SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #921 (89), Friday, November 21, 2003
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TITLE: Slain Democrat's Popularity Grows
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Slain State Duma deputy, democrat and leader of the Democratic Russia Party Galina Starovoitova is more popular now than during the last years of her life. 
 
This is the conclusion of the new book by the St. Petersburg sociologist Leonid Kesselman about the late politician, who was fatally gunned down on the stairs of her house on Griboyedov Canal on Nov. 20, 1998 in an apparent contract killing that shocked the nation. 
 Five years on, neither her killers nor those who ordered her murder have been found, despite promises from on high - including from President Boris Yeltsin - that law enforcement officers would not rest until they were caught and convicted. 
 The book, "Galina Starovoitova: the Continuation of Her Life," was presented at the St. Petersburg's House of Journalists Thursday as part of a memorial program on the fifth anniversary of Starovoitova's murder.
 The book is divided into two parts: a series of interviews about the politician and the results of sociological research about how she is remembered today.
 The interview part contains no personal stories from the late politician's relatives, close friends and fellow politicians with an obvious connection. It is rather a collection of thoughts of the people, whose life were touched by Starovoitova's activities or who the politician herself was known to respect. 
 Each interview bears the subjects' name and social status or profession, but not their personal connections with Starovoitova. 
 "We deliberately wanted to avoid having very personal stories there," Kesselman said. "The whole purpose of the book was to explore how her political legacy affects Russian society these days and what ordinary people know and remember about her."
 About 20,000 people were polled for the research in St. Petersburg and Samara. Samara was chosen to provide a contrasting range of opinions between the citizens of Starovoitova's home town and another, randomly chosen Russian town.
 According to the research, Starovoitova's name is known to more than 96 percent of Russians, while over 75 percent know about her activities as a Duma deputy and that she was assassinated. The figures in Samara were higher than it had been expected, with over 50 percent of respondents mentioning the murder and Starovoitova's democratic past.
 "In late 1980s and early 1990s Galina Starovoitova was a genuine people's heroine, a champion of democracy," Kesselman said. "But by the late 1990s most people were already disillusioned, holding a grudge against not just the top Russian authorities but also against the democrats, who started the reforms, which resulted in chaos." 
 Now, Kesselman believes, there has been just enough time for the people to think it over and form an unbiased opinion. 
 "The Starovoitova phenomenon, just like the Chechen phenomenon is a question of particular mentality, which exists in a certain group of society," he said. "You can kill Starovoitova, you can gun down all the Chechens, but the messages still survive: someone will read a book and accept the ideas, and it will start all over again."
 State Duma deputy Grigory Tomchin of the Union of Right Forces party, said in the book that the most important question was what lessons has society learned from the tragic death of Starovoitova, and how can it help the country choose what policies to follow.
 "It is crucially important that the book is not the kind of 'who remembers what about Galina' sort of thing," he said. "Russia won't stay in such an unstable condition forever, the country will have to choose a clear path of development, and this is where we still need her very much."
 Kazimira Prunskene, former president of Lithuania, wrote of Starovoitova as of "a person of crystal-clear principles."
 "She was impossible to misunderstand, her opinion was always impeccably precise and perfectly justified," Prunskene wrote. "In Lithuania, Galina is definitely more popular now than she had been before she died. It is probably because, as always, we all begin to value people when we lose them."
 Renowned film-director Alexander Sokurov, who never met Starovoitova in person, wrote in his comment that Starovoitova would have made for an ideal president of Russia, and called her a politician whose voice was impossible to ignore.
 "For that reason, for her political rivals she was much more dangerous than anybody else," he wrote.
 Olga Starovoitova, Galina's sister, said that the family, naturally has been considering the question of why Galina was murdered for a very long time. 
 "It is very complicated," Olga Starovoitova said. "She tried hard to make the country's budget transparent and believed legislators should be able to trace where state money goes. This, of course, was rather irritating for those on the receiving end of improperly directed budgetary funds." 
 But Galina was impossible to bribe or to persuade. After she was murdered, [literary historian] Dmitry Likhachyov said of her: "She would never compromise with rascals. And that is why she was destined to die." 
 "There are enough corrupt people here - I wouldn't even try to guess who ordered the crime," Olga Starovoitova said. "I am also quite sure it is very easy to hire people who are ready to kill anyone."
 When she visits her sister's grave, Olga feels great support from the ordinary people who gather there. 
 "There are always people bringing flowers, especially on Sundays," she said. "Sometimes there are so many flowers it is difficult to approach the grave. I find it encouraging that so many people remember her. "
 Publicist Viktor Sheinis, speaking at the presentation af the book Thursday, said that he misses Starovoitova above all as a politician of honor and transparency. 
 "Everyone knows the expression about politics being a dirty game," he said. "Of course, if your hands are dirty you would inevitably get into the dirty politics. But Galina's politics were always transparent and pure - something we desperately need in politics today."
 Six people suspected of involvement in Starovoitova's murder have been detained, but the St. Petersburg's Prosecutors Office still refers to the slaying as an unsolved case. Earlier this year it prolonged its investigation until Dec. 20.


TITLE: Bible Translators Work Their Way Across Russia
AUTHOR: By Greg Walters
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Gospel according to Luke is the most important book ever published in the Bezhta language. 
 
It is, after all, the only Bezhta book there is. 
 The Bezhta version of Luke comes courtesy of the Institute of Bible Translation, or IBT, a group that has been working for 30 years to provide translations of the Bible into all of the former Soviet Union's 130 languages. IBT so far has published passages in 80 languages. 
 Although the Bezhtas, a group of about 5,000 people living in southern Dagestan, are predominantly Muslim, they apparently were grateful for the material. The Bezhta legislature decreed that the work be studied in schools. 
 Locals organized reading groups for the new book, and subsequently sent IBT numerous letters of thanks. "This book was a great success," said Mariana Beerle-Moor, director of IBT. "It became a must-read." 
 The IBT's translations aren't always groundbreaking events, though. In 2001, IBT translated the four Gospels into Chuvashi, a language of more than a million books, including an earlier copy of the Bible. 
 "It's certainly a very good translation," said Roza Lizakova, deputy culture minister in Chuvashia. "Although I'm not sure that every person is interested in this kind of literature."
 In some cases, the institute has not only printed the first book in a given language - it may well have published the last. 
 The IBT has translated sections of the Bible into 18 of the 63 CIS languages that experts consider in danger of falling out of use altogether. Beerle-Moor said the organization is just as concerned with the study of languages and their preservation as with the Bible itself. 
 IBT is nondenominational, and Beerle-Moor said that it does not proselytize. "It's an organization that cares for all the non-Slavic peoples in this country," she said. 
 The Institute For Bible Translation was founded in Stockholm in 1973 by Borislav Arapovic, a devout Lutheran. When Arapovic left Yugoslavia in the 1960s, he realized that many people in the West were unaware of the great diversity of languages within the Soviet Union. 
 An economist by training, Arapovic took an interest in linguistics and studied Slavistics at Stockholm University. In the meantime, he scoured Western Europe libraries for translations of the Bible into the lesser-known Soviet languages. 
 "Being a Christian himself, the Bible was very important to him," said Barbara Lindstrom, who has worked with Arapovic for 29 years. The institute began by providing translations into less-obscure Soviet tongues such as Tatar, Tajik and Uzbek. 
 Arapovic and his associates then passed along the books to groups that smuggled them into the Soviet Union. Although no one was ever arrested in connection with their work, Arapovic himself was officially blacklisted by Soviet authorities, Beerle-Moor said. 
 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the institute moved its headquarters from Stockholm to Moscow. Since then, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II has publicly supported IBT's work - he holds a meeting with the organization every year. 
 Arapovic himself was made an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1990. Today, the institute has roughly 200 employees and has published Biblical excerpts in 80 different languages, many of them wildly obscure, such as Bordvin-Erzya, Yazgulyami and Karakalpak. Languages in the CIS can present special problems for biblical translations, Beerle-Moor said. 
 Some Caucasus languages, for example, have multiple words for "goat," while some Siberian languages have no word for "grape" - words that appear with great frequency in ancient scripture. 
 "We might just write 'sweet fruit,' or, 'a sweet fruit called 'vinograt,' [the Russian word for grape]," Beerle-Moor said. "Or sometimes we'll use a neologism. But we try not to do that too much." 
 Initially, IBT specialists translated the Bible only into languages that already had developed alphabets. Then, as their work progressed, they moved into uncharted territory. Now translating teams occasionally must create visual representations for sounds that have never had one. 
 That's no easy task considering that some Caucasian languages have as many as 70 consonants. Although IBT now has its headquarters in Moscow, funding still comes mainly from Western donors. 
 IBT asked oligarch Roman Abramovich, who serves as governor of Chukotka, to finance a $2,000 translation of the New Testament into Chukchi. Abramovich never responded to the request. 
 "I think we may have offended him by asking for too little," Beerle-Moor said. Beerle-Moor noted that the institute often translates the Bible into languages spoken primarily by Muslims. 
 But she says she can only remember one instance of a negative response from the readership, during a reading in Moscow of the modern Tatar translation. 
 "Why did you do this at all?" asked an audience member. "In principle, we should burn this book." 
 But after hearing the text, Beerle-Moor said, the audience was partially mollified. 
 "They said, 'It's a very pretty translation, and we can't have anything against it,'" Beerle-Moor said. "'Except for one thing: One really shouldn't love one's enemy. This we don't agree with. But otherwise, we're happy with it.'"


TITLE: Welsh Moscow Supports Wales
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MAERDY, Wales - While Russia urged its team on to a place in the European Championships on Wednesday night, residents of Moscow shouted and cheered on for Wales. 
 
