SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #976 (44), Friday, June 11, 2004
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TITLE: Governor Vows to Aid Poor
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a wide ranging speech on the state of St. Petersburg on Thursday, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said ridding the city of poverty is the main goal of the city administration, but provided few clues as to how she will stimulate the economy to provide the money to achieve that goal.
Describing St. Petersburg as in a "precarious" state, she outlined on Wednesday the program City Hall will follow for the three remaining years of her gubernatorial term in an address to the Legislative Assembly.
Assembly members' reactions were mixed, but several said the content of the address was quite removed from reality.
"It's important to bring the quality of the communal housing services up to standards approved by the government, to repair roofs, basements, facades, staircases and yards," Matviyenko said.
"Residents have to care about their own and the state's property," she added. "Together, we must do everything we can to stop domestic vandalism, which has reached dangerous levels. Every day lifts break down, windows and doors are smashed, mailboxes are crushed and staircases are fall apart.
"Not a single branch of the administration will be able to do anything if the residents are not on our side," she said. "Citizens have to take responsibility for their city, yards and houses."
Other priorities she listed included improving the city's infrastructure and the business environment, and creating standards of living close to the "minimum ones accepted in Europe."
To do this City Hall will not only have to reduce the number of people living in poverty, which is 22.6 percent of the city's 4.6 million population, but also foster the development of small businesses, which are capable of creating new jobs with higher salaries, she said.
"Administrative barriers that hinder Russian and foreign companies from coming to our city, and the patronage of certain companies by the city government over many years have created unhealthy conditions for local businesses and harmed their competitiveness," Matviyenko said.
The government plans to simplify the paperwork and reduce the time taken to get approvals for investment projects, making it possible for investors to get all they need from authorities at a single window, she said.
"We will go this way seriously and confidently, following a principle of fewer words and more deeds," Matviyenko said. "At the same time, we won't be copying some regions that have given investors more and more different privileges.
"Tax breaks will be possible in exceptional cases only, and only if investment is made in charter capital," she said.
Amendments to the law on tax breaks are ready and will soon be sent to the Legislative Assembly, she added.
"The main thing ... is to create understandable, transparent and predictable rules of the game," Matviyenko said.
One step in this direction is to set up a practice of open tenders for plots of land to renovate and develop buildings, she said.
Despite her words on transparency, Matviyenko this year allocated oil firm LUKoil 60 sites for gas stations, drastically increasing its presence in the city without any tender, in a decision that angered the local oil industry.
Her anti-monopoly committee said it had no concern over the LUKoil deal.
In-fill construction projects, which have spawned a wave of protests from residents throughout the city, are necessary, she said.
"There is a big demand for residential space. We've got to put up with this until we find new areas for construction."
Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the liberal Yabloko faction of the Legislative Assembly, said the address appeared to be a selection of the right words and good intentions, but without any firm basis.
"It sounded like the speech of a Communist leader at a meeting of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when all that was said sounded right but it was divorced from reality," Vishnevsky said Wednesday in an interview.
"She talks about a single window [for investors], but doesn't say that investors have to stand in a line for three months to get to that window," he said.
"She also didn't say anything about City Hall's plans to improve the city demographics," Vishnevsky said. "They have just drafted a law to get rid of financial assistance for new mothers. This is City Hall in action; the rest of what she said is just words."
In her address, Matviyenko said the city's population has dropped by 354,000 people since 1991 and the number of deaths a day is 1.9 times the number of births.
Vladimir Yeryomenko, a lawmaker in the Mariinskaya faction, said Wednesday that the address reminded him of a line from a poem by Robert Rozhdestvensky, which goes: "Everything has been calculated to the last decimal place, but it leaves the audience neither warm nor cold."
"This would be my comment," he said.
Yeryomenko was not happy that no deputies questioned the governor. The council of factions had decided against this, he said.
"It would be understandable in the case of a presidential address when there are 450 State Duma deputies in the hall and hundreds of other officials," he said. "But here there are just 50 lawmakers. It would have made sense to let each faction ask a question."
"I don't know why they decided not to ask questions. Maybe she asked them not to," Yeryomenko said.
It is unlikely that Vadim Tyulpanov, the speaker of the assembly, was satisfied with what the governor said.
"During her election campaign Governor Matviyenko made promises to bolster the city budget," he said Wednesday at a briefing.
"I would have liked the governor to show in her address how it will be possible to do this in a practical way, if not to double it, then maybe to raise it by 50 percent."
The only explanation Matviyenko gave about ways for the budget to grow was to say that a quarter of the city budget comes from taxes on small businesses, and that for this reason it should be fully supported by City Hall.
She forecast that in 2005 the budget would consist of 102 billion rubles ($3.5 billion) of revenue and 105 billion rubles ($3.62 billion) of expenditure with plans to increase both to about 140 billion rubles ($4.82 billion) by 2007.
