SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #680 (47), Friday, June 22, 2001
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Woman Dies in Blast at Factory
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A container of nitric acid exploded Wednesday evening at the Tekhnolog Plant in the city's Rybatskoye District, releasing a cloud of toxic gas. One plant worker was killed immediately, and nine rescue workers suffered minor respiratory problems.
According to Oleg Seminog, head of the press center of the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, the explosion may have been caused by a technical fault that occurred during a chemical process. "A 200-kilogram concrete container of nitric acid exploded and some was released into the atmosphere."
Plant worker Lyudmila Ivanova was in the shop at the time of the explosion, which caused the roof of the building to collapse. Rescue workers recovered her body late in the evening on Thursday.
As a result of the cleanup and rescue operation, nine rescue workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry and the municipal Civil Defense and Emergency Situations department had suffered "minor damage to the upper part of their respiratory tracts," according to Vla dimir Drozdov, deputy head of the Civil Defense and Emergency Situations administration press center. "They declined to be hospitalized."
"I expect the [clearing] work to go on throughout the day tomorrow," added Drozdov.
"There is no danger to residents in the surrounding area," said Seminog, attributing the minimal spread of toxic gases to the calm weather conditions and quick containment work.
Experts from the State Sanitary-Epidemiological Watch confirmed that the area was safe, and were quoted by Interfax as saying that the concentration of harmful substances in the air is "within permissable bounds."
Air samples taken by the Nevsky District Sanitary-Epidemiological Station showed the presence of nitric dioxide, butanol, propanol and formaldehyde in the air surrounding the factory, according to information provided by the St. Petersburg Civil Defense and Emergency Situations administration.
More than 150 people - including 68 firefighters, two Emergency Situations Ministry brigades, three traffic-police teams and two security teams - were working at the site Thursday, according to information provided by the police.
The police report also said that the explosion occurred at 8:35 p.m. on Wed nesday and destroyed Tekhnolog's production facility No. 3, a two-story brick structure of about 1,200 square meters.
The Nevsky District Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation to determine the cause of the explosion on Thursday.
The Tekhnolog factory is a research facility and production plant created by the St. Petersburg State Technological University that has developed - among other things - azidotimidin, a drug that retards the progress of the virus that causes AIDS, and which produces aerosol fire retardants and explosives.
Students of the State Technological University use the facility for internships and training as well.
Representatives at the Tekhnolog factory declined to comment on the explosion.
TITLE: Veterans Remember the First Shots
AUTHOR: By Sam Charap
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sixty years ago today, Yakov Suk hotin, a 21-year-old officer-in-training, was at a Red Army camp in the countryside about 25 kilometers outside of St. Petersburg. Having completed his degree the year before, he was at a special summer training session for new recruits.
"I remember that day very well," he recalled in an interview. "As it was a Sunday, there were no formal classes, and I was out in the forest. At about noon, one of my comrades ran up to me and asked, 'Have you heard that a war has started?'"
"I responded, 'What, are you kidding me?' I thought that maybe he had had a bit too much to drink. He said, 'Well, if you don't believe me, come listen to [Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav] Molotov.'"
"So I ran to the camp, and I listened to Molotov's announcement . . . The news hit me and all of Leningrad like an atom bomb. We had no idea that a war was coming."
Ultimately, in fact, the announcement Sukhotin heard that day had more devastating consequences on the city and the country than many atom bombs. On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered the German army to launch a surprise attack against the Soviet Union - Operation Barbarossa. The invasion marked the beginning of a campaign that would claim nearly 30 million lives, according to Yury Belov, a local political scientist.
Later that afternoon, Sukhotin's commanding officer gathered his group together. "We then understood that we had to go to war. We realized that each and every one of us would have to fight."
Although the Soviet Union had been involved in the fighting since it attacked Finland on Nov. 30, 1939, June 22 - which is now officially known as the Day of Remembrance and Mourning - marks the beginning of what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.
Sukhotin, who was later seriously injured at the front, eventually became a documentary military journalist, and today he is the director of the Council of Veterans of St. Petersburg. The group gathered Wednesday and relived their memories of the first day of the war. But unlike Victory Day on May 9, which is traditionally an occasion for celebration, the Day of Remembrance and Mourning is marked with reverence and sorrow.
"This is the most bitter date of my life. It was a bitter day, and it remains a bitter day," Sukhotin said.
It is all the more bitter for Suk hotin, who - as a military journalist - had access to some Soviet archives. There he learned the extent to which this day demonstrated Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's infamous military incompetence and self-destructive paranoia. Despite "the dozens of spies and agents" who were warning Stalin of Hitler's impending invasion, "the Red Army was completely unprepared," said Belov.
"Of course Stalin knew, but he didn't want to believe it. He was a person who trusted only himself," Belov continued, noting that some of the Soviet agents who had warned of the impending invasion were executed by Stalin's regime.
The next six weeks saw the German army advance with lightning speed, occupying Belarus and the Baltic states. The Red Army leadership had suffered greatly from Stalin's purges of the late 1930s - approximately 85 percent of the senior officer corps was either executed or imprisoned, according to Belov. "Very often divisions were commanded by officers without any experience," he said.
The city will mark the day with ceremonies at the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery and the war memorial on Mos kovsky Prospect, both scheduled for 11 a.m. Officials from the city administration are expected to attend, according to Vasily Kazak of the Culture Committee.
Also, a new exhibit of historical documents will be opened at the Museum of National Defense and the Blockade of Leningrad, entitled "Aggression."
TITLE: Archive Explodes Myths About Nazi Invasion
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Contrary to the belief that Josef Stalin was so surprised by Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union that he went into shock for several days, the Soviet leader actually put in a full day's work in the Kremlin and received top government and military officials.
The Soviet Army was indeed so unprepared that in many garrisons there was only one rifle for every two soldiers. And security agents did shoot on the spot their own officers for slight and unjustified suspicions of treason.
These and many other facts are detailed in reams of documents declassified by the government on Thursday on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Nazis' attack on June 22, 1941.
Vladimir Kozlov, head of the Federal Archive Service, where the documents are on now display, said the exhibition is a collection of Soviet and German documents dated from 1940 through the first few weeks of the Soviet Union's 1,418-day battle against Germany.
Among the documents being shown for the first time is the original Wehrmacht map of Adolf Hitler's Barbarossa plan to occupy the European part of the Soviet Union, Kozlov said. Also on display is the original of Hitler's order No. 21, which he signed Dec. 18, 1940, ordering the development of the Barbarossa plan. The Soviet army seized the papers at the end of the war.
"What also struck me as an archivist was to see with my own eyes the diary with names and signatures of those who visited Stalin on June 22," Kozlov said.
The first name on the list is Vyacheslav Molotov, first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, who arrived at 5:45 a.m., less than two hours after Germany began its offensive on a 3,000-kilometer front along the western Soviet border. The document effectively dismisses the theory that Stalin was so shocked that he could not work for a period of time after the war started.
Soviet efforts to stop the enemy were fruitless during the first weeks of the war. By June 27, 1941, Wehrmacht divisions took over the Belarus capital Minsk and moved some 300 kilometers further eastward.
Also on display in the archive is a list of goods that the Soviet Union had planned to sell to Nazi Germany from Feb. 2, 1941, to Aug. 1, 1942. The goods included pig iron, cotton, grain, manganese and sulfur. Needless to say, the shipments - a result of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed in 1939 - stopped once the Soviet Union saw 150 German divisions with 3 million men moving rapidly across the country. The Barbarossa force had about 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces and 2,500 aircraft, making it the largest and most powerful invasion force in history.
The exhibition also includes letters from private citizens, top military orders, Kremlin declarations and a collection of previously unpublished photographs, including some made by German soldiers. The original draft of the famous patriotic song "Svyashchennaya Voina," or "The Holy War," and a hand-written page of the score for Dmitry Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, also known as the "Leningrad," are also on display.
TITLE: Last Lenoblast Jailbreaker Recaptured
AUTHOR: By Sam Charap
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The last of the 20 prisoners who escaped from two temporary holding facilities in the Leningrad Oblast last month was recaptured on Monday, police have said.
Rashid Kashapov, a 44-year-old native of Kazan, was found in an apartment in Gatchina, to the south of St. Petersburg, where the holding facility from which he fled is located. It is not clear to whom the apartment belonged.
Kashapov, originally arrested for robbery, is now facing an additional charge because of the escape that could add up to eight years to his prison term. Police said he surrendered without resistance, ending a successful, bloodless manhunt.
"We are very proud, our officers behaved in a professional manner," said Viktor Utyenkov, a spokesperson at the St. Petersburg Police press service. But Utyenkov also spoke of the "human factor" leading to the escape. The Leningrad Oblast Prosecutor's Office is investigating possible negligence on the part of the guards and administration at the jails.
In the early hours of May 21, 14 prisoners escaped from a police building in Gatchina by breaking down the wall of their cell, and another six escaped from a similar center in Volosovo, 40 kilometers away, by sawing through the bars.
Both the buildings were constructed in the 19th century and were said to be in need of repairs. Twenty-nine prisoners were in the Gatchina cell, twice as many as originally intended. A project to build a new facility there, due to have been completed several years ago, has stalled because of lack of funding.
Kashapov is now awaiting trial in St. Petersburg's Kresty remand prison.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Zoo Boss on Sick Leave
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -Ivan Korneyev, embattled director of the St. Petersburg Zoo, went on sick leave this week and Sergei Yegorov was named his temporary replacement
Korneyev, who is involved in a conflict with the city administration, said he was surprised at the Culture Committee's decision to replace him with Yegorov, a former official of the Petrograd District administration.
"I have an official deputy director who has been replacing me, when necessary, for the last seven years," Korneyev said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "The Culture Commitee's actions show their intention to force me to leave."
The city administration has not declared its intention to fire Korneyev, but has blamed him for numerous shortcomings, from financial mismanagement to labor law violations. But Korneyev sees the roots of the conflict in his reluctance to support a vague and costly project to move the centrally located zoo to the Primorsky District, a proposal that is being strongly lobbied for by Irina Yakovleva, the wife of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev.
Korneyev expects to return to work Monday. Should the administration take further steps to force him out, he said that he is ready to take his case to court.
Lukashenko Visits
MOSCOW (AP) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko held talks Wednesday with President Vladimir Putin, in what some media viewed as an attempt to secure support in the run-up to the Belarussian presidential election this fall. Lukashenko is expected to win the September election.
Lukashenko was also to meet with Russian business executives to discuss joint oil projects and to urge investment in the Belarus economy, Kommersant reported.
"Lukashenko, having entered the election race, is intent on ensuring Moscow's support, and is fulfilling Vladimir Putin's wish that Belarus become more attractive to Russian capital," the business daily commented.
Seascape Stolen
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A painting by Ivan Aivazovsky was stolen from the Russian Geographic Society at 10 Pereulok Grivtsova during the day on Tuesday, the newspaper Nevskoye Vremya reported.
The painting, "A Total Eclipse of the Sun at Feodosii in 1851" and which measures 190 centimeters by 140 centimeters, was cut from its frame by unknown thieves.
Investigators suspect that the thieves may be two young men who had approached the Geographic Society a week earlier inquiring about renting space for an exhibition.
The value of the painting has not been established.
6 Bombing Arrests
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Police in Chechnya have arrested six people after a string of deadly car bombings, and the prosecutor general said Wednesday he would lead an investigation into the blasts.
Officials said three were killed and 34 injured when three car bombs exploded Tuesday in vehicles parked near a courthouse and police station in Gudermes, the seat of the rebel region's Kremlin-appointed administration.
At least one of the dead and most of the wounded were policemen.
Interfax quoted prosecutors in Gudermes as saying that six people had been arrested and were being questioned. Video cameras with cassettes showing the blasts, as well as walkie-talkies, had been taken from them.
Interfax said preliminary information showed the organizers of the attacks were part of a group led by Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev.
Bolshoi Shambles
MOSCOW (SPT) - The Bolshoi Theater is falling apart owing to lack of funding, blatant mismanagement and officials' obsession with entertainment at the expense of serious music, its former artistic director said.
In a letter published Tuesday in the Izvestia daily, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, a leading conductor who quit as the Bolshoi's artistic director last week, said he could not run the theater when performers skipped rehearsals and ignored orders. Rozhdestvensky also blamed his departure after one season on the Bolshoi's financial and technical problems, as well as unfair attacks by the press.
Rehearsals for the world premiere of Rozh destvensky's only new production, Ser gei Prokofiev's opera "The Gambler," "revealed a catastrophic inability of the Bol shoi to meet such challenges," he wrote.
Save the Volga Basin
MOSCOW (AP) - A lawmaker warned Wednesday that the Volga River is under threat of becoming a polluted stream fit only for technical needs, and he and allies have drafted a bill on protecting it.
The Volga basin occupies 8 percent of the country, but is home to some 40 percent of the country's population, or more than 57 million people, said Alexander Kosarikov, deputy head of the State Duma's environmental committee.
More than 45 percent of Russia's industry and half of its agricultural production is concentrated in the basin, and between one-half and two-thirds of the country's fertilizers and poisonous chemicals are stored there, he said.
