SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #912 (80), Tuesday, October 21, 2003
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TITLE: Former Editor Put in Charge of City Media
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alla Manilova, the former editor of Nevskoye Vremya daily, and infamous in the local journalistic community for firing a group of reporters who protested censorship in the paper in 1996, was appointed on Friday head of City Hall's media committee, Interfax reported.
"The door to information in Smolny should be wide open," Interfax quoted her as saying Monday. "There won't be any cookies for 'our' media and whips for others. There won't be favored and disfavored media."
One of her first goals is to organize a new system to distribute newspapers in the city because "an absence of a necessary access of publications to readers is a key problem for editors of many city papers," Manilova said.
"This problem affects all publications regardless of [their] political position," she added.
Manilova could not be reached for comment Monday.
Manilova gained experience in the media business at Nevskoye Vremya, printed five times weekly with a daily circulation of 17,000 copies.
"Her declaration that the door to information is going to be wide open sounds very pleasant and gratifying, but the question is who are these 'our' media and who are the 'others,'" Anna Sharogradskaya, head of the Regional Press Institute said Monday in a telephone interview. "If that's the way she put it, this means that these categories exist in her mind."
"It is not clear at all what understanding she has of the media business," Sharogradskaya said. "It can hardly be based on her experience at Nevskoye Vremya. This paper has not performed well at attracting advertisements and exists not because of paid advertisements, but because of some unidentified [financial] sources."
In 1996, while editor of the major city daily, Manilova supported the unsuccessful re-election campaign of former mayor Anatoly Sobchak. She acknowledged then that she was allowed to buy a downtown city-owned apartment at a bargain price two days before the June runoff vote.
According to a prominent real estate agent, the estimated value of the downtown apartment that Manilova was allowed to purchase was $30,000 to $40,000, well above the $7,000 dollars a City Hall official, who declined to be identified, said she paid.
Manilova said the purchase was made under a law which gave the St. Petersburg mayor sole discretion to sell apartments to city residents of "high cultural merit," "high achievement in sports" or other distinction in society.
During the 1996 gubernatorial elections, five reporters at Nevskoye Vremya went public with accusations the newspaper distorted their articles to favor Sobchak. Most of them were fired by Manilova soon after.
"There should be some rules guiding who can be appointed to managing positions," Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party and one of the journalists fired by Manilova, said Monday in a telephone interview. "[Manilova's appointment] is as hard for me to believe as if Colonel [Yury] Budanov [who was found guilty June this year in kidnapping, murder and abuse of authority leading to the death of a Chechen woman] was appointed to head the criminal department of the federal police."
"This [Manilova's appointment ] is not a mistake, this a crime against the city journalistic community," Linkov said.
Yury Vdovin, representative of St. Petersburg branch of Citizen's Watch, the international human rights organization said that the part of Manilova's official biography that claims she participated in the creation of one of the first independent newspapers in St. Petersburg is only partially true.
Nevskoye Vremya gained its independence in 1993 when the city parliament decided to withdraw its part of the ownership to make the paper absolutely independent, he said.
"It was true the paper was full of bright and interesting articles at that point, but then Manilova used this independence to just serve the authorities - Anatoly Sobchak at the first, then Vladimir Yakovlev and now Valentina Matviyenko. She [Manilova] is going to provide propaganda, that's all," Vdovin said.
Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko faction member of the Legislative Assembly, said he does not care that Manilova was appointed because she would not have any influence on any of the liberal-minded papers he cooperates with.
"I think this committee itself should not exist because it's useless," said Boris Vishnevsky, another Yabloko member of the Legislative Assembly and former Nevskoye Vremya journalist. "This committee plays the same role as the ideological department played in the city communist party headquarters [in the Soviet times]. Its main goal will be to ensure the St. Petersburg television station serves City Hall."
Manilova was not the only person associated with former city election campaigns to find a job in the local media recently.
Interfax Information Services Group announced last week its plans to created a news agency in the Northwest region. Lyudmila Fomicheva was appointed as the agency's president and the first deputy director. From 1993 to 1996 Fomicheva worked as Mayor Anatoly Sobchak's spokeswoman and in recent years was an adviser and spokeswoman to Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council.
TITLE: Elephants Have Colorful Link to Moscow
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: From the elephant who walked thousands of kilometers to reach Moscow in the 16th century to the elephants who were bribed into entering a new $20 million home in the Moscow Zoo last month, the history of elephants in the capital is colorful and surreal.
One might consider the phlegmatic, vegetarian giants as the zoo's less-than-exciting tenants. But experts who have been tracing the history of the tusked beasts in the capital say that elephants in Moscow have been loved, reviled, subjected to housing shortages, succumbed to flashes of insanity and even been bombed by the Nazis
"Elephants are something between dogs and children," said Natalya Istratova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow Zoo, which these days is home to seven adult elephants - three Asian and four African. "They are more intelligent than dogs, but at times very sensitive, touchy like children, but always unforgiving."
The first elephant stepped onto Russian soil in the 16th century and entered the annals of history through his dramatic fate. The Asian elephant, whose age and name have been lost over the past five centuries, arrived in Moscow in the mid-16th century loaded with gifts for Ivan the Terrible from the Persian Shah Tahmasp. The exotic giant impressed the tsar and his court more than all the gifts it had brought.
Though the tsar already possessed a menagerie within the Kremlin walls, only small animals and exotic birds lived there. The elephant was housed separately, perhaps out of consideration of its size, to the south of the Kremlin, right next to a cage of lions. The elephant resided without incident in a wooden house, and his Arab keeper, who also permanently settled in Moscow, took care of him. But the idyll did not last long.
In his memoir of his stay in Moscow, "Notes of Moskovia," 16th-century German-born oprichnik Heinrich Staden, a contract warrior hired to fight rebellious nobility, described the final chapter in the biography of the first Moscow elephant.
According to Staden, the elephant and his keeper fell victim to envy and defamation. "When the plague epidemic gripped Moscow in 1570 the Arab keeper with his elephant was slandered by the Russians as if he and the elephant were the source of the deadly disease," Staden wrote.
The keeper and the elephant were exiled from the capital. When the keeper died, the tsar ordered the elephant killed. But the animal, distraught over his master's death, broke out of its enclosure and "lay down on the nearby keeper's grave where he was finished off," Staden wrote.
Later, when Russia's capital moved to St. Petersburg, presenting tsars with exotic animals became a customary practice among foreign ambassadors. The tsars did not always know what to do with such gifts.
Yelena Lysogorskaya, a zoo guide and historian, said that for the zoo's opening in 1864, Alexander II donated an Asian elephant named Mavlyuk, which he himself had received as a present.
Little is known about the history of the zoo's inhabitants. Most of its archives were burned in a fire at the beginning of World War II, Lysogorskaya said.
However, a bigger fire, which could have destroyed most of the zoo grounds and killed dozens of tenants, was prevented by an emotionally unstable elephant named Shango. In 1941, he put out an incendiary explosive that dropped into his enclosure during a Nazi bombing run.
"Shango was very aggressive," Lysogorskaya said, adding that the elephant's bad temper was legendary. "The bomb spinning in the corner of his enclosure with an unpleasant hissing sound irritated him, so he stepped on it and dug it into the sand."
Occasionally, Shango used to throw stones or his own excrement across the wall of his enclosure, and at times even targeted visitors, Lysogorskaya said. Zookeepers had to remove the stones from his cage and clean him with regularity.
In his older years, Shango, who died in 1961, spent hours smearing his excrement skillfully with his trunk on the walls of the enclosure.
His one-time girlfriend, Molly, gave birth to his two sons, named Muscovite and Karat, but died in an accident in 1954. Molly's stuffed body is now on display at the zoological museum.
According to Istratova, the zoo's current elephants lack Shango's flair. Their main entertainment is eating.
The everyday menu is not very diverse, though it is plentiful.
An adult beast consumes up to 130 kilograms of grass or hay per day, depending on the season, along with vegetables such as carrots, cabbage and beets. Also, each of the seven elephants chews up dozens of birch or oak banya veniki, which are believed by veterinarians to aid in their digestion. Occasionally keepers serve the animals such delicacies as sugar, kiwi or other fruits, but only for training purposes, Istratova said.
The animals do not allow their keepers to sit idle, each producing up to 40 kilograms of waste a day.
Breaking the stereotype that the elephant is a very peaceful animal, some male elephants are aggressive and impudent, especially during mating season. "Usually the males [called bulls] go absolutely out of control, and get unmanageable," Istratova said. "Well, just like men do sometimes."
Also, elephants are the most difficult and dangerous zoo animals to care for.
Keepers at the Moscow Zoo observe a strict set of precautions when feeding or cleaning an elephant, Istratova said. Two keepers always enter the enclosure, one giving the animal commands and the other cleaning or serving food.
One keeper lost his life in 1993 when he entered the enclosure alone. An elephant accidentally smashed him to death against the wall, despite being emotionally attached to that keeper. In 139 years of operation, the Moscow Zoo has reported only one other elephant-related fatality. Officially, it boasts one of the lowest accident rates in the world.
Keepers give commands like "trunk," "back" or "down," always in English, in case an animal is relocated to another country where trainers and keepers don't speak Russian.
"Of course, the pronunciation of our keepers leaves much to be desired," said Istratova. "But the elephants understand their English anyway."
In 1985, six infant elephants were captured in Laos at the request of the Vietnamese Communist government, which intended to present the animals to Cuban leader Fidel Castro. To comply with local veterinary regulations, the animals were vaccinated against foot and mouth disease and put on a ship to the Caribbean.
But when the elephants made it to Cuba, the local veterinary and customs services declined the gift, fearing the elephants could still carry the disease, which had never been detected in Cuba before.
The Cuban customs officials and veterinarians tried to find a new home for the unwanted animals, and the Soviet Union was there to accept the offer.
Istratova flew to Cuba, then accompanied the animals on a six-month sea journey, during which one of the elephants perished. They stepped onto Russian soil in January 1986, when local temperatures hovered near 30 degrees below zero. The elephants were then distributed to three Russian zoos in heated train carriages provided by the Defense Ministry. Three of the animals ended up in the Moscow Zoo.
Life in captivity is tough on reproduction. Only one elephant has been born in the Moscow Zoo over the past 50 years. Born in 1995, Elbrus, named after the highest mountain in Europe, resides in the Yerevan Zoo.
One day of care, provisions and housing for an elephant costs the Moscow Zoo $45, making it one of the most expensive animals in residence, Istratova said. Expenses include three meals a day, snacks between meals, medical checkups and pedicures. A crocodile or arctic penguin costs the zoo only $1.50 to $3 per day. Perhaps for that reason, the elephants are still without a private or corporate sponsor, which other zoo tenants have.
Like many Muscovites, the elephants for years have suffered from housing problems, being forced to live in a cramped enclosure. But three of them received royal treatment last month, when they were moved into a state-of-the-art house with a shower, pool and climate control system. The new enclosure is decorated with a fake waterfall and trees to remind the elephants, which are believed to have an excellent memory, of their natural habitat.
The elephants were the only ones unimpressed with the new house. They refused to enter it for days. To mask the elephants' stubbornness during an opening ceremony that involved a slew of high-ranking city officials, zoo personnel employed a little trick: "rehearsing a happy and impatient walk into their brand new dwelling," Istratova said.
"The keepers left them food in the new house at the same time for three days in a row ahead of the opening so the animals already knew that food was there and were anxious to get to it," Istratova said. "When the mayor, zoo director and other officials walked into the house, the keeper opened the door from the adjacent open-air enclosure and the elephants literally rushed inside."
With no hope of getting another new home for the other four elephants, the zoo plans to send them to its branch near Volokolamsk, north of Moscow. There the zoo plans to build an open-air safari park.
"Seven elephants," Istratova said, "this is just too much for one zoo."
Yana Valuyeva contributed to this report.
TITLE: Cellphone Ducks Irk Inventor
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A Gatchina man wants to charge mobile phone company Siemens $1 for every one of its telephones in Russia, unless an expressive duck graphic that can be sent with SMS messages is removed from the company's phones.
The poor duck was brought before the city's Kuibyshev federal court last week as an evidence of inventor Viktor Petrov's claim that Siemens - one of country's biggest cell phone suppliers - had stolen his invention.
In April 1999, Petrov applied for a patent for his invention of a method for regulating the psycho-emotional condition of humans.
The method was meant to be used "by small groups, for instance, in a family, to create a friendly psychological climate, and in this way to prevent psychosomatic illnesses."
The idea came to the former military psychologist, while he was in the process of divorcing his wife.
