousness of the fighting.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Damascus-based activist Maath al-Shami said the clashes Tuesday were concentrated in Kfar Souseh, Nahr Aisha, Midan and Qadam.
“I can hear cracks of gunfire and some explosions from the direction of Midan,” al-Shami told The Associated Press via Skype. “Black smoke is billowing from the area.”
Syria’s state-run news agency said Tuesday that troops were still chasing “terrorist elements” who had fled from Nahr Aisha to Midan. Syria refers to its opponents as terrorists.
An amateur video showed two armored personnel carriers with heavy machineguns on top along with troops who were said to be advancing in an empty road toward Midan on Tuesday.
Activists have dubbed the fighting in the capital the “Damascus Volcano” in what appears to be an attempt to bring the fighting into Syria’s seat of power.
The clashes are the most sustained and widespread in the capital since the start of the uprising against Assad in March last year and a crackdown that activists say has claimed the lives of more than 17,000 people. In the past, clashes happened at night in the capital. Now, the fighting rages during the day.
Damascus — and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo — are both home to elites who have benefited from close ties to Assad’s regime, as well as merchant classes and minority groups who worry their status will suffer if Assad falls.
As the violence has spiraled out of control, diplomatic efforts to halt the bloodshed have faltered, with world powers still deeply divided over who is responsible and how to stop the fighting. The U.S. and many Western nations have called on Assad to leave power, while Russia, China and Iran have stood by the regime.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon was headed to China on Tuesday as part of a diplomatic push to get Russia and China to back a tougher response to attacks by Assad’s regime. Ban’s trip comes ahead of a UN Security Council vote this week. A Western-backed resolution calls for sanctions and invokes Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
A Chapter 7 resolution authorizes actions that can ultimately include the use of military force, which U.S. administration and European officials — for now — are playing down as a possibility.
Ban was to hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, with Syria expected to top the agenda.
UN special envoy Kofi Annan, meanwhile, was to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss the conflict.

TITLE: Olympic Organizers Put Spin On Hitches
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Lots of Olympics security guards didn’t show up for work — and two buses full of Olympians got temporarily lost on London’s winding streets — but the chief of the London Games says preparations are going just fine, thank you.
Organizers scrambled Tuesday to put the best face on an unfolding security debacle afflicting the games that start in just 10 days.
“Let’s put this in proportion,” games chairman Sebastian Coe told reporters. “This has not, nor will it, impact on the safety and security of these games — that of course is our No. 1 priority.”
Yet his efforts were undercut Tuesday in Parliament, where the chief executive of the G4S security group acknowledged that his company’s failure to recruit enough Olympic staff had embarrassed the entire nation. Some 3,500 more British troops — including some just back from Afghanistan — had to be called in on short notice to fill the gap.
The head of G4S, Nick Buckles, gave a groveling mea culpa as he was being quizzed by angry British lawmakers in testimony that was broadcast live.
“It’s a humiliating shambles for the country, isn’t it?” asked Labour lawmaker David Winnick.
“I cannot disagree with you,” Buckles said.
Still, Buckles was hard-pressed to explain why his company had failed to inform officials until only two weeks before the start of the 2012 Olympic Games that its recruitment efforts had failed.
But the company will pay for its mistakes. G4S says it expects to lose between 35 million pounds and 50 million pounds ($54 million-$78 million) on the contract, which is equal to about 12 percent of its annual profit.
Making things worse, a couple of buses carrying Olympic athletes from Heathrow took a wrong turn Monday — the big day when athletes started arriving for the games, a showcase moment if there ever was one. And the special “games lane” that they traveled on forced other London drivers into a miles-long traffic jam.
The lost buses — one for Americans, another for Australians — touched a nerve. From the very start of the project, transport organizers have feared repeating the transport woes of the 1996 Atlanta Games, where one of the biggest problems was having bus drivers brought in from outside the city who didn’t know their way around.
That allegedly happened Monday in London, even though Heathrow sailed through its heaviest passenger day ever with short immigration lines and plenty of help for Olympic travelers.
“First day. First arrivals. It’s going to happen,” said Jayne Pearce, head of press operations.
Coe urged optimism, despite a Twitter storm that erupted when an American hurdler took to the social networking site to express his frustration for a four-hour bus ride from Heathrow to the Athletes Village.
“Apart from a mis-turning and a couple of tweets we’re in pretty good shape,” Coe quipped.

