SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #919 (87), Friday, November 14, 2003
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TITLE: Yukos Is Focus at Harvard
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BOSTON - Although invited to the seventh annual U.S.-Russia Investment Symposium to discuss economic diversification, participants are mainly talking about the Yukos crisis, with investment guru George Soros even calling for Russia's expulsion from the G-8 over the "political persecution" of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
 
"The G-8 is supposed to be a democratic organization, but it is becoming questionable whether Russia qualifies for it," Soros told a packed hall Wednesday night.
 Soros said Russia would do little to change and urged the West to try to intervene. "[This responsibility falls] particularly [to] President [George W.] Bush, who has embraced President [Vladimir] Putin and looked into his soul and liked what he saw. I think he has to disembrace Putin and put him on notice that he is taking the country in the wrong direction," he said.
 Soros, who has given more than $1 billion to philanthropic projects in Russia since the collapse of the U.S.S.R and was speaking after accepting an award for his contribution to building a democratic Russia, said the fact that Khodorkovsky has been jailed since late October without being found guilty amounts to political persecution. 
 The Moscow City Court on Tuesday extended Khodorkovsky's detention until Dec. 30, and a prosecutor said Wednesday that Khodorkovsky might be held in pretrial detention for up to two years.
 Khodorkovsky, the founder of Yukos and Russia's richest man with an estimated wealth of $8.5 billion, was arrested at gunpoint last month and charged with $1 billion fraud and tax evasion. After building his fortune from the shady privatizations of the 1990s, he began taking an active interest in politics - a shift that observers say has the Kremlin worried. Khodorkovsky told Fortune magazine in August: "I'm going to try to buy a democratic future for my country. And I have enough money and energy to do that."
 Soros said Khodorkovsky's arrest casts doubt on whether Putin is committed to building democracy or is just selectively using the law. Putin insisted Thursday that "there is no basis to suppose that the use of laws is selective or will be selective." (Story, page 5.)
 Soros said the arrest will hurt Russia's economy and foreign investment. "The signal is so negative for Russia' s development that I can hardly believe that this was President Putin' s intention. I think a very bad mistake was made in doing this."
 Of all the oligarchs, Khodorkovsky - whose Open Russia foundation has taken over parts of Soros' own philanthropic programs in Russia - is "the most enlightened," Soros said, praising him for building a transparent company with good corporate governance practices. 
 Notably, earlier in the day U.S.-Russia Investment Symposium participants were invited to attend a workshop based on a case study of Yukos corporate governance developed by the Harvard Business School.
 Soros said he saw "no direct connection" between the "persecution" of Khodorkovsky, last Friday's raid of his own Open Society Institute' s Moscow offices on orders "of a gangster landlord," and the beating Monday of prominent journalist Otto Latsis. "But when you add it all up, it gives you a very, very bad feeling as to where Russia is heading," he said.
 U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans told the conference Thursday that Russia must show that its justice system is fair and transparent if it is to continue to attract foreign investment.
 "The Russian government has made impressive progress since ... the 1998 financial meltdown to create and safeguard an attractive investment climate.
 "Investors are looking for signals as to how this process is going to be handled," he said. "Will the implementation be fair? Will there be no political intervention in the process?"
 Evans repeatedly identified the rule of law, predictability, stability and "a climate of trust and safety" as key conditions Russia should guarantee in its handling of the Yukos affair and beyond to attract investment and stimulate economic growth.
 Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref listened as Evans spoke and then took the stage to defend the Kremlin. "I know Putin very well. He is a convinced liberal in his vision of the economic policy," Gref said in a speech touting Russia's continuing economic upswing, shrinking sovereign debt and growing foreign investment.
 "There should be no doubt whatsoever that the general course of Russian economic policy will remain the same," he said.
 Gref also expressed optimism that the stock market, which has dropped sharply over the Yukos affair, will eventually rebound.
 Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman echoed Gref's hopes later in the day.
 "It would be strange to say the Yukos situation will not influence the situation on the markets," he told reporters. "It must be openly discussed and there must be a verdict issued by the court. And if there is a verdict ... we will just have to deal with it and try to restore the situation on the market."
 Opening the three-day conference Wednesday, Harvard University professor Graham Allison said Russia has the choice of becoming a Canada or a Guatemala. He said Guatemala is the direction being taken if Khodorkovsky' s arrest is an attempt to " checkmate" the businessman before he can become Russia's equivalent of Italian baron-turned-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. 
 The theme for the conference is "Toward Diversification of the Russian Economy," but organizers were quick to react to developments in Russia, issuing a statement Wednesday warning that Putin may be " dismantling democracy to consolidate political power."
 The Yukos affair was on just about everybody's lips in informal conversations, although few participants showed alarm.
 " The case ... creates a certain degree of uncertainty," former U.S. Ambassador to Russia James Collins said in an interview. But he noted that foreign investors are still showing "a tremendous interest in Russia." 
 Collins, now a senior international adviser with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, praised Putin' s government for pushing on with economic and legal reforms. "These reforms have to be continued," he said.
 Western investors tend to be less alarmist than their Russian counterparts in assessing the possible repercussions of the Khodorkovsky case, a U.S. investor said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 
 He said Western investors he has spoken with at the conference generally agree that the authorities are targeting Khodorkovsky personally in an "isolated case" rather than attempting to seize Yukos or even revisit privatization.
 As for Soros' criticism, he said it might be difficult for the financier "to balance his political and economic interests," given his participation in 1990s privatizations.
 Former Pepsico chairman Donald Kendall was more upbeat that many in his assessment of Russia, saying Pepsi has seen a five-fold growth in sales since 1999 that shows "there are tremendous opportunities." 
 Kendall, who introduced Pepsi to Soviet Union, described in detail how Pepsico is now relying on locally grown potatoes for its Frito-Lay chips. 
 He also said that while it is easier to deal with a totalitarian regime, there is bigger money to be made in a free-market economy. "It is very easy with a totalitarian government, as you only have to deal with a few people," he said. "In a market economy, you have to deal with many more people, but a market economy is much better."

TITLE: Aphrodite Stays Under Wrapping
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A unique and beautiful statue that admirers have dubbed Aphrodite, after the Greek goddess of love, is out of the public eye while its future is decided.
 
The statue, which seems more alive than most, was created by an unknown sculptor in the 19th century, and recently restored by the St. Petersburg reconstruction company Intarsia for the water utility Vodokanal for $50,000.
 Art experts say the copper-coated cast-iron statue restored at Vodokanal's expense to decorate a fountain owned by the company at 64 Ligovsky Prospekt would not survive in the open air.
 Vodokanal considers the experts are likely to be correct, but is now finding it hard to justify the repair bill.
 "It's a tough case," said Vladimir Sorin, head specialist at Intarsia. "On the one hand, Vodokanal paid for the restoration of the statue for the fountain, but on the other hand, it was advised not to put it there."
 "The best way out would be if the city found a sponsor to pay for a rust-free copy of Aphrodite for the fountain," Sorin said.
 Making such a copy would cost up to $27,000, he estimated.
 The statue was made in the late 19th century on the orders of St. Petersburg iron-foundry owner Sangali, who is remembered only for his last name. The statue has its own legend.
 Sangali is said to have ordered the statue from abroad in honor of his beautiful daughter, who drowned when she was 16. 
 According to the legend, Sangali brought the model of the statue to St. Petersburg and the statue was cast at his plant. It was placed in the fountain on Ligovsky Prospekt, where Sangali used to live.
 However, the cast iron and copper coating corroded each other, especially since Aphrodite stood in water. Since it was installed, it has not been on display continuously, but was on display when the restoration began a few years ago.
 The statue had suffered serious damage.
 "This work of art is tremendous," said Pyotr Portugalsky, Intarsia restorer, who participated in Aphrodite's restoration. 
 Portugalsky said the statue is tremendous, especially because she looks as if she is alive. 
 The sculptor made the statue look warm, with a pretty and alive-looking face. The cherubs that surround her were executed not with classical doll faces but also with lively expressions, as if each has its own character, he said.
 "Those children are cheerful, sad, and one even has a rather naughty look. It's great," Portugalsky said.
 The sculptor was a great professional, and made the statue so that it would impress from all angles. His only mistake was the choice of materials, Portugalsky added.
 When Intarsia received the statue for the restoration, it was 70 percent destroyed, chief restorer Sorin said.
 "When a sculpture is 80 percent destroyed it automatically means that it cannot be restored," he said. "But when we saw how beautiful that sculpture was we did our best to bring it back to life."
 It took two and a half years to study the statue and restore it, but when the work was done, the restorers became concerned that the sculpture would not survive being placed outside again.
 At first, it had no name, but the restorers soon began calling the rescued beauty Aphrodite.
 "The place where this statue is to be displayed should satisfy two conditions - it shouldn't to be exposed to high humidity or freezing temperatures," Sorin said. "We are worried that if it is placed in the fountain it will die."
 "Ideally, this statue should be placed in a museum, perhaps even a distinguished one like the Hermitage or Louvre," Sorin said.
 Nadezhda Yefremova, deputy head of the sculpture department at the City Sculpture Museum, said the museum would be happy to take the sculpture, but then Vodokanal would have to have some kind of replacement for it.
 The museum has no money to pay Vodokanal for the sculpture, she added.
 "The best way to solve this dubious situation would be to find a sponsor to make a copy of the sculpture, or find another sculpture for the fountain," she said.
 Valentin Kuzmin, acting head of Vodokanal's fountains section, said Vodokanal is in a deadlock regarding the statue.
 "Considering the experts' opinion on the sculpture's fragility, we postponed the restoration of the fountain itself, but we still don't know what to do," Kuzmin said.

TITLE: Nabokov Suit Accents Copyright Woes
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Nabokov Estate in Russia has filed a suit against Nezavisimaya Gazeta for publishing several texts by Vladimir Nabokov without permission and defaming the author's name.
 
