SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #628 (0), Tuesday, December 12, 2000
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Chernobyl Set To Leave Past Behind
AUTHOR: By Pavel Polityuk
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CHERNOBYL, Ukraine - This week, at midday on Friday, a duty engineer at Chernobyl nuclear power station will press an inconspicuous button and begin the shutdown of the plant that caused the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.


That is if the station is operating - it has been forced to shut down twice in the last three weeks due to collapsed power lines and leaking steam, highlighting the jitters Chernobyl causes around the world.

After years of talks between Ukraine and Western countries, President Leonid Kuchma promised in June to close Chernobyl on Dec. 15, pledging never to turn it back on.

The No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl exploded on April 26, 1986, following a controversial experiment when staff temporarily cut off safety systems during a test of the unit's capacity.

Shortly afterwards, a series of powerful blasts caused by overheated steam inside the reactor completely ruined the unit, sending a huge, highly radioactive cloud across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and much of Europe.

Thirty firemen were killed in the immediate aftermath, but thousands of deaths have since been linked to radiation from the station.

Cases of thyroid cancer and other diseases have soared.

Fourteen years on, the last functioning reactor, No. 3, has been churning out 5 percent of the country's energy, but the plant has been dogged by minor accidents.

The process of decommissioning the plant is a long one - it will not be until 2008 that the last fuel rods can be removed and it will take a much longer time for radiation to die down.

Chernobyl operated RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors, the second major type of reactor built in the Soviet Union, designed in the 1960s to 1970s. Fourteen RBMK reactors are currently in service, practically all of them in Russia.

"In line with our rules, the procedure of shutting down the reactor will take about two hours," said Yury Neretin, Chernobyl's chief engineer.

"We have to transfer the reactor into a so-called sub-critical condition, when a nuclear reaction becomes impossible."

An engineer will give the order and a technician will press a button marked BAZ, short for "rapid emergency defense."

This button forces slow moving 211-cadmium-boron and boron-carbide control rods into the reactor to catch neutrons emitted by the nuclear fuel - the effect is slowly to stop the chain reaction happening inside.

One hour after the BAZ button has been pressed, an operator will press another button marked AZ-5 - "emergency defense number five."

This rapidly drops all control rods to the bottom of the reactor's active area - a process which takes between 1.8 and 2.5 seconds and suspends the reaction completely.

At the same time, operators have to cut the capacity of two turbo-generators and, later, to cut off the unit from the national power grid.

"It will be an ordinary stop procedure and we will do everything possible to maintain nuclear safety during the process," said Vadym Hryshchenko, deputy head of Ukraine's atomic energy regulator.

"But it will be a very morbid moment - like burying a near relation or friend," said Volodymyr Korovkin, director of another nuclear power station, at Rivne in western Ukraine.

"I don't understand why we had to rebuild the station after its explosion in 1986, only to shut it down in 2000," he added.

Chernobyl officials say that the No. 3 reactor could be safely operated until 2011, because a lot of work has been done to modernize it since 1986.

The thousands of people who work at the plant are also worried as it means their livelihoods are about to disappear.

"The station is good and reliable. It has been working at 82 percent of its designed capacity. This is higher than the world average and at the level of Japanese reactors," Neretin said.

But Western experts argue that RBMK units are affected by generic defects related to their design, their poor quality of construction and their operating safety.

A report by the Institute for Nuclear Protection and Safety, published several years ago, said: "It is the whole RBMK reactor system that raises very serious safety problems."

Nuclear experts say the emergency safety systems of the Soviet RBMK-type reactor operating at Chernobyl and a handful of other stations in Lithuania and Russia are not as reliable and lack multiple back-up systems.

In 1999, Chernobyl spent more than nine months off-line for repairs to pipelines in its cooling system. Thousands of faults were detected in welding, and 260 similar welding faults had already been spotted in 1997.

Experts say that besides welding faults, RBMK reactors have some irresolvable technical problems, especially in their safety systems.

TITLE: Scientists Develop New Laser Weapon
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Those who thought that Luke Skywalker's lightsaber was a thing of the distant future, think again: St. Petersburg scientists have created a gadget that a Jedi knight would not be ashamed to wield.


Stream, or Potok in Russian, is a new portable laser weapon developed by the St. Petersburg Institute of Special Materials. Unlike all other laser weapons already known to the world, Stream can temporarily stun a human being without causing irreversible blindness or death.

"I guess you could call it a true technological breakthrough," said Arkady Khalyavitsky, one of the three inventors of Stream. "The most important thing is that the laser is non-lethal. To our knowledge, this is the first thing of this kind to be made in Russia or the world."

Weighing just 300 grams and around 15 centimeters long, Stream looks more like a pocket flashlight than a crowd-control weapon. In fact, it looks so ordinary that, at first glance, one would think it was just one of those laser pointers you can easily find down at Sennaya Ploshchad.

The laser is not, however, intended for mass consumption. Its market is rather the police and the security forces, for potential uses in riot situations or anti-terrorist operations. In theory, it should take less than a second to stun one's target, and is effective at distances of several hundred meters. The laser is weaker in broad daylight, but its potency increases greatly in cloudy conditions and is at its maximum at night.

Stream could also be employed by the military, to create what its inventors call a "light screen" that would prevent the enemy from spotting one's location. And since its optical system can change the laser beam from a spot to a dot to a strip of light, it could also be used for signaling on reconnaissance operations.

The idea of developing a non-lethal laser stun weapon was launched about a year ago by Khalyavitsky and fellow scientists Sergei Kulakov and Andrei Mikhailin, who is the director of the Institute of Special Materials.

The institute is a subsidiary of Special Materials Ltd., a private firm manufacturing everything from khaki socks to bullet-proof jackets, to explosion inhibitors for bomb disposal units, as well as handcuffs and stun batons. According to Khalyavitsky, around 1,000 security firms and law enforcement professionals countrywide buy their equipment from Special Materials Ltd.

The International Convention on Conventional Weapons, which was signed in Vienna in 1995, prohibited laser weapons that lead to blindness or death.

The convention has not, however, stopped some countries such as China from developing such weapons. And in the United States, Human Rights Watch has expressed concern that blinding lasers are on offer to law-enforcement bodies and potentially for commercial sale.

In one notable case, a California-based company called Light Solutions reportedly developed a laser that was intended to defend the White House and other government buildings in Washington from terrorist attack.

But Stream's country of origin should perhaps not come as a surprise. A July 1996 U.S. intelligence report, entitled Worldwide Laser Capabilities - obtained by Human Rights Watch under the Freedom of Information Act - even stated that "Russia leads the world in the development of laser blinding weapons."

According to an article that will appear later this December in "Zashchita i Bezopasnost" (Protection and Security), a quarterly published by Special Materials Ltd., Stream is designed to knock out an assailant's sight for a short period of time - up to an hour - without serious health consequences. 

With previous laser weapons, it was found that there was no middle ground between causing blindness or death with a laser at full power, and having almost no effect when the laser was weak.

By experimenting with the beam's intensity, and length of exposure to it, the Russians have apparently hit upon the solution.

"[Stream] is still experimental," said Andrei Yevdokimov, deputy general director of Special Materials Ltd. "But it already exists, you can see it, touch it." 

Khalyavitsky demonstrated by lighting a papirosa cigarette and blowing smoke across the laser's path to make it visible. "Don't let this shine in your eyes," he said. "You won't be driving for the rest of the day."

Yevdokimov said that Stream was still undergoing medical trials, before passing on to military testing before Russia's security service and army officials give their verdict. If and when governmental approval is given, the Interior Ministry and other security agencies will be free to order the lasers, said Yevdokimov, who added that special forces units would probably start using it before it enters police service.

Mikhailin would not say when Stream might be available, but he did disclose that negotiations were already underway with the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and some foreign firms, which he did not name.

Mikhailin said that one Stream laser could cost from $100 to $1,000 or more, depending on the power required. 

Khalyavitsky wasn't sure if private customers would be able to buy Stream. "As with any new weapon, Stream will require special legislation," he said.

TITLE: Tsar's Throne Returned to City
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian imperial throne, upholstered in shimmering new red velvet, was restored to its original home in St. Petersburg's Winter Palace on Saturday, more than 80 years after it was trashed by communists during the bloody demise of the empire it represented. 


The St. George throne room was unveiled in a pomp-filled ceremony in the ornate palace on the Neva River, home to the world-famous Hermitage Museum. The museum paid for the painstaking six-year restoration. 

The hall's centerpiece is the gold throne, topped with a double-headed eagle, the tsarist state emblem. Together with a footstool, it stands on an imposing platform covered in velvet and topped with a canopy sporting huge ostrich feathers. 

The ceremony came amid heated national debate over the symbols of today's Russia and the legacy of the Soviet regime. Russia's lower house of parliament on Friday voted to approve the Soviet anthem as Russia's national hymn - but to keep the tsarist eagle as the state emblem and keep the pre-communist tricolor flag. 

President Vladimir Putin backed the bill, saying it would unite a society still deeply divided about decades of Communist rule. 

St. Petersburg Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev suggested Saturday that the restored throne room, like the parliament vote, was part of Russia's effort to celebrate the positive aspects of its troubled history. 

The throne room was designed in the late 18th century by Jacomo Quarengi, architect of many of Russia's most famous imperial monuments. The Bolsheviks stripped the room during the Russian Revolution in 1917, and removed the double-headed eagle from the throne, Russia's RTR television reported. 

The monarch himself, Tsar Nicholas II, was exiled to Siberia with his family and later executed in one of the most brutal, symbolic events of the turbulent period. The family's remains were found in 1991 and reburied in St. Petersburg in 1998.

TITLE: Supreme Court To Seal Election
AUTHOR: By James Vicini
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The historic case of George W. Bush versus Al Gore came before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday as the justices struggled over how to count Florida ballots that could decide who will be the next president.


In a showdown before the highest court in the land, the justices repeatedly questioned lawyers for both sides on exactly what should count as a legitimate vote for president in the disputed Florida election, where 25 pivotal Electoral College votes are at stake.

The justices retired at the end of the 90-minute session without issuing an immediate ruling on whether more hand counting of votes in Florida will resume, which Democratic Vice President Gore needs to keep alive his White House hopes.

Currently, Florida has certified Republican Texas Gov. Bush as the winner. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case could come at any time now that the arguments have been completed.

After five weeks of legal battles, one of the closest presidential elections in history could turn on the nine votes of the high court, where justices appear to be as deeply divided on the issue as the rest of the country.

Sounding exasperated, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a key swing vote on the court that has been split between conservative and liberal factions, questioned the standard used for Florida's recounts, which varies from county to county.

"Why isn't the standard the one the voters were instructed to follow, for goodness sakes? Why don't we go to that standard?" she asked Gore's lawyer, David Boies.

Boies argued that the standard adopted was uniform, fair and involved discerning the clear intent of the voter.

O'Connor asked whether the Florida Supreme Court ruling last Friday ordering the recounts usurped the authority of the Florida Legislature to make law.

"Isn't there a big red flag up there? Watch out. That's, I think, a concern that we have," O'Connor said, adding that she found it "troublesome." As a former state legislator in Arizona and former state court judge, O'Connor is known as a strong advocate of states' rights.

The Bush legal team went into Monday's arguments with a victory of sorts, after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Saturday by a 5-4 vote to halt the recounts in Florida until the nation's high court issues a decision.

Justice Stephen Breyer, one of only two justices named by a Democratic president, asked Bush attorney Theodore Olson what would be a fair standard to use to count the votes.

Olson replied that at a minimum "penetration of the ballot card" should be required.

When Boies was asked what standard he would use, he replied the standard in effect in Texas, Bush's home state, which also relies on the intent of the voter.

In the first question just minutes into Olson's argument, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked, "Where's the federal question here?" Without a federal question, the Supreme Court should not be involved in the dispute.

"I have the same problem Justice Kennedy does," O'Connor said.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist questioned whether the case might be appealed back to the Florida Supreme Court and then the U.S. Supreme Court after the recounts had ended. Justice Antonin Scalia said the vote count would have to reviewed by a Florida judge.

Boies said the counting of 60,000 ballots can be completed quickly. "We believe it could be done in the time available," he said.

Although other legal and political moves were still going on in Florida, with state lawmakers working on plans to pick the Legislature's own slate of electors for Bush and other secondary cases still pending, both campaigns said the Supreme Court ruling probably would decide the election.

Both Bush and Gore need Florida's 25 electoral votes to put them over the 270 mark to win the presidency. The deadline for selecting the electors is Tuesday, and the Electoral College meets on Dec. 18 to select the president.

For Bush, Olson argued that the state court engaged in a "wholesale revision of Florida election law" after the Nov. 7 election, violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

Boies replied that the Florida court simply was trying to act fairly and interpret state law to make sure that every vote counts.

After the arguments, Boies described it as a "45-minute interrogation."

Neither Gore nor Bush attended the session, although three of Gore's children were present. William Daley and Don Evans, the top campaign officials for Gore and Bush, respectively, came to hear the arguments.

TITLE: President Approves TV, Radio Overhaul
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin gave the green light Friday to a sweeping restructuring of the nation's vast state-owned television and radio network that could result in its partial privatization.


Putin gave his stamp of approval to the proposal by the press and communications ministries to revamp the All-Russian State Television and Radio Co., or VGTRK, and ordered the ministries to draft the documents needed to implement it.

"We decided on the issue of the transmission network: the creation of a joint-stock company, equal conditions for all [market players] and the creation of a competitive environment," Press Minister Mik hail Lesin said in a telephone interview after meeting with the president.

Lesin said he and Communications Minister Leo nid Reiman, who attended the meeting, will draw up the paperwork requested by Putin and present them to the Cabinet at the end of January. 

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov also took part in Friday's talks.

VGTRK is the massive and rapidly aging network that owns most of Russia's transmission towers as well as broadcasters such as the RTR and Kultura television channels, Radio Rossii and regional television and radio companies.

The company answers to the Press Ministry, which also licenses broadcasters. The Communications Ministry owns the Ostankino tower in Moscow and licenses transmitters.

Lesin said VGTRK will be split into two companies, one controlling the transmission facilities and the other the broadcasting studios. 

A 49 percent stake in the company overseeing the transmission network could later be sold to private investors who would fund desperately needed upgrades, Lesin said. 

The network consists of about 100 regional centers with 15,000 outdated transmitters and satellite uplink stations. 

A presidential decree would have to be made allowing such a sell-off. The Kremlin banned the privatization of transmission assets in 1998, effectively preventing them from raising funds from loans or direct investment.

"In 1998, there were huge expectations of growing advertising budgets and elections were looming," said Lesin, who served as a deputy head of VGTRK at the time. "Then, it was important to consolidate state media property. Now the situation is different."

Lesin said the Communications Ministry will grant licenses to companies interested in setting up transmission facilities in a bid to provide a level playing field for competition in an industry that has been mostly a state monopoly.

The value of the proposed transmission giant has not yet been determined, Lesin said, adding that $350 million to $400 million in investment is needed to replace outdated equipment.

The Communications Ministry has been at loggerheads with the Press Ministry over control of transmission facilities for months. 

Putin moved the Ostankino television tower in Moscow from the Press Ministry to the Communications Ministry after a blaze broke out in the tower last August.

The Communications Ministry refused Friday to comment on the meeting with Putin.

But Lesin said the ministries would work together and present a mutually agreed upon VGTRK program to Putin.

What will happen with the broadcast companies was less clear Friday.

Lesin reiterated an earlier statement that RTR will not be privatized. 

But sources in the Press Ministry said that a restructuring of government-owned broadcasters is also looming. Companies like RTR and Radio Mayak, which could be profitable, are likely to continue to receive government subsidies to send their broadcasts to remote areas. But other money losers such as Kultura and Radio Rossii may get a legal status akin to theaters and museums in which they are directly financed by the state budget. 

The prospects of finding private investors for any privatization remains unclear. The transmitting network is owed millions of dollars by national broadcasters like No. 1 station ORT and RTR. At the same time, it owes millions of dollars for electricity.

TITLE: U.S. Citizen in Tax Feud Finally Goes Home
AUTHOR: By Anna Badkhen
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - U.S. citizen Al Decie finally boarded a train to Riga on Friday night after being stuck in Russia for five months without a visa amid a tax dispute.