At that time, he thought that if each family member had a suitable apparatus at hand they could inform other members of their emotional state.
Using sketches of faces, accompanied by short melodies, they could indicate how stressed they were feeling. The so-called Smileys could indicate whether someone was in a bad mood, in which case it was probably better not to talk to them, or if someone urgently needed comforting.
A year and a half after he applied for the patent, Petrov's application was approved in December 2000. He has received no applications to use his idea.
However, in 2002 Petrov saw red when he observed Siemens' ducks and other graphic images or Smileys accompanied by texts describing the senders' moods.
"I'm ironic, flirty," says the first duck image, opening its eyes wide with a suggestive look.
"I'm glad," says the second breaking into a big smile; "I'm skeptical" the third frowns; "I'm sad,""I'm angry," "I'm indifferent," the rest of the messages say.
Since then Petrov has discovered similar "emotional Smileys" in most modern cell phones, but he chose Siemens S-45 as the first target.
"Petrov's copyright was definitely violated," Petrov's lawyer Alexei Yanykin, Petrov's said Monday in a telephone interview.
Petrov does not have a phone and did not respond to requests to contact The St. Petersburg Times.
Seeking proof, Petrov paid the Bonch-Bruyevitch Telecommunications University in St. Petersburg and others to conduct tests, and received confirmation that his patent was used in S-45 cell phone, Yanykin said.
From December 2002 to March 2003, Petrov was desperately trying to get in touch with Siemens offices in St. Petersburg and Moscow, sending letters, but got no response, he added.
In April, Petrov brought a case against St. Petersburg OOO Siemens on the illegal use of his invention to Kuibyshevsky court. Petrov demanded Siemens stop using his invention in its SMS function.
However, Siemens representatives did not show up for the first hearing last week, and it was postponed two months.
"We didn't see any sense in sending our representative from Moscow for the hearing of a meaningless case," said Siemens lawyer Alexei Daranov in a telephone interview from Moscow on Monday.
Petrov has not named a liable defendant, since neither St. Petersburg Siemens office nor the Moscow one has anything to do with either producing or developing Siemens cellphones, Daranov said.
Petrov's case is built on dubious premises, he added.
"The materials Petrov submitted for his invention were clearly related to medicine; that is a completely different field to telecommunications," Daranov said.
Daranov said Siemens used the duck images for a purpose other than medicine - the images are intended to enhance SMS communication, not to "regulate people's psycho-emotional conditions," as Petrov describes the application of his method in his official patent.
Under the Russian patent law, each invention applies to specific areas, he said.
"I can't say for sure when Siemens introduced smileys in its program, but it seems the idea of such informative symbols first appeared on the Internet, and long ago," Daranov said.
TITLE: Stepashin Gives Way On Road Funding
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The State Audit Chamber has lifted a demand made in May for the Finance Ministry to stop transferring subsidies for road construction to St. Petersburg from the federal budget, Interfax quoted chamber head Sergei Stepashin as saying Monday.
The cancellation of payments was instituted after federal money transferred to the city for its 300th anniversary celebrations was misspent.
A chamber investigation conducted in April found City Hall had misallocated 2.7 billion rubles ($90 million) meant for road and pedestrian needs, to "sow grass and light city streets." The Audit Chamber said this was a violation of Road Fund code.
Among other things the Chamber found over 1 billion rubles (about $33 million) was spent by City Hall to cover the cost of purchasing trees, flowers and grass, some of it delivered from abroad, that were planted in city parks ahead of the celebrations.
"When money transferred to repair roads is spent in so-called garden and park areas, with the grass being purchased from abroad, [it] is very difficult to understand," Stepashin said at a briefing in the first half of June. "The Audit Chamber paid very close attention to this ... We're waiting for an answer from [then governor] Vladimir Yakovlev, not through the media, but a concrete answer."
Yakovlev left the governor's office after being appointed deputy prime minister on June 16.
On Monday, Stepashin said the chamber had changed its mind about the transfer of funds after he received a letter on Oct. 6 from Governor Valentina Matviyenko saying that City Hall has taken steps to make sure the correct procedures are followed.
According to the letter, quoted by Interfax, that the city will repay the Federal Road Fund what it misspent, using 3.3 billion rubles ($110 million) of taxes collected in the first nine months of the year. Spending for the road construction totaled 5.3 billion rubles ($176 million) to date this year.
At a meeting with Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin on Oct. 11, Matviyenko received a promise that 1.5 billion rubles ($50 million) to continue construction of a ring road around St. Petersburg will be transferred to St. Petersburg from the federal budget this year.
"It is good, of course, that the city will get additional money, but the fact that two people can decide a question of 2 billion rubles while having a cup of tea shows there is no reason to believe that corruption can be ever stopped in Russia," said Olga Pokrovskaya, a Legislative Assembly member of the Yabloko faction said Monday. "That money may be well spent, but could equally well be stolen."
"We have tried to get in-depth information on how much and where exactly the money to prepare the city to celebrate its 300 anniversary was spent. People pay taxes, so they have a right to know," she added.
Dmitry Burenin, head of the city Audit Chamber, said Stepashin's removal of the block on funds unties Matviyenko's hands.
"The decision to drop the demands is absolutely logical," Interfax quoted Burenin as saying Monday. "It was done to resume financing projects that are important for St. Petersburg. The new governor should not be responsible for things done by the previous governor, and citizens shouldn't suffer from the shortcomings of the previous executive power."
Investigation of the misappropriations will continue, he said.
"But there won't be any sanctions that would make new governor and citizens suffer," Burenin added.
TITLE: First Spaniard in Space as Soyuz DocksWith ISS
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian, American and Spanish crew docked on Monday with the International Space Station, the second time time the Soyuz has replaced the U.S. space shuttle to keep the orbiting outpost manned.
U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri are the eighth crew to have flown to the space station for long-term occupation since the inaugural crew arrived on Nov. 2, 2000. There also have been four short-term missions using Soyuz craft.
Applause broke out at Mission Control outside Moscow after the docking Monday morning.
"I congratulate all our partners on this spectacular success today," William Readdy, associate administator at NASA, told a news conference after the docking.
Pedro Duque of Spain, a European Space Agency astronaut traveling with Foale and Kaleri, is to remain aboard the station for eight days and return on Oct. 27 with American Ed Lu and Russian Yury Malenchenko, who have been aboard since April 28.
For Spain, it was an especially moving maneuver.
"This flight gives a way for Spain to demonstrate its readiness to support the ISS," Vicente Gomez, who represents Spain in the European Space Agency.
Foale will become the first American to have served on both the ISS and its predecessor, the Russian Mir. He and Kaleri will remain at the station for about 200 days.
Malenchenko will become the first person to have left the planet single and return to a wife. He was married in August while in orbit.
Monday's hookup was performed faultlessly in automatic mode without any glitches despite a minor malfunction in the Soyuz engine's pipeline system, which was spotted Sunday. It prompted Russian flight controllers to switch to a back-up system for the docking, said Yury Semyonov, director of RKK Energiya, the company that builds Russian spacecraft.
Readdy, a veteran of three U.S. shuttle missions, said the glitch was "nothing serious."
The mission is the second time a Russian Soyuz has taken an American to the space station since the U.S. space shuttle program was grounded after the Feb. 1 disintegration of the shuttle Columbia as it was approaching Earth.
Semyonov said Monday that his company was forced to borrow to build the spacecraft this year and warned that it would not be able to build more spacecraft for future missions unless the Russian government or Russia's foreign partners come up with funds.
"The financial situation is catastrophic," Semyonov said.
Nikolai Moiseyev, first deputy director of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, said Russia has pledged to provide its ships to keep the station occuppied until U.S. shuttles return to space and the Cabinet would allocate the necessary funds.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Five Soldiers Convicted
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -Five soldiers of railway unit Number 01375 located at Mga station in the Leningrad Oblast were sentenced for up to four years in jail on Thursday for beating up an officer, Interfax quoted the Leningrad region military prosecutor's office as saying on Friday.
The five soldiers received sentences of 1 1/2 to four years imprisonment, and fined 30,000 rubles for causing psychological damage to the officer.
The incident took place on Dec. 31 2003, when duty officer Prisyach found the three soldiers drinking alcohol. The officer made a remark to the soldiers, who then beat him up. Prisyach's colleagues, also officers, in their turn "punished" the participants of the violence. On Jan. 3 they took the whole company to the drill square for "training" when it was minus 30 Celsius outside.
As a result of those actions, 24 soldiers deserted from the unit to St. Petersburg, where they appealed for help to the Soldiers' Mothers human rights organization.
A criminal case against the officers was also initiated, and in July the court found them guilty of exceeding their authority. The officers got suspended sentences ranging from one to three years.
Gas Tax for City?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has discussed the possibility of taxes on petrol being paid to the city with Vladimir Bogdanov, general director of Surgutneftegaz, Interfax reported Saturday.
Matviyenko told journalists that Bogdanov promised that "the gas duty would go to the city" and added that such money could be a "very serious part of an increase in the city budget."
Matviyenko said she plans to meet all companies working in the St. Petersburg oil market. She said she had good reason to question the quality of oil on sale in St. Petersburg, and promised to name and shame on Friday companies selling oil of doubtful quality.
Companies caught lowering the quality of oil should be deprived of their license to operate in the city, she said.
WWII Plane Found
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Volunteers from Forpost Vysota search units have found the derbris of an Il-16 plane which shot down during the Second World war, Interfax reported on Friday.
The remains of Lieutenant Pavel Titov, a Soviet pilot born in 1918 in Shakhty in the Rostov region were found near the plane wreck, the Leningrad Oblast government press service reported.
The pilot went on a his last flight on Aug. 21, 1941. He was shot down as he was providing cover for soldiers fighting for bridges on Narva river, the current border between Russia and Estonia. The search unit is now trying to track down relatives of the pilot.
HIV Cases up 3,000
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - More than 3,000 new cases of HIV were registered in St. Petersburg in 2003, Fontanka quoted Tatyana Kutasova, spokewoman for the State Epidemiology Center as saying on Monday.
Although this is 60 percent less than for the same period last year, the number of people infected through having unprotected sex has grown constantly in the last two years, Kutasova said.
"For the fist time in the last few years, the number of such people has grown to account for about 12 percent [of all the infected cases]," she said.
Most cases of HIV in Russia are due to people injecting drugs with infected needles.
United Russia Lists
MOSCOW (SPT) - The Central Election Commission has registered United Russia's federal list of candidates running in December's State Duma election, Interfax reported Monday.
The list of 266 candidates is led by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu and Tatar President Mintimer Shaimiyev, the party's top leaders.
United Russia presented 249,707 signatures of supporters, and only one percent of the 80,000 checked was falsified - "the best result at the moment," Central Election Commission head Alexander Veshnyakov told Interfax.
Live TV Debates
MOSCOW (SPT) - Channel One will broadcast State Duma election debates live, Vladimir Pozner, who is to host the debates, told Gazeta on Monday after talks with the channel's general director, Konstantin Ernst.
This announcement came less than a week after Channel One said it would show taped debates to guard against slanderous statements being broadcast and to reach the country's 11 time zones at suitable hours.
Rossiya television said it favored live debates, but also cited time-zone complications.
Critics argued that this was proof that the Kremlin was putting pressure on state-controlled television to make sure that United Russia, the party it backs, could be given the advantage in the editing room.
Following a letter drafted by Yabloko deputies asking the two stations to reconsider, Channel One on Thursday said it had made no final decision. Rossiya insisted that it had always intended to show the debates live.
The debates are to be broadcast daily from Nov. 7 through Dec. 5. The vote is Dec. 7.
TITLE: Kadyrov Sworn In as Chechen President
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Akhmad Kadyrov was inaugurated Sunday as Chechen president, two weeks after winning an election that the Kremlin promoted as a significant step toward stability but that critics denounced as a sham.
In a reflection of the violence that continues to plague Chechnya, where the second war in a decade is in its fifth year, the location of the inauguration was not made public ahead of time due to concerns that rebels might try to attack the ceremony.
The inauguration took place at the local administration headquarters in Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city. Officials attending were even told to switch off mobile phones for security reasons, agencies reported.
Kadyrov, once the spiritual leader of Muslim Chechens, gave the oath of office in Russian and not, as expected, on the Koran at the ceremony, which began with the Russian national anthem.
"I am not a religious leader, or the head of an Islamic state," Interfax quoted him as saying.
In comments at the ceremony, Kadyrov reiterated calls for the republic to be granted a special economic status, a move he has said is far more important for Chechnya than political autonomy.