This is not surprising, as Moscow, or Little Moscow to be precise, is located a mere 150 kilometers from the stadium where Russia beat Wales 1-0.
 Maerdy, a small village in the Rhondda Valley with a population of less than 2,000, is an unlikely place for a second Moscow. But it did not get its nickname from the Russian capital but from decades of ties with the Soviet creed.
 Or as Alun Jones, 64, a lifelong communist and one of the village's best-known sons, bluntly explains: "It's called Little Moscow because it's full ofcommunists and it's *** cold in winter."
 Jones, a sharp-minded, barrel-chested man with craggy looks that tell of his 36 years as a miner, is one of the last of a group of villagers who helped turn Maerdy into Little Moscow.
 The village's communist ideals, which made it the first town in Britain with a communist mayor, stem from it once being part of the South Wales coal industry, which provided one-third of the world's coal consumption in its heyday. 
 Mines were first built in the Rhondda Valley in the 1860s and the area quickly became the heartland of socialist politics in Wales. By the beginning of the 20th century, local miners, trapped in horrific conditions, began to form unions and fight for improvements at work and in their living conditions.
 From this moment, the communist movement found a welcoming home in the tight-knit village. Jones dates the movement's stronghold beginning from the General Strike in 1926, although the nickname of Little Moscow, derogatory at the time but accepted with pride by locals, was only given in the 1930s by national newspapers.
 According to villagers, the Nazis, after a disastrous bombing run on South Wales that saw them lose a number of planes and fail to hit Maerdy, warned on the radio: "We have not forgotten you, Little Moscow."
 A different message came from singer and actor Paul Robeson. He thanked Welsh miners for their support after he was blacklisted in the United States amid allegations of communist ties. 
 Villagers had a great affection for the Soviet Union, especially those who fought in World War II.
 "They supported the Soviet Union," Jones said. "The world can thank Russia for the destruction of the Nazis, losing 20 million against the bastards."
 It still must be said that their support was not strong enough to get them to root for the Soviet side when it played against Wales in 1965, 1981 or the Russians on Wednesday. 
 In Maerdy's bleakest moment, it was the Soviet Union that helped out. Jones remembers with fondness the visit of a Soviet delegation of former miners during a 1984-85 strike. The strike - over threats to close down mines - caused great hardship in Maerdy, where 70 percent of the male workforce worked in the pits. The delegation brought money and food parcels donated by Soviet miners.
 During the strike, Jones, union leader in the local pit, was arrested for organizing a gathering of more than three people, a crime introduced during the strike by the Conservative government, and fined Pound120 - a large amount at the time. Jones also was bound over to keep the peace for two years, meaning he could not picket under the threat of being sent to jail for two years. 
 "We had no say in our lives. It was always the capitalist who ruled," said Jones, who still remains a believer in the ideals of communism. 
 Instead of picketing during the strike, Jones raised money for miners by giving talks in the West Midlands and traveling to another stronghold of communism, Bologna. "I saw communism work in Bologna," he said. "The sick, the old were all looked after. It was wonderful."
 These days, however, few in the village share his enthusiasm. 
 Four days before Christmas 1990, the last pit was closed down in Maerdy, sending the village into a steep economic decline. Unemployment is around 25 percent in the valley, and alcohol and drugs are a big problem.
 "It's ebbing," said one villager, of any remaining socialist fervor. "You've still got Alun, but most of the youngsters don't give a sod. All they see is depression and unemployment. They're more interested in fascism than socialism and that's partly to do with football."
 Some soccer fans from Cardiff City have a reputation for troublemaking.
 Still, mining communities are by necessity close-knit, and Maerdy, although poor, is a friendly place with a noticeable community spirit. The villagers campaigned to save their grand 19th-century working man's club from being pulled down. A woman comes by once a week, collecting donations that have helped send a local child with arthritis to the United States for treatment. 
 "There is a cameraderie here that you don't find elsewhere," said Gareth Mortimer, a local musician who has toured with Tina Turner.
 When a reporter turned up from Russia on Wednesday, half of the local pub took it as an omen and put money on a horse called Moscow Fields. It came fourth.
 The nickname Little Moscow is now not much more than a memory of a village's struggle to survive and improve things for itself. Jones remembers the Soviet delegation's visit with delight, but communism is no more in Little Moscow, Wales, than Moscow, Russia.
 "If it had worked, it was a wonderful idea. But it didn't," Jones said.


TITLE: Yakovlev Laments Sad Housing Sector
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The sorry state of the country's housing and utilities sector is one for the record books, Deputy Prime Minister and former St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev said Wednesday, urging the State Duma to quickly pass laws to ward off a looming disaster.
 
The housing and utilities sector should be included in the "Guinness Book of Records for the number of accidents," Yakovlev told deputies.
 Parliament invited Yakovlev and the government's other pointman on the issue, State Construction Committee head Nikolai Koshman, to speak Wednesday about the state of the sector, which includes heating, electricity, water and gas supplies.
 With just three weeks to go before Duma elections, deputies have put all but the most essential bills on the backburner. Despite their time constraints, they found a few moments Wednesday to discuss problems in housing and public utilities - an issue that is all the more pressing during the winter months when tens of thousands of homes across the country inevitably lose heat, water or electricity. 
 Yakovlev said 107,000 incidents of heating systems breaking down were registered last winter, leaving about 400,000 people in the cold.
 "Everything will be different after we understand that the sector is bad, that engineering systems are going to come to a halt altogether at some stage, and we make decisions and pass the needed laws," Yakovlev said in remarks broadcast on Rossia television.
 "Our mentality is that we can get by. I am not making this up: we won't be able to get by any more, and breakdowns will take place," he said.
 Yakovlev said that the government is in the process of setting up a special service to quickly avert potential accidents. He also relayed a promise from the government that heating systems will work properly across the country this winter.
 Heating and other housing services, however, are not working properly despite the government's promises.
 About 200,000 people in the Far East port of Vladivostok have been without hot water for nearly three weeks due to a lack of fresh water supplies after a summer drought. The problem is expected to be resolved in January.
 In the southern city of Novo cherkassk, where winter has yet to start, 80,000 people have no water due to a sewage accident at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant. 
 The heating infrastructure is used on average to 60 percent capacity and up to 80 percent in some regions, according to Yakovlev. More than 10 percent of the country's 2.8 billion square meters of housing has not been repaired for more than 30 years. About 87 million square meters are in serious need of repair, and this amount grows by 20 million meters every year.
 "The situation this winter is extremely difficult and one should expect a very high number of accidents," said Sergei Puzanov, head of the Institute of Urban Economics think tank. "The situation will be getting worse every year if there is not any financial breakthrough in the sector."
 The sector's debts total 222 billion rubles ($7.7 billion), while it is owed 196 billion rubles. 
 The State Construction Committee has drafted a bill designed to pull the sector out of financial crisis. It envisions a write-off of about $30 billion of the sector's debt as well as a chunk in penalties and fines, Koshman told the Duma.
 Koshman urged deputies to pass the bill without delay and adjust the 2004 draft federal budget accordingly when it is discussed in third reading Friday.
 "The situation in the sector is so hopeless that the government has finally begun looking for a resolution," said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank.
 The State Construction Committee has also prepared amendments to the privatization law that would ban the sell-off of heating pipes, water and sewage infrastructure.
 Housing reform has a good chance of going forward after many years of foot-dragging, due to the fact that a deputy prime minister has been charged with overseeing its implementation, analysts said. Before this summer, the task had been left to lower ranking officials.

TITLE: Communists Hit by Probe
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: In a blow to Communists that could threaten their campaign for next month's parliamentary elections, pro-government centrists in the State Duma asked prosecutors Tuesday to investigate a company that reportedly served as their main cash cow. 
 
The motion, approved by the Duma in a 241-79 vote, urges the prosecutors to probe allegations that state subsidies provided to the Rosagropromstroi company to finance housing for farmers were instead used to finance the Communist Party's political activities. 
 "There is reason to assume that part of the funds concerned could be used to finance the Communist Party's activity," said Gennady Gudkov, head of the Duma's security committee. "We are talking about rather a lot of money.
 "One gets the impression that cheating and theft were possible here," he added. 
 Rosagropromstroi chief Viktor Vidmanov, a top Communist candidate in Dec. 7 parliamentary elections, denied the allegations.
 <i>(AP, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Top Official Detained
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A top official has been detained for accepting bribes, Interfax reported St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko as saying at a session of the city government on Thursday.
 City prosecutors, who later confirmed her statement, would release more information on the case on Friday, she added, declining to name the official.
 "We have reached a point where that approach to work [taking bribes] has departed from City Hall forever," she was quoted as saying. "The new administration will work openly and honestly. No one will be allowed to exploit their position for their personal profit."
 
 
<b>New Investment Body
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg administration has decided to form several new committees one of which is designed to bring more investment to the city, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 Citing the head of City Hall's administration, Viktor Lobko, the news agency said one committee would be created with the aim of attracting local and foreign investment. 
 Another new committee will monitor law and order and security, Lobko was quoted as saying.
 The committees that oversee housing policy and the housing stock will be united to form a residential committee, he added.
 
 
<b>New Boss at Peterburg
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Marina Fokina, the head of the state-owned All-Russia Television and Radio Corp., or VGTRK, in St. Petersburg, was on Tuesday elected general director of local television station Peterburg, Interfax reported.
 Citing the head of City Hall's media committee, Alla Manilova, the news agency said that the resignation of Igor Ignatyev, the former head of the station, had been accepted by an extraordinary meeting of shareholders.
 Ignatyev had earlier said he intends to return to his former post as deputy head of the local VGTRK.
 
 
<b>New Tourism Head
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Viktor Pakhomkov has been named head of City Hall's tourism committee, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 Citing the governor's press service, the news agency said Pakhomkov is a former general director of the state-owned chain of President hotels and health centers in the presidential property department, and before that he was general director of the hotel complex Pribaltiiskaya.
 The former head of the committee, Maria Beskrovnaya, had asked to quit her post on Tuesday, the report said.
 
 
<b>Resettlement Funding 
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The State Construction Committee, or Gosstroi, intends to allocate 165 million rubles ($5.5 million) for the resettlement of people living in condemned and dangerous buildings in St. Petersburg, Interfax quoted Vice Governor Alexander Vakhmistrov as saying Thursday.
 Vakhmistrov said the funds will be allocated under a city program.
 The program, which is due to be approved in the first half of December, foresees resettlement of residents occupying 240,000 square meters in dangerous buildings and 780,000 square meters in condemned buildings. <p><b>No Green Card Lottery
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT ) - Russian citizens will not be able to participate in the Green Card lottery this year, Interfax reported, citing U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow.
 Vershbow stressed that the decision "has no hidden meaning and is in no way connected to the Russian mafia." 
 He said it was linked to the fact that Russians have exceeded a quota of 50,000 immigrants to the United States over the past five years. Thus, they will not be allowed to participate in the yearly drawing of 50,000 residence permits this year. 
 
 
<b>U.S. Terror Trial
 </b>

DETROIT (AP) - A U.S. citizen of Chechen descent whom prosecutors accuse of links to terrorism was sentenced to 57 months in prison for smuggling $12 million in counterfeit checks into the United States.
 In sentencing Omar Shishani on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said allegations of terrorist links were "considerably overstated and overblown." 
 Shishani lawyer Corbett O'Meara said the government has ruined Shishani's life by falsely branding him a terrorist. 
 But Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Straus cited "credible evidence that he has been involved in supporting the international jihad movement." 
 Shishani, who was born in Jordan, denied those claims. 
 
 
<b>Shakhnovsky Verdict 
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Evenkia Legislative Assembly decided Wednesday not to appeal a court decision barring Yukos shareholder Vasily Shakhnovsky from taking a seat in the Federation Council, RIA-Novosti reported.
 On Monday, the Krasnoyarsk regional court sided with prosecutors' objections to Shakhnokvsky's appointment. The Prosecutor General's Office said the assembly had not followed proper procedure in its vote last month.
 
 
<b>Communist Expelled
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT ) - The Communist Party (KPRF) has expelled State Duma Deputy Leonid Mayevsky after he announced at a Moscow press conference this week that he met with exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky in London last October to discuss funding of the party.
 Mayevsky said that Berezovsky was ready to finance left-wing entrepreneurs running in the Dec. 7 elections on the KPRF ticket, and added that the tycoon had already donated to the party.
 KPRF general secretary Oleg Kulikov denied that the party had ever received money from Berezovsky, saying that Mayevsky's expulsion was linked to an attempt from the deputy "to blackmail the party." 
 
 
<b>Deadly Vodka Contest 
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A vodka-drinking competition in the southern town of Volgodonsk ended in tragedy with the winner dead and several runners-up in intensive care. 
 "The competition lasted 30, perhaps 40 minutes and the winner downed three half-liter bottles," said Volgodonsk prosecutor Roman Popov, who has opened an investigation. 
 "He was taken home by taxi but died within 20 minutes," he said. "Five contestants ended up in intensive care." </p> <p><b>Baltic Oil
 </b>

MOSCOW - Vladimir Grachev, chairman of the State Duma committee on the environment announced Thursday that he considers development by LUKoil of the D6 fields in the Baltic Sea safe, Interfax reported.
 "D6 ... will in no way affect pollution in the Baltic Sea and Curonian Spit," Grachev said.
 To date the only oil spills in the Baltic Sea have occurred in the Lithuanian ports of Klaipeda and Butinga, Grachev said. Nor could the D6 field be blamed for the oil spill that occurred in the Baltic off the coast of Kaliningrad last summer since D6 remains untapped.
 The deputy made his statement in response to an open letter signed by members of Russia's cultural elite such as writers Andrei Bitov, Fazil Iskander and Vasily Aksenov, and actors Mikhail Kazakov and Oleg Basilashvili.
 Grachev claimed that the cultural luminaries had been "deluded."
 The open letter appeared in the press on Nov. 19 and was reportedly circulated by the Civil Freedom Foundation, an organization financed by Boris Berezovsky.
 
