SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #637 (4), Friday, January 19, 2001
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TITLE: Schools Hit Books For New Methods
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya and Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Editor's note: This is the first installment in a periodic series on high-school education in St. Petersburg.
Life is strictly timed here. For decades, school has come alive at eight in the morning and gone to rest late in the afternoon. It is a small, independent state, which has its own laws, its own governors, its own history and even its own budget. Most importantly, it has its own population of small people learning to live their lives. Nonetheless, it has always been a faithful reflection of what was going on in the outside world. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist 10 years ago, so did Soviet school. What has come in its place? 




UNITING STUDENTS 

With the fall of communism, many of its attributes disappeared. The so-called collective spirit of the Soviet people - a euphemism for a hard press of ideology prohibiting any sign of individuality - has been cast aside. Thousands of schools across the country, whose duty had long been to cultivate this spirit in new generations, were relieved to get rid of morning parades, identical school outfits, and political literacy classes that turned children into cogs of the Soviet machine. But just as adults realized they had no national idea, children found they were their own masters. Teachers had no means to unite them anymore. 


According to a recent survey by the St. Petersburg city administration, two thirds of local teenagers want some kind of union in the collective spirit of the Young Pioneers' Organization, the old school-children's replica of the Communist Party. Meanwhile, more than 160 children's organizations - including the Scouts and Pioneers - exist in the city, but contact between these organizations and schools is weak.

"I go to school to study. That's it," said Sasha Spiridonov, 14, who is in seventh grade.

"It's quite boring, actually. I wish there were some after-class clubs as well, but there is nothing going on." 

Beyond students' desires, teachers say that the absence of a powerful children's union makes it more difficult to keep up discipline and develop children's ability to live collectively in society.

"I remember teachers used to say 'Behave yourself, or we'll throw you out of the Pioneers,' which was a serious threat meaning public humiliation and ostracism," said Alina Alexeyeva, a 47-year-old artist. Since the end of the 1980s, when the Pioneers were becoming little more than a school formality, such a threat would have meant nothing. 

Since a large city organization for school children has yet to emerge, the schools themselves shoulder the burden. 

Yelena Talapova, 26, who teaches Russian language and literature at school No. 371, offers an example. "If there are no organizations, you should create some original projects," she said.

In her school, the teachers introduced an annual "Pupils' Day" - in addition to the nationwide Oct. 3 "Teachers' Day" - on which all the teachers dress up, go on stage and perform for the children.

"Everyone loves it," Talapova said. "Our 'Dance With the Mops,' performance, for instance, was a real hit. Getting closer to the kids doesn't mean degrading ourselves."

Something as light-hearted as this might seem a travesty to old school teachers who put their faith in Pioneer rule. But 67-year-old Irina Solomenskaya, a math teacher at school No. 495, said that the Pioneer era "is gone." 

She recalls that the day after the Pioneers were officially stripped of their obligatory status, nobody showed up with their usual red Pioneer kerchiefs. 

"It was an impressive demonstration of how unpopular the organization was," she said. 

Today's Pioneers have a new, less ideological, motto: Instead of the old "Ready to fight for the cause of the Communist Party," they chose "For the Motherland, good deeds and justice." 

But the organization is crying out for members. St. Petersburg has hardly more than 500 Young Pioneers.



TEACHING STUDENTS

One positive result of the Soviet collapse is the variety of new educational programs - a course in the history of St. Petersburg, for instance - and opportunities for teachers to form classes based on the individual progress of the children, and not a rigid centralized curriculum. 


"After their first year, we divide pupils into two groups," Talapova said. 

"Those making fast progress will [in a year] join a more intensive course, and jump to the fifth grade after finishing the third, for instance. But those in need of more schooling will go to the fourth grade, spending a year more at school." 

"It is not a 'smart-or-stupid' kind of gradation," she added. "It is a flexible system catering to a convenient regime for both teachers and pupils."

During Soviet times, teachers - like the rest of Soviet society - were under the heel of so-called "socialist competition," wherein schools competed to have the fewest failing students. This meant that some teachers avoided giving low grades to even the most obvious sluggards. Such hypocrisy made teachers feel guilty and gave license to their pupils. 

"I could read it in some pupils' eyes that they didn't get a word of what I was saying, but I never had time for absolutely everyone," said Irina Kuzmina, 52, a Russian language and literature teacher at school No. 320. 

Much to the relief of high-school teachers, communist ideology, too, vanished from the new textbooks they were expected to work with. 

The Soviet Union's 10-year-olds going to an average school used to learn their first words of English from dull black-and-white textbooks, with the first pages offering such topics as "May Day," or "The Great October Revolution," not to mention Lenin's inevitable biography. 

Now, as a new culture emerges, children can learn how to talk about modern music or how to order at a McDonald's restaurant in, say, London.

The Soviet lack of true information, however, was replaced by a modern lack of textbooks themselves.

"Sure, we still have old, boring English textbooks, published in 1994," said Alexei Urayevsky, 16, a ninth-grader from school No. 48. 

"There is no more Soviet terminology in these. But still they are out-of-date, and not everyone can afford new textbooks, which cost about 80 rubles [$3]."

History lessons are a different case. Valentin Samorukov, 25, who teaches history in school No. 320, says that history primers for children between 11 and 14 - which focus mainly on ancient history - have remained the same. For students in higher grades, however, he sometimes doesn't use a textbook at all, recommending instead a list of reliable recent research and analysis sources. 

"The ideological nonsense of Soviet history books has been replaced by an enormous factual mess," Samorukov said. "Even certain dates are confused in most new books. Too, some of them are impossible to read because of their excessively dry and lifeless style."

Samorukov believes, in his subject, the most important thing is the teacher's personality. 

"The reality [of the subject] is such that historians are almost never liberals, which naturally influences what is happening in the classroom," he said.



BRINGING STUDENTS UP

Parents point out that Russia's schools - which once provided kids with both education and upbringing - have given up their parental duties. Given that a school teacher's average salary is about $30 a month - which is far less than the official minimum survival level - it is no wonder that teachers rush out of the school building as quickly as possible to make it to their night jobs. 


History teacher Samorukov, for instance, adds to his earnings by editing at a theater and working as a part-time night guard at a warehouse. His students, aware of his night-watch schedule, know they should show up prepared to avoid his fatigued testiness on those days. 

"We all have the same tiny salaries. But there just happened to be a team of hopeless crazy enthusiasts in our school," Talapova said. Her words are confirmed by many other teachers across the city. Their energy and devotion, however, are not without limits.

"When I was a schoolgirl, we would stay at school as late as 9 p.m., and our teachers were responsible for every one of us," says Alexeyeva. 

"We used to wonder how they could spend so much time with us for such a small salary. Well now, [I've heard my daughter's] teachers say 'Our job is only to give your children the knowledge we have. Let you, parents, take up the rest.' Besides, they say, every parent has his own ideas of good upbringing, his own ideology'."

Alexeyeva is quite content that Soviet school upbringing bore no negative effect on her two daughters, 20 and 14 years old. 

Both of them grew up in a dissident family, she said, and their teachers' ideological opinions took a back seat to the opinions of their parents.

When Alexeyeva's younger daughter went to school in 1993, communist educational ideals of in loco parentis were already an anachronism - and their absence created a vacuum. 

"Even in our school time, the kind of ideology or morals our teachers tried to inculcate in us was so divergent with reality that most were left untouched by them," she said, adding that only a very few students would try to understand why reality and ideology were at such odds. 

The ideological freedom that teachers now enjoy would seem a breakthrough for someone who was a student 10 years ago. 

Literature teacher Kuzmina, for instance, harshly criticizes many state policies when drawing cultural and political parallels with Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment." 

Likewise, history teacher Sa mo ru kov encourages his students to take a critical approach to Russian history and evaluate for themselves those events in its past that were once unquestionable truths. 

Some parents, though, are disappointed. "Bringing up children is now entirely on parents' shoulders," said Marina Karova, 40, mother of 14-year-old daughter Rosi, an eighth-grader. 

"I observe my daughter and compare her life to what was happening in my school years. The gap is huge." 

As Karova stresses, modern children barely take part in extra-curricular activities. Furthermore, teachers don't want the responsibility of partially raising someone else's children. The result, says Karova, is that kids grow up selfish and individualistic. 

"Children need to learn to live in a society, to deal with people," she said. 

"But they don't have much of a chance to do things together. Their teachers don't take them out of town on weekends like ours used to."

Teachers, in turn, have noticed change in parental attitudes towards their children's upbringing. 

"Parents used to be much more responsible," said Gennadya Schesnovicha, 60, a Russian language and literature teacher at school No. 320. 

"Now, as life has become more stressful, they have less time for their children, and hope the school will fill the gap."

Kuzmina says that "with the country thrown into chaos and instability, there are two types of families brave enough to have children - either well-off parents, who are sure of their future income, or carefree couples, whose children grow up enjoying as much attention as street grass. 

"We have to deal with the latter category. Kids of rich parents go to private schools," she says. 

Still, it cannot be said that the hard labor performed by these "crazy enthusiasts" goes unnoticed. 

If anything, the post-Soviet era has rendered teachers more democratic, and children are more involved in the adult world, now more difficult and frank than it was. "We like our history teacher [Sa mo ru kov] very much," said Tanya Va si lie va, 15, from school No. 320. 

"His explanations are always easy to understand, and he can analyze what's going on and even predict what will happen [in Russia]." 

And the students are willing to let the teachers know what they think. 

"Well over a half of my class called me with greetings on New Year's eve," said Talapova, smiling. 

"At the school I went to [in my time], we didn't even know our teachers' phone numbers and would never dare to ask."

TITLE: Restaurant Customers Take a Beating Over Bill
AUTHOR: By Barnaby Thompson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two customers at a prestigious restaurant in the center of St. Petersburg were beaten up by security staff after complaining they had been charged for food that they had not eaten.


The two men, both Russians, were part of a party of six dining at Restoran, located on Tamozhny Pereulok on Vasilievsky Island, on Jan. 5.

The restaurant has since fired those employees involved in the incident, said Alexander Shmidt, the owner of Restoran and of a number of other restaurants in the city, including nearby Akademia, in a telephone interview Thursday. 

According to a British photographer who gave her work name, Zanna, and who was with the group, the incident started when they found that the fish in one of the starter dishes was not fresh. Since most of the main courses to come were fish dishes, they decided to cancel the remainder of their order and leave the restaurant.

When the bill came, however, the group found they had been charged for the food they had canceled. On voicing their objections, said Zanna, the six found themselves surrounded by at least four security guards and the restaurant's administrator, Vladimir Maximov.

"From the moment the security people were called in, it was obvious they were ready for a fight," Zanna, who was on a 10-day holiday in Russia at the time, said by telephone from London on Wednesday. 

"They were even warming up their hands and cracking their knuckles," she said. 

"All our Russian friends were saying, 'Don't pay the bill,' but I paid because I hoped it would stop anyone getting injured. But that didn't work."

When a member of the party who asked not to be identified called for the restaurant's complaints book, a security guard responded by punching him in the stomach.

As the group was leaving the premises, restaurant staff tried to hand them plastic boxes containing the canceled food. A Russian woman with the group, however, threw the boxes on the floor.

Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, an artist and actor based in Moscow who was also with the group that night, said on Thursday that once they were outside, the guards then knocked the two Russians to the pavement and started kicking them.

"We understood we wouldn't get out of there unless we paid the full amount," he said. "But the way the guards laid into [our two friends] was as if they hadn't practiced on live material for some time, and were very enthusiastic about kicking them."

The two Russian members of the party were dragged back into the restaurant and made to pick up the boxes of food. They were then taken away by police, according to the group.

"When the police arrived, I saw one of them shake hands with a security guard," said Zanna. Mamyshev-Monroe added that the police and the security appeared to be on friendly terms.

Restoran owner Shmidt said by telephone on Thursday that the security guards were from a private firm and were not directly employed by the restaurant. "Nobody at Restoran is cooperating with [the police]," he said.

Shmidt said that he had taken action against two of Restoran's staff.

"We have fired two people, Maximov and the director, Anastasia Tsvetkova. I am ready to invite those concerned to the restaurant, to apologize and to say that my staff were not correct to act as they did."

But Shmidt also said that, judging from what he had heard about the incident, "[the customers] acted in a provocative manner. So I am not prepared to say who was guilty [of starting the incident] and who was not."

"This is an upscale restaurant. Ninety percent of our clientele are foreigners, and all the consulates, from the American to the Chinese, come here and bring guests," said Shmidt. "As I understand, the group in question was behaving in an inappropriate manner."

Zanna said that the fact that the group comprised some flamboyant characters - mostly artists and photographers - had probably prejudiced the security guards' view of them. "We weren't businessmen," she said, "but that doesn't mean we weren't doing business. And even if our friends had been confrontational, there was no need for violence. The security people intended that there should be violence."

Zanna informed the British Consulate, and left a message with the St. Petersburg representative of the Russian Embassy in London, which has so far not responded.

St. Petersburg British Consul Tim Waite confirmed that the consulate knew of the incident. "Our understanding is that the [owners] have since taken action against the individuals concerned," he said in a telephone interview on Thursday, referring to the dismissals, "which is the action of a sensible employer. It was an unfortunate and unpleasant incident, but they acted quickly."

At the police station, the two Russians from the dinner party were eventually let go when they each paid a 10-ruble fine "for hooliganism."

"As far as we could see, there was no difference between the security staff and the police," said Zanna.

Zanna added that the incident should serve as a warning to foreigners in the city.

"We were short-sighted," she said, "[in that] we should have been armed with a means of contacting the consulate. The whole thing was a nightmare, I've had nightmares since - and now I feel obliged to warn people about going to Russia."

TITLE: Prosecutors' Activity Seen as Smokescreen
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Keeping up a frenetic pace these days, the Prosecutor General's Office arrested the head of Media-MOST's finance department on Tuesday and sent him to the Butyrskaya Prison pending trial


The arrest of Anton Titov is the latest step against Media-MOST head Vla dimir Gusinsky, who is charged with fraud in a case widely seen as an attempt to force him to give up his NTV television station. 

On Wednesday, Gazprom-Media, which already holds 46 percent of NTV television, launched a legal battle in an effort to force Media-MOST to give up its remaining 19 shares to the gas giant, Reuters reported. 

The suit was filed the day after the apparent collapse of talks in the Kremlin aimed at enabling CNN founder Ted Turner to buy a stake in the Russian network. The Wall Street Journal, quoting sources close to the talks, said Kremlin officials refused to provide guarantees that there would be no interference in the channel's operations.

The Kremlin declined all comment on the report.

The battle to secure control over NTV, which has been critical of President Vladimir Putin and his administration, is seen by liberals and many journalists as critical for the survival of the post-Soviet free press.

Media-MOST's Titov was arrested after he came in for questioning for the second day in a row in the Media-MOST fraud case, Glushchenko said by telephone.

Media-MOST spokesman Dmitry Ostalsky said he was taken to Butyrskaya Prison, the same overcrowded, disease-filled Moscow prison where Gusinsky was held for three days in June. He later left the country, but was arrested in Spain last month and is fighting Russian prosecutors' attempts to extradite him.

Media-MOST first deputy chief Andrei Tsimailo also had been told to appear for questioning Tuesday but he did not show because he was sick.

Media-MOST said the Prosecutor's Office had agreed to postpone the questioning.

Prosecutors questioned Tsimailo last week and searched both his house and his office. They also searched the premises of NTV television.

