SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #791 (56), Friday, August 2, 2002
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TITLE: Yakovlev Backing Birthday Births
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev this week came up with one more idea of how the city's residents might go about preparing for the city's 300th anniversary - making babies.
The countdown to the May 27 event reached 300 days on Wednesday, so Smolny hosted an event at the 300th Anniversary Press Center in Dom Radio on Italyanskaya Ul. to give the media a little peak into what the celebrations promise, as well as to get some feedback from the city's residents.
The feedback came in the form of letters citizens had been asked to deposit in a mailbox on Italiyanskaya Ul. earlier in the summer.
Yakovlev selected two of the letters at the event, drawing them himself from the mailbox, which held about 200 submissions. The first suggestion turned out to be a little more of a stumper than the governor had expected.
"Dear Vladimir Anatolyevich," began the letter from a 31-year-old teacher, who gave her name as Anna Petrovna. "You are our only hope. Please take measures to improve the demographic situation in our city."
Yakovlev's face first went somewhat blank, but shifted to a much more reddish hue as he mulled the suggestion over. When the audience burst into laughter and applause, the governor's embarrassment at the question appeared to grow stronger. Skirting the issue for a moment, Yakovlev opted to move onto the second letter, a request from two people, who signed their names simply as Natasha and Maxim, asking the governor to organize a carnival like that held annually in Rio de Janeiro, a request that didn't garner much more of a response than the first letter.
But, after about an hour of gestation, the governor's solution to Anna Petrovna's demographic worries was delivered to the audience, fully formed.
"We will give an apartment to the family of the first, the 27th and the 300th child born on May 27," the governor said enthusiastically.
While accurate numbers won't be available until the results of a country-wide census scheduled for this fall, the high average age of the city's population and a birthrate that has fallen over the last two decades have led to a drop in the total population of St. Petersburg. The low birthrate will mean that, barring the contest generating truly significant results, the city will not likely have to pay out for the third apartment offered as a prize.
Last year 33,000 births were recorded in the city, Yakovlev himself said at the press conference while introducing his idea. This would work out to an average of about 90 children born per day.
As for the rest of the event, it didn't lose much to the governor's performance in the realm of the unusual and unexpected.
The whole event got off to a less-than-smooth start, as a glitch in the video array on the wall of the center, left Molodozhnoye Theater director and actor Mikhail Chernyak, the master of ceremonies at the event, stuck trying to entertain the audience for about 10 minutes while technicians worked out the difficulty.
With everything finally in order, Chernyak was able to introduce a short video-clip accompanying the song "Druzhishe Piter" ("My Pal Piter"), a song that has been composed specially for the city's anniversary.
The clip featured a few local pop-stars, as well as such typical St. Petersburg images as the poet Pushkin strolling the canals, or less common examples, such as a group of Zenit fans peacefully waving their inflated blue toy clubs at the camera.
After the clip, three short features shot by local television channels, three cartoons that were presented as those that best represented the city, and a slew of announcements concerning cultural competitions in preparation of the Anniversary followed in rapid succession.
Alexander Begak, an amateur pilot who is planning his own anniversary event for next year, was the last to speak, and came close to Yakovlev in the interest his idea generated.
Begak, who built and flies his own micro aircraft, says that he will fly nonstop from St. Petersburg's Palace Square to Moscow's Red Square next year to mark the event.
Begak's plane - really no more than a flying capsule - is little bigger than the standard armchair. The craft, named Skarabey, or beetle, is powered from behind by a single engine and rotor and stays aloft on a wing-shaped parachute.
Begak says that the roughly 650-kilometer flight would break the world record for non-stop distance flown in such an aircraft, and that he was dedicating the whole effort to the anniversary. He says that the project is being backed financially by the city administration and private contributors.
Thursday's event was the first of a number planned to continue the countdown to the big day in May. The city administration will hold similar events 200, 100, and seven days before the city's anniversary, which gives Yakovlev some time to sort through the other suggestions contained in the mailbox before the next meeting. The governor took the box with him, promising that he would read all of the letters inside.
And, as Yakovlev himself pointed out, there was still time for people to take him up on his apartment offer.
"Considering that the celebration takes place in 300 days exactly, there is still a whole month ahead," he said.
TITLE: Skating-Scandal Suspect Arrested
AUTHOR: By Andrew Dampf
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VENICE, Italy - An accused Russian mobster and a French sports official celebrated an alleged figure-skating fix at the Salt Lake Olympics, delighting that Russia took gold, despite the Canadians being "10 times better," according to police wiretaps released on Thursday.
An international investigation into the Russian mafia unexpectedly turned up references to the Olympics and a plot to corrupt judges, police explained on Thursday, a day after arresting alleged mobster Alimzan Tokhtakhounov on U.S. charges of scheming to corrupt Olympic judges.
Tokhtakhounov is accused of persuading a French judge to vote for the Russian pairs team and getting a Russian judge to vote in exchange for the French ice-dancing team, according to a New York criminal complaint. Both teams won gold medals.
Police said Tokhtakhounov held key phone conversations with a French man identified on wiretaps as "Chevalier." Italian authorities believe Chevalier was a member of the French sporting delegation, and that he was in contact with France's Olympic judges.
According to Italian transcripts of wiretaps - which have been translated by police from Russian - Chevalier and Tokhtakhounov spoke after the Russians won gold.
"Everything will go well now because the French, with their vote, have made them champions," Chevalier said, according to the transcript. "It happened, it happened. Even if the Canadians are 10 times better, the French with their vote have given them first place."
Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze won the gold medal by the slimmest of margins in pairs figure skating on Feb. 11, defeating Canada's Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. But French judge Marie-Reine le Gougne said the next day she'd been pressured to vote for the Russians.
The judging flap, the biggest in Olympics history, resulted in a duplicate set of gold medals awarded to the Canadian pairs team.
Le Gougne said in a telephone interview Thursday that she didn't know Tokhtakhounov. "I have no contact with him. I don't understand anything about this affair. This affair doesn't concern me."
She said she never had any contact with any Russian in deciding who to vote for in the pairs competition. "For me, the Russians were the best," she said.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said Thursday he was "appalled" at the alleged involvement of organized crime.
"While we knew from previous investigations that the judgment in the pairs figure skating was not correct, we are shocked to learn of the alleged involvement of organized crime," Rogge said.
A week after the pairs competition, the ice dancing team of Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat won France's first gold in figure skating since 1932.
Chevalier told Tokhtakhounov before the ice-dancing competition: "Be calm, Anissina will win," according to the transcripts.
About a month after the victory, Anissina allegedly called the Russian suspect to thank him, police said.
Other transcribed conversations had the two planning how to put together enough votes from the judges, as well as who were the most threatening skating opponents. Finally, they were recorded celebrating.
"My compliments, my dear friend. Thanks a lot," Tokhtakhounov told Chevalier by phone, the transcripts say. "I'm indebted to you for life."
The suspect also made references to judges, although none were recorded on the tapes and police did not know their identities.
"We have recorded a conversation in which the suspect indicates that six judges may have been involved," police Colonel Giovanni Mainolfi said. "However, we have no specific evidence against these judges at this time."
An official at the French Skating Federation said on condition of anonymity that she was not aware of anyone by the name of Chevalier being part of the delegation to the Olympics.
One French sporting official, Bernard Chevallier - spelled with two l's - insisted that he had no connection to the case. Chevallier, who was president of the French Ski Federation at the time of the Olympics in Salt Lake City, and said he had "no contact with skating" and did not know Tokhtakhounov.
"I have had no contact with these people," he said in a telephone interview.
U.S. investigators said on Wednesday that they had managed to obtain recorded telephone conversations held between Tokhtakhounov and a French ice dancer, in which he brags about being able to influence the outcome of competitions.
The U.S. complaint made clear the case was based on confidential informants and wiretaps. It said wiretaps caught the defendant talking to a female ice dancer's mother, telling her, "We are going to make your daughter an Olympic champion. Even if she falls, we will make sure she is No. 1."
After the Olympics, the female ice dancer called Tokhtakhounov to discuss the outcome, the papers said. She told him she could have won without his help, saying, the Russians "did not put us in first place," the papers said.
Anissina was the ice dancer who won the gold, but the papers didn't identify her as the woman on the phone.
Mainolfi said that the investigation of the Russian mob - an operation carried out with the FBI and Interpol - was ongoing. "We are still investigating about 50 other suspects," he said.
A top Italian organized-crime prosecutor, Pierluigi Vigna, said the Russian mafia has deeply infiltrated Italian and European economies. In June, Italian police along with the FBI and international authorities arrested 50 people in an operation against money laundering by Russian mobsters.
TITLE: Taivanchik Didn't Do It ... or Did He?
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, the alleged Russian crime boss arrested on suspicion of trying to fix Olympics skating competitions, has no influence over Russian sports and could not have fixed the Olympic results, Russian officials said Thursday.
However, a decade of local press reports paint a different picture. He is portrayed as a highflying socialite who has hobnobbed with the likes of Marat Safin, Pavel Bure and even Marina Anissina, the figure skater named in the U.S. criminal complaint.
Tokhtakhounov, who is better known in Russia by his nickname "Taivanchik" ("Little Taiwanese"), given to him for his Asiatic appearance, has also been linked to everything from dubious arms sales to former President Boris Yeltsin's chief bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin's tennis coach, and Lev Chernoi, the metals magnate whom the Interior Ministry has linked to organized crime.
U.S. prosecutors are accusing Tokhtakhounov of being involved in "drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles," according to their complaint filed Wednesday. He could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count if convicted.
Prosecutors said he tried to fix the skating competitions because he hoped to be rewarded a visa to return to France, where he once lived.
However, Italian police said Thursday that he already had French citizenship, as well as Israeli, German and Uzbek passports, AP reported. They described him as a senior member of a Moscow-based crime organization with about 3,000 members.
The U.S. complaint identified Tokhtakhounov as a "major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime."
Leonid Tyagachyov, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee, told TVS television that it "was out of the question" that Tokhtakhounov could have influenced the results in Salt Lake City in February.
Russian Olympic Committee spokesperson Gennady Shvets said Tokhtakhounov has no pull in the committee. "Tyagachyov told me that he knew of Tokhtakhounov, but he never met him," Shvets was quoted as saying. "The president of the [Russian] Ice Skating Federation, Valentin Piseyev, also has never had contact with the man."
Telephone calls to Piseyev's office went unanswered Thursday.
However, Shvets conceded that Tokhtakhounov is no stranger to sports celebrities. He told The Associated Press that Tokhtakhounov often spent time with Russian tennis players. A 1999 photograph on Ukrainian player Andrei Medvedev's Web site pictures him with Medvedev and Russian stars Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov.
Celebrities seem to be a weakness of Tokhtakhounov's, a 53-year-old native of Uzbekistan. Reports about his warm friendship with singers Alla Pugachyova, Iosif Kobzon and Sofia Rotaru are plentiful in the local press.
This is his story as told by local media:
Tokhtakhounov began his career as a professional card player and was twice convicted for petty crimes in the 1970s. In the late 1970s he moved from Uzbekistan to Moscow.
A decade later, Tokhtakhounov left Russia along with a dozen other alleged crime bosses (such as Vyacheslav Ivankov, also known as "Yaponchik", or "Little Japanese", who was convicted in the United States of racketeering in 1997) and formed what the world now calls the Russian mafia, according to organized-crime expert Simon Mag.