To serve development along the shores, 20 percent of the river's water is pumped out every year for industrial and agricultural needs, Kosarikov told a news conference.
"In such conditions, the Volga has no time to restore its ecological system," he said. "This kind of water use will cause the Volga to cease to be a river; it will become a technological canal."
The bill would establish quotas for the use of water and would regulate water use by the regions along the river, he said. Kosarikov and several allies want to present it to the Duma in the fall.
TITLE: Media Bill Is Sunk by Double Opposition
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac and Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A controversial bill aimed at limiting foreign ownership in Russian media failed to pass a second reading in the State Duma on Thursday, as liberals and Communists - guided by opposite motives - joined forces to vote it down.
The bill that was debated on Thursday was a watered-down version of the highly protectionist draft the Duma passed at the end of April. That draft stipulated that foreigners' share in any Russian media outlet - print or electronic - could not exceed 50 percent. Foreigners currently holding more than 50 percent of a media company's shares were to get one year to sell the "excess" to Russian partners.
The new version lifted this restriction for print media, radio stations and local television channels, limiting foreign ownership only for television channels broadcasting over more than half of Russian territory.
But this was far too liberal for the Duma's Communist majority and their allies, who insisted on Thursday that the ban should apply to all media and the maximum stake should be even smaller - 30 percent. The liberals, on the other hand, were appalled by the idea that the restrictions could be retroactive, Interfax reported.
Together, the two opposing sides voted the bill down twice in a row - the first time the bill fell 11 votes short of the 226-vote majority needed to pass, and the second time, just a few minutes later, only three votes short.
The bill, which was introduced by a group of deputies at the height of the battle for control of Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV television, was seen as a reaction to CNN founder Ted Turner's stated interest in acquiring a stake in the national channel.
It was supposed to "defend national security" and "make sure that foreigners can do business but cannot influence Russian politics," Deputy Pavel Kovalenko of the pro-Kremlin Unity faction explained at the time. The bill, co-authored by representatives from all of the Duma's factions except Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces passed by a landslide, even though the Press Ministry quietly lobbied against it.
Two months later, Kovalenko, a member of the Duma's information policy committee who oversaw the bill between the two readings, seemed much more prone to easing up some of its provisions. "The most important thing is that we have removed the limitations on print media," he said in a telephone interview Thursday. "That would be like cutting through live flesh: There are over 300 different newspapers owned by foreigners. Forcing their owners to give up part of their work would send a very bad signal to other investors."
One of the publishing houses that could be affected by the bill is Independent Media, which publishes The St. Petersburg Times, The Moscow Times and a range of glossy magazines. It also publishes the Vedomosti business daily in cooperation with The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
Other publishers potentially affected would be France's Hachette and Germany's Conde Nast and Burda. There are also several radio stations and regional television channels controlled by foreign companies. None of Russia's national television channels is 50 percent foreign owned.
The Duma's information committee will try to convince the deputies to vote for the bill by the time it comes up for the repeated second reading in a few weeks, Kovalenko said. If it is blocked again, the bill will have to be revised and reintroduced again in a first reading.
TITLE: Criminal Code Gets Mixed Reception
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma has passed in the second and crucial reading a new Criminal Procedural Code with the power to revolutionize the Russian legal system by introducing jury trials, curbing the rights of all-powerful prosecutors and protecting suspects in criminal cases from police brutality.
But the legislation, which passed on Wednesday with a vote of 290-2, has sharply divided liberal legal experts, with some calling it a success and others branding it an obstacle to real reform. It has also been harshly criticized by human rights activists, who say its liberal concept clashes with numerous provisions introducing practices abandoned even in Soviet times. Reform also has faced stubborn opposition from prosecutors, who object to the demand for jury trials and the handover of their right to issue arrest and search warrants to the courts, both of which were guaranteed by the 1993 Constitution.
The bill, which passed a first reading in April 1997, was authored by liberal Deputy Yelena Mizulina. It must still pass a third reading, usually a formality, before going to the upper house.
Among its most striking provisions are the ones requiring jury trials to be introduced throughout the country by Jan. 1, 2003. The cost of this is estimated at 4 billion rubles ($138 million).
All cases involving the serious crimes that are heard in regional courts - rather than municipal courts - will now be heard before a 10-member jury, said Lev Levinson, an aid to liberal deputy Sergei Kovalyov and a representative of the Moscow-based Human Rights Institute. These crimes include murder, rape, serious theft, all cases of bribery and all cases against government officials.
Prosecutors now present their cases in front of a single judge who is accompanied by two "people's representatives." Judges tend to take the prosecution's side out of fear that too many appeals may eventually endanger their careers.
The lawmakers also agreed to transfer the power to issue arrest and search warrants from prosecutors to the courts. This, however, would not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2004.
And the proposed code could put an end to beating a confession out of the suspects, which is still considered valid by many judges even if the accused retracts them in the courtroom. The code approved Wednesday makes sure that retracted confessions can no longer be admitted as evidence.
But former Moscow City Court judge Sergei Pashin called the bill flawed. "Some of its provisions are worse than in the Soviet times," he said by telephone from Boston.
One of the code's provisions, for instance, foresees reading a suspect his rights only after he has been questioned. Worse still, Pashin said, the code's authors kept the old Soviet clause that materials gathered by the defense during the investigation are not treated as evidence unless the investigator chooses to accept them.
The same goes for the much-lauded transfer of power to issue arrest warrants to judges, Pashin said. The new code provides no procedures for a judge's decision other than evaluating the formal correctness of the prosecutor's request. According to Pashin, judges currently grant "99.9 percent" of requests to install listening equipment or intercept suspects' mail. "The same will happen with the arrest warrants," he said. "They will be issued as on a conveyer belt."
TITLE: State Duma Gives the Green Light to Law on Political Parties
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma gave final approval on Thursday to a bill that would sharply limit the number of political parties and make them dependent on government financing.
The bill, which liberals say aims to give the Kremlin control of the country's political forces, follows a series of recent developments that have stoked fears that Vladimir Putin wants to restrict civil liberties.
The bill strictly curtails private donations and bans funding from foreigners and international organizations. Opponents warn that state funding of political parties would make them subservient to the government.
But Putin has said the new rules would lead to the creation of a few, strong parties, replacing the cacophony of the more than 200 organizations Russia now has, most of which exist only on paper.
According to the bill, a party must have at least 10,000 members countrywide and no fewer than 100 members in more than half of Russia's 89 provinces. A party must also regularly field its candidates in elections or risk closure.
In order to receive state financing, a political party would have to receive more than 3 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections. Parties would also be required to submit regular financial reports to the government, and critics said the provision would put parties under constant government watch.
TITLE: Caspian Sea States To Halt Caviar Exports
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: PARIS - Russia and two other countries agreed Thursday to stop fishing for sturgeon for the rest of this year to protect dwindling stocks of the fish prized for producing caviar.
Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan agreed to the freeze at a meeting in Paris of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, a UN-affiliated body that controls trade in endangered species.
A fourth Caspian Sea country, Turkmenistan, which also exports caviar, was not present at the meeting and must confirm in writing that it accepts the plan or face a total ban on its caviar exports, CITES said.
The fishing freeze is part of a 12-month action plan adopted by the three states. CITES had threatened to slap a total export ban on the countries if they did not act to curb illegal fishing.
"If they didn't agree to start to manage the resource in a way that we think is sustainable and sound, then we would have had to ban all exports -which are very important to these countries' economies," said Tom De Meulenaer, a senior scientific officer with the group.
Poachers have taken a toll on stocks of Caspian sturgeon, which produce the shiny black eggs that can fetch prices of up to $1,000 for 250 grams in Western Europe and the United States.
Under the agreement, Russia and the other two countries will be allowed to export caviar that is now in storage from this year's spring harvest. The countries have until July 20 to provide an inventory of the caviar already in stock.
The group declined to speculate on how the decision would affect prices.
"The concern is to make sure that sturgeon are sustainably managed," said spokesperson Michael Williams. "Also, the inventories have not been done yet, so that won't be known for another month or so."
The business is estimated to be worth about $1 billion a year in revenue, but only some $100 million is generated from official sales and exports.
In Russia, official trade brings in $40 million a year, compared with $500 million for the poachers, the Interior Ministry says.
Vitaly Korchinsky of the State Fisheries Committee, who represented Russia in Paris, said Wednesday that none of this year's harvest has been exported.
Russia's legal quota this year was to have been about 31 tons, Kazakhstan's about 29 tons, Azerbaijan's about 7 tons and Turkmenistan's about 4 tons.
The State Fisheries Committee had no comment on Thursday about the negotiations.
Fisheries committee head Yevgeny Nazratenko said Wednesday that Russia has been under international pressure to set up caviar testing facilities to close off the market to poachers. He said equipment for the testing has been purchased and the facilities will be up and running shortly.
The agreement reached Thursday gives Russia until the end of the year to study sturgeon stocks, approach Interpol to examine the illegal trade of sturgeon and allow CITES to carry out inspections, among other measures.
The temporary freeze will not likely have an immediate, sweeping effect on poaching, but the countries also have until next June to come up with a longer-term plan that would, among other measures, crack down on illegal fishing.
Stocks of the Caspian's beluga sturgeon - which produces the most expensive caviar - have dropped by about 90 percent in two decades, victims of destroyed spawning sites, pollution and the end of Soviet-era caviar regulation. Organized-crime groups have quickly moved in on a trade that was once state-controlled.
According to research by a Russian scientist, the number of mature Beluga females, or spawners, in the Volga River dropped to about 1,800 in 1996 from 12,700 a decade earlier.
Iran, another caviar producer, was not present at the Paris meeting and is not included in the CITES agreement because its management of caviar exports has been deemed fairly effective.
Sturgeon must be killed to harvest the eggs. However, research is being conducted on how to obtain the eggs without killing the fish.
The UN-affiliated body had temporarily frozen international caviar sales pending a decision at the Paris meeting, which began Tuesday.
-AP, Reuters, SPT
TITLE: Oil Majors Caught Up In Baltic Standoff
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An ongoing battle between two major Russian oil companies has gotten caught up in a bigger war raging within the Lithuanian government.
At the center of the storm is Mazeikiu Nafta, the largest oil refinery in the Baltics. Its fate hangs in the balance until Monday, when Lithuanian ministers are expected to approve the sale of 28.6 percent of the refinery to No. 2 Yukos.
According to the deal struck last week between energy multinational Williams and Yukos, Yukos will pay $75 million for the stake and contribute another $75 million toward refinery modernization. Yukos would also provide 4.8 million tons (35 million barrels) per year under a 10-year supply agreement.
Williams' stake - now at 33 percent - would decrease to 28.6 percent, putting it on an equal footing with Yukos.
The cabinet was supposed to give the nod Wednesday, but the resignation of Prime Minister Rolandas Paksas precluded such approval. Interim prime minister - currently the economic minister - Eugenijus Gentvilas said he would push approval of the Yukos deal through the government.
"Everything has been prepared and proposed," wire services quoted Gen tvilas as saying Thursday.
But when a disgruntled LUKoil, Russia's No. 1 oil company, is involved, anything is possible, said Dari es Silas, spokesperson for Williams' Lithua nian division. In 1999, Williams - an energy and telecommunications company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma - bought 33 percent of Mazeikiu Nafta for $75 million in a controversial privatization and became the refinery's operator.
LUKoil and Williams spent all of last year negotiating a partial sale of the stake, but talks broke down in December when the oil company reneged on earlier agreements, said Stan Polovets, an adviser to Williams.
But the relationship between the two had soured long before then, when LUKoil interrupted crude-oil supplies to the refinery. Not only was LUKoil the main supplier, it also coordinated crude-oil shipments from other oil companies.
Polovets says that consequences of last year's supply interruptions cost Mazeikiu Nafta $38 million.
LUKoil has long denied such charges, and LUKoil Baltic division head Ivan Paleychik said the company will not give up on the refinery so easily.
"The stance of the Lithuanian government is improper," Paleychik told reporters. "Yukos is taking a great risk."
LUKoil wants a tender be held for the stake, with open participation for all Russian companies.
LUKoil can offer better terms: It is ready to offer $5 million more for the stake. And it says it can supply 6 million tons of crude oil a year, compared to Yukos' 4.8 million tons, Paleychik said.
"Yukos has proved to be a reliable partner," Polovets said. "Williams manages Mazeikiu Nafta, and a new, undesirable partner can't be forced on the managers." The relationship between the two companies strengthened when Yukos signed a series of supply agreements with Mazeikiu Nafta last year.
TITLE: Putin Dresses Down Gazprom
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has berated gas giant Gazprom for misspending "enormous sums" and called on its new boss to sort out its finances and make them more transparent, the Kremlin said Tuesday.
But Putin said Gazprom's chief executive Alexei Miller, appointed at the end of May after veteran boss Rem Vyakhirev was ousted, would not be tracking down any wrongdoers, which he said was a job for police and prosecutors.
"We know that enormous sums have been misspent," the Kremlin quoted Putin as telling a group of U.S. journalists on Monday, speaking about the world's largest gas company.