The Prosecutor General's Office has also questioned Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and city Finance Minister Yury Korostelyov about the city's financial dealings with Media-MOST. Luzhkov gave written answers to questions, the Prosecutor's Office said. Korostelyov, however, was called to the Prosecutor's Office Friday and charged with abuse of power and negligence. 

The enthusiasm of the Prosecutor General's Office has left political analysts guessing. 

"They were obviously inspired by their meeting with Putin last week," said Yevgeny Volk, head of the Heritage Foundation office in Moscow. 

"The president must have asked them to be more active and given them permission to pursue some high-ranking state functionaries, too," he said, adding that the targets "would, of course, be chosen by the president."

Although Putin praised the prosecutors last week for their "independence" and "democratic outlook," Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov hurried to clarify that his office should act as an "instrument of the will and decisions of the Russian president."

Andrei Ryabov, political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said he saw two possible scenarios. "One is that they were advised to be more 'objective' and pursue not only Media-MOST but also some officials who were becoming problematic," he said.

"The other possibility is that the whole fuss is just an attempt by Kremlin image-makers to create an illusion of activity to hide the fact that the reforms Putin was promising have all been stalled."

TITLE: Borodin Arrested by New York Police
AUTHOR: By Ron Popeski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Police in New York have detained former top Kremlin aide Pavel Bo rodin under a warrant issued by Swiss authorities for alleged money laundering, and Russia on Thursday immediately demanded his unconditional release.


A top Swiss prosecutor said he had been officially informed of Borodin's arrest and would be seeking his extradition.

Borodin was detained at Kennedy airport on Wednesday and was to face questioning by a New York court later on Thursday. Interfax news agency said he had been invited to the United States to attend the inauguration on Saturday of President-elect George W. Bush.

Within hours, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had summoned U.S. ambassador James Collins and protested to him over the arrest. Officials at the U.S. Embassy declined to comment.

Interfax quoted Borodin's lawyers Genrikh Padva and Boris Kuznetsov as saying they would soon talk to their colleagues in New York to clarify why he had been detained.

Borodin, the former head of the Kremlin's huge property empire, was at the center of a series of allegations of bribe-taking involving Swiss firms which dogged the final years in office of former president Boris Yeltsin.

Borodin strenuously denied any wrongdoing and Russian prosecutors dropped their investigations last year. However, a Swiss prosecutor issued a warrant for his arrest.

Borodin, moved from his Kremlin post after Vladimir Putin came to office last year, is currently head of a special body overseeing efforts to form a "union state" between Russia and the neighboring former Soviet republic of Belarus.

He is close to Putin, who said in a book of reflections published last year that Borodin had been responsible for bringing him to Moscow from St. Petersburg in 1996 to work in the presidential administration.

Lawyer Kuznetsov said Borodin's position meant he enjoyed diplomatic status, even if he had tried to enter the United States on a standard Russian passport.

Bernard Bertossa, Geneva's chief prosecutor whose international warrant led to Borodin's arrest, said the Russian was wanted in Switzerland for involvement in laundering $25 million.

"I was officially informed by the U.S. authorities about Borodin's arrest this [Thursday] morning. He was arrested on our international arrest warrant," Bertossa said by telephone.

"We will be asking the United States to extradite Borodin to Switzerland."

Russian parliamentarians also denounced the U.S. action. Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky even suggested retaliating by arresting U.S. citizens currently in Russia.

A Swiss investigating magistrate indicted five people and issued the warrant for alleged money laundering against Borodin a year ago after a probe into alleged bribe-taking by government officials from Swiss construction firms Mabetex and Mercata.

Bertossa declined to say what implications Borodin's arrest would have on the Swiss probe.

The Russian prosecutors dropped their case against Borodin last year after years of cooperation with the Swiss authorities. The probe into the firms centered on the alleged payment of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Kremlin officials to secure lucrative contracts to refurbish Russian public buildings.

TITLE: Quarrelsome Deputies Open Session
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma's spring session got off to a rocky start Wednesday when most of the liberal lawmakers boycotted the first few minutes of the opening meeting.


The deputies said they decided not to be present as the national anthem was played - a traditional part of the first session. At the end of last year, parliament reinstated the Soviet-era melody, much to the chagrin of the Yabloko and Union of Right Forces, or SPS, factions.

Since the law requires people to stand for the national anthem, most of the liberal deputies opted to avoid a conflict between the law and their consciences by being absent.

"We can defend our interests while a law is being passed, but once it is passed, we believe it should be carried out," said Pavel Krasheninnikov, a leading member of SPS who once served as justice minister.

But two SPS members took the civil-disobedience route. Sergei Kovalyov and Yury Rybakov opted to attend the session, but sat throughout the anthem.

When it comes to passing laws, the spring's agenda is likely to be just as controversial as the anthem. Among the 613 bills on the Duma's plate are a handful of politically charged proposals, including laws regulating political parties, land ownership and labor relations.

The Duma is expected to discuss the law on parties by the end of the month. The bill was introduced by President Vladimir Putin and would put severe limitations on parties, slashing their number as a result.

"I characterize it as a monopoly agreement, like a cartel divvying up the market for parties," Ryzhkov said in an interview in late December on NTV television. "The idea behind our bill is to keep this market open for citizens, open for society."

The presidential administration is expected to put a proposed Land Code before the Duma this year. Such a code would allow the sale and purchase of land - a controversial issue the two previous Dumas were unable to solve. 

The new Labor Code, which was on the government's 2000 agenda but postponed in the face of fierce union opposition, is expected to be discussed in June. 

Work on yet another controversial code - that regulating criminal procedure - is also set to heat up this year. Deputy Yelena Mizulina, who is supervising the revision of the code, has said she hopes the code, which was approved in the first reading in 1997, will be passed and signed into law by the end of the year.

Advocates of judicial reform have slammed the draft as draconian. Sergei Pashin, the former head of the department on judicial reform in the presidential administration, said last month that the proposed code does not provide equal rights to the defense and the prosecution, treats minors like "small adults," and does not adequately protect the rights of victims.

TITLE: New Tax Weighing Heavily on Marshrutki
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Nearly 400,000 city commuters could be affected by a business tax taking effect Feb. 1 that could gut profits for St. Petersburg's most rapidly developing transport option: the marshrutka, or minibus taxi, van operators complained. 


The marshrutki are private minivans that run alternative, and often more convenient, routes in the city's currently dilapidated transport system. The system gained a foothold after the 1995 collapse of the metro tunnel between Ploshchad Muzhestva and Les naya stations, most routes cost only a ruble or two more than the metro. 

But because of the grassroots nature of the business - as well as creative bookkeeping and mismanagement of receipts - it has been nearly impossible to regulate or tax. 

The previous tax on marshrutki stipulated a $50 monthly levy on each licensed van in the city, of which there are 530 - 230 owned by companies, and 200 more operated by private individuals. But lawmakers complained that collecting this tax was untenable, given the wide-spread practice of profit hiding in the industry. 

The new unified taxes law, passed in the fall by the Legislative Assembly, will boost that tax by levying an average tax per van of 3,000 to 5,000 rubles ($100-150). 

Sergei Nikeshin, head for the Legislative Assembly budget Committee officially demanded that City Hall investigate the actually fare collection process aboard marshrutki. 

"It is well known fact that 80 percent of income is hidden in minibus businesses," said Nikeshin in a telephone interview Thursday. "Only 20 percent of passengers receive tickets, which are used as a receipt for tax inspection."

Both City Hall Transportation officials and marshrutki operators are protesting the tax vociferously. 

"Such a tax could kill the business, which really solves transport problems in the city," said Alexander Trubin, an adviser for the City Hall transportation committee in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

But the taxes, said Trubin and others, will make the business unprofitable, and in a display of outrage, more than 20 marshrutki vans gathered on St. Issac's Square in front of the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday to protest against the law.

But lawmakers defend the tax, saying it will simplify the tax collection process from business. The law stipulates that small businesses in town are to pay 20 percent of their forecasted income for the next month. 

The Legislative Assembly Budget Committee forecasts that new unified tax may inflate prices on the marshrutki, by one or two rubles, resulting in an average fare of 8 rubles. 

But according to Maxim Bogdanovsky of the St. Petersburg Taxi Drivers' Association the tax could drive prices up to 10-12 rubles. 

Boris Vishnevsky, Yabloko faction representative at the Legislative Assembly said the tax made little sense. 

"The only problem is not all the routes in the city are as profitable as others," he said in an interview on Tuesday. "There should have been higher [tax] coefficients introduced for the central part of the city, were minibuses are usually packed, and lower ones for suburban routes."

But Vishnevsky predicted that the same kind of profit hiding would occur under the new system. 

This is not the first time within the past year that officials have tried to curb the number of marshrutki operating in St. Petersburg. Last fall, the state auto inspectorate, or GIBDD, declared the city's marshrutki taxis to be unsafe and would be pulling unspecified numbers of them off the road for mechanical inspections. 

So far the plan seems vaguely to have worked; of the 730 marshrutki operating at the time of that announcement, 200 have been scratched from service by the GIBDD, or have registered in the Leningrad Oblast which surrounds St. Petersburg and where taxes are lower.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Murder Suspect Held

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Ukrainian Security Service said Wednesday that it has arrested a reputed St. Petersburg criminal under suspicion that he masterminded a number of contract killings and robberies.

Russian press speculated that the suspect, Vladimir Belyayev, was also behind the killing of St. Petersburg Dep. Gov. Mikhail Manevich.

Belyayev was arrested at Kiev airport Saturday when he arrived from Warsaw "probably with the intention to buy a house and settle down," a Ukrainian Security Service press officer said in an interview.

The officer and the Russian Federal Security Service said they had no knowledge as to whether Belyaev was involved in Manevich's death. The St. Petersburg deputy governor was gunned down by a rooftop assassin in August 1997.



Child Killed at Zoo 

MOSCOW (AP) - A 10-year-old boy was killed when a cord on his jacket got caught on a cage in a zoo and strangled him, a zoo official said Wednesday.

Svetlana Glushchenko, spokesperson for the Penza zoo in Central Russia, said zoo workers found the dead boy on Tuesday afternoon when they went to feed the animals. She said there were no witnesses to the boy's death. 

But she added that investigators had tentatively concluded that the boy, whom she did not identify, had been throwing wooden sticks at a tiger, and had climbed onto the cage. The investigators theorize that the tiger had lunged at the boy, and he had tried to run away, but a cord on his jacket snagged on the cage, trapping him, Glushchenko said.



Man Dies in Power Cut

MOSCOW (AP) - A veteran who was breathing with the help of an artificial respirator died this week after electricity was cut to a hospital that failed to pay its bills, Unified Energy Systems power grid operator said. 

A local electricity company in Tambov, 400 kilometers southeast of Moscow, cut power to the military hospital Monday morning, according to a statement released late Tuesday by UES. 

Power was restored 40 minutes after the cutoff, but by then the patient had already died, the statement said. Media reported that the veteran was 73 years old. 



McDonald's Fined 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Federal Labor Inspectorate is fining McDonald's after deciding that the fast-food giant has violated the nation's labor laws.

The inspectorate is levying a fine of 2,000 rubles to 10,000 rubles ($70 to $360) on McDonald's after finding, during an inspection of the company, that its policies on working time, time off and job protection did not conform to the Labor Code, sources close to the probe said.

The investigation also found, however, that McDonald's was much more vigilant than most stores and restaurants in upholding workers' rights.

McDonald's refused to comment on the report, saying it had not yet seen it. But the restaurant said in a statement that it "is pleased with the results of the inspections," pointing out that it found McDonald's to offer fair pay, benefits and working conditions.



Abramovich Sworn In

MOSCOW (SPT) - New Chukotka Gov. Roman Abramovich was inaugurated Wednesday in the region's capital Anadyr at a ceremony with 200 guests, Interfax reported. 

Abramovich, a 34-year-old oil tycoon, won 90 percent of the votes in elections that took place in late December. Incumbent Gov. Mikhail Nazarov pulled out of the race just days before the vote.

TITLE: Moiseyev Boycotts Own Trial
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Fed up with an espionage trial he calls a "farce," former diplomat Valentin Moiseyev has decided to boycott his own trial, telling his lawyers not to question witnesses, make arguments or otherwise participate in the closed-door trial.


In December 1999, the Mos cow City Court convicted Moise yev of spying for South Korea. But that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court, which ordered a new trial. Just before a verdict was to be given in the second, 2 1/2-month trial, the case was transferred to a new judge due to the illness of the first judge, Tatya na Gubanova. 

A third trial began Nov. 29 and could take months to be completed.

Meanwhile, Gubanova is not ill and is going to work, said Maria Gnatova, a secretary at the court.

According to a statement circulated by Moiseyev's wife, Natalya, the former diplomat is demanding that Gubanova finish the case.

Moiseyev's supporters have questioned the legality of the third trial and say Gubanova simply ducked out of the politically charged case.

Gnatova said the case was transferred to a different judge "so as not to drag out the trial."

"Who knew how long she would be sick?" she added.

Moiseyev's lawyer Yury Gervis said he understood Moiseyev's frustration, but did not agree that maintaining silence for the duration of the trial was the right approach. However, if Moiseyev insists that he and his colleague keep quiet, they will have no choice but to listen to him, he said.

TITLE: Former MI6 Agent Finds Publisher for Memoirs in Russia
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A rogue former British intelligence agent on the run for three years will publish his banned memoirs in Moscow next week amid claims that the publisher is linked to the Russian secret services.


The book "The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security" by Richard Tomlinson will be published in English and describe in detail the workings of one of Britain's most secretive organizations, the MI6, as well as insights into Tomlinson's time as an agent in Moscow.

"I published in Moscow because MI6 spent a fortune of taxpayers money taking out injunctions just about everywhere else in the world," Tomlinson said Tuesday in an e-mail interview. "Ironically, Russia was the only country which offered me freedom of speech."

"Britain has the most arcane secrecy laws of any country now - Russia is far more accountable and open than Britain," Tomlinson said, adding that even the color of the carpets in the MI6 building are classified. 

Tomlinson joined the MI6 in 1991 after studying aeronautical science at Cambridge University and serving in the Territorial SAS, an elite branch of the British armed forces. Initially seen as an agent with good prospects, he was sacked by the MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, in 1995 after serving in Bosnia. 

Feeling mistreated, Tomlinson attempted to appeal to an employment tribunal only to be blocked by the MI6, which cited national security concerns.

Tomlinson then claims, in extracts from the book published in this week's Sunday Times, that he was forced into signing an agreement that provided him with a Pound25,000 loan and a new job in exchange for agreeing not to write about his service in the MI6.

Dissatisfied, Tomlinson left the job and was subsequently arrested and sentenced to a year in prison under the Official Secrets Act for sending a synopsis of the book to an Australian publisher.

After serving six months in jail, Tomlinson fled abroad in 1998 and has been moving around ever since.

Much of the book describes the lengths that the MI6 has gone to in pursuing him. Tomlinson says he has been continually followed, arrested 10 times and banned from France, Switzerland, Australia and the United States since leaving England. He currently lives in northern Italy.

Other parts describe his mission in Bosnia and Moscow, according to The Sunday Times, but much of the material in the book is not likely to be new. The Observer reported last year Tomlinson's revelations that as an agent he helped sell chemical weapon materials to Iran in the early 1990s despite Britain's own ban on such sales. Other Tomlinson revelations include an attempt to assassinate Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic as well as an allegation that the chauffeur who died with Princess Diana was an MI6 agent.

Last year, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook accused Tomlinson of putting a list of active MI6 agents on a Web site. Tomlinson denied the charge, saying it was an MI6 slur - although he did admit threatening to do it. 