Initially, Tokhtakhounov settled in Germany, where he reportedly participated in selling arms to Middle Eastern countries that Russian troops had left behind after withdrawing from Germany
In the early 1990s, Korzhakov, Yeltsin's chief bodyguard and a close confidant, introduced him to Shamil Tarpishchev, Novaya Gazeta reported in 1996, citing Boris Fyodorov, Tarpishchev's successor in the National Sports Fund. The newspaper said Tokhtakhounov and Tarpishchev became business partners.
Tarpishchev, Yeltsin's tennis coach and a former sports minister, now heads the Russian Tennis Federation. The now-defunct National Sports Fund was a major importer of cigarettes and spirits and served as a slush fund for the Yeltsin administration.
Tarpishchev's office did not reply to requests for comment Thursday.
In 1993, Tokhtakhounov moved to Paris, where he quickly earned fame as a generous sponsor of Russian sports, culture and art.
TITLE: Crash Families Pick Top German Lawyer
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A top German aviation lawyer who won a $144-million settlement in the Concorde disaster in 2000, said his team has been selected to represent the Russian families of those who died in a midair collision over southern Germany last month.
Elmar Giemulla, who also advised on the privatization of Aeroflot, said Wednesday that he would seek a settlement of at least $4.9 million - $100,000 for each of the 49 people in the group that chartered the flight to Spain.
"We will represent all of the families involved," he said in a telephone interview.
All 69 people on the Bashkirian Airlines Tu-154 jet died in the July 1 crash, as did the two pilots of a DHL cargo plane. The Tu-154 was taking 44 children of top Bashkir officials and their five adult chaperones for a vacation at a Spanish resort.
Giemulla said his team was picked through a committee established by Bashkir President Murtaza Rakhimov "to close the contract with the families and to conclude a contract with the lawyers, with us."
"Since most of the Bashkiris are working in the state administration, they have no choice but to sign up," he said.
Giemulla said that he would spend Thursday and Friday in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, meeting with the families.
No one in the Bashkir administration was available for comment Thursday.
Giemulla said he would seek a six-figure sum of at least $100,000 in compensation for each victim in a process that could take a year. Individual settlements would probably not grow into the millions of dollars, as seen in U.S. settlements, but should be larger than any previous payouts to Russian air- crash victims, he said.
"We are not speaking about [legal] actions right now, but we are focusing on Skyguide, we are focusing on DHL, we are focusing on the manufacturer of the TCAS [crash avoidance system] instrument, which is Honeywell, an American firm," Giemulla said.
Skyguide, the Swiss air-traffic control agency that was responsible for the two aircraft, and Honeywell did not reply to queries for comment.
DHL spokesperson Chris McCafferty said his company had no comment while the accident was being investigated and had no knowledge of any claims against it. German investigators are not expected to release a report on the crash until next year.
Giemulla said an out-of-court settlement would be sought.
He said he has worked closely with Russia for the past decade and that experience led to his involvement with the crash case.
"I and some colleagues advised the Russian government on the drafting of their Aviation Act and the restructuring of their aviation administration, the privatization of Aeroflot," he said, referring to the Aviation Code.
"Through this work I have a lot of friends and colleagues here in Moscow from the aviation administration, and this is why I was approached by them immediately after the crash to involve myself," he said.
Giemulla works with a high-powered team of lawyers that includes Germany's ex-Interior Minister Gerhart Baum.
TITLE: Investigators Give First Crash Report
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - This week's crash of the Pulkovo Airlines Il-86 jet that killed 14 crew was caused either by a technical flaw or an error by the pilot - but it will take investigators at least a month to determine which - the country's top crash expert said Wednesday.
Rudolf Teimurazov, the chief crash investigator at the Interstate Aviation Committee, said a preliminary investigation had shown that the four-engine Il-86 airliner crashed 42 seconds after lifting off from Sheremetyevo Airport on Sunday because its horizontal stabilizer shifted to an extreme angle.
"That caused a steep ascent which led to a stall," Teimurazov said at a news conference.
Until investigators study the plane's twin flight-parameter recorders and debris from the crash, they won't be able to say whether the stabilizer shifted at the pilot's command or got stuck because of a system failure, Teimurazov said. The cockpit audio recorder was not working at the time of the crash, he added.
Teimurazov said investigators would also talk to witnesses about the crew's last three days before the catastrophe.
The Pulkovo Airlines Il-86 had just brought some 250 passengers from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to Moscow and was returning to its home port, St. Petersburg, with only crew on board when it slammed into woods just off the landing strip. Two flight attendants sitting in the back of the plane survived.
Teimurazov said that two seconds after takeoff the plane's stabilizer shifted from the normal 3 degrees to the extreme 12 degrees, jerking up the plane's nose and causing it to lose the lift on its wings and stall. He said that the plane's four engines were all working normally.
Pilots occasionally move the stabilizer, the horizontal part of the tail, to better balance the plane, but they normally control the pitch with the elevator - smaller surfaces located on the stabilizer's edge, Teimurazov said.
When the nose started going up, the pilot thrust the stick forward to bring it down using the elevator, but could not compensate for the bigger stabilizer pushing it up. At the low altitude of 600 meters, the stall was fatal, Teimurazov said.
Teimurazov said he could not imagine what technical flaw might have caused the stabilizer to stick, since the plane's control system has multiple backup motors and electric wires. Officials are checking stabilizers on all Russia's 72 Il-86s but have not banned their flights.
The plane was built in 1983 and had flown 18,370 hours, a normal amount, Teimurazov said.
The Il-86 was considered the world's most reliable jetliner, with no fatal crashes until Sunday.
TITLE: How To Reduce Crime Risk: Rent the Police
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Salman Sagidov, a 52-year-old Muscovite living in a posh building near Belorusskaya metro, made the same mistake for the umpteenth time: Having come home from his dacha Sunday evening, he forgot to phone in his password. Three minutes later, he stood with his face pressed to the wall, hands behind his head, the barrel of a Kalashnikov assault rifle poking into his ribs.
The police officers, who checked Sagidov's documents and invited his neighbors to verify his identity before leaving, were dispatched by the Interior Ministry's guard service after Sagidov - who hired the guards himself some 20 years ago - failed to give the "all clear" signal after tripping his alarm system.
Sagidov, who was fined 48 rubles ($1.50) for the false alarm, was not a bit dissapointed.
"I have nothing against such zeal in protecting my property," he said. "This is what I pay the police for."
Despite public outcries over the corruption and inefficiency plaguing Russia's police force, there is one sure-fire way to get decent service from the cops: Just hire them directly.
The police guard service, or vnevedomstvennaya okhrana, is the largest force within the Interior Ministry and its officers are true rent-a-cops. About 150,000 officers and 220,000 civilian employees get nothing from the state budget, the head of the service, Major General Vadim Savichev, told reporters recently. Instead, the service personnel earn their living by protecting 1.2 million apartments and 400,000 companies and organizations, both private and state-run, countrywide.
"It is a unique service with no analogues in Western countries, where the security business belongs entirely to private companies," Savichev said. "In Russia, we have the largest market share with our 10 percent."
Founded in 1952 under Josef Stalin to protect so-called socialist property - from railroad cargo and pipelines to museums and government buildings - the agency was allowed in the mid-1960s to expand its activity to installing alarms, monitoring homes and offices and standing sentry outside entryways, all for a modest fee.
Savichev insists that it is the service's low prices and reliability that attract customers, saying his officers foil 99.8 percent of burglary attempts on their turf, with 15,000 burglars detained in 2001.
But private security firms complain that the guard service has an unfair advantage because it inherited extensive alarm networks from Soviet times and enjoys more powers than private companies.
"Police officers don't have to spend money expanding their networks," lamented Pavel Stepura, a spokesperson for major private security firm Sheriff. "Private companies, to develop their own systems of electronic monitoring, have to demand higher fees from their clients and cannot compete with the cheaper police guards."
President Vladimir Putin recently helped level the playing field by doubling the salaries of Interior Ministry personnel as of July, thereby nudging up the guard service's prices.
But Stepura said security guards from private companies are also handicapped in that they have no right to detain intruders and must call the police to do this, so clients often prefer to hire police officers directly.
In Moscow alone, the guard service has 16,000 officers and 38,000 civilian employees who monitor 200,000 apartments and 22,000 building entrances, Savichev said.
Aside from chasing burglars, the police guards have gained some notoriety in the violent commercial disputes that became a fixture of Russian business in the past decade.
Earlier this month, in one of the most high-profile cases in the recent past, police guards hired by Mikhail Gutseriyev, the ousted head of Slavneft, barricaded the disputed oil company's offices to keep the new management at bay.
Alexei Donskikh, deputy chief the service, said guards often find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place: "If we withdraw the guards and then some damage gets done to the client's property, he can sue us."
However, in order to reduce the likelihood of such clashes, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov last November banned the service from guarding any company involved in ownership disputes or similar legal feuds. Officers who breach the order in favor of one of the conflicting parties can be severely punished, Donskikh added, without elaborating.
"Now, when signing a contract with a company, we specify that we will suspend our service until the company's owners settle their problems in court," Donskikh said.
TITLE: Polish Plane in Airfield Mix
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Polish passenger plane arriving in Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad mistakenly landed Tuesday at a military airfield instead of the local civilian airport, according to news reports.
The plane, operated by Poland's Lot Airlines, landed at a Russian military airfield in the village of Chkalovsk, a few kilometers away from its intended destination of Khrabovo civilian airport, ITAR-Tass news agency reported. There were 41 passengers aboard, Interfax news agency said.
The plane did not have prior permission to land at the military airfield, ITAR-Tass said. The landing wasn't caused by any technical problems with the plane, but because the pilots thought that the military airfield - which hasn't recently been used - was the international part of the civilian airport, Interfax said.
TITLE: Chechen Aid Started Late, Says Report
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The government started sending funds to reconstruct Chechnya five months late, according to a report by the State Construction Committee.
The report, a copy of which was reviewed by The St. Petersburg Times, said the first of the 3 billion rubles ($96 million) earmarked in the 2002 federal budget for the program to restore Chechnya's economy and social sphere was only released in May-June.
Anatoly Popov, director of the committee's office in Chechnya, presented the report Tuesday to the Cabinet's commission on Chechnya.
Although the funds were late in coming, they were released earlier than last year. Reconstruction money in 2001 was signed off on in February and only released in September. Revenues were then cut off at year's end before being completely dispersed.
Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko told reporters Tuesday before the closed-door commission meeting that steps must be taken to boost the effectiveness of the restoration program.
"The implementation of the program in the first half of 2002 looks better than last year, but I would not say that it is satisfactory," he said.
Vladimir Yelagin, the federal minister overseeing Chechnya, said 17 percent of the program was fulfilled by midyear, Interfax reported.
In March, Popov said his office, which provides work for more than 25,000 people in Chechnya, had not yet received a single kopek of the 3 billion rubles approved for 2002. He said about 40 percent of last year's 2.6 billion rubles ($82.6 million) had also never been dispersed. He also said he owed his workers almost 500 million rubles ($15.9 million) and many of them had quit over wage arrears.
After funds started trickling in after the five-month delay, the construction committee got back to work repairing homes and water pipes. Popov told reporters Tuesday that 450 houses and seven apartment blocks have been repaired so far this year.
The construction committee aims to fix up 2,560 houses by the end of the year.
TITLE: Witness: I Lied for Budanov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A key witness in the case of Yury Budanov, the army colonel on trial for killing an 18-year-old Chechen woman, said in an interview published Wednesday that he had lied to investigators to help his commander.
Alexander Yegorov, a soldier under Budanov's command, told investigators in late 2000 that he had repeatedly rammed a shovel handle into the groin area of the dead body of Elza Kungayeva after she had been abducted and strangled by Budanov near her family home in Chechnya.