Television footage of the briefing was available Monday, but the Kremlin so far had not published his comments on Gazprom, which accounts for 25 percent of world gas output and 8 percent of Russia's gross domestic product.
His comments came near to broaching for the first time allegations that Gazprom had lost billions of dollars in assets, although such allegations have been strongly denied by the company.
Miller's job was not to track down lost funds, said Putin.
"This should be looked at by law enforcement agencies. He should not carry out police functions," Putin said.
But the new CEO was to make the company as transparent as possible, Putin said.
"He has a tough task ahead of him. The first of these is to ensure the interests of the state in this company and to collect everything that belongs to the state, to make the company's work absolutely transparent for all shareholders, including minority shareholders," Putin said.
"We must sort out the financial obligations of the company," he added.
The removal of Vyakhirev at the end of May was seen as an effort by Putin to get his own man, Miller, at the head of the company and ensure Kremlin control. Some shareholders have also seen the appointment as a boost for their rights as Vyakhirev was a strong opponent of moves to restructure the company.
Few other changes have been seen at the head of the company after Vyakhirev's removal. A Gazprom board meeting earlier Tuesday made no management changes and extended the contracts of five board members.
Boris Fyodorov, the Gazprom board's champion of minority shareholder rights, said any management reshuffles at the company had been delayed until after an annual shareholder meeting, due June 29.
"This confirms that Mr. Miller is not really going to change management before the annual meeting," board member Boris Fyodorov told investors in a conference call after Tuesday's meeting, noting Miller himself was not at the board meeting. "Names of the more controversial members of management were not confirmed. This development is neutral or marginally positive."
Fyodorov, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister, said the annual meeting would also discuss a controversial PricewaterhouseCoopers audit of Gazprom and the company's much criticized links to Itera, a firm which has become a multibillion-dollar concern by reselling Gazprom's gas in other former Soviet states.
Miller did not attend the meeting because he was called to meet with Putin. He did, however, request that the board confirm the five candidates.
The candidates - with the notable exception of Alexander Semenyaka, head of the Gazprom securities department - are virtual unknowns, but their appointments were necessary because current management's contracts will expire in the coming weeks.
The board has the right to fire the newly appointed managers at any time, said board chairman Dmitry Medvedev, who is also Kremlin deputy chief of staff.
Medvedev heads a working group that is developing a plan to liberalize Gazprom's two-tier share system. The group's results are expected to be revealed July 8.
Putin's tirade against Gazprom included an attack on businessman Vladimir Gusinsky, stripped of most of his media assets after a campaign by the gas firm to get debts repaid. Gusinsky has said the campaign was orchestrated by the Kremlin to belittle a strong critic of the authorities.
Putin said Gusinsky was one of those who had received funds from Gazprom.
"He received [billions of rubles] and does not intend to pay it back. He is running between Israel and Washington and feels good, and buys groups of influence in the United States to carry out actions against us," Putin said.
-Reuters, SPT
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: 35,000 Millionaires
(SPT) - More than 35,000 Russians earned more than 1 million rubles ($34,000) last year, Prime-Tass quoted a Tax Ministry official as saying Thursday.
Anna Komardina, deputy head of the ministry's income tax department, said that 35,000 Russians listed their incomes as between 1 million and 10 million rubles in 2000.
Komardina said 267 people declared incomes above 10 million rubles, adding that 125 of those lived in Moscow.
One person in the Far North reported earning more than 2 billion rubles ($68 million), Komardina said.
$77M Barter Deal
LE-BOURGET, France (Vedomosti) - Italy has written off $77 million of Russian debt in exchange for technical assistance from the Yakovlev design bureau to build a new military airplane - the first time Russia has successfully used barter to reduce its Paris Club debt.
Yakovlev, creator of the Yak-130 training craft used by the Russian air force in the 1980s, teamed up with Italian aircraft manufacturer Aermacchi to jointly produce the M-346 currently being exhibited at the Paris Air Show.
The original plan called for the joint ownership and production of the Yak-130, renamed the Yak-AM-130. But the Italian company used the Yak-AM-130 model as the basis for building its own airplane, the M-346, to which the Russians have no ownership rights.
Aeroflot Strike Ruling
MOSCOW (AP) - The Moscow City Court ruled Thursday that a one-hour work stoppage by technicians demanding higher wages and stricter safety standards at the Aeroflot airline was illegal, the airline said.
The Trade Union of Aviation Specialists called the work stoppage May 13, delaying 14 international flights at a cost of $1.5 million to Aeroflot.
The ruling comes as the union is preparing for a month-long strike beginning June 30. Union leaders have said airplane maintenance workers will cut their 12-hour shifts in half, striking for six hours in the morning and six in the evening.
Boris Yeliseyev, director of Aeroflot's legal department, said on the basis of Thursday's court decision the upcoming strike could also be considered illegal. If the strike goes ahead, the company may demand financial compensation from the union, he said in a statement.
Aeroflot employees have accused the airline of mismanagement and amassing debts of $500 million, which they say endangers passenger safety because the company cannot afford maintenance.
Air Abramovich
MOSCOW (Vedomosti) - Sibneft tycoon Roman Abramovich looks set to snap up a 50 percent stake in Domodedovo airlines, and analysts predict that his next step could be to merge the company with flagship carrier Aeroflot, in which companies affiliated with the businessman-turned-governor hold a 29 percent stake.
After the privatization of Domodedovo about 50 percent of its shares are to be consolidated in the hands of top managers, which sources say subsequently plan to sell them on to firms affiliated with Chukotka Governor Abramovich.
Among Russian airlines, Domodedovo, which has a fleet of 24 aircraft, ranks No. 4 for domestic routes by the number of passengers carried and No. 9 for international routes. The company is the internal freight route leader
TITLE: IMF Gives Positive Report on Economy
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - International Monetary Fund first deputy managing director Stanley Fischer said Wednesday he saw a growing "sense of normalcy and confidence in Russia's economy," but warned against complacency.
Fischer, ending a short visit to Moscow as he prepares to leave the fund after seven years, told a news conference that the government seemed to have its economic priorities worked out and the potential to carry them through.
He also said if Russia needed IMF support in 2003 - its peak year for foreign-debt servicing - the government's current economic policies would make it easy to reach a deal.
"There was a growing sense of normalcy and confidence that one could feel, and there is some evidence to back that up," Fischer told a news conference.
During his visit, he met President Vladimir Putin and other officials.
He pointed to higher economic growth, tax reforms and other reforms submitted to the State Duma.
"All is not perfect, but all is better than it was a few years ago," he said on the last day of a three-day visit.
But Fischer said Russia should not get caught out.
"The IMF always has a formula at this stage of the proceedings: When things are going well, complacency has to be avoided," he said.
Russia, its gross domestic product growing on the back of world oil prices, has been able to do without IMF loans, ending a period when the fund regularly had to work out economic programs involving billions of dollars of loans to help the economy of the ex-Soviet state.
But Fischer said he and Russian officials had discussed the idea that Russia might need support in 2003.
The government has said it is unlikely to ask for new financing from the IMF in 2003, when it is due to repay $18 billion to various creditors.
"But if it were to arise and Russia was pursuing policies like those it is pursuing now, it would be very easy to arrive at an agreement on an IMF support program," Fischer said.
The IMF has had a mission working in Moscow since last Monday reviewing Russia's draft 2002 budget, which in its current form would be the first in the post-Soviet period to have a surplus.
On Monday, Putin offered to help Fischer find work in Moscow when he leaves the IMF.
"We are always glad to see you in our country. If you would like to move from the IMF to Moscow, we can look at various options," Interfax quoted Putin as telling Fischer.
-Reuters, SPT
TITLE: UES Plans Revamped Once Again
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Economic Development and Trade Ministry, charged with overhauling the national electricity monopoly UES, has accepted some proposals on the carve-up of the national grid, a deputy minister said Tuesday.
Deputy Minister Andrei Sharonov told reporters on the sidelines of Renaissance Capital's annual equities conference that the ministry would hand the government a revised blueprint, which included the compromises, by early Tuesday evening.
Sharonov said the revisions were negotiated with members of a Kremlin-sponsored group, which authored a compromise version of the reform plan.
An aide to President Vladimir Putin said last week that Putin had ordered Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref to take into account proposals from the alternative plan written on the president's orders.
Sharonov said more negotiations would follow.
"The government will hold meetings with the ministries concerned and with representatives of the [working group]. But I feel the president entrusted the government to make a decision on this."
The working group was opposed to plans to integrate all national transport networks into a state-controlled grid operator, and also had concerns about how minority shareholder stakes in UES would be compensated for in the redistribution of UES assets.
Sharonov said the plan now specifies a share swap for chunks of transport networks to be transferred from regional utilities to the federal grid operator.
The plan also specifies that the national power grid and dispatch services would be independent companies with the same shareholder structure as UES by the first quarter of 2004.
Just like the government, Chubais seems more willing to compromise. Speaking to a group of fund managers at the Renaissance Capital gathering, Chubais went out of his way to make them feel more comfortable.
"Attracting investments means getting new shareholders," Chubais said Tuesday. "We do not divide minority investors into bad boys and good boys."
-Reuters, SPT
TITLE: Kiev Mulling Ban on McDonald's Meat-Processing Plant
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Ukraine is likely to ban beef imports from fast-food giant McDonald's Russian meat-processing plant next week over fears of mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry said Wednesday.
The spokesperson, Natalya Chereshevskaya, said in an interview from Kiev that the ministry recently inspected the plant, located in Novoperedelkino on the southwest outskirts of Moscow, and determined that it processed meat from Belgium and the Netherlands, two countries on its "suspect beef" list.
Oleg Strekal, head of public relations for McDonald's Ukraine, said he had heard nothing of the ban. Ukrainian officials visited the plant and gave it a clean bill of health, he said.
He declined to comment on the consequences of any ban, but said that McDonald's Ukraine had its own processing facilities that may be used at some stage to process the 70 metric tons of beef the Moscow plant supplies to its Ukrainian restaurants each month.
The multinational, which has 65 restaurants in Russia and 45 in Ukraine, would not confirm or deny that such meat had been processed at the plant, saying in a statement only that "currently Australian, Ukrainian and Russian beef is used to produce beef products for Ukraine."
"McDonald's highest priority is for the safety of our customers," the statement said, adding that McDonald's has a "solid" tracking system for its meat.
"We are favorable to any further sound safety measures to be taken by authorities in the interest of our customers," the company said.
McDonald's did not respond to questions regarding what consequences a ban would have on its business in Ukraine.
Chereshevskaya said Ukraine not only has a ban on meat from the Netherlands and Belgium, but also feared contamination of meat from other countries by equipment that had been in contact with infected meat.
The proposed ban is not aimed specifically at McDonald's, it will cover all products that could have been infected by meat from the Netherlands and Belgium, whose meat exports are not banned in Russia, she said.
"What Russia imports is its business. We don't want to receive meat that might be risky," she said.
Chereshevskaya confirmed that neither Russia nor Ukraine had any cases of mad cow disease or recent foot-and-mouth cases.
A spokesperson for the Russian Agriculture Ministry said in a telephone interview that a ban on meat products from the Netherlands and Belgium instituted March 26 was lifted June 1.
TITLE: Statistics Committee Shifts Goalposts
AUTHOR: By Yulia Ulyanova and Alexander Bekker
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Statistics Committee this week changed the methodology it uses to measure economic performance - a move that bumped industrial output growth between January and May from 5.3 percent to 7.8 percent, at least on paper.
The jump in growth occurred after the committee, with the consent of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and the Industry, Science and Technology Ministry, "transferred its calculations to a new base year" - 1999 rather than 1995. In other words, statistics officials are simply juggling numbers in a new way.
In general, the industrial-production statistic is determined by the committee based on the production of 605 important goods, measured not by ruble price, but in terms of real value. The Industry, Science and Technology Ministry said that after the crisis of 1998 the relative importance of certain goods for the Russian economy changed, and the structure of gross added value in various sectors is quite different from the base calculation values for 1995. Thus it was decided to take the 1999 structure as a basis.
"[Since 1995] the power sector's share slipped, while the oil sector's most likely increased," said Alexander Fren kel, an expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences' economics institute.
Even so, certain experts are perplexed as to why the change in methodology has resulted in such a serious change in growth on paper.
"We have made a finite number of 'widgets'; assessments of the dynamics of the physical volume [of production] should stay the same," said an expert from the Unikon auditing company.
Independent research institutes that make their own calculations are inclined to dispute the results of the State Statistics Committee.
"According to our data, the total growth in industrial production this year in Russia is at 4 percent," said Seya Laimel, a specialist with the Russian and European Center for Economic Policy.
Despite the disparities, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov have already received the committee's new figures, which may require amendments to be made to the 2002 budget.
TITLE: He Died for His Ideals
AUTHOR: By Stanislav Bozhko
TEXT: ON June 2, the prominent human rights defender and peacemaker Viktor Alekseyevich Popkov died at the Vishnevsky Military Hospital. He was mortally wounded on April 18 in Chechnya, near the village of Alkhan-Kal.