"Chechnya's political status has been determined in a [March 2003] referendum, it is a republic within the Russian Federation. At the same time we will be seeking the status of economic autonomy," Kadyrov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Kadyrov has said that his first move as president will be to form a commission to investigate all crimes in Chechnya since 1991, a move that could be aimed at promoting reconciliation allowing separatists and civilians to publicly come forward with complaints of atrocities by Russian troops and by rebels.
"My main ambition is restore peace in Chechnya, give the Chechen people jobs and confidence in the future," Interfax reported Kadyrov as saying.
But when asked if he would seek a second term, Kadyrov indicated his own confidence in the future was not firm.
"I am never sure I will come back safe when I leave my house in the morning," he said, according to Interfax.
Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, a military spokesman, said Friday that authorities have detained 60 people he claimed were members of armed groups that planned to carry out terrorist attacks across the North Caucasus region and disrupt the weekend inauguration of Chechnya's president.
Shabalkin said authorities have confiscated large quantities of weapons and ammunition - about enough to fill a truck - and Channel One showed footage of guns, grenade launchers and other weapons Shabalkin said had been seized.
Officials said Friday that passage into Grozny would be restricted Sunday, and officials have said at least 3,000 Russian and Chechen police and security forces would guard the newly built government complex there.
Kadyrov's eldest son, Zelimkhan, was not able to attend the inauguration after being seriously injured in a car accident in eastern Chechnya on Friday.
Zelimkhan Kadyrov, 29, an officer in the Chechen Interior Ministry, was rushed to a Gudermes hospital and later flown to Moscow, where he underwent surgery.
Doctors described his condition as stable, Interfax reported.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: Putin Murder Plotters Detained
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - British police have detained and then released "without further action" two Russian men in an alleged plot to kill President Vladimir Putin, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
According to The Sunday Times, the two Russian nationals were seeking to pass information on Putin's travel arrangements abroad to Chechen separatists.
The two men, identified by Scotland Yard only as being 40 and 36 years old, tried to make contact with Chechen rebels through Alexander Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Service officer and a political refugee in London, the paper said. Instead, Litvinenko turned the men over to the police.
Litvinenko, along with exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, in 2002 alleged that the FSB was involved in a series of 1999 apartment building bombings in Russia.
Contacted Sunday, Litvinenko declined to comment except to confirm the details of the Sunday Times report.
According to the Sunday Times story, Litvinenko recognized a former FSB colleague in Central London earlier this month. He also believed that the man was an undercover FSB agent.
After a series of phone conversations and a meeting, Litvinenko contacted police, saying that one of them was an FSB hit man, also identified by The Sunday Times as "Major P."
"Major P. said [Putin] had to be overthrown because he was bankrupting the country and was going to put everyone in jail," the paper quoted an insider in the case as saying.
The two men were arrested on Oct. 12, but released Friday, a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said Sunday. She declined to comment on whether investigators contacted the Russian authorities or about Russian reaction to the case. In Moscow, officials from the FSB and the presidential press service declined to comment Sunday.
A source close to Chechen rebel envoy Akhmad Zakayev said Sunday that the incident had little to do with a plot to assassinate Putin, but was instead a clumsy attempt to implicate Zakayev on the eve of the final hearing of his extradition case.
Russian prosecutors have been pressing for Zakayev's extradition from Britain since February. Closing speeches in the case are to be heard in a London court Tuesday.
According to the source, the fact that the two men were released means that Russia did not ask British police to hold them as terrorism suspects.
"The FSB has landed itself in a stupid situation. If there indeed had been a plot to kill Putin, then it now looks like [he] was saved by Litvinenko," the source said. "But if it is just a clumsy attempt to push Berezovsky and Zakayev into a criminal adventure, what kind of idiot would buy that?"
TITLE: Soldiers in Chechnya 'Morally Degenerate'
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Scores of contract soldiers and officers in Chechnya have been discharged for drinking while on duty and other forms of misconduct, Ekho Moskvy radio reported, citing the Defense Ministry.
A Defense Ministry commission has inspected the conduct of contract soldiers in Chechnya and found that many of them "morally degenerate" during their tours of duty and end up being fired, the radio station quoted a commission report as saying Sunday.
Among the infractions, contract soldiers are "constantly consuming alcohol," the report said.
The military commandant's office in Chechnya's Naursky district - which normally has a staff of 45 officers - has fired 49 officers in the first half of this year, the report said. This means that the commandant's office has even had to fire officers hired to replace those who were sacked.
A total of 56 servicemen - mostly contract soldiers and sergeants - have been discharged from military commandants' offices across Chechnya for violating their contracts, the report said.
Based on the results of the report, the Defense Ministry has reprimanded military recruiters in regions such as Krasnodar, Rostov, Orlov and Ryazan for their selection process, Ekho Moskvy said.
Reached by telephone Monday, spokesmen for the Defense Ministry and the North Caucasian Military District, which includes Chechnya, said they were unaware of the report.
The misconduct findings are worrisome for a region where contract soldiers are supposed to take over in a few years. A national reform plan to phase out conscripts in favor of volunteers envisions military units stationed in Chechnya as being all-volunteer by 2008. Nationwide, contract soldiers are to account for 70 percent of the Defense Ministry's 1 million soldiers.
Some senior military officals have complained of misconduct by volunteers, who sign contracts to serve as soldiers and sergeants for salaries of less than $200 per month. Incidents of drinking on duty have been on the rise at the Pskov region-based 76th airborne division, which is increasingly relying on contract soldiers, a military prosecutor told Izvestia earlier this year.
The incidents occurred despite screening efforts that led to 200 applicants being rejected for alcoholism and other problems last fall alone, said an officer of the 76th Airborne Division, local media reported.
Alexander Pikayev, a defense analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said misconduct by professional soldiers is a major headache for commanders. "This is why officers have spoken in favor of conscription. It is easier for them to control 18-year-old village boys than men of 30 and older," he said.
TITLE: US Iraq Policy Snubbed by Putin in Interview
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Speaking to Al-Jazeera in particular and the Arab world in general, President Vladimir Putin on Friday criticized the United States' positions on Chechnya and Iraq and said Russia retains the right to use preemptive strikes if the UN continues to be sidelined in decisions on dealing with a security threat.
"With preemptive strikes, we start from the assumption that international law is most important. Any use of force is appropriate only in the case of a decision by the UN Security Council," Putin said in remarks broadcast on the Qatar-based network and picked up by Interfax. If it becomes standard international policy to no longer seek UN legitimacy, "then Russia retains the right to act in the same way."
Putin gave the interview from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, where he was attending a meeting of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, before heading to Thailand to participate in an Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (see story, page 5).
In prepared remarks, which were later posted on the Kremlin web site, Putin said that Russian history disproves the theory of a clash of civilizations.
Russian Muslims are an integral part of a multi-ethnic Russia, he said, "and we see the strength of our country in this inter-religious harmony."
Putin did not waste the opportunity to take a dig at U.S. policy on Chechnya, saying U.S. criticism of the elections in which Akhmad Kadyrov, backed by the Kremlin and running virtually unopposed, was elected president of the republic was hypocritical, given the problems the United States has in coping with insurgent threats to its own hold on Iraq.
"I think that it's an attempt to distract attention from their own mistakes," he told the television station.
TITLE: National Interests Will Determine Pipeline Route
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: When choosing a route for exporting oil from Eastern Siberia, Russia will be guided by its own interests as well as economic and environmental motives, President Vladimir Putin said Monday.
"What we will bear in mind above all is economic motives," Putin said in an interview with Asian satellite television operator Star TV circulated by the presidential press service.
"We should calculate which route is the most optimal from the standpoint of Russia's interests," he said. "We should think of developing Eastern Siberia and the Far Eastern regions, and we, naturally, should think of resolving environmental problems."
Russian environment experts have not yet fully analyzed any of the routes under consideration, he said.
"We have discussed this issue for a long time and believe that the more comprehensive the access to Russian mineral resources is, the better it is for the development of the Asia-Pacific region," Putin said.
Putin emphasized that Moscow intends to increase its oil supplies to China.
"What I can say with absolutely certainty is that we will develop our relations with our traditional partners, including China, no matter what.
"Whichever route for transporting oil we choose, we will increase crude supplies to China. This can be done either by laying a direct pipeline to Daqing, by building a branch stretching out from a pipeline that would run to Nakhodka, or by increasing supplies using railroads. These options are being analyzed. As long as we approach the decision, we will be informing business circles and our partners about it," he said.
The government has several times postponed a decision on which route a pipeline will take from Siberia to East Asia.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said in June a decision would be made by September on the route.
Yukos, the country's largest oil producer, has already signed a long-term supply deal with state-run China National Petroleum Co. to ship crude from its eastern Siberian fields.
Yukos has proposed a pipeline running from Angarsk in Siberia to Daqing in northeast China.
Kasyanov told China's leadership last month during a visit to Beijing that Russia intends to honor its agreement to build an oil pipeline connecting the two countries, Dow Jones newswires reported, citing the official Xinhua News Agency.
A short article posted on the Chinese agency's Web site said Kasyanov told Chinese officials during his visit to Beijing that the Russian government will "honor its pledge, [and] standby its agreement" on the proposed pipeline.
(Interfax, SPT, AP)
TITLE: RTS Hits Dizzying New Level
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The benchmark RTS stock index opened at a new all-time high of 649.43 on Monday, up 1.01 percent from Friday's close, and continued to rise, led by utility Unified Energy System and telecom stocks.
The index closed up a fraction of a percent on the day to 643.30, which is another record.
UES finished up 3.5 percent at 33.5 cents, while Rostelecom rose 5.1 percent to close at $2.23.
"There is demand everywhere today, but especially in Rostelecom," said Konstantin Shapsharov of Alfa Bank.
Yukos second-quarter earnings, which beat consensus forecasts by showing a less pronounced quarter-on-quarter fall than analysts expected, pushed it up higher than other Russian oils.
"The key factor for Yukos right now is a potential deal to sell a stake to a big Western company, not its fundamentals," the trader said. "It's also risen faster than other shares in the sector and is trading fairly high,"
Yukos finished down 1.4 percent at $15.63.
Russian officials have said Yukos is in talks with ExxonMobil on a potential stake sale; the company declined comment. Two of its major shareholders are also facing criminal charges in what is seen as a Kremlin campaign against the oil company's top management.
"As long as there are political problems there, it will be tough for Yukos to rise, even though it had such good GAAP numbers. But the whole market is going higher, and I think eventually they'll come for Yukos, in the good sense," Shapsharov said.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ilim Modernization
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Leading timber company Ilim Pulp plans to spend more than 70 million euros ($81 million) acquiring modern timber processing equipment over the next four years, Prime-Tass reported the holding's press service as saying Friday.
Total investments to upgrade the holding's equipment are expected to reach 170 million euros by 2007, the press service added. On Thursday, Ilim Pulp Enterprise held talks with Finland's Ponsse, a leading producer of timber-processing equipment, concerning the companies' mutual cooperation. Further talks are planned for the beginning of November.
Ilim Pulp Enterprise, registered in 1992, is among the world's ten largest companies producing and processing lumber and paper.
Hermitage Storehouse
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Lemcon, a subsidiary of the Lemminkainen concern, will build a new storehouse and office building for the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Prime-Tass reported last Tuesday.
Construction of the turnkey complex next to the art repository Lemcon built for the Hermitage is set to begin soon. Floor space will total 40,000 square meters.
U.K. Trade Support
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - British Trade International, the British government organization established in May 1999 to promote trade development and investment into the United Kingdom will combine its two operating arms in November to become UK Trade and Investment, according to a UKTI press release.
UKTI will take the lead in supporting British companies in business, and in attracting investment to the United Kingdom.
UKTI services are available in St. Petersburg and Northwest Russia through the Trade and Investment Section of the British Consulate General in St. Petersburg for businesses already operating in the region, and for companies seeking to expand exports to the Russian market.
World Bank Bullish
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The economy could grow 6.5 percent this year if oil prices are steady, the World Bank's chief economist for Russia, Christof Ruehl, said Friday.
"We are not changing our forecast, which is 6 percent now, but we could raise it to 6.5 percent if oil prices stay at the current level," Ruehl told reporters.
The official government forecast from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is 5.9 percent, up from last year's 4.3 percent growth.
Following Russia's receipt of an investment grade sovereign rating from Moody's Investor Services, Ruehl echoed Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's concern that Russia's narrow capital markets and shaky banking system could not handle a big inflow of investment.
Brazil's VWs to Russia
SAO PAULO, Brazil (SPT) - Fighting to put its Brazilian division in the black, German automaker Volkswagen plans to begin exporting its diminutive Brazilian Gol model to yet another market - Russia - next year.
