SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #893 (61), Friday, August 15, 2003
**************************************************************************


TITLE: CEC Puts Media In Dock for Coverage
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The City Election Commission has forwarded what it says are examples of violations of Russia's new elections law to the St. Petersburg office of the Media Ministry for further examination.
 
The penalties set out in the new legislation, which came into effect on July 19, can include the closing of a media outlet for the duration of the election campaign in cases of severe violations.
 Among the examples the commission cited were a number of articles about vice governor and candidate Anna Markova and one the news daily Smena published about Valentina Matviyenko, the presidential representative for the Northwest Region, as well as a public-opinion survey about the election in the weekly newspaper Delo, which did not state who had commissioned the survey, news Web site Fontanka.ru reported on Wednesday.
 "These are paid-for articles," Dmitry Krasnyansky, the deputy head of the City Election Commission, said in an interview on Thursday. "This is agitation. We can also read."
 According to an official at the St. Petersburg office of the Media Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, they received six or seven examples in total. The official also said that the Smena articles were no longer being considered as they were published before the new laws came into effect on July 19.
 One of the new laws, Article 5.10 of the Administrative Offenses Code, prohibits media outlets from providing coverage described as "agitation" during certain periods during the election campaign, with possible fines running from 200 to 1,000 minimum wages, or from 20,000 rubles to 100,000 rubles ($658 to $3,290).
 Article No. 161 of the Federal Elections Law, which is intended to guarantee the rights of citizens to participate in elections and referenda, grant courts the power to suspend media outlets that have been found guilty of a second instance of violating the law.
 "We work together with the [City] Election Commission ... [But] no measures have been taken yet," the Media Ministry official said. "Any measures can only be taken following a decision by a court."
 Krasnyansky said that the examination of the pieces in the publications could take as long as a month, according to the law, which, in effect, means that there is no threat that a media outlet would suffer great hardship from being closed down, as the Sept. 21 election date is just over a month away.
 "Of course it is very unlikely that the local Media Ministry office will take any of these cases before the court," Krasnyansky said.
 But the editors of the publications singled out by the election commission say that the current situation shows how the law can be harmful to press freedom and the interests of readers, as the mere mention of a candidate's name could lead to charges being filed.
 "Yes, we devoted a whole page to the article about Markova - whose Administrative Committee had just been abolished," Oleg Zasorin, the editor of Smena, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "The article makes sense, and it's absolutely clear that it would have been wrong not to write about it."
 "In the future, we'll be more careful. But this is an election campaign and not to mention the name of a particular candidate or to write about all of the candidate at once is ridiculous," Zasorin added. "We can't write [Sergei] Pryanishnikov did this, Markova did this and Matviyenko went there [for every candidate] for every day. We write about what's interesting for our readers."
 Sergei Chesnokov, the editor of Delo, said that he would like to organize a round table to discuss the low once the gubernatorial elections are over.
 "We publish surveys in every issue and consult with the election commission constantly to clarify whether there could be violations," Chesnokov said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
 "I don't like the law. It is very hard to inform readers this way. It treats the question as if the only way an article could appear about a particular candidate is if it was paid for, but we have never run any story for money," Chesnokov said. "It's a violation of readers' rights."
 Yury Vdovin, a member of the St. Petersburg branch of Citizen's Watch, an international human-rights organization, said that, in reality, the law does not defend voters from falsified information about candidates but, in fact, limits their rights to receive information about them at all.
 "The legislation that was recently introduced in relation to the media was presented as a measure to combat mudslinging campaigns but, as it comes out, it has deprived citizens of an ability to make a conscientious choice," Vdovin said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
 Chesnokov agreed.
 "The problem isn't with the Media Ministry," he said. "The problem is with the legislation."

TITLE: 300-Celebration Fever Hits Siberia's Remote Tuva
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: KYZYL, Eastern Siberia - Most St. Petersburgers would probably be unable to locate Tuva on a map of Russia. Yet the tiny republic on the Mongolian border this week made its contribution to the northern city's ongoing 300th-anniversary celebrations.
 
Hemmed in on all sides by 2,000-meter-plus mountains, isolated Tuva is one of the most impoverished parts of Russia. On Tuesday, a delegation of politicians, scientists, artists and other luminaries arrived in Kyzyl, the Tuvan capital, from St. Petersburg to give the republic a dose of cultural and scientific programs, exhibitions and goodwill.
 "I am happy that I am here to celebrate," Deputy Culture Minister Natalya Dementiyeva, a St. Petersburg native, said at a Tuesday press conference for St. Petersburg Days in Tuva.
 "I came to Tuva on several archeological digs [over 30] years ago," Dementiyeva said. "The best days for many scientists and scholars were spent here in Tuva's Sayan Mountains. We are all grown up now, but we still have a special love for the region."
 Whereas other cities promoted St. Petersburg's tercentennial by putting on festivals of their own - like the Vivat Peterburg! festival in Baltimore, Maryland - the event in Kyzyl, a city of 80,000, was focused more on relations between two sharply contrasting areas of Russia that, nevertheless, share some strong links. The republic's representative in the Federation Council, for example, is Lyudmila Narusova, widow of St. Petersburg's first mayor, Anatoly Sobchak.
 "During my second trip to St. Petersburg, I met with ... Sobchak and we signed a number of bilateral agreements regarding joint projects in archeology and economical development between Tuva and the Northern Capital," Tuvan Prime Minister Sherig-ool Oorzhak said at the press conference.
 Oorzhak subsequently asked Narusova, a former State Duma deputy, to represent his republic in the Federation Council. The Ulug Khura, Tuva's equivalent of the Legislative Assembly, confirmed her for the post in 2002.
 Narusova said that she had raised the money for the festivities in Kyzyl, home to a monument marking the geographical center of Asia, from private donors in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
 "This is not only a cultural event, we are also bringing goodwill," Narusova said at the press conference, while outlining the festival's program, ranging from giving clothing to underprivileged families to a number of advances at tuberculosis clinics in Tuva made possible by cooperation between the two regions. 
 She also announced that President Vladimir Putin had signed an order for celebrations of Kyzyl's 90th birthday and 60 years of the Tuvan Republic being part of Russia.
 "Usually, only round numbers like 50 or 100 are celebrated but, after a long conversation, he signed the order and plans on visiting," she said. 
 Tuva was incorporated into the U.S.S.R. on Stalin's orders in 1944, after its gentle brand of independence became too much for the Soviet leadership.
 The republic, whose people are ethnically Mongolian, and speak a Turkic language, had declared Buddhism its official religion, and its largely nomadic farming population provided stiff resistance to attempts at collectivization in the late 1920s and 1930s. 
 The republic's 32 Buddhist temples were all destroyed under Stalin. One is being rebuilt partially with federal money, but is only about 30-percent complete. Even today, many of the about 200,000 native Tuvans who form two thirds of the republic's population follow a traditional, nomadic way of life.
 "[The 300th anniversary] was a huge stimulus for investment in Petersburg so I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity," Narusova said. "While you should not expect 42 heads of state, it is still a good chance to get all the leaders of Siberia together."
 Tuva's most promising industry today is tourism. The republic is renowned for its tradition of throat singing and as a center of shamanism.
 "I prefer developing tourism to reopening the huge factories that used to operate here during Soviet times," said Konstantin Khlymov, the deputy director of the Khoomei musical center, which specializes in throat singing.
 "I understand that a railroad means progress and cheaper goods, but the economy isn't everything. ... We are one of the only republics where the ethic people are not a minority. This was largely due to our isolation," Khlymov said. "This is why we were able to preserve so much our traditional heritage. I am all for exchange and tourism, but let them come in small numbers." 
 Narusova said she hoped that tourism could boost Tuva's economy, and said that she was pushing for improved transportation, including a railroad and improvements to the one highway linking Kyzyl to the outside world. 
 Between 90 and 95 percent of Tuva's budget still comes from Moscow, which underpinned a local Communist regime during the Soviet era to keep the republic in check.
 The last decade, however, has been difficult, as the closure of many factories and a collapse in agriculture caused high unemployment. Kyzyl, the capital, now has a high petty-crime rate, and some of Tuva's population has turned to selling marijuana, traditionally grown in the republic for its oil and for medicinal purposes, to drug smugglers.
 Prime Minster Oorzhak, however, expressed hope for the republic's future, and said that much would depend on continuing links with St. Petersburg
 "Tuvan interests are represented every year at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. Petersburg is our bridge to the European market and the Western world," he said.

TITLE: Moscow Paralyzed by Record Heaviest Rainfall
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - While the Federal Security Service cannot extend its influence to the skies to block the record rainfall that has inundated Moscow over the few days, its agents were prepared to go underground Thursday to combat the flooding.
 
FSB experts were to begin an inspection Thursday of the city's subterranean water routes and sewage systems to improve drainage in districts where rain has left residents wading knee-deep in water, said Natural Resources Ministry officials, who met with FSB and Prosecutor General's Office representatives Wednesday to discuss ways to address the damage.
 Moscow saw its heaviest rainfall in 30 years early Wednesday morning, with more than 60 millimeters of precipitation falling on parts of Moscow, said Dmitry Kiktyov, the deputy head of the federal weather agency.
 The rainfall was nearly as much as the capital gets over the entire month of August.
 The previous record was set on Aug. 9, 1973, when an average of 66 millimeters of precipitation fell over 24 hours, Kiktyov said.
 Cars stalled after plunging into puddles. Trams, buses and trolleybuses ground to a halt. Metro trains stopped for 51 minutes during the morning rush hour on one metro line after floodwaters caused a landslide over the tracks on an open-air leg of the line - an unprecedented occurrence for the metro.
 "The streams from the downpour carried the soil [over the tracks], and it was physically impossible for the trains to move," said metro spokeswoman Svetlana Tsaryova. "This kind of thing had never happened to us before."
 The rain turned streets around Moscow into raging streams, with water gushing down from higher areas to deluge lower roads. Trams stopped when water levels rose above 100 millimeters, and trolleybuses went out of action when the levels exceeded 150 millimeters, said a spokesperson for the city's public transportation service, Pyotr Sidorov. 
 "The main traffic stoppage happened during the morning rush hour," Sidorov said. "From about 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., transportation stood still."
 On Prospect Mira, trolleybus traffic stopped for at least seven hours after water levels in the nearby Yauza River rose by 1 1/2 to 2 meters, flooding nearby streets, Sidorov said. On Shosse Entuziastov, in eastern Moscow, all public transport froze for nearly four hours, he said.
 "In the areas that got flooded, trolleybuses and trams stopped, cars stalled, and then other transport just could not get through," he said.
 The Moscow drainage system cannot handle more than 50 millimeters of rain per day - anything above that and the streets get flooded, said officials from the municipal Water Drainage Service. 
 The FSB's scrutiny of the drainage system Thursday was apparently aimed at getting at the bottom of the problem. The results of the inspection were not immediately known, and officials from the security service refused to comment. The prosecutor's office could not be reached for comment.
 After a pause Wednesday afternoon, heavy rainfall resumed in the evening and continued on and off into late Thursday morning, hampering efforts to restore order.

TITLE: Kursk Monument Is Unveiled
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Hundreds of relatives and friends of the 118 sailors killed when the Kursk nuclear submarine sank gathered at Serafimovskoye Cemetery on Tuesday for the unveiling of a monument on the third anniversary of the disaster.
 