He had been sitting in the front of a medical van, and the killer fired at an upward angle. The bullets shattered the windshield and riddled the entire right side of his body. All this happened in broad daylight just a short distance from a federal checkpoint. The assassin's car left, and nobody followed. The car carrying the dying Popkov was detained at the checkpoint for about 40 minutes. Every minute's delay decreased his chances for survival.
Viktor Popkov. Born in 1946. Human rights defender, missionary, peacemaker, savior. He spent the last 15 years of his life in the hotspots of Russia's south and the near abroad, beginning in Nagorny Karabakh and ending in Chechnya. His earlier biography was typical of a 1960s intellectual. He studied physics at a Moscow institute, left without graduating and became a journalist. He worked as a seismologist in Kamchatka. When the war in Chechnya began, Viktor did not stop to think whether one powerless man could do anything. He plunged in to stop it with his own hands.
During the monstrous Grozny "meat-grinder" of January 1995, he did the impossible. Day after day, in the cellars of the demolished presidential palace, he pleaded with armed guards for the lives of captured Russian soldiers. And he got a few of them to safety, taking those who could still walk. Only a few days later, heavy bombing turned the palace cellars into a mass grave.
Sitting with two dogs and a cat in a tiny book-filled apartment on the outskirts of Moscow, I look through family photographs. A happy young couple with two children, ages 3 and 5. "This guy is one of those he got out of there," says Viktor's wife Tanya. And suddenly I understand that, if not for Viktor, this guy would not be alive and enjoying his children.
I traveled with Viktor to a few hotspots. The first time it was the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone. I had to learn on the run, from how to get around in areas under fire to negotiating with combatants. Viktor at first irritated me with his deliberate slowness when I thought haste was in order. It was only after a few years of having worked with him, in both Chechen wars, that I understood he marched to his own drummer, sharing other people's pain and taking on other people's burdens.
Speaking of his goals in his seventh and penultimate trip to Chechnya, Viktor wrote; "As usual, it is to preserve my feeling of involvement in what is happening in Chechnya, to keep within me a striving to help and to defend the people of Chechnya, who are being destroyed by my Russia." He always felt a personal responsibility for evil done before his eyes and for every life extinguished - he simply could not be otherwise. And he was able quietly to insist to people blinded by hatred and given to violence that they respect humanitarian precepts. He knew that the slightest sign of nervousness or haste could ruin everything.
And Viktor was unbelievably successful. He was given custody of prisoners and hostages, and delivered humanitarian aid to remote areas of Chechnya. For weeks this strange, white-bearded man in a monk's habit wandered along the stony paths, spending his nights in forgotten mountain settlements. I even saw federal troops ask for his blessing, and old Chechens offer him bread.
Who shot Viktor Popkov? There are only assumptions at this point. He had no personal enemies in Chechnya, but there was undisguised malice from the authorities. I felt it when Viktor and I were distributing allowances to refugees from Komsomolsky. After a federal assault on the village, the residents were left with no homes or property, and no support from the authorities. We did our work openly, in close cooperation with the local social welfare office. We provided assistance to large families, the handicapped and the elderly. An hour after we began, we were detained by the Urus-Martan FSB. The local administration unsuccessfully tried to accuse us of helping fighters. Later we were sent to military headquarters where we were openly threatened. They released us toward evening and made it clear that we were not to return. And that was not the only incident.
In February 2000, Viktor was delivering aid to the village of Gekhi-Chu, left nearly in ruins after a mopping-up operation. He distributed it to the neediest residents who were left without shelter. Among them was an elderly teacher, a rural doctor, and an old blind woman born in 1895 who was lying on an iron bed in what was left of her home. Nevertheless, the head of the local administration accused Viktor of aiding the fighters - because he helped the neediest and drew up the distribution list with respected local residents and not with the village administration.
Last winter Viktor was working on an aid program for residents of Chechnya's mountains, who have suffered most during recent military operations. He worked for over a month in these isolated places and was horrified by what he saw. Endless mopping-up operations, plundering, violence. Adolescents taken away to detention camps where they vanished. Shepherds blown up bylandmines. Extrajudicial executions. Hunger and fear. Nearly all the children suffering from vitamin deficiency and dystrophy. Measles epidemics and tuberculosis. No shoes or clothing.
Viktor filmed all this. He felt an enormous responsibility to the thousands of people who ended up in tragic isolation, doomed to a slow death from starvation and disease. He was practically the only person who had information about their needs. And only he was prepared to go to them to help. And now he is no more.
He died. Doctors in Grozny, Nazran and Moscow fought hard for his life. They did everything they could, but his wounds were fatal. Viktor has gone. He leaves behind a wife and two children. His wife and his daughter Ulyana have been invalids for 19 years, and the girl has a severe genetic disease. Viktor and Tanya nursed her from birth. Perhaps during those years, Viktor learned his constant and active compassion toward life teetering on the brink of disappearance. He loved them very much.
Stanislav Bozhko was Viktor Popkov's friend and colleague. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. For information on how to help the family of Viktor Popkov, see www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/06/20/009.html.
TITLE: Fix the Jails Before Fixing The Blame
TEXT: EARLIER this week, local police successfully completed their operation to recapture the last of the 20 prisoners who escaped from oblast jails on May 21. Thankfully, all 20 prisoners - some of whom were being held on charges as serious as murder - were rounded up without violence or bloodshed.
But the successful conclusion of this episode must not detract us from the serious lessons this incident teaches.
The prisoners escaped from two separate holding facilities - one in Gatchina and the other in Volosov more than 40 kilometers away. What both jails had in common, though, was that they are completely dilapidated, inhumanly overcrowded and each is more than a century old. In Gatchina, the prisoners actually broke through a wall of their cell, while in Volosovo they cut through the bars in a window.
In Gatchina, 29 prisoners were being held in a cell intended for 14 at the time of the escape. The figure of 14 almost certainly already represents an unacceptable level of overcrowding.
Authorities reported that the construction of a new jail facility in Gatchina, which is intended to operate as a holding facility for the entire southern part of the oblast, has already been delayed for several years by financing problems. However, even in these days of severe budgetary shortfalls, it is inexcusable that dangerous prisoners are held in cells so run down that it is possible for them to break down the walls and walk away.
After the escapes, the authorities were quick to announce that there would be an "unpleasant" inquiry into whether any guards at the jails had been negligent or complicit in the incidents. Since then, the oblast Prosecutor's Office has opened an official investigation into the actions of the guards and administrations of the jails.
We can only hope that this investigation is not simply a search for scapegoats and an attempt to paper over the real problems with the penal system. A police spokesperson told The St. Petersburg Times this week that what the jail system needs is perestroika, or rebuilding, in the literal and figurative senses.
Oblast officials should be looking into why the construction work on the new facility in Gatchina has been frozen and investigating the budgetary decisions that led to this impermissible state of affairs. They should be asking themselves whether it was really inevitable for police to be put in such an unpleasant and dangerous working environment, and for prisoners to be held in such inhumane and cruel conditions.
These facts reflect very poorly on us as a society and on the elected officials who represent us.
TITLE: Market Model Doesn't Equal Market Deity
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: HERE'S a true story. A U.S. naval commander and a Canadian officer had an exchange by radio. The Canadians advised the Americans to change course to avoid collision, but the Americans insisted that the Canadians change course. The Canadians prevailed: They were calling from a lighthouse.
Alas, steady forward movement does not always lead to progress. For the past 18 months, President Vladimir Putin's government has cleared all obstacles from its path. It has put the governors in their place, exiled the unruly oligarchs and is systematically exterminating the Chechens. Everyone is ready to follow him come hell or high water. And no one has dared ask, "Where are we going?"
Instead of formulating a political and economic course, Putin's team from the start has focused on eliminating obstacles, both real and imagined. Russia's course was already set under Yeltsin. It continues to move forward and has even picked up steam with the change at the helm. Even the 1998 ruble crisis stopped no one, although it should have forced people to consider whether the chosen course was correct. Russian bureaucrats instead look for guilty parties while admitting "individual mistakes." But these petty tactical mistakes obscure serious strategic problems.
Still, the steady forward movement continues. Andrei Illarionov, Putin's economic advisor, is a dedicated liberal who believes a liberal course can have no shortcomings. If something is wrong, those who were implementing the course must be to blame. Those who were in power earlier were not true liberals; they were inconsistent, insufficiently radical. Had they been a little more decisive, Russia would already be a prosperous country.
And if you ask them what the problem is, they will tell you that all of this is caused by "populism" or concessions to the public. In fact, all misfortune comes from the people. Were there no people in the country, how easy the government's life would be!
Those at the top like this point of view. Even Anatoly Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems, and Illarionov have the same ideas of power, despite their squabbling. The public is not so unfortunate overall, although the standard of living is falling, civil liberties are diminishing bit by bit and life expectancy is decreasing to almost an African level. The authorities are tranquil, sensing no particular threat. One can try any radical reform with such a public. Of course, one can also miscalculate, but for now everything is splendid.
In fact, the government's problems in recent years are more a result of the resistance of economic reality and life itself than to mass opposition. And paradoxically, it is the hidden hand of the market that suffocates our market reformers. For our liberals, the market is a sort of deity, and they are its priests and interpreters. Andrei Illarionov and Anatoly Chubais each interpret the will of this god.
However, the market is no god, but simply a system of economic relations. The poorer the country, the sharper the contradictions will be. In the celebration of market principles, the public has been ruined and industrial development undermined. Our reformers created a market model that is headed for troubled waters. Meanwhile, the Russian ship of state has no intention of changing course. It will continue to eliminate obstacles until it founders on them.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: Dear Editor,
We would like you to know what happened to us on June 8 when we came and tried to enjoy the ballet "La Bayadere" at the Marinsky Theater.
We had ordered and paid for our tickets in advance through a St. Petersburg travel agency. We were guaranteed that we would have good seats in the stalls with a good view of the stage, and we paid 450 Finnish Marks ($65) each for our tickets.
We arrived in St. Petersburg on June 7 and picked up our tickets from the agency. But our disappoinment was tremendous when we came to the Mariinsky on Friday night and found out that these very expensive tickets were for seats on the third balcony.
We think that the Marinsky should take responsiblity for those who sell their tickets and what they tell fans of the theater. From our seats on the third balcony, we could see only half of the stage, and we feel that this was not right or fair, considering the huge amount of money we paid for the tickets.
We knew that we were present at a world-class ballet and witnessed an excellent performance. The Mariinsky's artists were truly magnificent. However, because we were cheated so badly, we don't think that we will ever go to the Mariinsky again.
Ilkka Lahti
Mirja Lehtonen
Ansa Parviainen
Helsinki, Finland
Dear Editor,
Your story by Matt Bivens, ["Harvard Gets Its Very Own Crony Capitalist," June 19] about workers who earn the minimum wage at Harvard is inaccurate.
In fact, fewer than 400 out of more than 13,000 employees of Harvard earn less than $10 per hour. Even fewer earn the federal minimum wage. Further, all of those fewer-than-400 employees are either part-time employees (by their own choice), or temporary employees. All are represented by collective bargaining agreements (labor unions).
In other words, their own union assigned them their jobs at the wage specified. All employees of Harvard who work at least 20 hours per week have full medical benefits, childcare benefits, and other benefits that are part of the union-negotiated employment package for Harvard employees. Here is a statement from Harvard:
"Indeed, the 1999-2000 review, conducted by a faculty committee, recommended innovative programs to enhance the status and opportunities for such employees. These recommendations, which have been adopted by the University and praised by national employment and training experts, include programs to improve job skills and literacy training for employees, expanded availability of health benefits for part-time workers, and other measures."
You have a fine newspaper. In the future, it would be better if you and Mr. Bivens were a bit fairer in your presentations, especially when the facts are so easy to access.
Randy Black
Dallas, Texas
Dear Editor,
I am an American, a wife and a mother, and friend of Jack Tobin, the Fullbright scholar being held prisoner in Voronezh. So many of Jack's family and friends back in Connecticut waited in anticipation for the Russian holiday on June 12th when tradition allows for amnesty to be given to certain people convicted of a crime in Russia and sentenced to time in prison. We had hoped that Jack would receive amnesty under this tradition, but the day has gone by and no word has been issued.
We firmly believe that there was some misunderstanding that led to Jack's arrest and conviction. Jack is an honorable, hard-working young man who always spoke so highly of the Russian culture and the people he met during his studies in your country.
We hope and pray that President Putin and the Russian parliament will look closely at Jack's situation and show the world that Russia is a nation that cares about justice and compassion. The American people look forward to good relations between our nations.
Ann Maher
Ridgefield, Connecticut
Dear Editor,
Your editorial of June 19, "Putin Comes Out on Top at First Summit," is sadly biased.
You state that Mr. Putin's most memorable moment came when he showed NATO's rejection of Russia as a member in 1954. And last year's rejection proves that America still considers Russia an enemy. Well, let's be honest - in 1954 that was the case. The Soviet Union was the enemy.