Yegorov's testimony led to the dismissal of initial rape charges against Budanov, although one of three contradictory forensic examinations showed that Kungayeva had been raped and sodomized before her death.
In an interview in Wednesday's Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Yegorov said that a military prosecutor investigating the case instructed him to take the blame for mutilating Kungayeva's body in order to shield a "good commander." Yegorov was amnestied before his case reached court, the newspaper said. Budanov has been on trial since February 2001. He is currently at Moscow's Serbsky Institute awaiting a fourth psychiatric evaluation.
Abdulla Khamzayev, a lawyer for Kungayeva's family, said Wednesday that Yegorov's statement shows that the pre-trial investigation was incomplete. He added that the publication might help force a new probe.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Mr. Popular
MOSCOW (SPT) - The popularity of Russian President Vladimir Putin remains high, with 73 percent of those questioned in a recent survey giving a positive evaluation of his work and only 20 percent disapproving, Interfax reported Thursday.
The research was carried out between July 26 and July 29 by the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, which questioned 1600 Russian citizens.
The survey also revealed that 43 percent of Russians approve of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's performance, while 38 percent of those asked are not satisfied.
Birthday Parties
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A delegation headed by St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev will visit Lithuania to take part in the 750th-anniversary celebrations of the town of Klaipeda.
As well as participating in the celebrations, the group will meet with Algirdas Brazauskas, the prime minister of Lithuania, and the mayors of Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaypede, Interfax reported.
The parties will discuss issues such as air links between St. Petersburg and Klaypeda and the development of the ports of St. Petersburg and Klaypeda ports for cargo and passenger loads.
The delegation will also be discussing Lithuanian participation in the coming celebrations of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg.
Georgia Row Simmers
VLADIKAVKAZ, Southern Russia (AP) - The military said Thursday that it was completing the hunt for Chechen rebels on the border with Georgia, while Moscow kept the pressure on its neighbor to let Russian troops conduct a military operation to root out rebels taking refuge on Georgian territory.
Federal troops were searching the mountains in southern Chechnya for rebels who had allegedly crossed over from Georgia on Saturday. Officials said the fighting claimed the lives of eight border guards, and about half of 60 invading rebels. Georgia has said it was unaware of a rebel incursion from its territory.
Federation Council member Mikhail Margelov derided what he called the Georgian government's "impotence" in dealing with Chechen rebels on its territory. He said Thursday that lawmakers would eagerly approve a military action against rebels in Georgia if necessary, Interfax reported.
Georgia has dismissed the Kremlin's demands for a military action on its soil and said it was counting on the United States to train its military for action against militants in the Pankisi Gorge.
Order 80 To Change
MOSCOW (SPT) - Military and human rights officials are ironing out new regulations that would stop federal troops from entering private homes when conducting mopping-up operations in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, the republic's recently appointed presidential envoy for human rights, told Interfax on Thursday.
Sultygov said he and several top military officials met Thursday and discussed a draft amendment to the controversial Order 80, which was introduced last spring to rein in the notorious searches in Chechnya, but has been widely flouted by troops. The amendment stipulates that federal troops would only surround a village, while searches for rebels within the village would be done by local police, prosecutors and other law-enforcement officials.
TITLE: IKEA Opens First Local Production Plant
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Swedwood, an international division of the IKEA furniture retail and manufacturing concern, opened its first manufacturing plant in Russia on Tuesday, in the town of Tikhvin in the Leningrad Oblast, 200 kilometers southeast of St. Petersburg.
The plant plans to process 150,000 cubic meters of timber per year and produce 30,000 cubic meters of furniture components for IKEA factories located in Sweden and central Europe, with further plans for the manufacturing of furniture for the international retail giant.
Swedwood has invested $15 million in the factory and hopes to invest another $10 million, Bruno Winborg, Swedwood Chairperson said. He added that the company had also built a 110-kilowatt electric power station, which should provide enough energy for the factory's planned expansion.
At present, 200 people are already working at the Swedwood plant and the company intends to employ another 200 by the end of the year, Clas Bostrom, the general director of the plant, said at its opening ceremony.
The component production will use pine timber, as well as aspen and birch. "Swedwood-Tikhvin will also carry out felling on rented areas, while guaranteeing forest restoration," Bostrom said.
Leningrad Oblast administration spokesperson Valentin Sidorin said in an interview on Tuesday that the new factory was highly innovative. "Until now, no timber-processing company in the Leningrad Oblast has used aspen and birch. They haven't been in demand here until now," he said. He also said that chippings and other production wastes would be exported for reuse as fuel.
According to an official company statement, the plant will begin the production of finished furniture goods, such as small IKEA tables, by the end of 2002.
At present, IKEA owns two stores in the Moscow Oblast and 173 shops are working with the firm in Russia under franchising deals, Irina Vanenkova, a spokesperson for IKEA Russia, said at the opening. "Our plans include building four stores in Moscow and one or two stores in St. Petersburg by 2003 or 2004", she added.
"Since the 1970s, we have been working with the Priozersk Timber-Processing Plant as one of our major suppliers. Now we've built our own plant, but we also intend to carry on working with Priozersk," Vanenkova said.
In a statement issued at the factory opening, Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyukov said that "Two-thirds of the Leningrad Oblast is covered in forest, so timber-processing is one of our major industries. However, until recently, the bulk of the timber was exported as a raw material. Now, the share of processed timber and even finished products is slowly growing."
According to Peterburgkomststat, a local government body that compiles statistics for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, production in timber-cutting, lumber and paper-mill industries went up by 4.6 percent in the first six months of 2002. In December 2001, the Elitel-Les company opened a plant producing lumber in the Volkhov district and two timber factories are currently being built in the towns of Syasstroy and Ust-Luga.
"We are trying to create a complete cycle for timber usage [in the Oblast], running from cutting to complex processing," Serdyukov said.
TITLE: Russian Newspaper Sets Net Precedent
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The national daily newspaper Kommersant made headlines this week by becoming the first Russian company to win back the rights to its dot.com domain name (www.kommersant.com).
The decision was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization, one of 16 specialized United Nations agencies that administers international treaties dealing with intellectual-property protection.
Of the 55 Russian companies that have been in domain-name disputes reviewed by WIPO, Kommersant is the only one to be a plaintiff, WIPO said on its Web site.
In its own report Wednesday, Kommersant wrote that it owned the rights to Kommersant.com between 1996 and 2000, when, "due to technical reasons," the paper failed to re-register the URL.
Nobody could be reached for comment at the newspaper Wednesday.
According to WIPO, an American named Stanley Tobiason registered Kommersant.com through an Australian company called Melbourne IT Ltd. The cyber squatter then offered to sell it to Kommersant for $5,000, the newspaper said. On June 6, after negotiations with Tobiason failed, Kommersant appealed to the WIPO arbitration and mediation center.
According to ICANN, the international body that governs Web addresses, there are three main criteria for revoking the right of use in a domain dispute: if the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by the plaintiff; if the defendant does not have a legitimate interest in the domain; and if the domain is not registered or if it is being used in bad faith.
Russian-language search engine Yandex, which is owned by Cyprus-based Yandex Technologies Ltd., won a similar case earlier this year.
In March, WIPO's arbitration and mediation center ruled that Moscow-based law firm Arbitrazhsudpravo, which had registered www.yandex.com, had no right to it. Previously, Arbitrazhsudpravo offered to sell the domain to Yandex twice.
Yandex's chief editor, Yelena Kolmanovskaya, said that Russia needs a body similar to WIPO to resolve dot.ru conflicts.
A common problem, she said, is when companies try to take advantage of frequent keyboard slips by registering domain names that are similar to well established sites. For example, she said, typing www.ayndex.ru will redirect the user to the homepage of travel agency RVB-Alean.
Yandex's top competitor, Rambler, has also had problems with the dot.com version of its popular dot.ru address. Rambler.com is a "Russia directory page" offering Russian women for marriage.
And the dot.com version of Kommersant's main competitor, business daily Vedomosti, is actually a site called Searchport.
Both Web sites offer contact details to those parties that are interested in acquiring the rights to the domain names in question.
TITLE: If War Is Certain, What About the Outcome?
AUTHOR: By Graham T. Allison
TEXT: AS preparation for war against Iraq intensifies, the time has come to pause and consider the view from Baghdad. Conclusions from such an exercise are not comforting. But to strike without thinking seriously about how Saddam Hussein could respond would be irresponsible.
Recent leaks of Pentagon plans reflect growing realism. Advocates' earlier claims about easy military options have given way to seriousness about a military campaign that could require 250,000 U.S. troops. As the chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard Myers stated pointedly: "You just can't overlay Afghanistan ... onto Iraq, and I would never refer to it as a cakewalk."
U.S. Congressional leaders from both parties now call on the administration of President George W. Bush to explain to Americans how it proposes to end Hussein's regime, at what costs in U.S. blood and treasure and at what risk.
Husseins's opening diplomatic gambits have been deft: settling outstanding territorial disputes with Kuwait; winning Arab League support for the proposition that an attack on Iraq constitutes an attack on all Arab states; dangling lucrative contracts before Russia and France; spooking Saudi Arabia so thoroughly that U.S. planners are now developing a war plan without use of Saudi bases.
As the United States has sought to enlist essential support in the region, the array of roadblocks and distractions expands. The list includes more than a dozen attempted terrorist assaults since Sept. 11; a sharp increase in suicide bombings in the second Palestinian intifada; terrorist attacks that have pushed India and Pakistan to the nuclear brink; and the collapse of the government of Turkey's prime minister, Bulent Ecevit. Given Husseins's modus operandi, which has included an attempt to assassinate the first President George Bush in 1993 and payment of $25,000 awards to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, we should expect him to continue fueling fires that could stand between the United States and war on Iraq.
Beyond diplomacy and distraction lies the murkier realm of deterrence, including a credible threat of massive retaliation. The most unrecognized, uncomfortable, but brute, fact is that Hussein already has weapons of mass destruction. The final report of UN inspectors in 1999 concluded that Iraq possesses significant stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. A recently circulated CIA analysis puts Iraq's anthrax supply at 10,000 liters.
In the first Gulf War, Hussein's forces loaded chemical and biological warheads on Scud and other launchers capable of reaching U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel. In that war, the United States effectively deterred Hussein from using his weapons of mass destruction by threatening unlimited retaliation that would destroy his regime.
But what about this time? The announced objective of the impending campaign is to eliminate Hussein and his regime. Having announced one's intention to destroy an enemy and everything he holds dear, how can one then deter him from a Samson moment? As President George W. Bush rightly noted: "A nightmare scenario would be if a terrorist organization such as al-Qaida were to link up with a barbaric regime such as Iraq and thereby, in essence, possess weapons of mass destruction." But the course of action Bush has chosen is increasing Hussein's incentive to take just such an action.
Hussein has aircraft and missiles capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons against U.S. troops, bases and allies. Moreover, he has watched Osama bin Laden take a page out of a Tom Clancy thriller, using jumbo jets as guided missiles to assault America.
Imagine, God forbid, that, as the United States builds up an invasion force in the Persian Gulf, Hussein sends a secret letter to Bush informing him that he has placed biological weapons in New York, Washington and several other U.S. cities. Where would the confrontation go from there?
Before choosing war, the administration has an obligation to make the case that the proposed military campaign to topple Hussein really is the worst possible option - except for all the others.