The monument, which is a black cube of granite, symbolizing the ocean's depths, and has waves carved on top to represent the stormy waters of the Barents sea, is topped with a storm petrel - a small sea bird that symbolizes trouble.
 "This monument will always remind us of the tragedy and we will always be faithful to the memory of our men," said Vladimir Mityayev, the father of Kursk sailor Alexei Mityayev.
 All 118 men on board the Kursk died after a practice torpedo exploded in the vessel's bow during exercises on Aug. 12, 2000, sending the Kursk to the floor of the Barents Sea. Divers, who managed to enter the submarine three months after the accident, found a letter written by Lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov to his wife, Olga, after the explosion, saying that 23 of the sailors had survived the blast and managed to take refuge and survive for a while in the submarine's rear compartment. The monument is inscribed with the words "Don't despair!" - a quote from Kolesnikov's letter.
 The operation to raise the hull of the vessel took over a year to complete, with the remains of all but two of the sailors being found and identified. Thirty two of the sailors, including the Kursk's captain, Gennady Lyachin, are buried in Serafimovskoye Cemetery.
 Federal, city and Navy officials joined relatives in laying flowers at the monument, which is also engraved with the date of the accident and the coordinates where the vessel sank and was designed by architect Gennady Peichev, whose submission was chosen over 10 others in a competition held last year.
 After the ceremony, friends and relatives gathered around the graves of their loved ones.
 "It will never get easier to cope with what has happened," said Svetlana Baigarina as she stood at the grave of her husband, Murat Baigarin, with her two teenage sons and the sailor's parents, who had come from their home in the Urals to attend the ceremony. "You can imagine how hard it is when a woman has two sons that need a father so badly."
 Baigarina said that part of the difficulty for her in dealing with the accident stems from the official investigation into the disaster, which was concluded in July 2002. The investigation found that no-one was at fault in the accidental explosion of the torpedo, and that none of the sailors could have been rescued, even if the navy rescue efforts had been mounted more quickly. Baigarina, like a number of the relatives of the Kursk sailors, is unsatisfied with the report.
 "I want to know the whole truth," Baigarina said. "I know that we don't know it yet."
 Boris Kuznetsov, who is representing the families of about 40 of the Kursk sailors, has been waging a campaign to have the investigation into the disaster reopened.
 Kuznetsov filed a complaint with the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office on Dec. 30, 2002, in which he challenged some of the conclusions reached as a result of the official investigation.
 One of the contentions in the complaint is that the 23 crew members who made it to the ships aft compartment survived for more than 48 hours after the explosion, and that a quicker response on the part of rescue officials might have saved at least some of their lives.
 The official report on the disaster says that none of the sailors survived for more than eight hours after the Kursk sank.
 Irina Lyachina, the widow of the Kursk's captain, said that she is against a new investigation.
 "The government and all the people who were in charge of the investigation have done everything they could," Interfax quoted Lyachina as saying. "I don't think that it's fair to demand something that is impossible."

TITLE: 11 Candidates Set To Run For Rydnik's Former Seat
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Eleven candidates were registered by the City Election Commission by Thursday's deadline to run in a by-election to fill the Legislative Assembly seat for the 41st District, which was left vacant after the City Court stripped Yury Rydnik of his victory in the district in the elections to the assembly in December. The court ruled that Rydnik had violated election laws in winning the race.
 
The list of those registered by the commission includes Natalya Garkavenko, Rydnik's former assistant, and Vyacheslav Makarov, a colonel at the St. Petersburg Aerospace Military Academy. Makarov finished second to Rydnik in the December vote.
 "Nothing out of the ordinary happened here," Marina Malova, the deputy head of the election commission, said on Thursday. 
 In order to be registered, each of the candidates was required to submit the signatures of 1,500 eligible voters (representing two percent of the total of 75,000) or pay a deposit of 45,000 rubles (about $1,480).
 Rydnik was forced to surrender his seat after Makarov and Dmitry Burenin, the head of the St. Petersburg Audit Chamber and also a candidate for the seat, filed a suit with the City Court accusing Rydnik of the violations.
 The violations concerned the activities of a cleaning company that was set up by one of Rydnik's relatives, using a business loan from Balt-Investbank (then Balt-Uneximbank), of which Rydnik is the president. The company then worked cleaning stairwells in the district during the campaign wearing uniforms with "Rydnik" stenciled across the back. The suit also cited 115 Balt-Uneximbank commercials that were broadcast on Petersburg Television between Nov. 28 and Dec. 6 as contravening election laws.
 Rydnik garnered 38 percent of the vote in the district, followed by Makarov, with 24 percent, and Burenin, with 15 percent.

TITLE: Vice Governor In Intensive Care
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg Vice Governor Anatoly Kogan remained in the intensive-care unit of the Mariinskaya Hospital on Thursday, with injuries suffered when he was attacked on Tuesday night outside the apartment building where he lives.
 
A worker in the hospital's information department said on Thursday that he was in stable condition.
 Kogan, who heads the city's Health Committee, was attacked by unknown assailants and suffered a fracture to the base of his skull.
 According to police, Kogan managed to make it to his apartment after the attack, at which point his wife called the police. The police have opened an investigation into the case on charges of hooliganism, Interfax reported.
 In February 2002, Kogan was charged with negligence, charges that brought with them an automatic suspension of his duties as vice governor. In July the same year, the charge was changed to abuse of office, but the charges were dropped as the investigation had carried on past the time period stipulated by the Criminal Code.

TITLE: Papers Tell Different Tales About Lakhani
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Doubts lingered on Thursday about how much of a real threat was posed by British citizen Hemant Lakhani, who is accused of buying an anti-aircraft missile from Russian undercover agents to sell to their U.S. counterparts, apparently without noticing that the missile was inert.
 
In a double-sting operation unveiled with much fanfare, Lakhani was arrested on Tuesday in New Jersey. The arrest was intended to be a publicity coup for the FBI and FSB, but newspapers in both countries wondered Thursday whether Lakhani would have pursued anti-aircraft missiles at all if not lured by U.S. and Russian agents.
 Newspaper accounts of both Lakhani's actions and background differed drastically, with one British newspaper describing him as an "idiot" with no experience, while a U.S. newspaper portrayed him as a "complete mercenary" who had dealt in arms before.
 The Guardian reported Thursday that Lakhani had little if any experience in buying arms on the black market.
 Quoting a source familiar with the Moscow end of the sting operation, the newspaper said that Lakhani had travelled to Russia in March "on the off-chance" he would find something after U.S. agents posing as terrorists had asked him to supply a missile capable of shooting down a passenger jet.
 The Guardian's source described Lakhani as an "idiot" and said he "made a direct approach" to the Russian plant that manufactures the Igla shoulder-fired missile.
 Employees of the plant, which the source said was located in the Krasnoyarsk region, then informed the Federal Security Service about the purported buyer and it responded by dispatching undercover agents to pose as suppliers, the Guardian said.
 Lakhani then arranged for his "client" - who was in fact an FBI informant - to travel to Moscow to meet the FSB agents on July 14. Their meeting in a Moscow office - during which Lakhani is given an inert missile to inspect - was videotaped, according to the Guardian's source and the FBI affidavit filed in U.S. federal court.
 One possible hole in the Guardian's source's account, however, is that there is no Igla-manufacturing plant in the Krasnoyarsk region, a fact that the newspaper acknowledged.
 When reached Thursday by telephone, officials at the Moscow region-based Kolomna Engineering Design Bureau and the Vladimir region-based Degtyarev plant, which design and manufacture the missiles, respectively, denied any knowledge of Lakhani.
 The Los Angeles Times, however, quoted a source saying that Lakhani had done business with the Russian and Ukrainian state arms export mediators and once had arranged delivery of BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers that were on paper destined for Angola. Lakhani is a "complete mercenary who didn't restrict his dealings to any particular country or cause," the newspaper quoted the source, identified only as a Western arms analyst based in East Europe, as saying.
 "All that the FBI proved here was that 1) Russian-made portable SAMS [surface-to-air missiles] are easy to get on the world market and 2) if you wave enough money around in what is an obvious scam, you can get someone stupid enough to come forward to try and provide them to you," the analyst said.
 Russia's Kommersant daily also raised doubts about the practical benefit from the operation, which it said netted "mediocre middlemen."
 "The most striking thing is that the services didn't even try to track real sellers and buyers of arms in their countries," the paper said on Thursday.
 Ruslan Pukhov, the head of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said the fact that Lakhani was going to make a mere $15,000 from the missile sale indicates he was probably new to the arms black market, since no professional illegal arms dealer would have agreed to such a sum given the complexity of the transcontinental deal. According to the affidavit, the missile was to be the first of 50 missiles to be delivered to the United States this summer.

TITLE: Russians Behind Insurance-Fraud Ring
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: GARDEN CITY, New York - Hundreds of people - including doctors, lawyers, chiropractors and psychologists - have been indicted on insurance fraud and other charges involving millions of dollars in claims on staged auto accidents that prosecutors say was part of an organized-crime ring with links to Russia.
 
Nearly 600 indictments have been filed in connection with the Brooklyn-based fraud ring, and further charges are likely, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said on Tuesday.
 The charges follow a yearlong investigation into accidents that took place on Long Island and in New York City, Spota said. Only 86 defendants have been arraigned so far, but the remaining indictments are expected to be unsealed in the coming days and weeks, he said.
 Many of those arrested so far are American citizens of Russian descent living in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, said Robert Clifford, a spokesperson for Spota.
 Clifford said that investigators "definitely know profits gained by the ring ... were accessed by counterparts in Russia. This was an organized criminal enterprise."
 Some profits from the frauds were channeled to businesses in Russia, while others were funneled into a Swiss bank account and withdrawn by Russian citizens, authorities said.
 "It's one of the biggest busts in the nation in terms of its breadth, its scope and the dollars involved," said Robert Hartwig, the chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. "We're talking about bringing down an entire network. It's analogous to bringing down a drug kingpin."
 Spota said that the ring used "runners" and "crash dummies" in cars that would cut in front of other cars, often driven by women with children or by elderly people, slam on the brakes, and cause a crash. The authorities said that the investigation dates to 2001, when they received word from insurers who noticed the same names were popping up over and over on insurance claims. One runner was involved with about 1,000 accidents.
 The frauds began with accidents in which a "runner" would recruit friends, relatives or strangers, promising them $500 apiece for participating. The runner would load them into an inexpensive sturdy American car - usually an aging Cadillac or Lincoln - and drive onto a highway, then veer in front of an unsuspecting driver to cause an accident, usually a fender bender. The accidents were staged mainly in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and Westchester.
 In the confusion, the driver would dart from the car and be ferried away in another automobile, leaving someone else to pose as the driver, in order to to avoid being connected to a string of accidents. Sometimes, the getaway car would disgorge people who would later claim to have been in the accident, Clifford said.
 The passengers then went to one of several counterfeit medical clinics in Brooklyn and Queens that had been set up specifically to treat them, prosecutors said. The clinic management filed no-fault insurance claims and ordered a barrage of tests and procedures, sometimes performing them and sometimes not, the prosecutors charged.
 The clinics were financed by lawyers, accountants and other investors, though doctors are listed as the owners. Lawyers whom prosecutors said were aware that the claims were false often called the insurance companies and threatened to file suits if the claims were not paid.
 Each passenger could bring in $50,000, officials said. According to Peter Smith, a Suffolk County assistant district attorney who investigated the ring, runners received $1,500 per "patient" while the "crash dummies" received up to $500 per crash. The lawyers who pressed the claims reaped one-third of the profits, and the clinic managers received another third.
 
 <i>(AP, NYT) </i>

TITLE: Refugees Told To Go Home
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, Dagestan - The acting chief of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration said on Thursday that tent camps for Chechen refugees in neighboring Ingushetia will be closed by Oct. 1, Interfax reported.
 
The decision is certain to anger refugees who fear to return to the region.
 &quot;All refugees will have been moved to Grozny,&quot; Chechen administration chief Anatoly Popov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Popov, Chechnya's prime minister, is filling in for administration chief Akhmad Kadyrov while Kadyrov runs for the Chechen presidency in an Oct. 5 election.
 Popov said that housing will be made available in Grozny for all those who choose to return and that he had secured a promise of help with the housing issue from Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Interfax reported.
 He also said those who do not want to return to Chechnya will be provided with housing in Ingushetia.
 Popov said about 9,500 refugees currently live in the camps in Ingushetia.

TITLE: Government Decides Budget Set for Duma
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - After a mere five-hour meeting, the Russian government agreed on Thursday to send a draft 2004 budget calling for a surplus to parliament for debate next month.
 