Decie, 32, has worked for a U.S.-based nonprofit organization in Krasnoyarsk in western Siberia since 1996, but his visa was abruptly seized last July by local authorities who said he had not paid taxes.

Decie called the seizure illegal and took Krasnoyarsk's visa and registration department, or OVIR, to court Nov. 9.

Last week, the Krasnoyarsk OVIR returned to Decie his visa on the condition that he drop the lawsuit.

"Glad it's over. It still hasn't hit me 100 percent true, but my life is not on hold again," Decie said in an interview.

When the OVIR seized his visa in July, they said Decie would have to pay his taxes to get it back. Decie, like hundreds of other Americans here, had never paid Russian taxes because he thought he was enjoying a tax break under an agreement signed by the United States and Russia in 1992. 

The agreement exempts employees of nonprofit organizations that receive U.S. government funding from Russian taxes. However, it was never ratified by the State Duma and therefore has no legal force.

Krasnoyarsk authorities could not be reached for comment Friday.

In an interview last month, Decie said he was willing to pay the taxes, but the authorities never said how much he owed. 

Decie said this week that he still has not been told exactly what amount the authorities think he owes in taxes.

The tax feud is not over yet, and Decie said he would like to visit Russia again.

His lawyer, Aika Dzhakobayeva, will continue handling the tax dispute for him.

But for now he is just looking forward to spending Christmas with his family in Newburyport, Mass. He plans to arrive back in the United States on Wednesday.

TITLE: Despite Kursk, Yeltsin Believes in Putin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Former president Boris Yeltsin chastised Vladimir Putin for responding slowly to the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, but said in an interview published Friday that he still believes he backed the right man to succeed him. 


Yeltsin told the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda that he has been meeting with Putin on a monthly basis to offer advice, which the new president often ignores. The three-page interview was Yeltsin's longest and most thorough since he abruptly resigned last Dec. 31 and the first time he has publicly criticized Putin.

"I believe that the new president should periodically listen to his predecessor," he said. "But I know that Putin will always do it in his own way." 

Yeltsin said he told Putin that he had made a mistake when he failed to immediately interrupt his Black Sea vacation after the Kursk nuclear submarine exploded and sank in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12. 

But Yeltsin defended Putin from allegations that the Kremlin was trying to constrain media freedom. "There is no threat to freedom of speech," he said.

TITLE: Putin Tells Clinton Pope Will Get Pardon
AUTHOR: By Peter Graff
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin gave his assurance to President Bill Clinton that he will pardon convicted American spy Edmond Pope during a telephone conversation the two leaders had Friday, The Associated Press reported. 


The announcment was made on Satuday by Clinton at a White House ceremony, where the designs of his Arkansas Presidental Libary were released, the report said. 

"I welcome President Putin's statement," Clinton said in a statement Saturday. "It will be a great relief to all Americans when Mr. Pope is finally freed and reunited with his family. We want to see him home and safe as soon as possible." 

Putin did not give a specific date for the pardon, but said it could be some time after Dec. 14 because of a regulation that clemency may not be granted until a week after sentencing. 

Putin's pardon followed quick on the heels of a recommendation made by the presidential Pardons Commission that Pope be released and spared the 20-year sentence doled out to him by a Moscow court on Thursday. 

Pardons Commission members spoke out decisively against Pope's conviction - and what they called "spy mania" driving the country's security services - as a relic of the Cold War, out of line with post-Soviet Russia. 

Pope's wife, who has feared her husband could die if his bone cancer returned, was said to be encouraged but would not be completely happy until Pope was free. She was denied an immediate request to see her husband Friday. 

Pardons Commission head Anatoly Pristavkin told reporters that the decision to recommend Pope's pardon had been unanimous. 

"We did not judge the ruling of the court. We made our conclusion on humanitarian grounds," he told reporters invited into the commission's chamber after its discussions. "Pope is a sick man. He is a man who has suffered a great deal. He is a citizen of America who can be united with his family, to see his dying father, and should be freed. I hope that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will heed our words." Other members of the commission - made up of leading writers, clerics and other cultural figures - went further, issuing fierce criticism of the process itself.

Commission member Maria Chudakova said the trial had shown that "the investigative organs in our country still bear the marks of the Soviet system, more so than society in general."

"I watched proceedings on television and I decided that this demonstrates spy mania, which we all know about," she said. "I hope the president understands our decision." 

The decision on whether to issue the pardon is still Putin's to make alone, but he has accepted the commission's advice in the past and indicated before Pope's conviction that he might consider a pardon on health grounds.

Commission members said their recommendation would reach Putin on Friday, but the president could not act on it for seven days, when Pope's sentence comes into effect. 

White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Clinton called Putin and spoke with him for about 10 minutes. 

"[Clinton] urged President Putin to release Edmund Pope on humanitarian grounds," Siewert said. 

Putin said he assured Clinton that Pope would be pardoned and released, but Putin did not specify when he gave that assurance.


(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Ex-Aeroflot Official Is Arrested
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A former top official of state-controlled Aeroflot was arrested Thursday on new charges of large-scale fraud, the Prosecutor General's Office said. 


The arrest of Nikolai Glushkov, the airline's former first deputy general director, was the second blow this week that prosecutors have dealt to companies closely linked to one-time Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky.

After the arrest, Berezovsky said he would revoke a decision to transfer his 49 percent stake in ORT television to a group of trustees, news reports said.

Berezovsky was called for questioning in the Aeroflot case last month, but fled the country, claiming political persecution. In remarks reported by Interfax from Paris, Berezovsky called Glushkov a political prisoner.

Prosecutors accuse Aeroflot executives of funneling $973 million of Aero-flot profits to two Swiss firms founded by Berezovsky, Forus Services and Andava. Berezovsky has denied the accusations.

But last month he said in an interview that he had given "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to support President Vladimir Putin's election campaign, including funds from Forus and Andava, which Berezovsky admitted founding "to help Aeroflot."

Last year, prosecutors charged Berezovsky, Glushkov and Aeroflot executive Alexander Krasnenker. The case against Berezovsky was dropped late last year and then revived in November. 

New charges were also brought against Krasnenker on Thursday.

Glushkov was jailed after coming to the prosecutor's office for questioning. Prosecutors said part of the new evidence had been provided by Swiss investigators visiting Moscow in September. 

A lawyer for Glushkov called the charges unfounded and said he would protest the arrest on the grounds that Glushkov is ill, Interfax reported. 

An investigator who led a raid of ORT offices this week was hospitalized Thursday with high blood pressure. Georgy Tsabia was forced to resign Wednesday after being admonished by superiors for using force during the raid.


(AP, SPT)

TITLE: Mad Cow Disease Said the Cause of Ukraine Cattle Deaths
AUTHOR: By Yuliya Polyakova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - With jitters over mad cow disease sweeping Europe, Russians were jarred this week when the fatal disease appeared to have struck close to home.


Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry announced Thursday that two cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE, had died in the village of Simonov in the Rovno region. 

Ukraine is Russia's main supplier of beef, providing about 70 percent of the market, according to the Russian Meat Union.

An employee with the Rovno regional headquarters of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Col. Viktor Simonyuk, said that it was unclear how the cows became infected. 

"We are currently trying to find a reason for what happened," said Simonyuk.

"We must introduce quarantines, vaccines and screen all cows for the presence of the dangerous disease."

However, other Ukrainian authorities questioned the Emergency Situations Ministry's assessment, saying the region did not even have the resources needed to detect the disease.

"Our Emergency Situations Ministry has got something wrong," said Alexander Kostuk, the head doctor at the Rovno veterinarian department. 

"Two cows did indeed die from a form of rabies, but this was the normal kind, the kind that affects foxes and dogs," said Valentina Titorenko, a deputy head at the Agriculture Ministry. 

While fears about mad cow disease have wreaked havoc on European food markets, there have been no recorded cases of it in Russia. Russian officials said that it is very difficult to find out whether the disease has crossed into Russia.

"It's just that many Russian and Ukrainian vets do not have the means to diagnose BSE," said Viktor Yatskin at the Russian Meat Union.

European experts believe that there is a link between the disease and the use of ground bone in animal feed, of which Russia imported 117,967 tons last year, according to State Customs Committee data.

Russian Meat Union chairman Musheg Mamikonyan said the feed is mostly used for pigs, while cattle are fed hay or pasture grass.

Yatskin disagreed. "In Russia, bone powder has traditionally been used to feed all animals," he said.

TITLE: Carnegie Urges Bold U.S. Policy Moves
AUTHOR: By Carol Giacomo
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON -The next U.S. president should take bold steps to mend Washington's frayed ties with Moscow, including unilateral cuts in nuclear arms and a halt to NATO expansion until 2005, a prominent think tank said. 


With a new U.S. president due to take office and President Vladimir Putin in power only a year, U.S.-Russia relations were at a critical juncture, according to the report called "Agenda for Renewal" issued Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

The report also recommended measures to promote Russia's long-term democratic and economic development and urged that Washington not block oil pipeline routes through Russia and Iran. 

It is one of a number of studies expected to be released in the next couple of months as members of the foreign policy elite on all sides of the political spectrum seek to influence the successor to President Bill Clinton. 

Differences over NATO, Kosovo, missile defense, arms sales to Iran and what the Carnegie report called Putin's "dubious attachment to democratic norms" have caused serious tensions in U.S.-Russia ties. 

But the Carnegie experts argued that the relationship was on fundamentally different and better terms than during the Cold War, and that the new administration should neither continue the status quo nor operate as if Russia was "merely a bundle of security problems." 

The report urged strengthening steps to support Russia's democratic transformation. 

"If Russia was a wobbly democracy under [former] president [Boris] Yeltsin, it is now in the gray zone between democracy and authoritarianism," given Putin's "weakening of all major sources of power independent of the executive branch," the report said. 

But Carnegie said that on the economic front, Putin had surprised many observers by assembling the "most pro-reform team in the government since the early 1990s" and already posting accomplishments, including a major tax reform package and a balanced budget. 

Among the study conclusions: 

The weakness of Russian maintenance of and control over its nuclear forces is a much greater threat to the United States than the possible use of those forces.

The United States and Russia are already committed under the START II treaty to slash their nuclear arsenals from more than 6,000 deployed weapons to 3,000 to 3,500 weapons by 2007. But Washington should reduce its level to 1,000 to 1,500 weapons, with the expectation that Russia would follow suit. 

The United States and Russia should increase the time required to launch a nuclear strike from minutes to hours and then from hours to days. That would entail a series of negotiated measures to de-alert and de-target land-based weapons. 

Unless the missile proliferation threat worsens (with another North Korean test, for instance), Washington should not unilaterally defect from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The new president should make a fresh assessment of the threat of missiles capable of hitting the United States and redouble diplomatic efforts to stem proliferation. 

In an effort to promote Russia's integration into the Euro-Atlantic security community, NATO should not consider expanding membership to states in the former Soviet Union before 2005.

TITLE: FSB To Take Over Bank, City Hall Bribery Probe
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City prosecutors last week turned an alleged bribery investigation involving Promyshlenno-Stroitelny Bank and the City Hall Maintenance Committee over to the Federal Security Service for completion. 


The case as prepared by the City Prosecutors' offices alleged that a personal $100,000 bribe was paid by Promstroibank to the committee's deputy head, Vyacheslav Strugov in exchange for opening several maintenance committee accounts with the bank. The bank, City Hall, and the maintenance committee have all denied the allegations.

Promstroibank spokesman Alexei Khitrov said the bank management does not attach any importance to which agency is running the investigation. 

"Promstroibank was and will always remain a law abiding bank, [it] will cooperate with all investigations made according to Russian law, irrespective of who carries them out," he said in a telephone interview on Friday.

On Nov. 16 the bank was the target of a paramilitary style raid, where gun-toting, masked men seized documents pertaining to the maintenance committee and the Strugov loan. 

A week later, Baltiisky Bank was raided in a similar fashion. Local television reports also said BaltUneximbank was raided the same day, but the bank denies this and the prosecutor's office will not comment on it explicitly. It is unknown whether those raids were related to the maintenance committee raids at Promstroibank. 

Also unclear is why the Promstroibank investigation was handed over to the Federal Security Service, or FSB. FSB Spokesman Alexei Vostretov said the case falls within FSB jurisdiction because "as far as I know, it is linked with bribery." 

He added that the case was now in the hands of "a very experienced investigator, head of one of the FSB's investigative departments."

Gennady Ryabov, spokesperson for the prosecutor's office, flat out refused to explain the case's transfer to the FSB.

He also refused to comment on whether a list of 29 City Hall officials, whose bank holdings were being investigated by the City Prosecutor's office, would also be passed on to the FSB. The list, dated Nov. 17 and including the names of 29 City Hall officials, was sent by the City Prosecutor's Office to Promstroibank with a request that the bank hand over information on their accounts. 

Among the names on the list were Vice Gov. Viktor Krotov, who currently heads the City Finance Committee; Vice Gov. Valery Malyshev, head of the City Sports, Transport and Communications Committee, and Alexander Yevstrakhin who formerly was in charge of the City Maintenance Committee, but now runs the Municipal Administration on Vasilievsky Island.

TITLE: Soviet-Era Anthem Returns
AUTHOR: By Ron Popeski and Tara FitzGerald
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday overwhelmingly approved President Vladimir Putin's request to reinstate the tune of the Stalin-era anthem and a tsarist flag and eagle as the country's state symbols.


The Duma pushed through the legislation in less than three hours. The most hotly disputed measure, the "Unbreakable Union" anthem, was backed by 381 votes to 51.

The white, blue and red tricolor and the double-headed eagle coat of arms also passed easily, as did restoration of the Soviet-era red banner for the armed forces.

A delighted Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said the vote on the rousing anthem music enabled Russians to be proud of Soviet-era achievements.

"We have restored the anthem of the Soviet Union," Zyuganov told Ekho Moskvy radio. "The great music of [World War II] victory, the flag that we planted atop the Reichstag, the anthem that helped us move into space and create a complete system of health care and education."

The legislation will provide Russia with an official coat of arms, flag and anthem for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Liberals, who had demanded a new anthem to break with the excesses of Stalinism, cried foul, saying they had been denied time to speak during the Duma session.

Grigory Yavlinsky, veteran leader of the Yabloko party, said liberals might challenge the procedural violations in the Constitutional Court. He said the vote was a harbinger of terrible things to come. 

"We believe this is a signal about where our society is heading and what we can expect in the near future," he told reporters outside the Duma. "It removes all illusions about the medium-term policy of the country's administration."

The rousing melody will replace an arcane 19th-century tune for which no words had been written. That tune, along with the coat of arms and flag, were only temporary stand-ins approved by decree under Former President Boris Yeltsin.

The anthem remains wordless for the moment pending a study of proposed new lyrics. Various sets of words have been put forward and among suggested authors is Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the original lyrics and has since amended them twice.

The legislation stipulates that those present during the playing of the anthem must stand to attention and men must remove their hats. Those found to have insulted the anthem will be subject to criminal proceedings.

As debate got under way, Yabloko party activists gathered outside Moscow's main post office, urging passers-by to send telegrams to Putin denouncing the president's proposals. News reports said that police had detained several of the protesters at the unsanctioned demonstration, including Union of Right Forces Duma deputy Vadim Bondar, but released all of them by mid-afternoon.

Elderly pro-Communist demonstrators backing the old anthem stood outside parliament and a few minor scuffles broke out as deputies made their way inside.

Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II, another surprise backer of the Soviet-era music, exercised caution after the vote, telling NTV television that state symbols "must not divide our people."

But many Russians seemed unmoved by Friday's decision.

"It makes no difference to me and it certainly doesn't to him," said Anatoly, gesturing toward his young son. "I think we should have one, but whether it's old or new really doesn't matter." 

"The problem with Glinka's music is that no one understands it," said Volodya, a taxi driver in central Moscow.

"I like Alexandrov's music, but I definitely think they should change the words. It's music, not politics." 

Alan Rousso, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center think-tank, said he thought the large majority of people would be somewhere between indifferent and supportive of the decision to reinstate the anthem.

"I don't think it's terribly important, but it does exemplify to a degree the confusion in the Kremlin over the direction in which the country should be moving," Rousso said.