As far as the rejection last year goes, Russia is not capable or ready to be a NATO member. The Russian economy could not afford to bring Russia's military up to NATO standards. The action in Chechnya has laid bare the low standards of professionalism, and even of humanity, of the Russian military.
NATO was founded as an organization to provide the mutual protection of democratic countries. Russia has yet to prove itself to be a democratic nation. Mr. Putin especially seems to be determined to resurrect the demons of Russia's totalitarian past, hence the resurgence of the FSB, the hooded "Tax Police," the farce of a justice system. .... I could go on, but you get the point.
Not being an enemy does not make one an ally. One goes from being an enemy, to neutral feelings, to trusted country and finally to ally. It takes years to gain trust.
Mr. Bush is going to spend the next several years as president of the world's most powerful nation and ecomonic engine. He will say what he means and mean what he says, whether you agree with him or not. Mr. Putin is going to spend those same years consolidating his personal power until he is effectively a dictator, muffling dissent, and trying to keep the Russian economy from completely falling apart. I, for one, am not convinced he is a man of his word.
I'll take a plain-talking Texan as president over a "statesmanly" former spy and dictator-in-training any time.
Jim Kaufman
Houston, Texas
Dear Editor,
As I understand from your June 19 editorial, you believe George Bush is a simpleton, and by implication that the American people who elected him are fools. By contrast, Vladimir Putin is a wily diplomat, and it follows that the Russians who chose him are sages. Thus, Putin "knocked out" Bush in their recent meeting.
It may come as a surprise to you to learn, then, that the United States has 130 million more people than Russia does, and each year it produces $8 trillion more wealth. The budget of New York City is far larger than the budget of Russia, and America's military budget vastly exceeds Russian GDP. What's more, America has twice as many Nobel Laureates for literature as Russia does, and millions more foreign tourists choose to visit us than go to Russia. Despite Russian cleverness, there are many more hours of American TV in Russia than vice versa, aren't there?
So, all I can say is: give me simpletons and fools over wily diplomats and sages any day of the week!
I don't think that, given the foregoing, Bush could possibly have any reason to take the vile little anti-democrat that is Mr. Putin at all seriously, or to care one way or the other how he looks in comparison. I think it was a nice gesture for Bush to meet Putin in order to save him the humiliation of being completely ignored, and Putin should take it easy on the guy rather than throwing his weight around - Bush ought to be praised rather than excoriated.
Doesn't it bother you at all to make yourself look like the toady of a man who is currently engaged in a relentless attack on the free media? It would me.
Claude Dunes
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: Clock Stoppers
"Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease."
- U.S. President George
W. Bush, June 14, 2001.
People are dying of AIDS by the millions in Africa. There are drug treatments that could help many of them - the same antiretroviral treatments used successfully in the West - but George W. Bush says they can't have them; it would just be money down the drain. Why? Because Africans are too stupid to tell the time.
We kid you not: That is the official position of the United States government. Bush's point man on the issue, Andrew Natsios, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, testified - before God, Congress and everybody - that Bush opposes giving the drugs to Africans because "they don't know what Western time is" and thus can't follow the necessary schedule for the treatment to work. "Ask them to take drugs at a certain time and they don't know what you are talking about," said Natsios, former head of a Christian relief agency.
So what does Bush propose in place of actual treatment? Why, "sexual abstinence and marital faithfulness," of course! Natsios said the Bushvolk will concentrate on prayerful prevention, not secular treatment, leaving the 25 million Africans already infected with the disease to just, well, die. Anyway, says Natsios, the drug treatments are so "toxic" that "40 percent" of American pansy-types don't even take them. And, oh yeah, the drugs have to be frozen - and go find a refrigerator in Africa!
None of this is true, of course. The drug treatments are not "toxic;" only a minuscule number of AIDS patients suffer untenable side effects, not "40 percent;" and the drug manufacturers themselves explicitly state that the medicines are not to be frozen. What's more, the treatment requires the drugs to be taken only twice a day, in the morning and the evening. Surely even the Bush administration - which has budgeted all of $220 million for the continent's battle against the "incredible disease" - will concede that Africans can tell the difference between day and night.
Some have called for Natsios to be sacked - but Bush has given his untruthful Christian appointee a vote of confidence. After all, a man who thinks Africa is a "nation" is not likely to be troubled by any underling's outburst of ignorance, is he?
Closed Book
Another day, another Bush, another spot of bother with ethnic minorities.
As faithful (not to mention faith-filled) readers of the Global Eye will recall, the Bushian Right has recently revived the ancient "blood libel" against the Jews, blaming the obstinate Hebrews for "killing Christ." A few weeks ago, it was G.W.'s mentor Paul Weyrich, the "founding father of modern conservatism," raging against the evil Jewish murder of Our Lord.
Now little bro, Jebby Bush, has entered the fray, hiring yet another blood libeler as an official state spokesman for literacy programs down in the family satrapy of Florida.
Actually, it was Jeb's main squeeze (and we mean that in a purely political sense, of course) Katherine Harris, who did the hiring, but Governor Jeb has manfully stepped up to defend her honor, The Nation reports. Harris, the state official who certified those wacky election returns in November, picked basketball star Charlie Ward to tell the state's kids about the wonders of reading.
However, the nature of Ward's own reading was called into question recently after he held forth to the New York Times Magazine about those perfidious Semites. "Jews are stubborn," Ward declared. "Why did they persecute Jesus unless he knew something they didn't want to accept? They had his blood on their hands."
These comments caused a bit of a stir in a state whose Jewish population rivals that of Tel Aviv, but Jeb pooh-poohed complaints about Ward's Christ-killer comments as mere "political correctness" crankery. He said it was matter of protecting "free speech" - although no one was denying Ward's right to freely spew Weyrichian Jew-hatred whenever he pleased. It was Bush's own judgement in hiring a Weyrichian Jew-hater that was at issue.
But here Jeb faithfully followed the hallowed traditions of his tribe - by ducking the question entirely. The controversy ended with Ward still out there peddling books to the state's schoolchildren.
"No kids, we can't do Dr. Seuss today. Uncle Charlie has something even better! Look at this nice book here, 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion!' Come on - let's read!"
Mentally Challenged
"Retarded people should never be executed." So says former Texas governor George W. Bush.
That will probably come as a shock to the half-dozen or so retarded people executed in Texas over the past few years - or would, that is, if they weren't dead. But that's what Bush said on his whirlwind tour last week when he was being hammered about the "barbarous" American death penalty.
Since Bush had obviously signed death warrants for mentally retarded prisoners, the White House was forced to go to some lengths in order to "clarify" his remarks. After much hemming and hawing, they finally announced that Bush has his own special definition of "retarded" in capital cases.
You see, it doesn't matter if a person is legally retarded; what matters is that they "understand right from wrong."
Bush is of course confusing mental competency with mental retardation. (But then, a man who believes Africa is a nation, etc., etc.) The reason such executions are banned in many states is that the very practice of killing mentally retarded people, despite any limited idea of right and wrong they may have, is wrong and barbarous - the equivalent of killing small children.
But Bush's peculiar position was backed-up this week by his handpicked successor in Texas, Governor Rick Perry, who vetoed a bill that would have outlawed executions of the retarded. Indeed, Perry went even further than Bush, declaring that "no retarded person has ever been executed in Texas."
Except, of course, for the ones who have.
TITLE: mariinsky shines with valkyrie
AUTHOR: By Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Mariinsky's premiere of Wagner's Die Walküre was far from being a guaranteed success. With the White Nights Festival already well into its third week, an exhausting affair for both orchestra and conductor Valery Gergiev alike, performing a four-hour Wagner opera was hardly going to be easy. The addition of Placido Domingo may not have helped, either - while he certainly drew the crowds, the danger in such visiting singers suddenly descending upon an opera company is that the end result may be rather uneven.
Fresh from Saturday's disastrous concert on Palace Square, where most of the audience was unable to hear anything, Domingo set himself the challenge of singing the role of Siegmund on Tuesday, and conducting Aida on Wednesday - and he is due to sing in the Forbidden City in Beijing on Saturday.
What is more surprising then, is what a triumph the opera was - not just for Domingo, but for everyone concerned. While the sets by German designer Gottfried Pilz may have been rather sparse, musically the production was breathtaking. It is often the case at the Mariinsky that the more uninteresting the staging, the higher the musical standard of the production - this was true for the company's version of La Bohème, and also held reversely true for their production of Macbeth, both of which premiered this year.
Here, then, one is treated to what is possibly one of the most minimalist productions of Wagner ever staged. With a table and chairs being the only stage decorations used for the first act, the singers did as best they could with the available space. The action was broken up somewhat with several black-clad figures, who appeared throughout the production in various roles, playing Hunding's servants and the souls of fallen soldiers claimed by the Valkyries.
With Siegmund in casual hunting clothes, Sieglinde in a Pioneer-type uniform and Hunding in a suit, the costumes seemed to be vaguely modern without attempting to remind the viewer of anything in particular. Wotan and Brunnhilde produced more of a comic impression, with the former looking more like a bank manager than the ruler of the gods, and reading a newspaper as Fricka berates him. Making his eyepatch and staff a matching red color cannot be said to be a particularly succesful costume decision, while Brunnhilde's detachable wings were simply silly.
As the night wore on, however, things began to pick up, with more imaginative use of the screen, with silhouettes of Wotan or Brunnhilde projected upon it in key scenes. This worked particularly well for Brunnhilde's appearance before Siegmund in Act II. On the other hand, the subsequent fight between Siegmund and Hunding was rather poorly executed, and it was difficult to tell what was going on. Indeed, if the singers seemed very familiar with what they were singing, the blocking was sometimes rather obviously improvised, or at least not adequately rehearsed.
Act III brought us a total of 16 valkyries, rather than the usual nine, all wearing white gowns. The final fire scene was successful, if somewhat kitsch, with a huge red curtain surrounding Brunnhilde.
These factors would have rankled were it not for the fact that the singing and playing was so superb. Gergiev is certainly one of the best Wagner conductors around - what is stolid and tedious under other batons becomes fluid and swift. Those accustomed to Wagner from such canoical recordings as Georg Solti's standard-setting 1960s recording of the Ring Cycle will find Gergiev's interpretation to be a revelation.
The singing was also uniformly excellent. The overall impression was of a seamless whole, with Gennady Bezzubenkov giving just the right note of cruelty to the part of Hunding, Vladimir Vaneyev excellent as a tormented Wotan, and Mlada Khudolei as tender a Sieglinde as one could hope to see. Most impressive was the rapport between the orchestra and singers, with no danger of the music overpowering the voices.
In general, the production was a worthy successor to last year's Das Rheingold, and perhaps the highlight of the White Nights Festival so far. With Siegfried and Götterdämmerung scheduled for 2002 and 2003 respectively, the Mariinsky will soon have a Ring Cycle to be reckoned with.
TITLE: tan dun makes music from water
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "When touching your instruments and singing, try to create a sound which is not mechanical but as close to nature as possible" - this is how Tan Dun, a Chinese-born classical composer now living in New York, started a rehearsal on Tuesday at the Mariinsky Theater.
The Petersburg-Concert chamber choir joined Russian and American musicians on June 21 for the Russian premiere Tan Dun's "Water Passion after St. Matthew," which was first performed in 2000 by the RIAS Kammerchor at the international festival in memory of the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's death.
Water is the key word for Tan Dun's piece, and large, transparent basins filled with water are present on stage - placed in the shape of a cross.
"Water is something which surrounds us even before our birth, it is one of the most natural and essential things for all of us," Tan Dun said. "But though water is all around, we don't really listen attentively to the sound of it."
Water Passion after St. Matthew juxtaposes different incarnations of water, serene or violent - rain, tears, blood, storm - but it also comes as a metaphor for reconciliation.
"Water is very important for spiritual life for many religions as it is a symbol of re-creation, renewal," Tan Dun said. "For many people, water is a reminder of where they came from and there they want to go."
Although Water Passion after St. Matthew, was inspired by a spiritual text, the piece is about being human too. "The Bible, like all religious books, was written by humans," Tan Dun said.
It is important for Tan Dun that the musicians themselves have physical contact with water while on stage: In the performance of the Water Passion the composer and the artists create their own personal responses.
Tan Dun gives musicians carte blanche for their behavior with the water exercises. "You can play with it, and do whatever you like," he told musicians. "The only thing you shouldn't do is shield water from the audiences."
Tan Dun's ideas need time to be accepted. At Tuesday's rehearsal the musicians' movements still seemed somewhat awkward, but much more emancipation was seen at the premiere on Thursday. The finale in which the singers, musicians and the conductor himself slowly leave their places to approach the basins with water to touch it and play with it was astounding. The sounds of water quietly splashing and the sight of the artists turning these sounds into music made a harmonious finale to the evening.
Artistically, Tan Dun aims for his music to bring together that which was once different and incompatible. "Water can be a metaphor for composing, too, because the composer's mind, like the water's flow, knows no boundaries."
"Contemporary musical culture in the world has become crosscultural and interdependent," Tan Dun said. "I think cultural globalization is a very positive trend as national cultures aren't locked within themselves as much, and have a greater opportunity to enrich one another. Every new tradition doesn't emerge from nowhere, but grows and develops from an older tradition. What one needs to do is not just continue the tradition but invent within it."