Graham T. Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
By Thomas L. Friedman
READING the papers lately, I've lost track of whether the Pentagon plans to invade Iraq from three sides or four, and whether the United States will be using Jordan, Kuwait or Diego Garcia as its launching pad. One thing I haven't seen much planning for is the impact an attack on Iraq would have on the world oil market. Depending on how the war went, that impact could be very bad and lead to a spike in oil prices, like $60 a barrel. But it could also be very good, and lead to $6-a-barrel oil that would weaken OPEC and, maybe, weaken the Arab autocrats who depend on oil prices to finance their regimes and buy off opponents.
The oil question is not an argument against deposing Hussein. It is an argument, though, for thinking through all the dimensions of any attack on Iraq. We're not talking about Tora Bora here. We're talking about a war in the world's main gas station. "A proposed attack on Iraq is an extraordinarily high-risk economic adventure that could either destabilize the governments of one or more oil exporting countries by creating a prolonged period of low prices, or, if things went wrong, lead to a prolonged disruption of world oil supplies, which could be even more devastating," says Philip Verleger Jr., an oil expert and fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Let's start with the $60-a-barrel scenario. While the Pentagon keeps leaking its war plans, no one ever writes about what Hussein's war plans might be. What if Hussein responds by firing Scuds with chemical or biological warheads at other oilfields? The world market could lose not only Iraq's 2 million barrels a day, but millions more. And what if the war drags on and the United States has as much trouble finding Hussein as it's had finding Osama bin Laden? If prices skyrocket because of a war in the Persian Gulf, Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria and others will cut back their output and keep prices high to milk the moment for all it's worth.
The scenario that could produce $6-a-barrel oil goes like this: Iraq under Hussein has been pumping up to 2 million bpd, under the UN oil-for-food program. Let's say a U.S. invasion works and in short order Hussein is ousted and replaced by an Iraqi Thomas Jefferson, or just a "nice" general ready to abandon Iraq's nuclear-weapons program and rejoin the family of nations.
That would mean Iraq would be able to modernize all its oilfields, attract foreign investment and ramp up its oil production to its long-sought capacity of 5 million bpd. That is at least 3 million barrels a day more on the world market, and Iraq, which will be desperate for cash to rebuild, is not likely to restrain itself. (Now you understand why Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait all have an economic interest in Hussein staying in power and Iraq remaining a pariah state.)
In addition, notes Verleger, if the U.S. invades Iraq in the late winter or spring, when world oil demand normally declines, OPEC countries will have to slash their production even more to accommodate Iraq. This would come when non-OPEC countries (Russia, Mexico, Norway, Oman and Angola) have been boosting their output and will continue doing so. Most OPEC countries, however, can't cut back any more to make room for them. Venezuela is broke. Iran, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia need cash to deal with all their debts, massive unemployment and new infrastructure demands.
Bottom line: A quick victory that brings Iraq fully back into the oil market could lead to a sharp fall in oil incomes throughout OPEC that could seriously weaken the oil cartel and rob its many autocratic regimes of the income they need to maintain their closed political systems. In fact, give me sustained $10-a-barrel oil and I'll give you revolutions from Iran to Saudi Arabia, and throw in Venezuela.
If that scenario prevails, you could look at an invasion of Iraq as a possible two-for-one sale: Destroy Hussein and destabilize OPEC at the same time. Buy one, get one free. But you better prepare for the consequences of both.
Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times, where this comment first appeared.
TITLE: More Saber Rattling Is Not the Solution
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: LAST Sunday, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov visited Kaliningrad, the main base of the Baltic Fleet, and told journalists that the situation in the Baltic region may destabilize when the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania join NATO and the European Union.
Ivanov announced that Moscow would continue to maintain a strong naval presence in the Baltic Sea, and that the fleet will continue to control the Baltic Sea and defend Kaliningrad from outside attacks. There will be no further cuts in the Baltic Fleet and new ships will be provided to keep it battle-ready.
Moscow is at loggerheads with the EU about visa requirements for Kaliningrad-based citizens traveling through Lithuania to the Russian mainland. It's possible that Ivanov's belligerent rhetoric about the totally peaceful Baltic Sea again becoming a possible theater of confrontation was an ill-advised attempt to add some military muscle to the debate. But no one is planning any attack on Kaliningrad, and the rusty old Baltic Fleet does not strengthen Moscow's bargaining hand.
In fact, this untimely belligerence may backfire.
For several years Russia has been arguing that the status of ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia should be improved before those countries are allowed to join NATO and the EU. The West partially agreed, especially since there was no visible threat coming from Russia.
Now Moscow is clearly putting political pressure on Lithuania to allow a visa-free corridor for Russian citizens through its territory and is threatening possible military or economic sanctions. The result will surely be the acceleration of the formal accession of the Baltic states into Western institutions to give them additional security guarantees, and Russian influence in the region will further decrease.
Today, more than 10 years after the end of the Cold War, Russia still has a fleet that - on paper - is second only to the mighty U.S. Navy. But the battle-readiness of the force is very low, especially its non-nuclear capabilities.
Russia has only one aircraft carrier - the Kuznetsov. But the last time the Kuznetsov air wing flew from its deck was in 1998, when the ship traveled to the Mediterranean. Another voyage of a big Russian naval task force into the Mediterranean, led by the Kuznetsov, was planned for the fall of 2000, but the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine led to the cancellation of the operation. (Many Russian naval officers still believe that the United States and NATO deliberately sunk the Kursk to prevent a strong Russian fleet from going south. It's also believed that the appearance of this flotilla near the Balkans in late 2000 would have somehow saved the Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia from collapse.)
The Kuznetsov was used during the Kursk salvage operation as a stop-off spot for helicopters, but its air wing stayed on terra firma. Now the Kuznetsov is in a shipyard for repairs and will not sail until 2004. Due to a lack of funds and apparently serious problems with the Kuznetsov's main engines, it's possible it will never do much sailing again.
Russia's best carrier pilot, General Timur Apakidze, plunged to the ground in his naval air force Su-33 at an air show near Pskov a year ago and died from his injuries. Apakidze was the first Russian pilot to take off and land on deck. Most experts agree his death was the result of too little flight practice.
This summer Ukraine allowed the Kuznetsov's air wing to use the aircraft-carrier simulator airfield that the Soviets built in Crimea to do some simulated landings and takeoffs. But with no real sea practice for several years and no prospect of any in the immediate future, it's safe to say that Russia's naval air capability is zero.
It would seem pragmatic for our defense establishment to concentrate its limited resources on having at least one operational aircraft carrier group to fly the flag worldwide, if it is serious in its talk of preserving Russia as a naval power of any significance. Instead, resources are being spread thinly in a futile attempt to keep all former Soviet naval holdings alive, including the Baltic Fleet.
The military is stubbornly retaining a Soviet defense posture against all odds. This senseless doggedness is today in itself one of the main reasons for the further decline of Russia's international status and obviously contradicts President Vladimir Putin's stated pro-Western policies.
However, the Kremlin seems incapable or unwilling to put this to rights.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
TITLE: campanology at the fortress
AUTHOR: by Anastasia Boreiko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ring out the bells!
The first ever International Carillon Festival at the Peter and Paul Fortress starts on Friday, attracting musicians from Russia and abroad to give a series of concerts on the fortress' recently repaired carillon.
A carillon is a set of bells that can be played by one or more musicians, via a system of levers that connect the bells to a set of keys and pedals down below. Carillons date back as far as the 14th century, when the first ones appeared at the top of towers and in chapels in Holland, Belgium and northern France.
This area, the cradle of carillon playing, is inextricably linked to the instrument in the Peter and Paul Fortress, as the restoration was carried out by Jo Haazen, of the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen, Belgium, with the support of the administration of Flanders. Haazen is one of four carillon players from the low countries who will be performing at the festival.
The instrument at the Peter and Paul fortress is an immensely complex system of cranks and levers, playing 51 bells that cover a range of four octaves, but Haazen's compatriot, Tom van Peer, made playing such a monster sound simple at a preview concert on Wednesday afternoon. The performance was largely improvised and was incredible to watch, as van Peer switched position countless times to hit the complex set of keys.
At a press-conference afterward, van Peer explained that the fortress' carillon is special because the bells produce long, resonating sounds, as opposed to carillons in his native country, which produce much shorter, less resonant sounds. As he said, "You play more romantically and feel more romantic than in other towers."
The word carillon is an alternation of the Old French word quarregnon, meaning a set of four, and probably has its roots in the fact that carillons originally consisted of four bells connected to a tower's clock. The system, which made the first strikes of large clock towers, is similar to the system still in use in Moscow's Kremlin.
The first carillon in Russia was built at the behest of Peter I, who heard carillons in Brussels and ordered one to be built in St. Petersburg in 1720. This instrument, however, which came from Holland, was destroyed by lightning in 1756.
In 1757, an attempt was made to replace the carillon, but the project failed and the instrument was only put in place in 1756. The bells rang out for 51 years until when, in 1827, they were so worn that they were not in a proper condition to be used further.
After that, the carillon was silent until 1991, when Haazen took up the challenge of restoring the bells. Upon examining the bells, however, it was decided that restoring the originals was impossible, as they had been almost completely destroyed.
Haazen first suggested restoring the carillon in 1996, and it was largely due to his enthusiasm that 353 sponsors were found for the $350,000 project.
"This project occupied my mind literally day and night," he said in an interview last September, before giving the first concert on the restored instrument. "But this is really the kind of thing that you do only once in your life. I am happy to see the dream is coming true."
Entering the building that today houses the only working carillon in Russia creates an almost tangible historical atmosphere. The cabin from which the musicians play the carillon - necessary because of the nearly deafening noise that the bells make when heard up close - nestles among the narrow staircases leading up to the top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. From here, the musician can send out over the fortress and the city the magical, evocative sounds that captivate the audience.
The carillon concerts are not the only musical events happening at the Peter and Paul Fortress. The Russian Horn Cappella - a collection of uniquely Russian instruments that resemble didgeridoos and can play only one note each - will keep the audience entertained in the intervals of the carillon concerts and, in addition, the Male Choir of St. Petersburg is giving concerts of Russian Orthodox church music and Russian folk music every Friday at 7 p.m.
The First International Carillon Festival runs at the Peter and Paul Fortress until July 10. Concerts start at 8 p.m. Tickets can be bought at the door. Call 232-9454 for more information.
TITLE: uncovering the real mexico
AUTHOR: by Gyulyara Sadykh-zade and Katerina Fedorova
TEXT: To the average European, Mexico is a country steeped in mystery. This perception is shaped by works such as Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished film "Mexican Fantasy" and popular, pseudo-scientific books such as "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge," by Carlos Casteneda. Influential above all, however, are standard Hollywood myths about magical indian powers, with images of natives turning into eagles and coyotes whenever they take a break from communing with the spirits of earth, wind and fire.
There is much of deep interest, therefore, to be found at the State Hermitage Museum's recently opened exhibition "Journey to the Land of the Gods," which confronts these stereotypes with the alien remnants of a long-departed civilization from a distant continent.
The exhibition brings together more than 270 artifacts from Mesoamerica, an area that covers most of Mexico and central America. It contains works in ceramics, stone and gold, taken from the cultures of more than 10 peoples, and spanning a period from the second millennium BC to 1521, when Hernan Cortes' exhibition conquered the area for Spain..
Eisenstein's film is also included in the exhibition. Although the film remained unfinished when Eisenstein died, it was released in 1998, in a version edited by St. Petersburg director Oleg Kovalyov.
Rather than group the artifacts by era, nation or region, the exhibition is divided into sections such as "Gods," "Rituals," "Sacrifices," "Ball Games," "Flora and Fauna," "Music," Masks," "Rulers," "Society." This arrangement serves to illuminate some of the kinships between the different Mesoamerican cultures.