"[He] is trying to have it both ways, and there is no clearer indication of this than putting together the Soviet-era anthem with the imperial flag. But I also think he was ill-advised not to more radically break with the past, as that would help to give the new Russia its own identity."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: House Fire Kills 4

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Four people, including one child, died in an apartment fire that broke out in a residential building located on Tavrichesky Ul. in central St. Petersburg, Interfax news agency reported on Monday. The fire started in the three-room flat at 4:05 a.m. and was put out at 5:42 a.m. Besides the four who died, eight other people in building were treated for smoke inhalation injuries at the scene, the report said.

The victims has not yet been identified, Interfax quoted fire officials as saying, nor have they determined the cause of the blaze.

Many of the buildings in the Tavirskchesky area rank among some of the oldest in St. Petersburg.



Pskov Bums Murdered

VELIKIYE LUKI, Pskov Region (SPT) - Two teenagers murdered two homeless men who had reportedly eaten a Rotweiller dog that belonged to one of the youths, Interfax reported Saturday.

According to a police investigation, the Rottweiler disappeared some days ago, Interfax said. According to the police report, rumors had been circulating the small village that a pair of men living in an abandoned building had been catching local pets for food. 

The Interfax report said that the dog's owner and three of his friends went to confront the homeless men who - just as the teens arrived - were in the process of digging into the Rottweiler meal. 

One of the homeless men died of injuries sustained in the ensuing fight. The other escaped and later died of trauma. Both teens have been arrested pending investigation and trial. 



Sochi TV Off Air

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Press Ministry on Thursday suspended the broadcasting license of a television company in Sochi, saying the company had violated election law by providing slanted coverage in the city's mayoral race, Interfax reported. 

The ministry said in a statement that MAX-TV was cut off after the local election commission complained to the ministry that the station had been spreading slanderous information about one of the candidates for mayor in the Black Sea resort town and had ignored requests to air retractions. 

The station's journalists said in remarks broadcast by NTV television Friday that they had not received any written notification of the suspension. They said the decision was a means of exerting political pressure on them. 

Broadcasting was suspended as of Friday and the company has until Dec. 31 to give the ministry an explanation for the violations, according to Interfax.



ORT Shares Available?

MOSCOW (SPT) - Boris Berezovsky has said he will probably not keep his 49 percent stake in ORT television because the government could find a way to take it - for example, by declaring ORT bankrupt, Ekho Moskvy radio reported Friday. Berezovsky said he would soon announce his plans for the shares. 

Meanwhile, a spokesman for State Duma deputy and businessman Roman Abramovich denied rumors that Abramovich has agreed to buy Berezovsky's shares. "So far, the reports are unfounded," Vladimir Ruga said.



Bykov Cleared 

MOSCOW (AP) - Aluminum tycoon Anatoly Bykov has been cleared of complicity in the murder of a businessman, one of the charges for which he was extradited from Hungary this year, Itar-Tass said Thursday. 

Bykov, the former head of the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, was arrested in Hungary in 1999 on charges of ordering the contract murder and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars. This year, he was extradited, imprisoned, released on bail, then jailed again in October after being charged with plotting a different assassination. He is now in Lefortovo Prison.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Digital War Threat

REDMOND, Washington (AP) - The nation's top cyberspace official Friday called on the next president to shore up the government's computer security to prevent a "digital Pearl Harbor." 

"What this presidential election year showed is that statistically improbable events can occur," Richard Clarke of the National Security Council said at a Microsoft-organized conference. "It may be improbable that cyberspace can be seriously disrupted, it may be improbable that a war in cyberspace can occur, but it could happen." 

On coming to office, the next president will find that several nations have created information-warfare units, Clarke said. 

"These organizations are creating technology to bring down computer networks. Some are doing reconnaissance today on our networks, mapping them," he said. 



Internet Libel Verdict

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) - A former doctor at Emory University School of Medicine has won what his lawyers say is the first libel verdict based on an anonymous Internet message. 

A U.S. District judge on Thursday awarded $675,000 to Dr. Sam D. Graham Jr., who resigned as chairman of the school's urology department in July 1998. 

In February 1999, Graham came across a posting on a Yahoo! message board suggested he had taken kickbacks from a urology company after giving his department's pathology business to the company and had been forced to resign. 

The message was from "fbiinformant," later determined to be Dr. Jonathan R. Oppenheimer, who had been a staff pathologist at the company and now operates his own labs. Calls for comment to Oppenheimer's company were not answered. 



Gateway Sued

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A shareholder has filed a lawsuit against Gateway Inc., alleging that the computer seller misled investors in the fall about financial statements.

The lawsuit was filed late Thursday on behalf of Houston shareholder James Burton, who is seeking class-action securities status in federal court in San Diego.

The lawsuit claims that Gateway reported false and misleading financial results for the three months ending in September. It also alleges that Gateway failed to record the declining value from its investments in startup companies and insisted that it was experiencing strong retail demand for PCs, despite obvious signs of weakening sales.

"We deny the allegations and will defend ourselves vigorously," said John, a Gateway spokesman. "I really can't elaborate beyond that."



Jewish Art Site

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - The Czech government plans a Web site to display artwork looted by the Nazis, aiming to return thousands of objects to their original Jewish owners or heirs. 

The artwork is currently owned by Czech museums and art galleries and includes valuable paintings by 19th and 20th century European artists, according to published reports. 

The Web page should start this month, Pavel Jirasek of the Czech Ministry of Culture, said Friday. 

Earlier this year, the Czech parliament approved a law to allow restitution of Jewish property confiscated during the country's Nazi occupation. Claims by original owners or their descendants can be filed until the end of 2002.

TITLE: Creditors Association To Lobby for Russia
AUTHOR: By Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia has acquired an unexpected ally in its negotiations with the Paris Club from several large Western investment funds that have established the Emerging Markets Creditors' Association. 


The association had its first meeting Friday in New York. Its members include Pacific Investment Management Co., Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Investment Management, D.L. Babson & Co., HBK Investment, MFS Investment Management, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., and Western Asset Management Company.

The association will lobby for the restructuring of the $43 billion Soviet-era debt Russia owes the Paris Club of sovereign creditors on the same terms that were achieved with the London Club.

In February, Russia signed an agreement with the London Club, in accordance with which 36.5 percent of its $32 billion debt was canceled and the remaining part was restructured into 10- and 30-year Eurobonds.

Previously, other groups were established to participate in the negotiations of the restructuring of emerging markets' debts - for example, groups of London Club creditors. 

However, the London Club represents banks and does not fully take into consideration the interests of other investors. The negative experiences of the restructuring of loans in Russia and Ecuador compelled non-bank portfolio investors to form their own association.

One of the main tasks of the EMCA is to ensure that sovereign creditors, for example the Paris Club, adhere to the principles of equal treatment of debtors and agree to write off that portion of the debt that private creditors had written off. The Paris Club has promoted the principle of equal treatment for many years but then it turned out that sovereign creditors wanted to be granted better conditions. Therefore, the Paris Club is now offering Russia the opportunity to forgive any portion of its debt while maintaining that under present circumstances, Russia would be able to pay it all off.

The members of the EMCA, which agreed with the terms set for the restructuring of Russia's debt to the London Club, finds the position of the Paris Club unacceptable. 

In their view, the more Russia's debts to the Paris Club are reduced, the smaller the risk that Russia will fail to meet its remaining obligations and the more prices of Russian assets in portfolio funds will rise. 

The position of the EMCA could influence the balance of power at the negotiations of the Paris Club. The Russian government understands and values this. 

"If the association demands equal treatment of all creditors [private or sovereign], this could have a serious effect on Russia's negotiations with the Paris Club and exert pressure on the participants to make a fair decision," said Andrei Cherepanov, head of the department of management of external state debt. A different source in the government remembers that foreign investors have in the past declared their intentions to put pressure on sovereign creditors, but little came of that.

The founders of the new association are nevertheless certain that this time, international organizations and the Paris Club will be compelled to listen to their opinion. 

"The EMCA includes large funds and they can influence international organizations to play by the rules," said Mark Helie, head of management at Grammercy Advisors, a company that gained notoriety during the negotiations between Russia and the London Club, when it formed an alternative group of investment funds. 

"The group will be too big for international organizations to ignore," said Mark Siegel, managing director of EMCA member D.L. Babson & Co. "International organizations will chop off the branch they are sitting on if they continue to disturb private investors from investing in emerging markets."

TITLE: Local Shopping Malls Plan Unveiled
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Turkish firm Yimpas Holding has announced a partnership with a Russian construction company to build three shopping malls and a business center in St. Petersburg.


Yimpas, which owns and operates over 50 malls in Turkey, Germany, Austria and Belgium, announced its partnership with private Russian construction firm Rosstroi at the end of November. Funds for the projects will be provided by Yimpas, Ali Nagi Aranly, president of Yimpas subsidiary ASG, told Vedomosti.

Construction of the 18,000-square-meter malls will start next year, and is planned to be completed by 2002, Aranly said.

Rosstroi representatives would not comment on the plan.

The malls will be located on Shkolnaya Ul. in the city's western outskirts, on the corner of Leninsky Prospect and Stachek Prospect, and on Prospect Slavy in the south.

One unusual characteristic of the project is that cafes and restaurants in the shopping centers will not serve alcohol, as Yimpas adheres to Islamic law.

Some analysts said that this would restrict the centers' popularity.

"I think that the absence of alcohol will definitely reduce their market," said Kim Isakyan, a consumer analyst at financial research group Renaissance Capital, in a telephone interview last week.

If the Yimpas-Rosstroi malls are completed, they will be the first megastores in St. Petersburg that match the size of Moscow's Ramstore, IKEA, Okhotny Ryad and Smolensky Passazh - a fact that had some observers thinking back to several grandiose local projects that have never made it off the ground, and are not likely to in the near future.

"The problem for developers [of superstores] in St. Petersburg is the lack of big investors," said Tatyana Yegorova, an analyst with international property consulting agency Colliers HIB, in an interview on Sunday.

"Most successful projects [in the city] have had local investors and been below the $5 million mark."

Yegorova said that there are six trade center projects in the works in St. Petersburg, none of which is nearing completion.

Take, for example, the $75 million Nevsky International Center - also known as Znamensky - which was launched in 1995 and supposed to open next year. The original plan was for an elite office center with shops, restaurants, parking and a hotel.

But the developers now say that building could begin in the first quarter of 2002, with the complex to open in 2005.

Meanwhile, the site - on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Ul. Vosstaniya, near the Moscow Station - remains shabby and conspicuously unrenovated. Reasons for the delay range from problems with potential investors to getting the necessary planning permission from City Hall before tampering with buildings considered historically important.

Another project still lacking investors is a trading and entertainment center near Pionerskaya metro station. According to an evaluation published by Gamma Capital, which is consulting on the project, the 20,000-square-meter center will cost a total of $13.5 million. 

A report published Nov. 23 by privately owned trading management firm Baltstalprokat Plus, which owns the territory the center will stand on, said two unnamed companies had expressed an interest in the project, and are planning to send representatives to St. Petersburg for negotiations. The building is slated for completion in 2002, if the finances can be found. 

But another Gamma Capital report on real-estate development in St. Petersburg said that the time to invest in superstores here was ripe.

"A growing middle class is changing its attitude toward shopping and leisure," it said. 

"Currently, there is a deficit of well-located shopping and leisure malls with appropriate parking facilities both in the center and in many outlying districts of St. Petersburg. When built, this type of commercial real estate will attract the majority of customer flows and will take a large share of the food, household, textiles and other retail markets." 

Yegorova of Colliers HIB was less optimistic.

"People who live in the newer districts of the city do not have many leisure opportunities," she said, "but shopping in a convenient [market] is one of them. But the development of big malls is more in the Muscovite character. I'm not sure that St. Petersburg is ready for hypermarkets."

Lev Sovulkin, an analyst at the Leontieff Center, said in an interview last month that operating the more chaotic and less well-equipped outdoor markets was more profitable than running superstores.

"It is more difficult to control what's going on in outdoor markets in terms of taxes, customs duties and quality control than it is with one elite building," Sovulkin said.

TITLE: Smelter Proposed as Way of Recovering Debt From Cuba
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vladimir Potanin, head of the Interros holding, said this week that his company's plans to complete a nickel plant in Cuba could help Russia recover Soviet-era debt from Cuba. 


"The project gives Russia an opportunity to expand nickel production at enterprises on the Kola Peninsula, increase tax revenues and recover Cuba's debts," Itar-Tass quoted Potanin as saying Thursday after a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, where the two discussed the Norilsk Mining Co.'s plans to invest in Cuba's Las Camariocas nickel smelter.

Soviet specialists assisted with construction of the smelter when work began in 1983, but the plant was incomplete when work halted in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia has estimated Cuba's debt at $27 billion. Potanin said Norilsk Mining Co., which is a subsidiary of Interros' flagship, Norilsk Nickel, would invest $300 million to finish the plant. Potanin did not elaborate on the link between the debt and his company's investment, but the newspaper Kommersant laid out a framework it said Norilsk Nickel had proposed. 

The newspaper said that under the scheme, Norilsk Nickel would form a joint venture with the Cuban state-owned General Nickel Co. to build the plant. General Nickel's share of the profits would go directly to the Russian government to pay Cuba's debt. 

Norilsk Nickel spokesman Anatoly Komrakov could not confirm Friday that such an investment-for-debt scheme was in the works, or that Putin planned to lobby the Cubans on behalf of Norilsk Nickel. 

Kommersant said Cuba has the world's third-largest reserves of nickel with 5.5 million metric tons of confirmed reserves. Canada has 7.4 million tons and Russia 6.6 million tons of reserves, the newspaper reported. But an unidentified source at Norilsk Nickel was quoted by Interfax as saying "the fate of the project evidently will be decided at the highest political level by the leadership of Russia and Cuba." 

Putin is to visit Cuba on Wednesday. 

Alexander Andreyev, a metals analyst at Brunswick UBS Warburg, said there was nothing unusual about Putin's involvement. "As far as I know, in Cuba, issues of foreign investment are decided at the government level," he said.

TITLE: Turkmenistan Plans To Sign Deal on Gas
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan - Turkmenistan plans to sign a contract in the next few days to sell Russia 30 billion cubic meters of gas next year, President Saparmurat Niyazov said Friday. 


A government official also said Turkmenistan had started shipping small amounts of gas to Iran through a new pipeline. The Central Asian state has some of the largest gas reserves in the world, but apart from its low-capacity links to Iran, it currently has no export options other than through Russia. It recently broke off deliveries through Russia following an argument over pricing but resumed them last year. 

"We will agree to sell Russia 30 bcm. I think we'll sign the contract next week," Niyazov told a meeting of diplomats shown on state television Friday. 

Following the resumption of sales this year, Turkmenistan delivered Russia 20 bcm by the end of September at $36 per 1,000 cubic meters on the Turkmen-Uzbek border. A further 10 bcm were due to have been delivered by the end of the year at $38 per 1,000 cubic meters. 

This year Turkmenistan will also sell Ukraine 5 bcm at $38 per 1,000 cubic meters, and this volume is due to rise to 30 bcm at $40 per 1,000 cubic meters next year. 

Separately, a government official said that Turkmenistan had started shipping 180,000 cubic meters per day to the northern border region of Iran through a new pipeline from Artyk, Turkmenistan. 

Between January and October this year, Turkmenistan sold Iran a total of 1.8 bcm through a pipeline from the Turkmen gas field of Korpedzh to Kurt-Kui. 

Talks are under way between the two governments to increase sales, with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami due to visit Ashgabat where he is expected to discuss gas contracts.

TITLE: AvtoVAZ Offers EBRD Stake In a Joint Venture With GM
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: The head of the nation's No. 1 car maker AvtoVAZ said in an interview published Friday that his firm had offered the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development a big stake in a proposed joint venture with U.S. General Motors. 


"We have offered the EBRD about 20 percent of the joint venture's capital," Vladimir Kadannikov, chairman of AvtoVAZ's board, told Kommersant. 

The $500 million to $600 million project, originally aimed to build GM's Opel Astra and a new version of AvtoVAZ's Niva off-road vehicle, has been in the works for years, but to date no agreement has been reached. 

Kadannikov said AvtoVAZ and the EBRD were in talks on the details. 