 
<b>Hotel Priorities
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG - Governor Valentina Matviyenko reiterated the city administration's dedication to developing the hotel industry in St. Petersburg at a construction and hotels meeting on Thursday, Interfax reported. 
 Vice Governor Yury Molchanov was tasked with coordinating the various committees in the administration involved in hotel development.
 The Governor also announced that the city's committee on economic development, industrial policy and trade would draft a plan for developing hotel infrastructure by the end of November.
 Jan. 1 is the deadline for reviewing the list of land plots proposed as sites for hotels with more than 100 beds each. This list contains 218 sites, 47 of which are under construction. Sixteen hotels will be built in St. Petersburg in 2004.
 
 
<b>Work at Home
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG - Starting Nov. 24, St. Petersburg job seekers will be able to us the services of the Home Job Center created by Stager Center for Internships and Employment, a press release from the organization announced Thursday.
 Job opportunities include seamstresses, knitters, telephone dispatchers, assemblers and artists, according to the press release.
 The job center originated in 1993 as the Women's Home Job Center, the only organization other than handicapped support groups to offer work-at-home jobs.
 The Center receives around 50 inquiries per day and maintains a job bank of more than 1,000 vacancies. It has helped almost 450 people find jobs. 



TITLE: Justice Ministry Criticizes UN Advice on Rights
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Justice Ministry on Wednesday criticized UN recommendations on how to improve human rights in Russia, saying some of them were &quot;tendentious&quot; and showed the United Nations lacks an understanding of the situation in the country. 
 
While acknowledging some progress, the UN Human Rights Committee urged Russia to improve its record on 18 counts, including salary discrepancies between men and women, domestic violence and extremism.
 &quot;The committee notes with concern the high level of poverty among women, the prevalence of domestic violence against women, and a marked difference in the wages of men and women for equal work,&quot; say the recommendations, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.
 &quot;It sounds as if our men are much richer,&quot; Justice Minister Yury Chaika retorted at a news conference. &quot;Inequality of men and women in terms of wages is nonsense. But they stated it again, reflecting old stereotypes.&quot; 
 He also lashed out at a suggested revision of a 2002 law on combating ex tremism to clarify its definition of extremist activity. The UN committee said the law is open to broad interpretation. 
 &quot;The law has a whole page dedicated to the definition,&quot; Chaika said angrily. 
 Deputy Justice Minister Mikhail Lebedev told the same news conference that a recommendation to protect media pluralism in light of the recent closures of private news outlets was out of touch with reality. 
 &quot;The issue confirms a lack of knowledge of the situation in our country,&quot; Lebedev said. 
 He refused to discuss the issue further, referring questions to the Press Ministry. 
 Justice Ministry officials said they had expected many of the other recommendations, including calls to curb police violence, human trafficking, abuses in Chechnya and the prosecution of journalists, researchers and environmentalists. 
 &quot;We know all these problems and are working on them,&quot; Lebedev said. 
 Alexander Cherkasov of the respected human rights organization Memorial insisted, however, that the critical tone of the UN report had come as a surprise to the authorities. &quot;The officials were indignant about getting such critical recommendations,&quot; he said. &quot;They thought this [report] was purely a bureaucratic matter and that no one would really pay much attention to it.&quot;

TITLE: Restaurant Style Fit for Tsars and Presidents
AUTHOR: By Natasha Warcholak
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Gourmet restaurants are gaining a presence in St. Petersburg, carrying the story of the post-Soviet enterprise culture. Special outlets labeled &quot;foreigners only&quot; monopolized by Intourist have disappeared and the &quot;discreet charm of the bourgeoisie&quot; is taking precedence. Although St. Petersburg's restaurant boom started about two years ago, thanks to the city's anniversary this year the luxury restaurant business is sky-rocketing. 
 
Lavish spending on restaurants is now becoming a status symbol. While some diners frequent high-end restaurants to flaunt their wealth, others enjoy indulging themselves in the luxury of excellent service, quality food and sumptuous interiors. With the ascendancy of eat-out culture, wine consumption and the strategic importance of wine suppliers such as Marine Express have been on the increase as well. This company started about seven years ago and expects favorable prospects for growth.
 What is the operating platform for such enterprises? According to Claudio Fopp, an &quot;on-call&quot; manager at Aquarel, the market situation before 1998 was like a ready-to-burst balloon when no one could be sure of anything. The August 1998 crisis caused the food market to shrink by about 20 percent, but also turned out to be groundbreaking for Russia's economy. What followed was, amazingly, an increasing stability which started attracting foreign investors and big capital. 
 Inspired trust and massive cash flow triggered the rise of ritzy restaurants. Now that they are cropping up in many parts of the city, lovers of dining out have plenty of venues to choose from. Excellent customer care, regular staff training, elegant crockery and cutlery, mouth-watering food, good choice of alcohol and cigars and interesting interior decoration are the starter package on the road to success. The rest is left to good marketing and masses of drive. Once the learning curve of the trading system is tamed, it's a very engaging business. 
 Some market veterans in operation since the early 1990s have managed to stay on top to this day. &quot;We are a fine-dining place for the elite,&quot; says experienced restaurateur Igor Markov, managing director of Palkin. &quot;The main selling point in the restaurant business is food. That's what attracts our customers.&quot; Live music every night, a banquet hall, art gallery and limousine rental are also on the menu. 
 While for Markov the restaurant business is like a mechanism of a watch where every little thing matters, Claudio Fopp sees it as a work of art. Aquarel is an example of what Fopp calls a good restaurant concept. Indeed, it opened only two years ago and has been famous for its fusion cuisine, which is probably why so many celebrities and VIPs - including Vladimir Putin - have chosen Aquarel for important dinners. Being located on a boat overlooking St. Petersburg's main historic monuments also helps. &quot;We're not just a restaurant though,&quot; says Claudio, &quot;we're an institution.&quot; Aquarel also hosts various music events, has a resident DJ and its own fashion agency. The restaurant also hosts Beaujolais Nouveau celebrations on the third Thursday of November. Other fancy restaurants including Le Paris at 63 Bolshaya Morskaya and Beletage 60 Nevsky Prospect are participating as well. 
 Beletage is one of the youngest whiz-kids of the gastronomic industry and the winner of this year's competition for best restaurant in the city. While the number of restaurants in operation makes it increasingly harder to be exceptional, Beletage organizes champagne tasting and cigar evenings and its Dutch-minimalist interior surprises with pseudo-Vermeer paintings.
 The elite restaurant business is a high-stakes game. Fortunes are spent on advertising, but word of mouth is still the best recommendation. French-owned Le Paris, an off-center regular VIP spot, has been open for almost four years with six types of home-farmed roast duck as its unique selling point. 
 Cozy atmosphere and selective advertising are the credo of Italian restaurants. Vinnarium concentrates on serving fine Italian wines, while Il Grappolo attracts sworn food connoisseurs, even from Moscow. The clientele in both places often includes celebrities.
 The local market is stable enough to attract bigger companies. One such company is Ost-Vest, the owner of Dvoryanskoye Gnezdo and 14 other restaurants. This is where the likes of Catherine Deneuve, Vladimir Putin, George Bush, and Paul McCartney choose to eat when in St. Petersburg, enjoying the sumptuous interior, quality food and made-to-order crockery. One selling point of Dvoryanskoye Gnezdo is the frequency of first-class performances by singers from the nearby Mariinsky Theater. 
 Another market giant is Concord Catering, which owns five very viable outlets. Concord's Staraya Tamozhnya, advertised as &quot;The Home of Haute Cuisine,&quot; although located slightly out of the city center, on Vasilievsky Island, is a favorite with VIP diners. The restaurant has fed 44 presidents, including the Russian president, and organized corporate evenings for companies such as Coca-Cola and Gillette. Famous customers such as Valentino, Gwyneth Paltrow and The Scorpions have been seen on the premises as well. Senat Bar across the river is famous for having served Bill Clinton during his state visit in 1996. Senat Bar has been a leader of the local restaurant industry since it opened in 1993 but doesn't rest on its laurels, ranking first in the Torgovy Peterburg annual competition run earlier this year.
 Regular restaurant-goers admit that there are no good seafood restaurants. Given the city's location, this comes as a surprise. Although in recent years the Russian economy has seen a mini boom in the production and availability of domestically manufactured consumer goods, this doesn't apply to the fish industry. Restaurateurs in unison admit that a good fish is a French-imported fish and that triggers additional costs. There is a glacial silence, however, when it comes to volunteering hard financial figures. 
 Good delicatessen shops are also in demand. Some restaurants like Vinnarium offer deli products on the premises but there's need for more. While the catering industry as a whole aims at consistent profitability and double-digit annual growth, there are still niches to fill.

TITLE: Deposit Insurance Bill Deadline Slips
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The likelihood of the deposit insurance law passing this year has slipped again as representatives from the Federation Council suggested they would block the bill and bankers said deputies acted on purely pre-election motives.
 
The Duma passed an amended version of the bill in a second reading Wednesday. 
 The deputies voted to retain state guarantees on all Sberbank deposits until 2007, not just on those accounts opened before the law comes into effect, as stipulated in an earlier version backed by the government and the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament.
 The Duma version &quot;gives Sberbank clear advantages vis-a-vis other financial institutions for attracting people's savings,&quot; which is anti-competitive and contradicts the Russian Constitution, deputy chairman of the Federation Council's financial committee Igor Provkin said in an e-mail to The Moscow Times.
 Provkin said the bill, if approved in a third Duma reading, &quot;will have a hard time passing the Federation Council, since the members of the Council are not affected by pre-election populism. At the very least, the [finance] committee will recommend that it be sent back.&quot; 
 His views were echoed by other committee officials Thursday, as well as by some bankers.
 The deputies &quot;destroyed the compromise that was so difficult to hammer out,&quot; said Yevgeny Ivanov, president of Rosbank, one of the participants in months-long negotiations on the bill. &quot;Such a version of the law should be rejected now and reviewed next year.&quot;
 Duma deputies defended the vote. 
 &quot;We must not, with our own hands, worsen the situation for millions of Sberbank account holders,&quot; said Yabloko deputy Mikhail Zadornov during the Duma debate Wednesday. 
 In the version that passed, the Central Bank retained the right to conduct special inspections to allow or reject banks from entering the insurance scheme. 
 Most analysts said this was the most important part of the bill, as it would allow for greater regulation of the country's fragmented banking sector and help depositors choose between healthy and weak banks.
 Some bankers, however, insisted the inspections would take too long. 
 &quot;We have serious doubts that the Central Bank could conduct these inspections quickly and professionally,&quot; said Andrei Yemelin, executive vice president of the Association of Russian Banks, adding that current regulations are already too extensive. 
 Nevertheless, Yemelin called for passage of the bill. 
 &quot;It would be easier to correct it later than to start anew,&quot; he said.
 &quot;If I could be sure this law would be adopted within the next six months, I'd wait [for a more liberal version],&quot; said Andrei Ivanov, bank analyst at Troika Dialogue. As it is, he also supports the bill's adoption now. 
 But Natalya Orlova, an analyst at Alfa Bank, said that the bill is unsatisfactory to too many sides and will likely fail at some future legislative stage.
 Banker Yemelin questioned the second reading's official tally, stating that 395 deputies voted in favor of the bill. Only about 40 deputies were present in the chamber, he said, with some voting for as many a dozen of their colleagues. 
 &quot;This corrupts the very idea of representative government,&quot; Yemelin said.