Volkswagen executive Berthold Krueger told reporters in Brazil this week that the company is negotiating a contract to send 2,000 of the economy cars to Russia in 2004.
The Gol is exported across Latin America, where it became the top-selling car in Mexico and Argentina this year.
Caspian Port Contract
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (SPT) - Russia's Vyborg Machine Building Plant signed a contract with Turkmenistan's state oil company Turkmenneft on Friday to design a project for a seaport in Okarem on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, Turkmenneft said in a statement, Prime-Tass reported.
According to the agreement, Vyborg will be the general contractor and prepare a preliminary feasibility study for the seaport's construction within the next five months. This part of the project is estimated at $980,000.
Next March, the parties are to sign the general contract for construction of the port. No estimates for the port construction costs were provided.
TITLE: Yukos Billionaire Under Attack
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - One by one, prosecutors are closing in on the six billionaires who built their fortunes on the back of Yukos, the nation's biggest oil company.
First they arrested Platon Lebedev, who has spent 15 weeks in Lefortovo prison. Then they hauled Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin in for questioning. After that, they conducted armed raids on the homes and offices of Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov. Now they've turned their attention to Vasily Shakhnovsky.
Prosecutors said Friday they had charged the Yukos-Moskva president with large-scale tax evasion for fraudulently declaring 29 million rubles in deductions between 1998 and 2000. In his tax returns for those years Shakhnovsky claimed he provided consulting services to an offshore company called Status Services Ltd., which prosecutors dispute.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said Shakhnovsky is charged under article 198 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. He is also charged with falsifying documents and was released only after promising not to leave the city, she added.
Emerging from a four-hour session at the Prosecutor General's Office late Friday, Shakhnovsky denied the charges, calling the whole affair baffling.
"I don't really understand what I falsified, but it seems what is meant is that I filled out my tax declaration incorrectly. The declaration was checked and approved and I underwent frequent tax audits," he said. "I can say in absolute honesty that I have done nothing illegal."
Shakhnovsky, who handles government relations for Yukos, gained a reputation as a wily political strategist in the 1990s. He was Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's chief of staff from 1991 to 1997, and a key member of Yeltsin's oligarch-funded re-election team in 1996. He was widely reported to be a top candidate to head the presidential administration in Yeltsin's second term, a job that eventually went to Anatoly Chubais.
Khodorkovsky said the unprecedented legal assault on his business empire "means that there really are no laws in this country."
"As a citizen of this country, I am ashamed," he told journalists during the opening of a company-sponsored boarding school in the Moscow region that was attended by Shakhnovsky.
Shakhnovsky said prosecutors asked him to return Monday for further questioning, Dow Jones reported.
In a related event Friday, prosecutors also summoned Yukos lawyer Anton Drel to give evidence - which he declined to do, since it would have meant violating Moscow Bar Association rules on client privilege.
"The prosecutor's office wants me to break the law. I cannot give evidence as a witness in a case in which I am participating as a lawyer for my client," Drel said by telephone Saturday.
Appearing in connection with case No. 18/41 as summoned would place Drel in violation of article 8 of the law on advocates and article 56 of the Criminal Procedural Code, since he had previously acted as the lawyer for both Lebedev and Khodorkovsky during their questioning under this same case.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said Drel "had indeed been summoned to provide a witness statement," but that it was not related to the Lebedev case. "It is in connection with the theft and tax evasion case by a number of companies controlled by Yukos," she said, adding that the case against Lebedev had been allocated a new number - 18/58 - in August.
Speaking after the Moscow Bar Association's emergency meeting Friday, which forbade Drel from accepting the summons from prosecutors, the head of the association, Genri Reznik, said Drel's license to practice law could have been revoked had he gone in for questioning.
"Signing an official witness statement would mean [Drel] would immediately be taken off the case," Moscow Bar Association member Anatoly Kucherena of law firm Kucherena and Partners told Ekho Moskvy.
Drel said he thought prosecutors were hunting for reasons to extend the Oct. 30 deadline to finish investigating the Lebedev case.
The latest blow to what is arguably Russia's bluest blue chip had little effect on the market, but analysts said it was yet another blow to Khodorkovsky's efforts to sell a strategic stake to a Western super-major like ExxonMobil or ChevronTexaco, both of which have expressed interest in recent weeks.
"Who can sell the company if there's nobody left to sign off on the transaction? Other than through prison bars, that is," James Fenkner of Troika Dialog said.
TITLE: Ruble Hits Coveted Rate of 30 to Dollar
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The ruble hit a two-year high against the dollar Monday as worsening liquidity before tax payments and end of month book closing pushed it through the psychologically important 30 level, dealers said.
The ruble broke through 30 to the dollar on Russia's spot foreign exchange market for the first time since December 2001, then slipped back for a short time.
The official ruble rate was set at a 30.0179 to the dollar.
The Central Bank, which had been intervening heavily, buying up $1.3 billion in one day alone last week, abstained from the market Monday, dealers said.
"The market is being moved by worsening ruble liquidity because of VAT payments and the month's end as well as quite high offers of hard currency from clients," a dealer said.
"The Central Bank has not been doing anything so far; it is expected somewhere at the 29.98 level."
The ruble has strengthened steadily throughout the year, fueled by a heavy inflow of oil and gas export revenues. It received a further boost when Moody's awarded Russia investment grade status Oct. 8, paving the way for a broader range of investors.
"Banks and clients are in the mood to go lower [on the dollar]. The trend is obvious," said Moscow Narodny Bank dealer Vasily Ushakov.
Deputy Central Bank Chairman Oleg Vyugin said last week that the dollar was being driven down by speculation and that its decline was short term.
"Most likely the market will find Central Bank support...and will start taking profits and closing short positions," a dealer said.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Duma Increases Spending Ahead of Dec. 7 Elections
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday revised the country's 2003 budget to allow for an increase in spending of 68.8 billion rubles ($2.3 billion) before parliamentary elections in December.
The bill was approved 326 to 1 with no abstentions and the move was widely seen as a compromise between pro-Kremlin lawmakers and the government to win swift approval of the 2004 budget.
On Wednesday, they passed the 2004 financial blueprint which calls for a surplus for a fifth straight year without a single amendment on its key second reading. The government wants the bill passed before the Dec. 7 Duma elections.
The Communists, Agrarians, Yabloko and most of the Union of Right Forces voted against the budget, though demanding more social spending. Yabloko also voted against the bill because it says the government intentionally underestimated revenues by $7 billion.
But analysts said the deal to quickly pass the 2004 bill in exchange for extra spending this year looked like a reasonable pre-election compromise which posed no serious risks to Russia's macroeconomic stability although it might add to inflation early next year.
After the revision, Russia's 2003 budget expenditure was set at 2.4 trillion rubles, or 18.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) with revenues planned at 2.56 trillion rubles, or 19.3 percent of GDP.
That should leave the budget in a 148.3 billion ruble surplus in 2003, equal to 1.1 percent of GDP.
Originally, Russia was targeting a 72.2 million ruble surplus for the year but booming oil exports brought more cash to state coffers than was initially envisaged.
Russia sets aside its budget surplus to a special reserve fund designed to smooth repayment of the country's foreign debt.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Russians Charge Their Way Around World
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It might have been the big-hitters partying on the Cote d'Azur or the easy access to cordon bleu cooking and fine wine.
Whatever it was, between June and August a certain Gallic je ne sais quois lured Russians to ring up $26 million in Visa charges in France, the new destination of choice for the credit carefree.
Holders of Russian-issued Visa cards notched up transactions worth more than $250 million in 144 countries outside Russia during the summer months, according to data released by Visa on Wednesday
A year-on-year increase of 26 percent, this figure is illustrative of Russia's consumer boom, said Natalya Zagvozdina, consumer goods analyst at Renaissance Capital.
"Real disposable income grew by 14.6 percent in the first half of this year. Russians have much more money to spend than state wage statistics show. Also consumer credits are appearing. People have more money and more and more of them are using their cards."
There's plenty of room for growth. Household loans came to just $30 per capita in Russia last year, or just 1 percent of gross domestic product. In Eastern Europe and the Baltic states the average figure is around 7 percent.
Zagvozdina was surprised that France topped the chart. "Probably 10 people each bought a yacht," she said.
Germany and Italy were the next favorite destinations for Russian Visa holders, who charged up $21 million and $20 million in the period, respectively. Britain and America rounded out the top five, with $19 million and $17 million.
Hurricane-battered Honduras came in last, with just one lonely Russian hitting his card for $13.
The action went both ways, as foreigners from more than 140 countries who visited Russia this summer charged more than $148 million on their Visa cards, up 28 percent on the year.
Americans led the way, racking up $55 million in charges, followed by Britons, who spent $21 million. The Swiss and Latvians charged $16 million, while the French taxed their credit to the tune of $14 million.
Annual Visa transactions worldwide total $2.7 trillion, according to the company.
TITLE: Annual Survey Says Moscow Top Target for European Firms
AUTHOR: By Denis Maternovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - For the first time since 1998, Moscow is not the worst city in Europe for doing business - it's the third-worst, according to an annual survey of the continent's largest companies.
The host of the 2004 Summer Olympics, Athens, edged out pristine Helsinki for that dubious distinction in this year's European Cities Monitor ranking of 30 major municipalities, which was released Thursday.
The top five business-friendly cities were unchanged, with London leading the way, followed by Paris, Frankfurt, Brussels and Amsterdam.
The survey, which international commercial real estate consultant Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker has conducted annually since 1990, queries senior executives on the issues they regard as important when deciding where to do business, including government policies, availability of qualified staff, communications and transport infrastructure, cost of living, quality of life, access to suppliers, the number of languages spoken, pollution and traffic.
Although still dwelling near the bottom overall, Moscow leads the pack when it comes to attracting new businesses, with 46 of the 501 companies surveyed expecting to open an office here within the next five years. Warsaw was next, with 29 companies saying they expect to have a presence in the Polish capital by 2008.
As a result, more than a quarter of Europe's 501 top companies will be operating in Moscow by 2008, up from less than a fifth now.
"This is very good news," said Sergei Riabokobylko, partner at Stiles & Riabokobylko, the local associate of Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker.
"It not only means that the reforms of the last few years are finally paying off, but also that Moscow is seen by outsiders as an interesting market."
Moscow's influence on the European and world economies may be growing, but when it comes to convenience, it still lags behind fellow former Communist bloc capitals Prague (17th) Warsaw (22nd) and Budapest (23rd).
Part of that can be attributed to a lack of knowledge, according to the survey, since only 29 percent of respondents said they knew Moscow either "very well" or "fairly well," an increase of just 3 percent on the year.
And by several criteria, Moscow ranked worse than it did in 2002. For example, in terms of the availability of qualified staff, Moscow dropped from 28th place to next to last, beating out only lowly Athens.
"This is one of those cases when existing stereotypes are hurting the perception of Moscow," Riabokobylko said, adding that this was partly due to City Hall's failure to promote the city aggressively.
However, Moscow fared better in terms of government efforts to create a business-friendly environment, tying with Manchester for 15th place, up from 19th last year. It is also rose from No. 10 to No. 7 in terms of staff costs.
It also improved its position in terms of availability of office space (21), transport (26) and telecommunications (25).
But when it comes to quality of life and the level of pollution, the Russian capital is dead last.
TITLE: A Positive Attitude Means Good Business
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Barchas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Whether she is designing an obstacle course to teach leadership skills or sponsoring a 100-mile wilderness endurance run, general director of Concept Training, Development and Consultancy Services Rachel Shackleton rarely turns down a challenge. Just consider how she chose her horse Misha.
When Shackleton decided to buy a horse, she picked out Misha from among 40 others but was told she could not have him because he had not yet been broken. She persuaded the seller to show the horse to her anyway, and Misha immediately rolled in the mud, coating himself with dirt.
Shackleton was convinced. "I said, 'I'm sorry, but that's definitely my horse.'" Shackleton has never regretted the choice. Moving to Russia in 1992 to accept a job as the training and human resources director at the Grand Hotel Europe was another good decision, she says. Although Shackleton, a British native, had lived around the world, she spoke no Russian and she assumed her stay would be temporary. Instead, she fell in love with St. Petersburg, battled bureaucratic red tape to establish her own business in 1996 and has been steadily working to promote Concept's services and develop its scope ever since.
Concept works with local businesses to provide training in a variety of areas, including human resources, leadership, team building, customer service and sales. Describing her approach as "proactive as opposed to reactive," Shackleton researches the businesses she works with to pinpoint weaknesses that should be targeted in training.