The publication in question is "Nabokov About Nabokov Etc.: Interviews, Reviews and Essays," printed in Russian by the Nezavisimaya Gazeta publishing house in 2002.
 Olga Voronina, official representative of the Nabokov estate in Russia, says that the book is actually a reprint of Vladimir Nabokov's English-language "Strong Opinions," a collection of letters, interviews and essays, first published in 1973 in the United States, for which Nezavisimaya Gazeta had not received permission.
 &quot;They didn't even <i>apply</i> for permission,&quot; Voronina said. &quot;Although there were some cuts and some additions, the book is clearly a reprint.&quot;
 The case was filed in Moscow's Basmanny Court on Tuesday, near the registered office of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which had no comment on the dispute.
 However, Anna Raiskaya, managing editor of the publishing department of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, was quoted by Delovoi Peterburg newspaper this week as saying the publisher had done nothing wrong.
 &quot;All the materials, including illustrations, come from magazines and newspapers,&quot; she was quoted as saying. &quot;Furthermore, our contract with Nikolai Melnikov, who compiled the book and wrote the introduction, says that he bears all responsibility for it.&quot;
 Nabokov, considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in any language, was born into a well-off St. Petersburg family and fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. He spent years in Europe before taking up a career as a teacher in the United States. He spent the last years of his life in Montreux, Switzerland, dying in 1977.
 Nabokov's most famous work is &quot;Lolita,&quot; the tale of a man's attraction to preadolescent girl.
 His son, Dmitry, is in charge of the author's literary and financial heritage. The estate's representative in Russia takes care of his affairs in this country; Dmitry decided that the proceeds from Russian sales of Nabokov's books should be donated to the city's Nabokov museum.
 Vadim Uskov, head of St. Petersburg law firm Uskov and Partners, said that although the book was published last year, his company had been trying to settle the dispute out of court.
 &quot;When we first approached the publishers, most of the 6,000 copies of the book hadn't been sold,&quot; he said. &quot;What we wanted was to terminate distribution and get them to pay royalties.&quot;
 No reaction followed, most of the copies the edition have since sold, and now the lawyers are demanding $24,000.
 Uskov said this figure was generated by a formula in accordance with a law that takes into account the sale price and number of books sold. No additional sum is being sought for the alleged defamation.
 If received, the $24,000 will go directly to the Nabokov Museum in St. Petersburg to be spent on its development.
 &quot;We are not doing this for the money,&quot; Uskov said.
 Melnikov entitled his foreword to the book &quot;A Performance With Unmasking.&quot;
 The Nabokov Estate said the style and content of the foreword is a groundless defamation and an attempt to blacken the writer's reputation.
 The following quote from Melnikov's foreward was one of several cases in point: &quot;Currently, almost all of them [English-language works by Nabokov] have survived a rebirth, and having thawed out, perform their arias in another language: some of them voiced and distinctive, some harder-of-hearing and colorless, sinning with clumsy claques and tasteless Americanisms, going astray to the falsetto of tactless ad-libbing worthless except for, at best, some condescending sympathy.&quot; 
 There are a dozen quotes similar to this one in tone and interpretation in the foreword.
 Uskov, a graduate of St. Petersburg State University, quoted his former law professor.
 &quot;He gave us five rules to follow and to explain our clients: 1. Don't think ill of other people. 2 If you do, then don't talk about it. 3. If you do the above, then don't write about it. 4. If you do the above, don't sign it. 5 If you have done all this and signed it, don't be surprised.
 &quot;Our actions are intended to be our contribution to creating a legal basis for copyright law in this country.&quot;
 The copyright law adopted in 1993 is considered fairly comprehensive by both Russian and foreign experts. The country joined the international Berne Convention on copyright in 1994, while the Soviet Union adopted the Geneva World Convention on copyright in 1973.
 But for the well over two decades since then, the outside world has been convinced that copyright does not exist in Russia, calling the country a black hole with respect to intellectual property.
 Under the law, authors' rights are to be protected during authors' lives and 50 years after their deaths.
 So Dmitry Nabokov theoretically shouldn't have had any trouble getting royalties and providing control over the literary element of his father's books in Russia. But in reality, only one of Vladimir Nabokov's books - &quot;Look at the Harlequins!&quot; printed in 1974 - is actually protected by the law.
 The key to this paradox is an amendment that the Soviet Union made when adopting the Geneva Convention. The country declared the convention non-retrospective.
 In other words, all material created by foreign authors before May 27, 1973 (when the U.S.S.R. signed the convention) aren't subject to the copyright law. The decision has since been causing much tension between the country and the rest of the world.
 St. Petersburg copyright lawyer Lyudmila Svetlitsa said that when signing the Berne Convention, Russia made an amendment stipulating that works that had already become &quot;public property&quot; are not subject to the copyright law. This includes not only works on which copyright had expired, but also works that never had copyright protection in Russia.
 The amendment contradicts the Berne Convention, Svetlitsa said.
 &quot;According to article 30 of the Berne Convention, the country can make no amendments to the convention expect in cases specified in the convention,&quot; she said. &quot;The amendment made by Russia also contradicts its own federal law on international agreements.&quot;
 After Vladimir Nabokov's books were allowed to be printed in early perestroika, his novels were published by multiple private publishing houses - with no permission from the Nabokov estate and subject to poor translation, with some important passages of novels entirely absent.
 It was for this reason that Dmitry Nabokov would not visit Russia until the mid-1990s.
 &quot;What was particularly distressing was not just the financial part - millions of copies of my father's novels have been printed illegally - but that there was little control over the literary part,&quot; Dmitry Nabokov said last year in an interview.
 Voronina said that the widespread practice of Russian publishers and users of intellectual property using the Russian law to avoid paying for intellectual property and authors' rights annoys Western copyright lawyers enormously.
 &quot;What is happening now is that Russian publishers who are concerned about their image in the West, who go to international book fairs and who communicate with their Western counterparts try to follow international rules of copyright protection and pay for use of international authors' work, even if the work was created before 1973,&quot; Voronina said.
 These publishers make gestures of goodwill by contacting agents or representatives of authors' estates abroad in order to keep up their image in the West. And, as Voronina believes, the wealthier and more established publishers in Russia get, the more they will be interested in keeping up good relationships with authors' estates and foreign agents.
 Russian publishers have recently began to realize the impact on the country's image that observation of copyright law has.
 A sociological survey conducted in fall 2000 by Gallup St. Petersburg on copyright awareness among local culture managers, publishers and electronic publishers indicates that 79 percent of them agree that violations of copyright in their businesses cause damage to the international image of Russia.
 87 percent believe that as the situation of this matter improves, it will improve the country's image.
 As Svetlitsa points out, if Russia is serious in its intention to join the World Trade Organization, the country's copyright legislation must not contradict international laws.
 &quot;I hope the situation will change when Russia enters the World Trade Organization, because one of the terms for the country to join WTO is that Russia must change its legal system in accordance with international laws, which means the amendment contradicting the Berne Convention will have to be removed,&quot; Svetlitsa said.
 But, Voronina said the problem of efficient monitoring of copyright, which is already causing trouble, might increase, and it is going to be very difficult for Russian law enforcement authorities to monitor production of CDs or any other materials in Russia.
 &quot;Our publishers sometimes buy exclusive rights to print 2,000 copies of a certain author, and if they decide to be dishonest and publish another 2,000 or 20,000 copies, it is very hard for the authors' representatives to control violations of copyright,&quot; Voronina said.
 With the wave of perestroika, a slew of new publishing houses mushroomed around the country, printing once-forbidden Western literature with disregard not only to paying royalties but also to textual quality. Numerous publishing companies surfaced - only to disappear after printing a couple of books.
 &quot;It often was a result of mere ignorance,&quot; said Dmitry Nabokov. &quot;Publishers simply weren't aware of the standards that exist to protect authors' rights, with the result often being very sad for the writers.
 &quot;Many of them [the early post-Soviet publishers] have long been gone but I hope that those who come later will be able to live and create in a fair, healthy environment.&quot;
 With the publishing market stabilizing, quality publishing houses are showing more concern about their international reputation. Still, relations between authors and publishers within modern Russia are often described as unfair or even illegal.
 Natalya Lokhova is deputy director of the northwestern department of the Russian Authors' Society, a national state-run organization monitoring and managing authors' rights.
 Though the situation of copyright in publishing has recently improved, the success is only relative, as achievements have been overshadowed by the blatant violations of copyright law occurring in the entertainment business.
 &quot;Back in Soviet times there was only one standard contract between the author and the publisher,&quot; Lokhova said. &quot;Now the contracts vary in form, and the freedom is causing problems. When offering a contract, publishers pursue entirely their own interests, while authors are often careless about significant details.&quot;
 The experts agree that the problem with Russian copyright law is that it only exists on paper and in practice is frequently treated with disregard or altogether ignored. Among the main reasons behind the disregard, lawyers name criminal organizations, economic uncertainty and public ignorance.
 &quot;The law is consistent and it passed a UNESCO review,&quot; Lokhova said. The problem is that this law is of a very declarative character, with procedures of enforcing the law vague or simply missing.&quot;
 In such a situation, the role of lawyers is increasing. But copyright lawyers are hard to find in Russia.
 Svetlitsa said one of the main reasons for this is that copyright awareness in Russia is still in an embryonic stage, with authors rarely seeking legal support, which has forced strong lawyers to switch their attention to other spheres.
 &quot;Additionally, cases involving copyright issues have been considered some of the most difficult, owing to novelty of copyright legislation in Russia and the lack of legal experience in the field,&quot; Svetlitsa said.
 The solution, Svetlitsa believes, is for intellectual property issues to become a natural part of Russia's social life and not be taken as an alien element.
 &quot;The situation is changing now, and with the growing interest in society regarding the enforcement of intellectual property laws, more copyright lawyers will inevitably emerge on the market, and quality of legal services in the field of copyright will improve,&quot; she said.

TITLE: Lithuanian President's Advisers Offer to Resign
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: VILNIUS, Lithuania - All the Lithuanian chief presidential advisers have begun announcing their resignations, presidential press secretary Rosvaldas Gorbaciovas told Interfax on Thursday.
 &quot;I have no precise information on whether all the six chief advisers have already announced their resignations to the president or not but, nevertheless, they are expected to do so today,&quot; Gorbaciovas said.
 The press secretary confirmed that foreign policy adviser Alvydas Medalinskas offered his resignation on Thursday morning.
 &quot;I have put my resignation on the president's table as well,&quot; Gorbaciovas said. 
 Gorbaciovas said he was unaware of whether national security adviser Remigijus Acas has submitted his resignation. Materials recently made public by the State Security Department have turned Acas into the prime suspect possibly involved in links with the criminal world.
 After the materials were made public about two weeks ago, Paksas suspended Acas's duties. 
 &quot;The noose is tightening around the Paksas gang,&quot; said the country's largest newspaper, Lietuvos Rytas, on Wednesday. 
 Paska denies any wrongdoing and has declined calls for his resignation. 
 Paksas, a Soviet-trained stunt pilot, surprisingly beat incumbent Valdas Adamkus in January. 
 He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing since a report on his office last month. The report said Lithuania was being used as a third party for illegal arms deals and financing international terrorism.
 <i>(Reuters, Interfax, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Move Over Banditsky, Here Comes Erotic Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Since the early 1990s, St. Petersburg has had the reputation of being the crime capital of Russia. Then came the television series &quot;Banditsky Peterburg,&quot; which painted the city as a den of corruption, betrayal and violence.
 
But those images of the city may soon have to make way for a new project called Erotichesky Peterburg, or Erotic Petersburg, that aims to highlight the city's sensual pleasures.
 St. Petersburg is one of the most erotically sophisticated Russian cities, or so say the authors of the pilot issue of Erotichesky Peterburg, St. Petersburg's first erotic guide, presented in Rossi's night club on Wednesday.
 The guide, the first full issue of which is to be published in December, was approved by the St. Petersburg administration and claims to be the country's first erotic guide that gives its readers a good-taste erotic directory to the most intellectually erotic Russian city, the guide's authors said.
 &quot;St. Petersburg has always been a pioneer in the country's erotic culture,&quot; said Lev Scheglov, a famous St. Petersburg sexologist, who is the guide's editor-in-chief.
 &quot;The city was the first to open a scientific school of sexology, a sexology center, and even a commission to control erotic products, which as yet has no analogies in the country,&quot; Scheglov said. &quot;No wonder that we were the first to publish such a guide.&quot;
 All the articles in the pilot guide, which covers issues from architecture to food, are related to erotic topics. 
 Even the most experienced readers may learn a lot about St. Petersburg's hidden eroticism, which takes its start from the city's architecture. 
 According to the guide's authors, people coming to visit St. Petersburg experience high excitement, often conditioned by &quot;the special erotic atmosphere of the city's architecture.&quot;
 Such an atmosphere comes not just from obviously erotic and sophisticated marble statues that stimulate the imagination with their nudity in the Summer Garden, but also from more global architectural designs.
 Thus, readers will discover that the Strelka of Vasily Island &quot;dividing with its banks the current of the Neva river and decorated with the two Rostral Columns&quot; is filled with &quot;bright erotic content.&quot;
 Meanwhile, the spires of the Peter and Paul Fortress and Admiralty express &quot;phallic symbols.&quot; 
 Then, one may easily guess that the arch of the General Headquarters, which leads to the city's main Palace Square with the tall Alexander Column at its center. has no less significant meaning.
 &quot;Even the map of the city's rivers is a reminder of a reclining naked woman, obediently spreading her arms and legs,&quot; says the article called &quot;St. Petersburg As Erotic Fantasy.&quot;
 The guide also flatters local residents, saying that the first men to settle the area of modern St. Petersburg were famed for having such &quot;prominent&quot; organ that they even &quot;experienced difficulties when horseback riding.&quot;
 And it may even tempt its readers into going to the suburban Gatchina Palace, which used to be equipped with &quot;erotic&quot; furniture, such as a table with legs in the form of male organs.
 Despite such extravagant claims, the authors describe St. Petersburg's sexuality as being rather modest.
 &quot;Among the erotic capitals of the world, St. Petersburg plays the role of a young nun whose mind creates pictures of lust, sin and temptation,&quot; says the author of one of the articles.
 &quot;St. Petersburg's sexuality is reserved, a bit arrogant, and rather intellectual,&quot; Scheglov said.
 The pilot issue also educates readers on the full picture of variations in sex drive. Here one learns that sex can be can be occasional out of spite, as payment, as an autograph, out of aggression or out of duty.
 Thus, a married couple may perform sex as a duty because they feel they owe the procedure to each other.
 &quot;After people experience the joy that they provided, they can go for several 'free' days or weeks by themselves,&quot; the guide says.
 The guide also contains articles on erotic food, the art of being a woman and the meaning of fragrances in erotic life.
 There's no mention of Viagra here, rather, to boost their sex drives, readers are advised to eat more chocolate, eggs, shrimps, garlic, pink onions, and drink champagne and red wine.
 Another article describes the rules and regulations governing the circulation of erotic products, such as video and mass media.
 The guide is illustrated with erotic pictures and photos, as well as advertisements for the city's night clubs, restaurants, beauty salons, saunas, fitness centers, marriage agencies, sex shops and medical centers.
 The guide is to be published twice a year and will be distributed in bookstores.

TITLE: Putin Says Yukos Exception
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reiterated his position that the legal assault on Yukos and its top shareholders is not part of a wider campaign to redistribute property - just as the Prosecutor General's Office suggested otherwise.
 