EBRD officials were not immediately available for comment, but a source close to talks said earlier the bank had considered extending a $170 million loan and making a $50 million equity investment in the proposed joint venture. 

Kadannikov said AvtoVAZ had offered a stake of its shares to GM as collateral under a strategic partnership program, but GM has not yet made any decision. 

GM has confirmed its interest in the joint venture, but wants the EBRD to share financial risks, Kadannikov said. He added that the joint venture may be registered in the first quarter next year. 

GM has said its board was likely to consider the deal in February.

TITLE: S&P Upgrades Rating on Russia
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Following the completion of the restructuring of MinFin tranche three bonds, international rating agency Standard & Poor's upgraded Russia's foreign currency issuer rating to B-minus from SD, or selective default.


"This completes a series of restructuring of Russia's local and foreign currency obligations, following the government's default on ruble-denominated debt in August 1998," says the text of the press release circulated Friday by Standard & Poor's.

Earlier this week the Finance Ministry reported that 91 percent of third tranche holders, who are owed $1.2 billion, filed applications for conversion into MinFin seven bonds maturing in 2007 and ruble-denominated paper due in 2003. 

The seventh tranche, worth $865 million maturing in 2007, is rated CCC plus by S&P, while the ruble bonds due in 2003 are rated B-minus.

Settling the dispute with holders of MinFin tranche three, on which the government defaulted in May 1999 under pressure from Soviet-era debt holders, opened the way for Standard & Poor's rating upgrade.

It also lifted the D (default) rating on the MinFin tranche three bonds.

MinFins, also known as Vnesh ekonom bank or Taiga bonds, were issued in the early 1990s to restructure foreign liabilities of the defunct Vnesh ekonombank, which sank together with the former Soviet Union. The bank has since been revived.

Eurobonds' rating of B-minus remained unchanged, so S&P's Friday move did not have a direct effect on the most popular debt instruments.

But in Moscow, the S&P decision sparked a stock market rally, which sent the RTS index through the roof to 163.03, up 7.72 percent.

The B-minus rating assigned to Russia implies a 21 percent probability that the nation will go into default within five years, according to a ratings performance study of European issuers carried out by Standard & Poor's in April.

Non-U.S. issuers made up 30 percent of the agency's clientele last year, of which emerging markets issuers accounted for 9 percent. Though the study is based on the history of corporate defaults in Europe, it is nevertheless indicative of a broad probability of an issuer going off the rails.

Moody's decision to stick a B2 rating on Russia's debts, expected within two to three months, will put it in the same group with Venezuela, a large oil-exporting country with a comparable economy, whose debts are traded 350 basis points above Russia's.

Moody's rates Brazil at B1, an equivalent of S&P's B plus, so the upcoming upgrade could make Russia comparable with a large player on international capital markets.

TITLE: THE TAX ADVISER
AUTHOR: Tom Stansmore
TEXT: Issue of Profit Tax Is Set To Turn Into a Real Saga 


RUSSIAN legislation requires that, in order for taxes to become effective, they must be passed during the year before they go into effect and be published at least one month before the beginning of the new tax year. In other words, if the government wanted a new tax to become effective in the year 2001, the enabling law for that tax would have to be passed sometime before Dec. 1, 2000.

This explains to a large degree the apparent mad dash recently seen in the Duma to push through an amendment that would have provided for a mandatory increase of 5 percent on profit tax, payable to local government. The amendments have yet to be raised in the Federation Council, and because the clock has stopped as far as the introduction of new taxes is concerned, these amendments will not come into force on Jan. 1, 2001, as planned.

The law on profit tax currently provides that 19 percent of profit be paid to the regional budget and 11 percent to the federal budget. Additionally, the regions have the right to impose a 5 percent rate, payable to their budget, making the maximum total profit tax 35 percent.

Recent amendments to the law affirm the right of the regions to grant concessions on their portion of the profit tax, and local governments are not required to impose their 5 percent. In order to attract investment, therefore, many local governments have refrained from passing legislation that would have the effect of dissuading investors by putting them at a disadvantage when compared with other localities. The federal law , however, would have imposed the 5 percent increase of profit tax, payable to the local government, with or without corresponding local legislation.

The issue of concessions has long been a source of tension between the federal government and the regions. The reduction of revenue expected because of the phasing out of turnover taxes is expected only to increase the strain. In short, the federal authorities feel that, because of these concessions, the regions are collecting less money than they might otherwise, and the government is tired of making up the shortfall.

Despite the fact that the amendments made it through the Duma in almost record time, the Federation Council refused to consider the bill, arguing that they had not had adequate time to acquaint themselves with the proposed changes. In spite of not being passed, the amendments were seen by many as merely a stop-gap measure, as more changes are on the horizon for next year (but won't become effective until Jan. 1, 2002). Among these changes is a brand new Profit Tax chapter that is said to lift a number of current restrictions on the deductibility of certain expenses, including insurance, advertising, personnel training and scientific research and development.

Other changes being planned include a proposal to levy excise tax on the transfer of goods, and not on the realization of goods as is currently the case. The amendments also envisage a switch to accounting on an accrual basis for exporters and importers of goods. (At the moment, exporters and importers can choose to pay on either an accruals basis or on a cash basis.)



Tom Stansmore is the head of the St. Petersburg branch of Deloitte and Touche CIS. For more information or advice, call Deloitte and Touche at 326-93-10.

TITLE: Shuttle To Return From Space Station
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SPACE CENTER, Houston - Another chapter in the construction of the International Space Station was to conclude with the landing of the space shuttle Endeavor.


Although there was a slight chance for showers at Kennedy Space Center, shuttle entry flight director Leroy Cain said officials are confident Endeavor would touch down in Florida late on Monday.

"The weather outlook is very good," Cain said.

The possibility of weather deterioration from Tuesday prompted NASA officials to activate Edwards Air Force Base, California, as a secondary landing site.

"It's an insurance policy for us," Cain said.

Endeavor will have two opportunities to land in Florida on Monday. If those are scrubbed, there will also be two chances to land at Edwards.

Cain said the diminishing amount of the shuttle's supply of lye, which helps clean carbon dioxide, will allow Endeavor to remain in orbit only through Wednesday.

Nearing the end of their 11-day mission, the shuttle crew on Sunday reflected on successfully completing its objective: outfitting space station Alpha with solar wings spreading almost 80 meters from tip to tip.

"I'm in the pure joy mode right now," astronaut Joe Tanner said from Endeavor in an interview with The Associated Press. He and space walking partner Carlos Noriega installed the solar wings last week, then went back out to make an unexpected repair on a wing that was too slack.

Until the new solar wings were installed one month into their four-month mission, station commander Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yury Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalyov had to skimp on electricity.

The $600 million solar wings - the largest and most powerful ever built for a spacecraft - are already generating up to 42 kilowatts of electricity for the three men on board.

Shepherd and his Russian crew mates have been aboard Alpha since Nov. 2. They will remain there through late February.

The next shuttle to visit the space station will be Atlantis, which will deliver and install the American lab Destiny in January.

The International Space Station is expected to be completed by 2006.

TITLE: The Price of Advice, or How Consultants Cleaned Up in Russia
AUTHOR: Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A company in transition will turn to consultants in order to help it get through the process in one piece. So when the whole market is in transition, consultants have a field day. Anna Raff reports on how Western auditing firms profited from Russia's economic problems of the 1990s. 


THE Arkhangelsk Paper Mill was on the brink of bankruptcy in the early '90s when Western shareholders acquired a large portion of the company's shares - literally saving the company from demise.


These new shareholders, from Austria and other parts of Europe, brought in fresh ideas and young management with their money; they also brought a set of demands.

They wanted to understand the companies' finances, which were expressed using Russian Accounting Standards, and which are indecipherable to many Western investors.

This called for radical measures in an otherwise traditional industry. This called for systems integration and modernization. This called for consultants.

"When we first started figuring out what we wanted to do, it provoked a lot of discussion within the company," said Sergei Dubov, assistant director of the mill, who oversees the transition.

Some employees came out against the changes, not understanding the need. But as the Jan. 1 start date for the new system approaches, Dubov said everyone has come on board.

Arthur Andersen won the tender to automate processes such as bookkeeping and payroll. That wasn't the expensive part, said Germa Freyman, the mill's chief accountant. The price tag for the software that would automate all systems, provided by SAP AG, made Freyman do a double take.

"I couldn't believe that one program could cost well over a million dollars," Freyman said.



Stepping In


Even during Soviet times, the country's forest and paper industries were hungrily eyed from abroad, and after the fall, foreign investors jumped at their chance to grab a piece of one of the country's most profitable sectors.


Their opportunity to enter the market came during the transition period when many Russian industries - including the forestry and paper sectors - were thrown into chaos, and years of inherent inefficiency were beginning to take their toll on the new market economy.

Implementing real-time financial reporting systems is one way that these structural weaknesses are being alleviated.

The success of such projects depends on the quality of management, said Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research at United Financial Group. If top managers have a strong aim and are willing to use the information these integrated systems provide, the company will benefit. If not, there is a high probability that things could go awry.

"If you are a Russian manager and you know that more information is power, would you want those above you to know more about what you're doing?" Sullivan asked rhetorically. "These people don't cooperate when they see these systems posing a threat."

So, much of the push for reorganization, systems integration and streamlining has come from outside investors, rather than Russian management.

"Companies hire an auditor the way they hire doctors and lawyers, only in situations of extreme necessity, without any particular satisfaction or happiness," wrote Eduard Grebenschikov, who formerly worked for Deloitte & Touche, in the Vedomosti newspaper.

"You could say this: If you are being audited according to international standards, somebody wants [to take] you [over]," Grebenschikov continued.

Or to paraphrase one of the commandments of the consulting industry: Consultants thrive when things aren't looking very good.

And based on available indicators, the decade following the collapse of communism is no exception.

Because the Big Five U.S. accounting firms - Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, KPMG Peat Marwick and PricewaterhouseCoopers - often coordinate projects among a multitude of offices, revenue figures for their practices here are almost impossible to come by.

But for the industry as a whole, the numbers point to steady growth.

According to an Expert magazine survey last year, the country's management consulting revenues totaled 2.27 billion rubles ($81.5 million) in 1998, and this figure doesn't take into account the activities of Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche CIS and KPMG.

Worldwide, 40 percent of financial-services companies' revenue comes from auditing. Consulting services make up the other portion. In Russia, as in many other developing economies, the demand for auditing services surpasses that for consultants. Here, auditing services account for about 75 percent of revenues.

Also, it is estimated that there are about 1.5 million mid-size and large companies in Russia that are fodder for financial consulting.

The Big Five came to Russia in the early '90s when its market was opened up to the West. Their primary mission was to support Western firms that opened Russian representative offices, and for these Western firms, the choice was easy. They picked the auditing firms that their parent companies used worldwide.

Technically, Arthur Andersen was the first to set up an office in Moscow, doing so in 1974. But it closed in 1983 because its performance didn't meet expectations.

Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers arrived in 1989. Arthur Andersen came back in the form of a joint venture in 1990. Deloitte & Touche opened their representative office in the same year. KPMG came in 1992.



Heavy Competition


The Big Five dominate market share in the management consulting industry because they are the ones who introduced the concept, industry insiders say. However, their share of the tax and auditing sector is substantially lower.


This can be attributed to many things. For one, there are some clients that the Big Five will never vie for, said Karl Johansson, managing partner of Ernst & Young.

"Russian auditing firms should have market share," Johansson said. "We will not go for small businesses that are very domestically oriented. We will not go for every new industry that pops up; we will choose them carefully."

In big industries, where domestic companies such as LUKoil are making global headway, there is fierce competition among the Big Five for contracts, and "native" Russian professional services are preparing to join the fray.

"Soon, we're going to be playing on the same level as the Big Five," said Ivan Glushkov, head of the newly formed financial consulting group Information Business Systems.

Energy pulsates from Glushkov's rigid, pensive form as he leans over the table, eloquently espousing ideas that have been brewing - in his head and in the industry - for some time.

The dark shadows under his eyes betray the fact that Glushkov has been up since 3 a.m., when he flew out of the Siberian city of Kemerovo, where IBS is working on a project with an electro-energy client.

"There's a lot of energy around here because we are in the midst of creating something," he said. "It's a great feeling as well as a lot of responsibility."

In the past year, IBS has been putting extraordinary effort into developing its financial-consulting group, because, company officials said, this is where the market is going.

IBS is not alone in marking the consultancies' development. "I've noticed that consulting firms and systems-integration companies have been coming together," said Sergei Romanenko, with consulting company PAKK, Izvestia reported last spring.

IBS, a domestic company, is known mainly as a systems integrator and developer of business-to-business e-commerce projects. According to the Financial Times, IBS expects to earn profits of $3.7 million on sales of $250 million this year.

In an effort to raise capital in Western markets, IBS announced in September that it is planning an initial public offering of its shares on the Nasdaq market next year. If the listing goes through, it will be the nation's first international tech offering.

Amid all the to-do about the offering, IBS's consulting arm remains lost in the shadows.

Glushkov isn't ready to brandish his sword quite yet. He said he needs to get a few more clients under his belt before he can be confident about changing the company's techie image.

He holds his hands parallel, one just above the other, and talks about the "gap" in the country's consulting industry.

"On one hand, you have huge multinationals who are very strong in information technology, but they are having problems fully adapting textbook methods to the Russian market," Glushkov said. "On the other are the Russian consulting firms, who might have great insight but don't have the IT know-how of the Big Five.

"We will fill in this gap."

At the beginning of the year, IBS made a conscious decision to develop in this direction, diversifying their imagination, which many perceive as "strictly IT." By the middle of 2001, Glushkov plans to have about 100 consultants working under him.

And even though IBS isn't really recognized as a competitor in the financial services market, they are making themselves known in discreet ways.

Glushkov said he poached his recent hires from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Russian rival Yunikon and that he will continue to skim the cream from other consultancies.

IBS is uniquely positioned to grow in this niche. Not only does it have clients like industry major Gazprom, IBS also says it has close government relationships, including an agreement to integrate the Railways Ministry's information systems.

According to Romanenko, the demands for audits of government-owned and -controlled companies will increase. And for patriotic reasons, many of these contracts will probably go to Russian firms.

"The government is aiming to better leverage its property, and we predict an increase in orders not only for auditing, but also for consulting from these companies," he said.

Alexander Slesarenko, head of the system-integrations department at Yunikon, a leading domestic financial services firm, said he isn't convinced his potential rival will successfully broaden IBS's profile.

"IBS is coming to this industry from a completely different angle," Slesarenko said. Because IBS has always been an IT company, the technology will steer the consulting and not the other way around, which is the approach Yunikon takes.

"We already have people working as financial advisers for companies like Rostelecom and Surgutneftegaz," he said. "For these companies, we decide the details of a tender, and companies like IBS will be the ones bidding. It will never be the other way around."

But industry insiders say that if IBS succeeds in remaking itself as a financial and management consulting firm, then it could turn the pecking order inside out.

Pyotr Medvedev of Arthur Andersen's tax and legal service said he doesn't see IBS as a real threat because the market is still far from saturated.

"First of all, I'm happy for them," Medvedev said. Perhaps foreign consultancies used to brush away the thought of local competition with a flick of the wrist, but now up-and-coming Russian firms are taken more seriously.



Going Global


According to Medvedev, Russian firms have some domestic advantages, along with international drawbacks. In some niches, these firms know the players and the companies inside out, because many boutique consultancies are built around employees who formerly worked in these sectors for decades.


But when it comes to issuing American Depositary Receipts or stock abroad, Russian consultancies don't have the international resources, the managers standing by in London or New York, to help pull the deal through.

"For something on a worldwide scale, a client will come to a multinational player," Medvedev said.

Alexander Verenekov, deputy director of Yunikon, agreed, saying the strength of domestic consulting and auditing firms is directly proportional to the strength of the country's companies.

Yunikon posted revenues for the first half of this year of 166.7 million rubles ($6 million), and it plans to go global as an accompaniment to the international forays of the nation's industry.

"The Big Five became 'big' because they went after the blue chip firms in their respective countries," Verenekov said. "When these clients like Coca-Cola and Hewlett-Packard opened offices around the globe, the Big Five followed suit.

"When AvtoVAZ starts selling cars out of Detroit, then we'll set up house in Michigan."