TITLE: Putin at Crux of Shift of Old Oligarchs to New
AUTHOR: By Andrei Piontkovsky
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin has of late been saying a lot of the right things about the defects of the system of oligarchic capitalism. Albeit somewhat belatedly - four years after his appointment to the presidency by one of the groups of the self-same oligarchs - Putin has nonetheless unearthed that people who made billions of dollars as a result of privatization are prepared to spend &quot;tens or hundreds of millions&quot; to save those fortunes.
 
As he said at a recent press conference in Italy: &quot;We know how this money is spent - on what lawyers, on what companies and PR firms, on what politicians - in part so these types of questions get asked.&quot;
 I will take the liberty of continuing the president's profound thought. Perhaps the most dangerous flaw in the oligarchic system is not the privatization of foreign journalists by business clans - even the Le Monde journalist who has yet to be circumcised by Putin's &quot;specialists&quot; - but the privatization of the top echelon of the state and the top brass of the country's law enforcement bodies.
 By way of illustration, I will adduce an example from the political life of the late 1990s. Then Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov imprudently got involved in the investigation of cases concerning the machinations of oligarchs close to the so-called Family. The unfortunate prosecutor was immediately &quot;wasted&quot; - not in the outhouse, but in bed with some VIP prostitutes. All things considered not a bad political death, you might say.
 However, in order to convince the public that Skuratov was a political corpse, state television first aired the scandalous tape with the naked prosecutor general, and then two of the country's top law enforcers appeared on the screen. I will call them law enforcer S. and law enforcer P. Their job was to certify the authenticity of the unfortunate Skuratov's genitals, which could be fleetingly glimpsed on the video tape.
 Law enforcer S. sat in silence, as red as a beetroot, his gaze fixed firmly on the floor. Law enforcer P. cheerfully and enthusiastically reported on the examination conducted jointly by his agency and the agency headed by S., which established the authenticity of the video tape and the people and organs depicted on it.
 As it emerged a little later, this was the crucial casting conducted by President Boris Yeltsin for candidates to succeed him as president of Russia.
 Several years went by and the everyday activities of certain oligarchs once again brought together the prosecutor's office and the same law enforcement bodies - however, this time in a somewhat different combination. The Interior Ministry, once headed by law enforcer S., took an imprudent interest in the case of the Tri Kita furniture store - a grandiose &quot;affair&quot; involving the up-and-coming oligarchic clan of alumni from the body once headed by law enforcer P.
 Law enforcer U., apparently recalling the unenviable fate of his predecessor or perhaps out of certain statist considerations, rushed to the defense of the new &quot;patriotically inclined&quot; oligarchs with his broad chest and powerful torso.
 And which oligarchs do you favor - Yeltsin's or Putin's?
 The Yeltsin-era oligarchs, it would seem, plundered more - although the Putin-era oligarchs are only just getting going.
 With these new patriotically inclined oligarchs, however, people have started dropping like flies.
 Already approximately a dozen people, having in some way or other come into contact with the secrets of Tri Kita, have perished. A key witness in the case, Sergei Pereverzev, was shot dead in a well-guarded ward of an elite Defense Ministry hospital.
 The investigative journalist and State Duma deputy Yury Shchekochikhin died in the Central Clinical Hospital after being mysteriously poisoned.
 It's not an easy choice. It's a good thing that we have a president whose career biography so organically combines and synthesizes the two component parts of Russian capitalism.
 Verily, Putin is our everything.
 
 <i>Andrei Piontkovsky, an independent political analyst, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Europe Has Role in Averting HIV Tragedy
AUTHOR: By Rian van de Braak and David Veazey
TEXT: Assessing the global HIV/AIDS situation, the National Intelligence Council, a U.S. government-sponsored think tank, has identified five countries of strategic importance that have large populations at risk of HIV infection. Russia is one of those five, along with India, China, Nigeria and Ethiopia. In these five so-called &quot;next wave countries,&quot; the number of infected people will grow from the 14 million to 23 million currently to an estimated 50 million to 75 million by 2010. This estimate eclipses the projected 30 million to 35 million cases by the end of the decade in central and southern Africa, the cur-rent focal point of the pandemic. 
 
All five countries have a major influence on their region and no doubt have the potential to affect the world. While the epidemic in these countries is still in its early-to-middle stages, they are led by governments that have not yet given the is-sue the sustained priority and attention that has been key to successfully controlling the epidemic elsewhere. Experience throughout the world has shown that only through active, high-level leader-ship to increase awareness, eliminate HIV-related stigma, and provide treatment (all of which help to change the behavior that leads to the spread HIV) can the scale of the epidemic be kept at a manage-able level. 
 Notably, for the very first time the emerging HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia was a topic on the agenda of the summit between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in Washington this fall. The Bush administration clearly wants Putin to undertake rigorous action to prevent the socio-economic disaster that so many experts are predicting. 
 Analysis of the development of the HIV epidemic in the former Soviet Union shows that developments follow a clear pattern in each country. First Ukraine and Belarus took the lead, with Russia following one to two years later. Then one or two years after that, the epidemic began to take hold in the countries of Central Asia. 
 Some might argue that the main U.S. donor agency, USAID, has a hidden political agenda with its HIV/AIDS and other aid programs in the former Soviet Union. This may be true and it could do more, but at least the U.S. government appears to be taking a serious interest in the devastating impact this epidemic will have on the region. The United States recognizes that this impact will echo throughout the world. 
 What is the European Union's position vis-a-vis this disaster that is occurring on its doorstep? With the upcoming expansion of the EU to include the Baltic states and Central Europe, the EU will soon share a border with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. 
 Looking at the EU's current response, it would be easy to conclude that there is very little concern at all. Some of its Tacis technical assistance projects now focus on HIV/AIDS (AIDS Foundation East-West is implementing some of them). However, sometimes these projects set unrealistic goals with a similarly unrealistic time frame and budget. They are also, in the broader scheme of things, nothing more than a drop in the ocean. 
 While some may say that a drop in the ocean is better than nothing, it is clearly not enough. If we look at Russia alone, a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS program incorporating prevention, treatment, care and support, would require an in-vestment of $160 million for 2003, increasing to $220 million in 2004.
 Russia is the largest beneficiary of funds from the EU's Tacis program, yet the amount of funds pledged to HIV/AIDS is less than impressive. In Russia, Tacis currently funds a 2.5 million-euro program to fight communicable diseases in prisons near Russia's northwestern border. Projects are also in the pipeline for addressing the Russian HIV epidemic in two &quot;phases.&quot; Both of these phases are small-scale advocacy, awareness raising and training projects limited to two of Russia's 89 regions. While these types of activities are needed, they are not of a scale equal to what European donors can contribute in this region.
 To be fair, the EU has made one of the largest pledges to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, with 460 million euros pledged up to 2006. The member states of the EU have individually pledged just under 1.7 billion euros for the same period. If the EU and its member states are taken as a whole, it would be considered the largest single donor to the Global Fund. Yet only 6.4 percent of the approved Global Fund grants have been allocated to HIV/AIDS pro-grams in the former Soviet Union. That amounts to about 0.37 euros contributed per person currently living in the EU from 2001 to 2006. Is this a sufficient investment to turn around one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics just across the border?
 Of course, the EU cannot take on all the needs of this region alone. The EU needs to work together with other G-8 countries to ensure an effective response. In the countries of the former Soviet Union, the governments themselves need to take more responsibility for stopping this epidemic in its tracks. Just as with the Global Fund, some EU members contribute to the efforts against HIV/AIDS in the region individually. These countries - notably the Netherlands, Britain and Sweden - actively and strongly support programs on the ground throughout the region. 
 But what is so evidently lacking is a common strategy and a clear position on which Europe can take a stand. Europe needs to team up with the United States to bring in resources and mobilize the political will to make HIV/AIDS a top priority in this region. Europe can also bring in valuable expertise, as well as a liberal and constructive attitude toward such sensitive topics as preventing HIV among injecting drug users or sex industry workers. 
 Maybe the EU could even be really daring and start up negotiations between the Paris Club of international debtor countries and Russia. Russia still owes more than $40 billion to the Paris Club for loans taken under the Soviet Union. One proposal that has been discussed is to retire these debts in exchange for greater spending on HIV programs by Russia (with possible benefits for all countries of the former Soviet Union). We need innovative proposals like this on the table to motivate Russia and the other countries in the region to work seriously on an epidemic that will soon be-gin to ravage an entire generation. 
 Sadly, the EU is losing precious time and may miss a unique window of opportunity to prevent this tragedy from happening. 
 
 <i>Rian van de Braak is general director and David Veazey is fundraiser of AIDS Foundation East-West, a nongovernment public health organization. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: glass in the window to europe
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Philip Glass, described as probably the 20th century's most commercially successful &quot;classical&quot; composer, who helped to found minimalism and developed his own distinctive style drawing from world music and rock, will come to Russia with his ensemble this week.
 