&quot;There is no basis to suppose that the use of laws is selective or will be selective,&quot; Putin told visiting International Monetary Fund chief Horst Koehler, according to the president's top economic advisor Andrei Illarionov, who attended the meeting. 
 &quot;The president stressed that [the Yukos affair] cannot be seen as aimed at reviewing the results of privatization. The prosecutor general must prove its case in an open and fair trial,&quot; Interfax quoted Illarionov as saying.
 Putin's remarks seemed to be enough to allay the concerns of an IMF worried about the economic impact of the arrests of Yukos founders Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev and the subsequent sequestering of nearly half the oil giant's shares.
 Koehler told reporters after the meeting that he had faith in Putin's dedication to reforms. &quot;I was satisfied ... that there will be no reversal of the strategy of reforms and economic growth based on the free market,&quot; he said. 
 Koehler also said the actions of the Prosecutor General's Office were troubling. &quot;I am really concerned over how prosecutors are handling the Yukos case, but I have no expertise to figure it out,&quot; Interfax quoted him as saying.
 Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov appeared to confirm the IMF's fears. The Yukos case, he said, is simply &quot;one part of a chain&quot; of presumed wrongdoings by other companies.
 &quot;The prosecutor's office receives complaints and discovers violations [by] all kinds of enterprises. Thus, the Yukos case should only be seen as just an episode in our work,&quot; Kolesnikov told Interfax.
 Kolesnikov's remarks came the day after he issued a public warning to &quot;those who are not yet jailed&quot; to be careful, and voiced regrets that the Criminal Code cannot offer a prison term longer than 10 years for the crimes that Khodorkovsky is charged with.
 Meanwhile, out in Tomsk, Kolesnikov's colleagues kept the pressure on Yukos by alleging a key subsidiary, Tomskneft, had failed to pay 1 billion rubles ($34 million) in taxes in 1999 in a scheme involving the now-defunct Menatep bank, which was controlled by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.
 A Yukos official said Thursday that the case was settled long ago. 
 With the prosecutor's office getting more aggressive by the day, and with Lebedev and Khodrokovsky both still behind bars, the so-called &quot;Union of Oligarchs,&quot; the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, has once again asked for an audience with Putin to discuss the matter - which he agreed to do on Friday.
 On Thursday, RSPP chief Arkady Volsky resumed the attempts to defend big businessmen from being prosecuted for economic violations of 1990s. 
 Putin ignored the big businessmen's pleas for an audience for 2 1/2 weeks before agreeing to the meeting with RSPP leaders.
 In an interview with the newspaper Trud-7, RSPP chief Arkady Volsky called again for a statute of limitations for economic crimes and an end to the practice of detaining suspected criminals for months and even years.

TITLE: Cost of BP Pipeline Could Hit $18Bln
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - The cost of building a proposed BP-led pipeline that will transport Russian gas more than 4,000 kilometers to China and South Korea may swell two-thirds to $18 billion, a Korea Gas Corp. official said Wednesday.
 
The cost of building what would be Asia's longest gas pipeline may rise from an initial estimate of $11 billion in 1995 because of the higher-than-expected costs of developing the Russian fields, said Baek Mun-seok, manager of international projects at Korea Gas, the world's biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas.
 Baek said one of the reasons for the higher cost estimate was that the field contained double the amount of gas first thought. He said more details would be available Friday, when Korea Gas, Rusia-Petroleum, in which BP has a major stake, and China's state-run China National Petroleum Corp. are due to announce the result of their joint study into the project.
 &quot;Building the pipeline is good for the buyers because they'll be able to command a better price when they go into negotiations with suppliers,&quot; said Lee Chang-mok, an energy analyst at Woori Securities Co. in Seoul.
 The proposed pipeline would tap gas from fields near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia and skirt Mongolia, running via Harbin in northeastern China to South Korea via the Yellow Sea, bypassing North Korea. The project would send 20 billion cubic meters a year of gas to China and 10 bcm to South Korea.
 
 <i>(Bloomberg, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: PM Scraps Production Sharing Agreements
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government has dissolved 19 commissions that worked on tax accords for oil, gas and gold fields, the latest sign the country is unwilling to offer more tax breaks, known as production sharing agreements.
 
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed a decree to dissolve the commissions on areas that include Sakhalin fields sought by ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, the Salym field that Royal Dutch/ Shell Group plans to tap and the Shtokman gas field, licensed to Gazprom, the government said in a statement.
 Russia passed production-sharing legislation in 1999. The government then was seeking to reverse a 12-year drop in oil output. Crude oil prices were close to their lowest in a decade. Since then, oil prices have tripled and Russian output has jumped 30 percent.
 In February, Kasyanov said Russia should curb production-sharing accords, which fix the amount of tax money Russia can receive from the production of natural resources, and that companies should develop the country's reserves under the regular tax regime.
 Only three oil and gas fields - one in the Arctic and two off Russia's Pacific coast - are now being developed under production-sharing rules.
 French Total and Norwegian Norsk Hydro pump oil from the Arctic field. ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is preparing to begin drilling at a $12 billion project near Sakhalin Island in the Pacific. Shell leads a group tapping another $12 billion field nearby.

TITLE: Moody's Upholds Status, Fitch Grim
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A defiant Moody's on Wednesday staunchly defended its landmark decision to award Russia investment-grade status, saying that even the nationalization of Yukos would not change its mind.
 
&quot;If you look back five years from now you will find the market will have converged with the assessments we made,&quot; predicted John Rutherford Jr., chairman and CEO of Moody's Corporation, the agency's parent company.
 Rutherford and other visiting senior Moody's executives called a press conference to defend last month's upgrade, which has come under a barrage of criticism in light of the arrest of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the freezing of a 40 percent stake in the company. Putting its money where it now encourages others to, Moody's also announced that it had finalized the acquisition of a 20 percent stake in Interfax Rating Agency.
 Moody's admitted that the legal assault on Yukos triggered a massive outflow of capital from the country, but neither that nor structural problems in the banking industry would lead to a downgrade. &quot;We cannot allow our ratings to be influenced by capital flight in the next two or three quarters,&quot; said Jonathan Schiffer, top Moody's' expert on Russia.
 The Central Bank said it expects more than $13 billion to leave the country in the second half of the year, which started with the July 2 arrest of core Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev on charges of stealing state property and tax evasion. Schiffer said that even if capital flight were to reach $15 billion this year, it would still be significantly less than the $20 billion experienced in previous years. &quot;If it were to be as high as 20 to 25 [billion] over a long period of time, that would be another question,&quot; he said.
 Standard &amp; Poor's last week said that if the legal assault on Yukos leads to significant capital outflows and a deterioration in economic activity, the agency would consider a downgrade, although this is unlikely to happen.
 Schiffer said Moody's is mostly concerned about government spending and the pace of administrative reforms, not the legal assault on Yukos, which he said will be considered an isolated event &quot;even if the government takes a part&quot; of the oil giant. &quot;Our primary focus is the ability to service debt, not the property rights of this or that company,&quot; he said.
 Moody's competitors, Standard and Poor's and Fitch, disagreed.
 &quot;The arbitrary action that we see in the Yukos affair... sends a negative signal about the market reform credentials of President Vladimir Putin and the economic policies which we might expect in his second term,&quot; Edward Parker, director of Fitch's sovereign group, said by telephone from London.
 Schiffer also said that Russia's banking system is simply too small to create a widespread financial crisis by itself.
 Both S&amp;P and Fitch agreed that no banking crisis was imminent, but said a weak system poses long-term problems.
 &quot;The banking sector... doesn't provide sufficient intermediation of savings into investments, which could constrain future economic growth,&quot; Parker said.
 As banks lend more, collecting bad debts will become more difficult because laws are enforced arbitrarily in Russia, said Scott Bugie of S&amp;P in Paris.

TITLE: Oil Shipper Ventspils May Sell Terminal
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW - Latvia's Ventspils Nafta, which exported a fifth of Russia's oil in the mid-1990s, may sell half of its oil terminal to a strategic partner to reverse a drop in shipments that has helped slash profit by 98 percent.
 
Kazakhstan is interested in a stake, Ventspils director Uldis Pumpurs said at a conference in Moscow. Ventspils will speak to Transneft, Russia's oil pipeline monopoly, about resuming Siberian oil supplies through a pipeline to the port, he said.
 Russia, the world's No. 2 oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, reduced and then ended pipeline shipments to Ventspils after completing its Primorsk port on the Baltic Sea in early 2001. In the 1990s Ventspils handled more Russian crude than any of the other three Baltic oil ports. Ventspils may post a loss this year as it switched to more expensive rail shipments for crude.
 &quot;Railway shipments will rise in mid-2004 as we complete the new terminal,'' Pumpurs said. &quot;Smaller Russian oil companies, which have problems with access to pipelines, may use this more by shipping oil in rail cars.''
 Ventspils had to start bringing in all its oil by rail in January 2003, when Transneft stopped shipping crude to the port through pipelines. The company's shipments fell 23 percent to 9.6 million tons of crude oil and oil products in the first 10 months of this year.
 Profit plunged to 33,800 lats ($60,800) in the first nine months of this year, from 1.94 million lats in the year-ago period, Ventspils said last month.
 Transneft does not expect to resume pipeline shipments to Ventspils.

TITLE: Kukes: Yukos To Double Output, Reserves
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yukos plans to more than double output and reserves by 2010, CEO Simon Kukes said Wednesday, adding that a dispute between his predecessor Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the government has been &quot;overblown.&quot;
 
Kukes intends to boost output by 12 percent next year and as much as 10 percent in 2005, pushing it to 3 million barrels a day, he said in an interview. By 2010, as Yukos seeks fields in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Iraq, supplies will reach 4 million barrels a day and reserves 30 billion, Kukes said.
 Kukes, 56, was named chief executive last week, after Khodorkovsky was jailed on charges of fraud and tax evasion, allegations he denies. Yukos shares have dropped 21 percent and Russia's benchmark index has fallen 12 percent since the Oct. 25 arrest hurt confidence in the stock market. Such concerns are unfounded, Kukes said.
 &quot;Within a few months, it will be business as usual,&quot; Kukes said in a televised interview with Bloomberg in London. &quot;The problem is between Mr. Khodorkovsky and the government. As a company, we won't take any political position.&quot;
 Born in Moscow, Kukes has been a U.S. citizen since 1982 and worked for Amoco and Phillips Petroleum between 1979 and 1996. Khodorkovsky has retired from Yukos' management and is now a shareholder only, Kukes said.
 The company's growth in oil production is slowing from 18 percent last year to a planned 15 percent for 2003. Output was 1.58 million barrels a day in the second quarter, and Yukos has estimated its reserves at 13.7 billion barrels.
 Before his arrest, Khodorkovsky held talks with ExxonMobil about the possible sale of a stake in Yukos, President Vladimir Putin said last month. Kukes left open the prospect that Yukos shareholders may sell a stake in the company, adding that management has yet to assess its strategic options.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Vimpelcom Gaining
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The number of subscribers to Vimpelcom's Bee-line network in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast grew to 245,000 in October, a company press release announced Wednesday.
 The provider gained 50,000 subscribers in October alone, making it the local leader in terms of absolute subscriber growth with 41 percent of all new subscribers in October, according to ACM-Consulting. Also in October, coverage was extended to Kronshtadt and Tosno, and work is underway to improve service within city limits.
 
 
<b>S&amp;P Karelia Rating
 </b>

LONDON (SPT) - Standard &amp; Poor's gave the Republic of Karelia a rating of ruBBB+ on its Russian scale, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 An S&amp;P press release said the rating was conditioned primarily by the limited flexibility of revenues and expenditures in the republic. Revenues are unstable due to changing rates, types of taxes and proportions of their distribution.
 Debt structure also keeps the rating from rising, the press release said. S&amp;P analysts said transparency and the quality of fiscal management could also be improved.
 The republic's geographic location was listed as a positive factor that "will foster economic growth in the medium to long term," according to the press release. Such growth will depend on development of the transportation infrastructure and the government's economic policy.
 
 
<b>Inflation Worries
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Consumer prices will probably rise 1.1 percent in November as compared to October, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told Interfax on Wednesday.
 The government is trying to cut the inflation rate to 12 percent this year from 15.1 percent in 2002. "There is a risk inflation will be a shade higher" than the forecast for the year, Dvorkovich said.
 
 
<b>Gazprom Likes Latvia
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Gazprom, the world's biggest natural gas producer, completed its purchase of a 9 percent stake in Latvia's gas company from Russia's Itera, part of its expansion into the Baltic market.
 Gazprom started negotiations with Itera, Russia's second-largest gas producer, on the transaction earlier this year, said Sergei Kupriyanov, a Gazprom spokesman. Gazprom now holds a 34 percent stake in Latvijas Gaze and may increase its stake further. Kupriyanov didn't say how much Gazprom paid.
 
 
<b>IKEA Movement
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - IKEA announced the creation of a movement in Russia called "For Home Comfort!" headquartered in St. Petersburg's IKEA-Kudrovo store to be opened Dec. 12, an IKEA press release said.
 According to a survey carried out in March 2003 by the Moscow State University's Bureau of Sociological Research, 71 percent of those surveyed admitted they are constantly concerned with home improvement. Sixty percent of all respondents said their mood depends on how their home is furnished. The respondent pool consisted of 1,200 Muscovites and 300 residents of Smolensk.
 Field offices of the IKEA movement will be set up throughout the city between Nov. 15 and 28 in preparation for the store opening, the press release said. <b>Security Council Posts
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and the former head of the presidential administration Alexander Voloshin have been replaced as members of the Security Council by Ilya Klebanov, the new presidential envoy to the Northwest region, and Voloshin's successor Dmitry Medvedev, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 .
 