Tan Dun's artistic attitude explains the stylistic eclecticism of the "Water Passion," in particular, where one can hear the traces of ancient Tibetan and Indian musical traditions. But the composer's individuality emerges clearly from this multicultural context where it is easy to lose oneself.
Breaking down barriers and reaching reconciliation seems to be the composer's major artistic professional goal. "Crouching Tiger bridged East and West, romance and action, high and low culture," Tan Dun said at his acceptance speech when he received an Academy Award for his soundtrack for Ang Lee's film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
Composing for films attracts Tan Dun as an opportunity to reach out to a greater audience. "I compose my classical works in a chamber way," he said. "But when I was working on the World Symphony for Millennium which was broadcast by 55 TV stations to giant audiences, I had a different, lighter, easier, less nuanced and more celebrative approach. Life is diverse, and music should be too. I am happy I have an opportunity to create in different ways."
Those who missed Thursday's concert still have a chance to hear Tan Dun's film music. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is currently playing in the Crystal Palace and Avrora cinemas.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: As the city gets ready to throw itself into the arms of the Festival of Festivals, there seems to be at least one music-related event in the program which is both surprising and interesting.
Sven Düfer's "Kurt Weill," screening on Monday, will be augmented by a concert that will feature greatly diverse acts from St. Petersburg's Large Synagogue Choir to Tequilajazzz and Volkovtrio, the two latter being a guarantee for some very unusual interpretations.
Kurt Weill (1900-1950), the composer who became famous through his work with Bertold Brecht, has been covered by many rock acts, including The Doors and David Bowie - and the film does feature rock musician Blixa Bargeld, who came to St. Petersburg with his own Einstürzende Neubauten and as a member of Nick Cave's band in 1997 and 1998, respectively.
"Kurt Weill" features Bargeld reflecting on the influence of Weill and then singing in an old New York ice cream parlor once frequented by Weill, and has been seen by one writer as "the clear high point of the film."
Weill's music and songs will also be interpreted by German singers Katja Plessing and Stefanie Wüst and pianist Henning Schneider. David Lefkowitz of the New York Park Synagogue will take part as well. Also featured are Khoronko Orchestra, which describes itself as folk jazz and chanson, and electronic act Chugunny Skorokhod.
Kurt Weill at 7 p.m. and the "Kurt Weill and His Music Today" concert at 9:30 p.m. at the Leningrad Film Center, June 25.
Akvarium suddenly dropped out of the Pushkinskaya 10 Anniversary Concert on Wednesday as Boris Grebenshchikov changed its concert schedule and rushed to London, where he suddenly got an opportunity to work on the songs he recently recorded in St. Petersburg. Yury Shevchuk and Vyacheslav Butusov will be performing as scheduled.
However, it was reported that Grebenshchikov had promised to come back by June 29, the date of the concert in memory of Andrei "Dyusha" Romanov, which will also be a presentation of the late Akvarium flautist's memoirs.
Wine is returning, as the City Club reported this week: Alexei Gelter, who settled in Paris last year, will be playing at the club on June 29. At press time it was not clear whether the lineup would include all the former musicians of the band, which was Britpop before the Britpop explosion, as one critic wrote.
White Nights Swing, which claims to be the city's main jazz festival, will open on June 29, and will feature acts from the U.S., Poland and Israel. Promoted by the state-sponsored Jazz Philharmonic Hall, it will be based around the venue, but traditionally one show is open-air, allowing the public to lie on the grass and enjoy the Alexei Kanunnikov Jazz Band or St. Petersburg's Saxophones led by Gennady Golshtein.
This year's festival also marks 40 years since David Goloshchokin, local jazz guru and head of the Jazz Philharmonic Hall, began his career in music.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: tindersticks conquer russian audience
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Of the many concerts performed by Western acts in the city lately, Tuesday's show by the London-based sextet Tindersticks stands out as special in terms of mood, atmosphere, and quality.
The 750-seat TYuZ, or Theater of Young Spectators, primarily intended for school students, is an unlikely place for a rock concert, but with Tindersticks the venue added to the show, as the audience sat in their seats, with nobody dancing with a beer in front of the stage.
After a brief delay caused by some backstage confusion, the band appeared and launched into "El diablo en el ojo" from its eponymous second album, and went on to cover songs from the 10 years of its existence. The audience was split in two - enthusiastic fans and those who seemed not to understand where they were and looked perplexed.
"You can't just get the music to be where you want it to be," said Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples as he sipped a Bochkarev beer at a pier bar near the Hermitage after spending hours at the museum on Wednesday.
"It's a kind of unconscious feeling. It's removing a barrier. It's like sharing something."
With Tindersticks, the music is slow, soft and somewhat monotonous. You immerse yourself in the sound, become almost hypnotized, and then it hits you: The strange and beautiful music the band plays has nerve and power.
"There's an element of the unknown that makes it exciting to play to people for the first time. There's no baggage, it's never the same after that," said Staples.
"Halfway through you kind of turn the corner and start connecting to people, and I was glad when it happened."
Staples is not what you expect from a rock frontman, especially from an introvert band like Tindersticks. He is open, friendly, natural and quiet. The band spent the night before the concert between Fish Fabrique and Cynic, guided by Tequilajazzz's Yevgeny Fyodorov.
Staples is the one who draws attention when on stage, both because of his unusual and beautiful voice and his appearance. At the concert he wore a suit, although casually enough, with a white T-shirt showing from under his half-buttoned shirt. For the last encore he appeared with cigarette in hand.
Visually, there was a slight resemblance to Bryan Ferry, and Staples readily admitted that he liked Roxy Music's early albums, though he had not listened to them for a long time.
While the band may have seemed withdrawn into themselves, for Staples the response of the audience is very important.
"For the first half of the concert last night we played our songs well and that was it," he said.
"Then things start to change and something comes into the room and it takes you somewhere else. That's to do with the audience. It's not to do with us. It's not to do with us playing better or worse."
Although Tindersticks released a new album, "Can Our Love...," last month, they played only three or four songs from the new record in the set, which lasted almost 1 1/2 hours.
With the extensive repertoire the band has, Tindersticks can afford to play different sets at every concert.
"We change every night. We decide what to play after the sound check, and we have so many songs we like to play at the moment," said Staples.
"I think tomorrow night we'll play a different set in Moscow because we are going to play a club, so we'll play harder things. It has to do with how we feel on stage."
TITLE: japanese you can afford
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If there was an area in St. Petersburg - or anywhere, for the matter - that could compete for the title of most restaurants per square kilometer, the region around the streets of Bolshaya Mor skaya and Malaya Morskaya would surely be high on the list. So popular has it become that restaurants in other parts of the city have begun opening branches there.
From cheap places like the Orient Bistro to top-of-the-line joints like Borsalino in the Astoria Hotel, there really is something for everyone. What's more, all of these places seem to be doing very well for themselves - there really must be a particularly large number of hungry people in the area.
Relatively new on the scene is a recently opened branch of the Shogun restaurant, which is located at the other end of Nevsky Prospect, on Ulitsa Vosstaniya. The branch on Gorokhovaya Ulitsa is smaller, modestly calls itself a sushi-bar, and is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. However, it is certainly a fully fledged restaurant in its own right, with a large selection of dishes.
Those who would think twice before splashing out on a Japanese meal will find the prices surprisingly reasonable. The fact the prices on the menu are in rubles is already an encouraging sign, even if they are pinned to the dollar, at a rate of 29.50.
The restaurant is divided into a dining room and a barroom area, with modest decor and all the correct feng-shui attributes. The place was moderately busy on a Wednesday afternoon, though we probably took more time on our meals than most of the diners, no doubt on their way to some important meeting.
We both began with a miso soup ($1), without which no Japanese meal is complete. Next came the Matsu sushi (206.50 rubles, or $7), six large pieces of salmon and prawn sushi.
These were served with plenty of ginger and wasabe, and it was good to eat in an Oriental restaurant where there is no choice but to use chopsticks: In some of the city's Chinese restaurants, you actually have to ask for them, and then to add insult to injury they give you brown bread! There was no danger of such blasphemy taking place at Shogun, which is authenticity personified.
My friend chose a salmon teriyaki salad ($5), which was almost large enough to be a meal in itself, and this was also pronounced a great success, with lots of very crisp lettuce and fresh tomatoes. She also ordered a pot of green tea ($1), which, as it turned out, was more than enough for both of us. Out of force of habit I ordered a Baltika beer ($1.50), but soon realized I would be better off sticking to tea.
Somewhat unoriginally, I also had salmon teriyaki ($7) for a main course, in a syrupy sauce, which was delicious. Unfortunately my friend had to wait for some time before her gyoza dumplings ($7) arrived - apparantly there was some problem with the frying pan.
This, however, was the only hitch in an otherwise magnificent meal, and we were even less inclined to find any cause for complaint when the bill arrived: At less than 900 rubles, we felt we had discovered a real bargain (by Japanese restaurant standards), and decided it wouldn't be long before we would be visiting again.
Shogun, 11/25 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, 314-74-17. Open seven days a week, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Lunch for two, 899.75 rubles ($30.50). Credit cards accepted.
TITLE: some of the highlights
AUTHOR: by Kirill Galetski
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg's enormously varied tableau of films, the Festival of Festivals, starts this Saturday at eight city theaters. Living up to its name, it is a collection of "greatest hits" culled from recent world film festivals.
Remarkably, this year's festival is more foreigner-friendly than in the past. Screenings without Russian voice-over translation used to happen with little advance notice before the actual festival. This year, the festival organizers hope to attract a wider audience with more screenings in the original languages (with English subtitles in most cases) during the festival itself, at three participating theaters.
The festival opens with gung-ho British documentary director Dom Rotheroe's potent fictional feature debut "My Brother Tom," which tells of two teenagers' powerful and destructive bond, and is filmed in intimate close-ups with a digital camera by Robby Müller, the acclaimed Dutch cinematographer.
The selection is replete with films that made strong impressions at this year's Berlin Film Festival, such as French Director Patrice Chàrau's first English-language film "Intimacy." This explicit adaption of semi-autobiographical stories by writer-director Hanif Kureishi is about a young couple who have a noncommittal, purely sexual relationship and the complications that ensue when the woman fails to turn up one day.
The humdrum existence of bottle plant workers is explored in Philippe Le Guay's "Trois Huit." One of the most weighty French films at the festival, it is a riveting psychological drama and character study that explores the phenomenon of hazing through the interaction of two different personalities.
New German cinema is represented by a number of films, including Thorsten Schmidt's ribald, winning comedy "Snow On New Year's Eve," which is mainly about a Berlin busdriver's misadventures with a contrary and pregnant Russian prostitute, but also features an array of other characters trying to lead meaningful lives on the eve of the millennium. The film features British rocker Eric Burdon in a supporting role, and has a punchy rhythm-and-blues soundtrack. Schmidt will be in attendance at the festival to present his film.
New Russian art films to be shown include Sokurov's oft-screened Lenin biopic "Taurus," as well as the little-seen, allegorical "Dark Night," directed by film historian and filmmaker Oleg Kovalyev, and Konstantin Lopushansky's new Bergmanesque drama "The Turn of the Century," which features renowned theater director Roman Viktyuk in an acting role.
Many of the films in the festival have connections to Russia of varying degrees. Sally Potter's "The Man Who Cried," starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci and Oleg Yan kovsky is about a young female Russian immigrant to America who falls for a gypsy horseman. Potter is best known for her film "Orlando," which was partially filmed in St. Petersburg at Lenfilm studios. Yan kovsky appears elsewhere in the festival, in a Japanese-Russian Lenfilm co-production called "Dreams of Russia," about Japanese sailors stranded in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. The film is part of a Lenfilm Studios retrospective.
Achim Von Borries' heartfelt, thoughtful drama "England!," one of the German films shown, features St. Petersburg actor Ivan Shvedov, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Theater Arts Academy, in a lead role. A Chernobyl cleanup volunteer slowly dying of cancer goes to Berlin to seek out a friend in order to fulfill their lifelong dream of travelling to England.
Dutch director Jos Stelling, who has had his newest films shown at Festival of Festivals in the past, will attend the festival's current retrospective of his quirky and intriguing films and teach a filmmaking workshop. Stelling is in the midst of working a documentary about Russian life titled "Dushka."
Another Dutch director's film closes the festival. Marleen Gorris, who received the 1996 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for "Antonia's Line," returns with another stunningly well-crafted film - "The Luzhin Defense," starring John Turturro and Emily Watson, and based on the Vladimir Nabokov novel about an unhinged chess master.
The Festival of Festivals runs from June 23 to June 29. For more information consult the festival Web site: www.filmfest.ru
TITLE: Total Solar Eclipse Puts Africa in Party Mood
AUTHOR: By Ravi Nessman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LUSAKA, Zambia - Thousands of tourists, scientists and new-age mystics gathered in Zambia on Thursday to watch the first total solar eclipse of the new millennium in southern Africa.