TITLE: Bone Marrow Cells May Treat Brain Injuries
AUTHOR: By Maggie Fox
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Bone marrow might provide an easy source of new brain cells, offering treatments for a range of diseases from stroke to Alzheimer's, researchers said on Thursday. 


They said tests on mice suggested that stem cells from bone marrow, which are a kind of master cell with the ability to develop into various cell types, can become brain cells. 

This might mean bone marrow transplants, already commonly used to treat cancer, might be used to help people with brain diseases and injuries, said Dr. Eva Mezey of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

"I really think that it is a very encouraging beginning and it will help people down the road with diseases that we don't have any cure for," Mezey, who led one of two studies published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, said in a telephone interview. 

Stem cells are a promising new area of medical research, offering the potential to mend and even regenerate tissues and organs. But they are hard to find, and scientists still do not fully understand what signals cause one stem cell to become a neuron, for example, and another to become a liver cell. 

Currently the only convenient source of stem cells is bone marrow, which generates both red blood cells and the white blood cells of the immune system. 

Mezey had been working with mice, looking for the origin of microglia, cells that help immune-system cells do their work in nerve tissue. When looking at brain samples from her laboratory animals, she found cells that appeared to her as if they had come from the bone marrow. 

She wondered if bone marrow might be a source of new cells for the central nervous system. Until very recently, scientists had believed that brain and spinal cord cells could not regenerate, but recent research has shown that under certain conditions people do grow new brain and nerve cells. 

"Lots of people thought I was crazy," she joked.

To test her hypothesis, she used mice that have been genetically engineered to lack immune-system cells. These mice also lack glial cells and will die soon after birth unless they get a bone marrow transplant. 

Her team deliberately chose female mice and gave then transplants from male mice. Then they looked for cells carrying the Y chromosome, which only males have, in the female mice. 

They found these cells throughout the mice - in their immune systems, as would be expected, but also in the brain. Not only were there glial cells, but neurons, the researchers said. 

She said that this system must be shown to work in humans. "Then I think it will be very important to figure out how the body does this, to find the factors in the brain that recruit these cells from the circulation and then make them differentiate into neurons," Mezey said.

TITLE: Satellite Photos Back Up Theories of Life on Mars
AUTHOR: By Paul Recer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Photos from a satellite orbiting Mars suggest the Red Planet was once a water-rich land of lakes, boosting the theory that billions of years ago it may have had the conditions needed for the evolution of life. 


The photos, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, show massive sedimentary deposits, with thick layers of rock stacked one on top of another in formations kilometers deep. 

In the wall of a massive canyon that stretches for thousands of kilometers, there are sharp layers of rock, rather like the formation that causes a striped pattern on the walls of Arizona's Grand Canyon, said Kenneth Edgett, a co-author of the study in Science. 

"I don't know how to do that [form such layers] without water," said Edgett at a news conference last week at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He said the layering could possibly have been formed by other means, such as wind or volcanism, "but water is the leading candidate." 

Michael Malin, lead author of the study, said that "the regularity of the layering is hard to create" without the presence of water. 

Malin, the principal scientist using a camera on the Mars Global Surveyor, said the photos suggest that water may have seeped in and filled Martian craters that were punched out of the planet surface by impacting asteroids around 3.5 billion years ago. 

"My guess is that there were lots of lakes," said Malin. "There may have been some areas that were so wet that there were small seas." 

But not all planetary experts were persuaded by the photos. 

Alan Treiman said he and some other planetary geologists at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston believe the interpretation by Malin and Edgett is not correct. 

Treiman, in a telephone interview, said that the new photos do little to advance the understanding of how such rocks formed. 

"It's nice to see the images, but this is not a dramatic new revelation," said Treiman. He said actions other than water - volcanism or blowing dust - could have formed the layered rock. 

"This is not evidence for an early wet, warm Mars," said Treiman. He said the layered rock "is probably not relevant to the possibility of life forming very early on Mars." 

However, J. William Schopf, head of UCLA's Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, said the study gives strong support for theories that Mars was wetter, warmer and potentially more friendly to life billions of years ago. 

"This is the strongest evidence yet for what appear to be sedimentary units [rock formations] on Mars," said Schopf. If there once were lakes of water on the planet, Schopf said, "it makes it increasingly plausible" that life could have existed on Mars. 

"You cannot have Earthlike life without having water, but the presence of water, in and of itself, doesn't say that there was life there," said Schopf.

TITLE: BOJ Takes New Look At Interest-Rate Policy
AUTHOR: By Yoko Nishikawa
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO - Japanese Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa sought to defuse a growing debate over whether the Bank of Japan should revive its zero-interest-rate policy as data on Friday showed capital spending looking healthy. 


Miyazawa added that the world's second-largest economy was still recovering, but that the benefits had not yet filtered through to consumers, and that this in turn was a factor holding back inflation and reining in consumer prices. 

"Japan's economy is recovering, and we should not be pessimistic over its future," Miyazawa told a news conference. 

Japan got fresh evidence on the volatile state of that recovery Friday with data showing machinery orders, a key leading indicator of capital spending, up 8.3 percent in October after a 16.5 percent slide the month before. 

But with stock prices falling and uncertainty mounting over the durability of the recovery, pressure from ruling- party politicians has been rising in recent weeks for the Bank of Japan to return to zero rates to keep the recovery going. 

BOJ Deputy Gov. Sakuya Fujiwara on Thursday fanned speculation that the BOJ could resurrect the policy by not ruling out a return to zero rates. 

But Miyazawa, who helped orchestrate government opposition to the BOJ's first rate hike in a decade in August, said the debate on zero rates is in the past. 

"That debate is already over, so I don't have any thoughts on it right now," he said. 

BOJ Gov. Masaru Hayami is widely considered unlikely to reverse the controversial decision to boost the target for the overnight call rate 25 basis points from zero, a move that came despite falling prices and with the economy still fragile. 

October's core machinery orders - excluding those for ships and machinery at electric power companies - were up 25.4 percent in the year to October after rising for a record five straight quarters to September, said the Economic Planning Agency. 

Orders by manufacturers jumped 21.7 percent from the previous month, including a 10.3 percent rise by automakers and 28.7 percent leap for electrical machinery companies. 

Non-manufacturer orders rose a smaller 4.7 percent, held back by an 18.1 percent drop in the telecommunications sector. 

The data is typically regarded as an indicator of corporate capital spending about six to nine months in the future. 

Demand has climbed as companies splurge on equipment to gain a high-tech edge, but economists say the trend could be near a peak and most expect Japanese companies to begin paring back capital spending next year as the global economy slows. 

"Gains in capital spending have peaked," said Takehiro Sato, economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in Tokyo. "But I don't think they will fall off sharply." 

Capital spending is the second-biggest chunk of the economy, accounting for some 15 percent of gross domestic product, and economists expect it to be a key source of growth next year.

TITLE: AOL-Time Warner Merger Expected Soon
AUTHOR: By Kalpana Srinivasan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Government officials reviewing the proposed deal between America Online and Time Warner could reach a decision as early as this week, resolving the companies' year-long pursuit of the largest merger in U.S. corporate history.


The Federal Trade Commission has scheduled a closed hearing for Thursday - the type of forum where the agency's five commissioners could discuss or vote on the deal, valued at $162 billion when it was announced in January.

The FTC could also postpone a decision, as it has done several times.

The Washington Post reported in Monday's editions that three - and possibly four - members of the five-member commission are ready to approve the merger.

The two companies, seeking to meld AOL's vast Internet presence with Time Warner's media empire, won approval from European regulators in October. Last month AOL and Time Warner extended negotiations with the FTC to mid-December, giving antitrust regulators time to review additional developments in the deal.

The two also need clearance from the Federal Communications Commission, which has said it will wait until the FTC's antitrust process is complete before acting.

The FTC has been scrutinizing the massive combination for possible anti-competitive effects. The deal brings together a media conglomerate that owns a far-reaching network of cable systems and shows, and the nation's top Internet service provider, with 25 million subscribers.

To assuage wary regulators, the companies promised they would give AOL's rivals access to Time Warner's high-speed cable lines to deliver Internet service.

Under pressure, Time Warner backed up the pledge with an agreement to offer AOL's chief competitor, EarthLink, over its cable systems. That means consumers who subscribe to Time Warner's high-speed Internet cable service will have choices besides AOL for their online provider.

Some Internet providers still argue that the terms reached by EarthLink may not set a suitable blueprint for negotiations in the rest of the industry.

Critics and rivals have also raised concerns about the ability of the combined business to hoard Time Warner's content - which includes cable channels HBO and CNN, and movies and music from Warner Brothers - and seal it off from other distributors.

"The fundamental issue is how to prevent them from leveraging their power over transmission and enormously popular content," said Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union.

TITLE: Saudis Give a Small Boost to Price of Oil
AUTHOR: By Richard Mably
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Oil prices, reeling after a two-week slide that lopped 20 percent from a barrel of crude, got a small lift on Monday after leading producer Saudi Arabia said it was too early to start talking about OPEC output curbs.


Prices also felt the impact of chillier weather in the Northeast United States, a big consumer of heating oil.

London Brent futures gained 30 cents to $26.86 a barrel and U.S. light crude advanced 26 cents to $28.70.

OPEC power Saudi Arabia said on Monday it was concerned about the slump that has cut the value of a producer's barrel by $6.50 a barrel in two weeks. 

"Saudi Arabia is concerned about last week's sharp price decline but oil prices are still within OPEC's desired [$22 to $28] price range," a Saudi oil ministry official told Reuters.

"Any suggestions about decreasing production at this time are premature," the official said.

Over the weekend the oil minister for OPEC price hawk Kuwait had said that it was all but certain that the cartel would cut supply when it meets in January. However, Saudi Arabia carries much more weight in OPEC than Kuwait.

Dealers said oil's decline, coming despite a 10-day stoppage to Iraqi exports, reflected the perception that world supply and demand were returning to balance after four OPEC output increases this year.

That judgment was borne out by the latest monthly report from the West's energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency.

The Paris-based IEA said commercial stocks among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries grew in October by 250,000 barrels a day.

That followed a stock build of 312,000 bpd during the third quarter after the IEA revised up its estimate for the period by 222,000 bpd. 

End-October OECD stocks of crude and petroleum products stood at 2.56 billion barrels, still 103 million short of levels at the same time a year ago, the IEA said.

Last month the IEA estimated the OECD's year-on-year deficit at 148 million barrels.

"Crude oil prices have been pressured by a potential reduction in demand caused by a slowdown in the U.S. economy and relatively mild weather to date," the agency said.

Stocks worldwide are expected to build further during the winter, wiping out the remaining year-on-year deficit. Normally stocks are drawn down during the winter.

Agency projections indicate that assuming steady OPEC output at October levels of 29.3 million, stocks worldwide would grow by more than a million barrels daily through the winter to the end of March.

While stocks are rising, the IEA said it had revised down its estimate for world oil demand during the northern hemisphere winter by 200,000 bpd to 77.7 million.

Oil markets were also bracing for the imminent resumption of UN-monitored Iraqi exports after a 10-day break.

The United Nations on Friday settled a dispute with Baghdad over the pricing of December sales and on Monday Iraq confirmed it had accepted an extension of the UN's oil-for-food program for a further six months until June.

TITLE: MARKET WRAP
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Wall Street Banking on A Victory For Bush 


REUTERS


Wall Street rallied in midday trading on Monday as investors bet the nation's top court would hand Republican George W. Bush a victory in the five-week-old battle for the White House.


Fear that a slowing U.S. economy will slash corporate profits has loosened its stranglehold on the market, but the threat still lurks on Wall Street.

"I think the tone is overall positive," said Paul Cherney, a market analyst at S&P MarketScope. "The market sense is that the final resolution to the presidential election is close at hand."

The technology-dominated NASDAQ climbed 89.37 points, or 3.06 percent, to 3,006.80. It was the index's first recovery above 3,000 after sliding below that level on Nov. 20.

The Dow Jones industrial average also rose, but its rally was muted by retailers Home Depot Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 13.08 points, or 0.95 percent, to 1,382.97.

As lawyers for Bush and Democrat Al Gore laid out their arguments in a historic U.S. Supreme Court showdown, traders were placing their bets on Texas Gov. Bush after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of stopping the recounts on Saturday.

Bush's plans for tax cuts, less government regulation of prescription drug prices and health care, and a more relaxed approach to antitrust issues will boost the stock market, experts said.

Interest-rate-sensitive financial stocks got a boost on speculation the U.S. central bank will lower interest rates soon, lifting the blue-chip Dow index. The Federal Reserve next meets to discuss interest rates on Dec. 19 amid expectations it will leave credit costs on hold. But analysts widely expect it to discard a warning that inflation is the prime danger to the economy in favor of a more balanced statement that would highlight risks of both an excessive slowdown and of inflationary overheating.

Such a shift in the Fed's posture would open the door to cuts in interest rates sometime next year. 

Meanwhile, telecoms and techs led European bourses to three-week highs on Monday as investors hoped the worst was over for battered new economy shares, and also looked forward to closure in the marathon battle for the White House.

France Telecom leapt 11 percent, and Deutsche Telekom, was up 6.8 percent amid relief that Morgan Stanley Capital International will not rejig its stock indices to reflect free-float until November 2001, later than expected.

Governments own chunks of both the companies, whose weightings in MSCI indices will therefore fall because not all the shares are freely available to investors.

European shares rose from the opening bell after Friday's rally on Wall Street. 

Arnaud Sauvage, a technical analyst at KBC Securities in Paris, said the Euro Stoxx 50 index was still in a downward trend, despite briefly breaching resistance of 4,975 points on Monday.

Sell-side analysts are becoming more bullish about the market after the transatlantic gains of the past week.

TITLE: Dollar, Pound Gain on Euro
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - The euro came under pressure against the dollar on Monday as dealers awaited a conclusion to the five-week U.S. presidential election drama after a weekend court decision that was seen to favor Republican George W Bush.


The single currency's losses against the dollar undermined it across the board but talk of mergers and acquisitions-related selling saw it suffer its steepest losses against sterling. Such talk also helped the pound to six-week highs against the dollar.

Analysts said the prospect of a conclusion to the U.S. presidential election was prompting investors to trim long euro positions accumulated last week when the single currency rallied to 2-1/2-month peaks around $0.8975.

"The risks for the euro are on the downside," said Teis Kutsen, chief strategist at SEB Merchant Banking in London.

"We are now waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and most people feel we are reaching the end of a very long journey. The euro has already moved up quite sharply and this situation had been weighing on the dollar. If we get a solution tonight it could turn out to be quite dollar positive.''

TITLE: The Cost of Helping Clients Save
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The phrases "free spirit" and "tax adviser" aren't often found in the same sentence, let alone the same person. But Steve Henderson - former employee of Revenue Canada and a man who thinks in flow charts and graphs - somehow reconciles the two concepts.


On this day, his office window looks out onto snow-powdered Tverskaya Ulitsa, and his desk is covered with stacks of papers - boxes and arrows betray their analytical contents - fastened neatly by paper clips.

Henderson has been with Deloitte & Touche CIS for more than a year. He says he likes Russia, but what he likes even more is his job as a partner in tax and legal services.

"I can talk about it forever," he said.

His angular face doesn't deflect emotion, and he doesn't hide the fact that his billing rate is $525 an hour, the basic Big Five standard for someone in his position.

The fee is middle-market. It's not the cheapest on the globe, but it's also not what New York City or London consultants charge.

"It's really no secret," Henderson said. "Every employee knows what their rate is."

And if you add up all the hours spent by consultants, managers and partners on a project scheduled for several months, the price tag ends up being many digits long.

"Sometimes I charge for telephone calls, sometimes I don't," he said. "We're not like lawyers. We don't have meters on our phones."

However, according to Henderson, Russian companies that approach Deloitte & Touche as prospective clients usually know what they're getting into before they send off their initial fax.

It's often Western companies that receive unpleasant shocks from their trusted consultants. For example, registering a company in the United States requires a trivial amount of money for documents such as a business license. Opening a representative office in Russia - a convoluted procedure highly criticized by business leaders - costs up to $10,000.

"The time frame involved is tremendous," Henderson said. "Many of our junior people have to physically stand in line for hours. It's all the bureaucracy, the filling out of forms."