The exhibition is accompanied by music by Antonio Zepeta that was originally recorded as the sountrack for the film "Return to Aztecas." Zepeda was at the forefront of a revival of interest in ancient Mexican instruments and sounds in the 1960s, and the recording uses a combination of Mesoamerican and ethnic Mexican instruments that simulate noises from nature, such as birdsong and the sounds of wind and water.
The instruments used are themselves genuine archaeological pieces from the area, the most ancient of which date back 3,000 years. Later items include whistles that reproduce the sounds of birds, as well as drums that produce a wide variety of ingenious noises with great precision. In the mix can be heard colorful morning birdsong, a wind blowing in the night, and the terrifying sounds of the pre-Hispanic underworld. The effect is to recreate the spirit of ancient Mesoamerican music, and Zapeda's soundtrack is a meditation on the tangible and mystical sides of the universe.
The exhibition reveals this ancient America as an immensely broad and varied culture. The objects in the exhibition include terracotta figures of humans and gods, stone carvings of territorial marking posts, gigantic heads of rulers, crockery depicting plant images and masks that are overwhelming in their intricacy, artistic inventiveness and detail. The objects culled from religious use- such as ritual knives, incense-burners, receptacles for blood and flayed skin - bear witness to the brutal social life of the peoples, an existence that was regimented by bloody rituals. For example, the Aztecs feared their all-mighty deities, who were held to influence the fate of all, so much that, during an annual spring rite, they skinned young men alive to present the skin to Xipe Totec - "Our Lord who is Flayed" - for him to clothe himself. Images of Xipe Totec, including the statue in the Hermitage's exhibition, are covered from neck to ankle in bubbles representing fat, illustrating his lack of skin.
The indians also believed that the spirits of the gods lived in these images, making, in essence, the image and the original one and the same thing. In this sense, then, the artifacts at the exhibition are not "art," as they were made for religious reasons, as physical manifestations of spirits. It is perhaps for this reason that the exhibits on display are so powerfully suggestive. An extraordinary power is given off, for instance, by an incense-burner that depicts a god of war. It is almost as if the gods have not left their material homes, though over a thousand years have passed since their creation and the civilizations that created them have long since passed away.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The alternative-rock club Poligon is to move from Lesnoi Prospect to the fourth location in the club's eight-year history. The club has previously been in Kupchino, on the Petrograd Side, and by Obvodny Kanal.
The club's all-night farewell concert on Thursday, which featured more than a dozen acts, was also held to celebrate the club's anniversary. Watch this space for news about the next location.
The summer rave season ends this Saturday with an open-air party at the Alexandrovsky Fort in the Gulf of Finland. Pompously called Ultimate Dance Trip Fort 2002, it is headlined by U.S. DJ Lenny Fontana; Carl Kennedy, Marco V. and Natasha, from the Netherlands; and the U.K.'s Luke Brancaccio.
Organized by Moscow promoters, the event has been advertised aggressively in local media as the "most fashionable and unmatched open-air rave." The event's Moscow origin is reflected in the ticket price, which is a whopping 1,500 rubles ($47.62)
In reality, the St. Petersburg scene - which actually started the rave movement in Russia - has a whole string of more innovative events that lay a stress on music and arts. The local scene tends to frown upon the openly commercial nature of this week's event and the expensive tickets.
For instance, the house club Par.spb claims that its party on a beach by the Gulf of Finland this Saturday, could be a healthy - and free - alternative to the open-air event. After the party, Par.spb, which opened last September, goes on vacation, having hosted eight months of house parties, art-film screenings and occasional concerts.
The club's closing party, Body and Soul, will be held at the Prichal restaurant in Komarovo, 50 kilometers or so down Vyborgskoye Shosse. The usual suspects - including DJs Strong, Lovesky, Primat, Sahaj, Raf and Banderas - will be operating turntables on two dance floors. Par.spb will reopen on Aug. 30.
Other clubs are continuing to have difficulties with filling up both their schedules and their venues, with many bands and large chunks of the city's gig-going public having left the city, and the lack of promising live action this week is indicative of this state of affairs.
One possible exception is an unlikely new project from famed local "new-music" trumpet player Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky, who now performs occasional concerts in cooperation with a bunch of DJs. The next such concert will take place at Fish Fabrique on Thursday.
Gaivoronsky was born in 1949 and has played with different bands since the mid-1960s. His best-known band was probably the Leningrad Duo - also known as Volkov and Gaivoronsky - the duet that he founded in 1978 with double-bassist Vladimir Volkov.
Incidentally, Fish Fabrique has introduced a new system intended to keep out any late-night riff-raff the club doesn't want around. Any visitor now coming to the club after a concert has finished has to pay 50 rubles for a paper check, which can then be exchanged for drinks up to the same value at the bar.
"It's small filter to prevent bums from hanging out here," explains the club's owner, Pavel Zaporozhtsev. "It's was introduced when people from [nearby bar] Cynic started to come here at nights, and also some shops selling alcohol have opened nearby. At least the money remains [at the club], otherwise some drunk with a cup of tea just sits here all night long."
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: comfort for the cheap
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Strapped for cash and in search of one of the myriad business-lunch deals that seems to be cropping up around town, the Astoria Club, an attachment on Malaya Morskaya Ul. to the Hotel d'Angleterre, is perhaps not the first place we would have tried our luck. Nevertheless, the sign on the door promised a business lunch "from 100 rubles," and it's precisely this kind of cunning marketing approach that our crack team of cheapskate restaurant reviewers falls for every time.
Once inside, the setting seems even more bizarre. To be fair, it will make a lot more sense come the winter, but, as you sit in the club's windowless interior, you may find yourself wishing that you were outside in the blazing sunshine, enjoying a meal at a street-side cafe or on one of the city's embankments. The club is spacious and airy, however, and you are not entirely overwhelmed by the sensation that you should be out in the open, catching some rays.
Decked out in red crushed velvet and brass-lamp fittings, and with a dance floor that's more accustomed to playing host to cabaret and "exotic" shows, the place has a quirky, 1960s London charm to it. If it wasn't for the quiet Tina Turner and Elton John muzak - how many other places have you heard a lounge-style version of Catatonia's "Mulder and Scully?" - playing in the background, you could imagine Lord Lucan finishing a brandy and cigar in these plush, richly upholstered surroundings, shortly before offing his nanny and disappearing into the night.
We were on rather more familiar territory with the business menu, however, which offered a fairly limited range of reasonably priced Russian and European starters, soups, main courses and desserts, almost all of them standards available at many of the city's cheaper eateries. Feasibly, you could eat for 100 rubles here, but you're far more likely to part with at least a couple of hundred-ruble notes.
My dining partner, only marginally less of a cheapskate than myself, lashed out on a radish salad entree at 50 rubles ($1.58) as well as an Ukha Rostovskaya fish soup (60 rubles, $1.90). The salad avoided the local pitfall of swimming in an oily sea of mayonnaise and was deemed a success, though the weak ukha would be unlikely to have you boarding the next train for Rostov. My solyanka (also 60 rubles) was tasty, but could have been thicker and lacked the lemony tang for which the dish is adored.
For his main course, my companion headed for the salmon with tartar sauce for 110 rubles ($3.49), while I sampled the "natural catlet of chiken filett in crackers" [sic], mistranslated into the Russian as shnitzel po-ministersky (also 110 rubles). In fact, far from ministerial, it turned out to be a straight schnitzel, light, succulent and crunchy and not at all bad, complimented by some plain but excellent rice (10 rubles, $0.32). The salmon was also pronounced a hit and mouth-wateringly tender, though the tartar sauce was suspiciously pink and smacked of thousand-island dressing.
We finished with "almond fancy cake" (50 rubles, $1.58) and "ice-cream with whipped cream" (also 50 rubles), the vanilla ice-cream deliciously creamy, even without the extra whipped cream, and the cake fresh and tasty, although perhaps best suited to the very sweet-toothed.
Astoria Club. Hotel d'Angleterre, St. Isaac's Square (entrance from Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa). Business lunch, weekdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Menu in English and Russian. Credit cards accepted. Business lunch for two without alcohol: 630 rubles ($20).
TITLE: a triumphant new turandot
AUTHOR: By Gyulyara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The plans for the Mariinsky Theater's new production of Puccini's last opera, "Turandot," which premiered last week, only materialized very late in the theater's season, and the production seems to have been a spontaneous decision. It is also unclear why the theater decided to put the opera on: Maybe the Mariinsky wanted to get the jump on Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, which premieres its new "Turandot" at the beginning of September; or, perhaps, Mariinsky Artistic Director Valery Gergiev remembered that he has to conduct the opera at the Salzburg Festival in August and realized he needed the extra practice.
Whatever the reason, a French team was flown in from Marseilles to stage the production. The team, including the director, Charles Roubaud, set-designer Isabelle Partiot-Pieri, and costume designer Katia Denise Duflot worked painstakingly for 1 1/2 months, with four casts of performers. They seemed to have worked not out of fear of getting it wrong, but with genuine, unhurried desire to get it right - another aspect of the production that is perhaps atypical of the usual process of staging an opera. In addition, the costumes were completed just three days before the premiere.
The hard work paid off. Some exceptional professionals have worked on the production, and the result is a triumph: for Puccini's music, for the singers, the orchestra and, primarily, for Gergiev. The premiere set the audience's hearts racing and laid hold of their emotions.
The original text eerily interweaves death and love, although it recounts the story in down-to-earth tones. Puccini's pathetic, passionate music takes it onto a new plane of brutality and horrifying confrontation, through the medium of bloody executions and the rages of the sadistic princess with a perverse imagination that feeds on the torments of others and the shedding of blood. Without this music and Gergiev's orgiastic interpretation of the score, the production's imagery, for all its elegance and aptness, could have seemed predictable and traditional, if not merely illustrative.
From Puccini's score, however, Gergiev extracts something of an altogether higher order. The expressive sounds, the deep basses, in which one can almost hear the echoes of a bottomless well, the cleverly calculated drama of the prolonged pauses, the precise, accurate articulation, the charged rhythm, the heated emotions and the astonishing, fiery climax all blend into a frenetic hymn to artistic realism in its purest, perfected expression.
The production also benefits from an extraordinary selection of soloists. Vladimir Glazulin, as Prince Calaf, sings as though giving the last performance of his life. His tenor is developing traces of a baritone, and this reaps rich rewards when coupled with his solid technical background. Irina Gordei, who takes the lead in most of the theater's dramatic repertoire at the moment, was in fine form, and the title role suits her voice well. Irma Gigolashvili, as Liu, also acquitted herself well, with a tender coloratura and subtle filigreed higher notes. And the delirious, tongue-twisting, machinegun-like singing of the comically pot-bellied court ministers Ping, Pang and Pong, in their blue gowns and pointy hats with bobbles, was a jaw-dropping oral stunt performed by Andrei Smekhov, Alexander Timchenko and Oleg Balashov.
In contrast to the performances, the set and directing were restrained, with a red-and-blue backdrop, unobtrusive oriental patterns, a hanging gallery-balcony and a circle that alternatively turned and tilted as the centerpiece. Partiot-Pieri created the impression of the interior of a Pekinese imperial palace with great success.
Director Roubaud did not set any unfeasibly clever goals, eschewing any hyper-intellectual, coded messages and pretentious concepts, concentrating, instead, on choreographing the lead parts and extras inventively, but with sound logic and without stepping outside the stylistic framework of the oriental tale of a hard-hearted princess dooming her suitors.