TITLE: Afghan Sentenced to Be Hanged For Killing Four French Soldiers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan soldier has been sentenced to death for killing four French troops earlier this year in eastern Afghanistan — one of the deadliest in a rising number of attacks in which Afghan forces have turned their guns on their foreign partners, a Kabul official said Tuesday.
Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said a military court in the country’s capital on Monday ordered the soldier, Abdul Sabor, to be hanged. The soldier can appeal the sentence to higher courts, Azimi said. It was not clear when the soldier was convicted of the crime and Azimi did not have any other details about his case.
The four French soldiers were killed on Jan. 20 in Tagab district of Kapisa province. Just a month earlier, on Dec. 29, 2011, another Afghan soldier killed two members of the French Foreign Legion.
The French casualties prompted France’s new President Francois Hollande to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan earlier than planned. The decision to put France on a fast-track exit timetable sparked consternation among some members of the U.S.-led military coalition, which is not ending its combat mission until the end of 2014.
France will pull 2,000 French combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and leave around 1,400 soldiers behind to help with training and logistics.
The death of the French troops was one of the latest cases of the so-called “green-on-blue” attacks in which Afghan soldiers, or insurgents disguised in their uniforms, turn their weapons on coalition forces.
Such attacks have fueled distrust between U.S. and other foreign troops and their Afghan partners. Last year there were a total of 21 ‘green-on-blue’ attacks that killed 35 coalition service members, according to NATO figures. That compares with 11 fatal attacks and 20 deaths the previous year. In 2007 and 2008 there were a combined total of four attacks and four deaths.
Besides targeting foreign forces, insurgents in Afghanistan have stepped up attacks on political and government figures.
On Monday, insurgents twice ambushed the convoy of Nuristan provincial Governor Tamim Nuristani, but he escaped unharmed both times, said provincial spokesman Mohammad Zareen.
The first ambush came as the convoy was traveling to Wama district where the governor was inaugurating a road. After a brief gunbattle, the insurgents pulled back. The convoy was later attacked again when the governor was en route to Parun district. One policeman was killed and two others were wounded in the fight that followed.
Also on Monday, a magnetic bomb attached to the vehicle of the chief of Khan Abad district of Kunar province exploded, killing one policeman and wounding eight civilians, said provincial spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini. The district governor was not in the vehicle when the bomb detonated.

TITLE: Analysts Detect Signs That Kim Will Lead North Korea His Way
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: From Mickey Mouse and a mysterious female companion, to the whiff of economic reform and the surprising ouster of his military mentor, evidence is mounting that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will lead very differently than his secretive father.
Seven months after inheriting the country from Kim Jong Il, the 20-something leader suddenly began appearing in public with a beautiful young woman. Dressed in a chic suit with a modern cut, her hair stylishly cropped, she carried herself with the poise of a first lady as she sat by his side for an unforgettable performance: Mickey Mouse grooving with women in little black dresses jamming on electric violins.
A few days later, video showed her flirting with Kim Jong Un during a visit to a kindergarten. She quickly became the subject of fervent speculation: Is she his wife? Girlfriend? A friend?
But the scent of change extends well beyond Mickey and miniskirts: A change of the guard in North Korea’s powerful military is taking place, as Kim retires his father’s confidantes and elevates a younger generation of generals. He promoted a group of younger economists to key party positions, part of a stated push to resuscitate an economy that has lagged far behind the rest of Asia.
Bureaucrats have been dispatched to rein in new foreign investment. A rare admission of failure came when Pyongyang’s vaunted rocket failed to make it into orbit. Kim Jong Un has delivered a pair of public speeches when his father avoided such displays.
To the outside world, these changes may seem trivial. In North Korea, they represent a seismic shift. For decades in this country built on a philosophy of “juche,” or self-reliance, shutting out the West was a state policy. So was shielding the private lives of its leaders from the masses.
Long at odds with the U.S. and its allies over a nuclear program that Pyongyang refuses to abandon, North Korea has struggled to feed its population. A recent UN report said two-thirds of its 24 million people face chronic food shortages, and access to clean water, regular electricity and medicine is still remote for most of those living in the underdeveloped countryside. A U.S.-based aid group also says scores of prisoners remain held in Soviet-style penal camps.
Still, there’s a glimmer of hope in the baby steps that North Korea is taking, said John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei University in South Korea, who has visited Pyongyang several times in recent years.
“That’s the subtle kind of way Deng Xiaoping signaled a new direction in the 1970s in China,” he said. “It doesn’t start with someone saying, ‘OK, we’re going to abandon communism.’ It starts in smaller ways like this.”
But it’s too soon to talk about economic and political “reform,” said Daniel Pinkston, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. North Korea needs to begin making real, lasting structural changes before that word can be used to describe the movement.