And he looks forward to the day when Deloitte & Touche won't have to charge their clients for such banal tasks. He's more interested in the creative aspect of his job.

After graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1992 with an accounting degree, Henderson spent four years working for Revenue Canada, the country's tax inspectors, because he wanted to learn how the "bad guys" - those who audited corporations - operated. Then he went to work for Deloitte & Touche in Vancouver, where he mastered Canada's tax law. He still keeps an updated version of the fat green paperback book in his cabinet.

Last year, a former colleague asked him to come to Moscow to work with him. Some things took some getting used to.

For one, engagement letters - a document outlining the terms and cost of an agreed-upon project - are taken much more seriously here than in Canada or the United States.

"Back in Canada, I think I wrote about five engagement letters during my time there," he said. "Here, we write one for almost every client."

This fact underscores the multiple realities of price. There is an agreed-up estimate. Then, there is the man-hour fee for each consultant. Then, there is the "recovery rate" - or the percent that the firm actually expects to receive at a project's finish.

In many firms, these hourly rates are listed but not set in stone, and many participate in what is called a "professional services discount," a 25 percent reduction in price for clients who have prestige potential but can't yet afford the sticker price.

If it's a one-time deal, then we'll probably be less flexible about altering our prices, said Pyotr Medvedev of Arthur Andersen. But if it's the beginning of a long-term relationship, accommodations can be made for those who can't afford to pay our full rates this year.

"If we're successful at helping the client out, then profitability should increase with time, as well as the ability to pay us," said Medvedev. "The point is not to bankrupt the client, the point is to help him."

The Big Five U.S. accounting firms - Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, KPMG Peat Marwick and PricewaterhouseCoopers - may be taking such measures to be more competitive with local tax consultancies, said Alexander Verenekov, deputy director of Yunikon. The price difference between the two echelons of service has decreased dramatically since the August 1998 crisis. The cost difference between the Big Five and high-profile Russian firms is almost negligible.

Henderson, however, says the cost of his service, his knowledge, his experience and Deloitte's information infrastructure is worth what he saves his clients.

"I have a personal rule never to accept work that I can't add value to," he said. "When I do good work, however, clients save that $100,000 they are charged many times over."

TITLE: Where Will Russia Turn to When the Oil Boom Ends?
AUTHOR: By Ariel Cohen
TEXT: WITH a $2.7 billion international debt repayment looming for Russia, the International Monetary Fund mission left Moscow in November without reaching an agreement. The IMF has decided that Russia has enough cash to pay off its debt. Revenues from high global energy prices as well as reports of higher-than-expected Russian GDP growth are causing some analysts to conclude that the Russian economy has turned the corner.


Unfortunately, some recent economic reports show this is not the case. There are disturbing indications that if oil prices plunge, Russian prosperity will evaporate. Even IMF officials acknowledge that, with the exception of the flat income tax set to begin on Jan. 1, little has been done in terms of real economic reform.

According to the Heritage Foundation's 2001 Index of Economic Freedom, Russia is ranked No. 127, trailing countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Estonia in such categories as free trade, inflation and foreign investment. Even more worrisome, while over the last five years Central European and Baltic countries have improved their Index scores by from 15 to 30 percent, while Russia is falling behind by at least 10 percent.

Russia remains mired in corruption, has an abysmal track record implementing the rule of law and has shown little progress carrying out structural reforms. Foreign investment per capita in Russia is much lower than in Eastern Europe and capital flight resumed in full force after a short hiatus in late 1999. A recent World Bank report titled "Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture, Corruption and Influence in Transition" argues that corruption in Russia remains a daunting problem. The study found there is a 90 percent probability of losing foreign direct investment in Russia within five years, as compared with a 25 percent chance in Hungary.

A survey of companies by the authors of that study found that Western businessmen consider Russian courts corrupt, unfair, unreliable and incapable of enforcing decisions. Russia still has a high level of "state capture," in which companies pay bribes for legislation and executive decisions.

Until Russia develops a credible legal system that recognizes and protects property rights, especially in the real estate and agricultural-land markets, economic prosperity will be limited to the boom-and-bust cycles of world oil prices. Without a transparent government and clear rules, Western lending and optimistic public relations are not going to do the trick. Domestic capital flight will continue and foreign investors will not come.

True, some progress has been made from the extremely low baseline of post-crisis 1998. GDP is up 13 percent since the 1997 nadir. It is projected to grow 7.3 percent in 2000. Investment for 2000 will be up 14 percent. Russia now boasts a strong current-account surplus of $23.9 billion. It is recognizing its obligations to international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.

However, this macroeconomic nirvana will not last long. First, it is driven by the high oil and commodities prices worldwide. Second, it is a direct result of the 1998 de facto default on foreign obligations. Third, the 75 percent devaluation of the ruble in 1998 helped to protect Russian asset prices and ruble-denominated debts while simultaneously decreasing the cost of labor. Fourth, the economic bounce is driven by price controls on domestic inputs such as electricity, transportation and other commodities. This is a de facto subsidy paid to industry by the government. This government support has stimulated the revival of moribund industrial capacity, primarily for export substitution and low-cost commodity production.

As a result of the improved balance of trade and accounts, the treasury does not need more international financing. Nevertheless, the Finance Ministry is planning to borrow $1.2 billion from the IMF and $900 million from the World Bank, just in case oil prices plunge and because it is easier to borrow than to raise revenue domestically.

According to the data collected by Richard Ericsson of Columbia University, real wages have fallen 23 percent since 1997, when they were not too high to begin with, and aggregate consumer buying power remains low. Consumption is down 1.3 percent since 1997. 

Tax reform - hailed as the biggest achievement of the Putin presidency so far - is incomplete. Taxpayers do not trust the newly declared benign tax policy and are scared by the government's promise to abandon the flat income tax rate of 13 percent once everyone declares their income to authorities.

According to the World Bank, only 25 percent of Russian companies claimed in a survey that their property rights are protected, compared with 75 percent of companies in Poland and Estonia. Seventy-two percent of Russia's land still is in state hands and only 0.03 percent is changing hands each year. There is no land market to speak of.

Russia must also face the crisis of its obsolete industrial base. Some of Russia's power-generation equipment dates back to the 1900s, a spokesman for electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems admitted recently. To turn the tide, UES will need $70 billion in the next five to seven years, or severe electricity shortages will continue to plague Russia. Another $80 billion is needed to replace Soviet-era equipment and pipelines in the cash-generating oil and gas sector, otherwise output will start declining.

Considering all these factors, it is no surprise, then, that foreign investors take note and prefer the relatively calm waters of Eastern and Central Europe to Russia's "wild, wild East."


Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is the research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies at the Heritage Foundation. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: EDITORIAL
TEXT: Don't Let Chauvinism Kill Charity 


SINCE 1992, the Salvation Army has worked to ease the suffering of Russia's poor and forgotten. It provides food to the homeless, offers drug counseling, runs community centers, conducts outreach programs in prisons and more. It provides relief during natural disasters and assists refugees. Anyone who knows Russia knows that we need as much help of this sort as we can get.


Perhaps just as importantly, this organization is introducing Russian society - grown accustomed to turning to the state for help in every situation - to the concept of civic activism and self-help. In Moscow alone, the Salvation Army boasts more than 200 Russian volunteers. 

Now all this commendable work is threatened in the typically ham-handed, xenophobic style that characterizes so much of the Russian bureaucracy. The municipal committee that registers such organizations has so far refused to register this one because of a trifling technicality. The Salvation Army appealed this decision to a municipal court, which in turn rejected the appeal. Now, with an end-of-the-year deadline looming, it may be too late for the Salvation Army to appeal further to the Supreme Court, mostly because the municipal court has said that it will only issue its verdict in writing "within a month."

The Salvation Army reports that it has already wasted $20,000 in legal fees contesting this case, money that could have fed and sheltered many homeless people this winter. 

The crux of the problem, besides the stupidity of the bureaucrats, is a 1997 law that was foisted on Russia by the Orthodox Church. That law requires any religious organization that has not been working in Russia since 1982 (that is, any organization that was not able to get the imprimatur of the Soviet state) to register with the authorities and abide by strict restrictions in its work.

Ostensibly, the law was paternalistically intended to protect Russians from dangerous cults and sects. In reality, its goal is to protect the Orthodox Church's status as a quasi-state religion by putting all other groups under the thumb of bureaucracy.

But there is still time to act. The Orthodox Church, which created this mess, must lobby against this crass application of the 1997 law. 

It would be only charitable for the patriarch himself to telephone the appropriate authorities and urge them to reconsider. After all, the poor are under much greater threat from cold, hunger and loneliness than from foreign cults.

Winter's cold is here. Christmas is coming. What other reason do we need to do what is right?

TITLE: MARKET MATTERS
AUTHOR: Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: Down in the Viper Pit With The PR Guys 


IT was a miraculous sight - public relations representatives from different companies greeting, toasting and giving flowers to each other. It was kind of difficult to keep hold of one's sense of reality. But, at least for a short while last Friday, natural enemies buried the hatchet at St. Petersburg's first-ever PR awards.


This was a smoothly run affair, with lots of music and plenty of alcohol flowing, as awards were given for the best PR manager ad project over the past year. And the gifts of washing powder that were presented to the competition's organizers at the end of the ceremony seemed mildly symbolic of the temporary victory of clean, honest marketing over the kind of smear campaigning that has become known as chyorny PR - black PR.

Again, the barometer of the contest's importance was the presence of the big Moscow-based companies, eyeing up the future of the industry in St. Petersburg, which, according to many of those present, has passed through its "beginner's" phase and is ready for further development.

It was a strange evening to behold because, unlike people who work in advertising - who are generally respectful of their rivals' creativity - members of the PR community are usually very unfriendly and willing to indulge in all manner of scandalous practices.

But they weren't really fooling anyone, even themselves. I was talking to one member of this community, who looked around and said that the gathering looked like a nest of vipers.

And I was tempted to agree, although I can't really put my finger on why. Perhaps it was the false smiles plastered on all-too-professional faces. Perhaps it was the amount of boasting and self-congratulation that was going on. Or perhaps it was the profession itself. When all is said and done, PR is about the manipulation of public opinion (and those who do it best are rarely inclined to boast about it in public).

However, it also appears that we in this city suffer less at the hands of PR mongers than they do in the capital - although PR wars, leaks to the press and the dissemination of compromising materials are far from unknown here.

As an example, I know the public relations head of a major local company who is a former journalist. Journalists who retain some sense of ethics often make the best PR people, but this man is certainly an exception, being neither helpful nor honest. On one occasion, when I asked him for comment on a piece of exclusive news, he immediately phoned up another newspaper and sold the news to them. He also gets upset with us when we frustrate his attempts to "place" articles in Vedomosti.

I had thought that this man was unusual. But when I complained about him to my colleagues in Moscow, all they said was, "Don't worry - we get dozens of people like that."

Moscow is ahead of St. Petersburg in so many ways, and I regret our relative lack of foreign investment, our poor business environment and our lousy streets. But if we stay light years behind the capital in terms of the tricks of the PR men and women, I'll be more than happy to take second best.


Anna Shcherbakova is chief of the St. Petersburg bureau of Vedomosti.

TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: Gold Diggers


This is how it works. This is the way they did things eight years ago and this is how they're going to do it again. Get used to it. Because this is how it works. This is what it's all about.


In 1992, in the final days of the first Bush presidency, George I cut a little-noticed deal with a little-known Canadian company called Barrick Goldstrike. Using an obscure 1872 law designed to allow frontier gold prospectors to gain title to their small claims, Bush gave Barrick control over federal-owned property containing some $10 billion in gold. For the right to mine that gold and mint its own private fortune, Barrick paid the American taxpayers the princely sum of $10,000, The Observer's Gregory Palast reports.

The incoming Clinton administration wanted to put the kibosh on this sweetheart deal, but George I was too fast for them; his Interior Department cut through the normal bureaucratic procedures with lightning speed and the Barrick's deal was finalized just days before Clinton took office.

So can you guess what happened next? Right: George I then joined Barrick's board of directors, where he pocketed big money for the next seven years. And he didn't mind singing for his supper either; Barrick frequently dispatched the ex-president to meet with the bloodthirsty dictators who were his "old friends," like Indonesia's Suharto and Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, to rig up juicy backdoor deals for his corporate masters.

Perhaps not incidentally, Barrick poured $148,000 into George II's campaign this year. And Daddy's dirty work as a bagman and fixer for other corporate interests has also served l'il Georgie well. For example, George I went to bat for the Mirage Casino corporation when they wanted to muscle in on some Argentina territory; this year, Mirage kicked back $449,000 to GOP coffers. Daddy G also did some highly remunerative flack work for Chevron Oil with his old friends in Kuwait; in return, Chevron pumped $657,000 into the Republican tank in 2000.

Dad has also hired himself out, at $100,000 a pop, to cult leader and convicted criminal Sun Myung Moon, lending his ex-presidential gravitas numerous times to the loony causes of the Korean-born manifestation of the Divine Creator of the Universe. In return, the god's newspaper, The Washington Times, has pounded a vigorous drum for George II.

That's how it works, see? One hand washes the other. You scratch my back, I'll cash your check. Government's a candy store - for the "right sort" of people - and, boys, the store is about to be reopened.

Get used to it.



Photo Finish


But you can forget all the court rulings and legal droolings going on back there in that banana republic located between Canada and Mexico; the real judicial action has been taking place in the much more august and exalted realm of Britannia.


Yes, in those good gray ancient precincts, where ever falls a fine fair mist from noble skies that ever shine with all the brilliant colors of the underside of a 1969 Dodge pickup on a gravel road through a washed-out cow field in Northern Mississippi at the end of winter after five days of rain, media and mob alike have thrown over the Florida fracas to follow a court battle between two true titans of power and influence: Hello! Magazine and its hated rival, OK!

The loudly meowing catfight between the two glossy gossip rags has, like the lesser tussle between Gore and Bush, ended up in a higher court. At issue are the exclusive rights to pictures of the greatest event in the history of humanity (excluding the manifestation of the Divine Creator of the Universe in Korea, of course): the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The extensively pre-nupped (and post-pregnancy) nuptials of the aging Hollywood heartthrob and his granddaughterly gal were greeted in Britain with the kind of fanfare normally reserved for moon landings, world wars and car accidents involving ex-royal socialites out on a toot after a boozy night at a Paris hotel. The Douglases sold the rights to their rites to OK!, but the magazine was beaten to the punch by its exclamatory rival.

Needless to say, legal hijinks ensued. OK! and the photogenic couple went to court to stop publication of the offending Hello! A High Court halted distribution of the latter, leaving 755,000 copies languishing in the warehouse. But last week, the Court of Appeal in London overturned the ban, allowing lucky Britons to enjoy a double helping of Douglas glamour, albeit vicariously.

By week's end, the story had moved on to the vicarious post-nups: "Mike and Catherine in 12-Hour Honeymoon Sex Romp!" screamed The Sun.

Wonder who got the exclusive photo rights to that?



Party Purge


'Tis the season and all that, but in the bloated barns that hold the mile-high piles of bovine leavings known, amusingly, in the United States as "network television," there is a distinctly Grinchy spirit in the air.


NBC is "suggesting" that its divisions "postpone" their holiday parties this year, as the poor little network tightens its belt to keep profit margins soaring, The New York Observer reports. Network officials called the move a "precautionary measure" in response to lower revenues. A corporate spokespeaker denied there was any specific cause for the lack of largess - such as the fact that it is now paying each cast member of "Friends" a whopping $750,000 per episode for their increasingly unprofitable yuppie shtick or the $7 million it lays out each year for the banal breakfast chatter of Katie Couric. 

So here's a money-saving tip for the network: Next year, keep the Christmas parties - cancel the programs instead.

TITLE: Spain Downs Australia To Capture Davis Cup
AUTHOR: By Stephen Wade
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BARCELONA, Spain - Spain might owe its first Davis Cup after 79 years to the 1992 Olympics in this Mediterranean port.


"These kids have worked many, many years," Spanish captain Javier Duarte said after Juan Carlos Ferrero led Spain to a 3-1 victory over defending and 27-time champion Australia. He capped the win Sunday by outlasting Lleyton Hewitt 6-2, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4 in the deciding match.