&quot;The 2004 budget is aimed for the future, a budget with a stabilization fund and lower tax burden will support economic growth,&quot; Interfax quoted Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying following the Cabinet meeting.
 Revenues in 2004 were set at 2.74 trillion rubles ($90.3 billion), with expenditure pegged at 2.66 trillion rubles, leaving the proposed budget with a 83.4 billion-ruble ($2.75-billion) surplus.
 The 2004 budget was expected to face a stormy debate in parliament with lawmakers demanding increased social spending. The first of four readings in the State Duma is due to be held Sept. 19.
 But the government appeared to have ironed out most of the issues with pro-Kremlin deputies before sending the bill to the 450-seat Duma.
 &quot;There is confidence that the budget will be passed by December,&quot; Vyacheslav Volodin, head of the pro-Kremlin parliamentary faction Fatherland-All Russia, told reporters after the meeting.
 The budget plan is aiming for a surplus equal to 0.5 percent of gross domestic product.
 Last week the government allocated some 30 billion rubles ($1 billion) more to the regions and the military in order to appease lawmakers, which effectively reduced the originally planned surplus by about 12 billion rubles.
 Volodin said that the Cabinet acceded to requests from deputies to increase spending on space programs by three billion rubles and to grant another three billion rubles for agriculture.
 An extra five billion rubles would be allocated for investment, deputies said, but declined to say where cuts would be made to accommodate the additional spending. 
 Kudrin said the decrease in the tax burden - the government is abolishing the sales tax and has proposed cutting the value added tax to 18 percent from 20 percent next year - will stretch the revenue side of the budget. 
 &quot;In key sectors, expenses will grow,&quot; he said, naming security, defense, health, culture and justice.
 He said that budget-based salaries would likely not be increased again before 2005, as the 33 percent increase would be adequate through next year.
 Economists have said the government's 2004 budget, based on an economic growth forecast of 5.2 percent, looks realistic but noted that revenues are heavily dependent on global crude-oil prices.
 The government's budget-revenue plan is based on the assumption that the price for Urals crude would average $22 per barrel next year. Spending plans are pegged to a $20 per barrel average price.
 &quot;Today we can allow ourselves to manage the situation. A possible drop in the price of oil will not undermine the government's [ability to meet its] obligations,&quot; Kudrin said.
 <i>(Reuters, MT)</i>


TITLE: Rail Passengers To Have Private Option
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: First Passenger Company, a privately owned company, is set to begin operations between Moscow and St. Petersburg in the summer of next year, bringing to an end an 85-year-old state-monopoly-situation in Russian passenger-rail service, according to Vasily Golubtsov, the deputy head of the Oktyabrskaya Railway.
 
Golubtsov made the announcement last Friday at a press conference in the city, Interfax reported.
 During and after the Soviet period, only the Railways Ministry and the regional companies that it owns and runs - such as the Oktyabrskaya Railway company, which operates lines running out of and around St. Petersburg, including that to Moscow - were authorized to use the country's railway infrastructure for passenger travel. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, private companies have been allowed to offer cargo services.
 First Passenger Company was set up in June 2003 by two St. Petersburg companies, Evrosib, which presently provides rail cargo service Okdial, which supplies the railroad with packages for passengers including soap, shampoo, towels and bedding.
 According to Golubtsov, the company plans to invest around $50 million in purchasing four trains, including two that will operate daily express runs, much like the R-200 daily express that presently operates along the St. Petersburg-Moscow route and two that will run overnight. Golubtsov said that the trains will have 16 or 17 carriages and will begin operating next summer.
 But Gennady Venediktov, the general director of Okdial, was even more upbeat about the overnight service in a telephone interview on Tuesday, saying that the company's first train working this run may make its maiden trip in October. He said that the daily express trains, which will charge higher fares than those charged by the ministry and which are targeted at a more upscale market, may not be ready to begin operations for another two years.
 Venediktov added that the demand for passenger service on the St. Petersburg-Moscow line is high and that the company will be able to find a profitable niche in the market.
 According to Golubtsov, First Passenger Company plans to purchase passenger carriages from the Tver Carriage-Building Factory.
 The next step for First Passenger Company is to sign a basic agreement with the Railways Ministry allowing it to operate a passenger service, a step that ministry representatives say should be handled relatively quickly.
 &quot;Any company may apply for the right to organize private railway transportation,&quot; Konstantin Pashkov, the spokesperson for the Railways Ministry, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. &quot;If there is no evidence that this won't negatively effect passengers' rights, the permission will be granted.&quot;
 Representatives of both the Railways Ministry and Oktyabrskaya Railway say that they do not expect that the launching of the project will mean any loss in their revenues. Golubtsov pointed out that First Passenger Company will have to pay for the use of Oktyabrskaya's tracks.
 The St. Petersburg-Moscow route carries the largest volume of passenger traffic in the country and the passenger levels this summer are 7-percent higher than those for the same period last year, according to information from the Oktyabrskaya Railway press service. Oktyabrskaya also says that it plans to run an additional 11 trains operating both ways daily for the last 10 days of August.
 In the first seven months of 2003, Oktyabrskaya Railway carried 7.56 million passengers on its regular lines - is 2.6 percent more than for the same period in 2002 - and another 11.046 million passengers on local commuter trains.

TITLE: Schwarzenegger's Run Is Pure Entertainment
AUTHOR: By Doug Gamble
TEXT: Leave it to a movie star to come up with a stunning plot twist. Arnold Schwarzenegger has to be credited with pulling off one of the biggest surprises in California political history by throwing his headband into the ring.
 
It appears that he deliberately misled some of his own political advisers, who had been saying that the actor was unlikely to run. The question is, can he mislead enough Californians into believing that he is the person to rescue the state from an unprecedented financial crisis and set it on a path back to its former glory? At the moment, most Californians apparently don't think so; a recent Los Angeles Times poll found that 53 percent of registered voters were not inclined to vote for him. 
 Making his announcement to run on Jay Leno's &quot;The Tonight Show'' rather than via a legitimate news venue was an insult to everyone who takes politics and California's problems seriously, indicating that his candidacy is more about self-promotion than it is about public service. Likewise, his flip remark that the decision to run was his most difficult since deciding to get a bikini wax in 1978 was something that millions of Californians who are in real pain and looking for proven leadership must have found to be truly hilarious.
 Schwarzenegger will undoubtedly pump up his performance on the stump as the campaign progresses, but his news conference outside the NBC studios in Burbank, California, was pretty pedestrian.
 Of course, Schwarzenegger is an amateur politician, one who may have many voters end up asking where's the beef, as opposed to the beefcake. In a celebrity-obsessed society, the candidacy of a movie star with little political and no government experience may not seem so absurd in more tranquil times, but when the state is hanging by its fingertips over a pit of fiscal calamity? 
 Comparisons between Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan are ludicrous and an affront to those who revere the former governor and president. Not only did Reagan pilot the Screen Actors Guild during one of the most tumultuous eras in its history, he also immersed himself in politics and public policy long before running to be chief executive of California. 
 Reagan also possessed something else that Schwarzenegger may turn out not have: a thick hide to protect him from the indignities of the campaign trail. In the weeks leading up to the recall election, Schwarzenegger will learn that the inquisitors working in the political media bear absolutely no resemblance to the fawning posterior-kissers who populate the celebrity beat. Then there will be the inevitable tabloids with which to deal with. 
 He doesn't even compare with his co-star in the film &quot;Predator,&quot; Jesse Ventura, who was a real-life action hero, serving as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and who went on to serve four years as the mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, before running for governor of the whole state. If Ventura is known for the line, &quot;I ain't got time to bleed,&quot; from &quot;Predator,&quot; Schwarzenegger appears to be saying, &quot;I ain't got time to pay my political dues.&quot; 
 Schwarzenegger's candidacy will not be embraced by California's conservatives. Like former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (who had been leading Schwarzenegger in the polls), the actor - who is pro-choice, supports adoption rights for gay couples and is pro-gun control - is actually a Democrat in a Republican loincloth. He once said he was ashamed of Republicans who voted for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
 The Republicans also have to ponder the possibility of Schwarzenegger winning the race and turning out to be a disastrous governor. That would put a Democrat politician back in the top job in 2006, forcing Republicans in the state to roam the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.
 If Davis is ultimately recalled, and the choice of an alternative is determined on the basis of name recognition alone, Schwarzenegger would win. But if Californians recognize the need for deft leadership by an experienced politician who can navigate the mazes of government, there are enough viable alternatives to prevent the actor who debuted in &quot;Hercules in New York&quot; from appearing in a new production called &quot;Neophyte in Sacramento.&quot;
 
 <i>Doug Gamble has written speech material for Republicans, including U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.
 </i>
By Maureen Dowd
 Arnold Schwarzenegger is hoping his campaign will be a Charles Atlas moment in reverse.
 
&quot;It's like the famous 'Muscle Beach' scene, where the scrawny guy is getting sand kicked in his face by a bodybuilder,&quot; said an Arnold adviser. &quot;But in this case, everyone's cheering on the bodybuilder, because the scrawny guy is the mean, nasty, reprehensible one.&quot;
 The Scrawny Guy, aka the governor of California, is ready and eager to tattle on Arnold or sue his abs off. Gray Davis is Al Gore without the spontaneity.
 The race will be between a governor who became unpopular acting like a robot and an actor who became popular playing one.
 After his wife, Maria, told him to go for it if he really wanted to, the movie star told his strategists not to put out a prepared statement saying he wouldn't run. On &quot;The Tonight Show,&quot; the advisers, who had done all the spadework for a race but thought it was a no-go, watched agog as the boss began attacking Gray Davis.
 &quot;We just looked at each other backstage and said, 'Huh?'&quot; recalled one.
 The former Mr. Universe and Junior Mr. Europe pulled a fast one and outsmarted the smarties. With one quip, he bikini-waxed the entire tedious field of yakking Democratic presidential candidates and sent the political world into a whirl.
 When was the last time a big-time candidate gave a speech in a Teutonic accent, sporting hip shades?
 California Republicans had nowhere to go but up. In the last election, they were unable to topple one of the most unpopular governors in the state's history. Many were not even interested in challenging Davis in the recall, figuring it would be better to let him stew in his own $38-billion budget deficit.
 They reckoned the recall created a unique opportunity for the 56-year-old Schwarzenegger. &quot;This is a beauty contest, and Arnold is the best looking guy,&quot; one Republican said.
 The race is so wacky, there's less emphasis on the fact that the actor is running on pecs and running away from peccadilloes.
 Sure, he's smoked marijuana and his father was a Nazi, but look at the field: a porn star who wants to tax breast implants; a self-styled &quot;smut peddler who cares&quot;; a billboard Barbie in a pink Corvette; a former child actor; an ex-cop who wants to legalize ferrets; a comedian who wants to ban low-low-riding pants; a glam Greek columnist whose rich ex-husband endorsed Arnold.
 But even swaddled by high-priced political advisers, the Terminator could easily terminate, tripping on his own ego or inexperience or past.
 &quot;It depends on how much discipline he has,&quot; said one well-connected Republican. &quot;The first stupid thing he says and it could be downhill from there.&quot;
 Another Republican operative working for Peter Ueberroth said the Olympics impresario will run as &quot;Arnold for adults.&quot;
 &quot;This will be a real test of how shallow Californians are,&quot; he said.
 When President George W. Bush does a Top Gun landing on an aircraft carrier, he's trying to imitate an action hero. When Senator John Kerry carts his Harley to various campaign stops, he's trying to show he's a tough guy.
 Schwarzenegger already has what consultants struggle to superimpose on candidates: an aura of a strong protector who will get voters out of messes.
 As one of his advisers says, &quot;Whether it's really Arnold or his movie image, he's seen as a man of few words and lots of action. Other candidates spend $50 million on ads to get a sliver of that persona.&quot;
 Beside, the star isn't the first one with connections to a political dynasty but no elective experience to try to be governor of a big state. And unlike W., Arnold actually is a successful self-made businessperson.
 
 <i>Maureen Dowd is a columnist at The New York Times, where this comment first appeared. </i>

TITLE: Of Potatoes, Courts and Airline Attendants
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: One of my favorite ways to pass my weekends at the family dacha is to basically do nothing, just kick back and watch the potatoes grow. More adventurous readers might find this picture a little lacking in excitement, while the more agriculturally inclined would likely point out that you can't actually watch potatoes grow - they're underground.
 