The tailor-made approach has ensured Concept's success, says Stephen Gardner, commercial director of Peterstar, which was Concept's first client and has continued to use Shackleton's services periodically over the years. "Rachel will spend half a day just sitting there and listening to how employees work with the customer," he said. "She really tries to understand the environment, processes and issues. The reason we've been so satisfied is her ability to understand our industry, our clients and our problems and customize a program around this."
Depending on the specific needs of the company, Shackleton incorporates hands-on activities with training. In a recent session on communication she put blindfolds on all but one person who then led the group through an obstacle course by describing it verbally. From role-play to ropes courses, her sessions are as varied as the businesses that make use of her services, including Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, Motorola, Sony and American Express.
Shackleton said she has built up a base of loyal clients over time. "We have managed to keep most of our clients for the long term," she said. "They know who we are, they know what we are, they know how we do it and they like the results."
In fact, Concept has been so successful Shackleton decided to open an office in Moscow with partner Stanislav Alexeyev earlier this year to give the company a larger presence in Russia and expand its opportunities.
Alexeyev describes Shackleton as a natural in the business world. "She's very easy going and I think that's why she knows almost everybody who works in international business in St. Petersburg," he said. "She's very honest and enthusiastic. That's why I like having a business relationship with her."
Being a woman comes in handy occasionally, too, Shackleton says. "When it comes to drinking vodka, I often say I'm so glad I'm not a man doing business in this country," she said. "Women are allowed to say no and it's accepted."
But founding a business in Russia has presented her with challenges. Having worked in South Africa, Jamaica, Barbados, and France, Shackleton describes Russia as far more bureaucratic. From obtaining registration documents to dealing with tax authorities, she says, "You learn things in this country that relate to business that you'll never learn in any business school in the world."
"I wouldn't set up another business in Russia, but now that I'm here I'm not going to close up and go away," she said. "I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from working with local people. They're very demanding, very kind, very gracious, very stimulating - many extremes which I personally enjoy."
Adrian Terris, managing director of St. Petersburg Yellow Pages, another Concept client, credits Shackleton's success to her personality. "Number one, she's customer-oriented," he said. "She has full focus on the customer's needs. Number two is her energy and enthusiasm."
Terris also knows Shackleton outside the business world because they are both founding members of Petersburg Caledonia, an international club that promotes Scottish culture in St. Petersburg. When she's not planning the annual St. Andrew's Ball or Highland Games, Shackleton keeps busy riding Misha, doing yoga, helping out at a 100-mile endurance run co-sponsored by Concept, or simply cooking soup.
"She makes very good soup," Terris said. "She has an open door policy and any time I'm passing by I'll go up for a bowl of soup. That's one of her special qualities."
One of many, according to Gardner. "Rachel really is a dynamic woman," he said. "Even in the worst of times she has always maintained a very positive spirit inwardly and outwardly and I think it's that positive attitude that really drives her."
And although her drive has led her to live and work around the globe, Shackleton says she is glad to have settled in St. Petersburg. "This is the most beautiful city in the world," she said. "I love looking at the different lights and different colors and different scenes. This is where my life is, and this is where my home is, and that's that."
TITLE: Moody's Sets Bear Trap for Western Investors
AUTHOR: By Jerome Guillet and Tania Sollogoub
TEXT: Moody's has taken the drastic and unusual step of upgrading Russia's rating by two notches, to Baa3, bringing it up to investment grade for the first time ever. This decision surprised the market, but more in its timing than its actual content, which was already heavily talked about. It has been perceived as an acknowledgment of the recent strong performance of the Russian economy as well as a strong endorsement of President Vladimir Putin himself, coming three months prior to the State Duma elections. And yet the likely effect of this upgrade could be to accelerate the occurrence of a new Russian crisis.
The first thing to note is that there is an unusual convergence of interests pushing for a reassessment of Russia. After four years of high oil prices, apparent political stability and some real, but limited, progress on corporate-governance issues, Russia's economy is indeed experiencing a boom. Strong growth (6 percent per year on average over the past 5 years) has sent the stock market into record territory, beyond the peak of 1997.
The budget balance is positive and Russia is paying off its external debt early. Western bankers are pouring into Moscow once more to capture some of the excitement - and fees - of the corporate sector's turnaround. Brokers are selling one of the best-performing markets of the past years. This cycle is self-reinforcing; big Russian corporations benefit from cheaper and more easily accessible international funding, and the Russian authorities bask in the praise of their supposed reforms and the generally flattering signal given by repeated rating upgrades. Nobody has any interest in spoiling the party.
The upgrade by Moody's will only fuel this cycle by allowing new categories of investors to join the fun. In theory, Moody's rating only evaluates the capacity of the Russian state to repay its external debt. The rating agency thus have a tendency to focus on those criteria that reflect the country's short-term liquidity position and its long-term solvency profile: net debt, debt-service ratios, reserves, and so on.
Four years of high oil and gas prices have indeed improved Russia's financial balance. But this gives no clear or obvious indication as regards future growth and its sustainability. On the contrary, Russia is more specialized than ever, and the economy may also turn out to be more volatile than ever. The story is the same for the institutional framework: The growing focus on energy has consolidated Russian oligarchs, and it has stabilized the political situation in the short term. But that is only the result of a fragile compromise between the state and big corporations that is under growing strain, as suggested by the current fracas between the government and oil giant Yukos.
Despite the narrow focus of the actual assessment, these sovereign-debt ratings are widely interpreted in the market as an overall assessment of the economic situation of the country. This investment grade rating is thus generally seen, rightly or wrongly, as an approval by Moody's of Russia's reforms and future economic prospects and not just of its external solvency. Many investors will thus rely on Moody's rating to divert a portion of their funds into the Russian market. In the meantime, the expected influx of new money will drive down the risk premium on Russian assets, driving down returns on those assets in the medium to long term. But in the short term, it will lead to higher valuations and lower costs of capital, in turn ensuring that some of Russia's most visible macroeconomic numbers continue to improve, and encouraging more investment flows from abroad.
If the past is any guide, easy availability of money will reduce the perceived need for real - and still necessary - structural reforms. New imbalances will build up. Russian assets have repeatedly lost most of their value in brutal crises, whether through default, confiscation, market crash or banking meltdown, usually triggered whenever powerful interest groups within the power structure saw such circumstances as in their interest.
International markets have repeatedly shown that they did not mind providing new money again not very long afterwards, thus encouraging Russia to do it again as soon as it was worthwhile - recall the talk in 1998 about Russian debt being "radioactive waste," never to be touched again. Throwing large amounts of money at the country is the best way to make it likely that the same will happen again.
While it is clearly true that the country does not face the strains that appeared in 1998, it is much harder to argue that its institutional framework and its ability to handle large influx have improved. In today's environment, when the prospects for future investments appear good and external debt is being steadily repaid, an actual debt default rightly seems far away. But the rating upgrade will make a crisis (in a form yet to be identified) more likely as the temptation for well-placed insiders to take advantage of the situation grows quickly.
Add in any unexpected external shock (such as a fall in oil prices or strong currency variations between the dollar, in which most of Russia's exports are sold, and the euro, in which most of its imports are bought) and the underlying weaknesses of the Russian economy may suddenly and starkly reappear.
One must remember that Russia has been quite an innovator in the "business" of default and crisis-precipitation (1998 was the first ever moratorium on a country's domestic debt, for instance). There is no legal framework in the sense of laws being consistently and fairly enforced, the banking sector does not finance the economy in any meaningful way and the Kremlin has shown that it does not tolerate independent powers, whether in the press (witness the successive independent TV stations shut downs) or in the business sector (witness the current crackdown on Yukos, widely seen as a message that all businesses must be subservient to the president). More significantly, the Western world has very limited leverage over Russia, as the political inertia over Chechnya confirms. Even if Western-owned assets were to be confiscated, the West would still continue to buy Russian oil and gas on which it is increasingly dependent. Russia actively maintains its international capacity for nuisance (as with the Iranian nuclear program) even when supposedly a strategic ally of the United States. Financial markets - and rating agencies - have shown they have no memory of Russia's recent history and thus cannot impose discipline on Russian counterparties. And while the big Russian companies have clearly no interest in a crisis today (as opposed to the situation in 1998), Russian authorities, especially the parts controlled by former KGB members who have been brought into power in recent years, are in a very different position. They resent and crave the wealth of the oligarchs, and could very well find it easier to fleece Western investors in Russia than to wage an uncertain war with the existing oligarchs for control of their wealth.
While it is currently unfashionable to say so, foreign investors should be fully aware of the dangers of putting their money in a country where arbitrary decisions are a way of life.
It is possible to do business in Russia and to make money, and it is possible to trust individual companies or partners and enter into mutually beneficial transactions. But the blanket endorsement of Russia provided by Moody's is extraordinarily dangerous and may haunt that institution - and put its credibility under strain - in the years to come.
Jerome Guillet is an investment banker in Paris and Tania Sollogoub is an emerging-markets economist in Paris. This comment appeared in last Monday's edition of The Wall Street Journal.
TITLE: Capital Flight Escapes Double GDP
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Last week, the Central Bank reported a record private sector net capital outflow from Russia in the third quarter of 2003. According to the bank's figures, outflow in the three months from July to September totaled $7.7 billion. Total outflow for 2002 amounted to just $8.2 billion.
The Central Bank's figures do not include the $2 billion that Roman Abramovich is set to receive for his sale of a 25-percent stake in Russian Aluminum, but it's hard to imagine that this money will stay in the country. No one sells a company then turns around and leaves his newly fattened wallet lying on the side of the highway.
It's clear why Abramovich was selling. It's less clear why Oleg Deripaska was buying. Keep in mind that Abramovich only parted with half of his 50 percent stake in RusAl. What is the remaining 25 percent stake worth by the brutal standards of Russian business? A whole lot of nothing.
I have a hunch - and it's just a hunch, mind you - that some of Abramovich's old business partners, let's call them Borya and Badri, might own a share of that remaining 25 percent. And if that's the case, Deripaska's decision to buy would make perfect sense to the Kremlin. "Look, fellahs, Roma and I figured out a way to stick it to a certain political refugee."
The $11 billion that Mikhail Khodorkovsky would have cleared for selling off a quarter of Yukos to Chevron or Exxon also won't figure in the Central Bank's capital flight figures. As soon as rumors of the sale began to leak, the Prosecutor General's Office raided a Yukos-owned business center. Every such raid knocks down the potential value of the company. Who knows. Maybe our law-enforcement agencies disapprove of selling off the Motherland, even for a tidy profit. Or maybe they're hoping for a payoff. In any case, the prosecutors probably aren't worried that the money would leave the country. More likely, they're worried that it would be used in a pitched battle with the Kremlin. And that would be far worse than a little capital flight.
The sale of assets to foreigners has started to look like lemmings following one another over the cliff. BP bought TNK; Danone is buying leading juice and dairy company Wimm-Bill-Dann. Even Malik Saidullayev, who was forced out of the presidential race in Chechnya, has announced that he is selling off his company in Russia because to do business in Russia "you've got to have access to the Kremlin."
Saidullayev's main business is the popular lottery Russkoye Loto - not exactly something that foreign investors will queue up to buy. You've got to feel bad for Saidullayev. The rest of Akhmad Kadyrov's opponents were bought off, but he was simply struck off the ballot. Yet his announcement is typical. After all, the boss is much more likely to believe you've got the flu if you call in sick during a flu epidemic.
Selling assets to the West provides no protection against the excesses of arbitrary rule at home. A foreigner will not stand guard for his Russian partner. When things get hot, he'll swear he's never seen you before. But such sales are the best way to legalize capital. It's easier to get away from the Russian Central Bank than from Carla del Ponte. The other option is to secure political asylum, like Boris Berezovsky. The efforts of the prosecutor's office turned him from the "godfather of the Kremlin" not just into a political refugee, but into the sole oligarch with fully laundered money.
All of this shows that we are steadily progressing toward the goal of doubling GDP by 2008 - the part of GDP that has fled the country, that is.
The Central Bank's figures demonstrate that Russian business has returned to the early days of privatization. The owners of companies now feel like "red directors." It's time to get out while the going's good. The bird - or rather cash - in hand is once more worth two in the bush. The harder the regime comes down on business, the more business will retreat into the shadows. And the more it retreats, the more ravenous become the pitbulls of the regime.
Yulia Latynina is a presenter of "24" on RenTV.