"He has a long track record of sensational material," said a British Foreign Office spokesman on Tuesday. "That he has gone to the lengths of publishing in Moscow makes his credibility less than zero."

MI6 accused Tomlinson of doing a deal with the Russian secret services to publish his memoirs according to The Sunday Times. They said that the publisher, which both The Sunday Times and Tomlinson refuse to name, is a frontman for one of three intelligence services and is operating under a false name.

Tomlinson denied the allegations.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, also denied the report.

"This is completely absurd," said Boris Labursov, the head of the SVR's press office.

Anything that shows the workings of the national services is not in national interests, said a British Foreign Office spokesman.

"If it is harmless and doesn't put lives at risk then why publish it in Moscow?" said the spokesman.

He said there are so far no plans to take court action against the book.

The unknown publisher has printed 10,000 copies for worldwide distribution. 

Moscow booklovers, however, will not get to see Tomlinson at the book launch.

"I don't think I'll come over for it - it will just give MI6 ammunition against me," Tomlinson said.

TITLE: More Trouble for Mir Space Station
AUTHOR: By Oleg Akhmetov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BAIKONUR, Kazakstan - The launch of a cargo rocket to guide the veteran Mir space station back to Earth after a 15-year mission has been put off because of a new glitch on the troubled station, officials said Thursday. 


The launch had been scheduled for Thursday at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan, but officials at mission control just outside Moscow said it would now take place no earlier than Jan. 21. 

"The problem is on the Mir station. They're looking into it at mission control," Nikolai Zelenshchikov, first deputy head of the Energia corporation that runs Mir, said at Baikonur. 

"Everything is in order at the cosmodrome, and we're ready to launch the rocket at any time. But first we must clarify the problems on Mir," he said. 

A spokesman at mission control confirmed that the launch had been postponed because of problems on the station that became apparent about seven hours before the scheduled launch time. 

Vladimir Solovyov, in charge of the Mir flight at mission control, said on RTR television that power levels had fallen unexpectedly, which caused navigation systems to fail. That would have prevented any craft from docking with Mir.

TITLE: Russia Stands Firm on Nuclear Project in Iran
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov on Tuesday dismissed as "all politics" staunch U.S. opposition to Russia building a nuclear reactor in Iran and announced that work on a second one was already under way.


"There is not a single piece of evidence that we are helping or might help Iran strengthen nuclear weapons potential," Adamov said at a press conference. 

He said that construction of the first 1,000-megawatt reactor at the Persian Gulf port city of Bushehr, which began in 1995, is 90 percent completed. 

The reactor is expected to be fully operational by 2003, when Iran is due to pay Russia $800 million, according to the agreement.

Iran already has two small research reactors of its own, but the Bushehr reactor would be Iran's first that would be powerful enough to produce weapons-grade plutonium - the very reason the United States says that it is against the project.

In the past, both Iran and Russia have insisted that the plant will be used only for civilian purposes. And Adamov reiterated that position again Tuesday.

The Nuclear Power Ministry is building six reactors outside Russia - the two in Iran, plus two in India and two in China.

"Not a single foreign corporation has that many orders for constructing nuclear power plants in a foreign country," said Adamov.

Alexander Pikayev, editor of the Moscow Carnegie Center's magazine Nuclear Non-Alignment, said that although Russia's reactor deal in Iran is "absolutely legal," the United States continues to oppose it - a position that may become more resolute under U.S. President-elect George Bush. 

Pikayev said that the United States has expressed little concern for Russia's projects in India and China. But that, too, could change under Bush, he said. The United States is also building reactors in China and is competing with Russia to help meet China's swelling energy demand.

Back at home, Adamov said his ministry is planning to double domestic nuclear energy capacity over the next 20 years.

Last year the ministry spent 4 billion rubles ($140 million) on nuclear industrial science development, and 1.5 billion rubles on upgrading production. As a result the nation's nuclear power plants produced a total of 130 billion kilowatt hours of electricity - up about 8 percent from 1999 and 30 percent from 1998. 

The growth from 1998 is the equivalent of adding five new reactors, and saved 10 billion square meters of gas, said Adamov.

He also said nuclear fuel was removed from 17 nuclear submarines in 2000, compared with just two to four in previous years.

"The year 2000 was very successful," he said.

TITLE: Canada Announces Innovative Plan To Dispose of Plutonium
AUTHOR: By David Ljunggren
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OTTAWA - Canada said Monday that it was about to start a unique test to see whether Russian and U.S. weapons-grade plutonium could be burned in a civilian nuclear reactor and thereby help to boost the disarmament of nuclear weapons


Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. plans to use its Chalk River nuclear laboratories to burn around 450 grams of Russian weapons-grade plutonium that has been mixed in with 14 kilograms of regular uranium oxide reactor fuel to produce mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel. 

"I'm pretty sure the test will start this month," said AECL spokes man Larry Shewchuk. 

A team from Russia will visit Chalk River - located in a remote part of eastern part of the province of Ontario - this week for final consultations before the test begins. 

The test could have a significant impact on Moscow's program to disarm its nuclear warheads. If it succeeds, Canada could eventually help dispose of the 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium that Russia has identified as excess. 

And if Russian reactors could be converted to burn MOX fuel, it could also help generate much-needed electricity in a country hit by periodic power shortages. 

Chalk River also will burn a smaller amount of U.S.-produced MOX in a side-by-side test that will take three years followed by a cooling-off period. 

Initial results will be available in about four years' time. If all goes well, some of the weapons-grade plutonium will have been destroyed, and the rest will no longer be pure enough to use in warheads. 

Washington, which is confident it can take care of the 34 surplus tons of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium itself, is paying for the test of the Russian MOX. Shewchuk would not reveal how much the test will cost. 

"Why this experiment is unique is that Russian and U.S. fuels have never been tested together before. People want to know the differences between the two," he said. 

"It is important for the two countries to have their fuel tested side by side for verification purposes. Canada is a country capable of doing this and which is deemed trustworthy by both countries." 

Environmentalists say the test could turn Canada into a nuclear dumping ground, but Ottawa says it will help increase security around the world by speeding up the process of destroying weapons-grade plutonium. 

"No one will steal U.S. plutonium because it is very well-guarded, but the same is not true in Russia, where there is no great security," Shewchuk said.

MOX has already been used commercially for years in many European countries, including Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland. However, the tests in Canada are the first to involve weapons-grade, rather than reactor-grade, plutonium.

TITLE: Heat Crisis Crippling Far East
AUTHOR: By Nonna Chernyakova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - An energy crisis that many are calling the worst since before World War II has crippled the Primorye region, shutting down factories, emptying schools and leaving residents without electricity for long stretches at a time.


With temperatures falling to minus 45 degrees Celsius in parts of the finger of Russia on the Sea of Japan, hundreds of thousands of people are spending their days in unheated or barely heated apartments in which the lights click off at 7 a.m. and don't click on again until they wake people in their beds at 11 p.m.

Heating crises and blackouts strike Primorye every year. But the latest electricity crisis has been staggering even in a region where residents are used to cooking on propane camp stoves and lighting their houses with candles. 

People's anger is growing. About 200 people who live on Ulitsa Chkalova in Vladivostok blocked the main highway out of town Monday, and demonstrators called for Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko's resignation in front of the regional administration building Tuesday. Protests continued Wednesday, Reuters reported.

"Even during the war, the trams were running day and night, industry was working for 24 hours. The city windows were covered, but we always had electricity," said Ulitsa Chkalova resident Nikolai Turkutyukov, 73. "But now, for four days in a row, we had electricity for only three hours a day."

Throughout the region, the catalog of energy woes is beginning to sound like something out of neighboring North Korea. In Vladivostok's Pervomaisky district, 38 apartment blocks went without electricity for 24 hours. 

Hilltop apartment blocks in the city have no water because the pumps that force water uphill run on electricity. In the nearby port city of Nakhodka, electricity has been out for 14 to 16 hours per day in schools, homes, clinics and a center for disabled children, where doctors cook food for their patients on gas stoves. 

"The energy system of Primorye has collapsed," said Vladivostok Mayor Yury Kopylov in a radio interview.

Prosecutors have opened more than a dozen criminal cases linked to the disruptions of heat and electricity. In Artyom, Sergei Melnikov, deputy mayor in charge of housing maintenance, was convicted of negligence for behavior that led to a month-long heating crisis.

Yet Kopylov and other elected leaders - most of whom are allied to Nazdratenko -have been incapable of taking action or even explaining the outages. Kopylov insists there is plenty of coal and manpower to keep the power plants running, while the energy utility Dalenergo says there is nothing left to shovel into the boilers. Indeed, a hapless Primorye Regional Duma - dominated by allies of the governor, who successfully conducted a three-year campaign to nullify the elections of many opponents - voted down a minority request to consider impeachment proceedings against Nazdratenko on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Nazdratenko spokesman Alexei Kazakov accused certain "forces" of trying to use the problem for political gain. Nazdratenko, he said, is "trying to solve this problem with all his might" and sent his deputy to Moscow to demand help from Unified Energy Systems, the national electricity monopoly of which the local utility, Dalenergo, is a part. A first trainload of coal has already left from Siberia, Kazakov said.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Pu tin discussed the energy problems with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Wednesday. Russian news agencies quoted the Kremlin as saying Kasyanov would hold a meeting with officials from UES.

TITLE: Illarionov Warns of More Economic Gloom
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov painted a bleak picture Tuesday of what awaits Russia over the next 12 months, saying the soaring economic growth seen last year is grinding to a halt.


"The party is over and the hangover is about to begin," said Illarionov in opening remarks of a presentation to members of the European Business Club.

"Actually, it has already begun," he added ominously.

Illarionov gained wide recognition after correctly predicting the 1998 economic crisis.

When President Vladimir Putin assigned roles in his administration last year, Illarionov was picked for the job of the president's chief economic adviser. He has since repeatedly lambasted the Cabinet's efforts to reform the economy and criticized Anatoly Chubais, the head of Unified Energy Systems and godfather of a hotly disputed plan to revamp the lumbering electricity giant.

In a presentation Tuesday that left many of the attending business executives stunned, Illarionov predicted that the economy will enter a tailspin this year, adding that the first hiccups have already been heard.

Seasonally adjusted, industrial output was down 0.6 percent in November for the first time since the middle of 1998, he said.

Other signs of an impending shake-up are also looming, the adviser warned.

The money base is growing at a faster pace than the inflation rate, repeating the scenario that preceded the 1998 crash.

"Inflation can grow at a lower pace over the short term, but such a trend is not sustainable in the long run," said Illarionov.

In 1996, the money base expanded 30.6 percent, while inflation surged 21.8 percent. In 1997, the money base grew 29.8 percent, while inflation stood at 11 percent, triggering a string of optimistic comments by then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his government.

In 1998 the bubble burst. Consumer prices shot up to 84.5 percent as the currency base grew a meager 21.5 percent.

But monetary authorities ignored the red flag and keep marching forward.

In 1999 and 2000, the money base grew 55.7 percent and 55 percent, respectively, but inflation stood calm at 36.6 percent and 20.2 percent.

Thus, Illarionov reasoned, prices should sooner or later shoot up, beating the government's forecast of 12 percent to 14 percent for this year.

At the same time, the ruble should start devaluing, though probably not as abruptly as it did 2 1/2 years ago.

The government is again closing its eyes to a looming crisis by allowing the ruble to appreciate, undermining the competitiveness of the economy, Illarionov said.

An appreciating ruble is gradually fueling a growth in imports. In physical volumes, imports grew at a rate of 22.7 percent in the first quarter of 2000 and 38.6 percent in the fourth quarter. Exports increased at a slower rate of 9.3 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively.

Over the last 12 months, orders placed with industrial and construction companies clearly show a declining trend on a yearly basis, Illarionov said.

Meanwhile, unemployment was up month-on-month 2.4 percent to 7.37 million people in November, according to the State Statistics Committee, implying that approximately 200,000 people lost their jobs in one month.

Illarionov downplayed the work of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his economic team in promoting economic growth last year, saying the 7 percent jump in GDP was sparked by sky-high oil prices and the rapid depreciation of the euro to the U.S. dollar.

A combination of these two factors fueled Russia's foreign trade to such an extent that its exports grew 169 percent in value compared to the price levels of 1996, he said. However, the value of imports was down 38 percent compared with 1996.

Oil prices averaged $17.2 per barrel from January 1992 to June 1999, while the dollar fetched the equivalent of 0.83 euros, measured by a basket of currencies that now comprise the euro.

Then in 2000 Brent oil prices shot up to $32.2 per barrel, while the dollar appreciated to 1.15 euros.

As a result, in terms of the European currency, oil surged to 36.9 euros per barrel as compared with an average of 14.2 euros in the period from January 1992 through June 1999.

The nation enjoyed a windfall of $35 billion in additional revenues last year, which in turn fueled the economy to grow at the highest rate since the 1960s.

To prevent an abrupt economic downturn, Illarionov said the government needed to devalue the ruble to restore Russia's competitiveness on the world stage.

The presidential adviser also suggested that the government help sterilize an excess inflow of hard currency into the economy by making payments on its sovereign debt. The government has said that it can only afford to make minuscule payments on its debt in the first quarter.

"We should reverse the flow of capital," said Illarionov. "That will solve several problems at once."

So far, the Central Bank has been printing rubles to soak up excess dollar liquidity in the economy, increasing pressure on the money supply side.

Creditors should not hold their breath, however. While Illarionov's forecasts have often proved right on the nose, his advice is often ignored by the government.

The 1 1/2 hour presentation Tuesday left many of the jaws of the attendees slacked in disbelief.

"It is clear that his views are contradictory to those of the current administration," whispered one of the participants, walking out of the room.

But Illarionov, saying that his authority rests on "the power of ideas," was unshaken about his economic convictions.

"The best way is to wait and see," he said.

TITLE: Uralmash Announces Restructuring Plans
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With sales booming, the nation's largest producer of heavy machinery said Wednesday it would sell off all non-core units to generate the tens of millions of dollars it needs to expand its main business.


Machinery tycoon Kakha Bendukidze said restructuring his Uralmash-Izhora holding company, formerly known as Uralmash Zavody, will streamline its machinery production to concentrate on five areas: mining, drilling, metals, energy and shipbuilding.

The first two-year stage of the restructuring calls for Uralmash-Izhora, which is comprised of 25 enterprises that hold 60 percent of Russia's heavy machinery market, to sell non-core units that make everything from sausages to mufflers.

The second stage is to sell its trucking, publishing and other service units.

And the third stage is to invest some of the sell-off's proceeds into increasing production volume of its main units.

The company currently produces 70 percent of all drilling equipment in Russia, 60 percent of galvanized steel, more than 90 percent of mining equipment, 78 percent of steel equipment and 50 percent of heavy machinery used in nuclear power stations. It is also the sole supplier of diesel torpedoes to the navy.

The company posted a 70 percent increase in sales in 2000 to 6.5 billion rubles ($228 million) on the back of the booming oil sector, Bendukidze said. In 2001, sales should grow 30 percent to 9.5 billion rubles "at a minimum," he said.

The biggest boom was in sales of machinery used in nuclear plants, which grew six fold, he said, adding that three export contracts were signed last year for two nuclear energy units in India and one in Iran.

The Uralmash-Izhora chief painted a bright future that should get even brighter once the restructuring plan is implemented, citing last year's sale of an unprofitable rolled iron plant to steel major Severstal for $20 million, which saved the company $1 million a year.