I grant that the whole procedure might seem a little on the tedious side, but it is comforting to me in some way to just know that the potatoes are there - even if I can't see them.
 If you are wondering what this has to do with the politics, the answer is simple. One part of potato watching, the lack of excitement, has been perfectly recreated in the summer gubernatorial election campaign we've seen so far, while the other, the feeling of comfort it generates, is entirely absent. Here, I can watch exactly what is happening and it's of no comfort whatsoever.
 Gone are the scandals that characterized the race in 2000 or the hundreds of thousands of fliers providing compromising information about the candidates that floated through the city or the seizure of issues of some newspapers by police that were such a big part of the interest generated in the 1996 campaign.
 This year, it's as though the candidates have been given a drug that has led them simply to yield the right of way to Valentina Matviyenko, the Kremlin favorite and current front-runner.
 The other candidates are largely ignored by television stations that can't seem to get enough of Matviyenko visiting factories, talking with voters and taking part in official events.
 The unveiling of the monument to the crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine, all 118 of whom died when the vessel sank three years ago Tuesday, was a perfect example. Matviyenko was introduced, given the opportunity to speak and mentioned by many of the other speakers who delivered their own speeches at the ceremony. Anna Markova, currently running second in the race, was also present, but did not have the opportunity to speak and was ignored in the official statements.
 The lack of complaints filed against Matviyenko's campaign in relation to these events would seem to be good evidence that the other 10 candidates have, in fact, been drugged, or have themselves taken to potato watching at the dacha, if it weren't for the fact that they have managed to stay busy by filing complaints against each other.
 Viktor Yefimov, the director of the First Pasta Factory, filed a complaint against the registration of pornographic-film production-company owner Sergei Pryanishnikov as a candidate, on the grounds that a police examination of a sample of the signatures he gathered for his registration documents found over 40 percent of them to be invalid. In reply to a question from the judge at the City Court on Wednesday, Yefimov said that his information on the signatures had come from a newspaper report. When he couldn't recall in which paper he had read the report, he switched to saying that he had been told by some acquaintances who regularly hang around the City Election Commission. It was a frightening show of legal understanding from someone looking to occupy the city's highest executive position.
 Yefimov did have a point, though. Newspaper reports have quoted comments made by Dmitry Krasnyansky, the deputy head of the commission, at a press conference last week, that police had reported 40 percent of the signatures as invalid but, also, that an investigation by the commission itself showed the number to be a mere 2 percent.
 After examining a number of other documents, the complaint was ultimately turned away by the court.
 Although the whole exercise ended up being futile, Yefimov and Pryanishnikov may have hit on something. If, as it appears, no one is willing to go after Matviyenko's campaign, then going after each other may be the only publicity avenue open to the other 10 candidates. It's their only chance at some free television coverage of their own.
 Perhaps I should say nine of the other 10 candidates, as there is one that does have his own little opportunity to do some individual campaigning to what is a captive audience.
 Oleg Titov's job, as a flight attendant with Pulkovo airlines, does not have a government position from which he must take a leave of absence in order to run for governor. He can spend all of the time he likes (within the bounds of professional service and courtesy, of course) singing his own virtues and explaining his vision for the city's future to those eligible voters flying into and out of St. Petersburg with the airline.
 But even he has his work cut out for him. A politician friend of mine told me the other evening that part of his pre-election activities involved putting together an information file on each of the candidates. Titov's is, by far, the thinnest of the files.
 &quot;I don't know a single thing about him,&quot; my friend said. &quot;All I have in the file is a piece of paper with his name and position on it and a photograph of one of Pulkovo Airlines' planes.&quot;

TITLE: they swear they'll make it big
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As one of St. Petersburg's best live rock bands, Kacheli has long enjoyed a cult following in the city. Now, it's getting ready for a shot at the big time - with some help from a new label set up by Sergei Shnurov of local ska-punk phenomenon Leningrad.
 
Kacheli garners frequent Leningrad comparions for its foul-mouthed lyrics, but frontman Lyokha Lysy, who sings and plays guitar, says his songs included four-letter words before the better-known group even formed.
 Despite Kacheli's aggressive live style, Lysy (&quot;Bald&quot;) says he prefers to listen to classic acts like King Crimson and David Bowie, as well as 1990s bands like the Sugarcubes and Happy Mondays.
 &quot;I don't like loud music,&quot; he said over a beer at underground club Cynic last week. &quot;I like Brian Eno and don't want anything else.&quot;
 &quot;It doesn't matter what I play myself, I don't listen to such stuff much at home. It's a total contradiction,&quot; Lysy said.
 &quot;Many people do what they like, but we do what we like even though we'll never listen to it. Total crap, isn't it?&quot; he asked rhetorically.
 Kacheli's style when it started out in 1995 was softer and more new-wave influenced than it is today. For this reason, although it formed while seminal local underground rock club TaMtAm was still extant, Kacheli preferred to play less &quot;alternative&quot; venues like Wild Side and Ten Club - both, like TaMtAm, now defunct.
 Indeed, the band made its debut on March 5, 1995, at Wild Side, which cultivated softer music styles and was oriented more toward university students.
 &quot;TaMtAm was super for some time, but after a while it has become a dirty, lousy club, with everybody shooting drugs and police raiding,&quot; said Lysy. &quot;It was not even fun. So I stopped going there.&quot;
 Lysy described Kacheli's early style as &quot;danceable, new-waveish stuff with rock-and-roll guitar.&quot; Over the years, the band's sound has hardened, although Lysy said its lyrics are not meant to be inflammatory, despite being laden with expletives.
 &quot;They are sort of bad boy, tongue-in-cheek,&quot; he said. &quot;They don't challenge anybody to fight or anything.&quot;
 The band's name also reflects this duality. Meaning &quot;swing&quot; in Russian, <i>kacheli</i> is drug slang for speedball, a mix of cocaine and heroin, but, according to Lysy, it is also about swing as a musical term. He said he chose the name because mixing heroin and cocaine was all the rage with gangsters in 1990s Moscow.
 The shift toward a harder-edged style has meant a change of gig venues as well. For the last three years, Kacheli was a regular at City Club, but was recently asked to take a break.
 &quot;Our music was getting harder and harder, and finally reached the point where we were just telling the public to f**k off,&quot; said Lysy. &quot;It's different [in places like Cynic], because people come here to drink and listen to the music that they like, while at City Club it's students who come to pick up girls.&quot;
 Today, Kacheli has a flexible lineup of three to five members. Its full performances feature two bass players and two drummers, but even as a trio it is a ball of energy and easily fills places like Cynic or Fish Fabrique with sound.
 &quot;What are we about? It's bicycles, soccer, guitars, marijuana - it's our whole life,&quot; said Lysy. &quot;We don't do anything else. Anyone who wants to work, works - but no-one works.&quot;
 Kacheli boasts of having four albums, but only one - &quot;Muzyka Dlya Selyodki&quot; (&quot;Music for a Herring&quot;) - has been released comparatively professional, on local indie label Zvezda in 2000. The band's most recent opus was the self-produced CD &quot;Vsyo Po Mode&quot; (&quot;Following Fashion&quot;), of which 200 copies were made. 
 The new album, due this autumn on Shnur O.K., the new label founded by Leningrad's Shnurov, is tentatively titled, with typical bravado, &quot;Ne Uchi Otsa Yebatsya&quot; (&quot;Don't Teach Your Father How to F**k&quot;).
 The Kacheli-Shnurov link came about when the Leningrad vocalist dropped into Fish Fabrique one night, heard the last song of Kacheli's set, and offered studio and production facilities for the new album on the spot.
 &quot;He has known us for a long time, but probably didn't like something previously,&quot; Lysy said. &quot;This time, he simply said, 'Take your time [in the studio], money is limitless.'&quot;
 Shnurov said this week that he was motivated by the desire to document the 1990s club scene of which he was part.
 &quot;I go to clubs and see many bands who were cult some five years ago going nowhere,&quot; he said this week. &quot;The whole history of St. Petersburg's club movement remained uncovered. I am interested in the bands that we'll never hear on the radio.&quot;
 Kacheli cherishes hopes for a big breakthrough, but its eight-year career has taught it not to get carried away.
 &quot;If Shnurov talks about us everywhere, if we shoot a video, everything will roll right away,&quot; said Lysy. &quot;If not, we'll keep playing Cynic and Griboyedov, which is just as great. The only thing is that the money isn't mcu. But money is not important - what matters is fun, and fun emerges when everything is in harmony.&quot;
 
 <i>
Kacheli performs at Moloko at 8 p.m. on Aug. 24 and at Fish Fabrique at 10 p.m. on Aug. 30. www.kachely.narod.ru </i>

TITLE: exhibit revives a forgotten artist
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sergey Kalmykov, the subject of the State Russian Museum's latest exhibition, presents art historians with something of a typological headache.
 
Sometimes described as &quot;scientific-artistic fantasies,&quot; the little-known artist's works are apparently very difficult to compare with those of other artists - including his contemporaries.
 &quot;We can trace some influences, for example, that of the [early 20th-century artists group] World of Art, but Kalmykov's style is unique,&quot; Tamara Chudinovskaya, an art historian at the Russian Museum, said by telephone on Wednesday.
 Forty of Kalmykov's paintings are now on display at the exhibition &quot;Sergei Kalmykov and the Russian Avant-Garde, 1920s and 1930s&quot; in the Russian Museum's Benois Wing. The works are all on loan from the Kasteyev State Art Museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan, as part of the Year of Kazakhstan in Russia, a project announced earlier this year by President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The paintings rarely leave the walls of the Almaty museum, and an exception was made for this special occasion.
 Born in 1891 in the ancient Uzbek city Samarkand, Kalmykov spent his childhood in the Ural Mountains city of Orenburg, later coming to St. Petersburg, where he studied with Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, of the famous World of Art group, and avant-garde artist Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. In 1935, Kalmykov moved back to Almaty - then called Alma-Ata - to work as a set designer for the city's State Musical Theater (now the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater). 
 In his diary, Kalmykov wrote that Petrov-Vodkin was impressed with his 1911 sketch &quot;Red Horses,&quot; and claimed that his teacher portrayed him as the young man in his famous painting &quot;Bathing a Red Horse.&quot;
 &quot;He had a very theatrical mentality, very imaginative,&quot; Chudinovskaya said of Kalmykov. &quot;It was no accident that he eventually became a set designer in the theater.&quot;
 Kalmykov's artistic world is very warm and generous, dominated by shades of yellow, red and green. Although they include multiple fantastic creatures, the paintings are not mystical or tragic, as is often the case. Rather, the cavaliers, dancers, elephants, swans and cats are gentle and full of noble grace - they look as if they came from tales with happy ending.
 Some critics describe his art as melodious - Chudinovskaya said &quot;the first words that come to my mind are grace and theatricality&quot; - and it would be impossible to guess from the art alone that Kalmykov was, in fact, very lonely, and that his works went unrecognized in his lifetime.
 When Kalmykov's works reached Almaty's State Arts Museum of Kazakhstan after the artist died in 1967, most were in a state of disrepair. His body of work includes over 1,000 paintings, sketches and drawings, some of which, painted over the back of old maps or reproductions of paintings, have now been restored.
 Even in the 1960s, when Socialist Realism was the order of the day in the Soviet Union, Kalmykov remained faithful to his rich inner world, portraying the inhabitants of his imagination, not his surroundings.
 Compared with works by World of Arts Lev Bakst and Dobuzhinsky, Kalmukov's 1961 &quot;Cavalier Mot&quot; and &quot;Serenade&quot; seem to have been painted five decades earlier than they were. Being a theatrical set designer may well have provided Kalmykov with a shelter from the outside world.
 &quot;It is the exquisite harmony of color, style and imagination that makes him close to the aesthetics of World of Art,&quot; Chudinovskaya said. &quot;I also can't think of any other artist, who, having started under that influence, would be able to carry all that culture into the 1960s. It's just remarkable.&quot;
 
 <i>
&quot;Sergei Kalmykov and the Russian Avant-Garde, 1920s and 1930s&quot; runs through the end of September in the Benois Wing of the State Russian Museum. Links: www.rusmuseum.ru </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Local club band <strong>Wine</strong>, which has long had a cult following, has put together a few gigs this week - its first since June.
 