TITLE: Russia, the Country That Links East And West
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Putin
TEXT: Time has revised Kipling's well-known postulate: "East is East and West is West." That dictum once seemed unshakable. But West and East meet now - in Russia. That not a single major global or regional problem can be solved without Russia's active and equal participation is a geopolitical reality. This is also confirmed by the new multipolarity in Russia's foreign policy, which focuses on developing relations in the priority vectors of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
In the autumn of 1998, Russia took the historic step of joining the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which now has 20 members, including the United States, and meets in Bangkok next week. This was the right decision for Russia, and I am convinced that our partners in APEC have not been disappointed. I believe their decision was based on the recognition of the importance of Russia's role in international and regional affairs and recognition of our breakthroughs in the economy.
Indeed, Russia is a reliable political and economic partner to the major countries and regions of the world. Russia has intensified trade, economic and investment ties with the United States, China, India, Japan and Southeast Asian and Latin American states. Investors from Western and Eastern countries are enjoying market opportunities in our vast territory with equal vigor, especially in Siberia and the far east of our country, which have abundant natural resources, as well as technological and scientific potential.
The challenges facing APEC are not specific to the Asia-Pacific region, however, and they include the paramount challenge of combating terrorism. Russia sees APEC as important to developing a long-term strategy to eradicate the "21st century evil" on both the regional and global levels. APEC's efforts to strengthen counter-terrorist cooperation include preventing and interdicting financial support for terrorism and ensuring the safety of trade, transport arteries and information systems. And we believe it is necessary to further develop anticipatory programs to compensate businesses and communities for the material damage caused by terrorist acts. Russia has raised this issue at the current session of the UN General Assembly.
Russia, too, is committed to playing an active role in combating terrorism. We are working to block the financial channels of terrorism, and also money laundering. The Russian Committee on Financial Monitoring has been established for this purpose. We are strengthening cooperation with our partners at all levels to advance these efforts.
At present, terrorism has also become a serious economic problem. By some estimates, the attacks by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, have led to a 1 percent reduction in global GDP. As a result of terrorist acts in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries, the number of tourists coming to this region has markedly decreased and the development of other industries has slowed. The terrorist threat and the political instability in some of the regions that are the key suppliers of energy resources jeopardize the sustainable delivery of energy resources to the Asia-Pacific region and throughout the world.
Russia is prepared to contribute greatly to repelling this threat to the economic prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region. This contribution will be practical, effective and mutually beneficial. I am referring to the development of a new energy structure in the Asia-Pacific region, and above all in East Asia, through the creation of a system of oil and natural gas pipelines and tanker deliveries of liquefied natural gas from the eastern areas of Russia which have considerable hydrocarbon resources. We are working on these issues on a bilateral basis with neighboring countries and will step up these efforts.
By joining the forum, Russia also has assumed responsibility for facilitating, jointly with other partners, the creation of a system of free and open trade and investment activity in the Asia Pacific region. I do not think it is important that one country can shift to fifth gear while another cannot do more than second or third gear. What is important is that we all are moving in the same direction and that nobody hits the brakes unnecessarily. I am referring here to the outbreak of protectionism in the form of unilateral measures limiting trade, the excessive use of anti-dumping procedures, and the like. As we see it, protectionism, whatever the guise, provokes a predictable chain reaction and limits competition. It has an especially pernicious effect on developing and transition-economy countries.
For our part, we suggest launching an APEC dialogue on liberalization in the non-ferrous metals market. The overwhelming majority of APEC economies are members of the World Trade Organization. It is logical that the Forum's modus vivendi is largely determined by WTO rules. (For those tempted to despair of the WTO, I would not dramatize the situation that developed after the ministerial conference in Cancun. On the contrary, I think that the discussions in Mexico were highly instrumental for our advance toward an eventual compromise.)
Russia is closely watching the globalization of the planet's economy. Globalization is a fact, and clearly one that influences economic growth positively for the most part. However, globalization also presents humankind with serious problems, such as the growing differentiation in standards of living, with the poorest countries being pushed to the outskirts of global civilization and given unequal access to information and telecommunication technologies. Reducing this gap means not only achieving economic progress in developing countries, but also higher standards of living for the people and, hence, social stability and the eradication of the roots of such dangerous phenomena as international terrorism.
To this end, we value APEC's assistance to small and medium-sized business, which means new jobs and the basis for the development of the middle class and, hence, sustainable social and economic development. Moreover, small businesses are a relatively quick and effective method of solving economic and social problems.
In Russia, small and medium-sized businesses employ 17 percent of the population. We have cut red tape in the system of registration and licensing of small businesses and the system of taxation and accounting has been greatly simplified. However, other problems hinder the development of small and medium-sized businesses, in particular poor access to financial resources and administrative barriers.
The APEC summit in Bangkok will be held under the title "World of Diversity: Partnership for the Future." Yes, we are all different. However, we have before us common problems and search together for solutions to them. The world has changed in the 14 years since the creation of APEC. There is no longer a confrontation of political-economic blocs and even the geographic map of the world has changed with the appearance of new states and disappearance of others. In these new conditions we should work even harder toward our common goals.
Vladimir Putin is president of Russia. This comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 10.
TITLE: Canny Police Stopped Bloodshed in City
AUTHOR: By Matt Bivens
TEXT: We've just been through the "ten years after" retrospectives of October 1993, and there was little new or startling in them. In particular, there was no answer to a footnote I've carried around ever since: In St. Petersburg, some cunning police commander with a genius for crowd psychology prevented the city from erupting into murderous violence the way Moscow had. I wish I knew who he was, because he was a hero and should be recognized as such 10 years on.
St. Petersburg was dark and bizarrely windy the Monday after Sunday's worst violence in Moscow. Then Mayor Anatoly Sobchak - posing as Yeltsin's only hope - had sent the city's toughest police units, the OMON, to Moscow. As crowds gathered that evening on St. Isaac's Square, it seemed a terrible idea to have emptied the city of cops. These weren't the usual "it's Leningrad not St. Petersburg"crowds of shouting babushki with Soviet flags; instead, amid an eerie quiet, about 1,000 young men stood talking angrily. And then suddenly they were marching - far, far faster than any Russian protesters I'd seen.
They were headed for St. Petersburg's television station, a popular protest site in the early 1990s. I got there first, by car, and found a small line of very frightened-looking police officers. They wore a hodge-podge of different uniforms - clearly they'd been pulled from posts across the city.
There was a narrow alley leading to the TV station, and they'd blocked it off with trucks, and then stood before this barricade, clubs and riot shields at the ready. It was crazy: They had created a dead-end alley with no way to fall back.
"You want to know why we're unprepared? Ask our leaders," an angry police colonel told me. "Ask them why we're undermanned tonight. Ask them why we have only real bullets to fire instead of rubber bullets, which police in civilized countries use to disperse crowds. Ask them why tonight we're going to have to kill people."
The noise of the crowd grew nearer. Three officers suddenly broke out of the shield line and began scrambling about the alley, frantically snatching up loose stones and tossing them under a bus, out of reach of demonstrators who might throw them. There were perfect throwing-sized stones all over the ground. The wind gusted violently, kicking up dust and scraps of paper, shaking street lamps, sending shadows leaping crazily. The police blinked grit out of their eyes and squinted.
The crowd poured around the corner, and when they saw the police - so few, so frightened - they roared in triumph and raced forward.
Just then a bus screeched around the corner, a blue flashing light atop it, and shot past the crowd. It was followed by a truck, but the protesters got in front of the truck, stopped it and literally pushed it back. The bus, however, slid to a sideways halt, blocking the marchers, and OMON troops started pouring out smartly and joining the line of police. It was still a joke - one bus of reinforcements versus 1,000 or so angry young men. But the last-second dramatic arrival was enough to give the crowd pause; and a crowd paused is a crowd defused.
To cries of "Judas, take your silver!" the protesters pelted the police with coins and one-and three-ruble notes. But that anonymous police commander had out-psyched them brilliantly, using his wits instead of rubber bullets to make sure no blood was spilled.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, writes the Daily Outrage for The Nation magazine. [www.thenation.com]
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
AUTHOR: By Chris Floyd
TEXT: The hackneyed phrase "political circus" came vividly to life here in America a fortnight ago. The national media, hardly sober and substantive at the best of times, were positively drunk with tabloid glee over two lurid spectacles whose simultaneous explosions of sex, blood, celebrity and raw power merged into a single glop of fevered emotionalism, driving the real story deep into the shadows.
We refer, of course, to the elevation of a cartoonish muscle-man to high office and the near-devouring of a Las Vegas circus performer by a white tiger. In the garish cacophony of America's 24-7 media bubble, the election of scandal-plagued Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governorship of California was scarcely differentiated from the mauling of Vegas showman Roy Horn during his animal act at the aptly named Mirage Hotel. Both stories were the subject of nonstop gabbling on every news outlet, with the American media's high priest, CNN's Larry King, alternating interviews with California political players and Vegas heavyweights on the implications of it all.
Politics, tigers, governments, movies - it's all one thing, one product in America's mega-merged media these days. Diversion is the name of the game: keep 'em stirred up, with witless titillation, primitive emotion, gossip, chatter, anxiety ("Are your taxes going up? Is your deodorant letting you down? Are the terrorists gonna get you? Does your butt look big in this?") - endlessly evoking unobtainable desires for beauty, riches, security, love. Reality gets smothered in the glop.
The right-wing moneymen behind the Schwarzenegger sideshow are well aware of this new paradigm. They were no doubt delighted when the stories about Arnold's aggressively roving hands hit the papers the weekend before the vote (at the same time as Horn's tiger lit up the airwaves with his bloodwork). The meticulously detailed allegations of the actor's boorish mauling of women over the past quarter-century provided the perfect opportunity to shovel the election into the diversionary ditch of personal scandal, with its ritual patterns of charge, denial, contrition and counterattack. It wasn't likely that louche behavior from a Hollywood actor would come as a great shock to anyone already enthralled by celebrity - including stalwart Republican conservatives, like prim Mormon politico Orrin Hatch, who had rained hellfire on Bill Clinton for consensual dalliances, but leapt to defend Arnold for his "youthful indiscretions." (In fact, Hatch went so far as to introduce legislation to lift the constitutional ban on foreign-born citizens - like Austrian native Schwarzenegger - running for president. Next stop: Das Weisse Haus, baby.)
All this non-signifying sound and fury kept voter, and media, attention away from the real impetus behind the recall. As always, it comes down to big money. The same weekend that sex charges and circus blood flooded the news, muckraker extraordinaire Greg Palast produced the smoking gun: reams of corporate memos that confirmed Schwarzenegger's involvement with Bush-backing Enron chief Ken Lay and convicted stock swindler Mike Milken in a scheme to thwart the California government's attempt to win back $9 billion in illegal profits looted by Lay and his fellow energy barons during the state's manufactured "energy crisis" in 2000.
Taking advantage of the state's Republican-installed, loophole-ridden "deregulation" laws, Lay and the barons gamed the energy grid in 1999-2000, forcing massive blackouts and monstrous price hikes, and costing California more than $70 billion, as Jason Leopold reported in Scoop. After hard evidence of widespread tampering and manipulation came to light, the state government of Governor Gray Davis filed a $9 billion civil suit against Lay and the boys to recover some of those ill-gotten gains.
It was then that Arnie sat down with "Kenny Boy" (the cutesy nickname George W. Bush gave to his biggest contributor) and conman Mike in L.A.'s swank Peninsula Hotel to launch their plunder protection plan. Kenny Boy would work on the Washington energy regulators - whose chief had been appointed by Bush on Lay's personal recommendation - to reduce any federal penalties to peanuts. The moguls would then use Arnold's boundless ambition for power (his admiration for dictators was as well-documented as his girl-groping) to take over the state government and put the kibosh on the private lawsuit.
Here's the crux: The main charge against Davis in the recall was that his inept leadership had led to an $8 billion budget deficit. (Actually, Arnie - and the national media - continually repeated the falsehood that the state had a $38 billion deficit. But who cares? Hey, did you hear about that tiger?) Yet a Schwarzenegger win meant throwing away $9 billion - leaving it in the pockets of Kenny Boy and his fellow Bush bagmen.
But Palast's story didn't stand a chance against Vegas tigers, Kennedy wives, kinky sex and celebrity glitz. Nor, as Leopold points out, did the bedazzled media bother to visit Arnold's own web site, where he - or rather, his advisers like Ken Lay - clearly laid out the Recaller's rapacious energy policy: a return to Enron-friendly deregulation and the gutting of state programs to build small, publicly-owned power plants to ward off future blackouts.
So Arnold was swept in - and the deficit-clearing lawsuit was, of course, swept out. Immediately after the election, a Schwarzenegger spokesman said the new governor would not pursue the court action: "It's time to settle and move on."