<b>Smuggled Icons Seized
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Pulokov Airport customs officers have seized a shipment of 240 contraband icons weighing 350 kilograms, Interfax quoted Vladimir Vyunov, head of the Northwest customs directorate, as saying Wednesday.
 Vnyunov said the icons had been bound for Germany and Israel. "A criminal case has been opened and investigations are being made," he added.
 
 
<b>Extremism Charges 
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg prosecutor's office has brought the first charges in Russia of forming an extremist organization against Dmitry Bobrov, head of the Schultz-88 neo-Nazi group, Interfax reported Thursday. 
 The charges were brought under Articles 282.1 (organization of an extremist community) and 280 (public calls for extremist activities) of the Criminal Code. 
 Bobrov is also charged with involving minors in criminal activities (Article 150) and hooliganism (Article 213). Law enforcement officials have detained three more activists of the neo-Nazi group. Charges are expected to be brought against one of them, the report said.
 Schultz-88 appeared in 2001, when Bobrov, 24 at the time, brought together about 10 teenagers under the slogans of combating Jews, Africans and natives of the Caucasus, the news agency said.
 
 
<b>Officer Held in Belarus
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A Russian officer from the Leningrad Military District has been detained on charges of smuggling by security services in Belarus, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 Oleg Veselovsky is alleged to have entered Belarus in the possession of explosives - 12 200-gram packets of TNT and 50 bullets - while traveling on leave from Murmansk to the Kaliningrad region, the report said. 
 Russian military prosecutors are trying to find out the source of the explosives. The security of weapons and explosives in the military district is also being checked, the report said.
 
 
<b>Commission Pardons 2 
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Only two people have received President Vladimir Putin's approval to be pardoned in the 18 months since a St. Petersburg pardons commission was created, replacing a more liberal national pardons commission that the president disbanded, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 "The results of our work are depressing," commission chairman Alexei Kozyrev was quoted as saying. "We had asked for eight people to be released."
 One of those pardoned had a six-year jail term for fighting reduced to four years and will walk free. The other had his conviction for deserting his post wiped - the man had not been paid for a long time, the report said. <b>MiG Pilot Found
 </b>

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) - Rescuers on Thursday found the wreckage of a Russian MiG-29 fighter jet that crashed in northern Armenia, Armenian defense officials said.
 The pilot's body was later found on a nearby mountain. 
 The jet crashed Wednesday after taking off from the Zrebuni airdrome, about 170 kilometers north of the capital, Yerevan, during training exercises. A snowstorm hampered the search. 
 The fighter's wreckage was found on the slope of the Urasar mountain not far from the village of Dzhadzhur, said Seiran Shakhsuvarian, spokesman for the Armenian Defense Ministry. Neither the pilot, Major Konstantin Kardash, nor his seat were immediately found near the wreckage, suggesting that he had bailed out of the plane before it crashed. 
 
 
<b>$50M for ISS
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Thursday ordered the Finance Ministry to give 1.5 billion rubles ($50.2 million) to the Russian Aviation and Space Agency to ensure that Russia meets its commitments to the international space atation, Interfax reported. 
 The Russian space program has become the only link with the multinational orbiting space station since the U.S. space shuttle Columbia broke apart while returning to Earth on Feb. 1. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. 



TITLE: Gref To Slash Costs of Trading
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government will slash costs for traders of shares and bonds by 50 percent or more before the end of next year, seeking to bolster investors' confidence and stimulate investment, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Tuesday.
 
Gref, the architect of President Vladimir Putin's economic policies, said the government must cut taxes on trades and simplify &quot;contradictory&quot; rules to make markets more like Western exchanges.
 That should help increase ordinary Russians' investment in securities and boost the types of securities traded, he said.
 &quot;The reduction of transaction costs is one of our priorities,&quot; Gref told reporters after a government meeting. &quot;If we can implement the measures we set out today then we hope to reduce transaction costs by two to 2 1/2 times by the end of 2004.&quot;
 Financial markets will not develop &quot;if there is any doubt about ownership rights,&quot; Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the same meeting.
 &quot;Companies are afraid to go deep into the financial markets because the rules of the game are not always predictable,&quot; he said.
 The government is seeking to reassure investors after stocks and bonds dropped following the Oct. 25 arrest of former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the subsequent freezing of a $13 billion stake in the oil major.
 Putin met in the Kremlin with officials from banks and fund managers, including Citigroup, to discuss securities markets five days after Khodorkovsky's arrest.
 &quot;Any move to improve Russia's financial markets is greatly welcomed,&quot; said John Coast Sullenger, who manages $344 million in emerging market assets at Lombard Odier in Geneva.
 Investors such as Mark Mobius, who manages $9 billion in emerging markets at Templeton Asset Management Ltd., have said Russian markets have too few securities, that small amounts of securities change hands and that trading lacks transparency.
 Franklin Resources, which owns Templeton, was represented at the Oct. 30 meeting with Putin in the Kremlin, along with officials from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Fidelity. California-based Franklin Resources is the largest publicly traded U.S. mutual fund company by market value and had $314.3 billion under management at the end of October.
 &quot;I would like to repeat: For us it is obvious that the development of Russia's economy depends a lot on investment activity,&quot; Putin said at that meeting, according to a transcript of his comments supplied by the Kremlin. &quot;The necessity of preserving the rights of investors and shareholders is recognized by the Russian business community.&quot;
 &quot;The Russian market is characterized by a high level of volatility and lack of stability,&quot; according to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry report on financial markets presented to the government Tuesday and posted on the government's web site.
 The country has too few stocks and too many regulators, obstructing investment, Gref said. That has helped to dissuade many Russians from buying shares, so only about 17,000 citizens have invested in the stock market, he added.
 There are six organizations that regulate the markets and they create sets of rules that are contradictory, meaning exchanges must breach some rules if they want to operate. Gref said the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and Central Bank will report by Feb. 1 on proposals to create a &quot;mega-regulator.&quot;
 The government is also considering legislation to insure individual deposits, which may encourage Russians to trust banks with their savings.
 Deposit insurance must be in place before the government can move to reduce the state's 61 percent stake in Sberbank, held via the Central Bank, Gref said. That stake will probably not be reduced until after 2007, he said.
 International investors and lenders have urged the government to simplify rules on trading securities and reduce state ownership of the banking sector to boost investment and lessen the country's dependence on commodities such as oil and metals.
 Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said late Monday that the government's &quot;strategic orientation&quot; is to divest itself of all bank holdings.
 Kudrin also said that a program to exit the industry &quot;must be prepared&quot; in the near future, RIA Novosti reported. 
 
 <i>(Bloomberg, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Ministry: Gazprom Must Operate From Revenues
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom said Thursday its management had approved a plan to increase borrowing by 40 percent in 2004 to 217 billion rubles ($7.3 billion). 
 
The firm also plans to cut costs by at least $1 billion, after cost cuts of $1.3 billion in 2003. 
 Vedomosti on Thursday quoted sources at the state-controlled gas giant as saying new loans would be used to build and reconstruct pipelines, launch new gas fields and refinance existing loans, but the borrowing program has yet to be approved by the government. 
 The Economic Development and Trade Ministry objects to the plan and is urging the company cut costs instead. 
 Gazprom was not immediately available for comment. 
 The state allowed Gazprom to borrow 151.7 billion rubles this year and suggested it would borrow the same sum on domestic and international markets in 2004. 
 Vedomosti quoted sources as saying the company planned to borrow 150 billion rubles to finance its investment program and an additional 67 billion to restructure its debt portfolio. 
 &quot;We are currently holding talks with banks about restructuring our old debts, and we hope we will manage to replace some short-term debt with longer-term facilities next year,&quot; the newspaper quoted one source as saying. &quot;But if creditors don't make concessions, we will have to raise the share of our short-term borrowing.&quot; 
 Gazprom's long- and short-term debt stood at around $13.7 billion by mid- 2003, the highest level among Russian companies. The government is scheduled to discuss Gazprom's 2004 investment program and borrowing plan on Nov. 20. 
 
 <i>(Reuters, Bloomberg, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Taxmen Seek Authority
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Tax Ministry is pressing the government to give it a range of police powers that only the Interior Ministry enjoys.
 
Tax Minister Gennady Bukayev told the latest issue of Russian Tax Courier, the ministry's in-house publication, that he wants his ministry to be able to &quot;inventory taxpayers' property, interrogate witnesses [and] seize documents and objects,&quot; Vedomosti reported Tuesday.
 He also said he wants to extend to five years from three the length of time official inspections can last.
 Currently, only the police, armed with a court warrant and accompanied by tax officials, are empowered to interrogate witnesses and seize documents and property in the course of an investigation. But Bukayev said a bill authorizing such powers it has already been drafted.
 The bill has yet to be submitted to parliament, but it has already encountered staunch opposition from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, which told Vedomosti that &quot;it would give tax authorities - indeed, local tax authorities - unprecedented powers.&quot;

TITLE: Deripaska Relinquishes Role as RusAl CEO
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After orchestrating a hotly contentious and occasionally violent campaign to forge the aluminum industry's choicest assets into a single global giant, Oleg Deripaska is moving on.
 
Deripaska will step down as Russian Aluminum, or RusAl, CEO &quot;within days&quot; to concentrate on managing his rapidly growing pool of assets, including 75 percent of RusAl, the company said Wednesday.
 RusAl's chief operating officer, Alexander Bulygin, will take over for Deripaska, who will likely become chairman of the board.
 Deripaska's holding company, Base Element, or BasEl, last month paid an estimated $2 billion for half of fellow billionaire Roman Abramovich's 50 percent stake in RusAl.
 The company was formed in 2000, when Deripaska agreed to merge his metal industry assets with those of Boris Berezovsky's Sibneft. Abramovich later took control of Sibneft and merged it with his other holdings into Millhouse Capital, which still controls 25 percent of RusAl.
 &quot;When you have full control of a company there aren't any problems getting information from management,&quot; BasEl spokeswoman Yeva Prokofyeva said, explaining Deripaska's decision to give up managerial control of the company.
 Relations between Deripaska and Abramovich have been at times strained as the two titans competed for control of RusAl and other companies in the 1990s. Unlike Deripaska, however, Abramovich decided to liquidate his holdings in Russia to focus on London soccer club Chelsea, which he bought this summer. In the last several months, Abramovich has sold stakes in RusAl, flagship airline Aeroflot, oil major Sibneft and auto industry holding Ruspromavto. He still controls a 26 percent stake in newly merged YukosSibneft.
 For Deripaska, relinquishing day-to-day control of his prized asset signifies a change in roles, from being an executive to being an investor, Prokofyeva said.
 &quot;He is chairman of the board of directors of Base Element and controls a lot of other assets,&quot; she said. &quot;He can't be involved only in RusAl's businesses - chairman of the board is a more fitting position to oversee its operations.&quot;
 BasEl owns stakes in about a dozen companies involved in everything from metals and automobiles to aviation and insurance, according to the company web site.
 Industry analysts polled Wednesday agreed that Deripaska's decision to quit as CEO made sense, considering all the other businesses he is involved with.
 They said, however, that it was hard to say what it will mean for RusAl itself, since the company, which is not public, is largely opaque. The company has said that it wants to go public, and wants to place 25 percent of its shares by 2007.

TITLE: Gubernatorial Stimuli
PUBLISHER: by nikolai petrov
TEXT: For the past few weeks nearly half of Russia's regional leaders have found themselves in a rather interesting position. Although officially "on vacation" as they tend to their own re-election or the United Russia party's parliamentary campaign, they remain "at their posts" when it comes to pressing business or direct orders from the president. Take the State Council, for example. Yezhenedelny Zhurnal reports that President Vladimir Putin summoned the country's regional bosses and told them in no uncertain terms that his primary interest in the upcoming State Duma elections was the performance of United Russia, though he would have no objections if the People's Party and the Russia's Rebirth-Party of Life bloc also managed to clear the 5 percent barrier. He then announced that the head of the presidential administration Dmitry Medvedev and his deputy Vladislav Surkov were attending to the election personally. Meanwhile winter is upon us, bringing a heating crisis that promises to be no less serious than last year's. The federal government is nervous as it tries to figure out how to keep too many people from freezing while staying within the law. The presidential envoys to the seven federal districts have been working on the heating issue since the spring. The president made this one of their main priorities, although this hasn't helped much. Oversight is one thing, but someone still has to tackle the problems on the ground. Now even Anatoly Chubais has caught the political bug. Perhaps he should be replaced, but who would fill his shoes at Unified Energy Systems? Various plans have been put forward to salvage the situation. The "vacationing" Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who doubles as a leader of United Russia, has called for a more efficient procedure for getting rid of popularly elected governors and mayors. Shoigu unveiled his big idea in Kamchatka, where Governor Mikhail Mashkovtsev, and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka Mayor Yury Golenishev have been openly feuding for two years now, much to the detriment of the region's already dismal housing and heating situation. Under Shoigu's proposal, governors could be removed not just for violating the Constitution or federal legislation, as the law currently stipulates, but, say, for a chronic inability to get the trash collected. Governors could even be removed through the courts, since the courts now work hand-in-glove with the General Prosecutor's Office. Shoigu's big idea was taken up by Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Yakovlev, who oversees the nation's crumbling housing sector. Yakovlev went as far as to name the first three places that would be better off managed directly from Moscow: The Kamchatka region, the Koryak autonomous district and the Ulyanovsk region. As it happens, the governor and mayor of Kamchatka are both Communists. In Koryak, a geologist and businessman, Vladimir Loginov, is in charge, while in Ulyanovsk General Vladimir Shamanov runs the show -- the Kremlin's secret weapon in its bid to unseat a "red" governor who has proved less useful in peacetime. The idea of simplifying the legal procedure for removing under-performing governors was recently supported by the government as a whole. Russian law enforcement wasn't caught napping while all of this was taking place either. Boris Gryzlov, the "vacationing" interior minister and United Russia leader who recently completed a campaign spin through the regions, announced that instead of "werewolves in epaulets" we now face the threat of "werewolves in suits." And these suits just happen to be close to a number of key governors. Kamchatka's Mashkovtsev is the second governor to be investigated by law enforcement on the eve of the elections. Tver Governor Vladimir Platov was the first. The Yukos affair has had a major impact on the governors, and not only in the three dozen or so regions that are directly tied to the oil major. It was suggested that the federal government's campaign against Yukos would inspire copycat campaigns against local oligarchs at the regional level. But for the governors, the impact has been far more sobering. Regional law enforcement is more than ready to take up Moscow's anti-oligarch initiative, but the governors and the oligarchs connected to them are more likely to be the prey than the hunters. In most regions, local leaders exercise far less control over law enforcement agencies than they used to, and regional law enforcers are poised to go after their former bosses at the first clear signal from the Kremlin. So why did Moscow decide to put the fear of God into the governors now, when only a few Duma sessions remain and the legislative branch is effectively paralyzed until the beginning of February? The aim is clearly to scare the governors into demonstrating a little more zeal in their preparations for the elections and a little more concern for their constituents. After all, the current crop of regional leaders may also be semi-paralyzed by the need to "play at democracy," but both we and the Kremlin have no one to take their place this winter. Nikolai Petrov, head of the Center for Political and Geographical Research, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