The band, which takes its influences from such uniquely British acts as The Kinks and The Smiths, was a fixture on the local club scene in the 1990s, performing at TaMtAm, Fish Fabrique and, later, Moloko. At one stage, it featured former Akvarium cello player and TaMtAm head Seva Gakkel.
 Wine will perform at Purga on Friday, Moloko on Thursday and Boom on Aug. 22.
 Wine was away from the local club scene for over two years while its frontman, Alexei Winer - real name Alexei Fedyakov - was in Paris, where he started to write Russian-language material. However, he insists there will not be any Russian songs at this week's concerts. As before, the set will be exclusively English.
 &quot;There will hardly be any new songs, but there will be surprises,&quot; said Winer, adding that his Russian-language material is still &quot;in the works.&quot;
 Joining Winer will be Igor Kvavchenko, of rapcore band Dai Pistolet! and pop-rockers Nastya, on drums and Kostya Kremlyov on guitar. Kremlyov, who also plays with the pop-grunge band S.O.U.S., comes from Vyatka, Central Russia - as does Winer.
 &quot;We started out together as teenagers back in Vyatka, and now we happened to reunite,&quot; said Winer.
 The biggest of the three shows will be one at Moloko on Thursday, according to Winer, &quot;because Moloko is virtually the last good place left - the rest are nonsense.&quot;
 Chufella Marzufella, another great group influenced by the British rock - in this case, by The Who and The Rolling Stones - will perform at Moloko on Wednesday.
 The band, which formed in January 1994, reinvented itself this year, and now performs under the name <strong>Greblya</strong>, with two or three additional players and an element of psychedelia added to its garage-rock style.
 At its most recent gig at Moloko late last month, the band first appeared as Chufella Marzufella to perform its older stuff, before morphing into Greblya after the first five songs.
 With Red Club, currently the most popular place for foreign bands' club dates, on vacation, there will not be much of interest until late August, when the venue will reopen with the concert by <strong>The Legendary Pink Dots</strong> - the truly legendary psychedelic/industrial/goth-tinged band that formed in Britain in 1980 and moved to Amsterdam in the mid-1980s.
 Led by singer/lyricist Edward Ka-Spel, The Legendary Pink Dots has put out over 40 releases, quite apart from various side and solo projects. It will perform on Aug. 31. Check www.brainwashed.com for more information and media files.
 <i>
 - By Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: eateries with a twist in the tail
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: I've harbored a secret fondness for rodents since childhood, when two of my favorite pets were a pair of gerbils named Ron and Ron, after the eponymous characters in a sketch by British comedy duo Hale and Pace. So when I heard about not one but three - yes, three - mouse-themed establishments that opened recently, I jumped at the chance to review them like a hungry gerbil at a sunflower seed.
 
The toothily-titled troika of Myshi (&quot;Mice&quot;), &quot;Myshelovka&quot; (&quot;Mousetrap&quot;) and &quot;Myshinaya Nora&quot; (&quot;Mousehole&quot;) - a restaurant, bistro and coffeehouse, respectively - are located some way out of the center down Moskovsky Prospect. My dining companion and I therefore scuttled to the metro like Jerry fleeing Tom and his frying pan and emerged at the Park Pobedy station, opposite which the eateries are situated, and dove out of the rain into Myshi.
 Metaphorical whiskers a-quiver, we perused the menu and the interior. While the former is disappointingly low on rodentalia, the latter is predictably laden with it. Decorations include various representations of cheese, stills from various black-and-white films with mouse heads imposed on the main characters, and some very clever statues and portraits of the restaurant's namesake rodents engaged in activities such as playing the violin.
 Myshi's menu includes a separate section offering freshly squeezed fruit juices, which both my companion and I chose, opting for the apple (60 rubles, $2) and grapefruit versions (70 rubles, $2.30), respectively, both of which were very refreshing. We also ordered a bottle of Borzhomi mineral water (50 rubles, $1.60). 
 For starters, my companion chose the Fetaki salad (180 rubles, $6), a self-styled Mediterranean concoction of salad leaves, vegetables and Feta cheese. This she prounounced to be satisfying, with fresh vegetables and leaves and firm cheese, although the latter was of the standard Russian packaged variety. The salad also had a spicy note, provided by a sprinkling of ground hot pepper.
 Meanwhile, I settled for that old favorite, the tomato-and-mozarella salad (220 rubles, $7.30). This was also fine, with a nicely vinegar-tinged dressing, soft mozarella and fresh tomatoes.
 I continued with the breaded king prawns, tempted by the English-language description of scampi, another personal favorite. This was, for me, the highlight of the visit, by a narrow squeak over the salad. Rather than the traditional accompaniment of lemon wedge and tartar sauce, Myshi's variant, which gets top marks for looks, comes served on a pineapple ring with a sweet pineapple sauce, slices of orange and red grapefruit and some berries. I found the whole concoction ideal, with the tart fruit setting off the shellfish beautifully - although I was less enamoured of the dill sprigs that garnished it. Still, they were easily removed, so it would be churlish to complain.
 My companion was less fortunate with her main course, the fried trout wrapped in bacon and grape leaves. This turned out to be a whole trout, and my companion, who is not a big fan of fiddly dishes, especially fish, found it a bit overwhelming. However, she said that she liked the flavor, which, like her starter, had a spicy edge to it, and would recommend it to fish fanciers.
 We decided against dessert, although we were tempted by the cheesecake (of course). Instead, we ducked out and went next door to Myshinaya Nora, where I had a very good cappuccino and a slice of somewhat dry chocolate cake, while my companion had green tea and a piece of strawberry cake that she said was moist and enjoyable.
 We were too full to venture to the final venue, Myshelovka, although my companion suggested that it might offer free cheese, after the Russian proverb &quot;Free cheese is found only in a mousetrap,&quot; the equivalent of &quot;There's no such thing as a free lunch.&quot; A return visit to find out is probably in order.
 
 <i>
Myshi/Myshelovka/Myshinaya Nora. 165 Moskovsky Pr. Tel.: 389-5636, 388-2879. Open daily, noon to midnight (Myshi); daily, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.(Myshelovka); daily, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Myshinaya Nora). Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards accepted. Lunch for two, without alcohol: 1,210 rubles (about $40). </i>

TITLE: mariinsky tour points to future
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON - The Mariinsky Theater's ballet company on Saturday wrapped up its London season at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with two performances of its spectacular production of &quot;La Corsaire,&quot; with which it opened up on July 21. The troupe's three-week season provided plenty of highlights and talking points, including two Stravinsky ballets, some promising debuts, and the imminent move to Moscow of a top star.
 
The company, making a welcome return to the British capital after its last appearance in 2001, presented five programs, the most significant of which was Sergei Vikharev's reconstruction of &quot;La Bayadere.&quot; A repeated viewing left me in no doubt that this is now the definitive production of Marius Petipa's classic. Also new to London were Stravinsky's &quot;Les Noces&quot; (1923), choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, and &quot;The Rite of Spring&quot; (1913), choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, both of which premiered recently in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;Les Noces&quot; raised some eyebrows, as the choreographic text used by the Mariinsky differs from the Royal Ballet's version, which Nijinska herself staged in 1966 and is more familiar to London audiences. However, this stark, anti-Romantic work is a 20th-century masterpiece that belongs to the Mariinsky, which will doubtless master it with more performances in the future.
 &quot;The Rite of Spring&quot; is more questionable, however. Nijinsky's original steps have, unfortunately, been lost, and the text therefore contains a fair amount of extrapolation by American academic Millicent Hodson, who reconstructed it. The whole ballet, and especially the ending, looks pretty tame by today's standards - it is difficult to imagine the outrage that caused the audience to riot at the premiere 90 years ago at Paris' Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Nevertheless, Yulia Makhalina danced the Chosen Maiden movingly and with dignity.
 Every London season is rewarding for some important debuts by the Mariinsky's seemingly endless supply of young talent. This year's major discovery was Leonid Sarafanov, a prodigious 21 year old from Kiev who joined the company last year, and for whom company director Makhar Vaziyev has high hopes. This elegant, well-schooled dancer, cast in the opening night's &quot;Le Corsaire,&quot; was revealed as a splendid virtuoso, and went on to make a remarkably assured debut as Solor in &quot;La Bayadere&quot; the following week. Sarafanov's technical prowess is truly dazzling, although his characterization is still tentative. His effortlessly stylish dancing in Harald Lander's &quot;Etudes&quot; (1948) in the final week was breathtaking; no wonder The Sunday Times dubbed him &quot;the wonder boy of this season.&quot;
 The most talented of the young women barely out of their teens is the beautiful, tall, long-limbed Yekaterina Kondaurova, who danced &quot;Le Corsaire&quot;'s Medora boldly, on a grand scale and in long, seamless phrases. The performance was reminiscent of Makhalina when she danced the role in London 1988, at the beginning of her career.
 Some of Kondaurova's contemporaries were less remarkable. Tatyana Tkachenko was oddly bland as the second leading woman, Gulnara, in the opening night's &quot;Le Corsaire,&quot; although she later impressed as the third shades soloist in &quot;La Bayadere.&quot; Daria Sukhorukova was totally inexpressive as the Mazurka ballerina in &quot;Chopiniana.&quot; However, Viktoria Tereshkina has improved in the ballerina role in &quot;Swan Lake&quot; since her debut in the Manchester tour in April.
 There were, of course, distinguished performances from the more established stars. Svetlana Zakharova, currently one of the Mariinsky's two most celebrated female dancers - the other being Diana Vishnyova - danced the first night of most programs, and dominated the season. 
 She was wholly ravishing as Medora on the opening night, with her fine musicality and strong, yet delicate, legwork etching delightful shapes in space. As &quot;La Bayadere&quot;'s tragic heroine, Nikiya, Zakharova's gorgeous plastique and her intense acting complemented her diamantine virtuosity, producing arguably the greatest performance of the season. In the final program, she was superlative as the focal ballerina in &quot;Etudes,&quot; alluring in her grace and warm femininity.
 Zakharova's triumphs were, however, overshadowed, as news broke that she has signed a contact to join Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet next season. Zakharova told me in an interview in London that she will still guest with the Mariinsky in future at home and on overseas tours, but her less frequent appearances with the Mariinsky will be an inestimable loss.
 Another superlative performance came from Natalya Sologub, whose Odette/Odile in &quot;Swan Lake&quot; was a revelation. Irina Zhelonkina, a gem of an old-style ballerina, was the best of the three casts of Gulnara in &quot;Le Corsaire.&quot; She was also divine as the mazurka ballerina in &quot;Chopiniana,&quot; with her vibrant upper back and ability to seemingly float on thin air with her light pointework. It is incomprehensible why she wasn't given more first nights.
 The most prominant male principal in London, Andrian Fadeyev, is the Mariinsky's most polished male dancer. He was a classically pure and noble Prince Siegfried in &quot;Swan Lake,&quot; and was singularly impressive as the &quot;turning&quot; male soloist in &quot;Etudes.&quot; Cast against type in &quot;Le Corsaire&quot; as the evil slave trader, Lankedem, he was nevertheless magnificent in the role.
 Another noteworthy event was the return of Igor Zelensky - a favorite of London audiences - after a long absence due to injury. Another star Faroukh Ruzimatov, now 40, made just one token appearance in London, but it was amazing to see that he still danced the Golden Slave in &quot;Scheherazade&quot; so powerfully after all these years. The radiant Vishnyova also danced only one performance, of &quot;Le Corsaire,&quot; before leaving for Japan to dance in the World Ballet Festival. More of her stellar performances in London would have been more than welcome.
 Worthy of mention were the Mariinsky's incomparable character dancers - Galina Rakhmanova stunning in the Infernal Dance in &quot;La Bayadere,&quot; Islom Baimuradov as the evil Birbanto in &quot;Le Corsaire,&quot; and Vladimir Ponomarev commanding as the High Brahmin in &quot;La Bayadere.&quot;
 The Mariinsky's female corps de ballet is a remarkable star in its own right on every tour, and often receives loud ovations. The 32 anonymous women in the Shades scene in &quot;La Bayadere&quot; were transcendent, showing that the company's corps de ballet is still the greatest in the world. This consistancy must be reassuring for the Mariinsky Ballet, whose young talents may be more variable in quality.

TITLE: operatic hopefuls get their chance
AUTHOR: By Anastasia Makarova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Since launching her career some 40 years ago, Yelena Obraztsova has established herself as one of the foremost sopranos of the modern era. Now, the Leningrad-born singer is aiming to promote the opera stars of tomorrow with her own competition - the Yelena Obraztsova Competition for Young Opera Singers - the third running of which kicks off at the Glinka Philharmonic this week.
 