"In the Olympics there has never been a pentathlon champion who won each of its five competitions," he said. 

Eugene Satskov, a heavy machinery specialist for Renaissance Capital brokerage, said the restructuring plan was "absolutely logical" given the situation on the world market and Uralmash-Izhora's chances of increasing exports.

United Financial Group's Yulia Zhdanova said the plan was "very positive" for the company because it simply produced too many different products that were often "one-off" or unique.

Despite the thumbs up, however, Zhda nova cautioned that the plan doesn't make the company a capitalist darling.

"Generally, the company is very nontransparent, slowly managed and its structure is unclear," she said.

Uralmash-Izhora is 30 percent owned by Rosindustria, of which Bendukidze is board chairman. Domestic investors own 4 percent and foreign investors own 40 percent, with 13 percent held by the company as a strategic share, according to United Financial Group.

TITLE: OPEC's Production Cuts Leave Russia Cool
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - As OPEC leaders decided to cut oil production 5 percent Wednesday to keep world prices steady and high, Russia remained an interested - yet complacent - observer.


Russia is in no position to take advantage of higher oil demand on international markets. Already pumping all it can, Russia's pipeline and transport capacity is limited, and expansion of the export infrastructure is fraught with political tumult.

The world's No. 1 oil producer, Saudi Arabia, led the push for a reduction of 1.5 million barrels per day to 25.2 million. Iran pushed for a larger reduction of 1.7 million bpd, but was unsuccessful.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries wants to prevent oil from slipping below $20, let alone collapsing back into the single-digit prices seen in 1998.

"Stocks are increasing, and in the second quarter we saw a sharp fall in prices coming," said OPEC Secretary-General Ali Rodriguez. "We wanted to maintain the stability of the market and, of course, of prices."

OPEC was blamed last year for stirring inflation by moving too slowly to restore output curbs that propelled oil prices from 1998's lows to a $35 high for benchmark Brent three months ago.

OPEC leaders have said they wish to keep their crude, which is of a lower quality than U.S. light crude, at $25 per barrel. OPEC oil is currently trading at less than $25 per barrel.

In the days leading up to the meeting, the price of oil had shot up. For the first time in a month, crude futures surpassed the $30 mark on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Russian consumers probably will be little affected, if at all, because Russia - being the world's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia - doesn't rely on imports to run its economy.

And prices on the domestic market have historically been much lower than those on international markets, said Tatyana Demidova of Kortes Statistics.

"In the near future, OPEC is not going to have an effect on oil prices on Russia's domestic market," Demidova said. Russia has more pressing issues such as haggling over taxes with the federal government.

Russian crude has actually seen a fall in prices since November, when the Urals benchmark traded for $23 to $24 per barrel. Today, the same crude sells at $15 to $16 a barrel, half of what the U.S. benchmark goes for.

Though Russian producers face low prices at home, 40 percent of what they produce is exported abroad, so they still stand to benefit from high world prices.

Russia tends to respond to the changing levels of worldwide prices faster than other non-OPEC countries, said Julian Lee, senior energy analyst with the Center for Global Energy Studies in London. "Last year, we saw an increase in production - in light of high oil prices - because Russian oil companies had the cash on hand to expand operations," Lee said in a telephone interview.

But Russia's path to increasing capacity is riddled with hurdles, said Sergei Yesaenko at the Cambridge Energy Research Associates' office in Moscow. "It's purely a technical problem," Yesaenko said.

TITLE: Lenenergo Waits for UES Plan To Take Shape
AUTHOR: Viktoria Uzdina
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: At the end of December, the Lenenergo board of directors approved a plan for the restructuring of the local utility, which was proposed by the company's management team. However, the realization of this plan will not take place before the restructuring at Unified Energy Sytems (UES), Russia's national energy holding company. UES feels that the daughter companies should not get ahead of the parent in this process. But Lenenergo has seemed in a hurry since, besides the formulation of its own restructuring plan, the company has also been actively pursuing a project to issue level-1 American Depository Receipts (ADRs). In an interview with Vedomosti's Viktoria Uzdina, Andrei Likhachyov, general director of Lenenergo, says that these steps will make the company more competitive in a free market for electrical energy in Russia - a market that, as yet, does not exist.




Q: As we know, the restructuring program at UES hasn't garnered the support of President Vladimir Putin. Does it make any sense then to lobby for a restructuring plan at Lenenergo at this point?

A: I don't think that the term "restructuring program" is entirely accurate. There is talk about reorganizing Russia's energy companies in the sense of their basic functions. Reform involves everyone in electrical energy output in the country from its production to its sale. For that reason it doesn't mean the restructuring of just one company and, of course, isn't just a plan drawn up by the management at UES. This is a program that really can only be undertaken with the support of the president and the government.


The president - and this is most important in my view - is of the opinion that reforming the monopolies in Russia isn't the same as restructuring individual enterprises. What is involved is more of a general technological process of reform of the whole country. He has also said that during the process of our own reforms we should pay attention to the experiences of other countries. What this means is the creation of an electrical energy generation market under conditions of a strict state monopoly on the system of transmission of that energy. The proposal is for the government to hold 75 percent plus one share in the company that will be responsible for the whole transmission sector.

When, at a Dec. 22 meeting at the Northwest Heat and Electricity Station (TETs), (UES chief) Anatoly Chubais suggested to Vladimir Putin "take care of your own business, and we'll take care of providing you with energy," the president characteristically responded "I agree, but only at a reasonable price." A reasonable price presumes a market environment, with a degree of bargaining between buyers and sellers of electric energy. The price shouldn't be higher or lower than what is reasonable.



Q: But how will that price be determined?

A: It will be determined by the market. We think that during the process of moving to a free market in energy the price will actually come down. The calculation is very simple. Today Lenenergo's tariff on electricity provided to industrial consumers is 68 kopeks per kilowatt hour. This has conventionally compensated for the outlay in producing electrical energy at TETs. At the same time the cost of electricity which is produced at other facilities, for example, the Leningrad Atomic Power Station (LAES), is, on average, about 15 kopeks. Right now we buy energy from LAES at the tariffs set by FOREM (the government system responsible for the sale of electricity in Russia) and then sell it to our consumers.


Under market conditions the price will be determined by the production cost and the cost of transmission. To put it bluntly, if the price of electricity were to correspond to the production cost, the result would be a price of 35 to 40 kopeks. This is almost half the present tariff.

But working only from these economic considerations would sink us. The thing is that TETs, aside from electrical energy, also produces heat energy. The majority of the expenses at the plant are covered by electricity tariffs. In this way, the tariff system on electricity subsidizes the production of heat energy, so consumers get heat energy at a relatively low price. In a market situation, such a regime can't be allowed to continue.



Q: What needs to be done so that Lenenergo is better suited to the demands of a market situation?

A: I can tell you what Lenenergo's management is proposing. We have a source we can use to produce electricity at a price that would be competitive on the market in hydro-electric stations. We plan to detach these into a separate division within Lenenergo. For that group, the production of electrical energy will be the main line of business, with heat energy production being secondary.


Then there is TETs. If the production of electrical energy at TETs proves to be unprofitable, the logical answer is to shut it down. That would be the answer of any effective owner in any sphere of business. This option isn't open to Lenenergo because TETs also provides for half of St. Petersburg's heating needs. This means that for TETs, which is also to be split into a separate division, the main business should be heat energy production. Electrical energy would become its secondary product and where it is competitive, the energy can be sold at that price called for by the market.



Q: How do you plan to bring about competitive production of electrical energy at the plant?

A: We need to establish a level of tariffs for heating energy which is able to compensate for the expenses of running the plant. Most of all, we need to take into account the possible loss in revenue associated with a drop in the price of electrical energy in free-market conditions.

Q: But tariffs aren't set by Lenenergo, but by the regional energy commission. How can you get them to go along with your expectations?

A: 80 percent of our heat energy produced goes to the city's population or to public-sector organizations. Therefore, they have their definition of how much is needed. On the other hand, Lenenergo has TETs, which in the production of heat energy and from considerations of basic repairs and upkeep, has its own requirements to satisfy. The regional energy commission simply needs to determine what level of tariffs for heating energy will allow Lenenergo to produce the amount of heating energy required by the city. In that way we can achieve full transparency in the process of tariff determination.




Q: Besides electrical and heating energy, what other structural divisions will be created within Lenenergo?

A: In a third group will be the distribution network. It's necessary to split this off into a separate division in order to establish tariffs independently that will provide for the maintenance of the network. This should be a tariff for transmission which shouldn't depend on who is producing the power or to whom it is being sold.




Q: Who will set the tariff?

A: The government. The distribution network in any event will remain a technological monopoly. As I said earlier, the reform of the Russian energy sector assumes a state monopoly on the transmission of electrical energy under conditions of equal access for all producers. The tariffs will depend on the cost of operating the transmission system.


A final new division within Lenenergo will take care of energy sales. This division will not only take care of selling energy, but also developing different related services for consumers.



Q: For now the plan is to develop these divisions within the Lenenergo corporate structure. When will they attain the status of independent legal entities?

A: We're only the team in charge of managing Lenenergo, and don't have the authority to decide on questions of ownership. These questions are the prerogative of the shareholders.




Q: In connection with that, how have Lenenergo's shareholders reacted to the restructuring concept?

A: At the last meeting of the board of directors Leonid Melamed, representing UES, supported our proposals for the preparatory stage of the reforms at Lenenergo. This included the idea of dividing the different aspects of the company's business into separate divisions based on what they do.


In accordance with UES' suggestion, the restructuring process at Lenenergo will be undertaken at the same time as reforms are put in place at the parent company.

The foreign shareholders, who took part in the preparation of the restructuring plan for our company, were entirely satisfied with the ideology behind it. I can say that they unanimously support the management's proposals.



Q: How long will it take to complete the preparatory stage?

A: By May, when there will be another shareholders meeting, all of the proposed changes to the internal structure of the company will have been examined completely.




Q: Recently Lenenergo announced its choice of institutions to help in the launch of a level-1 ADR program. Earlier, the company worked with the Bank of New York (BoNY). Why, then, did you ultimately decide to work with J.P. Morgan?

A: Our choice of J.P. Morgan was in no way a reflection of the professional quality of management at BoNY. We've conducted a lot of joint business and have been completely satisfied with our collaboration. The thing is that BoNY has been very active in programs for the conversion of stock in Russian firms into ADRs. For J.P. Morgan, though, this will be one of its first such programs in Russia. Thus, the result of working with Lenenergo will be more significant for J.P. Morgan than for BoNY.




Q: At what stage right now is the conversion of Lenenergo shares to level-1 ADRs?

A: The conversion will begin at the end of January or beginning of February.




Q: By your calculations, how many shares in Lenenergo will be converted into ADRs?

A: The final number will be somewhere in the region of 10 to 12 percent.

TITLE: What Other Papers Are Saying
AUTHOR: by Ali Nassor
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin waited until National Press Day last weekend to reveal that there is absolute freedom of speech in Russia. But an outspoken television channel was, as usual, on hand to act as guinea pig for this bizarre theory.




The War Goes On


State prosecutors may have found the president's comments amusing. Just a day after Putin's declaration, they staged yet another raid on Media-MOST's NTV television headquarters to search the office of an accountant who had been fired two years back, reports Vedomosti.


Prosecutors said they were looking for documents that would give clues to Vladimir Gusinsky's transfers of funds offshore, says Kommersant. 

Failing to catch the culprit, they were quick to find a substitute, arresting another man dealing with money related to NTV - head of Media-MOST's finance department Anton Titov, who, the paper says, was at least a consolation prize. 

That day, prosecutors revived probes into a "dubious commercial deal" struck in 1998 between Moscow Mayor Yury Luzh kov and Gusinsky, in which Luzh kov had allegedly issued a $200 million loan from the state budget to Media-MOST, says Izvestia. 



Hide & Seek


This all happened shortly after Putin had acknowledged his commitment to freedom of speech, and a few days after Segodnya newspaper - also owned by Media-MOST - had dared criticize a high-ranking prosecutor, says Kommersant. 


The paper quotes a senior prosecutor as saying, "Media-MOST's leadership shouldn't have played a game of hide-and-seek with us." 

In another development, the paper smells a rat as to why the state-controlled Gazprom-Media went to court to claim an extra 19 percent on top of the 49 percent of stock it currently owns in NTV, immediately after the news was broken that CNN-founder Ted Turner was negotiating over the purchase of shares in the television station. 

Genuinely doubting Putin's commitment to freedom of speech, Segodnya quotes UNESCO general director Koitiro Matsuuri as saying, in a letter to the president this week, that: "The situation surrounding NTV, is only one of the most recent incidents that gives [me] cause for concern [over press freedom in Russia]."


Songs of Freedom 


But referring to the general trend in last year's press-related events, Argumenty i Fakty suggests that talking to Putin about press freedom amounts to conversing with a brick wall.


The paper quotes Putin as saying when he was still acting president that Russia's press "will be forever free" - only to author a freedom of information doctrine restricting the media just a few months later.

Indeed, the erstwhile advocate of free speech has made abortive attempts to regain control over national television station ORT, prompting Boris Berezovsky to sell out his stock, says the paper.

Despite a wave of Kremlin-initiated scandals involving NTV and other liberal media organs run by oligarchs, Putin and his subordinates are yet to show any signs of giving up, suggests the paper.



Jacks of All Trades


But Novaya Gazeta suggests that if Putin is serious about his commitment to freedom of speech, then he should start by reducing the new powers he has given to state prosecutors. Otherwise, people will begin to believe that prosecutors have been empowered to make their own laws, and be judge and jury in all cases.


And the paper quotes Prosecutor General Valery Ustinov as expressing his gratitude to Putin for "creating excellent working conditions" for institutions under Ustinov's patronage.

TITLE: COMMENT
AUTHOR: By Doug Gamble
TEXT: Americans Get a Leader Who Is 'Dumb Like Us' 

DEMOCRATS salivating at the prospect of a dim-bulb presidency leading to George W. Bush's defeat in 2004 may be as disappointed as Republicans who were sure Bill Clinton's immorality would bring him down. 


While capturing at least 270 electoral college votes is the key to winning the Oval Office, capturing the tenor of the times is an important factor in hanging on to it. And just as Clinton's sleazy conduct both before and during his presidency was in step with an American culture in moral decline, Bush's shallow intellect perfectly reflects an increasingly dumbed-down America. 

In 1992, Clinton's survival of the Gennifer Flowers affair in the New Hampshire primary signaled a new political era when character no longer seemed to matter to the voters, as it had just four years earlier when a revelation of marital infidelity by Democrat Gary Hart sank his presidential hopes. In 2000, Bush survived dismal showings in early primary debates, appearing in some as though he'd be hard-pressed to name the president of the United States, let alone foreign leaders. 

While such poor performances would have doomed a would-be president in previous years, it did not matter to many in a society where ignorance, if not bliss, is at least more the norm than at any time in memory. The America that Bush mirrors is the one displayed on "The Jay Leno Show" when he stops people along the street and stumps them with a pop quiz. Most cannot identify photos of prominent government officials, have no idea how many states there are, and so on. The Bush presidency may well be uninjured by the short attention span, fractured phrases and lack of intellectual curiosity. To many Americans, Bush is "just like us."

Bush may also benefit from the country's acceptance of a diminution of presidential stature. The stature gap has widened enormously over the last two decades and will achieve Grand Canyon proportions when Clinton passes the torch to the junior Bush. During the late December meeting between the two, with Clinton looking more presidential than ever, relaxed and in command, Bush sat stiffly with his legs spread and his hands folded like a kid who had been summoned to the principal. 