For his first Russian tour, which takes in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Glass chose &quot;Koyaanisqatsi,&quot; the first part of &quot;Qatsi,&quot; the film trilogy directed by Godfrey Reggio with soundtracks composed by Glass. The Philip Glass Ensemble will be providing live backing as the film is screened.
 The Baltimore-born Glass, 66, sees the piece as an good introduction for new audiences to his enormous body of work, which includes dozens of soundtracks, operas, ballets and theater performances.
 &quot;For people who don't know the work it's an excellent introduction, because it's only images and music, so no language is required,&quot; he said in a recent telephone interview from his home in New York.
 &quot;The ideas have universal interest. I played this piece all over the world, I just was in Korea and Japan. I've been in South America, Australia, Europe, so I've been everywhere with this piece and what I've discovered is that people from every part of the world are interested in this piece. It doesn't matter what nationality, it doesn't matter any of those things.
 &quot;I have many different programs I can do, but I think this is an important piece for several reasons.
 &quot;It defines very much my relationship to film in a way. It's also a subject which is very much a part of the discussions taking place today in terms of the environment and politics and social welfare. So it both artistically represents me and it represents me in terms of my ideas about the way we can work towards a better world.&quot;
 Having &quot;Life Out of Balance&quot; as its tagline, &quot;Koyaanisqatsi&quot; has no conventional plot, but rather presents a collection of masterfully filmed scenes that reflect the influence of technology on mankind.
 &quot;The ideas were developed by Godfrey Reggio, the filmmaker,&quot; said Glass, who worked on the film with Reggio from 1978 until it was released in 1983.
 &quot;It investigates the way the world is being transformed by the power of technology and it makes a kind of critique of it in a way. So the issues of 1983 are even more current today. If technology was an issue 25 years ago, it's even more so in 2003.&quot;
 Though dealing with ecology, Glass said the scope of the film is broader.
 &quot;You know, ecology is only one aspect of it,&quot; he said. &quot;It's also really about social organization too. It's about how we control the world, and the materials, intelligence and technology; it's about how we organize our life on this planet. It goes really beyond ecology.&quot;
 Glass who defines himself as a &quot;theater composer,&quot; adding that he sees cinema as a form of theater, said he likes to work with visuals.
 &quot; I like to work with image, with text, and with movement,&quot; he said.
 Glass said his work with Reggio was different from than some of his other numerous film soundtracks, such as that for last year's Hollywood film &quot;The Hours.&quot;
 &quot;With Reggio we worked as collaborators on equal basis, and the images and music came together at the same time,&quot; he said.
 &quot;In some cases the music came before the images and sometimes the images before the music. We joined together through from the very beginning of the process.
 &quot;With 'industry movies' like 'The Hours,' generally speaking, the movie is completed before the music is added. So the music doesn't have an opportunity to become an organic part of a film - only if the composer finds the way to do that, which I have been able to do on a number of occasions. But not through the efforts of the director in the case of 'The Hours,' or even with 'Kundun' or even with 'Mishima.' It's only with a few filmmakers that expect that the composer to work on an equal basis.&quot;
 Glass' probably best-known forays into pop and rock music are his &quot;Low&quot; and &quot;Heroes&quot; symphonies that he composed under the inspiration of the eponymous albums which were part of David Bowie and Brian Eno's trilogy in the late 1970s.
 &quot;I think it's very common for composers of concert music to take popular music and put those themes in their music,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Certainly that's been true in Russia, as you know. A lot of Russian concert music caught themes from folk music and popular music. Composers have done this for hundreds of years. Hundreds of years! It's not something new. I just take people who are alive; I didn't take dead people.&quot;
 He added that David Bowie especially liked his &quot;'Heroes' Symphony.&quot;
 &quot;David liked that one very much; he liked 'Heroes' more than he liked 'Low.' He liked 'Heroes' because he thought it was different from his own work. And he liked to hear how it became different.&quot;
 According to Glass, the symphony based on the final part of the trilogy, &quot;Lodger,&quot; still might appear sometime.
 &quot;There are plans but we are both busy. [Bowie] lives near me in New York. We see each other frequently, we do concerts sometimes together but to find the time is not easy. But we plan to do it.&quot;
 Always with an ear open to what is happening in rock music, following and collaborating with the likes of David Byrne, Michael Stipe and Patti Smith. Glass said he keeps hearing interesting sounds these days.
 &quot;I like a lot of them, people like Ben Harper or Rufus Wainwright - these are people in their 20s. Pearl Jam is a little bit older, I think Eddie Vedder is interesting,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;I hear this music. Living in New York it's very easy to hear, it's around all the time.&quot;
 
 <i>
The Philip Glass Ensemble will perform at 8 p.m. on Wednesday at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, 6 Ligovsky Pr., M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya, 275-1273. Links: www.philipglass.com, www. koyaanisqatsi.org</i>


TITLE: grebenshchikov still rocks at 50
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian rock guru Boris Grebenshchikov, or simply BG to his fans, will not head to India or London to celebrate his birthday far from St. Petersburg, as he used to. Instead, the day he will turn 50, he will climb the stage of the pompous Oktyabrsky Concert Hall to perform an anniversary concert with his band Akvarium.
 
The anniversary events kicked off on Oct. 31, when Grebenshchikov performed what was officially called his 50th anniversary concert at Moscow's Kremlin Palace, three weeks ahead his real birthday. 
 Since then Grebenshchikov has been the focus of media attention, causing a stir by appearing on television drinking tea in the company of Boris Gryzlov, the interior minister leader of the pro-President Putin party United Russia. BG also made news last week when he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Motherland medal for his &quot;great contribution to development of the art of music.&quot;
 According to Grebenshchikov, he stayed in Russia to celebrate his 50th birthday with anniversary concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg on his friends' request. 
 &quot;Quite a lot of people asked me not to leave for my 50th birthday but to play a concert. I came to the conclusion that it's pretty logical,&quot; said Grebenshchikov, speaking by phone from Kazan on Wednesday.
 Akvarium played Kazan as part its brief, two-date Volga tour, which also included Nizhny Novgorod. Grebenshchikov said the concerts were not part of anniversary activities. 
 The Moscow concert took place in the cities' most prestigious and official concert hall, the Kremlin Palace. Grebenshchikov whose Akvarium was often banned under communist rule said he doesn't accept the media's criticism about him performing at the Kremlin.
 &quot;Why does everybody speak about the Kremlin, but nobody speaks about [the Moscow club] B2?&quot; he asked.
 &quot;Whatever I do, people pay attention to the Kremlin. They will say 'You're playing at the Kremlin,' but they don't even notice that I play at a regular club the same days. It says a lot about people's mental state. But I'm ready for it. You don't need to convince me that people are stupid.&quot;
 Grebenshchikov has frequently expressed his criticism about Russian politics and even called the government &quot;war criminals&quot; at a press conference in 1995, while his line &quot;My Motherland is a pig that eats her sons&quot; (from &quot;500&quot; on Akvarium's 2002 album &quot;Sestra Khaos,&quot; or &quot;Sister Chaos&quot;) might be the strongest comment on the Chechen war in Russian rock. 
 But on the eve of his Kremlin concert he was shown drinking tea with Gryzlov at prime time on two state-controlled television channels, ORT and RTR. One of the highlights was Gryzlov's comment, &quot;I noticed that you're BG and I'm BG. I think we should have definitely meet and speak about life in this situation. It's a good coincidence.&quot;
 &quot;Well, if the minister of internal affairs decided it was important for him to meet me and inform me about the state of affairs in the country, I treat it as a big compliment,&quot; said Grebenshchikov.
 &quot;I think it's very interesting that he meets me and informs me about what's going on.&quot;
 Though the encounter was generally seen as part of the United Russia's pre-election campaign, with Gryzlov on an official leave from his ministry to conduct it, Grebenshchikov, who used to stay away from any political campaigns, disagreed. 
 &quot;He didn't say anything about it to me,&quot; he said. &quot;It was interesting to me. And it will be interesting to me in the future. But I can't see any participation in the pre-election campaign [on my part] so far.&quot;
 When asked about how he feels about being awarded a medal by the state, Grebenshchikov was full of irony.
 &quot;I have my plans for my political career. I'll gather many decorations, make an enormous number of millions, become friends with all the ministers ... First I become a deputy, then a tsar. I hope I didn't sound too aggressive.
 &quot;I'm in a very interesting situation, and I'll never be able to explain people why I do what I'm doing,&quot; he said. &quot;But the predictability of their reaction scares me immensely.&quot;
 Formed in 1972, his band Akvarium is considered the first that managed to marry rock music and the Russian language successfully. Since many lineup changes Grebenshchikov remains the only member left from Akvarium's classic lineup of the 1980s.
 Posters advertize the Thursday concert as one by Boris Grebenshchikov, rather than Akvarium - something that Grebenshchikov finds irritating.
 &quot;As long as I'm alive, it will be Akvarium. What they write [on posters] is their own damn business.&quot;
 According to Grebenshchikov, the anniversary concert will feature a string quartet, Akvarium's former accordion player Sergei Shchurakov, plus other guests.
 
 <i>
Akvarium will perform at 7 p.m. on Thursday at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, 6 Ligovsky Pr., M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya, 275-1273. Links: www.aquarium.ru</i>


TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: This week will see a concert by <strong>Philip Glass,</strong> something that has been rumored in the city for the past two or three years. Glass, who has never played in Russia, but has a plenty of fans in St. Petersburg not only for his symphonies, ballets and soundtracks but also for his collaborations with rock figures such as David Byrne and David Bowie.
 
Though the early reports had Mariinsky Theater as a possible venue for the event when the Philip Glass Ensemble provides live backing to Godfrey Reggio's film &quot;Koyaanisqatsi,&quot; has finally moved to Oktyabrsky Concert Hall. Glass will perform on Wednesday. See article, this page.
 A soundtrack composer from the younger generation, the 33-year old <strong>Yann Tiersen</strong> will be also performing this week. The Brest, France-born Tiersen is responsible for soundtracks of such films as 2002's &quot;Amelie&quot; and 2003's &quot;Good bye, Lenin!&quot; He will perform at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Monday.
 Akvarium's frontman and songwriter <strong>Boris Grebenshchikov</strong> will mark his 50th birthday with a concert on Thursday. Earlier this month the formerly subversive rocker was meeting members of the government while President Putin signed a decree to decorate him with a state honor . There was a mixed reaction to these events. See article this page.
 <strong>Modernization Music Festival,</strong> held at Ice Palace on Friday, doesn't look like a big deal, even if it has the Ukrainian folk rockers Vopli Vidoplyasova and good local pop-rock band Multfilmy. The rest of the bands on the bill seem to be the pulp that can be heard on youth-oriented music radio. <strong>Radical Strike 3,</strong> a small festival promoted by punk band L.O.V., formerly known as Lots of Vodka, at Orlandina the same night, might turn out to be more exciting.
 <strong>Kirpichi,</strong> arguably one of the finest local alternative bands, will perform at Red Club on Friday. Led by singer and guitarist Vasya Vasin, it now performs hard-edged, guitar-based rock, though it occasionally raps, a legacy from the band's hip-hop period from the late 1990s. The Tom Waits-influenced trio <strong>Billy's Band</strong> will appear at Stary Dom the same night. 
 An alternative can be found in a concert by <strong>NAIVE,</strong> probably the best-known Moscow punk band, which will perform at Orlandina. The band, which came to the city last month to promote its latest album, &quot;Rock 'n' Roll Myortv?,&quot; or &quot;Rock 'n' Roll's Dead?&quot;, called after Akvarium's 1983 hit, is to celebrate its 15th anniversary in early December.
 While local rock band DDT will be competing for audiences with the U.K. pop-metal outfit Def Leppard (both have stadium concerts this Saturday), <strong>Leonid Fyodorov,</strong> the frontman of the respected yet lately not very prolific band Auktsyon will make a solo appearance at Red Club.
 While Auktsyon marked its 20th anniversary with a concert late last month, Fyodorov has had a 10-year solo career. Though Fyodorov solo album &quot;Lilovy Den&quot; (Lily Day) was put out in early September, the show has been advertized as the official launch concert for the release.
 Finally, <strong>Televizor,</strong> probably the most politically radical band of the local rock scene in the 1980s, had come through many ups and downs since its heyday. It will reappear with its funk-rock style at Red Club on Sunday.
 <i>
 - By Sergey Chernov
 </i>


TITLE: fat chance of fine food in the pub
AUTHOR: By Joseph James Crescente III
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Walking along Liteiny Prospect not long ago I noticed a boisterous looking place promoting itself as a <i> &quot;pivnoy restoran,&quot;</i> a beer restaurant. I couldn't exactly decipher what a beer restaurant was, since technically beer isn't food, but after several weeks nagging curiosity overcame self-restraint. 
 