"They were born into tennis, most of them with the Olympics in Barcelona," Duarte said. "This tells you how long they have been working and fighting to accomplish this.

"This Spanish generation of players is the best generation of tennis we have ever had. It's going to be very difficult to get another generation as good as this one."

The oldest member of the Spanish team is 26-year-old Alex Corretja. Joan Balcells and Albert Costa are 25, while former world No. 1 Carlos Moya, who wasn't on the team, is 24.

Their best game is on clay, but they all can play on other surfaces. Ferrero was described by one of the Australians as "not your average Spaniard," meaning the tall blond with the strong return has an all-court game not limited to clay.

"It's easier to play at home," Duarte said. "We'd rather play on clay. Away, it would be tougher. But with the players we have, they've proven they can win on different surfaces."

The victory over Australia sent a sellout crowd of 14,000 at the '92-Olympics-built Palau Sant Jordi - including King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia - into a singing, flag-waving frenzy. Spain's two other appearances in the Davis final were both losses to Australia in the 1960s on grass.

In a match between two of the game's best young players, Ferrero broke the 19-year-old Hewitt at love in the first game and thwarted the tenacious Australian each time he threatened to wrest control of the match. The Spaniard got in more first serves, made fewer unforced errors on the slow clay and lashed baseline passing shots from both sides.

Ferrero got the winner with a backhand passing shot down the line. The shot came on the fourth match point of the game after Ferrero had been up 15-40 and couldn't convert. He finally did on the second point.

"I don't know if this will change my life, but certainly the experience of having won a Davis Cup at 20 gives me confidence for other tournaments," Ferrero said. "It's a dream come true. It's tremendous joy for us.

"It's one of my best victories, well, the best. I'm on cloud nine."

An avid tennis fan, King Juan Carlos embraced the Spanish team members as he handed over miniature Davis Cups. Moving down the line of players, he consoled the Australians, patting Hewitt on the cheek and joking with coach John Newcombe.

"I said to the king that I was watching him toward the end of the match on some of those points - and he had his hands covering his eyes," Newcombe said. "He was very nervous, so we just laughed about it.

"[The king] told Lleyton what a great fighter he was, how tough he was."

Hewitt, who won his opening singles match on Friday over Albert Costa, was subdued and a bit downcast.

"Two days ago, I was saying I had the greatest feeling out on that court and now it's probably the worst feeling of my tennis career so far. ... I couldn't have asked any more of myself. I felt if I could have gotten out of that fourth set, I would have won the fifth."

Newcombe, who is retiring from Davis Cup along with coach Tony Roche, saluted the same rowdy crowd he'd criticized for being unsportsmanlike and cheering Australia's errors.

"It is the third time that our nations have played against one another in a final and this time we had to come to your country to defend the cup," he told the fans. "We tried our best, but in the end you were just too good."

Then Newcombe issued a warning.

"Next time we play, you better be prepared to play on what the cows eat - grass."

Duarte recognized the efforts of many in building Spanish tennis - including its greatest player, Manuel Santana, who was fired a year ago as captain.

Santana did not attend the final, playing instead in a tournament in Florida.

"If the coach had been Santana, [Manuel] Orantes, [Jose Luis] Arilla or [Juan] Gisbert, we would also have won," he admitted.

On Saturday, Corretja and Joan Balcells defeated Sandon Stolle and Mark Woodforde 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to give Spain a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five-matches competition.

On Friday, Hewitt defeated Albert Costa 3-6, 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 and Ferrero beat Pat Rafter 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2) 6-2, 3-1 when the Australian retired with cramps. Sunday's remaining, but meaningless, singles match between Corretja and Rafter was called off by both teams.

TITLE: Nobel Laureates Collect Their Prizes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The first Nobel prizes of the new millennium were awarded at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Sunday, with Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae-jung of South Korea vowing to devote the rest of his life to peace and human rights.


King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden awarded the prizes for sciences, economics and literature to 12 laureates in Stockholm, while South Korean President Kim received the Peace Prize in Oslo.

Kim, 75, received the peace prize for his work for democracy and human rights across Asia, especially for his efforts to promote closer ties with North Korea.

In his acceptance speech, Kim praised Stalinist North Korea for easing Cold War tensions.

"I humbly pledge before you that ... I shall give the rest of my life to human rights and peace in my country and in the world, and to the reconciliation and cooperation of my people," Kim told an audience including Norway's King Harald.

The prizes, founded in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, are each worth nine million Swedish crowns this year ($929,300).

The other laureates received their prizes at a traditional ceremony in Stockholm's Concert Hall, attended by 1,800 people.

They later took part in the Nobel banquet, a glittering climax to the year's Nobel festivities, attended by 1,373 guests in Stockholm's City Hall.

This year's choice of literature laureate - Chinese-born writer Gao Xingjian - angered the authorities in Beijing who said the award had political motives, and the Chinese embassy in Stockholm declined an invitation to attend the ceremonies.

Gao, the first Chinese-born writer to win the prize, left China after its army massacred pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and his works have been banned in China since 1986.

In a speech to the banquet, Gao recalled the hardships he had had as a writer in China and in exile, and the miracle of winning the prestigious prize.

"Suddenly, here he is in this brilliant hall, receiving this precious award from the hands of His Majesty the King. Is it a fairytale or is it reality?" Gao said.

Scientists who laid the foundations of the computer revolution and pioneered plastics that can conduct electricity won the physics and chemistry prizes.

Their work paved the way for computers, compact discs and mobile phones without which modern life is unimaginable. And true to form, a mobile phone rang out loudly during the speech praising the three physics laureates, Jack Kilby and Herbert Kroemer of the United States and St. Petersburg's own Zhores Alfyorov.

Alan MacDiarmid of New Zealand, Japan's Hideki Shirakawa and Alan Heeger of the United States shared the Nobel honors for chemistry, while the medicine prize was awarded to Swede Arvid Carlsson, Austrian-born Eric Kandel, today a U.S. citizen, and Paul Greengard of the United States. James Heckman and Daniel McFadden, both of the United States, are this year's economics laureates.

In Stockholm, Russian physics co-winner Alfyorov noted in his acceptance speech that physics had brought both benefits and disasters to mankind in the 20th century and warned that mass media could be abused in the wrong hands.

"Knowledge is power, but power must be based on knowledge," he said.

Alfyorov recalled his years of research into lasers in St. Petersburg on a light-hearted note in verse:

"Our purpose was both great and bright/no more the dark!/Let there be light!/So to release eternal light/we did the work all day and night./And when we could neither work nor think/we had the Russian vodka drink... .

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Netanyahu Returns


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu announced a bid to challenge Prime Minister Ehud Barak in coming elections, adding to political turmoil that has made peace with the Palestinians seem even more remote.

Israel's preoccupation with the ballot, expected within 60 days following Barak's resignation on Sunday, was likely to shunt to the sidelines a first visit to the region on Monday of a U.S.-led inquiry commission into Israeli-Palestinian violence, in which at least 310 people have died.

Attention in Israel is now riveted on parliament, which must decide whether to enact legislation that would enable Netanyahu to run in a rematch against Barak, the Labor Party leader who trounced the former Likud chief in a May 1999 election.

Announcing at a news conference his return from a brief stint in the political wilderness, Netanyahu looked like the cat who ate the canary. Opinion polls show him far ahead of Barak. 



Iliescu Wins Runoff

BUCHAREST, Romania (Reuters) - Ion Iliescu, claiming a landslide victory over an ultra-nationalist foe in Sunday's Romanian presidential election, said it was a defeat for extremism and a step toward European Union membership.

Exit polls gave Iliescu, a former communist who was president from 1990 to 1996 when he was ousted by centrists, a 70 percent to 30 percent victory over 51-year-old publisher Corneliu Vadim Tudor.

Tudor, a publisher whose newspapers routinely print attacks on Jews, Roma gypsies and Romania's large ethnic Hungarian minority, was anything but ready to concede defeat. Calling the outcome "the biggest political fraud of the century," he told supporters he intended to sue the elections bureau to have the result overturned.



Sharif Exiled

DUBAI (Reuters) - Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for an indefinite exile after being released by the army which overthrew him 14 months ago, Saudi officials said.

A plane carrying Sharif and his relatives landed in the Red Sea port of Jeddah and the ex-premier pledged to his Saudi hosts that he would stay out of politics, the officials added.

A Pakistani statement said earlier that Sharif, who received a life sentence on charges including corruption, had been sent into exile to Saudi Arabia. Sharif, 51, had complained of heart problems.

The statement said that, under terms agreed with military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Sharif would not have to serve any further time on his sentences but would have to forfeit $8.3 million in property and stay out of politics for the next 21 years.



Toxic Treaty Signed

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - UN officials announced Sunday that 122 countries have agreed on a treaty banning 12 highly toxic chemicals. 

Despite disagreements that kept negotiators awake most of Friday and Saturday nights, all welcomed the final text, said John Buccini, chairman of the summit organized by the UN Environment Program. 

Production and use of nine of the 12 chemicals will be banned as soon as the treaty takes effect, likely four to five years after the signing ceremony, set for May in Stockholm, Sweden. 



'Poison Rice' Probe

BEIJING (AP) - The government has ordered nationwide inspections of rice after authorities discovered farmers in central China had been mixing in industrial chemicals to add weight before sale, state media said Monday. 

Authorities in Henan province found 46 tons of the tainted rice, which they said had been sold by farmers there to a company in southern Guangdong province, newspapers said. Three farmers were arrested and another was being sought, the reports said. 

On Saturday, China's cabinet ordered additional inspections across the country for what the media have dubbed "poison rice." The inspections found five more tons of oil-contaminated rice and 270 tons of what newspapers called substandard rice being sold illegally as high quality rice. 



Estrada Gives Reprieve

BACOLOD, Philippines (AP) - Philippine President Joseph Estrada, undergoing an impeachment trial, announced Sunday he will order the commutation of all death sentences to life imprisonment. 

More than 1,500 people have been sentenced to death in the Philippines since capital punishment was restored in 1994, among the highest number in the world. But because of opposition, no executions were carried out until last year. Since then, seven people have been put to death, all by lethal injections. 



Pope: Stick to Faith

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Missionaries, parochial school teachers and other religious workers filled St. Peter's Square Sunday to hear Pope John Paul II command them to adhere strictly to church doctrine rather than striking out on their own. 

John Paul dedicated the Holy Year event to those who spread the message of the Roman Catholic church. Your "message to men and women of our time cannot betray the truth and the continuity of the doctrine of faith," John Paul said. 

Citing predecessor Paul VI's words of caution after the liberalizing 1960s, John Paul denounced "the dangerous tendency to reconstruct, on psychological and sociological bases, a Christianity removed from uninterrupted tradition."



Clinton Visits Ulster

LONDON (Reuters) - Northern Ireland's First Minister David Trimble said on Sunday the outcome of President Clinton's visit to the province this week would depend partly on how he dealt with the Real IRA renegade guerrilla group.

While the mainstream IRA, representing Catholic minority interests in Northern Ireland, is sticking to a cease-fire agreement, the breakaway Real IRA opposes the peace process and has been blamed for a number of recent attacks.

Clinton is seen as a major player in behind-the-scenes negotiations that secured broad peace in Northern Ireland between separatist Roman Catholics and majority Protestants loyal to London in the 1998 Good Friday accord.

The outgoing U.S. leader is expected to meet politicians on both sides of the divide during his visit, part of a three-day tour of Britain and Ireland.

TITLE: Photos Link Japan PM to Crime Boss
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO - Beleaguered Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori faced fresh trouble on Monday that could threaten his tenuous hold on power with the publication of long-rumored photos of him with a man alleged to be a right-wing gangster.


Analysts said the photos would damage Mori, already one of the nation's most unpopular prime ministers ever, but might not topple him - partly because with parliament in recess, the opposition lacks a forum for a high-profile attack.

The pictures, carried in mass circulation Shukan Gendai magazine, were said to have been taken after a function by a Mori support group in western Japan in October 1998, and show Mori sitting next to a man alleged to be a right-wing extremist with suspected ties to organized crime.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said on Friday that Mori had denied any personal links to the man in the photo, and would take legal action if the picture was published.

Political analysts said the photograph was clearly damaging for Mori, but added that momentum within the Liberal Democratic Party to ditch him soon appeared to be waning.

Picked in a back-room deal last April after his predecessor suffered a fatal stroke, Mori saw his popularity plummet after several verbal gaffes and the resignation of two cabinet ministers over scandals. Last month, he barely survived an opposition-sponsored no-confidence vote after LDP barons quashed a rebellion by would-be reformers.

TITLE: Carter's 35 Not Enough as Suns Burn Raptors
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TORONTO - Jason Kidd was not going to let the Phoenix Suns give away this one.


Kidd scored nine of his 24 points in the fourth quarter as the Suns regrouped after blowing a 21-point lead for a 95-87 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Sunday.

The All-Star point guard added nine rebounds and six assists. He made just 6 of 17 shots, but four came from 3-point range at crucial times, stemming surges by the Raptors.

Cliff Robinson scored 22 points and Rodney Rogers added 19 for the Suns.



Boston 104, Denver 102. In Boston, Paul Pierce hit the game-winning jumper as time expired in overtime to lift the Boston Celtics to a 104-102 victory over the struggling Denver Nuggets.


After Nick Van Exel's jumper tied the game with 6.8 seconds to play, the Celtics pushed the ball upcourt and found Pierce. He managed to get off a jump shot from the left side despite Denver's smothering defense.

Antoine Walker had 26 points and 11 rebounds for Boston. Kenny Anderson scored 13 points in his return from a broken jaw.

McDyess had 37 points and 18 rebounds and Voshon Lenard scored 21 points for Denver, which fell to 0-4 on its East Coast swing.



Sacramento 100, Miami 97. In Sacramento, rookie Hidayet Torkoglu drove for a layup with 51 seconds left and Jason Williams hit four straight free throws in the final 12 seconds as the Sacramento Kings secured a 100-97 victory over the Miami Heat. 


Chris Webber scored 19 points, Williams added 15 and Jon Barry 14 as seven Kings scored in double figures after no one had more than four points in a disastrous first quarter. 

The Kings came back from a 24-point deficit, after allowing a season-high 40 points to the Heat in the first quarter. 

Tim Hardaway scored 11 of his 25 points in the first quarter and also dished out nine assists for the Heat. 



Los Angeles Lakers 112, Detroit 88. In Los Angeles, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant each scored 26 points in just three quarters as the Los Angeles Lakers routed the Detroit Pistons, 112-88.


Bryant scored 16 points and O'Neal added 12 in the first half as Los Angeles opened a 56-44 lead. In the third quarter, the duo combined 24 of the Lakers' 29 points. O'Neal collected 14 and Bryant 10 as the Lakers widened their lead to 85-67.

Both superstars took a seat for the fourth quarter and the reserves continued the blowout.

Detroit's Jerry Stackhouse scored 30 points, lifting his average to 28.1 points per game.

Stackhouse scored five straight points in the second quarter to bring Detroit within 42-38 with 5:53 to go. However, the Lakers countered with a 14-6 run to close out the half and give them a 12-point lead at the break.

TITLE: England Triumphs in Pakistan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KARACHI, Pakistan - England won its first series in Pakistan in 38 years on Monday when it crowned an outstanding display on the final day of the third and final test with a six-wicket victory.


In rapidly fading light, Graham Thorpe and Graeme Hick put on 91 for the fourth wicket before Hick was bowled by Waqar Younis for 40 with just 20 runs needed for victory.

Captain Nasser Hussain, dropped behind the wicket off his first ball, and Thorpe scrambled to victory in near-darkness after Pakistan was repeatedly warned by the umpires for time-wasting.

England, on its first tour of Pakistan in 13 years, finished with 176 for four with Thorpe unbeaten with 64.

Michael Atherton, named man of the match for his first-innings century, called the victory an "incredible achievement.

"It was only the second test England had won in Pakistan - the last was in October 1961 - and was the first defeat for Pakistan in Karachi.

England started the day by dismissing the home side, which resumed with 71 for three, for 158 in its second innings - its lowest score against England in Pakistan.

Left-arm spinner Ashley Giles and paceman Darren Gough both took three wickets to give England a victory target of 176 at exactly four runs an over. Pakistan had made 405 in its first innings and England 388.