Everything seems to be in its rightful place, and the effect is both aurally and visually pleasing. A blue canvas shimmers behind the ministers' backs as they complain of a life of peace in a house with a small blue pond; yellow and red lotuses flower on stage, formed from the knees and elbows of groups of six choral singers; the ministers play out a simple, pentatonic melody on the round heads of extras, as if hitting the bars of a xylophone; bloodthirsty executioners in red turbans whirl in a frenzied circle, eagerly anticipating the pain of a new victim, a handsome Persian prince who has failed to answer the Princess's fateful riddle; maidens with elongated foreheads appear from puffs of smoke, sailing round the stage in semi-transparent white tunics. The mob is restless, falling back or crowding into the circle of the opera's main events.
The premiere hinted at a simple truth: Even the most faithful reproduction of a composer's intentions is dead if it doesn't have energy, gripping action and an individual interpretation that can blend seamlessly with the original. This was just such an interpretation, warm and full-blooded. The audience was not slow to express its appreciation at the premiere - the uproarious celebration of gratitude will ring loud in the ears of those present for a long time.
TITLE: a medieval black sabbath?
AUTHOR: By Michael Tarm
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TALLINN, Estonia - An Estonian record company has released an album of Black Sabbath songs played by a quintet specializing in music from the Middle Ages and singing in the main literary language of that era - Latin.
"If you take away the massive wall of sound from many Sabbath songs, what you have is pure 14th century music," producer Mihkel Raud claimed last week. "Really."
The 12-track album - called "Sabbatum," Latin for "sabbath" - includes "Wheels of Confusion" ("Rotae Confusionis") and "War Pigs" ("Verres Militares") in slow, minimalist versions that wouldn't seem out of place at mass in the Sistine Chapel.
"We went at it with the fantasy that these songs in Latin were actually the original versions, and that Black Sabbath found and used them," Raud said. "Usually ... albums try to add modernity to known music. We did it in reverse."
The 33-year-old producer has loved the hard rock group's music since the 1970s when the Baltic Sea coast nation of 1.4 million was still a Soviet republic and Ozzy Osbourne - lead singer and now star of the MTV reality show "The Osbournes," which airs at 6 p.m. Saturdays and 10 p.m. Sundays on Russian MTV - was notorious for performance antics like biting the head off a bat.
Raud thinks he's onto something big with an album of contemplative music - whispering harps, gently-tapped frame drums - that appeals, he hopes, to classical tastes as well as to headbangers.
"There are 100,000 potential buyers: Sabbath and classical fans," he said.
Some 1,200 CDs have been sold, mainly to U.S. buyers via the Internet since the album was released in March, Raud said. He considers any sales over 10,000 a big success for his tiny, two-year-old Beg the Bug Records.
Raud wooed the music group Rondellus, whose three previous albums were of mainstream religious music, to arrange and record the Black Sabbath tunes. He described ensemble members as "open-minded" and "enthusiastic," though he decided not to ask them to record Black Sabbath songs referring directly to the devil.
"I felt that asking them to sing, 'My name is Lucifer, please take my hand' would have been too much," he said.
Music publishers who owned the rights to Black Sabbath songs granted permission for them to be recorded by Raud, he said.
"People said we were crazy, sure," he said. "But that's part of the beauty of the thing."
Links: www.sabbatum.com
TITLE: go east, life is vibrant there
AUTHOR: By Avery Johnson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Upon arriving in Vladivostok, in Russia's Far East, the first thing you'll notice is the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, but the city's ubiquitous maritime imagery comes a close second. Everywhere you will encounter anchors, ships and monuments to the Pacific Fleet, which - rather like the ocean itself - pound away at your consciousness until you get the point: Water is very important in Vladivostok.
In a largely landlocked country, Vladivostok is an anomaly, and this sense of separation makes it a fascinating place to visit, with plenty of aquatic attractions for tourists, from seafood restaurants to summer sporting events. But the city is also reinventing itself as a fast-moving Asian trading center, with a thriving nightlife to match.
Vladivostok's ocean climate has often been compared to that of San Francisco, with winters and summers that are mild by Russian standards, frequent rain and fog that rolls in fairly regularly every afternoon around four o'clock. Like San Francisco, Vladivostok is also situated on a hill overlooking a peninsula, on the left side of which is the port, with its forest of ships' masts, and on the right of which are bathers and beer stalls.
The subtleties of Vladivostok's urban planning and the nooks and crannies of its architecture seem to evoke the sea, too: Small carved waves lap across building facades, statues of maritime traders watch benevolently from rooftops and raised anchors on the streets' iron railings remind visitors that hard months at sea are never far off for many residents.
For naval history buffs, Vladivostok offers a rare chance to stroll among working military ships. For a major military base, Vladivostok's port is remarkably accessible, especially considering that the city was closed to foreigners until 1991 to shield the same navy that is now prominently displayed.
Today, the port is thronged by a mixture of freight, fishing boats and ferries, and there is so little regulation that it is hard to tell where the civilian vessels end and the naval base begins. Visitors are welcome to wander around and photograph the ships, and a few enterprising crab and beer shacks have popped up on the way to provide more diversions.
Vladivostok's museums are less involving than the living history unfolding daily on the docks, but they are worth an afternoon of exploration.
Particularly interesting is the Museum of the Pacific Fleet at 14 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa. Although its literature and guides sometimes fails to distinguish between Pacific Fleet history and general Soviet military history, the museum contains fascinating photographs and maps of the World War II Pacific front and a unique exhibit and lifelike panorama honoring the Far Eastern border guards. Also covering that Pacific campaign is the Submarine Museum, housed in a World War II-era sub on Korabelnaya Naberezhnaya Ulitsa.
Wining and dining in Vladivostok is also dominated by watery themes, and the seafood is first-rate. Head down to the fish market on Ulitsa Admirala Fokina, where you can purchase cooked shrimp and the delicious, sweet crab for a song. The food is best enjoyed with a beer in the picnic areas adjacent to the market, or on a bench near the massive Poseidon fountain just up the hill.
The fish market overlooks the recreational part of the waterfront, where locals sunbathe and boats from the Vladivostok Yacht Club pack the harbor and compete in regattas. In the ramshackle back lots bordering the bay, teenagers play volleyball regardless of cement patches and chain link.
But Vladivostok isn't all lazy strolls by the seaside. Since 1991, city officials have tried to forge a new identity for Vladivostok as a free-wheeling Asiatic trading center. You can see evidence of this in the many Japanese cars on the streets, the amount of English speakers in the city and in the building boom that has resulted in the city's skyline becoming crowded with cranes.
As night falls, this side of the city's character becomes dominant. Unlike most towns outside St. Petersburg, nothing closes early in Vladivostok. It is a port after all, and sailors at dock expect a good time, which Vladivostok offers in abundance. Even at night, however, the city does not entirely trade its nautical feel for faceless modernity. In the Amursky-Zaliv hotel's bar and disco, for example, the walls are decorated by ship's ropes and the MC-DJ team dress like pirates, although none of the locals on the dance floor or at the crowded bar seem to notice these kitsch touches.
While Vladivostok might finally be letting its hair down, however, the long period in which it was closed off has meant that it is only just beginning to develop an infrastructure for tourism. The positive side of this is that you can walk unrestricted among the ships at port and meet city residents over cheap crab legs. One of the drawbacks is that even high room rates in your hotel do not guarantee working water. Even with such shortages, Vladivostok seems a world away from the rest of Russia.
Where to Stay
The Hotel Vladivostok (10 Ulitsa Naberezhnaya. Tel. 4232-22-22-08) has cleaned up its reputation as an Intourist holdover with a recent makeover that left about half the rooms a bit rough around the edges and half renovated Western-style. Some rooms have a great view of the Amursky Gulf. Singles cost $35 per night, doubles $50 per night.
For those on a tighter budget, the Hotel Moryak (14 Partizansky Prospect. Tel. 25-38-15) offers single rooms in a turn-of-the-century building for $10 per night.
Where to Eat
To purchase fresh, cheap seafood, visit the fish market on Ulitsa Admirala Fokina, or, for a meal, try Nostalgia on Ulitsa Pervaya Morskaya, a charming restaurant with a cafe that serves breakfasts of bliny with honey and jam, overstuffed omelets and real coffee. If you prefer Japanese to Russian cuisine, try Eden (at 29 Ulitsa Pushkinskaya) for standard rolls, sashimi and tempura.
How to Get There
There are no direct trains from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, so go down to Moscow, from where a one-way ticket to Vladivostok costs about $130. The Rossiya train leaves from Yaroslavl Station every other day and arrives in Vladivostok 6 1/2 days later.
Pulkovo Airlines flights leave on Monday and Wednesday. A ticket costs about $300 one-way. Tickets can also be booked through Pulkovo for flights on Khabarovsk-based carrier Dalavia every Friday. Pulkovo's office is at 4 1-aya Krasnoarmeiskaya Ul. Tel.: 303-9268.
TITLE: dancing all the way to new york
AUTHOR: by Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Kirov Ballet - the name under which the ballet company of the Mariinsky Theater tours abroad - is now back in St. Petersburg and, with regular performances beginning again in its home theater, probably has little time to reflect upon its two-week season at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, one of the world's most high-profile venues.
The U.S. press, however, was, on the whole, enthusiastic about the fortnight's productions, the first time that the company has visited New York since 1999. In the New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff summed up: "The Kirov Ballet has closed its by and large successful season as part of the Lincoln Center Festival 2002 ... ."
The season opened on July 8, with the company's new production of Marius Petipa's famous work "La Bayadere," based on his 1900 version. This production is a reconstruction of Petipa's original steps by Sergei Vikharev, one of the company's young balletmasters, who has won awards for his choreography, and premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on May 31 on the opening night of the theater's "Stars of the White Nights" festival.
Reviews in New York were mixed, although Robert Greskovic, in the Wall Street Journal, praised "a glorious restoration from the Kirov. From now on, no production of this classical ballet about life in Hindu India can afford to ignore the verities of this staging ... the Kirov's team, overseen by company head Makharbek Vaziev and director Sergei Vikharev, deserves great credit for reclaiming the work's intentions."
Robert Johnson, the dance critic of The Star-Ledger, also applauded the Mariinsky's worthwhile research in the historical reconstruction of "La Bayadere" and another 19th-century classic "The Sleeping Beauty," which opened its last New York season. "This effort has profound implications for ballet companies everywhere and, once more, places the Kirov in a position of world leadership," he wrote.
The impressive second-night cast of "La Bayadere" was led by the luminous star Diana Vishnyova alongside Andrian Fadeyev. (The opening night's leading pair was Svetlana Zakharova and Igor Kolb.) As the doomed temple dancer, Nikiya, Vishnyova danced lyrically with a ravishing beauty. She was finely complemented by Elvira Tarasova as Gamzatti, Nikiya's rival for the love of the warrior, Solor.
The rediscovered final act, which depicts the destruction of the Rajah's palace, was eye-opening. The production restores the pas d'action to its rightful place in this act, instead of in the second act, as it was in the previous, Soviet production by Vakhtang Chabukiani and Vladimir Ponomaryov in 1941.
Nikiya's continuous intrusion into the wedding ceremony of Solor and Gamzatti was dramatically apt. The "Dance of the Lotus Blossoms" was pleasing, although it would have seemed more appropriate had it been danced by students of St. Petersburg's Vaganova Academy, instead of by U.S. students, even if they had been chosen from an open audition.
Other revelations in this visually opulent production included Nikiya's first appearance, playing a lute in a side window in Act 1, and the rocky landscape setting for the fabled "Shades" scene in Act 3, which the Mariinsky's corps de ballet still dances perfectly.