How people will react to a President Bush being one of the poorest communicators ever to hold the Oval Office - a man whose lips are where words go to die - remains to be seen. Barring some calamity, most Americans will become as conditioned to a stumbling, bumbling President Bush as they were to a roguish President Clinton. These two men simply reflect the immorality and mediocrity that the country has come to accept. 



Doug Gamble has written humor and speech material for Republicans, including presidents Reagan and Bush. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.

TITLE: EDITORIAL
TEXT: New Realism Better Than Old Illusions 


WHILE it is not entirely clear whether U.S. President-elect George W. Bush fully understood what he was saying earlier this week about international lending to Russia during the '90s, we suspect that he may be right.


A harder line toward Russia back then might well have prevented a lot of money from being squandered or stolen and might have left Russia in a far better position than it is in now.

In a crippled verbal style that is reminiscent of his father's way with words, Bush told reporters Monday: "It just seems like to me that we don't want to be lending money and/or encourage the lending of money into a system in which the intention of the capital is never fulfilled." If we are parsing him correctly, then it just seems like that to us, too.

The stubborn refusal of the Clinton administration (and other Western governments such as that of Britain's Tony Blair) to face facts about the true situation in Russia - particularly about the Yeltsin administration's nonexistent commitment to real political or economic reform - was a major obstacle to effective assistance. In retrospect, the position of President Vla dimir Putin's chief economic adviser Andrei Illarionov that Russia never needed Western lending at all and that endless borrowing merely undermined any incentive for real reform seems increasingly credible.

Now Russia is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It is saddled with a foreign-debt burden that is clearly putting a strong brake on further growth, sapping funds that could be invested in infrastructure.

On the other hand, not paying its debts will undermine the confidence of investors, whose direct investment in the real economy (as opposed to institutional lending) is what Russia really needs. Restructuring merely puts off the dilemma until tomorrow, when it is a few billion dollars more intractable.

Bush, then, is right to make a break with the self-delusions of the past and to assert that Russia certainly does not need "more of the same" from the West. But that doesn't mean that Russia does not need help and that the West cannot provide that help. Ignoring Russia would not be any more "realistic" or "pragmatic" than was pretending it is already a free-market democracy.

Russia needs assistance that stimulates reform, rather than inhibits it. It needs incentives for pursuing policies that will make it, in Bush's words, "a safe haven" for capital. Most of all, it needs to be judged by its deeds rather than its words. This kind of "realism" would be a welcome change.

TITLE: DEFENSE DOSSIER
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: Held Hostage By the Scourge Of Militarism 

DEFENSE Minister Igor Sergeyev is a lame duck. For almost a year now, he has been removed from any serious national security decision-making. Rumors of Sergeyev's impending ouster have been swirling. However, Sergeyev is still in office because the Kremlin has not yet decided on a successor. As long as President Vladimir Putin remains undecided, Sergeyev stays as a caretaker.


Part of the problem is that this decision involves not just naming a new defense minister, but also defining serious changes in the organization of the ministry and the overall military command structure. 

The General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (which today is part of the Defense Ministry and, formally at least, under Sergeyev's command) has put forward a plan that would make it independent. The Russian General Staff was modeled after the German Imperial General Staff at the time of World War I. Today Russia's generals want to form a "civilian" Defense Ministry that will only supply the military with men and arms, while the armed services themselves would be under the operational command of the General Staff, which in turn would report directly to the president as commander-in-chief.

For all practical purposes, the General Staff has already emancipated itself from most controls and is already virtually independent. Last year Putin made the present chief of the General Staff - Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin - a full member of the Security Council. 

In recent years, the increasingly independent Kvashnin has on several occasions imposed on the country decisions that have greatly damaged our national interests. In June 1999, he bypassed Sergeyev and marched a column of paratroopers through Serbia into the Kosovar capital Pristina to steal a march on Western peacekeepers. 

At the time, this move was very popular in Russia, and many believed that the West had been snubbed and Russian influence in the Balkans enhanced. Today it is obvious that Kvashnin's bravado only heightened Western suspicions and did not bring Russia any advantage.

The same year the war in the Balkans ended, Russian troops moved into Chechnya. In October 1999, Yeltsin and Putin (then the prime minister) approved changes in the overall plan of operation that sent Russian units across the Terek River into southern Chechnya to "wipe out the terrorists." Today many Russian generals and politicians believe that this change of plan was a major disaster that has led to the present bloody and costly stalemate. The initiative to go for immediate full victory in Chechnya, which backfired so painfully, came again from Kvashnin and his generals. Putin and Yeltsin only approved it, most likely not fully understanding what they were doing.

The General Staff, like its German predecessor, has been the center of aggressive militarism for decades. During the Cold War, it accelerated the arms race by grossly overestimating Western military capabilities. In the end that arms race killed the Soviet Union. 

Nowadays the same General Staff is spreading its influence into the Russian government. Last week state television reported that Kvashnin was taking part in an important meeting to select a new Chechen prime minister. Such activities are a far cry from "operational control of the military." Instead of enhancing civilian control over the military, the appointment of a "civilian" defense minister may only stimulate Russia's traditional scourge of extreme militarism.


Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst.

TITLE: The Real Wallenberg Story
AUTHOR: By Paul A. Levine
TEXT: Why does the world so fervently remember Raoul Wallenberg? Every piece of information about him that surfaces, like the recent Russian announcement that he was executed more than 50 years ago by the KGB, spawns renewed speculation about the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance. Are we fascinated by Wallenberg because of his life, because he was a man who did remarkable things during a time of extreme crisis, or because of the riddle of his fate? Had he never vanished while in Soviet hands, had he returned to Stockholm to live to a ripe old age, would he still inspire our reverence? 


Wallenberg is undeniably a hero of the Holocaust for his efforts on behalf of Jews in Budapest during World War II. But his deeds and his stature have been distorted by time and the mists of myth that have surrounded him since his arrest by the Soviets in 1945 and the lingering questions about the truth and the manner of his death. In more than 10 years of conducting research on him and Swedish diplomatic efforts to save Jews during the war, I have seen how Wallenberg's acts have been glorified over time. And as a teacher of Holocaust history, I know that this tendency to mythologize can prevent a real understanding of the moral importance of his mission and its historic example. 

The popular story of Raoul Wallenberg has the Swedish government sending the young diplomatic novice to Budapest to save the Jews of Hungary at the behest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wallenberg is supposed to have confronted Adolf Eichmann and his henchmen and stopped them from rounding up and deporting the nation's Jews. He is described as having been personally responsible for the security of Budapest's more than 200,000 Jews, and as having directly rescued the more than 70,000 who cowered in that city's ghetto. Commonly associated with his memory is the iconic figure of 100,000 - the number of Jewish lives he is said to have saved through his personal actions. 

Romantic as it sounds, little of this confusing narrative, according to available historical documentation, is exactly true. Although Wallenberg accomplished much, he was but one link in an established chain of Swedish diplomacy working to save Jews. After November 1942, when the Nazis deported almost half of Norway's Jews to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, Sweden began extending diplomatic protection to many Jewish individuals and families throughout Europe, often forestalling their deportation. Swedish diplomats in Budapest had been trying to help Jews in Hungary before the country's occupation by its German "ally" in March 1944. 

By the time Wallenberg arrived, Eichmann had already struck at the Jewish population of the Hungarian countryside. In some seven murderous weeks beginning in mid-May 1944, the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators deported more than 435,000 Jews to Poland, up to 12,000 a day to Auschwitz. Budapest's neutral diplomats could do nothing to stop this well-organized machinery of death. It was Miklos Horthy, head of Hungary's rump government, who finally ordered the transports stopped on July 7, once he understood what Eichmann was doing, and thus saved Budapest's Jews from deportation. Wallenberg arrived two days later. 

On Oct. 15, the Hungarian fascist party, the Arrow Cross, overthrew Horthy, and Eichmann had another opportunity to go after Budapest's Jews. Shortly before this, Wallenberg had written his mother to say he would soon return to Stockholm. But now, he chose to remain in Budapest and help those Jews he could. Over the next three months, he launched into action. 

It is important to understand that he was able to act to the extent he did because his diplomatic status gave him a measure of protection and freedom of action. Diplomatic practice gave him the "working space" he needed to perform his tasks. Memorably, he expanded this space. Often leaving the safety of his embassy, he crisscrossed Budapest trying to save Jews from Arrow Cross thugs. He threatened, pleaded and argued with Hungarian and German officials. Armed with both real and false Swedish identification papers he went to train stations and elsewhere, insisting that Jews with his papers were Swedish citizens. 

It is his constant visibility in these efforts, as well as during the Nazis' "death marches" of Jews toward the Austrian border in November and December 1944, that made its mark on survivors and lingers in their memories. Wallenberg's efforts surely saved dozens, even hundreds. But the fact is that, while he saved some Jews from the transports, he couldn't stop the trains from leaving with others. 

Nor did Wallenberg "save" the Budapest ghetto. Many accounts maintain that he threatened German SS Gen. August Schmidthuber and cowed him into backing down from a planned attack. But the documentation available does not support this. Eyewitness testimony indicates that Schmidthuber himself decided at the last minute not to go through with the assault. 

The truth is that the Holocaust wasn't perpetrated by "devils," but by real men who chose to do what they did. Similarly, Wallenberg wasn't an "angel of rescue," nor a saint, but a very real man who, unlike so many others, chose to help. Even at considerable risk to his own life, he used his diplomatic status and organizational skills to aid as many individuals as he could. 

Remembering Raoul Wallenberg in his real context is essential to honoring him and others like him. Even well-intentioned inaccuracy can harm memory, and nowhere is accuracy in memory more important than in regard to the Holocaust. Yet more and more people today talk about the Holocaust while understanding frightfully little about how it actually happened. This growing gap between history and memory reduces our understanding of the event and thus the lessons we try to draw from it. If we remember Wallenberg incorrectly, if we exaggerate his actions because of his tragic fate, we do not enlarge him and his example; we diminish his memory and the positive choices he made. 


Paul Levine is assistant professor of history in the program for Holocaust and genocide studies at Sweden's Uppsala University and is writing a book about Raoul Wallenberg. He contributed this essay to The Washington Post.

TITLE: mariinsky to stage the stuff of legend
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: Opera director Dmitry Chernyakov well remembers what he felt when he first heard Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh" as a teenager at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The impression, he says, was overwhelming: "I felt a religious horror."


So Chernyakov is especially excited to be staging his own version of the opera at the Mariinsky Theater here in St. Petersburg on Staturday, and hopes that his version will create a similar effect on the audience as it once created on him.

Chernyakov's staging of "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and of the Maid Fevronia," to give the work its full name, will be the opera's sixth production at the Mariinsky since its composition. Written in 1904, "Kitezh" was in fact first put on at the famous theater only three years later. Often considered Rimsky-Korsakov's most successful opera, it rarely, however, is to be found in opera houses outside Russia.

Chernyakov makes no secret of the fact that he searched long and hard for an opportunity to stage "Kitezh."

"I went knocking on the doors of different theaters until I met [Mariinsky director] Valery Gergiev, who was very keen on the idea, and, like me, obsessed with the work," Chernyakov said in an interview last week. 

The opera is loosely based on a 13th-century legend of the same name, in which Vsevolod, the prince of Kitezh, falls in love with and marries a woodcutter's daughter called Fevronia. Vsevolod sends a procession to fetch Fevronia, but during the wedding celebrations, a marauding gang of Tartars attacks Kitezh the Less, and Fevronia and the drunkard Grishka Kuterma are the only two to survive. The Tartars force Kuterma to lead them to Great Kitezh, and both wipes out Vsevolod's opposing force and razes the city to the ground.

Fevronia and Kuterma escape to the forest, and as she dies from exhaustion, she sees a a vision of Vsevolod leading her to a rebuilt Kitezh, where people are celebrating their wedding in this "other" city.

Dealing with such an ethereal work is obviously the big challenge for the director. Chernyakov said that, rather than using traditional folk imagery, his treatment will be conceptual and metaphorical - an approach he used in his last opera, contemporary Yekaterinburg composer Vladimir Kobekin's "Young David" with the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater; this earned him a nomination for a Golden Mask, Russia's highest theatrical prize.

But it is the very subtlety and spirituality of "Kitezh" that attracts Cher nya kov. "This opera is full of the sense of the apocalyptic that was dominating people's minds when Rimsky-Korsakov was working on it, and it appears to resonate with our era as well," he said.

The part of Fevronia will be taken by soprano Mlada Khudolei, who has so far in her career concentrated on the repertoire of Wagner and Verdi. This will be only her second role sung in Russian, following her performance as Renata in Sergei Prokofiev's "The Fiery Angel."

"I am very excited about this first opportunity to sing such God-inspired material," Khudolei said last week. This music tells you much about the Russian soul and character."



"The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh"premieres at the Mariinsky Theater on Saturday, Jan. 20., and will be performed again on Feb. 2.

TITLE: chernov's choice
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: One of the most popular directors among Russian film lovers, Emir Kusturica, will come to Russia - not, however, to present a new masterpiece, but to play guitar with the group, which he co-founded when he was a punk in Sarajevo in 1980. 


Kusturica, who was honored as best director for "Black Cat, White Cat" at last year's Venice film festival, will play four concerts in Moscow with his No Smoking Band at the Rossiya Concert Hall on Jan. 31.

Although he is not appearing in St. Petersburg, local fans are sure to travel to the capital - if they are not put off by the cost, as tickets for his gig are going for from 400 rubles to a hefty 6,000 rubles ($215).

No Smoking Band reformed in 1994 in Belgrade, with Kusturica's son on drums. In 1998, the director joined the band, which made the soundtrack of "Black Cat, White Cat", and embarked on European tour to support its recent album, "Unza Unza Time."

"The new No Smoking Band places emphasis on the virtuosity of talented soloists, who bring to the group their own individual contributions of original folk, jazz and gypsy music," said Kusturica.

"The No Smoking Band epitomizes an unusual phenomenon in that it has found an entirely original way to express itself through a combination of all the musical genres known in the Balkans - a common heritage left behind by hordes of conquering armies that have followed in one another's footsteps through the millennia. "

The night after the concert at the Rossiya, No Smoking Band will play at Chinese Pilot Dzhao Da, with gigs at Restavratsiya and Zeppelin following on Feb. 1. For more information, see www.emirkusturica-nosmoking.com.

Wine - the cult band with a bunch of local Anglophiles but chronically devoid of any commercial success - has released its second album, which hints at the hardships of being an "Englishman" in St. Petersburg.

Called "Wine Not?," the album is really a solo work from the band's founder Alexei Winer, whose musicians left for more commercial projects such as Latin pop band Los Coyotas. Winer, who is the band's sole songwriter, sang, played all the instruments and designed the '60s-style cover, which features his self-portrait.

Wine was formed in 1991 as Winecaster - a mythical place somewhere in Olde Englande populated with characters from Winer's songs and paintings - and performed mostly at the seminal TaMtAm club - at one time featuring TaMtAm's founder and ex-Akvarium cellist Seva Gakkel. 

The tape-only album is released on Manchester Files, the local label which put out Wine's debut, "Ugly," in 1999. It is available from a selection of local record shops.

TITLE: hard rock club minus the rock
AUTHOR: by Molly Graves
TEXT: So you've heard of Baltika cigarettes, you may have even caught the recent concert of Creedence Clearwater Revived, but have you checked out the "first in Russia" Hard Rock Club? 