The home team lost nightwatchman Saqlain in the fifth over when he was pinned lbw by Gough.

Salim Elahi and Yousuf Youhana - later named man of the series - added exactly 50 for the fifth wicket before both were out in quick succession.

Youhana, with 24, flicked a bouncer from White down the legside where Stewart took a smart catch before Elahi was snapped up by Graham Thorpe close in on the offside off Giles.

Giles took his third wicket of the innings when Abdur Razzaq, who had batted 41 balls for one run, got an outside edge and Mike Atherton took the catch at gully.

Moin Khan, with 14, then hit a slow full toss from paceman Craig White to Hussain at extra cover.

Afridi hit a full-blooded drive off Giles and the ball ricocheted off Trescothick at short leg. Younis called for a run but was several meters short when wicketkeeper Stewart picked up the ball and threw down the stumps.

Gough ended the Pakistan innings when he had last man Danish Kaneria lbw for nought. Gough finished with three for 30.

When England batted Michael Atherton, a century-maker in the first innings, was caught by Saeed Anwar for 26 after getting a top edge off off-spinner Saqlain.

TITLE: New Leaders Take Over On Top of Euro Leagues
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - It was all change again at the top in Germany, Spain and France as Bayer Leverkusen, Valencia and Girondins Bordeaux headed the pile after this weekend's fixtures.


However, AS Roma and Feyernoord stretched their leads in Italy and the Netherlands while in England Arsenal closed the gap on Manchester United to six points.



England. It was raining goals in the premier league as the weekend's 10 matches produced 33 of them.


Manchester United fans saw six, but for once they weren't all at one end as Charlton Athletic earned a 3-3 home draw.

That enabled Arsenal to close within six points with a 5-0 thrashing of Newcastle United, Ray Parlour grabbing a hat trick.



Germany. Bayer Leverkusen returned to the top of the Bundesliga with a 4-0 hammering of Hertha Berlin. Two goals from Oliver Neuville helped Leverkusen to the win, which took them on top with 31 points.


Schalke 04 is in second with 30 after a 2-1 defeat of bottom-placed VfB Stuttgart on Saturday. Borussia Dortmund beat SpVgg Unterhaching 3-0 to move to third with 29, with Hertha dropping from first to fourth with 28. Bayern Munich is in fifth with 27 after a goal-less draw at Kaiserlautern.



Italy. Goals from Gabriel Batistuta and Francesco Totti gave AS Roma a 2-1 victory over Udinese to take Fabio Capello's side six points clear.


Atalanta Bergamo is in second with 19 after being held to a goal-less home draw by Perugia with Juventus also with 19 after it edged Parma 1-0 in Turin thanks to a goal from Ciro Ferrara.

Champions Lazio finally hit form to win 4-1 at Vicenza to go fourth with 18, ahead of AC Milan, also with 18 after beating Lecce by the same score in the San Siro.



France. Girondins Bordeaux rallied to score a 2-1 win at home to St. Etienne on Sunday and regain the league lead.


Goals from Belgian Marc Wilmots and Portuguese striker Pedro Pauleta canceled out Pape Sarr's 29th-minute opener for St Etienne to take Bordeaux to 34 points.

They are one clear of previous leaders Nantes, who lost 2-0 at Olympique Marseille, and Sedan, who also went down 2-0, at Lille, who move to fourth place with 30 points.



Spain. Valencia beat Real Sociedad 2-0 on Saturday with second-half goals by John Carew and Juan Sanchez to return to the top.


Deportivo Coruna had the chance to reclaim the lead on Sunday but was held to a 1-1 home draw with Rayo Vallecano.

Roy Makaay had Deportivo ahead after 35 minutes but Elvir Bolic equalized 20 minutes from time for the league's top scorers. Deportivo's fiery Brazilian Djalminha was sent off again in the 52nd minute.

Valencia and Deportivo both have 28 points with Real Madrid third with 26 after an impressive 3-0 win over Celta Vigo. A superb individual effort by Luis Figo was the pick of Real's goals. 



The Netherlands. Feyenoord went four points clear after beating Ajax 3-1, its first home win over the Amsterdam club in six years.


Feyenoord has 37 points, four ahead of PSV Eindhoven, without a game, and Vitesse Arnhem, which drew 0-0 at home with Heerenveen.

TITLE: 23-Year Wait Comes to an End as Baltimore Makes Playoffs
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BALTIMORE, Maryland - The Baltimore Ravens clinched a post-season berth with a 24-3 victory over the awful San Diego Chargers Sunday, giving Baltimore football fans their first playoff team in 23 years.


Baltimore quarterback Trent Dilfer, who was 5 the last time a team from Baltimore made the playoffs, completed 16 of 24 passes for 187 yards and two touchdowns as he improved to 5-1 as a starter. He lost his starting job earlier this year.

All three of Baltimore's touchdowns followed turnovers by San Diego. Baltimore (10-4) set the tone early in the game when they marched 60 yards in 17 plays.



Philadelphia 35, Cleveland 24. In Cleveland, Donovan McNabb passed for four touchdowns, two each to Torrance Small and Charles Johnson, leading the Philadelphia Eagles to a 35-24 win over the Cleveland Browns and a spot in the playoffs for the first time in four years.


The second-year quarterback completed 23 of 36 passes for a career-high 390 yards for the 10-5 Eagles. He has run up 3,167 yards and thrown for 20 touchdowns this season.

Tight end Chad Lewis caught five passes for 100 yards for Philadelphia.



Tennessee 35, Cincinnati 3. In Nashville, Tennessee, the Titans clinched a playoff berth with a 35-3 rout of the lowly Cincinnati Bengals as Steve McNair passed for 229 yards and three touchdowns, including two to running back Eddie George.


McNair topped the 200-yard mark for the sixth straight week, completing 16 of 26 passes. He hit Yancy Thigpen for a 56-yard score midway through the first quarter to put the Titans ahead for good.

George scored on a five-yard run before the period ended to make it 14-0, then caught touchdown tosses of seven and three yards. He carried 24 times for 81 yards.



New York Giants 30, Pittsburgh 10. In East Rutherford, New Jersey, The New York Giants, in arguably their most impressive performance of the season, received a huge day from Kerry Collins and cruised to an easy 30-10 triumph over the Pittsburgh Steelers for their third straight victory.


Collins threw for 333 yards and two touchdowns, and once again the Giants defense came up big, completely bottling up Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis and Kordell Stewart.

The Steelers (7-7) were unable to recover from an early 13-0 deficit as Kris Brown missed two field goals.



New Orleans 31, San Francisco 27. In San Francisco, Terry Allen dove in from the one-yard line with 49 seconds left, completing the New Orleans Saints' rally for a 31-27 victory over the San Francisco 49ers.


New Orleans trailed 27-17 when Terrell Owens caught a 69-yard touchdown pass from Jeff Garcia with 8:38 left in the game.



St. Louis 40, Minnesota 29. In St Louis, Marshall Faulk rushed for a career-best four touchdowns and 135 yards and Kurt Warner dissected the Minnesota Vikings' secondary with ease as the St Louis Rams posted a 40-29 victory over the Vikings.


The Rams (9-5) snapped a three-game losing streak and remain tied with New Orleans for first place in the NFC West.

TITLE: Duval Leads the Way to World Cup for U.S.
AUTHOR: By Kevin Gray
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELLA VISTA, Argentina - Tiger Woods made it sound as though David Duval single-handedly won the World Cup of Golf for the United States.


Woods did his part, too, with the most spectacular shot of the day.

With host Argentina making a run while cheered on by thousands of spectators, Woods sank a 40-foot birdie putt at the 11th hole Sunday to give the U.S. team a cushion it wouldn't relinquish en route to a three-shot victory and the $1 million top prize.

"David played great all week, and he really carried us," Woods said. "I only made one putt. Other than that, I didn't feel like I did much of anything."

Woods and Duval entered the day with a three-stroke lead over Argentina's Eduardo Romero and Angel Cabrera. That had been whittled to one shot when the Americans got to the par-3, 146-yard 11th hole.

Duval's tee shot, perhaps caught by heavy winds, carried well left of the pin. Woods, playing next in the alternate-shot format, calmly sank the slightly downhill putt to build a two-stroke lead.

Argentina then bogeyed the 13th and 14th holes and never challenged again.

Woods and Duval combined to shoot a 4-under-par 68 Sunday, finishing at 34-under 254 for the tournament. It was the 23rd U.S. title in 46 World Cups and the second in a row for Woods, who teamed with Mark O'Meara last year.

While Woods struggled in the early rounds, Duval kept the team in contention with his long drives and precision putting.

They combined for six birdies in the final round.

Twenty-four nations competed in the event, which mixed alternate-shot and four-ball play. Players had to deal with blustery winds, searing temperatures and threats of rain.

The ninth hole, a par-5, 495-yarder, brought a surprise bogey for Woods, who said he simply slipped: "I took the club back on my left foot, I flinched. I hit it fat and made it airborne."

Romero eagled that hole for Argentina. The Argentines birdied 15 and 17, but it wasn't enough as the U.S. team birdied the 14th and then closed with four straight pars.

Romero and Cabrera finished with 68 on the day for a 257. Paraguay's Carlos Franco, a PGA Tour regular, joined with Esteban Isasi to take third place after a final-round 67 for a 265.

Japan's Shigeki Maruyama and Hidejmichi Tanaka were fourth at 266, with Scotland's Paul Lawrie and Gary Orr two strokes back.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Aikman Injured Again

IRVING, Texas (AP) - Another concussion has made Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman's future even more uncertain.

While the Cowboys aren't ready to say the end of Aikman's 12-year career is near, he almost certainly won't be back this year.

Aikman was slammed to the ground by Washington linebacker LaVar Arrington midway through the first quarter Sunday. It was his second concussion this season and 10th of his career - fourth in his last 20 starts.

"I don't know, unless he just got real clearance, that he will play again this season,'' Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said after the Cowboys' 32-13 victory. "Why risk something?"

Aikman will undergo further evaluation this week, but Jones said the quarterback exhibited dizziness symptoms common to concussions.

The Dallas owner faces a March 8 deadline that will impact both the financial standing of the Cowboys and the team's future on the field. Jones must decide by then whether to pay Aikman a $7 million bonus.



World Player of the Year

ROME (Reuters) - French playmaker Zinedine Zidane was named as FIFA's world player of the year for 2000 on Monday.

Real Madrid's Portuguese midfielder Luis Figo was second and Barcelona's Brazilian striker Rivaldo third.

Zidane, who plays for Juventus, won the annual event organized by world soccer's governing body with 370 points to Figo's 329 and Rivaldo's 263.

The votes were cast by 150 national team coaches who awarded five points to their first-choice player, three to their second and one to their third.

Zidane, 28, who inspired France to the European Championship title in July, becomes only the second player to win the award twice following his success in 1998.

Brazil's Ronaldo won in 1996 and 1997. 



Soccer Stampede

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Dozens were injured in clashes between rival fans and a stampede after riot police fired teargas to break up fighting at a cup match on Sunday. 

Hundreds had been locked out of Bulawayo's Barbourfields stadium which was filled to its 40,000 capacity hours before the game between arch-rivals Highlanders and Dynamos. 

Trouble flared long before the start as fans fought to gain entry into the ground. 

Witnesses said police fired teargas into the crowd as rival fans fought and hurled missiles outside the stadium and later at the end of the match. 

Harare-based Dynamos won 2-1 to lift the Big Cities Cup 4-2 on aggregate.



Rangers Land A-Rod

DALLAS (AP) - Alex Rodriguez and the Texas Rangers reached a preliminary agreement Monday on a $252 million, 10-year contract, the richest deal in the history of sports.

The deal was subject to a final meeting Monday between Rodriguez's agent and the Rangers, according to two baseball sources who spoke on the condition they not be identified. It probably would be announced Monday evening.

The contract calls for a $10 million signing bonus and annual salaries ranging from $21 million to $27 million, one of the sources said.

Rodriguez's deal is exactly double the previous record for a sports contract: a $126 million, six-year agreement between forward Kevin Garnett and the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves.

TITLE: Florida State Quarterback Takes Heisman Trophy in Tight Race
AUTHOR: By Richard Rosenblatt
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - His family celebrated in St. Paul, Minnesota, his teammates cheered in Tallahassee, Florida, and Chris Weinke simply took Manhattan after winning the Heisman Trophy.


"Yes, I had a great night," Weinke said Sunday. "After winning the Heisman, how can it be anything but great?"

"I'm honored beyond words," Weinke said Saturday night after winning college football's top individual prize by 76 points over Oklahoma quarterback Josh Heupel. He said he was a nervous wreck in the moments leading to the announcement of the winner, and afterward said "it may take a while before this all sinks in."

It sure caused a ruckus at brother Derek's house, and at the Seminoles annual awards banquet on Saturday night.

Weinke has his first big win over Heupel, but the two will go at each other again in the Orange Bowl, where the stakes involve a national championship.

Weinke will lead the third-ranked Seminoles (11-1) against the top-ranked Sooners (12-0) on Jan. 3 hoping to finish his career with two consecutive national titles. Heupel is looking to bring Oklahoma its first title since 1985.

"It's exciting," Weinke said. "Regardless of who wins the Heisman, we're going to get a head-to-head matchup and whoever doesn't win is probably going to want to go out there and prove he deserved to win."

That would be Heupel, who told Sooners fans not to be discouraged by his runner-up finish.

"I would tell them to put a smile on their face and get ready for a trip to Miami," Heupel said.

Weinke, who led the nation with a school-record 4,167 yards passing and threw 33 touchdowns with 11 interceptions, totaled 1,628 points in the Heisman balloting - 369 first-place votes, 216 for second place and 89 for third.

Heupel, who threw for 3,392 yards and 20 TDs, collected 1,552 points - 286 first-place votes, 290 for second and 114 for third.

Of the 922 eligible Heisman voters, only 796, or 86.3 percent, cast ballots. Weinke was left off 122 ballots, while Heupel was not among the top three choices on 106 ballots.

TITLE: Red Wings Get Snowed Out in 4-3 Loss to Penguins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DETROIT, Michigan - There are nine Czechs on the Pittsburgh Penguins' roster. Garth Snow isn't one of them. But he did a pretty good impression of one Sunday.


Snow came up with back-to-back spectacular saves in the waning moments after rookie Toby Petersen scored the go-ahead goal with 15:27 remaining as the Penguins held on for a 4-3 victory over the Detroit Red Wings.

Snow made 34 saves to help the Penguins improve to 8-4-2-1 on the road.

The Red Wings pulled goaltender Chris Osgood for an extra attacker in the final minute, but Detroit right wing Darren McCarty was penalized for elbowing with 38 seconds left.

Vyacheslav Kozlov and Shanahan scored power-play goals for the Red Wings.



Nashville 2, Minnesota 1. In St. Paul, Minnesota, Cliff Ronning made a brilliant pass to set up Scott Walker's goal, then scored the eventual game-winner on the power play in the second period as the Nashville Predators ended a four-game losing streak with a 2-1 triumph over the Minnesota Wild.


Tomas Vokoun stopped all 14 shots over the final two periods and finished with 25 saves for Nashville.

Darby Hendrickson scored the lone goal for the Wild, who have lost five of their last six games.



Philadelphia 5, New York Islanders 2. In Philadelphia, after firing coach Craig Ramsay this morning, the Flyers defeated the New York Islanders, 5-2, to give Bill Barber his first win as coach.


Keith Primeau scored two goals for Philadelphia, who had lost three of its previous four games.



Dallas 1, Anaheim 0. In Anaheim, Ed Belfour stopped 29 shots for his league-leading seventh shutout and Grant Marshall scored 5:26 into the game to give the Dallas Stars a 1-0 victory over the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.


Belfour continued his dominance of the Ducks, improving to 18-6-1 lifetime with nine shutouts against them. But he was barely tested in racking up his 56th career shutout.

Marshall gave Belfour all he needed early on. Former Duck Ted Donato set up the goal when, standing in the right face-off circle, he pushed the puck to Marshall in the corner. Then, as the right wing walked up into the circle, Donato charged to the net, drawing two defenders.

Turning to back into the crease, Marshall waited and whipped a high wrist shot past goal tender Guy Hebert for his second goal of the season.