This year, 192 hopefuls - 104 sopranos, 40 mezzo-sopranos, 12 tenors, 22 baritones and 21 basses - from 21 countries will be hoping to take first prize of $10,000 - and a career boost potentially worth a lot more than that. Many of the competitors are drawn from the Mariinsky Theater's Academy of Young Singers, whose artistic director, Larisa Gergieva, was involved in setting up the competition in 1999.
 &quot;Every contest is a chance for young, gifted soloists to be heard,&quot; Gergieva said this week. &quot;Many of the winners of the two previous competitions, like [Mariinsky academy graduates] mezzo-soprano Yekaterina Semenchuk and tenor Daniil Shtoda, have since found worldwide fame, and have performed in the world's top opera houses, such as [New York's] Metropolitan Opera, [London's] Covent Garden, the Mariinsky and so on.&quot;
 Gergieva said that many students from the academy who will likely form the next generation of Mariinsky soloists will get some exposure at the competition.
 &quot;There are some brilliant voices among them,&quot; she said. &quot;I think they will make a good impression, although they are still greenhorns.&quot;
 In Gergieva's opinion, &quot;the competition is very demanding for the young singers. It's remarkable that they are able to sing in different languages, such as French and German.&quot;
 &quot;It's also demanding to perform in front of such a highly qualified jury, consisting of eminent soloists, conductors and international performers, such as [Italian soprano] Renata Scotto, [pianist] Vazha Chachava and [French countertenor] Robert Expert,&quot; Gergieva, herself a jury member, said.
 The rules of the competition are strict. Lots are drawn to determine the order in which the competitors will perform in all three rounds.
 &quot;Nobody wants to be 13th or first,&quot; Gergieva said. &quot;It may just be prejudice, but the first performer is generally unsuccessful.&quot;
 Each young singer is expected to present a program that includes an aria from a Verdi opera and a Rachmaninov romance, as well as set works. The jury will reduce the initial field to 40 competitors for the second round and 20 for the third, final stage.
 According to Gergieva, musical ability alone is just one of the things that the jury will be looking for - charisma is the critical factor: &quot;It needs to be learned, but my personal belief is that it's given by God.&quot;
 
 <i>
The Yelena Obraztsova Competition for Young Opera Singers runs from Monday through Aug. 30 at the Glinka Philharmonic (first round) and the Shostakovich Philharmonic (second and third rounds, final concert). Admission to the first and second rounds is free; to the third round and final concert by ticket. Call the Yelena Obraztsova Cultural Center at 553-1069 or 553-3780 for details. Links: www.obraztsova.org</i>


TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy <i>
TEXT: Razgovor po dusham</i>: a heart-to-heart talk; talk in which you bare your soul.
 
If there is one thing that seduces us foreigners and makes us lifetime captives of the charm of life in Russia, it's the capacity of Russians to engage in deep, soul-baring, intimate conversations about life, values, love and all the pleasures and pains of being a human being. These conversations - <i>pazgovory po dusham</i> can take place in the kitchen, around a bonfire at the dacha, or in a train compartment with a total stranger. In English, we usually call this a &quot;heart-to-heart talk,&quot; but be careful: This can also refer to a candid reprimand. (&quot;I had a heart-to-heart talk with him about his poor job performance.&quot;) In most Russian expressions for any kind of emotional depth and intimacy - anything that touches the essence of our being - the human spirit resides in the soul; for English-speakers, it's usually the heart.
 A <i>razgovor po dusham</i> begins when there is something &quot;on your mind,&quot; or &quot;weighing on you:&quot; <i>U menya tyazhelo na dushe</i>. (I have a problem weighing on me.) Then there are various ways to express opening your heart to someone: <i>Ya izlival yemu dushu</i>. (I poured out my heart to him.) Or, <i>Ya otkryla yemu dushu</i>. (I opened my heart to him.) This can describe either the openness of your conversation or your general willingness to open up to a person.
 If you reveal a great deal of yourself, you can say, <i>Ya obnazhil dushu</i>. (I bared my soul.) Or, <i>Ya vyskazal vsyo, chto bylo u menya na dushe</i>. (I said everything that was on my mind.) When you have really told all, you can say, <i>Ya vyvernul dushu naiznanku</i>. (I bared all, I didn't hold anything back. Literally: &quot;I turned my soul inside out.&quot;) <i>Krik dushi</i> is a &quot;cry from the heart&quot; - a blurted revelation that you can no longer hold inside. <i>Vdrug on priznalsya, chto on vsegda eyo lyubil. On ne khotel etogo govorit - eto byl krik dushi</i>. (Suddenly he confessed that he had always loved her. He didn't want to say it - it was a cry from the heart.) The result of these talks is <i>dukhovnaya bliznost</i> (deep intimacy), and great comfort and relief: <i>Ya oblegchil dushu</i>. (I eased my heart.)
 Different levels of intimate conversation can also be expressed. <i>Dushevnaya beseda</i> is a friendly, open, or warm chat. <i>My s nachalnikom dushevno pogovorili</i>. (My boss and I had a warm talk.) <i>Govorit s dushoi</i> means &quot;to speak passionately,&quot; or &quot;to have - or give - a heartfelt talk.&quot; <i>Govorit ot dushi</i> or <i>ot vsei dushi</i> is a stronger expression of candor: to speak from the heart.
 There are many other useful soulful expressions in Russian. <i>Ya eto sdelal dlya dushi</i> means &quot;I did it to please myself&quot; and is something like the English expression &quot;one for the heart.&quot; <i>V dushe ya vsegda khotel stat vrachom, no zhizn slozhilas inache</i>. (In my heart I always wanted to become a doctor, but life turned out differently.) <i>London byl mne po dushe</i>. (London was to my liking; I really felt at home in London.) <i>U nego za dushoi ni grosha</i>. (He doesn't have a penny to his name.) <i>Ya vlozhil dushu v rabotu</i>. (I put my heart into my work.) <i>Ona takaya dushka!</i> (She's a real sweetheart!)
 Nicest are the expressions describing love. <i>My s nei zhili dusha v dushu</i>. (We lived together in total harmony.) <i>U nas bylo yedinyoniye dush</i>. (Our hearts beat as one.) It is a lucky soul indeed who gets a letter addressed <i>Dusha moya</i>. &quot;My darling!&quot; is acceptable, but it doesn't match the Russian for depth of feeling. It's closer to the old English expression, &quot;My own true love.&quot; When you get that kind of love letter, you're entitled to wax poetic: <i>stalo khorosho na dushe</i>. (My heart took wing.)
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator. Yelena Khatskevich contributed to this column. </i>

TITLE: regime change a la 1953
AUTHOR: By Warren Bass
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: On Aug. 15, 1953, a group of anxious CIA officers huddled in a safe house in Tehran, sloshing down vodka, singing Broadway songs and waiting to hear whether they'd made history. Their favorite tune, &quot;Luck Be a Lady Tonight,&quot; became the unofficial anthem of Operation Ajax - the American plot to oust Iran's nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and place the country firmly in the authoritarian hands of Mohammed Reza Shah. 
 
In fact, luck was not much of a lady that night. As Stephen Kinzer's lively popular history of the 1953 coup recounts, Mossadegh's chief of staff got word of the conspiracy, and rushed troops to defend the prime minister, thereby panicking the feckless young shah into fleeing to Baghdad and plunging the carousing Central Intelligence agents into gloom. The coup succeeded four tense days later, only after a CIA-incited mob (led by a giant thug known memorably as Shaban the Brainless) swept Mossadegh aside. Luck was even less kind to the Ajax plotters in the longer haul; in 1979, the despotic shah fell to Islamist revolutionaries bristling with anti-American resentment. 
 Even the president who approved the coup, Dwight Eisenhower, later described it as seeming &quot;more like a dime novel than an historical fact.&quot; Sure enough, &quot;All the Shah's Men&quot; reads more like a swashbuckling yarn than a scholarly opus. Still, Kinzer, a New York Times correspondent now based in Chicago, offers a helpful reminder of an oft-neglected piece of Middle Eastern history, drawn in part from a recently revealed secret CIA history. 
 The book's hero is the enigmatic Mossadegh himself. In his day, British newspapers likened Mossadegh to Robespierre and Frankenstein's monster, while The New York Times compared him to Jefferson and Paine. Kinzer full-throatedly takes the latter view, seeing Mossadegh's achievements as &quot;profound and even earth-shattering.&quot; But he acknowledges that the great Iranian nationalist was also an oddball: a prima donna, prone to hypochondria, ulcers and fits, who met the urbane American diplomat Averell Harriman while lying in bed in pink pajamas and a camel-hair cloak. 
 Mossadegh's Iran faced formidable foes: British oil executives, the CIA and the brothers Dulles, all of whom come off wretchedly here. The least sympathetic of all are Iran's erstwhile British rulers, who continued to gouge Iran via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. When the Truman administration prodded it to share the wealth with Iran, its chairperson sniffed, &quot;One penny more, and the company goes broke.&quot; In 1951, to London's fury, Mossadegh led a successful campaign to nationalize the oil company, drove the British to close their vital oil refinery at Abadan and became prime minister. The British began drafting invasion plans, but Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned them that gunboat diplomacy would hurt the West in its struggle with Moscow. 
 Truman and Acheson's successors, alas, were less restrained. Third-world nationalists like Mossadegh made Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, as one scholar has put it, &quot;see red&quot; - as Communist wolves in neutralist sheep's clothing. Eager to roll back Communism rather than contain it, enthralled with covert action and egged on by Winston Churchill, they soon concluded that Mossadegh had to go. 
 Conveniently enough, the secretary of state could ask his brother to do the dirty work. Allen Dulles was then running the newly founded CIA, which had grown out of the wartime Office of Strategic Services. The CIA's man in Tehran was Kermit Roosevelt, an affable young O.S.S. veteran who had inherited his grandfather Theodore's taste for adventure. After masterminding the 1953 coup, Roosevelt began his victory speech by crowing, &quot;Friends, Persians, countrymen, lend me your ears!&quot; 
 Kinzer's brisk, vivid account is filled with beguiling details like these, but he stumbles a bit when it comes to Operation Ajax's wider significance. Kinzer shrewdly points out that 1953 helps explain (if not excuse) the Islamist revolutionaries' baffling decision to take American hostages in 1979; the hostage-takers feared that the CIA might save the shah yet again and, in part, seized prisoners as insurance. One mullah - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now Iran's supreme leader - warned at the time, &quot;We are not liberals like Allende and Mossadegh, whom the CIA can snuff out.&quot; Kinzer also notes that the 1953 conspiracy plunged the CIA into the regime-change business, leading to coups in Guatemala, Chile and South Vietnam, as well as to the Bay of Pigs. 
 The book's subtitle, unfortunately, suggests a less persuasive argument. &quot;It is not far-fetched,&quot; Kinzer writes, &quot;to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the shah's repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.&quot; Kinzer is right to warn against the unintended consequences of American intervention, but his suggestion here involves far too many causal leaps. After all, the shah needn't have turned out to be such a tyrannical disaster, and 1953 needn't have led to 1979. Moreover, while Iran's Shiite radicals surely helped inspire many Sunni Arab Islamists, the Iranian revolution hardly created the fanaticism of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who nursed hatreds of their own. Indeed, revolutionary Iran and Taliban Afghanistan were rivals, not allies, and they even almost went to war in 1998. 
 Moreover, blaming the CIA and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for the Iranian revolution lets later American administrations (and the shah himself) off the hook. Most Cold War presidents relied too heavily on the shah for Persian Gulf stability while doing too little to press him to reform. John F. Kennedy, who pushed Iran to liberalize, proved an honorable exception. In April 1962, he told a somewhat baffled shah to learn from the example of Franklin Roosevelt, who &quot;was still regarded almost as a god in places like West Virginia&quot; for siding with the common citizen. 
 The shah didn't get it. Nor did Eisenhower, who, in a March 1953 National Security Council meeting, wondered why we can't &quot;get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us.&quot; It's still a splendid question. 
 
 <i>
&quot;All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.&quot; By Steven Kinzner. John Wiley &amp; Sons. 272 pp. $24.95</i>
 

 <i>
Warren Bass is the author of &quot;Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance.&quot;</i>


TITLE: 'identity': film shall not live by one plot twist alone
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scott
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: In &quot;Identity,&quot; a group of strangers find themselves stranded at a ramshackle motel on - how to put it? - a dark and stormy night.
 