The original Hard Rock Cafe - to which the HRClub claims no connection - boasts over 100 restaurants in 36 countries, though none yet in the former Soviet Union. However, the new St. Petersburg Hard Rock Club's logo - a familiar golden circle with brown lettering - strikingly mimics the signature logo of the world's leading collectors and exhibitors of rock'n'roll memorabilia.

But beyond this, all similarities stop. The HRClub turns out to be more of a small pub than either a club or cafe. The menu is limited, and the dishes not as exciting as the names may first sound.

The soup "ZZ Top" was not available, so I opted for the "Elvis" salad (40 rubles), which turned out to be tomatoes and cucumbers with a blop of mayo, (I never knew Elvis was such a simple guy.)

This was followed by the perch "Yellow Submarine" (95 rubles), which should in fact have been named the perch "Hard-Rock" - for it really was.

My companion first eyed the "Samantha Fox" beef medallions (who could blame him), but instead chose the tantsuyuschiye gribochky (dancing mushroom) soup (43 rubles), along with the mysteriously named "Phil Collins" beefsteak (115 rubles) - both of which he claimed were fairly basic and unspectacular, the steak a bit hard to chew. Our dishes were garnished with the somewhat odd-tasting (soy sauce & sugar?) french fries HRC (20 rubles).

Perhaps in honor of the holiday season, complimentary drinks were rampant - glowing red, bubbly glasses topped with plastic palm trees (vodka, Sprite and Cool Aid?) were passed out frequently by a painfully wide-smiling hostess. Beers were mostly foreign and rather expensive - my companion's Budwiser was 90 rubles for half a liter.

However, my biggest complaint has nothing to do with the food, or even with copyright laws of world-famous logos. A true rock club - in the spirit of the original Hard Rock Cafe, promoting Russian rock as well as the genre itself - would actually be an interesting idea. And a collection of artifacts of local Russian rock musicians - like, say, Victor Tsoy's first guitar - would be fairly easy and cheap to acquire.

But instead, the rock connection at the HRClub is weak at best. The only "artifacts" are stained-glass guitar lamps glowing on walls, alongside small photographs of, among others, DDT's Yury Shev chuk and Boris Grebenshchi kov of Akvarium. 

And the music was pretty standard. "The Wall" played soundlessly on a TV behind the bar, and the piped-in music seemed to be from a U2 box set, later moving on to the Queen box set as we had our coffee (which was actually quite good espresso - for 25 rubles).

HRClub versions of the famous HRC T-shirts are available for 290 rubles (about $10) - and may be the best deal there. But better get 'em fast, as there's no guarantee this club will be around for long...



Hard Rock Club, 10 Prospect Chernyshevskovo. Metro Chernyshevskaya. Dinner for two, 488 rubles (about $17.50). Credit cards are not accepted. Daily from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. - there's live music on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Telephone: 272-51-88.

TITLE: petersburg rock set for explosion part II
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Every Friday, dozens of local musicians from such bands as Tequilajazzz, Pep-See, Leningrad, Markscheider Kunst or Volkovtrio, meet on a platform at the Moscow Station to end up at a Moscow club gig - and Moscow's public enjoy it.


"There's shortage of bands in Moscow," said Anton Soya, manager of MultFilmy, which played the capital last week. "Moscow hasn't produced anything worthwhile lately, so there's a certain vacuum."

"It's a very well-fed, business-oriented city - that's why it experiences problems with bands," continued Soya. "Everybody makes money and has no time to make music. Out of the Moscow bands that provoked any interest from Muscovites themselves, of late I know only Korabl, but they are seen as the same thing as [local band] Leningrad, which says a lot in itself."

Moscow might be Russia's money capital, but St. Petersburg bands seem to have established a dominant position on the Moscow music scene - if not in quantity, then in interest - for both the public and the media.

And the northern musicians are predicting that their popularity in Moscow is about to reach perestroika-era levels - considered the first hey-day of Leningrad rock.

In the early and mid-1980s, underground acts such as Akvarium and Zoopark were fuelling the city's rock explosion; but they were also the sensation of the capital, packing out venues on the outskirts of Moscow even though the only means of promoting a gig was the grapevine.

Now, slightly recovered from the general malaise that accompanied the 1998 economic meltdown, local acts are ready to rule again. And Alexei Paperny, co-founder of the Moscow club Chinese Pilot Dzhao Da, said that it would be no exaggeration to call what's going on a St. Petersburg invasion. 

"A great deal of St. Petersburg bands play in Moscow, at our club in particular," Paperny said. "It hurts me to say it, but there are fewer interesting acts in Moscow [than in St. Petersburg].

"Off the top of my head, I can name [St. Petersburg's] Leonid Fyodorov - both with Auktsyon and by himself - as well as Tequilajazzz, Dva Samaliota, Fyodor Chistyakov, Leningrad, Markscheider Kunst - which is my favorite - and so on. They all play at our club constantly."

Sergei Shnurov, leader of Leningrad and 3D, hasn't done a local concert since December, but appears with his bands in Moscow every weekend. "There is more room in clubs in the capital, there are more of them and they have a better sound," he said.

"You can play in Moscow all the time for different audiences, while in St. Petersburg you're always playing for the same bunch."

"This Petersburg resurgence has been taking place over the past three years," said local music critic Andrei Burlaka. "Moscow has never been a very fertile place for new, original music, but now it has become creatively impotent."

Drummer Katya Fyodorova, who leads the all-girl folk-punk band Babslei, said: "It's not that the interest has increased - they just have nothing of their own, they do not have their own musical product. We have more groups, but fewer clubs, so it's only natural that our musicians travel to Moscow."

But the difference between the two cities' financial situation does play a part. "Unlike Muscovites, St. Petersburg musicians work in a financial vacuum," said Burlaka. "In a situation where there's no chance of making money, people make art. While they were forced to stay in St. Petersburg because of the financial crisis of 1998, many acts managed to develop a style, to build a repertoire, to polish their professional abilities - and when they come to Moscow, they were highly competitive and original."

Even alternative venues in Moscow pay three times as much as St. Petersburg's clubs, and often much, much more. For a recent concert at a St. Petersburg underground venue, Babslei was paid a mere 100 rubles per person. "There were lots of people, entrance cost 50 rubles, so I don't know how the system works," said Babslei's Fyodorova. "But there are more rich people in Moscow."

"In Moscow, [St. Petersburg bands] see a great opportunity to improve their financial position," said Burlaka.

"St. Petersburg's impact there has been pretty big, but it will be even bigger now - almost comparable to the 1980s."

TITLE: petersburg art 2000: creativity still alive
AUTHOR: by Tom Masters
TEXT: On an circular glass table there sits an enormous pile of salt. A young, arty-looking girl showing friends around the exhibition puts her finger in the pile and starts tracing wild and random patterns on the glass, explaining as she does so how much she loves interactive art. Suddenly the bohemian calm is shattered. "Dyevushka!" shrieks an septuagenarian official, "Don't touch the art!"


Given the Western trend for interactivity in contemporary installation, the mistake, made at the Petersburg 2000 art exhibit at the Manezh Exhibition Hall, was understandable. While the contemporary art on display seems to be similar in style to that you might see at New York's Museum of Modern Art or the Pompidou in Paris, there is a strong undercurrent of "Russianness" to the exhibit's themes and their presentation.

Petersburg 2000 - an enormous annual retrospective of the work of the city's artistic community over the past year - gives people a chance to decide for themselves whether St. Petersburg can still justify its self-proclaimed title of Russia's artistic center. 

Held in the chilly, modernist expanses of the Manezh, all of St. Petersburg's well-known artists, as well as many unknowns, have at least one piece on display. The range is enormous, encompassing painting, sculpture, installation, photography and even tapestry, in a selection that reflects both the highs and lows of a year in local art.

Despite the range of media, many artistic preoccupations during 2000 seem to have been common; for example, Russia's still-uncertain future and search for a post-Soviet identity is one theme that is brought up under many guises. Marina Kopdobskaya's simple "Butterfly" - a childlike painted outline of a lustful lepidoptera with dollar signs, Lenin and catastrophic lightning bolts on its wings - conveys the ideological limbo many feel Russia finds itself in today.

Yevgeny Maryshev, whose instantly recognizable fusion of fantasy and ancient Rus can be found in large number at the exhibit, took the sinking of the Kursk submarine as his theme for "Goodbye, Comrades, Everybody Take Their Places." The tragedy is here represented with his trademark fantasy - chaos above water, but with the Kursk sinking toward an ancient yet peaceful Russian village on the sea bed.

Tamara Bukovskaya's installation "Free Self-Expression" is a curt indictment of the Russian tabloid press, using a page of the offending newspapers to spell out the enormous initials WC. A somewhat similar installation next to Bukovskaya's was Valery Mishin's "My Wife Bought Me Beer," using beer coaster from a huge variety of brews to spell out "pi-pi-vo!" (pee-pee-beer!).

Beer is also the theme (as well as the material) for the most striking installation at the exhibit, Pyotr Reykhet's "Baltika Deputy," an enormous collection of used plastic Baltika bottles forming a human body gorging itself on yet another bottle of beer.

But it would be untrue to say that the majority of the art has such troubled themes. Indeed, exploring the exhibit, which contains more than 500 pieces of art, the overall impression is that of a huge, thriving diversity.

There is no escaping the predominance of primitivism in both painting and sculpture, however, as well as that of folk art to a lesser degree. There are, of course, swathes of terribly banal work - Socialist Realist throw-backs, and seemingly endless landscapes that bring nothing new to the table. But this is all to be expected in an holistic portrait of the city's artistic output; not everybody can break new ground all the time.

Among the less exciting art, there are some real treats hidden away, however. Try searching out Vadim Grigorev's post-modern Orthodox triptych "Transformation," a new take on the iconostasis that dominates the Russian Church. Or take a look at Anatoly Belkin's strikingly odd sado-masochistic photo-painting, "In the Bag" ("Delo v Shlyape").

Whatever criticisms might be levied against the St. Petersburg art scene, inertia cannot realistically be one of them. Petersburg 2000 provides ample evidence that, while many artists still prefer to look to Russia's past for inspiration, a significant number of them are seeking to integrate tradition with modern techniques and significant, contemporary concerns.

TITLE: khvorostovsky's rare appearance in city fails to impress
AUTHOR: by Giulara Sadykh-zade
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Philharmonia's break after the closing of the Arts Square Festival didn't last for long, as the following weekend saw yet more high-profile musical events take place.


Lovers of symphonic music were presented with two concerts from the supremely respected Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund, while singer Dmitry Khvorostovsky's admirers filled the Shostakovich Philharmonic Great Hall on Saturday, desperate to hear his performance of Sergei Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky romances.

Confronted with such a line up, money was no object to the audience, and although tickets were going for as much as 1,000 rubles ($35), the stalls were completely full and people were practically hanging over the balcony.

Taken overall, the three concerts were not without merit: For one thing, they proved that the Philharmonia is alive and kicking even after the impressive Arts Square festival. But they had their rather glaring drawbacks, too.

Khvorostovsky's concert, as is now to be expected, brought with it a hint of sensation as the singer visits St. Petersburg quite rarely - usually only once or twice a season.

Khvorostovsky, who has earned a reputation as a generous, elegant star - as well as attracting a horde of female admirers - is notable for working with musicians from all spheres of the musical world - including those of rock and pop - without denigrating his image before serious musical audiences. 

In spite of this, his luxurious, rich baritone, which has drawn praise all over Europe ever since he won a prestigious competition in Britain, has over time undergone clear changes, and not for the better.

His voice now seems to rely more often on his upper diaphragm, and as a result sounds tighter and more constricted. 

Until recently, Khvorostovsky had no equal among performers of Russian vocal chamber music. His interpretation of the romances of Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomizhsky was enough to bring tears to the eyes of his listeners, and some of his performances are legendary.

Moreover, the cycle of concerts he gave in preparation for the anniversary of St. Petersburg composer Georgy Sviridov - along with pianist Mikhail Arkadyev, who also accompanied Khvorostovsky on Saturday - will go down in the annals of the history of contemporary music, having set a new standard for the performance of Sviridov's setting to music of the poetry of Alexander Blok and Sergei Yesenin.

This exemplary standard no longer applies. Khvorostovsky's performance of Rachmaninov's romances, sung in the dry and cold manner of a perfectionist, no longer manages to move the soul of the listener, as it could previously. 

With age, Khvorostovsky has become emotionally barren, even when performing such tragic romances as "Yesterday We Met" or "A Vengeful Lord Has Taken Everything From Me."

Arkadyev's piano was equally dull, too quiet and arrogant, leaving the audience far from experiencing - as the words of Alexander Pushkin say - "life, tears and love."

The two concerts given by Paavo Berglund with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, although not causing such a stir among the locals, proved themselves to be an example of serious musical craft.

Without any flights of fancy, Berglund thoughtfully and responsibly articulated Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony and, even more successfully, Franz Schubert's Ninth, the "Great C Major," in his second concert of the day.

The first part of the concert was led by the talented young Japanese violinist Daishin Kashimoto. 

Having started his collection of prizes from prestigious violin competitions at the tender age of 14 - including first place in the Menuhin and Kreisler contests - Kashimoto first appeared on the St. Petersburg stage around three years ago at the "Muscial Olympus" festival that showcases young laureates, and ever since has been the rising star of the violin world. On this visit, he gave us the concertos of Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn.

However, Kashimoto's style of playing bears close resemblance to that of his teacher, Zakhar Bron, who is renowned for regularly producing prize-winning violinists. They are all distinguished by one quality: excessive boisterousness and frivolity, typified by the way Kashimoto beat out the high notes.

This approach, and the richness of Kashimoto's sound, are not at all appropriate for Brahms and Mendelssohn. Saddest of all is that these characteristics are so ingrained that Kashimoto will never get rid of them.

TITLE: everyone welcome at exclusive new venue
AUTHOR: by Tom Masters
TEXT: The run-up to Christmas saw a spate of club openings in town, each successively ritzier and supposedly more arty and exclusive than the last.


Caught up in the festive drinking season, however, few people seemed actually to pay much attention - although rumors about Ostrov's supposed exclusivity filtered back with some persistence.

Not to be left out, Face Control spent Old New Year's Eve - otherwise known as last Saturday - at the new club, situated on a remote stretch of the Neva Embankment on Vasilevsky Island, from where the club takes its name.

The club is far from a metro station, and if you don't have a car, driver or inclination to take taxis everywhere, then this is perhaps not the place for you.

As far as defining characteristics goes, however, this is the only one we could see, with Ostrov's crowd comprising middle-aged plutocrats mixing with St. Petersburg's so-called "golden youth" (the offspring of the very same plutocrats), media types, off-duty bandits, tusovka refugees and a small but visible gay presence.

With the interior being a cross between a labyrinth and a hall of mirrors, Ostrov's main selling point has got to be that it is unthreatening and (gasp) even friendly by the standards of such "exclusive" clubs. The people are beautiful, and the whole place has the air of a private members' club, for those to whom the gaudy ostentation of Hollywood Nites seems too '90s.

The eager bar staff are like lapdogs, and with Heineken at 110 rubles a bottle, it's easy to understand why. Yet while there are some cheaper beers, Ostrov's style is far more champagne cocktail than it is half-pint of Nevskoye - but consult the menu before you treat anybody.

The music policy is mainstream all the way, with an emphasis on Western pop and some progressive house. The circular dance floor rotates and is crammed with seven-foot Russian beauties strutting their stuff and trying not to give in to the centrifugal force. 