TITLE: Putin, Property Rights And Prosperity
PUBLISHER: by martin wolf
TEXT: Arbitrary power versus illegitimate wealth: That is the essence of the conflict between President Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, estwhile chairman of Yukos. Power will surely win. The question is how power will use that victory. Will it support a market economy or lead to a new cycle of predation? Either way, Russia's progress towards what contemporary westerners regard as normality is to be measured in decades, not years. Secure private property is the foundation of both a market economy and democracy. Parliamentary control emerged in England because the Crown had to obtain the consent of the propertied to taxation. In time, the suffrage widened with the circle of those whose consent was necessary. In the Russia of Peter the Great, however, the state owned everything. When private property was granted, under Catherine the Great, it took the form of absolute ownership of the country's principal resource: its people. Inevitably, as Harvard's Richard Pipes notes, property "was widely viewed as an enemy of both freedom and social justice." The serfs were at last emancipated in 1861, only to be re-enslaved, after 1917, by perhaps the most despotic state in history. That this history made a swift transition to a law-governed, property-owning democracy almost impossible is evident. Yet how far Russia has gone backwards to its future is astonishing. An arbitrary, but ineffective, state faces vast, but illegitimate, wealth. Again, that wealth derives from private ownership of the country's most valuable resources: not its people, but its natural assets. How did Russia get here? Critics have, on occasion, contrasted its failure with China's success. This is a doubtful comparison: China's untapped human resources allowed Deng Xiaoping to circumnavigate the party's resistance, while China's state has been able to sustain political control, so far. But Russia's reformers needed to liberate resources from the dead hand of the Soviet state and so destroyed it. A less foolish comparison is with the successful reformers of Central and Eastern Europe. Here as Anders Áslund, an acknowledged expert, notes: "The empirical evidence of the benefits of a radical and comprehensive reform is overwhelming." But Russia failed to carry through such reforms, as it struggled with the simultaneous collapse of its ideology, its empire and its regime. Partial reforms allowed a group of shrewd people to amass huge fortunes. Privatization permitted both them and existing managers to seize industrial assets. Finally, the notorious "loans for shares" scheme of 1995 transferred much of the country's natural resources to private hands. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so Russians abhor a weak state. Strengthening it is Putin's chief goal. He has a specific understanding of what this means. The aim is not only to establish an effective monopoly of power but also to monopolize competition for it. This is why his targets have been Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky and now Khodorkovsky. No doubt, all three men rose to wealth through much illegality. But so have all successful Russian businessmen. What these men shared was political influence and ambition. Remember that the reforms that led, unexpectedly, to the end of the Soviet Union were initiated, in 1982, by Yury Andropov, head of the KGB for 15 years. Putin is the natural heir to his project for a reformed economy under a strong state. Now that the communist economic system has gone, the project may be achievable. What then might this new system look like? It would possess a "party of power," which would control organs of opinion, put forward approved candidates and prevent adequate funding of alternatives. After a detour, Russia would end up looking a bit like today's China, with a democratic veneer. It is a mark of the sickly state of Russian democracy that Khodorkovsky should have become its hope. That hope has now faded. But the state's assault on independent sources of power need not mark the end of economic reforms. Today, after all, even plutocrats have some interest in improving the economic regime, as Khodorkovsky's transformation from poacher to corporate-governance gamekeeper demonstrated. Already, after the 1998 devaluation and the state's enforcement of fiscal and monetary discipline, sizeable improvements have been made. Gross domestic product this year is forecast to be some 36 percent above its trough in 1998. The stock market reached a peak last month. Gross foreign currency reserves were $58 billion in September, up from $8 billion in August 1998. Moody's has even rated Russia's sovereign debt at investment grade, five years after its default. Yet these improvements, albeit real, must not be exaggerated. The data, for what they are worth (not that much), suggest GDP is still below 1990 levels. By 2002, the stock of inward foreign direct investment into Russia was only $23 billion, against $45 billion in Poland and $448 billion in China. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates capital flight at $191 billion from 1994 to this year inclusive, and $23 billion this year alone. The cumulative flight is not much short of twice annual exports and two-thirds of GDP. The question is whether Putin's authoritarian state will improve the economy further. This is possible, but doubtful. The Khodorkovsky affair can only underline the insecurity of property and the discretion available to the state. Those who support Putin understandably resent the wealth of the new tycoons. That is a recipe for ongoing capital flight and corruption. Finally, the basis of wealth in Russia remains natural resource rents. As long as this is the case, the pursuit of wealth will be seen as a zero-sum game, with victory to the powerful. We know that Russia is not going to be a bigger version of Poland. What we do not know is whether it will deliver greater prosperity. For that, Russia needs secure property rights. This was never going to be easy to achieve. The grotesque maldistribution of wealth of the 1990s has only made it harder. We must hope that Putin understands the necessity. Even if authoritarian, a prosperous Russia would be a better neighbor than one mired in poverty. Martin Wolf is associate editor of the Financial Times, where this comment first appeared.

TITLE: inuit art comes in from the cold
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Artist Robert Houle uses eagle feathers in his installations and describes himself as a &quot;classical&quot; Indian, a descendant of the &quot;feather Indians&quot; who painted their faces before a fight and lived in wigwams. He is one of thirteen artists, whose artworks are part of a new display at the State Ethnography Museum.
 
Called &quot;Transitions,&quot; the exhibition brings to Russia contemporary Canadian Indian and Inuit art for the first time, and aims to break the notorious stereotype that such art is primitive, lacks depth and philosophy, and limits itself to animalistic and domestic subjects.
 The display juxtaposes a series of works by some of the most prominent contemporary Indian and Inuit artists in Canada. The twenty-four sculptures, paintings, collages and installations touch on a variety of contemporary themes pertinent to Indian and Inuit peoples in the Canadian north, including issues relating to cultural survival, cultural identity, gender and colonization. 
 Thomas Simeon's miniature &quot;Wuapmeoti Thsisseltemun,&quot; carved from the African &quot;wonder stone&quot; pyrophyllite, is a pile of two dozen empty-eyed and heartless human masks, their features hard, sharp and cold. The artist admits in the caption that he has long wanted to dedicate the sculpture to industrialists who damaged the environment around the Peribonka and Manouane rivers in Quebec.
 George Arlook's &quot;Shaman&quot; made of soapstone and caribou antler was inspired by his childhood memories watching a real shaman healing a sick patient in the north of Canada. The shaman's entire body was covered with huge animal teeth, which made a particularly strong impression on the young artist, and the sculpture attempts to reproduce the mesmerizing effect. It oozes magnetism and power. 
 &quot;In our museum we especially cherish everything related to the cultural identity of peoples living in a much closer contact with nature than we do in St. Petersburg,&quot; said Vladimir Grusman, director of the Ethnography Museum. &quot;And this is exactly why the exhibition of Canadian Indian and Inuit art is very precious to us.&quot; 
 The Consul General of Canada in St. Petersburg, Dr. Anna Biolik, said many of the visitors are likely to be surprised by the diversity and multiplicity of voices of Indian and Inuit artists in Canada.
 &quot;The exhibition will provide the viewer with the opportunity to gain deeper insights into contemporary Indian and Inuit art through a number of ground-breaking works of art by some of Canada's most prolific Indian and Inuit artists,&quot; Biolik said.
 The exhibition takes up one hall on the museum's first floor and is linked to the galleries housing household items and art of the peoples of the north-east of Russia, including Aleuts and Eskimos.
 The parallels between the two displays are obvious and countless. &quot;The perception of nature and earth is very similar between the peoples of north-western Siberia and the aborigines of coastal areas in Canada and the United States, as they live in virtually an identical climate,&quot; Grusman said. &quot;Their perception of themselves as human beings is also very close. Naturally, their lifestyle revolves around things like hunting, fishing, and so on.&quot;
 Artists from both continents also use the same materials - birch, whalebone, wool - yet it is also unlikely that Siberian peoples would use transistors, acrylic and plexiglass in their work. These are some of the unexpected materials used by the contemporary Canadian artists. While maintaining tradition, the artists don't refrain from experiment and are keen to try modern tools and materials. 
 A perfect illustration of the tendency is &quot;Modern Couple From Cape Dorset.&quot; This colour drawing by Johnny Pootoogook shows an Inuit couple wearing typical ethnic winter clothing, but made out of ultra modern, store-bought materials using centuries-old sewing skills.
 The exhibition was jointly sponsored by the Departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.
 
 <i>
&quot;Transitions: Contemporary Indian and Inuit Art&quot; can be seen at the Ethnography Museum until Jan. 18, 2004. </i>

TITLE: karelia's musical ambassadors
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For the past 11 years, Myllarit, arguably Karelia's leading folk band, has done its fair share in putting Karelia's capital Petrozavodsk on the world music map. However, the sextet, which will play two concerts in the city this Saturday, was formed &quot;by pure accident,&quot; according to the band's founding member Sergei Zobnev.
 
Originally, Myllarit's members were part of Kantele, Karelia's state-sponsored Soviet-style folk band. &quot;Every republic had a system of state-owned song-and-dance bands, with folk instruments,&quot; said Zobnev in a recent telephone interview from Petrozavodsk. &quot;It was created by Stalin to have them sing songs about how great he was.&quot;
 But while touring with Kantele in Germany in 1991, a few members of the band went out to play in the street to make a little extra money for a few beers and so impressed a German impresario passing by that they got an invitation to go back to Germany six months later. 
 &quot;We got the taste of free music-making, like troubadours or traveling musicians,&quot; said Zobnev of the trip. &quot;In the state-sponsored band, no independence was allowed. Everything was decided by the director, who was appointed by a minister. And then we gained complete liberty. We did whatever we wanted.&quot;
 Bordered by Finland on the west, Karelia is populated by Karelians, Finns, Veps and Russians. The rich mix of cultures is part of Karelia's music, which has been heard both in the band's hometown and on tours in Finland, Scandinavia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
 &quot;Karelian music is rather well-known internationally due to the work of Finland's Varttina, which is the world's best-known Karelian folk band,&quot; said Zobnev. &quot;It is a very interesting band that plays quite progressive world music. They're professional, super musicians.&quot;
 Varttina's singer and <i>kantele</i> player Mari Kaasinen helped Myllarit by producing its debut CD, &quot;Eta Pravda,&quot; which was released on Finland's Mipu Music label in 1997.
 The band takes its subject matter from traditional sources, such as the Finnish-Karelian epic &quot;Kalevala.&quot;
 &quot;We've always tried to hold on to traditional literary origins, so the lyrics are all traditional, [or] probably slightly changed here and there,&quot; said Zobnev.
 Apart from its own work, the band was active in promoting Karelian music by establishing the Myllarit music center to organize festivals and other events.
 &quot;Our idea was to work and win people over with this music, so that there would appear more musicians that play music based on traditional culture - not enforced by politics or anything,&quot; said Zobnev.
 One of the most memorable events the band has promoted was &quot;Myllarit Fiesta,&quot; which took six Karelian folk bands to Moscow in 2001. 
 &quot;All the musicians who came to the concerts were shocked, how it could be that our city with a population of 25,000 has so many interesting bands, playing its own, Karelian music,&quot; said Zobnev.
 Myllarit has always been an international band featuring both Russians and Karelians as well as a Belarussian and a Finn at one point.
 &quot;When we're criticized that we don't perform as many Finnish songs as before, I say, 'We're Myllarit, take us as we are,'&quot; said Zobnev.
 &quot;We play more Russian stuff today, but we can do a Veps program tomorrow. We perform the music of our region - in the Karelian, Finnish and Russian languages. Why should we sacrifice any of our traditions? We do what is interesting for us.&quot;
 Myllarit has released five albums, the latest being &quot;Birth of an Island,&quot; out on Oct. 25, but Zobnev said the band is best appreciated when playing live.
 &quot;You should hear Myllarit live. I think that a CD doesn't really convey the full energy, atmosphere and drive that the musicians can give at a concert,&quot; said Zobnev, adding that a Finnish newspaper coined the term &quot;stadium folk&quot; to describe the band's style.
 With its combination of traditional Karelian and Finnish instruments such as the kantele (a type of zither) and <i>jouhikko</i> (similar to a three-string fiddle), the Swedish <i>nyckelharpa</i> (key fiddle), African Jamba drums and the Australian didgeridoo, Myllarit's concerts are no dusty museum pieces, but contemporary, lively shows.
 &quot;From the very beginning, we declared that folk music should be pop music,&quot; said Zobnev. &quot;We make our sound accessible to contemporary ears. There should be a beat - bang, bang, bang. It's music that anyone can dance to, laugh and cry to. Simply human music.&quot;
 
 <i>
Myllarit will play this Sunday at 7 p.m. at Moloko and at 10 p.m. at Griboyedov. Links: www.myllarit.ru </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: With autumn, the season for new albums, in full swing, the weekend starts with a launch of folk-punk band <strong>Iva Nova's</strong> long-awaited debut.
 