Like the setting, the characters themselves have the damp, bedraggled air of cliche. There is a spoiled, has-been actress (Rebecca DeMornay), whose limo driver, a former police officer (John Cusack), has apparently driven in from a French movie, with his dark overcoat and his dog-eared copy of &quot;Being and Nothingness.&quot;
 These two are joined by a creepy desk clerk (John Hawkes), a call girl with a suitcase full of money (Amanda Peet), a nice-looking family (John C. McGinley is the dad), a desperate-seeming young couple (Clea DuVall and William Lee Scott), and a corrections officer (Ray Liotta) transporting a snaggle-toothed criminal (Jake Busey). 
 This is an awful lot to keep track of, especially since each of these folks seems to be carrying around a secret. Before long, though, they begin to die off, horribly, one by one, leaving the survivors and the audience to speculate about who the killer, and the next victim, might be. The desperate-seeming young wife has a vague recollection of seeing something similar in a movie once before, though she declines to cite the title, which is either &quot;And Then There Were None&quot; or its send-up, &quot;Murder by Death.&quot; 
 &quot;Identity,&quot; a piece of elegant directorial hackwork by James Mangold (&quot;Girl, Interrupted,&quot; &quot;Kate and Leopold&quot;), goes through its generic paces with enough flair and mystery to keep you moderately entertained. The apparent premise, creaky though it may be, holds ample opportunity for suspense and second-guessing, and Mangold handles the revelations and reversals of Michael Cooney's script with nerve-racking aplomb. There are horror-film conventions - eerie sounds, slow camera movements, half-open doors and carefully arranged shadows - that retain their effectiveness no matter how many times you've seen them before, and Mr. Mangold adds to these a grisly repertory of severed heads and bloody handprints. 
 The second-handness of the situation, and of the characters who inhabit it, is explained - or justified, if you prefer - by an enormous, gold-plated pretzel of a plot twist that I will not divulge, lest my own head end up in someone's clothes dryer. I should note, however, that the television commercial in which Cusack is shown in conversation with Alfred Molina comes very close to spoiling the surprise, which is odd since without the surprise the movie would have no reason to exist. 
 Whether it has much of a reason to exist with the surprise is another question. Once it is clear you are no longer watching the movie you thought you were watching, there doesn't seem to be much point in going back to the movie that you thought you were watching, which is nonetheless what happens. Still with me? When the revelation comes - the moment that explains why all these panicky people are running around in the rain, kilometers from anywhere - it does administer a pleasurable jolt. You think: &quot;Wow. Cool.&quot;
 But the impression of cleverness, and the filmmaking dexterity that created it, fades pretty quickly, and you are left thinking: &quot;What? Wait a minute.&quot; All of those anxious, obvious characters - and the game, earnest performances of Cusack, Peet and Hawkes, especially, suddenly lose dimension, and they did not have all that much to begin with. 
 &quot;Identity&quot; is a reasonably well-executed thriller. It suffers not from awkwardness or silliness, which would make it more fun, but rather from its air-brushed, expensive pretentiousness. Like last year's &quot;Panic Room,&quot; the springtime box-office success of which Sony may be hoping to repeat, &quot;Identity&quot; is a dressed-up B picture, a hunk of cheese trying to sneak into the gourmet-food aisle of the supermarket.
 The cheap grubbiness that was always the hallmark of the best horror movies, and that survives in straighforwardly exploitative pictures like the recent &quot;Final Destination 2,&quot; is missing from preening high-concept movies like this one and the disastrous &quot;Dreamcatcher.&quot; Mangold acquits himself much better than Lawrence Kasdan did in that nightmare, and &quot;Identity&quot; is not terrible by any means, but there is nonetheless something depressing about seeing so many interesting actors stuffed into such an empty, ersatz vehicle. 
 
 <i>
&quot;Identity&quot; is currently showing at Crystal Palace and Neo cinemas. </i>

TITLE: U.S. Forces Deploy Near Liberian Airport
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONROVIA, Liberia - Dozens of American troops landed at Liberia's main airport Thursday, increasing the U.S. presence to boost West African peacekeepers, as rebels began withdrawing from Monrovia, ending their two-month siege of the starving capital.
 
U.S. Ambassador John Blaney and rebel chief of staff Abdullah Sherrif shook hands in the center of a bridge marking the front-line of the war-divided capital, signaling the rebel handover.
 The rebel withdrawal opens access to Monrovia's vital seaport and allows food and supplies to flow again, particularly to the famished government-held side of the capital, where hundreds of thousands of residents and refugees have had little more than leaves to survive on.
 Small numbers of West African peace forces and U.S. Marines crossed into rebel territory after the ceremony, and at least four West African military vehicles went directly to the port.
 Firing into the air, insurgents left the port and retreated north, heading toward the Po River, their promised new boundary outside the city. They kept their AK-47s, rocket launchers and other arms, and many carried away stereos, sacks of food aid and other loot.
 Tens of thousands of civilians massed on both sides of the New Bridge. West African peacekeepers, trying to curb the chaos, held back hungry crowds on the government side as well as civilians on the former rebel side, who rushed the bridge by the thousands, shouting, &quot;We want peace!&quot;
 Excited masses on both sides cheered as two U.S. fighter jets swooped back and forth above the crowd.
 Rebels had promised to pull out of the areas of the capital they control by noon Thursday, following the resignation and departure on Monday of President Charles Taylor, a former warlord blamed for 14 years of conflict in Liberia.
 U.S. President Bush had refused to send in any significant number of troops until Taylor left - and Thursday's deployment dramatically increased the number of U.S. troops on the ground in Liberia, from only about a dozen to a planned 200, including a 150-member rapid reaction force.
 U.S. Marines armed with M-16s and wearing helmets and jungle camouflage jumped out as nine U.S. helicopters settled on the airport tarmac, with two more helicopters hovering overhead.
 &quot;We are just here to help the people,&quot; Sergeant Michael Hobbs said minutes after arriving. All the 200 additional U.S. soldiers were expected to arrive Thursday.
 &quot;This operation today is going to be an important one,&quot; said Blaney, the U.S. ambassador, meeting the arrivals at the airport. &quot;You are going to see American boots on the ground, and a firm commitment to uphold humanitarian concerns in this country.&quot;
 Fifty members of the new U.S. deployment are to help with the logistics of getting aid flowing again to Liberia's cut-off capital.
 Taylor's exit has raised hopes for an end to the bloodshed. Fighting since 1989, when Taylor plunged the country into civil war, has killed more than 100,000 people, left the once-prosperous country in ruins, and left the population prey to armed fighters on both sides who loot and rob.
 Washington has stressed that the U.S. role would be as back-up to African peace troops, and that they would be concerned primarily with getting in humanitarian supplies. It said it did not intend the Americans to take part in combat.
 For Liberians, sight of the American helicopters and troops was enough.
 &quot;I am so happy. All these years we've been praying for America to come,&quot; said Randolph Eggley, a 51-year-old worker at the airport. &quot;Today maybe peace will begin.&quot;
 The troops, members of the 26th Expeditionary Unit, have been waiting in three U.S. warships off Liberia and have now pulled to within view of the city.
 Securing the port is a key first step for peacekeepers. Heavy looting of U.S. and World Food Program aid warehouses and other stockpiles of food continued Thursday morning ahead of the rebels' withdrawal. Thousands of people poured out of the area around the port with bags of grain and other goods on their heads. Rebels fired into the air as looters fought each other for the booty.
 West African countries have been landing peacekeeping troops since Aug. 4, keeping them at a temporary base at the airport until the force reached sufficient strength to deploy in the capital. Monrovia, a city of more than 1 million, is now crowded with hundreds of thousands of refugees.
 About 800 West African peacekeepers, mostly Nigerian soldiers, have landed so far, and a second Nigerian battalion was to start flying in later Thursday.
 Leaders of Liberia's post-Taylor government said they welcomed the U.S. deployment. &quot;It's long-awaited and we thank God it's been realized,&quot; said Lewis Brown, the foreign minister. &quot;It leads one to believe we might be closer to the end.&quot;
 Brown spoke at the airport as he accompanied new President Moses Blah to Ghana and ongoing peace talks there.
 Brown said Blah would meet with leaders of both of Liberia's rebel groups for talks that would focus on their demands that Blah step down.
 West African leaders say Blah is to hand over power in October to a transitional government that will lead Liberia to new elections. Rebels insist Blah is only a stand-in for Taylor, and want him out sooner.
 A cease-fire has held in Monrovia since the West African peace troops first deployed. Fighting has persisted outside the capital, with recent clashes to the south as Liberia's second rebel group moved forward from the country's second-largest city, the southeastern port of Buchanan.
 Blaney, the U.S. ambassador, said the southern rebels have now agreed to withdraw to within a few kilometers of Buchanan, using the St. John River as a cease-fire line.

TITLE: Summer Heat Wave Claims 3,000 Lives in France
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - About 3,000 people have died in France of heat-related causes since abnormally high temperatures swept across the country about two weeks ago, the health ministry estimated Thursday.
 
It was the government's first official death toll estimate. One of the few organizations to issue an estimate, France's emergency hospital physicians' association, had earlier this week said the death toll was at least 100.
 &quot;We can now state what's happening to us is a veritable epidemic,&quot; Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei said on France-Inter radio.
 Over the past few days, various city and regional governments had issued death estimates in their areas. The national government said it was working to compile full, countrywide figures.
 Morgues and funeral directors have reported skyrocketing demand for their services since the heat wave took hold. General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6 through Aug. 12, compared to 2,300 on an average week in the year - a 37 percent jump.
 The ministry said its estimate was partly drawn from studying deaths in 23 Paris regional hospitals from July 25 through Aug. 12 and from information provided by General Funeral Services.
 According to 2002 figures, the Paris regional hospitals that were surveyed could have expected some 39 deaths a day, the ministry said. But on Aug. 12 this year, during the heat wave, they recorded nearly 180, it said.
 &quot;We note a clear increase in cases beginning Aug. 7 and 8, which we can regard as the start of the epidemic of deaths linked to the heat,&quot; the health ministry said in a written statement.
 Many of the victims were elderly, and Mattei said the high death rate was a result of an &quot;exceptional&quot; heat wave combined with an aging population.
 Health officials say August is often a time when elderly people find themselves alone, when their families go on vacation.
 &quot;They are often alone in Paris when their families go away on holiday,&quot; said health ministry spokesperson Laurence Danand. 
 &quot;There are a lot of elderly people alone in big cities in August,&quot; he said.
 Danand said an exact figure would be released next week on the number of heat-related deaths, based on a survey of all private and public medical institutions, including retirement homes.
 On Wednesday, days after the first complaints accusing the government of a slow response to heat-related deaths, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin asked the Paris region to launch an emergency hospital plan to provide for a massive influx of patients.
 Mattei also acknowledged &quot;difficulties&quot; for the government in managing the surge in temperatures, but said that hospital staffers were performing in an &quot;exemplary&quot; manner in response.
 The government &quot;carried out the responses that were needed&quot; as soon as the first cases of heat-related death appeared about a week ago, Mattei said. &quot;We didn't just remain inactive.&quot;
 Paris City Hall said Wednesday it had taken extra measures to ensure that city-run funeral homes would remain open to bury bodies on Friday, a holiday in France, and recall more than 30 municipal workers from vacation.
 To protect the elderly, the city government's 13 retirement homes bought extra fans and atomizers to keep their residents cool in a country where air conditioning is not widespread.
 Record-high temperatures have been set in numerous cities across France, and the capital has baked under heat exceeding 98 degrees Fahrenheit (37C). The average August temperature in Paris, which has warm but not torrid summers, is 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24C).

TITLE: Piazza Blasts Mets to Win Over Giants
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Mike Piazza looked as if he'd never left. 
 