The dance floor also doubles as a stage that can theoretically be viewed from 360 degrees, but by an incredible design blunder in the form of four massive blocks, is only visible from about 180. 

Proving (as if we needed further evidence) that the only constant in Russian nightlife is flamboyant camp, a transvestite Tina Turner took to the stage as soon as we arrived, and to the strains of "Simply the Best" proceeded to kiss the balding heads of the suited biznesmeny seated in proximity - a move that might have ended up with blood on the floor of a more meathead establishment, but one that here just got indulgent smiles from the victims.

We decided we liked Ostrov, despite its prohibitive prices. Quirks such as a chill-out room, featuring swinging wicker chairs that hang on chains from the ceiling and arranged in intimate groups for friends to sit and chat in, as well as a quiet coffee bar featuring live video relay of events on the rotating dance floor for those less inclined to dance, certainly make it an interesting and pleasant contribution to St. Petersburg's in-crowd nightlife - although without an enormous pay rise, we certainly won't be making this a regular weekend haunt ourselves. 



Ostrov, 37 Nab. Leytenanta Shmidta. M. Vasileostrovskaya. 328-46-57. Open Friday to Sunday from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Entrance costs 300 rubles.

TITLE: charlie's angels: long on looks, short on intellect
AUTHOR: by A. O. Scott
TEXT: Charlie's Angels" is dedicated to the proposition that you can have your cheesecake and eat it too. Its three heroines - played with varying degrees of swagger and sultriness by Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore - are meant to appeal both to teenage girls, who will admire their professionalism and fighting spirit, and to teenage boys, who will find other things about them to admire. The original television show, which ran from 1976 to 1981, was the leering ancestor of "Baywatch;" each week it found ingenious new ways to exploit the unlikelihood of its premise, that three luscious babes could be a fearsome crime-fighting force.


The three ace operatives of the Charles Townsend Detective Agencies are, like the women of "Sex and the City" and of "Ally McBeal" (in which Liu also stars), acrobats juggling the demands of career, romance and looking great, without pulling a muscle or breaking a sweat.

One of the movie's recurring jokes is that the Angels can reduce any man to a state of drooling cretinism, but of course the camera, zooming in from behind Liu so that you can count the stiches on her very tight jeans, or exploring the bouncing contents of Barrymore's blue racing jacket, strives to do the same to the audience. But the Angels, in addition to looking great in a variety of elaborate and revealing costumes, are also crack martial artists, fluent speakers of Japanese and steel-nerved bomb defusers. 

Would that the filmmakers displayed similar competence. After a clever James Bond-style opening featuring one of the better recent uses of the ubiquitous latex-mask trick, the movie settles down to a plot that would barely sustain a one-hour television pilot and offers very little in the way of surprise or suspense.

Hired to rescue a geeky Bill Gates-like software mogul (Sam Rockwell) from the clutches of a rival (Tim Curry), the Angels soon find themselves embroiled in a fight to save "privacy as we know it," and also their elusive, doting boss (the voice of John Forsythe). The story, in any case, is a rickety scaffolding onto which director Mr. McG and the screenwriters fasten a hectic series of high-kicking fights and comic set pieces.

The action sequences, in spite of the participation of the Hong Kong master Yuen Cheung Yan (whose brother Yuen Woo-ping choreographed "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dra gon"), are pretty mediocre. Carelessly edited and ploddingly staged, they lack the balletic grace and neck-snapping surprise that have made the Hong Kong style so attractive to an American film industry desperate for new ways to thrill. 

The comedy is a little better, and best when it's unapologetically low-concept, as when Liu's character, Alex, infiltrates a computer company in the guise of a dominatrix-like efficiency expert. The Angels each have distinct characters, or at least defining traits. Alex is the tough one, Dylan (Barrymore) is the wild one with perpetual love trouble, and Natalie (Diaz) is the nerd.

As she did in "There's Something About Mary" and "Being John Malkovich," Diaz plays against her own sexiness, emphasizing Natalie's gawky cluelessness to good comic effect. In one scene, her love interest (Luke Wilson) takes her on a date to a taping of Soul Train, and Natalie bumps and grinds to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back." The joke, about as subtle as they come in this movie, is that Diaz hardly conforms to the steatopygous ideal of female beauty the song celebrates, but Natalie is too goofily naive to notice or to care. 

"Charlie's Angels" is as awkwardly eager to be liked as Natalie, and as flimsy and sparkly as the gold bikini Diaz wears in the opening scene. The presence of Bill Murray, as Bosley, the Angels' handler, promises a higher level of wit than the movie is able to deliver, but Murray's fans can at least take comfort in the fact that the paycheck he earns here for rolling his eyes and lolling around will pay for another round of character parts in small, ambitious movies like "Hamlet" and "Rushmore." 

The most that can be said for "Charlie's Angels" is that, unlike so many big-budget action movies, it never pretends that it's anything more than trashy, cheesy fun. But even trash - especially trash this expensive - should at least be well made. Sure, it's easy on the eyes, but would a little brains be too much to ask?


- NYT

TITLE: Hall Comes Calling for Winfield And Puckett
AUTHOR: By Hal Bock
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Baseball's newest Hall of Famers put on their jerseys for the first time Wednesday. Standing side by side, 1.70-meter Kirby Puckett looked up at 1.95-meter Dave Winfield and said, "You've got the tall and short of it right here."


They are opposites, one tall and rangy, the other short and stubby - two old teammates, who played two years together at Minnesota, both elected in their first year of eligibility. They celebrated the moment with good memories.

Puckett recalled arriving in the majors in 1984 and being invited out to dinner by Winfield, then an 11-year veteran.

It was a rite of passage for Puckett, the same kind of help other players had given Winfield. "I remember my first year, when I came into Atlanta," he said, "Dusty Baker and Ralph Garr calling me over, Garr with that high pitched voice, 'Hey, Win-field, come talk to us.'"

Major league players belong to an exclusive fraternity and it is the camaraderie that they miss when it is over. For Winfield and Puckett, that link was restored by their election to Cooperstown.

"You miss the shared relationship with the guys," Winfield said. "I miss going from first to third on a single. I miss throwing guys out and wagging my finger at them. Playing baseball, you're a grown man living a child's dream. It's like raising kids: hard work, but a lot of fun."

Puckett said he was an instigator, skilled in needling teammates. He said he could get two players to start arguing. "I'd go out and hit, come back inside and they'd still be arguing," he said.

Puckett spent his entire 12-year career with the Minnesota Twins and still works for the club. Winfield was a baseball vagabond, playing for six teams over 22 seasons. He also was among the first multimillion-dollar free agents, signing a 10-year, $22 million contract with the New York Yankees in 1980.

Winfield helped the Yankees to the 1981 World Series but managed just one hit in 22 at-bats as New York lost in six games. Owner George Steinbrenner was outraged by the loss and felt obliged to apologize to the city. Winfield said he apologized to Steinbrenner.

It was a debt he never could pay. The Winfield Yankees never made it back to the Series and Steinbrenner put much of the onus on the high-paid slugger, at one point dismissing him as "Mr. May," a putdown that referred to his early-season success and late-season slumps.

Winfield moved to California for two seasons, drove in the winning run in the 1992 World Series for Toronto and finished with two years in Minnesota, where he got his 3,000th hit. The runner he drove in with the hit was Puckett.

The Steinbrenner-Winfield feud has been smoothed over. The owner issued a statement congratulating the slugger on his election and said the Yankees look forward to honoring him this season.

That doesn't mean Winfield will have a Yankees' hat on his plaque.

"The cap is not an issue for me," he said. "I never get ahead of myself. The hat I'm wearing now is the Hall of Fame."

TITLE: Official Confirms Kabila's Death
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo - President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, shot at his palace in Kinshasa on Tuesday, has died and will be buried next week, a source at the Information Ministry said on Thursday.


State television and radio were expected to broadcast the news of his death later on Thursday, ending 48 hours of confusion since Kabila was shot and flown to Zimbabwe for urgent treatment.

Kinshasa authorities have so far refused to confirm that the president died of his wounds, although the government Wednesday put his son, Joseph, in charge of the government and armed forces.

State television said on Thursday that Joseph Kabila had taken over the functions of president "on an interim basis."

Kinshasa remained calm, with people keen to hear one way or another if Kabila was dead but otherwise going about their normal business.

Soldiers were deployed outside government buildings, but that was the only outward sign of the unfolding events.

Political sources in Laurent Kabila's home town, Lubumbashi, said preparations were starting for a state funeral there but the ministry source said Kabila would be buried in Kinshasa.

Government officials in Zimbabwe, Kabila's main ally in a two-year war against foreign-backed rebels, said they would make a statement on Kabila based on a doctors' report but only after they had been briefed by the Kinshasa government.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe returned home early on Thursday from Yaounde, Cameroon, where he had been due to attend a Franco-African summit, spokeswoman Betty Dimbi told Reuters.

Dimbi said Mugabe would meet his allies in the Congolese war in which Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola support the Kinshasa government against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda.

Political sources in Harare told Reuters the Kinshasa authorities were delaying news of Kabila's death while they put security arrangements in place to avert a collapse into anarchy.

Conflicting statements from Congolese officials have added to the confusion. Defense Minister Godefroid Tchamlesso said in Libya on Wednesday that Kabila had died in a Kinshasa hospital two hours after being shot.

The same day, Kabila's ambassador to Zimbabwe said the president was alive after being evacuated to Zimbabwe for surgery, although he was in serious condition and being treated by Congolese doctors.

Zimbabwe Defense Minister Moven Mahachi and foreign governments, including former colonial power Belgium, have all said that Kabila did indeed die from his wounds.

President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, current head of the Organization of African Unity, asked participants at a Franco-African summit in Yaounde, Cameroon, to stand for a minute's silence for Kabila on Thursday.

"My joy at being here is tempered by the uncertainty over the fate of President Laurent Desire Kabila," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the meeting.

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the UN, told foreign armies not to exploit the situation.

"It is essential that the foreign forces who have invaded and occupy large parts of the Congo halt their offensive action," Holbrooke told African ambassadors to the UN.

Joseph Kabila, 31, born during his father's long exile in East Africa and well connected in both Rwanda and Uganda, fought beside his father in the rebellion backed by those countries that ousted veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

TITLE: No Reprieve for Canadian Mercy Killer
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OTTAWA - Canada's Supreme Court ruled out leniency for so-called mercy killing on Thursday and said a man convicted of murdering his handicapped daughter must serve his sentence of at least 10 years in jail.


The country's highest court rejected the arguments of Robert Latimer that he asphyxiated his 12-year-old daughter Tracy in 1993 out of love and necessity. It upheld the legal requirement for second-degree murder of a life sentence with no parole for at least 10 years.

Tracy had suffered from severe cerebral palsy, and Latimer's lawyers said she had been in constant pain.

"In considering the defense of necessity, we must remain aware of the need to respect the life, dignity and equality of all the individuals affected by the act in question," the court ruled in its 7-0 decision.

A clearly shocked Latimer said at his Saskatchewan farm - where he has been free on bail pending the court ruling - that he could not understand how the judges had come to their conclusion but added he had no regrets about what he had done.

"I can't see how they figured out that's right, but obviously they've done it ... it's pretty unusual. Wouldn't most people think that?" he told reporters outside his house a few minutes after the ruling was announced.

The debate over involuntary euthanasia has pitted arguments by Latimer about Tracy's suffering against those of disabled groups outraged that a lower standard of justice should apply to offenses against handicapped people.

Latimer had put Tracy in his pickup truck and piped in exhaust fumes until she died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He has said he would do it again.

The Supreme Court did take the unusual step of noting that the government had the "royal prerogative of mercy" - it could cut Latimer's sentence or pardon him. But the government itself had argued against leniency during the lengthy court proceedings.

In rejecting the argument that the sentence was cruel and unusual, the high court said a valid goal of severe sentences was to deter like-minded individuals. 

It was not clear exactly when Latimer would return to prison, but shortly after talking to reporters on his farm, he and his wife drove to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to talk to his lawyer.

Latimer's lawyers said Tracy had been slated to have a portion of her thigh bone removed to deal with a dislocated hip - which Latimer and his wife viewed as mutilation. They said Tracy could not walk or feed herself, had trouble swallowing and had suffered from bronchitis, pneumonia and seizures.

Handicapped representatives welcomed Thursday's Supreme Court ruling, saying it assured them equal protection under the law.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Arafat Agrees To Talks

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said on Thursday he was ready to hold marathon peace talks with Israel to try to clinch a last-minute deal before elections for an Israeli prime minister on February 6.

Arafat, who met Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami in Cairo on Wednesday, said the Israelis had yet to respond.

Asked by reporters when he returned to Gaza about the idea for marathon talks, Arafat said: "We agreed to that and we have informed the co-sponsors of the peace process that we are willing to do this."

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for a new round of talks near Tel Aviv on Thursday.



California Blacked Out

SACRAMENTO, California (AP) - Californians had a second day of rolling blackouts Thursday as the state readied to spend millions to keep electricity flowing and prevent money-strapped utilities from going broke.

Hours after people across northern and central California saw everything from their lights to their heaters, elevators and bank machines abruptly switched off, Gov. Gray Davis ordered the state to temporarily start buying power from wholesalers and providing it to power-short utilities.

"I'm declaring a state of emergency in California," the governor said during a late-night news conference Wednesday.



U.S.-Korea Accord

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The United States and South Korea signed a new accord Thursday that gives South Korea more legal jurisdiction over American soldiers accused of crimes on its soil.

South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn and Evans J. R. Revere, charge d'affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy, signed the revised Status of Forces Agreement governing the legal treatment of the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against communist North Korea.

The rights and responsibilities of the U.S. troops here are a politically sensitive subject for South Koreans. Rape and other serious crimes involving U.S. soldiers receive keen media attention and trigger anti-U.S. protests by a small group of activists.



Fox Hunting Ban

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's lawmakers moved closer to outlawing the centuries-old sport of fox hunting in England and Wales on Wednesday, voting to ban it despite opposition from campaigners who say it is an integral part of rural life.

Politicians, only months before an expected election, voted by 387 to 174 in parliament for an outright ban, rejecting more moderate proposals for regulation. The vote does not apply to Scotland which would legislate separately.

The bill now passes to the unelected House of Lords, where peers have long supported the right to hunt with dogs.



Battle for Net Twins 

LONDON (Reuters) - The real mother of American twins sold twice over the Internet and at the center of a bitter transatlantic custody battle told Britain's Sun newspaper on Thursday that she now wanted them back.

Tranda Wecker, the 28-year-old mother of Kimberley and Belinda, was quoted by the best-selling tabloid as saying she had changed her mind when she saw the six-month-old twins on British television.

They have been adopted by British couple Alan and Judith Kilshaw, already locked in an acrimonious tug-of-war with Californian couple Richard and Vickie Allen who say they also adopted the babies and will fight in court to get them back.

The Kilshaws, from Wales, are being investigated by local authorities, who have demanded copies of adoption papers. The children were given to the Kilshaws in California in December by Wecker. They had paid an Internet firm 8,200 pounds ($13,500) to adopt the twins.



Estrada Protests Grow

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Tens of thousands of demonstrators formed a human chain in Manila's streets Thursday and protests were reported in at least 18 other cities as demands for President Joseph Estrada's resignation grew.

In Manila, the capital, up to 100,000 people gathered at a monument dedicated to the revolution that forced the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos out of power. Many linked arms, forming a 10-kilometer-long human chain.

The crowd was growing as people got off work, and protest organizers hoped their numbers would reach the hundreds of thousands for a march on the presidential palace within the next several days. A general strike was called for Friday.