The company also treated New York audiences to two other 19th-century classics: "Swan Lake," in Konstantin Sergeyev's 1950 production; and the first New York performances of "Don Quixote." In the first of these, Zakharova was beautifully expressive as the White Swan, a role danced superbly in another cast by Sofia Gumerova. Both Zakharova and Gumerova were strongly partnered by Danila Korsuntsev, who danced on a heroic scale.
The most satisfying of the three casts for "Don Quixote" - arguably the finest production in existence of the ballet - was the youngest, and reinforced the impression that the Mariinsky is able to produce an endless stream of young talent.
This cast, which danced the matinee on July 17, was led by Irina Golub and Anton Korsakov, who are both just 22. Golub's Kitri was exhilarating, and her dancing had freshness, delicacy and finesse. In that evening's production, the young classical stylist Andrian Fadeyev was splendid as the hero, Basilio. The depth of talent available to the company is quite awesome, and its dancers seem to be of a different breed, superior to those of other companies.
Other highlights of "Don Quixote" were the vibrant character dances in which the Mariinsky dancers, notably Galina Rakhmanova and Islom Baimuradov, remain unsurpassed. Of the supporting roles, Natalya Sologub was sublime as the Queen of the Dryads, and danced her solo impeccably. Andrei Merkuriev was a handsome, highly charming Espada.
The season ended, fittingly, with "Jewels", a 1967 masterpiece by the Mariinsky alumnus George Balanchine, the 20th century's greatest choreographer, who was a co-founder of New York City Ballet. The ballet, which was first staged at the Mariinsky in 1999 by four balletmasters sent to St. Petersburg by the Balanchine Trust, demonstrated to New York's Balanchine lovers how well the Mariinsky has now mastered the choreographer's style.
The Mariinsky's first New York performance of "Jewels," on July 18, was a momentous occasion. Among the luminaries in the audience were Barbara Horgan, the Balanchine Trust's general director, and Irina Dvorovenko, a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater.
The company's version of the opening section, "Emeralds," raised some eyebrows, as it omitted the plaintive coda that Balanchine added in 1976. Veronika Part, who is soon to join the American Ballet theater, was voluptuous as the second ballerina, with her luscious arms. In the pas de trois, Anton Korsakov's dancing was bright and crisp, and his high, airy jumps were as light as a feather. The radiant Diana Vishnyova was simply sensational in "Rubies," dancing every step with such fine nuances that Balanchine's masterly choreography might have been originally created for her.
In the final section, "Diamonds," Balanchine's tribute to imperial Russia, Zakharova was transcendent in the lead female role. Is there another major company today that can field two such distinguished ballerinas of differing temperaments as Vishnyova and Zakharova? The corps de ballet danced nobly, at the end of its strength. It was a truly glorious performance, and a real Balanchine experience, that lifted the spirits, even surpassing the Mariinsky's previous outstanding performances of this ballet in its London seasons of the past two years. At the end, the excited audience gave the company loud standing ovations.
Robert Gottlieb in the New York Observer looked back on a season of "interesting productions, first-rate dancers, and the fascination of watching a major ballet company reinvent itself." Gottlieb was also curious to figure out the company's true identity from its large repertoire and the many dancers who did not come to New York. In the end, he concluded, "We'll never know, unless we spend a season or two in St. Petersburg."
Kevin Ng contributes to the American publications "Dance Magazine" and "Ballet Review."
TITLE: Lethal Mining Tragedy Strikes in Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Marina Sysoeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV - An underground explosion tore through a coal mine Wednesday night in Ukraine, killing at least 19 miners in the latest in an extensive series of disasters that have hit the country's mining industry.
Two miners were still missing after the explosion, which occurred 1,067 meters underground, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Dozens of rescue teams converged at the scene at the Zasiadko mine in Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, the ministry said.
It wasn't immediately known what caused the blast, which was the latest in a series of accidents to have taken place at mines in Ukraine which are believed by many to be the most dangerous in the world with about 3,700 miners killed since 1991. Critics blame the dangers on a lack of funds to modernize equipment and negligence toward safety regulations.
On July 7, 35 coal workers were killed in a mine fire - the deadliest mine accident this year in Ukraine. On July 21, a methane blast killed six miners and injured 18. In another scare this weekend, 34 miners were trapped by an underground fire but were brought to safety.
At the Zasiadko mine, 55 workers were killed by a methane gas explosion in August 2001 and 50 miners were killed in a May 1999 accident.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukraine's work safety agency suspended operations in 43 mines for violations of safety regulations in the wake of the recent accidents.
TITLE: State Attack Alleged by Sudanese Rebels
AUTHOR: By Andrew England
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya - Sudanese rebels claimed Wednesday that government troops using bombers and helicopter gunships attacked areas of a town in Sudan's oil-producing Western Upper Nile Province.
The rebels claimed that 1,000 people were killed in and around the town of Yalbor, but the figure couldn't be confirmed independently. It also came too late for the government to respond, but authorities have denied similar reports in the past.
The Sudan People's Liberation Army - which is fighting a 19-year-old civil war with the government - had also claimed on Tuesday that another 1,000 people were killed during fighting that began Friday in the nearby town of Tiam.
Ghazi Salah Eddin Attabani, the Sudanese government's peace adviser, denied in a statement that 1,000 people were killed in Tiam. He also denied that government soldiers were targeting civilians.
The death toll, if accurate, would be among the largest in such a short time since the latest conflict in Africa's largest country broke out in 1983.
SPLA spokesperson Samson Kwaje did not explain how the SPLA knew how many people were killed, since the towns were now in government hands. He said, however, that the gunships and bombers had targeted and fired on groups of people in and around Yalbor on Tuesday and Wednesday. He said that the victims had fled to Yalbor in order to escape fighting elsewhere.
Other people died when they were forced into a river, Kwaje said in a satellite telephone from an undisclosed location in southern Sudan.
Attabani, the government's peace adviser, said that the latest military skirmishes that had taken place were part of operations "aimed at securing military and civilian areas, such as areas of oil production."
Attabani said that the operations were also part of pre-emptive operations to defuse rebel threats to military and civilian bases in the area.
The fighting comes 10 days after a breakthrough in talks to end the conflict, which broke out when rebels seeking autonomy for the largely animist and Christian south took up arms against the Muslim-dominated northern government after the adoption of Islamic law, or sharia.
Under the framework for peace talks, signed July 20 in Kenya, the government of President Omar el-Bashir made an agreement that the constitution would be rewritten to ensure that sharia would only be applied in the north. It would not be applied to non-Muslims in the south.
The rebels and international human rights groups have accused the government of forcing tens of thousands of people to flee areas in and around the oil fields of Western Upper Nile province - a charge the government denies.
Most of the country's oil reserves lie along a line that divides the north from the south.
At least 2 million people have died, mainly through war-induced famine, and another 4 million have been displaced in the conflict.
TITLE: Pope Gives Saintly Status to First Indian
AUTHOR: By Victor Simpson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MEXICO CITY - As feathered Aztec dancers and Catholic clergy moved through an incense-filled basilica, Pope John Paul II canonized the first Indian saint in the Americas on Wednesday, using the ceremony to urge Mexicans to help its large indigenous Indian population.
More than one million believers cheered and wept in the streets outside as the pope described Juan Diego a catalyst in the conversion of millions of Indians to Christianity.
The frail, 82-year-old pope, nearing the end of an 11-day pilgrimage that began in Canada, looked weary during the three-hour canonization Mass, often stuttering but speaking in a reasonably firm voice.
Although some question whether the 16th-century Juan Diego actually existed, John Paul stressed his importance as a man who helped the worlds of Spain's conquistadors and Mexico's native peoples come together. But the pope made clear that the indigenous people - 10 percent of the population - have been let down by Mexican society.
"Mexico needs its indigenous peoples and these people need Mexico," John Paul declared, setting an agenda for his church, which is battling inroads among Indians by evangelical Protestants.
Inside the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, dancers dressed in feathered Aztec costumes shook rattles and blew into conch shells as the image of the new saint was carried to the altar. Priests read from the Bible in Spanish and in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.
"Christ's message, through his mother, took up the central elements of indigenous culture, purified them and gave them the definitive sense of salvation," John Paul said, his face reddening after a series of open-air Masses.
"He facilitated the fruitful meeting of two worlds and became the catalyst for a new Mexican identity," he said.
Following up on remarks Tuesday in Guatemala, the pontiff appealed for better treatment for indigenous peoples in the Americas. He asked Mexicans to help create "greater justice and solidarity" for all, and to "support the indigenous peoples in their legitimate aspirations, respecting and defending the authentic values of each ethnic group."
The pope, who suffers from symptoms of Parkinson's disease and hip and knee problems, slumped in a gilded chair placed near Juan Diego's cloak, straining to raise his head before speaking.
During the pope's drive back from the basilica, a teenager fired a BB gun at a police officer guarding the route. The officer was hit, but not seriously hurt, and the youth was arrested, according to Federal Preventative Police spokesperson Oscar Hernandez. He said the pope was not in the vicinity when the shot was fired.
John Paul heads back to Rome Thursday but will be on the road again soon, making a four-day trip to his native Poland starting Aug. 16.
President Vicente Fox, criticized by some for kissing the pope's ring when he arrived Tuesday evening, also attended the canonization, the first time a Mexican president has attended a papal Mass.
Later Wednesday, Fox went to the papal nuncio's residence in Mexico City for a brief private meeting with the pope. They discussed poverty, migration and Indian rights, Mexico's most pressing issues.
Mexico only recently repealed what for decades were some of the world's strictest anti-religion laws, designed to rein in a church that for centuries ruled as part of the colonial power structure, owned much of the country's land and allied itself with foreign invaders and domestic dictators.
Only 22,000 people fit into the basilica, and earlier plans for a Mass that would accommodate up to 5 million people were canceled. So most people had to be content with catching a glimpse of John Paul as he passed by on the street in his popemobile.
Faithful hordes climbed trees, hung from balconies and perched on rooftops to get a view of the pope, who waved through armored glass that was partially lowered to give the crowds a better view.
"Our faith is great, so we want to see him close up," said Juventino Carrillo of San Jose, California, a 54-year-old cook at Stanford University.
Mexicans have a special affection for John Paul, who chose their country for the first foreign trip of his papacy and has returned for the fifth time on what many expect will be one of his last. The pope repeatedly expressed his delight to be back in Mexico, where in 1979 he strummed a guitar with mariachis and donned a sombrero at a bullfighting ring.
Juan Diego was an Indian born before Europeans arrived in the New World. According to church tradition, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in 1531, leaving an olive-skinned image of herself on his cloak and helping drive the conversion of millions of Indians throughout the Americas.
Debate has intensified in recent months over Juan Diego, who some believe never existed. Several Mexican priests unsuccessfully petitioned the Vatican to delay the canonization because of the doubts.
But the vast majority of Mexicans tie their national identity to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and to the man to whom she appeared.
"This is the first pope to recognize an indian, a humble indian," said Maria Dominguez, a 48-year-old lawyer among the faithful lining the streets.
TITLE: Riot Squads Called In For Venezuelan Trial
AUTHOR: By Fabioloa Sanchez
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela - Police used tear gas and fired shots into the air Wednesday to break up fights outside Venezuela's Supreme Court, which is deciding whether four military officers should be tried for rebellion.
At least five people were injured, and several were arrested. Scuffles between supporters of President Hugo Chavez and riot police spread to streets surrounding the court building in downtown Caracas.