The All-Star catcher homered and drove in five runs in his long-awaited return to the lineup, propelling the New York Mets to a 9-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday night. 
 &quot;I'm glad I kind of downplayed everything and told them not to expect too much,&quot; Piazza said. &quot;It feels like spring training. I'm excited to be back.&quot; 
 Steve Trachsel shut down Barry Bonds and the Giants, but Piazza was the star of the show. 
 Playing his first major league game since severely straining his right groin May 16 in San Francisco, he grounded out his first time up, then connected for a two-run shot off rookie Jerome Williams in the third inning. 
 After Timo Perez popped out of the dugout, drawing laughs from the crowd, Piazza emerged for a curtain call. It was a welcome sight for 31,759 fans, who have endured the last three months of an awful season without a chance to watch the Mets' main attraction. 
 &quot;Doesn't he do that all the time? I've seen him do it a million times on TV,&quot; Mets rookie Jason Phillips said. &quot;I just got to see it from the dugout this time. He's Mike Piazza. He puts people in the seats. That's who they come to see and he delivered tonight.&quot; 
 Piazza, who was in a real groove at the plate before the injury, chased Williams (5-3) with an RBI single in the fourth. He added a two-run single in the seventh off Matt Herges and left for a pinch-runner to a standing ovation. 
 &quot;It was like he never left. Raking right off the bat,&quot; Trachsel said. 
 The Mets beat the NL West-leading Giants for the second night in a row and fourth time in six tries this season. 
 Piazza went 3-for-17 (.176) in a five-game minor league rehabilitation assignment with Triple-A Norfolk and said before the game he expected to struggle for a while as he tried to get his timing back. 
 In fact, he said he was so jittery Tuesday night he could barely sleep. 
 &quot;I didn't see any changes in his swing,&quot; Giants manager Felipe Alou said. &quot;He's a born hitter. He may be out of shape, but lacking a few at-bats Piazza is still better than most guys.&quot; 
 His return seemed to lift all of the last-place Mets, who got 13 hits and have won six of nine overall. 
 Ty Wigginton reached base all five times, going 3-for-3 with two doubles off the wall and two RBIs. Perez had two hits, two steals and two runs scored. Even Trachsel, batting .095 this year, hit a two-out RBI double over the head of right fielder Jose Cruz Jr. in the fifth. 
 &quot;It's a good start. I don't want to say anything because I don't want to jinx it,&quot; Piazza said. &quot;The comfort can go away real quickly.&quot; 
 
 <strong>
Kansas City 11, N.Y. Yankees 0.</strong> Ten years seemed to melt away right before Kevin Appier's eyes. It was 1993 again. He was the young ace of the Kansas City staff, on his way to winning 18 games. Kauffman Stadium was full. The Royals were in a pennant race and quite handily beating the New York Yankees. 
 
He's not young anymore, and this is 2003. But all the rest was the same Wednesday night. Appier reintroduced himself to Kansas City by pitching six shutout innings as the Royals routed New York 11-0 for their first home series victory over the Yankees in 10 years. 
 &quot;It's pretty awesome,&quot; said Appier, the longtime Royals pitcher who was traded away in 1999. 
 &quot;Every win is huge,&quot; he added, &quot;but coming back here and being able to help these guys in a pennant race - it feels really good. It feels tremendous.&quot; 
 Mike Sweeney drove in four runs and Brent Mayne had four hits and two RBIs for the Royals, whose $41 million payroll is less than one-quarter of the $180 million carried by the Yankee franchise that has dominated them for almost a decade. 
 &quot;This means we can play with anybody,&quot; manager Tony Pena said. 
 By taking two of the three games, the surprise leaders in the AL Central won their first home series from the Yankees since Sept. 10-12, 1993. 
 Until this week, New York hadn't lost a game in Kansas City since 2000 and hadn't dropped the season series at Kauffman in nine years. 
 The Yankees have lost four of five. This was their most lopsided loss of the year. 
 &quot;We have to turn the page and fix what went wrong tonight,&quot; Yankees manager Joe Torre said. &quot;We have to win in Baltimore and make sure this game doesn't carry over.&quot; 
 Appier (8-8) walked one and struck out two in his first home start since the Royals picked him up on Aug. 6. 
 The 35-year-old right-hander, who has kept his home in Kansas City, had been released on July 30 by Anaheim after the Yankees, of all teams, roughed him up for five hits and four runs in just two thirds of an inning. 
 &quot;I didn't get out of the first inning. That was ugly,&quot; Appier said. 
 To make sure Appier got a curtain call, Pena let him warm up for the seventh inning before going out to the mound and bringing in Jeremy Affeldt. The crowd of nearly 35,596 stood and cheered. 
 &quot;It was an incredibly generous ovation,&quot; Appier said. &quot;I genuinely appreciate it. That's Tony. It made me feel really good.&quot; 
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>

TITLE: Clijsters Makes Comfortable Debut as World's New No. 1
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO - Kim Clijsters easily lived up to her new ranking as the world's top player, taking just 48 minutes Wednesday night to advance to the third round of the Rogers AT&amp;T Cup. 
 
The player from Belgium, who replaced Serena Williams at the top on Monday, routed Francesca Schiavone 6-1, 6-2. Williams, who withdrew before the start of the tournament, had been No. 1 for 57 weeks. 
 Clijsters is the first woman to reach No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam title since the WTA Tour introduced its rankings in 1975, but has a tour-leading six victories this season and has reached the semifinals of all 14 appearances. 
 &quot;I definitely felt great out there,&quot; Clijsters said. &quot;She probably made more mistakes than the other two matches I've played [against her] in the last few weeks. 
 &quot;But I played very aggressive and never gave her a chance to play her game,&quot; she said. 
 In the afternoon, second-seeded Justine Henin-Hardenne and defending champion Amelie Mauresmo won second-round matches. 
 Other seeded players advancing to the third round of the $1.3 million event were No. 4 Daniela Hantuchova, No. 5 Anastasia Myskina, No. 9 Elena Dementieva, No. 10 Vera Zvonareva, No. 12 Elena Bovina, No. 14 Nadia Petrova and No. 15 Nathalie Dechy. 
 Henin-Hardenne had an easy time with Marion Bartoli, winning 6-3, 6-3. Bartoli was ahead 3-2 in the second set, but Henin-Hardenne said a turning point came when she won a long, hard-fought rally to make it 30-30. 
 &quot;Mentally and physically it was an important point,&quot; Henin-Hardenne said. &quot;I was feeling fresh and probably she was a little bit tired.&quot; 
 Bartoli was broken after hitting the net on the next two points. 
 Mauresmo overcame several errors in the first set to beat Yelena Likhovtseva 3-6, 6-1, 6-2. 
 Third-seeded Mauresmo has battled knee and rib injuries this season and, with the exception of Fed Cup hasn't played a tournament since June. But she wasn't worried when she got behind against Likhovsteva. 
 &quot;I was a little disappointed by the way I started,&quot; Mauresmo said. &quot;It happens very often for me when I am out for a few weeks. I takes a little time to come back.&quot; 
 Hantuchova routed Jill Craybas 6-1, 6-2. 
 &quot;I was really pleased with the way I played today,&quot; Hantuchova said. &quot;And it's always nice to have a match like this at the beginning of the tournament which gave me a lot of confidence. I felt really good out there today.&quot; 
 Myskina received a scare from Nicole Pratt but won 3-6, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4. 
 Myskina was down as much as 5-1 in the second set. Her coach was so unhappy with her play that he stormed off the court. 
 &quot;He was really mad that I was down and I just said that I have to win because I don't want to make him even more angry,&quot; Myskina said.
 In Mason, Ohio, Andy Roddick is taking nothing for granted in the Cincinnati Masters. 
 The seventh-seeded Roddick has defeated his round of 16 opponent, James Blake, in all six of their meetings, but isn't convinced winning a seventh time will be easy. 
 &quot;We've had some tough matches, some three-setters,&quot; said Roddick, who won the Canada Masters last week. &quot;I think he's getting better all the time.&quot; 
 The unseeded Blake isn't awed by Roddick. 
 &quot;Anyone out here can be beaten,&quot; Blake said. &quot;Right now, Andy is probably playing the best out of all of them, but he's still beatable.&quot; 
 Blake beat 11th-seeded Sjeng Schalken 6-1, 6-4 in the second round Wednesday. 
 Roddick advanced by defeating Ivan Ljubicic 6-1, 6-4. Roddick had 10 aces to three for Ljubicic. 
 David Nalbandian, the 2002 Wimbledon runner-up, beat reigning Wimbledon champion Roger Federer 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5). Nalbandian has defeated Federer all four times they have played. 
 Nalbandian advanced to a Thursday match with another unseeded player, Juan Ignacio Chela, who defeated 13th-seeded Fernando Gonzalez 6-2, 6-4 Wednesday. 
 Also advancing was No. 8 seed Rainer Schuettler, who defeated Jarkko Nieminen 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4). Schuettler defeated Andre Agassi last week in the Canada Masters before losing to Nalbandian in the semifinals. 
 French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero was eliminated in the second round, losing 6-7 (7-3), 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 to unseeded Gaston Gaudio, who advanced to play Robby Ginepri. 
 The second-seeded Ferrero had 16 aces to Gaudio's six but was undone by 10 double-faults and 40 unforced errors to Gaudio's 24. 
 It was the first time this year that Gaudio had defeated the Spaniard, having lost to him at Monte Carlo and again in Rome. 
 Gaudio, who was eliminated by Federer last week in the first round of the Canada Masters, said he has known Ferrero since their youth and they are well matched. 
 &quot;We know each other so much that there's always tough matches,&quot; he said. 
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>

TITLE: Players Looking for Upset at PGA Tourney
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROCHESTER, New York - Optimism at the PGA Championship has never been so high for so many players, and not just because Tiger Woods has gone five majors without winning one. 
 
It comes from Ben Curtis winning the first major he ever played. 
 &quot;The inspiration is ... you know what? Anyone can win any week out here,&quot; Steve Flesch said Wednesday. &quot;That's what you have to keep in mind.&quot; 
 It shouldn't be hard to remember. Only a month ago at the British Open, a 26-year-old rookie unknown by most of his peers captured the oldest championship in golf by beating the best players in the world. Curtis became the first player in 90 years to win a major in his first try. 
 Who's next?
 Maybe it will be Chris Riley, who learned his lessons from Royal St. George's. Riley finished third in the PGA Championship last year, and won his first PGA Tour event a week later. But in the first round of the British Open, a 7-over 78 made him wonder if he was fooling himself. 
 &quot;I was like, 'Look at the names who win this tournament - Ernie Els, Tiger Woods.' Did I really have a chance coming over here?&quot; Riley said. &quot;Usually, the big names win the major championships. To watch Ben Curtis win ... I'll never take that attitude again. 
 &quot;It obviously gives guys like myself a lot of confidence.&quot; 
 That means the PGA Championship, which starts Thursday at Oak Hill Country Club, could be more wide-open than ever. 
 The fourth major of the year is famous for its surprises - John Daly in 1991 at Crooked Stick as the ninth alternate; Jeff Sluman at Oak Tree in 1988 for his first PGA Tour victory; even Rich Beem last year at Hazeltine, although he had won his previous start. 
 Twelve of the last 15 winners at the PGA Championship had never won a major. 
 Who's next? 
 Maybe it will be Phil Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie, the best two players to have never won a major. 
 &quot;Mike Weir and Jim Furyk were up there with those people that were some of the best players in the world not to win a major championship, and they both got that off their backs now,&quot; Thomas Bjorn said. &quot;Players like Mickelson and Monty, that must give them a lot of feeling that they can go in here and have a chance.&quot; 
 Mickelson tied for sixth last week at the International, his first top-10 since he was third at the Masters in April. He has kept out of the spotlight this week, and could be ready to claim that first major when not as many people are watching. 
 &quot;I want to win just as bad as I always have,&quot; Mickelson said. &quot;And I'll be trying just as hard as I always have.&quot; 
 Don't forget about Woods. 
 His last major championship was the 2002 U.S. Open, hardly an eternity ago. He comes into the PGA Championship with a tie for second, a tie for fourth and a victory in his last three tournaments, and he appears to be playing well. 
 &quot;Tiger is still the man to beat every week,&quot; Ernie Els said. 
 Still, Woods might have lost some of the intimidation factor he had when he won seven out of 11 majors through the 2002 U.S. Open. 
 A year ago, Woods was only one shot behind Beem going into the back nine at Hazeltine, and Beem proceeded to build an insurmountable lead. 
 &quot;Before, I think there was an attitude that you had to play really well to beat Tiger,&quot; Padraig Harrington of Ireland said. &quot;Now players are saying if he plays great and he wins, fine. But let's see him do it.&quot; 
 Then again, Woods isn't the only guy to beat this week - not after what Curtis did at the last major, not with so many guys believing it could just as easily been them. 
 &quot;It takes every rule - that you think you have to have experience, that you have to play a bunch of these - and throws it out the window,&quot; Charles Howell III said. &quot;It just shows you that anything can happen. It also shows you how good players are.&quot; 
 The PGA Championship likes to boast it has the strongest field in golf, with 96 of the top 100 players at Oak Hill, typical of most years. 
 The Masters is said to have the weakest field - only about 95 players, including aging champions like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tommy Aaron. 
 Truth is, every major used to have a short field. Only so many players had the game, the experience and the mental strength to withstand the Sunday pressure of a major. 
 How to explain Curtis? 
 &quot;There's not just one guy that can win a major championship out here,&quot; said Davis Love III, the winner of just one major in 19 years on Tour. &quot;There's a whole bunch of them, and I'm sure it gives the whole field confidence.&quot;