Lockerbie Trial

CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands (AP) - After months of testimony, judges on Thursday began deliberations on the fate of two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Lord Ranald Sutherland, the president of the court, said the judges would reconvene on Jan. 30, but would not deliver a ruling on that date. However, they may indicate then when they would be ready to give a judgment.

The Libyan defendants, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, are accused of planting the explosives in a radio cassette player concealed in a suitcase on board the aircraft. Eleven people died on the ground and 259 in the air in the Dec. 21, 1988 blast.

If convicted, Al-Megrahi, 48, and Fhimah, 44, would face life imprisonment in Scotland. 



Jackson Admits Affair

WASHINGTON (AP) - Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson revealed on Thursday that he had an extramarital affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter. "I fully accept responsibility and I am truly sorry for my actions," he said.

Jackson, a Baptist minister and one-time aide to Martin Luther King Jr., issued a statement admitting that he fathered the child, now 20 months old, and has provided "emotional and financial support" since her birth.

His New York-based spokesman, John Scanlon, said later that Jackson acted to get out in front of anticipated tabloid reports about the child, who Scanlon said was the result of an affair Jackson had with a woman who worked in the Washington office of Jackson's advocacy group, the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition.

TITLE: Bulls Fall Short Against Sixers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA - Allen Iverson poured in 43 points, reaching the 40-point plateau for the fifth time in 11 games, to lead the Philadelphia 76ers to a 99-88 National Basketball Association victory over the Chicago Bulls.


Iverson made 15 of 25 shots from the field and 11 of 12 from the line and the Sixers held the Bulls without a basket for more than nine minutes in the second half on the way to their fourth straight win and 12th in 13 games.

"He is playing at an extraordinary level right now," Philadelphia Coach Larry Brown said. "He's had an amazing run."

Iverson had 27 points by the half Wednesday night but the lowly Bulls (6-32) still led late in the third quarter.

Chicago then went 9:09 without a basket, missing 15 consecutive shots, and the 76ers (29-9) scored the first 10 points of the fourth quarter to pull away and beat the Bulls for the sixth consecutive time.

"We had some terrific defensive sequences in that last 14 minutes," Brown said.

Theo Ratliff scored 12 points and Aaron McKie added 11 for the Sixers.

Elton Brand had a big game for the Bulls with 24 points and 19 rebounds and Bryce Drew also scored 24 for Chicago.



Sacramento 111, Boston 106. In Sacramento, California, Chris Webber had 30 points and nine rebounds and Peja Stojakovic scored nine of his 26 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Kings a 111-106 victory over the Boston Celtics.


Celtics forward Antoine Walker hit a franchise-record nine 3-pointers on the way to a 47-point night and added 13 assists.

The Kings overcame Walker's sensational night with their best shooting performance of the season, making 56 percent (44 of 79) of their shots for their fifth win in six games.

Jason Williams added 17 points and Vlade Divac chipped in with 12 points and 11 rebounds for Sacramento. Paul Pierce had 18 points for Boston.



Dallas 91, Charlotte 90. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Dirk Nowitzki found Howard Eisley wide open for a three-pointer at the buzzer that lifted the Dallas Mavericks to a 91-90 victory over the Hornets.


Nowitzki had 27 points and Eisley added 23 and eight assists for Dallas, which erased an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit to improve to 15-8 on the road this season.

Jamal Mashburn scored 22 points and David Wesley added 19 to lead the Hornets, losers of eight of their last 11 games.



Minnesota 89, Utah 81. At Salt Lake City, Kevin Garnett had 23 points and 11 rebounds and Terrell Brandon added 19 points and 11 assists as the Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Utah Jazz 89-81. Minnesota missed 14 of its first 17 shots in the fourth quarter, but Anthony Peeler, who finished with 17 points, made a pair of clutch jumpers in the final 71 seconds as the Timberwolves snapped Utah's four-game winning streak.


Karl Malone led Utah with 22 points and 13 rebounds. Donyell Marshall and John Stockton also had double doubles for the Jazz - Marshall with 19 points and 10 boards and Stockton with 10 points and 10 assists.



Toronto 98, San Antonio 91. In San Antonio, Vince Carter scored 27 points and Mark Jackson came up with 23 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds as the Toronto Raptors won for the fourth time in five games with a 98-91 victory over the Spurs.


Jackson made eight of 10 shots, four of four free throws and committed only one turnover and rookie Morris Peterson added 15 points as the Raptors handed San Antonio only its third home loss of the season.

Tim Duncan had 22 points and 11 rebounds and Derek Anderson added 20 and 10 for the Spurs, who made just four of 14 shots in the fourth quarter.

TITLE: Coyotes' Power Play Feasts on Pens
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PHOENIX - The Phoenix Coyotes exploited Pittsburgh's penalty killing to the tune of four power-play goals - two coming 48 seconds apart in the third period - to rally for a 5-4 National Hockey League victory over the Penguins.


Keith Tkachuk provided the game winner with his second goal of the night and 20th of the season, snapping a 4-4 deadlock with 4:16 left in regulation as Phoenix struck three times with a man advantage in the third period.

Ian Moran took a roughing penalty with 5:34 to play and teammate Marc Bergevin followed him to the penalty box just 11 seconds later, giving Phoenix a five-on-three advantage.

Daniel Briere notched the equalizer just 19 seconds later, shoveling in a rebound after Tkachuk hit the left goalpost. Less than a minute later, Tkachuk deflected a Briere shot past goaltender Jean-Sebastien Aubin for his league-leading 14th power-play goal. 



Dallas 4, Nashville 3. In Dallas, Jere Lehtinen recorded his first career hat trick and Brett Hull scored 1:41 into overtime to lift the Stars to a 4-3 victory over the Nashville Predators. Three times Lehtinen gave Dallas a one-goal lead, only to have Nashville come back to tie the game each time, the last on Kimmo Timonen's power-play goal at 5:11 of the third period.


In overtime, Hull took a pass from Brad Lukowich in the neutral zone and ripped a shot over Tomas Vokoun's right shoulder for the game-winner.


Chicago 5, Florida 0. In Chicago, Bob Probert recorded his first two-goal game in nearly five years and Jocelyn Thibault posted his fourth shutout of the season as the Blackhawks cruised to a 5-0 rout of the Florida Panthers.




Los Angeles 2, Toronto 1. In Toronto, Jamie Storr made 34 saves and Jozef Stumpel scored the go-ahead power-play goal midway through the second period as the Los Angeles Kings edged the Maple Leafs 2-1.


Minnesota 3, Columbus 2. Filip Kuba scored the tying goal with 62 seconds left in regulation and Sean O'Donnell notched the game-winner in overtime as the Wild rallied for a 3-2 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets in the second meeting of the NHL's two newest teams.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Marist Center Arrested

POUGHKEEPSIE, New York (AP) - Marist College's basketball center Marius Janisius, who claimed he was beaten by three men on campus, was arraigned for allegedly stabbing another student.

The 23-year-old junior from Vilnius, Lithuania, was being held at Dutchess County Jail Wednesday night in lieu of $50,000 bail and was also forced to surrender his passport to the court.

Janisius, arrested shortly after 2 a.m. Wednesday, is charged with one count of second-degree assault, a felony. Police said he stabbed the victim twice in the buttocks with steak knives. The incident took place in a campus apartment.

Janisius also claimed that he was beaten earlier in the night near the college library. The assault resulted from a dispute at a bar, police said.



Mantei Signs New Deal

PHOENIX (AP) - Closer Matt Mantei and the Arizona Diamondbacks agreed Wednesday to a $22 million, four-year contract.

Mantei, 27, has 39 saves in 45 chances since the trade that brought him to Arizona from the Florida Marlins on July 9, 1999.

Last season, he had 17 saves in 20 opportunities after a slow start that included two appearances on the disabled list.

Mantei had just two saves in his first 19 appearances last season, but had 15 in 17 appearances after that. He allowed five earned runs in his last 28 2-3 innings.



Sharks Bitten by Injury

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - The charmed season of the San Jose Sharks suffered a significant blow Wednesday when it was learned that All-Star center Vincent Damphousse will be out three to four months with a dislocated shoulder.

The Sharks announced that the normally durable Damphousse will undergo surgery on his left shoulder Thursday. He could miss the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs, which begin in mid-April.

The 33-year-old Damphousse suffered the injury in the first period of Monday's 3-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings when he fell awkwardly in a collision with Detroit's Tomas Holmstrom. He returned to skate one shift but did not play again.

Damphousse is among the NHL's leading scorers with 46 points. He has nine goals, 37 assists in 44 games. On Tuesday, he was named as a reserve on the North American squad for next month's All-Star Game in Denver.



U.S. Captain To Quit?

LONDON (Reuters) - United States captain Claudio Reyna says he may quit international soccer after the 2002 World Cup because he wants to carry on playing at club level in Europe.

"I'm traveling eight or nine times a year to play for the national team which involves long flights but that is the dilemma playing for a country so far away from Europe," the Rangers midfielder said on the Scottish club's Web site on Wednesday.

"I really enjoy playing for my country and our target is to play in the next World Cup. After that I will be 30 and I don't know if I will be playing after that."

"I want to stay in Europe and have a long career so I will have to cross that bridge when it comes and see what I want to do."



Tyson Suspended

DETROIT (AP) - Mike Tyson tested positive for marijuana following his victory over Andrew Golota on Oct. 20, but Michigan boxing regulators only punished him for refusing to submit to a urine test before the fight. 

Tyson did give a urine sample after the fight, and it tested positive for marijuana, a member of the state Board in Control of Athletics, told the Detroit News. The Grand Rapids Press also reported the positive test. 

Nevada Athletic Association executive director Marc Ratner said he also was told by Michigan officials that Tyson tested positive for marijuana. 

On Tuesday, state regulators suspended Tyson's Michigan boxing license for 90 days and fined him $5,000 for refusing to submit to a urine test before the fight at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

TITLE: Rusedski Shocks No. 1 Seed at Aussie Open
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE - Brazilian world No. 1 Gustavo Kuerten was knocked out of the Australian Open on Thursday, beaten 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 2-6, 9-7 by Briton Greg Rusedski in the biggest upset of the tournament.


Rusedski condemned the top seed to another early exit when he saved a match point in the 12th game of the final set before claiming victoryafter two hours 44 minutes.

Women's top seed Martina Hingis had no such problems, sweeping past Belgian Els Callens 6-1, 6-0 to remain on a collision course with the Williams sisters, both straight sets winners on Thursday.

The 1995 Australian champion Mary Pierce and her French compatriot Amelie Mauresmo, a Melbourne finalist two years ago, also won a place in the third round in double quick time while the remaining top men all fared well.

Olympic champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov lived to fight another day after struggling to a 6-2, 3-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 win over Germany's Nicolas Kiefer while fourth seed Magnus Norman of Sweden and Australian teenager Lleyton Hewitt both had comfortable wins.

Rusedski, who has struggled with injury for a year, had to fight for every point in a wildly fluctuating center court match that finished just before midnight.

As the tension built late in the final set, Rusedski had two contested line calls go against him but he kept his cool, saving a match point, then serving for the match at 7-6.

He failed to serve it out on the first attempt as Kuerten, a two-time French Open champion, leveled at 7-7. But the Briton earned another chance, which he took, when he broke the Brazilian in the next game.

"It's great to get a win against the world number one. I'm more surprised than anyone else," said Rusedski who reached the U.S. Openfinal in 1997.

"I think it's my greatest victory by far. For me that's something very special."

"It was very disappointing, I wish I had won," said Kuerten, who has never made it past the second round in five appearances at theAustralian Open.

"If I had won that match point I would have won but I tried to win until the end."

Kafelnikov, runner-up in Melbourne last year and champion the year before, was lucky to keep his impressive record in Australia going, after getting a real scare from Kiefer.

"I was pushed 100 percent to the limit and it's quite helpful to the confidence," the Russian said. "Today was a big step for me."

Fourth-seeded Swede Magnus Norman steered an easier course into the third round with a 7-6, 6-3, 6-0 win over Frenchman Fabrice Santoro while Hewitt showed no signs of fatigue from his grueling five-set win over Swede Jonas Bjorkman on Tuesday as he beat German Tommy Haas 7-5, 7-6, 6-4.

The 19-year-old Australian powered past Haas despite falling 5-0 behind in the opening set, lifting his game at key moments.

"To my credit I hung in there, kept fighting, got the breaks when I needed to and played the big points well," said Hewitt, who beat Normani n the final of a lead-up tournament in Sydney last week.

Hingis, a finalist here the last four years and champion three times, was once again in great form, demolishing Callens in 40 minutes, but faces a daunting task getting to her fifth consecutive final.

The draw, which has put her in the same half as the headline grabbing American sisters, will make it tough for her to make up for lean Grand Slam pickings of late. The 20-year-old has not captured a Grand Slam title since she won in Melbourne in 1999.

"I'm hoping for another one, that's for sure," Hingis said of her Grand Slam drought. "If it will be here, that's great."

Trend-setter Venus, the U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion, is drawn to meet Hingis in the semifinals. Younger sister Serena is scheduled to face the Swiss in the quarters.

Both came into the first Grand Slam of the year underprepared but are slowly starting to gather momentum as Venus swept past U.S. compatriot Meghann Shaughnessy 6-3, 7-6 while her younger sister Serena overpowered Russia's Nadejda Petrova 6-3, 6-2.

TITLE: New York Giants Enraged Over Allegations They Cheated
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey - The New York Giants returned to work, fired up by the challenge of playing the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl and even more aflame over a report that claimed they had cheated in their playoff victories.


A report from a Toronto Globe and Mail columnist that the Giants had intercepted radio signals between the opposing coaches and their quarterbacks to help their defense in playoff victories over the Eagles (20-10) and Vikings (41-0) was shot down by National Football League officials.

But that didn't keep the National Football Conference champions from getting all riled up Wednesday over the unsubstantiated allegations.

"We made so many big plays it has come to this," said Giants coach Jim Fassel. "This is ludicrous, and totally irresponsible. I guess this is a compliment to our defensive coordinator John Fox, but how can anyone write this?"

Said Giants linebacker Jesse Armstead, "We analyzed their attack like we always do and I guess we made some accurate choices. [Vikings quarterback] Culpepper got excited and started to run around and got away from his game plan when it was suddenly 14-0.

Michael Strahan, the Giants' star defensive end, explained the Giants' utter domination in their rout of the favored Minnesota Vikings, thus: "We were on a roll, and didn't seem to make any mistakes. The Vikings got messed up mentally, stopped running their routes and were brush blocking.

"Culpepper seemed to lose it under the pressure of our early lead. He threw into crowds of coverage and after Randy Moss got wracked up, he wasn't into the game."

Giants public relations director Pat Hanlon was not as diplomatic.

"The report out of Toronto is bogus," said Hanlon. "It's pure bullshit and you can write that if you can."

"I think the players were glad to get back to work today," said Fassel.

"As I have said before, there will be a party atmosphere in Tampa. But we are going there to work and to win the Super Bowl. This is our chance at the brass ring and I don't intend to let anything stop us from playing at our utmost top level."

Said safety Sam Garnes, "Just getting there is not enough. We have to win one more game or the whole thing was a lot of work for almost nothing."

Giants quarterback Kerry Collins, who had a career day in heaving five touchdown passes against Minnesota, said he had great respect for the Ravens' top-rated defense but remained optimistic.

"Can we get 41 points? Probably not. If you ask me can we move the ball, I say, yes we can."