Tolsty Friar (&quot;The Fat Friar&quot;) opened just six months ago on the corner of Belinskogo and Liteiny. What, I wondered, is the difference between a beer restaurant and a pub? There is a difference: in a beer restaurant some of the entrees are cooked with beer.
 My companion and I were greeted by a mustachioed English-speaking host, who, even though it was early and the restaurant nearly empty, refused to let us select a seat at the window. He gave us a choice of some of the more out of the way tables.
 The restaurant is dim and cavernous comprising one large room with the bar in the center and eight tables on each side. The d&eacute;cor is rustic and simple with antique lamps hanging over wooden tables. This ambience was awkwardly complemented by the blaring sound of Soviet pop, which later in the evening changed to Russian chanson to better suit the surroundings. In one corner was a statue of the tolsty friar himself, a boisterous, jolly man. But as we were soon to find out, he probably dines elsewhere.
 The menu numbers over ten pages and was larger than I had expected. It serves all the major Russian soups (<i>shchi, borshch, solyanka</i>), sandwiches, beer-soaked meats, fish and desserts. And everything sounded great. But there was a grave difference between the description on the page and the proteins we were to be presented with.
 For appetizers my companion and I selected three of the more signature-sounding items. The &quot;friar-style sausages&quot; were tasty, served with an above average ketchup (80 rubles, $2.60). They were slightly spicy - the kind of sausages one would expect to find at a Hungarian barbecue. Next we had a salad of cabbage, salted trout, apples, cucumbers and olives for 90 rubles ($3). Unfortunately they skimped on the trout and apples and the heavy dose of mayonnaise swallowed any flavor that this salad potentially could have had. The mushroom julienne we ordered for 45 rubles ($1.50) was so small it was served in a container the size of a thimble. The cheese was overly thick and sticky on top and only partially melted inside instead of being smooth. My companion quipped after the mushrooms arrived, &quot;I'm starting to wonder how a friar could get tolstier with portions like this.&quot; However, one of the true delights of the evening were the freshly squeezed juices for 55 rubles ($1.80) each of which we downed with the starters. I had apple and my companion had carrot. There are five other juices on the menu.
 Being a beer restaurant, we decided that it was absolutely obligatory to drink beer. But after perusing the beer page we found the selection to be average. The usual Nevskoes, Baltikas and Bochkarovs dominate all at 50 rubles ($1.60) for a half liter. We tried slightly less standard choices: I had a Sibirskaya Korona for 60 rubles ($2), and my companion a Czech Budweiser for 110 rubles ($3.60) and a dark Tinkoff for 90 rubles ($3), all half liters. The bar list is extensive with the usual range of vodkas, cognacs and cocktails. The customer will be pleased to know that with the first beer comes a complimentary tray of beer snacks with chips, pretzels, fish and cheese. 
 With our beer my companion enjoyed a fish cream soup for 60 rubles ($2), which was generous with its portion of fish, yet smooth so that the fish taste didn't dominate. But like everything else, it was bland.
 For the main course I had a <i>shashlik</i> of pike perch and trout for 130 rubles ($4.30) with a side of rice curry for 30 rubles ($1). The fish was well prepared and pan seared, and served with lemon which released the fish's mild flavor. However, it was lacking any sort of spice, and the rice had no flavor at all. My companion had pork neck served in a beer marinade for 120 rubles ($4) with &quot;peasant&quot; garlic potatoes for 40 rubles ($1.30). He described the meat as tender, but complained that it probably had been cooked in a pan instead of over an open flame. He resisted getting a sauce, in order to fully appreciate what he imagined would be a beer-flavored dish but it was mild. He said the potatoes weren't bad, but could have been crunchier. We followed dinner with a couple of decent espressos for 25 rubles (83 cents) each.
 The service could have been the restaurant's saving grace. However most of the wait staff were teenage girls who were inattentive and inexperienced. It wasn't particularly busy, yet it took six or seven minutes to get a beer, and we were the closest table to the bar. By the time we left the place was almost full.
 The tolstiness of the place is misleading. The portions aren't exceptionally hearty, and with the exception of the freshly squeezed juice nothing is above average. But everything was reasonably priced, and it is in a great location between Liteiny and Fontanka. Also there is some kind of smoke eating device. Even though a number of the patrons were smoking, it wasn't noticeable. It might be an okay place to grab a beer and a late night meal after you've already been drinking. That way you won't notice the blandness as much.
 
 <i>
Tolsty Friar, 13 Belinskogo Ulitsa. Tel. 272-7943. Open daily from 10 a.m. until the last guest leaves. Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards not accepted. Dinner for two with alcohol: 1015 rubles ($33).</i>


TITLE: tenor revels in russian repertoire
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The life of Vladimir Galuzin may be hectic, and full of contradictions, yet the Russian-born tenor thrives on it. 
 
The world-renowned singer, who established himself at the Mariinsky Theater in roles like Hermann in Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot;, Andrei Khovansky in Mussorgsky's &quot;Khovanshchina&quot;, the title role in Rimsky-Korsakov's &quot;Sadko&quot; and other Russian arias, now performs almost exclusively works from the Italian repertoire and almost always abroad - at Milan's La Scala in particular.
 &quot;I would adore to sing more Russian operas but there is just such a lobby against them in Western Europe, in particular, and my repertoire has shrunk since I left Russia,&quot; said the singer, who comes to town for two performances at his musical alma mater next week. 
 &quot;Audiences rave about those tuneful, languid, romantic, sometimes cloying Italian operas, and everyone is comfortable with the status quo,&quot; he explaines. Some Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov would definitely help to spice up his stage life away from home land but for the time being the Galuzin family soothes its nostalgia by singing 19th century Russian romances (such as &quot;Why Do You Girls Like Handsome Guys?&quot;) at home.
 Galuzin said that his wife,Yekaterina, speaks to their children in French, while he speaks to them in Russian yet apart from that the family lives as if in Russia, adding that he &quot;hasn't become westernized.&quot; 
 &quot;We get together on all Russian holidays, including the biggest Orthodox ones, and my Russian relatives living in Germany come to visit as often as they can,&quot; he said. &quot;We just adore singing together with friends, and when we expect guests we prepare many copies of texts of the songs we sing with them - for those who forget the verses!&quot; 
 So where does Galuzin feel most at home?
 &quot;The least serious yet the most honest way of describing where I live would be to say on the plane,&quot; said the singer - who, after abandoning a cosy house in Provence in the south of France for a place whose best point is being 30 kilometers from Brussels Aiport, was obviously only half-joking. 
 More seriously the singer admits to an affinity with Italy and southern France. &quot;I admire their artists, and nature and even the climate, so it is a very wholesome experience,&quot; he said. &quot;I resonate with these places.&quot;
 It is the power, drama, depth and philosophy of Russian opera that most moves Galuzin and what brings him close to operas like &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot; or Rimsky-Korsakov's &quot;The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh&quot;. 
 &quot;In many Italian operas, even the most famous ones, the plot is really fictitious and often illogical, which shows that the composers didn't want very much from the libretto,&quot; he said. Even Verdi's &quot;Otello&quot;, the opera he excels in, and which he now sings on international stage frequently, he wished was a bit more Shakespearian. 
 &quot;I have been cast in many productions of 'Otello', and naturally I have many ideas about the character,&quot; he said. &quot;Shakespeare's Othello is a very complex character, very sophisticated, while in the opera the personages are boldly drawn as either good or bad. Desdemona, for instance, is quite a daring girl in the opera ... But there is little the director can do, the music just doesn't imply too many nuances.
 &quot;When I am on stage I always think of Shakespeare - as well of course of Verdi! - and I am every minute aware of Othello being a careerist, who married Desdemona for her father's money. Love is simply out of the question.&quot;
 A Novosibirsk Conservatory graduate, who joined the Mariinsky in 1990 and moved abroad less than 10 years later, Galuzin now gives a mere handful performances a year with the Mariinsky Theater, and wishes his packed schedule could allow him to spend more time at home. 
 &quot;I am not being altruistic, and I very much need to perform in Russia myself,&quot; he said, adding that he craves for Russian audiences. &quot;I just know that every message I send from the stage - vocally, dramatically or emotionally - will be received and understood.&quot;
 For Galuzin, Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot; is the greatest ever dramatic opera, and the greatest ever drama. &quot;I adore singing Otello and Kalaf [in &quot;Turandot&quot;] but Hermann's passions are genuinely bottomless, this is just a breathtaking experience to live through his story.&quot;
 Thinking back to his years in Russia, Galuzin recalls being more enthusiastic about his art than he is now. &quot;When you hope that your audiences will sense every most sublime nuance, it makes you more inventive,&quot; he said. &quot;It is like when you start thinking about it, all your senses don't just wake up but sharpen and become razor-edged. When you feel slightly alien to the public, it cools you down.&quot;
 Looking forward to his visit to St. Petersburg, Galuzin says he is eager to sing his favourite Russian arias.
 &quot;Perhaps the dramatic element in many other European operas is often scarcely present because it has been underestimated, and the reason why I love the Russian opera so much is that they give you a genuine human drama as well as the music, and it is not just all about melodics,&quot; Galuzin says. &quot;And after all, I do remember that Russian composers made me the singer I am now.&quot;
 
 <i>
Vladimir Galuzin next performs at the Mariinsky Theater on November 27 in Puccini's &quot;Turandot&quot; and then again in a gala-concert on December 1.</i> 


TITLE: opera lovers to wed
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - During last Saturday's student performance of &quot;La Boheme&quot; at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, when tenor Chingis Ayusheyev kissed soprano Elena Bychkova on stage, it was more than just acting. The two 27-year-old singers - who play the lovers Rodolfo and Mimi in Giacomo Puccini's classic 1896 opera - are engaged in real life.
 
&quot;In the beginning, it was hard to do the love scenes,&quot; admitted Ayusheyev, who graduated from the Conservatory last summer. But the two fell in love while rehearsing for a performance of &quot;La Boheme.&quot; At that time, both Ayusheyev and Bychkova were students at the Conservatory. Now, the two singers plan to get married next spring.
 &quot;La Boheme&quot; is frequently performed at the Conservatory's Student Theater, not least because it lends itself well to updating. In recent years, it became the basis for the popular Broadway musical &quot;Rent,&quot; set in New York in the 1990s, and last weekend's performance at the Conservatory was staged in contemporary costume. 
 In fact, Puccini's opera about the romantic travails of several young poverty-stricken artists, writers and musicians in 1830s Paris is surprisingly up-to-date from the perspective of today's Conservatory students, many of whom face similar problems of their own. 
 In real life, students at the Conservatory receive a paltry monthly stipend of 300 rubles. Those who cannot find housing in Moscow live in a cramped dormitory. Since the Conservatory's auditoriums are all used for public concerts, the Student Theater has no practice stage - so rehearsals for &quot;La Boheme&quot; took place in a basement practice room. Except for the freshly painted front facade, the building of the Conservatory is itself in dire need of renovation, with crumbling walls and dank, poorly lit corridors.
 Nonetheless, the Conservatory continues to produce world-class performers. Many of its opera singers go on from graduation to solo on stages like the Bolshoi Theater, while touring at other prominent venues around the world. In doing so, they uphold a tradition that goes back to 1866, when the Conservatory was founded. Professors here have included the world-renowned composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Dmitry Shostakovich. Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich studied here before he defected from the Soviet Union, as did composer Sergei Rachmaninov.
 Aspiring opera singers must complete a five-year program in the Conservatory's vocal department. The curriculum incorporates classes on subjects like art, history and dance into a strenuous practice schedule - singing upwards of three hours a day under the guidance of a single teacher. A student's relationship with his or her teacher is the centerpiece of their academic career. To graduate, each student must perform in a <i>diplomny spektakl</i> (degree performance), with tremendous consequences for their future careers. 
 Most students at the Conservatory have studied music from an early age. Bychkova started playing piano at the age of seven, and, as a teenager, training her voice. Originally from Belgorod, Bychkova's parents moved the family to Moscow in order to support their children's musical careers. Bychkova is not the only Conservatory student in the family; her younger brother, a clarinetist, attends the Conservatory as well. 