The eponymously-titled album will feature 16 songs and two bonus tracks. Iva Nova has been busy with the album, recorded at a Moscow studio, for the past six months. The studio time was bought for the band by Moscow's club Forpost.
 Typically, Iva Nova, formed by ex-members of the older all-girl folk-punk band Babslei in 2002, tends to transform the launch concert into an all-girl event.
 According to Iva Nova's drummer Katya Fyodorova, singer Gaya Arutyunyan of the Moscow-based folk-rock band Deti Picasso as well the local female vocal ensemble Chempionki Mira will take part in the show.
 Iva Nova perform at Red Club on Friday.
 The new album from <strong>Markscheider Kunst</strong> also comes out this week. 
 Called &quot;Na Svyazi,&quot; the album is released on the Moscow-based Gala label and will first go on sale at the launch concert this Saturday, also at Red Club.
 The band, however, has reservations about the Gala's additions to the work.
 &quot;We take full responsibility for both the cover design and content,&quot; said singer and guitarist Sergei Yefremenko, &quot;but they added two videos to the album for some reason, one of which we haven't even seen. I don't know why they did it. It makes no sense.&quot;
 The video in question is an animated clip to one of the songs. &quot;It was a big surprise; we watched it and fell into a state of shock and awe,&quot; he said.
 Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov who quit Gala and now is suing the label, has frequently complained about changes and additions made by the company to his albums without telling him.
 According to Yefremenko, the Markscheider Kunst show will start with the whole new album performed live and will end with better-known numbers. In between, a number of guests will perform. Though not confirmed, Yefremenko said he invited Billy's Band and 5nizza, among others.
 The Turkish brewery Efes Pilsener is bringing its <strong>Efes Pilsener Blues Festival 14</strong> to the city.
 Actually, this is a package tour featuring U.S. musicians of different stripes, originally launched in Turkey and first brought to Russia five years ago. This year's event also visits Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Rostov-on-Don.
 <strong>Roomful of Blues, Philadelphia Jerry Ricks and W.C. Clark</strong> will be performing. The show will be held at Yubileiny Sports Palace on Tuesday.
 <strong>Dobranotch,</strong> a local folk band which frequently tours Europe, will perform in the city during a hiatus in its tour schedule. The band has different programs of Balkan folk and Klezmer music to perform. Dobranotch play Red Club on Thursday.
 While the city is anticipating the opening of at least a couple of new music clubs (there is not much information and no dates so far), <strong>Front,</strong> a bunker club which provided the closest to the true spirit of rock and roll - coupled with a slight sense of danger - seems to be changing its policies.
 With a new art director, it looks like it is changing its mainly harsh sound for softer pop-rock and Latin-tinged styles.
 
 <i>- By Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: a garden of eden - with conditions
AUTHOR: By Matthew Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The menu at Seoul Garden, a relaxed and cheerful Korean-Japanese restaurant on Kanal Griboyedov, is priced in &quot;y.e.&quot; or &quot;conditional units.&quot; Such menus continue to be a hazard for diners in Russia - perhaps even more so now that the value of those units could be based on the euro or the dollar. Niggling about the rate is something nobody wants to do at the start of a pleasant evening so the question &quot;<i>Ikura desu ka?</i>&quot; - &quot;How much is it?&quot; in Japanese - remained unasked in any language as choices were made about the meal ahead. 
 
The delightfully-kimonoed waitress offered both the Korean and Japanese menus, explaining that &quot;soup and salad&quot; came as standard with the Japanese dishes. This sounded tempting, so then it was simply a matter of choosing a main course and a drink. Japanese-style pork cutlet and rice (15 y.e.) and eel, ginger and rice (12 y.e.) were ordered, along with a bottled Heineken at 4 y.e.
 The restaurant is thoughtfully and tastefully designed, with a bar area, where it is possible to watch the chef working, and two brightly lit yet intimate dining rooms. The temptation to run amok with its name has been effectively parlayed by Seoul Garden's proprietors into understated horticultural references such as framed prints of blossoms and bamboo on the walls, and a row of potted palms, yuccas and ferns in its welcoming lobby.
 A second waitress was enlisted to set our table and help with the &quot;soup and salad&quot; set-up. It needed two pairs of hands. First came a refreshing salad of finely-shredded cabbage and radish, doused in a light soy and oil dressing. Then, covered pots of deep, briny miso soup were delivered. Then nine - yes, nine! - hors d'oeuvres were placed in the center of the table. Ranging from a hunk of steamed chinese cabbage slathered in a crimson curry sauce to combinations of beanshoots and eggplant, seaweed and black mushrooms, the spread was enthusiastically attacked with chopsticks from both sides. The combination of flavors offered contrasts of fire and ice, sweet and sour; chunks of white radish in a hot pepper sauce were balanced by diced sweet potato and juicy capsicum squares. A sliced, spiced boiled egg was decorated with a prettily carved carrot garnish. The main courses arrived midway through the gorging.
 The large pork cutlet was wrapped in a sweet, breaded coating, served with sticky rice, shredded cabbage, and tartar sauce, garnished with a half a sliced apple and a twist of orange. The eel arrived in a beautiful black lacquered box. Lifting the lid let loose a heady waft of ginger and revealed dark, glossy pieces of fish and slices of rolled white-egg omelet on a bed of rice. The eel was tender and tasted like freshly grilled Portuguese sardines. 
 The Kanal Griboyedov Seoul Garden is the second in the city - the first resides on the seventeenth floor of the Pribaltisky Hotel, which might as well be in Korea itself, unless you happen to be staying at the hotel. But the first Seoul Garden limited itself to Korean cuisine. Why the excursion to Japan? The waitress, who was more friendly and efficient than one has a right to expect these days, explained that the Korean chef trained in Japan and was flexing his culinary muscles with the new restaurant. The combination is clearly authentic, as there were many Asians visiting the restaurant. But the vexing question of the check could no longer be evaded. What sort of &quot;conditional units&quot; operate in this little corner of Shangri La?
 The total was 28 y.e., a ruble total of 912, but according to the check the beer had somehow turned into tea during the meal, confusing matters further. The conversion rate, therefore, was 32 rubles to 1 unit - somewhere, in fact, between a euro (34) and a dollar (29). Perhaps in this magic garden such matters are best forgotten - and no doubt that is half the point.
 
 <i>
Seoul Garden, 8/1 Kanal Griboyedov. Tel: 314 5529. Dinner for two: 912 rbl. </i>


TITLE: pop star robbie crosses tracks
AUTHOR: By Matthew Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: British pop superstar Robbie Williams took time out from his European tour to visit disadvantaged children in Moscow this week in his role as UNICEF Special Representative, according to the organization's website. 
 
Williams visited a UNICEF-supported shelter in the city on Saturday, where he heard about the plight of three-year-old Sabrina.
 When Sabrina arrived at the shelter, she was unable to speak or stand up, as her alcoholic mother had been unable to feed or take care of her.
 Williams, who according to the organisation is &quot;a strong supporter&quot; of UNICEF's End Child Exploitation campaign, also visited children who live on the streets of Moscow. In scenes broadcast on BBC television, Williams met Sasha, 16, who took him to see the abandoned metal shed where he lives.
 &quot;Its a real eye opener seeing where kids like these have to live - especially when it is so cold during the winter,&quot; Williams said in televised comments.
 &quot;Luckily there are places like [the] UNICEF-supported shelter where kids can come if they have nowhere else to go,&quot; Williams said. &quot;It's a place full of fun and laughter, and I feel really privileged to have been able to spend some time with these kids - they have definitely recharged my batteries.&quot; 
 Williams played his only concert in Russia at Moscow's Olimpiisky stadium on Sunday before continuing his European tour in Finland and Norway this week. 
 
 <i>
For more information on UNICEF's End Child Exploitation campaign visit www.endchildexploitation.org.uk </i>

TITLE: poets learn language lessons
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Reich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Back in the early 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews were pouring into Israel, people used to joke that three out of every four people who got off the airplane were carrying musical instruments. Every fourth, of course, was a pianist. 
 