Indeed. For Arnold has also pledged to eliminate public oversight on any future state contracts with his baronial energy backers. In other words, the tigers have been set loose again - and California's hapless, misinformed, media-cheated citizens are in for another fierce mauling.
For annotational references, see the Opinion section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: New Bin Laden Tape Carries More Threats
AUTHOR: By Sarah El Deeb
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO, Egypt - The airing of a new audiotape, purporting to be from Osama bin Laden and promising fresh attacks against the United States, is a sign that "the war on terror goes on," President Bush said Sunday.
In the tape that aired Saturday, a voice said to be bin Laden vowed suicide attacks "inside and outside" the United States and threatened nations that are helping the American occupation of Iraq.
The speaker in the tape, broadcast throughout the Arab world by the Al-Jazeera television station, also warned Iraqis against cooperating with U.S. forces and urged youth in neighboring nations to join a jihad, or holy war, against the Americans.
"We reserve the right to respond at the appropriate time and place against all the countries participating in this unjust war, particularly Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy," the voice said.
"The Islamic countries who participate will not be exempt, especially the Gulf countries, most prominent among them is Kuwait, the launching base for infantry troops of the crusaders."
It was the first tape since one released on the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks - and the new message came as Bush was on a tour of Asian nations rallying allies in the anti-terrorism campaign.
"The bin Laden tape should say to everybody the war on terror goes on, that there's still a danger to free nations," Bush said in Bangkok, Thailand on Sunday.
The speaker on the tape used similar wording, including Quranic verses and poems, spoken by bin Laden in previous tapes. He held back a sob when addressing the Iraqi people, telling them he shares their concerns and saluting them on their jihad.
"God knows if I could find a way to your field, I wouldn't stall," the speaker said.
"You my brother fighters in Iraq ... I tell you: You are God's soldiers and the arrows of Islam, and the first line of defense for this [Muslim] nation today ... so don't [fail] the Muslims today."
The speaker said this is his second message to the Iraqi people. In February, an audiotaped message believed to be from bin Laden urged Iraqis to carry out suicide attacks against Americans and fight U.S. troops in Iraqi cities.
The Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera received the recording Saturday from a "trusted source" who called and offered the audiotape, news editor Ibrahim Hilal said.
The message apparently was recorded before early September, because the speaker refers to the government of former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned Sept. 6.
In the portion addressed to Americans, the speaker said: "I tell the American people we will continue fighting you and we will continue martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States until you stop your injustice, and you end your foolishness."
TITLE: Huge Crowds Honor Mother Teresa
AUTHOR: By Nicole Winfield
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY - More than a quarter-million people - rich and poor, royal and regular - flooded St. Peter's Square on Sunday for the beatification of Mother Teresa, honoring the nun who built shelters, orphanages and clinics around the world to care for those forsaken by everyone else.
Pope John Paul II presided over the open-air Mass but, for the first time in a major Vatican ceremony, was unable to utter a word of his homily, leaving other prelates to do so. In the few prayers he did say, his words were so slurred and shaky they could barely be understood.
John Paul did declare Mother Teresa "blessed," moving the woman many called a living saint for her work in the slums of Calcutta one step closer to official sainthood - and bestowing the honor during his 25th anniversary celebrations.
It has been a particularly grueling week for the ailing, 83-year-old pope, celebrating his anniversary Mass on Thursday and gearing up for another lengthy ceremony Tuesday to install 30 new cardinals.
The Vatican estimated Sunday's crowd at 300,000 - one of its largest ever - and the ceremony was a colorful mix of Indian dance and sitar music with traditional Catholic hymns, reflecting the cultures in which Mother Teresa lived and worked.
"In her, we perceive the urgency to put oneself in a state of service, especially for the poorest and most forgotten, the last of the last," John Paul said at the start of the service, held on a sunny Roman morning.
St. Peter's Square and the streets feeding into it overflowed with pilgrims, tourists and nuns of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity order, grouped in small clusters of their trademark indigo-trimmed white saris alongside cardinals in scarlet cassocks and politicians in somber black.
Some of the nuns wept, and others buried their heads in their hands when the smiling, wrinkled face of Mother Teresa was unveiled on a tapestry hanging from the facade of St. Peter's Basilica.
John Paul himself appeared visibly moved as Indian girls bearing blue and white flowers performed an offertory Indian dance and accompanied a wooden reliquary containing a sample of Mother Teresa's blood to the altar.
Beatification allows public veneration for holy people, so the relic - blood on a piece of cotton inside the reliquary - can go on display.
Also attending were Muslim and Orthodox Christian delegations from Albania, whose government declared a national holiday. Mother Teresa was born to an ethnic Albania family in the Macedonian capital, Skopje.
TITLE: Paper: No Charges over U.S. Crimes in Vietnam
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOLEDO, Ohio - An elite unit of American soldiers mutilated and killed hundreds of unarmed villagers over seven months in 1967 during the Vietnam War, and an Army investigation was closed with no charges filed, The Blade newspaper reported Sunday.
Soldiers of the Tiger Force unit of the Army's 101st Airborne Division dropped grenades into bunkers where villagers - including women and children - hid, and shot farmers without warning, the newspaper reported. Soldiers told The Blade that they severed ears from the dead and strung them on shoelaces to wear around their necks.
The Army's 4 1/2-year investigation, never before made public, was initiated by a soldier outraged at the killings. The probe substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 soldiers and reached the Pentagon and White House before it was closed in 1975, The Blade said.
The Blade reviewed thousands of classified Army documents, National Archive records and radio logs and interviewed former members of the unit and relatives of those who died.
Army spokesman Joe Burlas said Sunday commanders of Tiger Force, acting on the advice of military attorneys, determined there was insufficient evidence for successful prosecution. He would not comment on why the military did not seek out the evidence sooner.
TITLE: APEC Leaders Wary of Pyongyang Bomb
AUTHOR: By Terence Hunt
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK, Thailand - U.S. President Bush conferred with the leader of South Korea on Monday and said progress was being made "on peacefully solving" a crisis with North Korea by offering Pyongyang written security assurances in exchange for a commitment to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun met over breakfast a day after Bush rejected North Korea's demand for a formal no-invasion treaty, but left the door open for some form of written security pledge backed by the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
Nuclear tensions hung over the opening of a 21-nation summit of Asian-Pacific leaders, along with disputes over trade and the U.S. occupation of postwar Iraq. On the economic front, China refused to give ground in a currency argument with Washington.
In his talks with Roh, Bush said, "We have a common goal to make sure that the Korean Peninsula is nuclear weapons free."
While administration officials said Bush's initiative was still in the early discussion stage with allies, the president said, "We're making good progress on peacefully solving the issue with North Korea." He said he would talk with Roh about how to move the process forward.
Roh, speaking through a translator, said he appreciated Bush's efforts and said, "this issue is very critical."
Bush, who acknowledged to a reporter that he was feeling a bit jet-lagged from his Asian travel, also said he would talk with Roh about trade issues and U.S. demands that trade be "free and fair."
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters that consultations are just beginning - that no draft had yet been circulated.
"The key here is that anything having to do with security guarantees obviously also has to do with performance by the North Koreans," she said. "And it has to do with North Koreans being willing, able and verifiably capable of carrying out the obligations that they undertake."
"We want to discuss this with our partners. We are not going to go in all guns blazing and say `Take it of leave it this is it.' But, one thing should be very clear, this have to be performance-based. What will not work."
North Korea also was at the top of the agenda Sunday when Bush met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who pledged to encourage North Korea to return to multiparty nuclear talks soon.
With at least two nuclear weapons in its arsenal, North Korea startled the world last year when it admitted running a secret weapons program. In August, talks between the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas in Beijing ended without agreement on a next round.
The administration fervently wants to avoid Bush having a nuclear crisis on his hands as he heads into a re-election battle next year.
Hu said only that he would "strive for a peaceful resolution."
North Korea said the meeting in Bangkok was not the place to discuss the nuclear standoff because it "is an issue to be resolved between us and the United States."
TITLE: Israelis Bomb House After Ambush
AUTHOR: By Alon Bernstein
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EIN YABRUD, West Bank - Israeli warplanes on Monday bombed a home in Gaza City that reportedly belonged to a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, witnesses said. The explosion came hours after Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli army patrol in the West Bank, killing three soldiers.
The blast went off in the Shijaiyeh neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, and smoke rose into the air. First reports said a house belonging to Abdullah Shami, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, was targeted.
Israel has carried out dozens of air strikes against Palestinian militants in the city, including targeted killings of wanted men.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 21 Israelis earlier this month in the Israeli port city of Haifa.
The Israeli army foot patrol was attacked Sunday evening in the Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud, near the West Bank town of Ramallah, the military said. Three soldiers were killed, and another was seriously wounded, according to a statement.
A spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, loosely linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said its members carried out the ambush.
"A group of our fighters attacked an Israeli patrol in Ein Yabrud, killing and injuring many soldiers," he said by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The ambush came a few hours after Palestinians in Gaza fired rockets at Israeli towns, and Israeli forces wound up a phase of a wide-ranging operation in a Palestinian refugee camp on the Egyptian border.
The area has been the scene of frequent Palestinian gunfire attacks against Israeli military and civilian vehicles.
Israel TV said that because of the severity of the attack, Israeli forces were likely to enter Ramallah, where Arafat has been trapped in his headquarters for nearly two years.
Soldiers imposed a curfew on Ein Yabrud and were searching for the attackers, who escaped.
The last serious attack of its kind in the area was in February 2002, when four Palestinian gunmen opened fire an Israeli military checkpoint at nearby Ein Arik, killing six soldiers before escaping.
Earlier Sunday, Palestinian militants fired a barrage of homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel, one of the largest salvos in months.
No one was hurt in the barrage of Qassam rockets, relatively small and primitive weapons.
Three exploded in the town of Sderot, a frequent target not far from the Gaza border fence, and others fell near smaller communities, the military said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Blair Has Heart Scare
LONDON (AP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been under increasing political pressure because of the war in Iraq , was hospitalized Sunday with heart palpitations, his office said.
Doctors restored Blair's normal heartbeat with electrical stimulation and he was feeling "fine" at home.
Blair was expected to return to work full-time Tuesday, but would not make a planned statement to the House of Commons on Monday about a European summit he attended last week, his office said.
Blair was spending the weekend at Chequers, the official rural retreat for prime ministers, when he became ill. He initially was taken to a local hospital, but then went to Hammersmith, which has a specialist coronary-care unit.
Gay Priest Resolute
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire - The Rev. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop-elect, told parishioners his election is a sign of a changing church, one that will continue even if he resigns.
"If I step down, do you really think other qualified gays and lesbians wouldn't be elected?" he asked about 40 people during a religious education meeting Sunday at Grace Church. "My standing down isn't going to make it all go away."
His comment was prompted by a suggestion from a parishioner that Robinson reconsider accepting the bishop's role because of the turmoil it has caused and the threat it poses to the international church.
Sony Mum over Jobs
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's Sony Corp declined to confirm or deny what it said was a speculative press report about a plan to cut 15,000-20,000 jobs globally by the end of March 2006.
"It is based on speculation and fragmented information. We have no comment at this time," Sony said in a brief statement.
The company will announce its structural reform plans on Oct. 28 when it will explain its management plans, Sony added.
The company was referring to a report by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun Monday that said the electronics giant was to cut 15,000-20,000 jobs or about 10 percent of its global group workforce as it withdraws from unprofitable operations.
Births Kill in Africa
GENEVA (Reuters) - Sub-Saharan African women are 175 times more likely to die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than their sisters in rich countries, three United Nations agencies reported Monday.
In Africa at large, a report from the three agencies said, one in 16 women do not survive a pregnancy.
But in Europe, North America and Australasia, the average is only one in 2,800, according to a report from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.N. Population Fund.
Tobacconists Strike
PARIS (Reuters) - French tobacco vendors refused to sell cigarettes on Monday in an unprecedented nationwide protest over a 20 percent tax hike they fear will put hundreds of them out of business.
Several tobacco shops in Paris stuck up posters accusing a government that is cutting income tax of hypocrisy.
"They're taking from our pockets taxes they claim to be cutting elsewhere," said the posters.
The tax rise of 18-20 percent took the price of a top brand packet of 20 cigarettes to around 4.60 euros ($5.35).
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Mikhail Youzhny of Russia opened the St. Petersburg Open 2003 on Monday with a first round clash against Andrei Pavel of Romania. The ATP event - billed as "St. Petersburg's biggest sporting occasion" - has a championship purse of over $1 million. Former champion Marat Safin will be hoping to end a six-month losing streak, which saw him crashing out of the ATP Tennis Masters event in Madrid last week, on home turf. Other big names in the main draw include Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Sebastian Grosjean and Gustav Kuerten. Only one Russian qualifier, Kirill Ivanov-Smolensky, made it to the finals by beating German Bjorn Phau on Sunday.