TITLE: coen brothers' comedy lacks heart
AUTHOR: By Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: &quot;Intolerable Cruelty&quot; is so clever, so funny, so suavely entertaining, that it comes as a shock to realize that its not nearly as satisfying as all those qualities would lead you to believe. Despite its manifest strengths and multiple pleasures, this screwball comedy about romance and divorce finally leaves us stranded at the altar, caught off-guard by a chill we should have known was coming. 
 
The sharp humor will not be a surprise to partisans of its creative leaders, writer-director Joel Coen and writer-producer Ethan Coen, who've spent close to two decades turning out a series of clever and dark comedies from &quot;Blood Simple&quot; and &quot;Raising Arizona&quot; through &quot;Fargo&quot; and &quot;Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.&quot; 
 Though other writers were involved here (the story is by Robert Ramsey &amp; Matthew Stone and John Romano, with Ramsey &amp; Stone getting a share of the writing credit), the film has the Coen's unmistakable snap and bite, which is a very good thing, at least up to a point. 
 With George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones working together beautifully as L.A.'s pre-eminent divorce attorney and the woman who is determined to get the best of him, &quot;Cruelty&quot; has the keenest satiric eye for where California culture is most ridiculous. At its best moments, this is the equivalent of a dexterous drawing-room farce. 
 &quot;Cruelty&quot; also has an eye for smartly drawn comic characters, whether they be smaller turns like the wonderfully named Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy (Jonathan Hadary), or picture-stealing ones like Billy Bob Thornton's splashy showing as the impossibly wealthy Texan Howard Drexler Doyle. 
 The film opens with one of its most amusing folks, TV producer Donovan Donaly (Geoffrey Rush), classically driving through Beverly Hills in his spiffy Jaguar convertible, his faux hip ponytail blowing in the wind as he brings unexpected passion to Paul Simon's &quot;I am just a poor boy&quot; lyric from &quot;The Boxer.&quot; 
 It's through Donovan or more specifically Donovan's soon-to-be-wife, that we meet Miles Massey (Clooney), &quot;a man whose name is synonymous with bitter disputes and big awards,&quot; a rapacious legal practitioner whose prenuptial agreement is so impregnable an entire semester is devoted to it at Harvard Law. 
 Despite all this, despite having a cabin in Colorado, and a man who waxes his private jet, Miles is having a &quot;what does it all mean&quot; midlife crisis. But that doesn't stop him from taking on yet another case, that of real estate entrepreneur Rex Rexroth (a delightful Edward Herrmann), a man caught cheating on his wife who wants to avoid paying the price. 
 This is business as usual for Miles until he meets Marylin Rexroth (Zeta-Jones), Rex's not particularly forgiving wife. In a trice, Miles is smitten. When he says, &quot;I am fascinated by that creature,&quot; for once, he's speaking from the heart. 
 But smitten or not, Miles is not about to be bested by anyone, which is exactly how Marylin, who looks upon her divorce as her &quot;passport to wealth, independence, freedom&quot; feels as well. The lengths this conniving pair cannily and stealthily go to to get the best of each other, the (perhaps excessively) elaborate stratagems they resort to, is what takes up the greater part of &quot;Cruelty's&quot; screen time. 
 Given that they are the two most calculating people anyone has ever met, it's clear, at least to us, that Miles and Marylin are made for each other. And what, after all, are classic screwball comedies such as &quot;Bringing Up Baby&quot; and &quot;Twentieth Century&quot; but romances under the most hectic circumstances imaginable? Yet romance, a small but critical component of this film's plot, is where &quot;Cruelty&quot; comes a cropper. 
 For as our protagonists begin to think about warming to each other, we find it impossible to warm to them. The Coens, brilliantly funny though they are, have always made ice-cold movies. They caught a break in &quot;Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?&quot; one of their most popular efforts, because the traditional music on the soundtrack provided all the warmth the film needed. The music choices here may be impeccable (Elvis doing &quot;Suspicious Minds,&quot; Edith Piaf's &quot;Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien&quot;), but the soundtrack is not as central to the plot and can't function the same way. 
 So &quot;Intolerable Cruelty&quot; ends up being a heartless screwball comedy, which is a kind of contradiction in terms. In the heyday of the form during the 1930s and 40s, something like this wouldn't have been possible - the kind of hip coolness the Coens exemplify was not a cultural norm, and the whole idea underlying this kind of movie and the actors and actresses who starred in them were as entities we had no trouble warming up to. Without that sense of connection, no amount of zinging humor can make &quot;Intolerable Cruelty&quot; completely satisfying. We laugh, and that is no small thing, but, finally, even surprisingly, that is not enough.


TITLE: stagnant 'twelfth night' marks a new low
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The new production of &quot;Twelfth Night&quot;, which premiered at the Bolshoi Drama Theater last weekend, comes amid rumours that its director Grigory Dityatkovsky is being considered to replace the BDT's veteran artistic director Kirill Lavrov. Now 78, Lavrov has been talking of handing his duties to a younger but talented and &quot;reliable&quot; colleague.
 
On this showing Dityatkovsky is not the right candidate. His &quot;Twelfth Night&quot; is utterly disappointing, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth, especially for audiences who remember the Golden Age of the BDT in 1960s, 70s and 80s. The theater flourished under directorship of Georgy Tovstonogov, who took over in 1956 and was in power until he died in 1980. Tovstonogov's 1962 &quot;Woe From Wit&quot;, 1966 &quot;Idiot&quot;, 1972 &quot;Inspector General&quot;, 1975 &quot;Story of a Horse&quot;, 1983 &quot;Tarelkin's Death&quot; gained the troupe nationwide fame.
 The new production will only make theatergoers even more nostalgic. William Shakespeare's famous romantic comedy, which first saw the stage in London in 1601, has acquired a farcical flavor in Dityatkovsky's rendition, and he has turned the show into an inappropriate gathering of cynics. Sublime humor and light merry spirits have evaporated from the story which in this version could hardly be less sophisticated. The characters flirt with each other in a vulgar manner, making salacious grimaces, with cheap, pub-style humor.
 From the moment the curtain rises the performance is deathly uninspired, lacking spark and ease. Sergei Dreiden is aloof as Duke Orsino, and appears to be far too bored with life to be able to fall in love. The words of passion and affection coming out of his mouth find no confirmation in his acting. Maria Lavrova, on the other hand, was ecstatic and galvanized with emotions as Viola, but this only works to the show's disadvantage. 
 Ensemble playing was virtually non-existent, as if every single actor was on stage in their own show. Polina Tolstun, still a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Theater Art was charming but helpless as Olivia. The audiences would have never guessed this disjointed show was a premiere, so worn out and moss-covered did the production look.
 The level of this show's vulgarity - from Maria's heavily overdone makeup and suggestive poses (Yelena Popova) to Sir Toby Belch (Valery Zakharov from the Theater On Liteiny) taking his clown's trousers off - is something never before seen on the BDT stage. The reason why salaciousness and boorishness are needed to spice up Shakespeare, remains obscure. 
 The director has also decided that it would be wise to liven up the centuries-old play with a bit of music and singing. A piano and a violin were present on stage throughout the performance but the instruments were used to accompany only a parody of the vocal arts. The trick was apparently meant to be a funny, a lively mocking of serenades but again, it didn't work, resulting in cacophony. When Maria ended one such exercise with a loud clap and the abrupt cry of &quot;stop this shrieking of tomcats!&quot;, the audience burst with applause. It was the applause of relief.
 The audience is left with the impression that the actors are uncertain as to where and how to go about the performance, looking for a concept but unable to find it. The actors could, at most, to concentrate on their roles and offer some interpretation, as did the troupe's veteran Alisa Freindlich, whose Clown was both bitter and extremely compassionate.
 After Georgy Tovstonogov's death in 1980, an adequate replacement was not found, and it was decided that the new artistic director would concentrate his efforts on preserving the legacy of the late legendary director. The most important thing was not to ruin the house that Tovstonogov built. Now, that house has become old, feeble and fragile. Only two productions - &quot;The Pickwick Papers&quot; and &quot;Uncle Vanya&quot; - have survived from Tovstonogov repertoire, and two dozen actors from his dream team remain in the troupe. After being denied fresh blood and any new influence at all for so many years, the BDT troupe finds itself in an unappealing state of stagnation. Its new &quot;Twelfth Night&quot; only confirms the trend. Thus the whirligig of time brings in his sweet revenges.


TITLE: Dozens Killed in Istanbul Bomb Attacks
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: ISTANBUL, Turkey - Trucks packed with explosives blew up near the high-rise headquarters of the London-based HSBC bank and the British consulate on Thursday, killing at least 25 people and wounding nearly 400, officials said.
 
The bombings, which occurred five minutes apart, at about 11 a.m., came days after two synagogue suicide bombings and coincided with the visit of President George W. Bush to London. They were blamed on al-Qaida.
 &quot;We see their utter contempt for innocent life,&quot; Bush said at a news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. &quot;The terrorists hope to intimidate, they hope to demoralize. They are not going to succeed.&quot;
 British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described the attacks as &quot;clearly appalling acts of terrorism&quot; and he suggested a link to the al-Qaida network.
 &quot;I'm afraid it has all the hallmarks of international terrorism practiced by al- Qaida,&quot; he said in London.
 A man calling the semiofficial Anatolia news agency claimed that al-Qaida and the militant Islamic Great Eastern Raiders' Front, or IBDA-C, jointly claimed responsibility for attacks.
 Turkish authorities said the same groups were behind Saturday's nearly simultaneous synagogue bombings in Istanbul, which killed 23 people and the two attackers.
 &quot;It seems the attacks have been conducted with the same barbaric methods,&quot; Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, who serves as government spokesman, told reporters.
 Turkish media reported the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, but the governor's office said only that attackers blew up explosive-laden pickup trucks.
 The first blast was at the Turkish headquarters of HSBC, the world's second-largest bank, shearing off the facade of the 18-floor building and shattering the windows of nearby skyscrapers.
 Body parts, the charred shells of cars and broken glass were scattered around a 3-meter-deep crater that was carved in the street outside the bank. Water gushed out of the top floors of the building like a faucet.
 Bystanders bloodied and covered in dust looked dazed as they walked past lines of ambulances. Several people helped carry the limp bodies of victims.
 Another bomb ripped off the wall surrounding the garden of the British consulate in the downtown Beyoglu district.
 British consul general Roger Short was killed in the car-bomb attack against the consulate in Istanbul, the consulate's chaplain Ian Sherwood said.
 Asked whether the consul was dead, the chaplain replied, &quot;he is.&quot;
 The building where Short was working was completely destroyed, the chaplain added.
 At least 25 people were killed and 390 wounded, Istanbul's Health Department reported. Television reports initially said up to five blasts, but Turkish authorities later confirmed only two.
 &quot;Again we are reminded of the evil these terrorists pose to people everywhere and to our way of life,&quot; Blair said. &quot;Once again we must affirm that in the face of this terrorism there must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace, in attacking it wherever and whenever we can and in defeating it utterly.&quot;
 Blair also reaffirmed his commitment to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
 &quot;It should not lessen ... our commitment to Iraq,&quot; he said. &quot;On the contrary it shows how important it is to carry on until terrorism is defeated there as well.&quot;
 The Foreign Office warned British nationals against travel to Turkey's metropolis Istanbul after the bomb attacks.
 &quot;We advise against all but the most essential travel to Istanbul, until the situation becomes clearer,&quot; the Foreign Office said, updating its travel advice for the country.
 &quot;We urge you to be vigilant in all parts of the country,&quot; the Foreign Office advice said, calling for particular care be taken around potential terrorist targets such as tourist sites and areas where foreigners gather.
 The Beyoglu district, where the consulate was located, is a popular tourist destination with shops, bars, movie theaters and restaurants.
 On Wednesday, authorities arrested six people in connection with the synagogue bombings. 
 A Turkish court charged five with &quot;attempting to overthrow the constitutional structure,&quot; which carries a sentence of life imprisonment. 
 A sixth person was charged with &quot;helping illegal organizations,&quot; punishable by five years in prison, Anatolia said.
 No trial date has been set.
 Two suicide attackers, both Turks, blew up pickup trucks outside the synagogues on the Jewish Sabbath, killing 23 people and the two bombers. 
 Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the two had visited Afghanistan in the past and that investigators were looking for any al-Qaida links.
 On Sunday, the al-Qaida terror network claimed responsibility for the bombings in messages to two Arabic-language newspapers, but it was not possible to authenticate those claims. The outlawed IBDA-C, also claimed responsibility, but Turkish authorities said the attack was too sophisticated to be carried out by that group.
 