Several dozen "Chavistas" overturned a truck and started a small fire. About 300 motorcycle police prevented that crowd from approaching the court.
Clashes also occurred Tuesday outside the court, where the military officers are accused of rebellion during a coup that ran from April 12 to April 14 and briefly ousted Chavez.
The Supreme Court voted 12-8 on Wednesday to reject a draft order by one magistrate that would have had the four officers face trial, said Carlos Bastidas, a lawyer for the defendants.
The court appointed another magistrate to draft another ruling within five days, Bastidas said. The officers welcomed the decision as a sign that the Supreme Court was planning to rule in their favor.
"For now, steps toward justice are being taken," said navy Vice Admiral Hector Ramirez Perez. "We'll have to wait for the final decision."
Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez, however, insisted that the new magistrate may simply use different arguments to order a trial.
Besides Perez, the other accused officers are Rear Admiral Daniel Comisso Urdaneta, army General Efrain Vasquez and air force General Pedro Pereira.
Chavez supporters have tried to attack the four, along with retired officers and civilian supporters. If convicted, the officers could face up to 30 years in prison.
Retired Rear Admiral Rafael Clavier, a Chavez opponent, angrily appealed for citizens Wednesday to protest and give their support to the accused officers.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Risks of Iraq Invasion
WASHINGTON (NYT) - In the first public hearings on the administration's goal of ousting Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi presidency, an array of experts warned a Senate committee on Wednesday that an invasion of Iraq would carry significant risks, ranging from more terrorist attacks against American targets to higher oil prices.
The witnesses - including former senior military officers and nongovernment experts on Iraq - expressed confidence that American forces would prevail in an invasion. But they said it would be a difficult fight, requiring a major commitment of troops and the support of many allies.
The experts said said that the military would need to deploy tens of thousands of ground troops as well as many aircraft, ships and armored vehicles to ensure victory. And the administration should plan on keeping forces in Iraq for many years to help rebuild it, the experts added.
Report on Massacre
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A long-awaited UN report rejects Palestinian claims that Israeli forces carried out a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp, but it criticizes both sides for putting civilian lives at risk, Western diplomats said.
The report, released on Thursday, was prepared by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the request of the General Assembly.
The violence in Jenin came amid an Israeli offensive across the West Bank launched on March 29 in response to a suicide bombing that killed 29 Israelis. The Jenin camp saw the heaviest fighting, and Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said in mid-April that 500 people had been killed.
But the UN report said only 52 Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by April 18, and that up to half may have been civilians. It called the Palestinian allegation that some 500 were killed "a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of evidence that has emerged," the diplomats said Wednesday.
North Korean Contacts
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei (AP) - The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is weighing a resumption of dialogue with North Korea after Secretary of State Colin Powell held the first face-to-face U.S.-North Korea meeting since President George W. Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil."
On a day of heavy diplomacy, Powell also voiced concern to Russia's foreign minister over Moscow's contribution to a nuclear power plant in Iran.
Powell told China's foreign minister, in a separate meeting, that the United States would make sure that Taiwan can defend itself, no matter what Chinese buildup is directed against the island.
The meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sum occurred midmorning when Powell went to the delegates' lounge at the conference of Pacific rim countries.
Afghan Bomber Foiled
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A failed suicide bomber had taken delivery of his explosives-loaded Toyota near the Pakistan border, then headed into Kabul bent on blowing up Afghan President Hamid Karzai or some foreign "infidels," an Afghan intelligence chief said Wednesday.
"He has admitted he worked for al-Qaida," Amrullah Saleh said of the suspect.
The plot fell apart when the car collided with another vehicle in the heart of the capital Monday morning and sped off, only to be cornered by pursuing police at a checkpoint.
TITLE: Pressure Mounts on Biryukov
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mikhail Biryukov must be a worried man.
Zenit has played five matches with Biryukov as head coach since Yury Morozov retired for health reasons, and Zenit has gained just one point, sliding down to ninth place in the Russian Premier Division in the process, 17 points behind league-leader Lokomotiv Moscow.
Biryukov found little of comfort on Tuesday, either, as Zenit slumped to a tame 1-0 defeat to hated Moscow rival Spartak.
The loss was made all the more bitter for the Zenit fans, as the only goal of the game was scored by Vladimir Beschastnykh, who had been the target of abuse from Zenit fans throughout the match for his poor performances at the World Cup in June.
The other target of the fans' ire was - predictably - the referee, Stanislav Sukhina. In this case, the fans' approbation was not entirely unjustified, as Sukhina made some questionable decisions, the majority of which went against the home side. In particular, the yellow card shown to Zenit's key attacking midfielder, Vladimir Mudrinic, for wasting time over a freekick seemed ludicrous, as he was protesting an obvious encroachmment by Ban Kebe.
Biryukov's assessment of his team's performance was overly harsh, however. Zenit looked dangerous going forward on occasion in the first and early in the second half - star striker Alexander Kerzhakov hit the bar twice near the beginning, and caused the Spartak defense problems - and the defense dealt fairly comfortably with Spartak's raids.
The game turned with the substitution of Mudrinic in the 75th minute. Mudrinic, who had hit the bar directly from a 25-meter free kick five minutes previously, had provided strength and some incisive passing throughout, and his substitution, for young striker Dmitry Makarov, was something of a surprise. After the change, large holes appeared in Zenit's midfield.
In the 10 or so minutes prior to Mudrinic's substitution, though, the warning signs had already begun to appear, as the players on both sides seemed at times to have stopped playing.
Spartak took full advantage, with Dmitry Ananko and Dmitry Kudryashov making particularly dangerous forward runs, and Zenit goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev having to make some top-class saves to keep the score level at 0-0.
Not even Malafeyev could do anything about Beschastnykh's goal, however. A left-wing cross from the versatile Kebe - who played in every position down the left-hand side of the pitch in the course of the match - was headed down towards the goal. Malafeyev made an instinctive block, but, as he made to recover, Beschastnykh was on hand to smash the rebound into the roof of the net.
Malafeyev was visibly distraught after the goal, as he realized that his heroic efforts would likely go unrewarded. The goal was harsh for defender Igor Lepyokhin who, until that point, had kept Beschastnykh effectively under wraps.
The final ten minutes were largely desultory, and the home fans left bitterly disappointed and, for once, their anger was directed, not at Spartak, but at their own team's perceived lack of effort.
Biryukov now faces the task of getting Zenit back to its winning ways, starting with a difficult match away at Saturn-REN TV Ramenskoye on Saturday, before the team begins its Intertoto Cup campaign later in the month.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Waugh To Retire?
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) - Mark Waugh says failure in the test series against Pakistan later this year could signal the end of his Australia career.
Waugh, speaking at the launch of his autobiography on Thursday, said he hoped to regain his place in the one-day side in time for next year's World Cup but added: "First of all, I've got the test series against Pakistan. If I don't perform there, I could be on my last legs for Australia. I'm confident I can do well."
The 37-year-old, who has played 125 tests and 244 one-day internationals, said he felt lucky to have been part of an Australian team which won the 1999 World Cup as well as a world-record 16 consecutive test wins.
Cup Overcometh
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Paraguay's Olimpia won the Libertadores Cup for the third time on Wednesday, coming from behind to beat Brazil's Sao Caetano 2-1 in the second leg of the final and then winning a penalty shootout 4-2.
Olimpia, beaten 1-0 at home in last week's first leg and in apparent disarray after the shock resignation of the club president on Monday, seemed to be in more trouble when Ailton gave Sao Caetano a first-half lead.
But goals by Gaston Cordoba and Richart Baez within 15 minutes of the restart made the aggregate score 2-2 and Olimpia held on for penalties, despite having midfielder Victor Quintana sent off for the second game in a row.
Olimpia converted their first four penalties in the shootout while Sao Caetano's Marlon and Serginho both skied their efforts wildly over the bar to give the Paraguayans the title in the fourth successive Libertadores final to be settled by a shootout.
Olimpia's triumph came 48 hours after president Osvaldo Dominguez Dibb stormed out of the club, claiming his players lacked commitment and making serious allegations of indiscipline off the field.
It also came one week after the club celebrated their centenary and six months after Nery Pumpido - the goalie in the Argentina team which won the 1986 World Cup - took over as coach.
Looking To Deal
NEW YORK (AP) - While the union and owners remain far apart on the main issues, players are relatively optimistic a deal can be reached without baseball's ninth work stoppage since 1972.
Negotiators made progress Wednesday on the minimum salary and the benefits plan. Union head Donald Fehr briefed the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers, leaving him with just two more teams to see on his round of meetings.
"I left the meeting very positive and optimistic after listening to what Don had to say," Yankees pitcher Steve Karsay said after Fehr's session in Arlington, Texas. "We don't want a work stoppage. We want both sides in a room trying to hash it out."
Players filed a grievance, claiming the Nov. 6 decision by owners to fold two franchises-later identified by management lawyers as Montreal and Minnesota - violated the rules of the previous labor contract, which remains in force.
Owners said they had the right to shut down teams and needed to bargain with players only on the effects of contraction, such as a dispersal draft.
Going, Going ...
MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - Former Italian champion Fiorentina has been refused a place in Serie B for next season and is facing bankruptcy.
Italian Football League President Adriano Galliani said the only chance the city of Florence has of maintaining a presence in professional soccer is if a new club is formed and is granted a place in the third or fourth division.
"The old Fiorentina doesn't exist anymore and it is vital that a new club is born to represent Florence," said Galliani.
The troubled club, relegated from Serie A last season and in administration, has reported debts of around 22 million euros and the federal council of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) met on Thursday to discuss what level the team will be allowed to play in next term.
A spokesperson for Fiorentina, which was playing Champions League soccer just three seasons ago, said that the club had not been granted permission by the council to play in the second division, Serie B, next season.
"We are not in Serie B, that is official. At the moment the council is looking at hypotheses about us playing in Serie C," said the spokesperson.
Three's a Charm?
CARLSBAD, California (AP) - Top-seeded Venus Williams began her quest for a record third consecutive Acura Classic title Wednesday night, defeating unseeded Janette Husarova of Slovokia, 6-4, 6-1, in 66 minutes at La Costa Resort and Spa.
Williams struggled early in the first set, trailing 2-1 to the pesky Husarova, who broke the defending champion's serve four times in the match.
In the end, however, Williams was too physical for Husarova, who tried unsuccessfully more than a dozen times to score on drop shots.
In the top day match, Lindsay Davenport, in her second WTA tournament since undergoing knee surgery, needed just a little more than an hour to defeat Marie-Gaianeh Mikaelian of Switzerland 6-3, 6-0.
Not Paying Up
LONDON (Reuters) - The English Football League lost its bid on Thursday to force broadcasters Granada and Carlton to pay 132 million pounds ($205 million) owed by their collapsed pay-TV venture, dealing a blow to struggling clubs.
London's High Court ruled the firms were not liable under ITV Digital's contract to screen League matches because neither Carlton nor Granada had given financial guarantees.
"In my judgement, the Football League's case falls at this first and fundamental hurdle," Justice Gordon Langley said.
Some of the poorest clubs have said their survival depends on the ITV Digital money. The cash situation of lower-division soccer clubs is a far cry from the glamour of the Premier League, which includes the world's richest club, Manchester United.
The judge indicated that the Football League, made up of the three soccer divisions below the top-flight Premier League, had been naive in its dealings with ITV Digital. Under no normal commercial negotiations, he said, was it usual to enter such a big deal without securing proper financial guarantees.
The League issued a statement saying it was disappointed at the judgement and would now consider an appeal.