Eclipse day was declared a national holiday. Hotels were fully booked in Lusaka, the only capital within the eclipse band. Farmers in the eclipse path rented out land for makeshift campsites. "This is a big event for Zambia," said Agnes Seenka, head of the government's eclipse committee.
The government expected more than 20,000 tourists, the most ever in Zambia, and deployed 2,500 police to patrol the streets of Lusaka and other tourist areas.
More than 4,000 people traveled from as far as Japan, Israel and Ecuador to sway to trance music at a farm north of Lusaka during a 10-day eclipse rave. "When something like a solar eclipse happens, vast energies, as far as I'm concerned, are moving around," said James Johnson, a 25-year-old South African at the rave. "The world is moving toward a higher consciousness."
One pilot chartered a jet to fly people from South Africa to the Lusaka airport for an eclipse barbecue. As insurance against bad weather, he filed a contingency flight plan to take his guests above the clouds for the eclipse.
Zambians have been bombarded for months with front-page newspaper editorials, television commercials and special eclipse radio programs warning against looking directly at the sun without protective eyeglasses before it is fully eclipsed.
The eclipse first hit land in Angola around midday, then traveled across Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique before heading out to the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, becoming shorter in duration along the way.
In Zimbabwe, tribal healers warned that the eclipse was a sign the ancestors were unhappy with a country that had abandoned the traditional African values of peace and harmony. As retribution, they would bring further conflict to a country already suffering from political and economic turmoil and the crushing scourge of AIDS.
In Zambia, members of the Ngoni tribe planned to recreate their 1835 crossing of the Zambezi River during their flight from the warriors of the Zulu king Shaka. The original crossing coincided with a total eclipse.
Mozambique has urged reporters, including community radio stations, to explain the science behind the eclipse to its impoverished people so that it "should not cause fear or panic. Because it is a natural and predictable phenomenon, unlikely to cause any material or personal damage."
In Angola, police seized 5,000 pairs of phony protective glasses being sold by street kids after tests showed they would not protect people's eyes from being damaged during the partial phases of the eclipse as claimed.
Though the eclipse was longest in Angola, many tourists shied away from a country still fighting a 25-year-old civil war and opted to come to Zambia instead.
The last total eclipse was in Europe in August 1999. The next one will again hit southern Africa in December 2002.
TITLE: Words Failing the World With Death of Rare Languages
AUTHOR: By Darleen Superville
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Ever hear someone speak Udihe, Eyak or Arikapu?
Odds are you never will. Among the world's 6,800 languages, half to 90 percent could be extinct by the end of the century.
Half of all languages are spoken by fewer than 2,500 people each, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a private organization that monitors global trends.
Languages need at least 100,000 speakers to pass from generation to generation, says UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. War, genocide, fatal natural disasters, government bans and the adoption of more dominant languages, such as Chinese and Russian, also contribute to their demise.
"In some ways it's similar to what threatens species," said Payal Sampat, a Worldwatch researcher who wrote about the topic for the institute's May-June magazine.
The outlook for Udihe, Eyak and Arikapu - spoken in Siberia, Alaska and the Amazon jungle, respectively - is particularly bleak. About 100 people speak Udihe, six speak Arikapu, and Eyak is down to one, Worldwatch says. Marie Smith, 83, of Anchorage, Alaska, says she's the last speaker of Eyak, a claim verified by linguists.
"It's horrible to be alone," Smith, who grew up speaking Eyak in nearby Prince William Sound, said in an interview Monday. "I am the last person that talks in our language."
It's becoming a struggle, too, to find many who can say "thank you" in the Navajo language of the American Indian tribe (ahehee), say "hello" in the Maori language of New Zealand (kia ora) or rattle off the proud Cornish saying: "Me na vyn cows Sawsnak!" (I will not speak English!).
The losses ripple far beyond the affected communities. When a language dies, linguists, anthropologists and others lose rich sources of material for their work documenting a people's history, finding out what they knew and tracking their movements from region to region.
And the world, linguistically speaking, becomes less diverse.
In January, a catastrophic earthquake in western India killed an estimated 30,000 speakers of Kutchi, leaving about 770,000.
Manx, from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, disappeared in 1974 with the death of its last speaker. In 1992, a Turkish farmer's passing marked the end of Ubykh, a language from the Caucasus region with the most consonants on record, 81.
Eight countries account for more than half of all languages. They are, in order, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Mexico, Cameroon, Australia and Brazil.
That languages die isn't new; thousands are believed to have disappeared already. "The distinguishing thing is it's happening at such an alarming rate," said Megan Crowhurst, chairwoman of the Linguistic Society of America's endangered-languages committee.
Linguists believe 3,400 to 6,120 languages could become extinct by 2100, a statistic grimmer than the widely used estimate of about one language death every two weeks.
While a few languages, including Chinese, Greek and Hebrew, are more than 2,000 years old, others are coming back from the dead, so to speak.
In 1983, Hawaiians created the 'Aha Punana Leo organization to reintroduce their native language throughout the state, including its public schools. The language nearly became extinct when the United States banned schools from teaching students in Hawaiian after annexing the then-independent country in 1898.
'Aha Punana Leo, which means "language nest," opened Hawaiian-language immersion preschools in 1984, followed by secondary schools that produced their first graduates, taught entirely in Hawaiian, in 1999.
Some 7,000 to 10,000 Hawaiians currently speak their native tongue, up from fewer than 1,000 in 1983, said Luahiwa Namahoe, the organization's spokesperson.
"We just want Hawaiian back where she belongs," Namahoe explained. "If you can't speak it here, where will you speak it?"
Elsewhere, efforts are under way to revive Cornish, the language of Cornwall, England, which is believed to have died around 1777, as well as ancient Mayan languages in Mexico.
Hebrew evolved in the last century from a written language into Israel's national tongue, spoken by 5 million people. Other initiatives aim to revive Welsh, Navajo, Maori and several languages native to Botswana.
Governments can help by removing bans on languages, and children should be encouraged to speak other languages in addition to their native tongues, said Worldwatch's Sampat, who is fluent in French and Spanish and grew up speaking the Indian languages of Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Kutchi.
TITLE: Iraq: Jets Bombed Soccer Field
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi television claimed on Wednesday that a U.S.-British airstrike killed 23 people during a soccer game, but U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said if there were deaths, they were likely caused by Iraq's own "misdirected ground fire."
The state-run Iraqi News Agency said allied planes attacked Tall Afar, 440 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, the capital. It did not say when, but said the victims were buried on Wednesday. It said 11 other people were injured.
At the Pentagon, officials said Iraqi forces fired several surface-to-air missiles at allied planes on Tuesday, and it appeared that part of at least one of the Iraqi missiles malfunctioned and landed in the soccer field.
Rumsfeld said the planes spotted fire from anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles that did not come "anywhere near our airplanes." The allied planes did not fire in response, he said.
"In the event anyone was killed, it undoubtedly was the result of misdirected ground fire that ended up in a location that was not intended," Rumsfeld said in a brief encounter with reporters. He did not elaborate.
Iraqi television showed children being treated at a hospital who were reportedly injured in the attack. It also quoted an unidentified doctor who treated people at Tall Afar Hospital as saying the attack was on Tuesday.
The television report quoted the doctor as saying four members of one family were killed and some of the injured were in serious condition. "I saw three planes attack the soccer field at 11:30 a.m.," an unidentified man told the station.
An injured child, Amar Hameed, 5, said on television that he was watching the soccer game when a missile fell on the field. He reportedly had burns and fractures.
"America and its ally, Britain, have committed a new, ugly crime that will be added to the record of their heinous crimes against Iraq," the Iraqi News Agency said. "The people of Tall Afar buried today the martyrs amid shouts of anger and condemnation for this crime."
Allied aircraft patrol the zones over southern and northern Iraq, which were established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in the south and Kurds in the north from Saddam Hussein's forces. Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has challenged allied aircraft since December 1998.
In Washington, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said of the Iraqi charges, "There's no substance, nothing at all to those claims."
Major Ed Loomis, public affairs officer for the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, denied such a hit could have come on Tuesday. "We did fly yesterday, conducting routine enforcement of the no-fly zone," Loomis said. "Our aircraft completed their mission without dropping any ordnance and returned safely to their bases. ... The Iraqi allegations are absolutely false."
Britain's Defense Ministry said that American and British planes were fired on by Iraqi ground forces while patrolling Tuesday and Wednesday, but did not respond either day. "This is yet another example of Iraqi propaganda," a ministry statement said. "Saddam regularly claims that we have killed civilians or destroyed civilian infrastructure on days when we have not dropped ordnance - and even when we have not flown patrols over the no-fly zones."
British and American jets enforcing the no-fly zone over northern Iraq are based in Turkey.
A spokesperson for U.S. forces at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, home base for the planes that fly over northern Iraq, denied anything was bombed on Wednesday. "We flew today, but we did not ... drop anything," said Major Scott Vadnais.
The Iraqi television report also showed hundreds of people and government officials attending funerals, with people shouting, "We will protect our leader with our souls" and "America is the enemy of the world's people."
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Berenson To Appeal
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - American Lori Berenson, given a 20-year jail sentence for collaborating with Marxist rebels in Peru, called a recent verdict unjust and pinned her hopes on an appeal to the country's top court.
A civilian court convicted her late Wednesday of being a willing collaborator with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, although not a militant member, and said she should be jailed until Nov. 29, 2015, counting time served.
The 31-year-old New Yorker showed no emotion as the sentence - widely expected to be severe - was read out at the culmination of a marathon all-day final session.
"Convicting her of crimes of terrorism in respect of collaboration against the state, the jail sentence is 20 years, to end on Nov. 29, 2015," the three judges' verdict said. Peru has no jury system. The prosecution had demanded 20 years.
Solstice at Stonehenge
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of druids and new-age tourists converged on Britain's Stonehenge on Thursday to celebrate the summer solstice, reveling in the chance to get close to the ancient standing stones for only the second time since 1984.
Visitors are normally kept well away from the stone circle, but English Heritage, which manages the site in southern England, decided to allow access again after a successful summer solstice last year when 8,000 people attended.
This year, at the peak of the celebration shortly before sunrise, some 12,500 people had gathered there, a spokesperson for Wiltshire police said.
The circle of megaliths is a holy place to the pagan religious order of Druids, who welcome the dawn of the year's longest day with chanting and dancing to pipes and drums. "Their belief system is recent - the ceremony only dates back a couple of centuries,'' an English Heritage spokesperson said. "But the Druids and other pagans see summer solstice as a very important time of the year.''
Land Talks Proposed
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Wednesday that he welcomed a Nigerian proposal to set up a seven-nation mission to mediate an end to the standoff between Zimbabwe and Britain over land.
Mugabe told Zimbabwe television on arrival back home from a visit to Kenya that he hoped the initiative by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo would break the deadlocked relations with Britain.
"I hope it is a new beginning and that the new government in Britain would like to make a fresh start ... our reaction would depend on their reaction,'' he said. Mugabe made his first official comment on the proposal after his trip to Nairobi to discuss land issues with President Daniel arap Moi.
Britain gave a cautious response.
"The U.K. would welcome any initiative which would enable the international community to convey its concerns about the situation in Zimbabwe,'' a Foreign Office spokesperson said.
Price Hike Fuels Protest
AKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police on Thursday fired tear gas to disperse around 200 students protesting against hefty fuel price increases near a gas station in the east of the capital Jakarta.
The price increase over the weekend, by an average of 30 percent, has triggered several protests in major cities.
Witnesses said the students ran to their nearby campus to take shelter when the police moved in. No injuries were reported. Earlier, protesters had burned tires and blocked a major thoroughfare. Bus drivers this week also went on strike after the fuel price rise, forcing local authorities to allow them to increase fares.
Raising fuel prices has always been politically risky in Indonesia, where the majority of people depend on cheap public transport. A hike in 1998 helped hasten the end of former president Suharto's 32-year of authoritarian rule.
Cuba Praises 'Heroes'
HAVANA (AP) - In its first reaction to the conviction of five Cubans for spying, Fidel Castro's government on Wednesday called the men heroes who risked their lives to protect their country from terrorism.
A Miami jury on June 8 found the five men guilty of operating as foreign agents without notifying the U.S. government and of conspiracy. Three face possible life sentences and two up to 10 years in prison.
Cuba's Communist Party daily Granma, in a front-page editorial under the headline "heroic conduct in the entrails of the monster,'' praised the men as heroes.
The government honored the men again on its regular weeknight round-table television program later on Wednesday, showing each of their five faces superimposed over the image of a red, white and blue Cuban flag waving in the wind. The word "INNOCENT'' was stamped at the bottom of the screen.
Program participants offered a detailed account of incidents in Cuba since 1991, including violent incursions into Cuban territory, to demonstrate the country's need to gather information about such planned attacks in order to defend itself.
Published earlier in the day in Granma was also a letter to the American people from the five Cubans, who said their country "has every right to defend itself from its enemies who keep using the U.S. territory to plan, organize and finance terrorist actions.''
"We are just Cuban patriots and it was never our intent to cause any harm to either the values or the integrity of the American people,'' said the front-page letter that carried their signatures.