Zenit's Hopes Fade
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Zenit St. Petersburg lost two valuable points in its bid to secure its first Russian Premier League title in almost two decades after being held to a 1-1 draw at Rostov on Saturday.
Ukraine international Olexander Spivak fired the visitor ahead on the half-hour, but Rostov substitute Roman Adamov equalized midway through the second half after capitalizing on a defensive blunder by Zenit goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev. Zenit, which won its first and only championship title in 1984 when it was known as Zenit Leningrad, is now three points behind Premier League leader CSKA Moscow with just two games remaining.
CSKA, which has 55 points and a game in hand, faces bitter rival Spartak in a Moscow derby Monday.
Iraq vs. Australia
PERTH, Australia (AP) - Iraq's national soccer team will play a representative side on Nov. 16 as part of a 10-day tour of Western Australia that will include training clinics and exhibition matches in two regional centers.
The Iraqi team, coached by former Perth Glory coach Bernd Stange, will play an Australian team including former Australian international Robbie Slater, Western Australia state team members and Australian Institute of Sport players in Perth.
Stange said he was looking forward to returning to Perth to showcase his new team and to promote the reconstruction process in Iraq.
"We are now forging a sense of community, personal change and unity realized in actions - which for me is sport - not just echoed constantly in words," he said.
TITLE: Russian Fans: 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame'
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When State Sports Committee head Vyacheslav Fetisov announced last month during President Vladimir Putin's visit to the United States that the World Series would be shown in Russia for the first time ever this year, the U.S. sports media immediately let loose with some potshots.
ESPN columnist Jim Caple wrote a fictitious dialogue between Russian baseball commentators bashing shallow American capitalists and complaining about failed Russian wheat crops. Scott Ostler on MSNBC.com wrote that six out of every 10 televisions in Russia will be tuned into the series, meaning a total of six televisions will be tuned in.
But Russian baseball fans, an admittedly small circle, are serious about the Grand Old Game, and about 50 of them turned out at the Boar House on Sunday afternoon to watch the replay of Game 1 of the series, in which the Florida Marlins beat the New York Yankees 3-2.
"Basically everybody knows everybody else," said Yevgeny Kirushin, 40, who was a shortstop for the Soviet Union's first national team in 1986.
The television channel Sport will be showing the World Series games in the early morning hours all this week with afternoon replays the next day. A majority of those on hand Sunday said they would be watching the replays.
"We all have jobs," said Denis Talakin, 33, who started playing baseball 11 years ago and now is an active softball player. "It's hard to stay up that late to watch the games live."
Watching Game 1 along with Kirushin was his teammate from the Soviet national team, Sergei Tumansky, 40, who learned the game together with Kirushin as a teenager while their parents worked abroad in baseball-mad Cuba from 1976 to 1980.
Tumansky said showing Major League games on television can only help the sport's development in Russia, though he noted that the cost of equipment is still a barrier for many boys.
"Real leather baseball gloves and balls themselves are expensive," he said. "They are beyond a lot of families' means."
Nevertheless, Russia's youth teams have experienced considerable success in recent years.
Moscow's Khovrino Little League team has competed in the last two Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and Russia's under-12 national team is one of the best in Europe.
A pack of youth baseball players showed up Sunday to watch the game, though several of them drifted over to the pool table by the fourth inning. Many of the players were part of the group that toured the United States during Putin's recent U.S. visit.
During their tour, they took a field trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and played a series of exhibition games against U.S. youth teams. The boys said one of the highlights of their trip was winning two games against a youth team from Harlem.
"We thought it would be a lot more difficult to beat them," said Pavel Talakin, 11, who pitches and plays first base. "They practice all the time, and we only practice once a week."
Almost all of the boys said they wanted to grow up to be professional baseball players.
Talakin said he would like to play for the Arizona Diamondbacks, while teammates Dmitry Zhuravlyov, 12, and Anton Chekalin, 11, want to play for the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, respectively.
How long it will take for baseball to become a popular sport is unclear.
"Give it about 100 years," Tumansky said. "Look how long baseball has been played in American. About 150 years. It's just started in Russia."
But Tumansky did express optimism about the growth of the sport's popularity in Russia in the near future.
"All of these kids watching the game today, in about six or seven years they will be able to go to America and play," he said. "Then people will understand that Russians can play baseball, too."
TITLE: Yankees Return Florida's Favor
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - With the bill of his cap pulled down low to shadow his dark eyes and his glove held high, Andy Pettitte cuts a menacing figure on the mound. The Florida Marlins saw it for themselves Sunday night.
Pettitte pitched the New York Yankees right back into this World Series, working into the ninth inning on only three days' rest and winning 6-1 to even it at one game each.
Inspiration came from his mentor, Roger Clemens.
"I was inside the clubhouse before game talking to Rog a little bit. He said, 'This is what we worked all year for. You got to go out strong like a horse tonight,''' Pettitte said.
He did, all right, and his teammates came out slugging, a take-that response to a Marlins team intent on using its speed to cause trouble.
Hideki Matsui delivered the big hit the Yankee Stadium crowd was waiting for, a three-run homer in the first inning on a 3-0 count. Slumping Alfonso Soriano later added a two-run drive.
Those shots seemed to revive a Yankees team that looked sluggish in losing the opener 3-2. And they were plenty for Pettitte, who tied John Smoltz's postseason record of 13 victories.
Now, the Series shifts to Pro Player Stadium for Game 3 on Tuesday night. Marlins ace Josh Beckett will start against Mike Mussina.
Pettitte nearly recorded his first postseason shutout in 29 starts. Third baseman Aaron Boone's second error of the game, a two-out misplay in the ninth, set up Derrek Lee's RBI single.
Pettitte gave up six hits, struck out seven, walked one and did not permit a runner past second base until the last inning. Jose Contreras relieved and got the final out.
"I was missing a little bit, kind of fighting myself a little bit trying to figure out what kind of game I wanted to pitch on three days' rest,'' Pettitte said, referring to the first inning.
Once again, Pettitte's timing was impeccable.
The Yankees also lost the openers in their playoff series against Minnesota and Boston this year before Pettitte won Game 2.
Pettitte improved to 13-7 lifetime in the postseason, and never let the Marlins threaten. Catcher Jorge Posada threw out Luis Castillo trying to steal in the first inning, and the Yankees got a lucky break when a ball that deflected off Miguel Cabrera's leg was called fair and turned into a double play.
Not that the Yankees needed much help to beat Mark Redman on this night. Pettitte's deep start allowed New York to give ace closer Mariano Rivera another day of rest.
Nick Johnson helped out with three hits for the Yankees. He may not get to play again for a bit because the Yankees will lose the designated hitter at Miami, with Jason Giambi taking over at first base.
Boone is certainly learning how fast fortunes change in the Bronx - he was hailed as a hero after his 11th-inning homer won Game 7 of the ALCS, but was criticized for failing to throw home in a key spot Saturday night.
Matsui's homer came after Giambi was hit by a pitch with two outs and Bernie Williams singled.
"I'm just taking the same mental approach I did during the regular season,'' Matsui said through a translator.
TITLE: Shaq Attack Fails to Lift Lakers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAKERSFIELD, California - Shaquille O'Neal made a surprise return to the lineup and was his usual erratic self at the free throw line as the Los Angeles Lakers lost 102-87 to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday night.
After missing three games because of a bruised left heel, O'Neal told coach Phil Jackson he was ready to play just a few minutes before tipoff.
"I said it would be nice if I had someone to go with, and he suited up,'' Lakers teammate Karl Malone said. "Even though it's a preseason game, that meant a lot to me. Now, we're looking forward to getting Kobe in the mix next.''
O'Neal went 4-for-4 from the free throw line in the first quarter, then missed eight of 12 attempts in the third quarter.
Ricky Davis led Cleveland with 27 points on 11-for-16 shooting, including a spectacular follow dunk off a missed free throw at the third quarter buzzer.
LeBron James grabbed 10 rebounds but again had trouble with his outside shot - though not to the degree that he struggled in Cleveland's first five games. The 18-year-old rookie had 14 points, three assists, five turnovers and five fouls before leaving with 7:22 remaining and the Cavaliers ahead by 18.
Kevin Ollie added 15 points, making his first six shots.
Davis improved his scoring average by 8.9 points last season, the largest improvement by any player in the NBA. But his shot selection was often terrible on a team with few other offensive options.
And his field goal percentage was just 41 percent.
"I'd like to get it up above 50 percent this season,'' Davis said.
That was not a problem in this game as Davis shot 8-for-9 in the first half to help Cleveland take a 57-33 lead. O'Neal scored 14 of his 20 points in the third quarter, but the Lakers did not gain any ground and never threatened in the fourth.
Kobe Bryant was not included in the Lakers' line-up. He could learn as early as Monday whether he will stand trial on a sexual assault charge in Eagle, Colorado.
Lakers forward Slava Medvedenko left the game in the first half with a bruised left heel and did not return to complete the game.
Detroit 93-Denver 91
Mehmet Okur hit a driving layup with 2.3 seconds left, giving the Detroit Pistons a 93-91 exhibition victory over the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night and putting a damper on Carmelo Anthony's return to the Carrier Dome.
Okur took an inbounds pass and drove to the basket, avoiding two block attempts under the basket, one by Anthony, and laying the ball in off the glass. After a timeout, Anthony inbounded the ball to Rodney White, but he was unable to get a shot off before the buzzer.
Despite the loss, it was a memorable night for Anthony, who was playing his first game on Jim Boeheim Court since he led the Syracuse Orangemen to the NCAA national championship in April. With Boeheim watching from a courtside seat, Anthony scored a game-high 23 points, shooting 7-for-13 from the floor and 9-for-13 from the line in 34 minutes.
Chucky Atkins led the Pistons with 19 points, Tayshaun Prince had 15, Chauncey Billups had 14, Okur had 12, and Zeljko Rebraca 11.
Nene had 18 points and White finished with 17 for Denver.
Anthony, who entered the game averaging a team-high 18.3 points, had 19 points in the first half as Denver gained a 54-42 lead at the break.
A running dunk by Chris Anderson gave the Nuggets their biggest lead, 59-46, with 9:03 left in the third quarter before Billups and Atkins led the Pistons back.
Billups hit two 3-pointers and Atkins contributed seven straight points to key a 24-3 run. A dunk by Ben Wallace with 2:08 left in the third ended the spurt and put Detroit up 71-64.
Anthony, who sat on the bench for most of the second half, returned with 3:31 left as the crowd of 20,315 chanted his name. He hit a driving layup with 59 seconds left to tie it at 89, but that was it.
TITLE: Nashville Nixed By Chicago Rookie Ruutu's Power Play
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO - Tuomo Ruutu's first NHL goal came at an opportune time. The rookie scored on the power play to break a 1-1 tie and end Chicago's four-game losing streak with a 3-1 win over the Nashville Predators on Sunday.
"We needed the win,'' Ruutu said. "I got the puck and I just shot it and it went in.'' Tyler Arnason scored late in the second period for the Blackhawks, who got an insurance goal from Kyle Calder with 6:10 left in regulation.
Dave Legwand scored on the power play for the Predators, who played their first road game this season. They were 3-1-0 in Nashville. Jocelyn Thibault stopped 21 shots for Chicago. Chris Mason, making his first start for the Predators, had 28 saves.
"It's just one of those things where I step up, it hits me in the shoulder,'' Mason said of Ruutu's shot. "I just didn't see it.''
Chicago was 1-for-7 on the power play. Meanwhile, the Blackhawks, who have been short-handed a league-leading 47 times this season, killed six of seven Nashville power-play chances on Sunday.
In a 7-2 loss at Atlanta on Saturday, Chicago was short-handed 15 times and gave up four power-play goals.
"It was a lot different team,'' said Thibault, pulled after the Thrashers' fifth goal on Saturday. "Last night, I was scared with the way we played, but we rebounded real well.''
Legwand was credited with a goal when Marek Zidlicky's shot from the left circle struck his skate and trickled past Thibault with 3:06 left in the second period. Arnason replied 23 seconds later from the slot to tie it at one.
Ruutu gave Chicago a 2-1 lead with a power-play goal 53 seconds into the third. After faking a pass, he fired in a nonchalant wrist shot from the right circle. Calder made it 3-1 with 6:10 left. He stuffed in a loose puck nine seconds after a Nashville penalty expired.