Needless to say, cultural expectations for the new arrivals were high. By the 1970s, some 140,000 people had emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel, swelling the ranks of orchestras, dance troupes and theaters. But the real rush of immigrants began in 1989, when the borders of the U.S.S.R. opened up. Israel's population currently numbers about 6.6 million people. Of those, a million are Russians who came over the last 14 years. 
 &quot;The Russian diaspora is a catastrophe in the Greek sense of the word [a sudden overturn],&quot; said prominent Israeli poet Meir Wieseltier, in Russia for last month's Moscow Poetry Biennale festival. &quot;It is an awe-inspiring process. The iron borders that compressed all those people in one country suddenly burst into all corners of the world.&quot; 
 Wieseltier was one of a handful of Israeli poets who made the trip to the poetry festival, which was dedicated in large part to Russian-language poets no longer living in Russia. Author of 12 books of poetry in Hebrew and a new collection in English entitled &quot;The Flower of Anarchy,&quot; the tall, white-haired Wieseltier was given Israel's highest award for lifetime achievement, the Israel Prize, in 2000. Two of the other Israeli poets at the festival, Mikhail Gendelev and Gali-Dana Singer, were adults when they went to Israel in 1977 and 1988, respectively. But Wieseltier was part of a different generation of immigrants - the post-World War II generation that doubled Israel's Jewish population in just a decade. 
 Born in Moscow in 1941, Wieseltier came to Israel when he was only eight years old, having spent the war years with his family in Novosibirsk. In one of his poems he revisits the childhood memory of being pulled on a sledge by his sister across a snowy Novosibirsk square, with giant ice sculptures of monkeys and elephants towering overhead. 
 &quot;My sister taught me a lot of Pushkin and Lermontov by heart. When someone came over, she'd put me on a chair to recite them,&quot; he said. But by 1949, Wieseltier was already in Israel and ready to put the war behind him. His Russian was the first thing to go. &quot;My theory is that I didn't forget Russian - I killed it. I repressed it,&quot; he said.
 &quot;When I came to Israel, I was offered an identity. I grabbed it.&quot; 
 In the 1960s, Wieseltier found himself at the center of a group of poets known as the Tel Aviv circle. One of his innovations was to return now and then to rhyme and meter, which had been considered old-fashioned in Israel ever since free, unrhymed verse had become popular a decade before. Whenever Wieseltier needed some rhyme or rhythm for his poems, he said, he would turn to Pushkin's cadences for help. 
 &quot;I think that somewhere in my subconscious, I did have Russian rhythms. I couldn't repeat them, but I could play with them,&quot; he said.
 Still, when the first wave of Soviet writers began to arrive in Israel in the early 1970s, Wieseltier found it as hard as any other Israeli to communicate with them. 
 &quot;They formed a very closed group of their own,&quot; he said. &quot;They couldn't read us, we couldn't read them. There were some translations, but they weren't very good.&quot;
 According to Gali-Dana Singer, a soft-spoken poet who moved from Leningrad to Jerusalem in 1988, the 1970s generation was never interested in switching to Hebrew.
 &quot;They believed that their language, their literary means, was Russian.&quot; Continuing to write in Russian, several of them, including Mikhail Gendelev, became well-known in the small circles of Russian readers in Israel. But publishing their work in Russia was out of the question. 
 &quot;Russian literature was so cut off from them that it didn't even make sense to think about it,&quot; Singer said. &quot;In fact, they were adamant about being a part of Israeli literature, except that they wrote in Russian.&quot;
 Wieseltier was more blunt. &quot;Their attitude was, 'I'm holier than thou. I come from the great Russian poetry,'&quot; he said. 
 As it happened, a generation of grand old Russian-Hebrew poetry translators such as Natan Alterman, Leah Goldberg, and Avraham Shlonsky, were dying out in the 1970s, making it doubly difficult for the new generation of Russian writers to mix in with the Hebrew-speaking scene. 
 But by the time Singer arrived, perestroika was already in high gear. Russian-Israeli writers could now read what was being written in Russia and even publish their works abroad. 
 &quot;The old formula turned out not to work anymore,&quot; Singer said. &quot;Those who had held onto it as a way of defining themselves either had to stick to it without paying any attention to the changes that were going on, or make the change along with everything else.&quot;
 The mass immigration of the 1990s began to rev up in 1989, just one year after Singer came to Jerusalem. Suddenly, Russian could be heard on every street corner in Israel. Russian-language newspapers multiplied. New literary journals, in spite of their naturally small circulation, began to compete with each other for readers. Russians complained that they were victims of exclusion and prejudice, but, according to Singer, they also did their fair share in setting themselves apart. 
 &quot;We keep finding ourselves being labeled Russian, and although I don't feel it personally, there's a kind of segregation. Both sides are responsible for it ... People are always inclined to divide themselves up into their own and not their own.&quot; 
 But Singer had no interest in being part of the Russian ghetto and cutting off contact with other Israelis. Dissatisfied with the approach of the more conservative literary magazines, she and her husband, artist Nekoda Singer, applied for government funding to create their own journal, which they called Colon (as in the punctuation mark), or Dvoyetochiye. 
 Five years later, they expanded the journal into a bilingual edition, which opens from left to right in Russian and from right to left in Hebrew. 
 Bilingualism is Singer's crusade. In her opinion, the 1970s approach gave too much credit to geography and language. On the contrary, she believes, the place where she lives and the language she speaks don't limit who she really is and what she writes. Instead, they just increase the possibilities for expression. 
 &quot;I write in Russian and in Hebrew independently of what I want to say,&quot; Singer explained. &quot;It's not a conscious thing. A poem begins with a word of some sort. If that word happens to be in Russian, then that means that the poem will be in Russian. If the poem turns out to be in Hebrew, then that means that the poem will be in Hebrew.&quot; 
 The new generation of Russian immigrants is different from the generation of the 1970s. For one thing, its young people are much more interested in blending into the rest of Israeli society than were the Soviet immigrants 20 years earlier. General university attendance has gone up massively since the Russians started coming a decade ago. 
 &quot;I know people who say, 'No, I can't read in Russian anymore.' They've taken on a new language, and that was more important to them at the time,&quot; Singer said. 
 On the other hand, the sheer size of the migration has also made it easier than ever to stick to Russian ways. Now that Russia's borders are open, Russians and Russian-Israelis can communicate and travel back and forth. 
 According to Singer, the very fact that she, Wieseltier and other foreign poets were invited to the Moscow festival last month is a sign that the Russian literary scene is ready for exchange in a way that it had never been before. 
 As far as Wieseltier is concerned, there is no pressing need for Russians to adopt Israeli ways. 
 &quot;I don't think that a poet's aim should be integration,&quot; he said. Being Russian in Israel is a multicultural experience, Singer said, and Colon is built to reflect that. While the magazine does include translations of works written in other languages, the Hebrew and Russian sides do not mirror each other. 
 &quot;I always thought that it was boring to do parallel translations,&quot; Singer said, explaining her journal's rationale. &quot;Our ideal reader is a person - and of course such readers are very rare - who can read our journal from start to finish, from the Russian side through the Hebrew side.&quot; 
 But as Singer herself is the first to admit, the number of people who are interested in reading in both Russian and Hebrew and who also follow literary magazines is quite small. 
 New immigrants from Russia are largely divided between those who want to assimilate into Israeli society and those who want to stay cut off. 
 However, Russian immigrants writing in Hebrew are already being published. Wieseltier sees elements of the Russian tradition in the Hebrew work of young writers such as Alona Kimchi. But the influence has not yet gone in the opposite direction, he said. 
 &quot;I don't think that Israeli poets have been affected by the Russians, because most Israelis don't read the Russians even when they are translated.&quot; 
 With a circulation of only 1,000 in Israel and Russia, Colon is unlikely to grow soon, according to Singer, and, in fact, future government funding is in doubt. In the long term, a bilingual magazine makes sense only if people keep speaking both Hebrew and Russian. 
 &quot;What we're trying to do with our bilingual journal is to help people who write in both languages - Russian and Hebrew - to understand that they exist in the same space and do the same things, and to interest them in each other. That is our main goal,&quot; Singer said.

TITLE: new matrix is no revolution
AUTHOR: By Stephen Hunter
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: Neo, schmeo! In &quot;The Matrix Revolutions,&quot; directors Andy and Larry Wachowski give up on character; instead, they try havoc and let slurp the dogs of war. The film is a soggy mess, essentially a loud, wild 100-minute battle movie bookended by an incomprehensible beginning and a laughable ending. 
 
As a final act and summation of the brilliant &quot;Matrix&quot; and the not-so-brilliant &quot;Matrix Reloaded,&quot; it is utterly inconsequential; as pure spectacle it's almost a hoot but only barely entertaining. 
 For those hundred minutes, we just watch - without reference to Neo (Keanu Reeves), Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) or any of the other boys and girls - a movie that might as well have been called &quot;Zion vs. the Insect Machines.&quot; The familiar characters are absent from the picture for this long tour of duty, which has many variations but essentially one issue: gun crews from the underground city try to spray-paint their way out of an onslaught by mechanical creepy-crawlies. 
 The imagineers are not without a certain level of low cunning. They have conceived the machine attack not so much as an invasion or an assault but as an infestation. Thus they play on resonant, universal fears of things that swarm and buzz and bite and have lots of legs and chompy, gibbering jaws. A million tentacled, flying voracious creatures breach the vault of Zi-on (the movie's characters invariably allot the name two full syllables when they speak it), the last remaining human city sequestered somewhere down below, where platoons of manned robots with Gatling-gun fists spit ack-ack at them. 
 Encased in gigantic mechanistic exoskeletons, the valiant warriors of Zion try to kill enough of the flying metal arachnids to survive through the night. It's like the siege of Fort McHenry on steroids from outer space, and the only anthem to be written would be &quot;Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.&quot; The illusion is stunningly real, even if it's only happening in geekspace in some anonymous San Fernando Valley bunker where professional entertainment is now manufactured. But you do believe that the hordes swirl and buzz and strafe and the gunners track them and pump them full of glowing slugs amid explosions, collapsing beams, shrapnel and crumpled-up, unused pages from the script. It's pretty neat. 
 But you have to ask: Why is this sequence more than an hour long? It could be five minutes and there'd be plenty of time left for old-fashioned stuff like, you know, story and character, both of which are given scant attention over the movie's long, relentless running time. And perhaps then the filmmakers would have gotten around to picking up some of the plot pieces left in the air in the last installment. 
 But no. The brothers want their battle scene, ahead of the Christmas curve of battle scenes (&quot;The Last Samurai,&quot; &quot;Lord of the Rings III,&quot; &quot;Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,&quot; etc.), and so they get their battle scene. It seems to have eaten all their energy and passion. 
 After the fighting's finally over (whew!), the boys move on to their climax, and it has a sense of a blown budget, and a cast and crew out of energy. I know movies are shot out of sequence, so that can't be right; nevertheless, that's how it feels. 
 Neo ventures to what is called the Machine City but seems clearly modeled on Oz. The God in the Machine even has a giant face like the Wizard's big green one floating in space, though the Wachowskis aren't clever enough to come up with a man behind the curtain to pay no attention to. But like Dorothy, Neo is given a task that he must complete and, like Dorothy's, it involves assassination: He must go back into the Matrix and destroy Smith, who is busy taking over the cyberworld and presumably the human and machine worlds next (the logic is a little shaky here). 
 Which sets up the battle royale: Neo vs. Smith for the world championship. And you have to say the Wachowskis really don't deliver it. I mean, can this knock-down drag-out in the rain really be the climax to seven hours of moviegoing? It lacks energy and style, there's nothing singular to it, and compared with several fights-to-the-death in the recent &quot;Kill Bill,&quot; it's pretty lame. It certainly gets nowhere near the intensity of the battle between the two that concluded &quot;The Matrix.&quot; 
 A lot of other &quot;Matrix&quot; pleasures are gone, too. There's no great, overarching metaphorical idea that echoes; intellectually, the film is less developed than the first edition. Neither Morpheus nor the great Trinity has much to do. Even Agent Smith hardly appears until the end, and when he does, he hasn't anything of the demonic force he had in the original. So, like too many great adventures, from Alexander's conquest of the world to Coppola's &quot;Godfather&quot; saga, the final stage doesn't so much end as bleed out. The only thing remaining is the corpse of our fond memories.

TITLE: retelling the life of a literary saint
AUTHOR: By Benjamin Schwarz
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: No other writer in the English language has more often been likened to a saint than George Orwell. His contemporaries and subsequent hagiographers lauded his self-denial, integrity, physical and intellectual courage, and - Orwell's favorite quality - &quot;decency.'' These personal characteristics, so the thinking goes, are inseparable from his writerly ones: only such a man could write such clean, clear prose, &quot;like a windowpane'' (as he famously described his ideal). But Orwell himself held that &quot;saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.'' With Gordon Bowker's &quot;Inside George Orwell'' and D. J. Taylor's &quot;Orwell,'' the number of comprehensive biographies has increased to five, and while the authors of all of them have plainly admired their subject, the man who emerges from this body of work is considerably less than saintly. 
 
One might justifiably greet these new books with skepticism: are two additional fat biographies really necessary? Although each offers some fresh insights, neither breaks important new ground. Bowker's is somewhat more detailed, but he often has difficulty separating his speculation from fact. Yet neither succeeds in placing Orwell in the context of the fierce political atmosphere of Britain in the 1930s - when the future of liberal democracy seemed very much in doubt - which means that Orwell's own protean political views go largely unelucidated. Neither author, for example, notes, let alone explains, Orwell's rapid transformation from an antiwar anti-imperialist (as late as July 1939 he suggested that British imperialism was &quot;just as bad'' as Nazism) to a doughty English patriot. 
 As that shift suggests, Orwell's views were, depending on one's perspective, evolving or inconsistent - or both. Add to this his determined cussedness and it's clear that Orwell's <i>oeuvre</i> (his complete works fill 20 volumes) supports all sorts of disparate positions. Indeed, a problem with Orwell has always been that, as he wrote of Charles Dickens, he's a writer &quot;well worth stealing.'' For more than half a century he's been celebrated and fought over by anarchists and Cold War liberals, the Old Left and the New, socialists and neoconservatives. 
 Bowker lays out Orwell's myriad - and largely familiar - intellectual and political contradictions. A man of the left, he turned to socialism largely because he thought capitalism was destroying the traditional decencies; as his friend Cyril Connolly said, Orwell was &quot;a rebel in love with 1910.'' Although committed to the reformation of Britain's class-bound society, Orwell put his infant son's name down for Eton. This anti-imperialist former imperial policeman combined the cosmopolitan and the parochial. His mother was half French; he fought in Spain under the banner of international socialism; he championed Henry Miller. But his intense attachment to England led V. S. Pritchett to remark that Orwell had &quot;gone native in his own country'': when venturing onto the Continent, he was gripped with fear at the prospect of being unable to find &quot;proper'' tea. And, as the biography keenly emphasizes, Orwell the devout nonbeliever held that the loss of faith had left modern man spiritually bereft and ethically bankrupt. 
 But Bowkers display far more interest in the contradictions in Orwell's personality and private life. As a writer Orwell prized lucidity and honesty, but nearly all his friends remarked on his intense secretiveness. His furtive nature engendered an elaborately conspiratorial view of the world. (To be fair, his experiences of being hunted by Stalinists in Spain plainly aggravated this tendency.) Other aspects of Orwell's personality are also less than attractive. Although often gentle, he had a cruel, even sadistic side. And he carried the asceticism that accompanied his conspicuous saintliness to a disturbing extreme. To be sure, his self-deprivation had an endearing aspect (typically, he pronounced Britain's wartime canteen food &quot;really very good''); but Orwell also evinced a streak of masochism and, in subjecting his ailing first wife, Eileen, to his life of excruciating self-denial, a narcissistic indifference to others' suffering. However charming Orwell may have been in his (somewhat cultivated) eccentricities, he was - considering his dalliances with married women - obliviously selfish in his married life.
 Orwell's consistently awkward relations with women are the most obvious manifestation of what seems to have been an arrested emotional and social development. He had the aloofness and intense self-pity, as Taylor nicely puts it, of one &quot;permanently on the edge of things.'' And he never outgrew the adolescent pose of the outsider who draws attention to himself. His friend Malcolm Muggeridge caught the staginess of Orwell perfectly when he wrote of his &quot;proletarian fancy dress.''
 Refreshingly, Bowker eschews an anachronistic condemnation of Orwell's attitude toward Jews, a topic that has recently preoccupied Orwell revisionists. He discusses the subject at length, but concludes that while Orwell never fully transcended the sometimes ugly prejudices of his time and class, he struggled to do so through his entire adult life. 
 Indisputably, Orwell's most historically significant works are &quot;Animal Farm'' and &quot;Nineteen Eighty-Four.'' But while neither book is merely topical, neither fully transcends its historical and political context. Some of Orwell's other novels - &quot;Coming Up for Air,'' &quot;Keep the Aspidistra Flying'' - are underrated, although undoubtedly they would long ago have vanished into obscurity had Orwell not written them. As The Times of London acknowledged upon his death in 1950, Orwell &quot;had a critical rather than imaginative endowment of mind.'' He wrote best when he married precise and forceful reportage and social observation with intensely personal experience - as in &quot;The Road to Wigan Pier,'' &quot;Homage to Catalonia'' and, above all, his essays and criticism. In such works as &quot;Charles Dickens,'' &quot;The Art of Donald McGill'' and the unjustly neglected &quot;English People,'' Orwell, to quote Bowker's spot-on assessment, &quot;combined an acute sociological imagination with great economy and clarity of style.''

TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: Shapochnoye znakomstvo:</i> a nodding acquaintance with someone.
 
Friendship in Russia is more than just friendship. It comes with responsibilities (staying in touch, lending money, lending a hand) as well as benefits (knowing there is always someone to help you get through the bad times and celebrate the good ones). Friendship also has its own language to indicate where you are on the spectrum of intimacy, which ranges from being merely acquainted to being tied by nearly unbreakable bonds of closeness, security, and understanding. 
 <i>Shapochnoye znakomstvo</i> is a nodding acquaintance, literally &quot;a hat acquaintance,&quot; i.e., someone you tip your hat to. <i>Ty khorosho znayesh Ivana Ivanovicha? Net, u menya s nim prosto shapochnoye znakomstvo.</i> (Do you know Ivan Ivanovich well? No, we just have a nodding acquaintance.) <i>Znakomy</i> (an acquaintance) refers to someone you know and perhaps see socially, but it doesn't imply any closeness, or even that you like the person. <i>Priyatel </i>is a pal, a buddy: someone you know and like, but not a close friend. <i>Tovarisch</i> (comrade) has fallen out of favor since 1992, which is a bit of a shame, since it's a good word to describe an associate, someone you are connected to by work or interests. You can still hear it used in phrases like <i>tovarisch po rabote</i> (a co-worker) or <i>tovarisch po neschastyu:</i> someone you share misfortune with. If this refers to two women, you can use the (somewhat outdated) phrase &quot;sob sister.&quot; <i>My s ney teper tovarischi po neschastyu: obe nedavno razvelis s muzhyami.</i> (We're sob sisters now: we both recently got divorced from our husbands.) 
 You can use other terms to describe various levels of acquaintance: <i>sosluzhivets</i> (a co-worker), <i>spodvizhnik</i> (a &quot;comrade-in-arms,&quot; an associate); <i>yedinomyshlennik </i>(a like-minded person, a confederate); <i>odnoklassnik</i> (school mate). All of these terms might refer to someone you see day in and day out, but they don't necessarily imply friendship. 
 That's reserved for the few people you call <i>drug (</i>said<i>: 'drook')</i>. The word actually comes from the military sphere: it originally meant someone you fought with, or a military leader. You can hear this in the word <i>druzhina</i> (a volunteer patrol), used in the Soviet period to describe a group of volunteers who kept order at concerts. 
 If someone has disappointed you in friendship, you might call them <i>lzhivyi, lozhnyi</i> (false), <i>mnimyi </i>(fair-weather) or <i>poddelnyi</i> (fake, feigned). If someone is a truly good friend, you can clarify the kind with a variety of adjectives: <i>milyi </i>(dear), <i>blizki </i>(close), <i>vernyi </i>(true), <i>davni </i> (old), <i>serdechnyi</i> (a friend of the heart). Or you can forget all the adjectives and simply say: <i>Ty - drug</i>. (You're a real friend.) 
 This is the kind of friend you can call at 3 a.m. and know that he'll come over and hold your hand through your divorce, your anxiety attack or your bankruptcy. <i>Druzya poznayutsya v bede </i> (A friend in need is a friend indeed). 
 Russian sayings hold that the best friends are those who have stood the test of time: <i>Staryi drug luchshe novykh dvukh.</i> (An old friend is worth two new ones.) And there's no question that having friends is better than having money: <i>ne imei sto rublei a imei sto druzei </i>(a hundred friends are better than a hundred rubles). Of course, inflation has done its trick over the centuries, but it's still true that connections (<i>svyazi, blat</i>) are worth more than a Swiss bank account. 
 Although the Swiss bank account doesn't hurt. Lawyers, unlike friends, don't make 3 a.m. house calls for free. 
 <i>
 - by Michele A. Berdy </i>

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: <b>'Ghost Ship' Irks Brits
 </b>

HARTLEPOOL, England (Reuters) - The first of 13 U.S. ships due to be scrapped in Britain sailed into port Wednesday, to cries of protest from environmentalists who have won a first round in their campaign to stop the vessels being dismantled.
 The environmentalists say the old ships, built with asbestos and possibly containing traces of other chemicals, are toxic and poisonous, and the government has suspended permission for scrapping, a decision now under appeal.
 The empty ships were due be scrapped by a British firm under a contract worth $16.7 million.
 The former U.S. Navy oil tanker "Caloosahatchee" was the first of the so-called "ghost ships," a fleet of vessels dating back to World War II, to arrive.
 
 
<b>Translator Indicted 
 </b>

BOSTON (AP) - A former Guantanamo Bay translator arrested after he was found with classified documents at Logan International Airport was charged Wednesday with gathering defense information and making false statements.
 The grand jury's indictment alleges that Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, who has been in federal custody since his arrest, lied to investigators when he told them he was not carrying any government documents from Guantanamo Bay. Customs agents found 132 compact discs in his luggage.
 His arrest was the third involving someone who worked closely with Guantanamo's prison population, which includes several people arrested during the war on terrorism. 
 
 
<b>Guinness Hits 100M
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - A burp from the loudest belcher in the world echoed round Britain's Tate Modern Gallery as the Guinness World Records book celebrated the release of its 100 millionth copy.
 The book, which lists world records from the smallest dog to the highest paid TV guest star, has its own entry in the latest edition as the best-selling copyright book of all time.
 "Everybody has a dream to be the best at something in the world and the public has an incredible imagination," the book's editor Claire Folkard said at a reception in London. "That's what has kept us going."
 
 
<b>No Envoy Extradition
 </b>

LONDON (AP) - An Iranian diplomat accused of helping to mastermind the car bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina was freed from extradition proceedings Wednesday when the British government said there was not enough evidence to continue with the case.
 Hade Soleimanpour, 47, was arrested in northeast England on Aug. 21 on an Argentine warrant. Argentina has accused him of conspiracy to murder in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The attack killed 85 people.
 
 
<b>Microsoft on Defense 
 </b>

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. was set to defend itself Thursday against European Union charges that it muscled out rivals who make software for playing music and videos from the Web.
 Thursday was the second day of a closed-door, three-day hearing. 
 European Commission regulators could order Microsoft to remove its own music and video player from Windows when they announce their decision in mid-2004.
 
 <b>Man U Back to U.S.
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - Manchester United is coming back to the United States for another preseason tour next summer.
 Coach Alex Ferguson announced Tuesday that the English Premier League champion will play three games in the United States. Two of the games will be at Giants Stadium and Chicago's Soldier Field. The site of the third game and the three opponents have not been finalized.
 Unlike in their other preseason tours, Manchester United players can roam the streets in the United States in relative obscurity.
 
 
<b>Halladay Best Hurler
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - Toronto's Roy Halladay won the American League Cy Young Award on Tuesday, easily beating Chicago's Esteban Loaiza.
 Halladay, who won a major league-high 22 games, received 26 first-place votes and two seconds for 136 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Loaiza got two firsts, 16 seconds and five thirds for 63 points. Boston's Pedro Martinez was third with 20 points, followed by Oakland's Tim Hudson (15), Seattle's Jamie Moyer (12), the Yankees' Andy Pettitte (four) and Oakland's Keith Foulke and Minnesota's Johann Santana (one each).
 Halladay finished 22-7 with a 3.25 ERA this year, winning 15 consecutive decisions from May 1 to July 27 and tying for the AL lead with nine complete games.
 
<b>Ping Pong Doping
 </b>

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A former European women's table tennis champion has acknowledged using a banned performance-enhancing drug in one of her last competitions before retirement.
 In an authorized biography published this week, Dutchwoman Bettine Vriesekoop said she took pills containing the stimulant ephedrine at the 1998 championship in the Netherlands, though she failed to win. Vriesekoop won the European singles championships in 1982 and 1992.
 The book, entitled "Bettine, Surviving and Winning," said Vriesekoop knew she was risking disqualification and suspension, but thought it was unlikely she would be caught since she wasn't tested.
 Ephedrine is the active ingredient in the herb ephedra, also known as Ma Huang, which is found in some weight loss and exercise pills.
 
 
<b>Shockey Sidelined
 </b>

TORONTO (Reuters) - Pro Bowl tight end Jeremy Shockey will be side-lined for six to eight weeks with a partially torn ligament in his left knee, the New York Giants said this week.
 Shockey, who limped off the field late in the Giants' 27-7 loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, was initially diagnosed as having a sprained knee, but an MRI scan on Monday revealed the ligament damage.
 Shockey is the team's leading receiver with 48 catches for 535 yards and is likely to miss the remaining seven games of the regular season. 



TITLE: Last-Minute Arrival Doesn't Stop O'Neal Piling on Points
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Shaquille O'Neal and Gary Payton barely arrived in time for the start of a Los Angeles Lakers game against the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday, but O'Neal eventually warmed up, getting 23 points and 14 rebounds for the Lakers to keep the Toronto Raptors winless on the road with a 94-79 victory.
 
&quot;It was kind of a flat game for a rainy day,'' said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who popped in the locker room before the game to see who was still missing. 
 Heavy rain, accompanied by rare lightning and thunder, flooded freeways, snarled traffic and delayed O'Neal and Payton until 30 minutes before tipoff. Derek Fisher beat them by 15 minutes. 
 &quot;I didn't think the floods had hit yet,'' Jackson said, smiling. &quot;I know the apocalypse is around the corner, but maybe not tonight.'' 
 The Lakers got 17 points from Karl Malone and 16 points from Payton to end their two-game losing streak. Toronto fell to 0-4 away from home under first-year coach Kevin O'Neill. 
 After committing a season-high 23 turnovers in losing to Memphis on Monday night, the Lakers held their miscues to 11. 
 &quot;We just got a little discombobulated in Memphis,'' said Payton, who downplayed any dispute with Jackson about playing a season-low 27 minutes Monday. 
 &quot;I don't worry about that. Phil thought my ankle was bothering me, so he didn't want me to chance it. That's what it was all about.'' 
 Kobe Bryant scored 19 points, going 8-of-10 on free throws, as one of four Lakers starters in double figures. On Thursday he leaves Los Angeles to attend his first hearing before the judge that will preside over his sexual assault trial in Colorado. 
 &quot;It's one of these victories where we just kind of coasted,'' said Bryant, who expects to return in time for practice Thursday afternoon. &quot;We're going to get much, much better.'' 
 Vince Carter led the Raptors with 23 points, their only starter in double figures. Guard Milt Palacio scored two points, starting in place of Alvin Williams. 
 &quot;You just have to guard them,'' Carter said of the Lakers. &quot;They can deserve all the respect in the world, but if you back down from them, they'll blow you out of the gym.'' 
 The Lakers led by 10 points at halftime. Malone, Payton, Devean George and O'Neal scored on the Lakers' first four possessions of the third quarter while denying Toronto on its first four trips down the floor. O'Neal and Payton chipped in consecutive baskets for a 65-45 lead with 8:12 remaining. 
 The Lakers' defense briefly let up, letting the Raptors score nine unanswered points to get to 65-54. After Malone and Payton missed on the same possession, Bryant came down the next time and hit a 3-pointer that kept Toronto's deficit in double-digits. 
 &quot;You've got four guys there who could be go-to guys on any given night,'' Toronto's Jerome Williams said. ``We couldn't do anything with them after they made their run. They just have a great, disciplined team.'' 
 The Raptors trailed 74-60 heading into the fourth quarter. O'Neal returned seven minutes in when the Lakers were ahead 80-67. 
 &quot;We just wanted to get Shaq going, get the ball to him inside and make them foul and make them get back on their heels,'' Malone said. &quot;When we do that, we are a very good team.'' 
 Morris Peterson hit a 3-pointer that got Toronto to 86-77 with four minutes left. But Bryant hit two free throws, and Malone and Payton scored to push the Lakers' lead to 92-77. 
 Peterson added 16 points and Lamond Murray had 15.