 <i>(AP, AFP) </i>

TITLE: Friend Says Jackson Will Surrender
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SANTA BARBARA, California - Michael Jackson and his attorney will &quot;choose their own time and their own place&quot; to surrender to face child molestation allegations, a family attorney said Thursday. A friend said he was going to &quot;fight this tooth and nail.&quot;
 
Investigators waited for the singer at Santa Barbara's small airport Wednesday, along with a throng of media, but he did not appear. Jackson had left Las Vegas in his private jet Wednesday, but his whereabouts were unknown, according to published reports.
 He was expected to surrender to authorities as soon as Thursday, and law enforcement officials said charges would be filed.
 Brian Oxman, who has been an attorney for the Jackson family for years but is not directly representing Michael Jackson in this case, said Thursday that Jackson and attorney Mark Geragos were working on the timing of the surrender. 
 &quot;They will choose their own time and their own place to do this,&quot; Oxman said on CBS's &quot;The Early Show.&quot; &quot;It will be designed to be as quick as possible from their own perspective.&quot;
 A family friend, Steve Manning, told ABC's &quot;Good Morning America&quot; Thursday that Jackson's family came to Las Vegas to support him. &quot;He feels he's been wrongly accused and he's going to fight this tooth and nail,&quot; Manning said. &quot;He's at war right now and he's going to use any weapon he has to fight these charges.&quot;
 His arrest warrant set bail at $3 million and Jackson was directed to give up his passport, authorities said.
 The 45-year-old singer was in Las Vegas when dozens of law enforcement agents swarmed his Neverland Ranch compound Tuesday to serve a search warrant.

TITLE: Russia Named As Iran Helper
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria - The International Atomic Energy Agency has identified Russia, China and Pakistan as probable suppliers of some of the technology Iran used to enrich uranium in its suspect nuclear programs, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday.
 
The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity as a key IAEA board meeting discussed how to react to Iran's nuclear activities. While Iran has acknowledged nearly two decades of concealment, it has recently begun cooperating with the agency in response to international pressure.
 As part of that cooperation, it has suspended uranium enrichment - an activity that the United States had linked to what it says was Iran's nuclear weapons agenda. Iran insists it enriched uranium only to produce power.
 While acknowledging that some of its enrichment equipment had traces of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, it insists those traces were inadvertently imported on material it purchased abroad.
 Iran has said it cannot identify the countries of origin because it bought the centrifuges and laser enrichment equipment through third parties.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: <b>Report Faults Utility
 </b>

WASHINGTON (AP) - A computer malfunction at an Ohio utility played a major role in the nation's worst blackout, but a U.S.-Canadian task force said power grid operators still should have prevented the Aug. 14 outage from spreading through eight states and Canada.
 "Things go wrong. But it is the responsibility of the people who operate the system to keep the small problems from getting bigger," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Wednesday.
 Abraham, who chaired the task force with Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal, said FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron violated several voluntary reliability standards the power industry has imposed on itself.
 "This blackout was largely preventable," Abraham said. He lamented the federal government's limited ability to take punitive action for a blackout that left 50 million people in the dark, including all of New York City, Cleveland and Detroit, and knocked out more than 260 power plants.
 
 
<b>SEC Probes Payouts
 </b>

CHICAGO (AFP) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating millions of dollars of unauthorised payments to former executives of the Hollinger International Inc. publishing group.
 The Chicago Tribune reported that the SEC has been working quietly with Richard Breeden, who was hired by the Hollinger board to look into the payments to former Hollinger CEO Conrad Black and several other executives.
 A separate investigation by the SEC is expected to focus on Hollinger's board of directors and its role in approving certain payments to top executives, the daily said.
 Black, the Canadian-born British press baron who controls the Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times and Jerusalem Post, resigned his key executive posts Monday over the row.
 David Radler, the publisher of the Sun-Times and Hollinger's chief operating officer, was also ousted by the Hollinger board.
 Black and his lieutenants are said to have pocketed $32.1 million in payments that were not approved by the board. 
 
 
<b>New Whale Species?
 </b>

TOKYO (AP) - Japanese scientists say they have identified a new species of whale, a remarkable discovery if confirmed.
 The animal is a type of baleen, the family of whales that strain tiny plankton and other food from seawater, the researchers say.
 "Can you imagine? An animal of more than 10 meters was unknown to us even in the 21st century," said Tadasu Yamada of Tokyo's National Science Museum, the senior author of the study that appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
 
 
<b>Many Ill in Hong Kong
 </b>

HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong health officials warned the public to be on alert after hundreds of people were struck down by an outbreak of viral gastroenteritis.
 The Department of Health said the outbreak, which first emerged at a school last week, had infected a total of 409 people after spreading to another four schools, an elderly home, a hospital ward and a training centre.
 The outbreak appears to be linked to the Noro virus, also known as the Norwalk-like virus, which generally occurs in places where there is inadequate sanitation and food is contaminated by infected people. 



TITLE: U.S. Leads Belgium in Fed Cup
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Meghann Shaughnessy edged Kirsten Flipkens 9-7 in the third set, and Lisa Raymond overpowered Els Callens, giving the United States a 2-0 lead over Belgium in the Fed Cup semifinals Wednesday. 
 
&quot;Sometimes you have to win ugly,&quot; U.S. captain Billie Jean King said. 
 Neither team has its top players, with the U.S. squad missing Serena and Venus Williams, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles. The Belgians are without Justine Henin-Hardenne and Kim Clijsters, who are ranked Nos. 1 and 2. 
 Shaughnessy erased a match point and outlasted the 17-year-old Flipkens 6-7 (4), 7-6 (8), 9-7, after Raymond put the Americans ahead in the best-of-five series by beating Callens 6-2, 6-1 at Olympic Stadium. 
 &quot;It feels good to get the U.S. off to a good start,&quot; Raymond said. &quot;I think we're all ready, and we came here to win this Cup.&quot; 
 Russia and France were tied 1-1 in the other semifinal. 
 Amelie Mauresmo beat Vera Zvonareva 6-2, 6-2 to give France the lead, but Russia evened it when Anastasia Myskina saved a match point and came back to top Mary Pierce 4-6, 7-6 (2), 7-5. 
 &quot;I didn't let her put her game together and do what she likes to do, which is dictate the points,&quot; Mauresmo said. 
 Flipkens, the top-ranked junior, gave Shaughnessy quite a tough time. The Belgian took two timeouts early in the third set to have her legs massaged. 
 But Flipkens went up a break at 4-3 when Shaughnessy sent a shot long after four deuces. 
 The American broke back to even the set at 5-5, and the players then held serve to 8-7. That's when Flipkens netted a backhand at 30-40 to end it. 
 Shaughnessy, King said, &quot;found a way with her heart and her guts to win that match.&quot;
 Raymond faced a break point in the fifth game of her match but powered a forehand past Callens to get to deuce. Raymond then quickly collected the next two points, returning to her seat next to King with a big grin and a 4-1 lead. 
 Callens finished the next game with an ace, but Raymond made it 5-2 on serve and then broke Callens at 15. 
 In the second set, Callens won the second game, which went to deuce five times, but she couldn't manage to claim another. 
 The American took a 2-1 lead by serving at love, then broke Callens twice before closing out the set 6-1 and winning the match with another love game on serve. 
 The United States, with Martin Navratilova scheduled to play doubles alongside Raymond on Thursday, is seeking its 18th Fed Cup title. The Americans pulled out of the competition in 2001 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, then lost to Austria in the second round last year.


TITLE: Enthusiasm Replaces Navratilova's Hatred of U.S.S.R.
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Martina Navratilova calls it &quot;coming full circle.&quot;
 
Navratilova emigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1975 when she was 18, going on to a career in which she amassed 37 Grand Slam titles and becoming the greatest player in the history of women's tennis.
 Now 47, Navratilova is in Moscow this week to play for the U.S. team in the final four of the Fed Cup, returning to a city so despised in her native country.
 &quot;I hated the Soviet Union,&quot; Navratilova said in an interview Monday evening. &quot;Everybody did. You couldn't be a proper Czech and like the Soviet Union... They affected our life. People telling me what I could study, where I should go to school, what I should think, what I should feel, what I should say. That's not a way to live.&quot;
 Navratilova said she was also having her tennis career dictated to her, which was why she decided to leave.
 &quot;In 1975 the federation said it wasn't going to let me play in the U.S. Open because they said I was too Americanized and I was hanging out too much with the American players,&quot; she said.
 &quot;They almost didn't give me a visa to go and play, so when I finally did get it and was able to go to the States, I never went back.&quot;
 The boom in Russian women's tennis in recent years comes as no surprise to Navratilova, who said it was just a matter of giving players the freedom to develop.
 &quot;All these women were here before, they just didn't have the opportunity to stay out there long enough and flourish.&quot; In Soviet times, players were quickly replaced if they did not achieve immediate success, she said. &quot;They would start traveling when they were 16, 17 or 18. Then they would be on the tour for two or three years, and if they didn't become great like Olga Morozova, if they just made it into the top 10 but not the top five, they would let somebody else come [and play]. They were 21, and their careers were over.&quot; 
 &quot;You don't really hit it in tennis until your late 20s. That's when you hit your stride. So most of them never had the chance.&quot;
 The Russian side is the most formidable of this year's final - which includes Belgium and France in addition to the United States - featuring four players of the world's top 13: No. 7 Anastasia Myskina, No. 8 Yelena Dementieva, No. 12 Nadia Petrova and No. 13 Vera Zvonareva.
 But despite the strong Russian side and the participation of Navratilova, this year's final four is more notable for who is not playing than for who is.
 Belgian stars Justin Henin-Hardenne and Kim Clijsters, No. 1 and No. 2 in the world, respectively, pulled out after Moscow was chosen as the host over a Belgian site, and the U.S. team is far from full strength with the absence of Serena and Venus Williams, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati.
 No. 4 Amelie Mauresmo and No. 33 Mary Pierce will lead the French team, while the most familiar name on the Belgian team will be Elke Clijsters, Kim's younger sister.
 The tournament draw was held Tuesday, with play starting up Wednesday morning at Olympiisky Stadium. The United States-Belgium matches will begin at 11 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, with the Russia-France matches not beginning before 5 p.m. on both days.
 Navratilova and doubles partner Lisa Raymond take on Belgium's Caroline Maes and Clijsters on Thursday afternoon.
 Players will have a rest day Friday, when the draw for the Saturday-to-Sunday final will be held.
 Tickets cost from 50 rubles to 3,000 rubles and are on sale at the stadium.