Three of the five were convicted of espionage conspiracy for efforts to penetrate U.S. military bases even though they received no U.S. secrets.
Taiwan Tests Missiles
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan successfully test-fired three of its U.S.-made Patriot missiles on Wednesday in the first of a battery of trials for the defensive weapon system.
All three Patriot missiles, launched from a military base in south Taiwan's Pingtung county, hit a target missile and aircraft, according to a military official taking part in the tests.
"We are pleased with the result,'' said the official, who declined to be identified.
Political rival China was holding war games on a nearby island, but Taiwanese military officials and analysts have said that the timing of the Patriot test was not related to the Chinese military exercise.
Private cable television stations broadcast some film of the tests, showing exhaust trails from a Patriot and the target missile it was intercepting.
The Ministry of National Defense declined to comment, citing security grounds. While the ministry had earlier confirmed it would hold tests, it declined to give details.
TITLE: Bonds Breaks 2 More Home Run Records
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: San Diego - Barry Bonds is trying to keep his record-breaking home run binge in perspective.
"I'm not chasing anybody," Bonds said after hitting his 38th homer to break two major league records in San Francisco's 8-6 victory at San Diego on Wednesday night. "The season doesn't end in June."
Bonds hit a two-run shot in the eighth inning off reliever Rodney Myers to break a tie withReggie Jackson (1969) and Mark McGwire (1998) for the most homers before the All-Star break.
Bonds also became the quickest to 38, doing it in his team's 71st game. Babe Ruth hit 38 in 88 games in 1928.
"It's all right. We're winning now," Bonds said. "We're playing better baseball. It's a lot more enjoyable when you're winning games."
Calvin Murray had a career-high four hits, including a two-run homer, and scored three runs. He also had a triple and two singles.
In other NL games, Cincinnati beat Milwaukee 11-3; Atlanta defeated Florida 7-2; Philadelphia topped Pittsburgh 9-5; New York edged Montreal 4-3; Houston beat Colorado 7-2; Chicago defeated St. Louis 9-4; and Los Angeles edged Arizona 4-3.
San Diego catcher Ben Davis said Bonds didn't even get his arms fully extended.
"If anyone knows how to pitch to him, let me know," Davis said. It seems like he is so locked in right now, he hits almost anything you throw him."
Bonds has 532 career homers, leaving him two short of tying Jimmie Foxx for 10th in major league history. He also had an RBI groundout and has homered in his last six games against the Padres.
His 59 homers against the Padres are his highest total against any team. It was Bonds' 30th at Qualcomm Stadium, his highest total as a visitor at any stadium.
Giants starter Mark Gardner (3-5) allowed three runs and six hits in 5 1/3 innings for the victory. Kevin Jarvis (3-7) allowed five runs and six hits in 5 1/3 innings.
Cincinnati 11, Milwaukee 3. Jason LaRue hit the first of Cincinnati's four homers as the Reds ended an eight-game losing streak and an awful homestand.
The major leagues' worst home team won at Cinergy Field for the first time in June, finishing a 1-5 homestand that was full of boos and blunders. The Reds got plenty of breaks Wednesday - the Brewers even had third baseman Mark Loretta pitch the eighth.
Will Cunnane (0-3) lost in his first start of the season. Chris Reitsma (4-6) gave up seven hits in 7 1/3 innings.
Atlanta 7, Florida 2. Greg Maddux (7-5) allowed only three hits in seven innings as Atlanta beat Florida.
The Braves snapped a three-game home losing streak and avoided dropping into third place behind the Marlins, whose winning streak ended at five.
A.J. Burnett (5-3) allowed five runs - three earned - and six hits in five innings.
Chicago Cubs 9, St. Louis 4. Sammy Sosa hit two home runs, including a grand slam, as Chicago snapped a 13-game losing streak at St. Louis.
Julian Tavarez (5-4) allowed two runs, eight hits, walked three and struck out five in seven innings for the Cubs, who had not won at Busch Stadium since Oct. 2, 1999.
The loss snapped a five-game winning streak for the Cardinals, who had won eight straight at home and are 5-1 on their 12-game homestand. The Cubs have won six of their last 11.
Los Angeles 4, Arizona 3. Arizona rookie reliever Erik Sabel hit Eric Karros with a pitch with the bases loaded in the ninth to force home the deciding run for Los Angeles.
Hiram Bocachica singled off Sabel (3-1) with one out, then went to third when the right-hander threw a pitch in the dirt that eluded catcher Damian Miller. Sabel then issued intentional walks to Shawn Green and Gary Sheffield to load the bases.
Jeff Shaw (3-2) pitched the ninth for the Dodgers.
TITLE: NBA Player Surrenders On Rape Charges
AUTHOR: By Brian Melley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FRESNO, California - In a telepohone conversation with the mother of 14-year-old girl, Utah Jazz rookie DeShawn Stevenson admitted to having had sex the girl, according to court records.
The 20-year-old Stevenson surrendered to police Tuesday night and was charged with statutory rape. He was released on $5,000 bail.
Stevenson, a backup guard who went directly to the NBA from high school last year, is charged along with former high school teammate DeShawn Anderson, 19. A hearing was set for July 6.
The girl told police the two and another former teammate took her and a 15-year-old girl to a motel June 6 after buying a bottle of brandy.
According to the report, both girls said they got drunk on alcohol served by Stevenson. The 14-year-old said she had consensual sex with Stevenson and later passed out, while the 15-year-old said she had consensual sex with Anderson, the report said. Also in the room at the time was Richard Millsap, a former high school teammate of Stevenson and Anderson, who the 15-year-old said did not participate in the sex.
Everyone left the motel together and the girls were dropped off at the 15-year-old's house. The 14-year-old's mother, who was worried because her daughter was late, found her at her friend's house and picked her up. The mother called police after her daughter told her what had happened.
The mother later confronted Stevenson in a telephone call that was recorded, the police report said, and Stevenson admitted he had sex with the woman's daughter and said Anderson had sex with the other girl. Stevenson also admitted providing the alcohol.
The 14-year-old and her family have known Stevenson and Anderson for four years.
Stevenson faces up to three years in prison if convicted.
Stevenson could not immediately be reached for comment. No one was home at his parents' house where a purple Jazz flag was hanging.
Anderson, who has an unlisted number, also could not be contacted.
At a news conference Wednesday in Salt Lake City, Jazz officials said they didn't know enough about the case to take action. Jazz vice president Kevin O'Connor said nobody in the organization has spoken with Stevenson.
"Should he have been in a position that supposedly he was in? No. Do we know what that position was? No. So to support him or to say he was wrong, I don't want to say either one until we know more," O'Connor said.
Stevenson's agent, Rob Pelinka, would not comment. Stevenson's lawyer in the case, Roger Litman, did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.
Stevenson played in 40 games for the Jazz as a rookie, averaging 2.2 points and 0.7 rebounds. He was placed on the injured list March 2 with tendinitis in his right knee and was reactivated April 11.
This is the second time Stevenson has run into legal trouble in Fresno since he was drafted in the first round by Utah last year, the 23rd pick overall.
On the night he was drafted, he was involved in a brawl at a high school all-star basketball game in neighboring Clovis. Stevenson, who did not play in the June 28 game, said he was jumped by five men after signing autographs. He pleaded innocent to charges of fighting in a public place.
TITLE: U.S. Close to Earning Spot in World Cup
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FOXBORO, Massachusetts - Even the U.S. soccer team seems stunned: At the midpoint of the World Cup qualifying finals, the Americans nearly have a berth clinched.
"We're pretty close to being at the big dance next year," U.S. coach Bruce Arena said following Wednesday night's 2-0 victory over Trinidad and Tobago.
The Americans, looking like the region's dominant team, went ahead just 74 seconds in on a goal by Ante Razov - the fastest U.S. goal in qualifying in at least 12 years - and Earnie Stewart added a goal on a breakaway in the 20th minute.
"Now we can really say one more win will get us in," U.S. captain Claudio Reyna said. "To be at this position at this stage is incredible."
The United States (4-0-1) leads the North and Central American and Caribbean region with 13 points, probably one or two short of the amount needed to qualify for next year's tournament in Japan and South Korea.
Costa Rica (3-1-1) is second with 10 points, followed by Honduras (2-1-2) with eight, Jamaica (1-2-2) with five and Mexico (1-3-1) with four and Trinidad (0-4-1) with one. The top three countries advance to the 32-country field.
"We are real close, but we have to push forward until we're mathematically there," Arena said. "Who knows how many points are needed to qualify [for the World Cup]?"
At this pace, the United States is likely to clinch either on Sept. 1 at Washington against Honduras or on Sept. 5 at Costa Rica.
"You want to qualify as fast as possible. That's the most important thing," said Stewart, who became the American career scoring leader in World Cup qualifying with his seventh goal, one more than Willy Roy scored from 1966 to 1974.
The Americans are unbeaten in nine straight qualifiers since a last-minute loss at Costa Rica last July 23, allowing only one goal over that stretch. They are 14-0-5 in home qualifiers since the Costa Ricans beat them on May 31, 1985, at Torrance, California.
On a night with lightning but no rain, Jeff Agoos created the opening goal with a long, looping pass behind the defense in the second minute. Razov, a former Major League Soccer player who spent last season with a small team in Spain's Second Division, was one-on-one with goalkeeper Clayton Ince and easily beat him with a left-footed shot from 10 meters out.
"Early in the game, they weren't ready for balls over the top, and we surprised them," Agoos said.
It was the fastest U.S. goal in a qualifier since Bruce Murray connected in the third minute against Guatemala at New Britain, Connecticut, on June 17, 1989.
Stewart scored when he stripped the ball from Marcin Andrews and came in alone on Ince and easily beat the beleaguered keeper. The Americans dominated, except for the final 10 minutes of the first half and the first few minutes of the second, outshooting Trinidad 15-8.
Trinidad, which has never advanced to the World Cup, probably must win its five remaining games to qualify.
"The hopes are very slim now," coach Ian Porterfield said. "It's a long shot."
TITLE: Baseball's Iron Man To Retire After Season
AUTHOR: By David Ginsburg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BALTIMORE - Having accomplished everything he set out to do in the game he's always loved, Cal Ripken is ready to try something new.
Eager to spend more time with his children and teach baseball to a new generation, Ripken said Tuesday he will end his 21-year career at the end of this season.
"I don't see this as an ending so much. I'm not stopping something. I'm just moving on," said Ripken, who has played his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles. "The reality is that players can't play forever."
During his lengthy and productive career, Ripken earned a World Series ring, two MVP trophies and the reputation as the most durable player in baseball history.
The announcement came on the 98th anniversary of the birth of the Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees, whose seemingly unbreakable record of playing in 2,130 straight games was shattered by the man who became known as the Iron Man.
The timing was ironic, but perhaps not entirely coincidental.
"Don't think that Cal doesn't plan these things," said bullpen coach Elrod Hendricks, who has been with the Orioles throughout Ripken's career. "Isn't today Lou Gehrig's birthday, or close to it? Is it Yankee Stadium where he will finish his career?"
Yes, it is. After nearly 3,000 games and 12,000 at-bats.
Ripken's final game will be at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 30. The Yankees sold nearly 20,000 tickets for the game on Tuesday, making it a sellout.
Ripken's final home game, scheduled for Sept. 23, is also sold out.
His decision to retire came not because of injuries - he missed parts of the previous two seasons with back problems - but because he wants to spend more time with this family.
"I'm as healthy now as at any time," he said. "The last couple of years I've been noticing that I miss being away from home. I miss my kids' activities and it seems like the passion ... I was getting into other things."
Ripken, 40, has always played the national pasttime with a certain childlike exuberance. But this season, reduced to a part-time player on a team geared toward youth, his approach became more businesslike.
"The one thing I noticed missing this year is that little boy," Hendricks said. "There's always been a little boy in Cal. This year, he's not having much fun. ... That's the part I miss in Cal this year."
Ripken holds the major league record for consecutive games, playing in 2,632 from May 30, 1982, to Sept. 20, 1998, when he voluntarily ended the streak. At the time, Ripken said he chose to sit down because he feared his Iron Man run was a distraction to the Orioles.
Ripken, whose 345 home runs as a shortstop are a major league record, has been forced to share time at third base this season. He's hitting .207 with four homers and 25 RBIs after going 0-for-3 Tuesday night against Toronto.
He is defined by his consecutive-games streak, but Ripken is also one of only seven players in major league history with 3,000 hits (3,107) and 400 home runs (421).
"It's sad for us - we've lost one of our leaders," Orioles second baseman Jerry Hairston said. "Any time you look at the Baltimore Orioles, you associate them with Cal Ripken. ... But it's a positive for him. He's done a lot in this game."
The weeks leading up to his final games could be hectic for Ripken, who had hoped to avoid a farewell tour.
"I think it's nice because everybody around the league will get a chance to appreciate and honor him. He deserves that," said former teammate Rafael Palmeiro, now with the Texas Rangers.
It started Tuesday night, when Ripken received a standing ovation during pregame introductions. He received an even rowdier ovation before his first at-bat, and he cordially tipped his helmet.