TITLE: Blokadniki Protest Cash Deal
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Survivors of the Siege of Leningrad or blokadniki have called on the government to drop its plans to end their "privileges" - such as free medicine and free rides on public transport - and to "compensate" them for the loss with extra cash.
Unions organized nationwide protests against the plan on Thursday.
About 500 survivors of the Nazi siege of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known as in World War II, took part in a protest at the city's monument to the Heroism of Besieged Leningrad on Tuesday. They carried banners saying "Hands Off Our Privileges" and "No to Compensation."
"It's very painful that the government acts like this toward us," said siege survivor Tamara Zhuravlyova, 72.
"We are very afraid of this reform, because the compensation of 1,100 rubles ($37) [offered to siege survivors] will never be enough for us to pay for the free services that we have," Zhuravlyova said.
The plan to exchange the long-standing subsidized and free services for veterans and invalids for cash, which the government proposed last month, has been met with much skepticism by citizens.
Veterans said the proposed schedule of cash payments, which range from $30 to $100, is very low in regard to the cost of living today.
The protesters called on President Vladimir Putin to cancel the reform.
"It's very offensive for us that Putin, who is a native Leningrader, and whose parents survived the siege, believes those who said we would be able to live well on these miserable payments," said Galina Schukan, head of the Vasilyevsky Island branch of the Siege Survivors Society.
Many protesters said they did not believe the government's assurances that people would be able to choose between continuing to receive the subsidized or free services, and taking cash in compensation.
"I'm sure it's only talk that we will have a choice," Zhuravlyova said. "We don't believe it."
Zhuravlyova was eight years old in 1941 when the siege began. Hundreds of thousands of Leningraders died of starvation.
"The hunger was terrible," she said. " Ever since, I become dizzy if I haven't had something to eat for a few hours. The siege ruined our health."
She had recently spent 1,000 rubles for injections for headaches and dizziness, she said.
Another siege survivor, Tatyana Konstantinova, 64, said the pension siege survivors and other pensioners receive is so low that they use their free transportation "to travel around the city in search of cheaper food."
Pensions range in value depending on how long and where people worked. Most pensioners receive from $50 to $100 per month.
To get to see her little granddaughter, who lives at the other end of St. Petersburg, she has to change her means of transport three times, which would cost her more than 40 rubles for a round trip if she had to pay cash.
Yury Kolosov, also a siege survivor, said that the reform was neither well thought out nor well prepared. "It seems the government decided to plug the gaps in its finances with the help of veterans' and invalids' privileges," Kolosov said.
The State Duma is to review the bill in its first reading on July 2, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Meanwhile, invalids are seriously worried they will lose their rights to free medicine.
Marina Shipulina, head of the St. Petersburg Diabetes Society, said invalids with diabetes, cancer, tuberculosis and asthma are especially concerned. All these categories of invalids get medicine at no cost because they need it to survive.
If diabetics had to pay for their medicine it would cost about 4,000 rubles ($137) a month, she said.
It is not yet clear whether invalids will lose their right to free medicine and be offered cash instead, but they are worried that the compensation won't cover their needs, Shipulina added.
Interfax quoted Tatyana Golikova, a deputy finance minister, as saying Tuesday that if the subsidized and free services are replaced by cash payments, the government will have to pay veterans 25.9 times as much as they do now, while invalids will receive 8.9 times more in 2005.
Golikova said the subsidized and free services for veterans cost on average only about 50 rubles a month, while for invalids the figure is 112 rubles. The nation's 89 regional administrations pay only 27.4 billion rubles to all those entitled to privileges, she added.
TITLE: Ex-Adviser to Reagan Hails His Successes
AUTHOR: By Simone Kozuharov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's one-time adviser on Soviet affairs remembers him as the man who forever changed the face of Moscow-Washington relations.
Suzanne Massie, Reagan's adviser from 1984 to 1988, a respected author and a Democrat at the time, said Reagan played a "very significant" role in ending the Cold War. "His greatest ... achievement was being able to make that breakthrough and establish a human contact and relationship of trust, which was definitely not there before," Massie said.
Reagan was the first U.S. president to build human relations between the two countries that were locked in the decades-long Cold War, Massie said.
"[Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev told me that [Reagan] had extraordinary human instincts," Massie said. "That's very important for Russians." Washington bureaucrats had a stale approach to U.S.-Soviet ties, leaving the two sides locked in an arms race that had the two superpowers living in fear of each other.
"They all just assumed that the Soviet Union was immutable, would never change. Think how many careers were built on that - bureaucratic careers. So status quo was much more convenient than anything else," Massie said.
But Reagan turned the tide with his unique approach and interest in the Soviet people.
"He really wanted to know how ordinary Russians thought and lived and their aspirations, rather than bureaucrats," she said. "He was the first president I think to understand very clearly the difference between Russian and Soviet."
Known as "The Great Communicator," Reagan collected Soviet anecdotes and many of his words became catchphrases or lasting hallmarks of the 1980s. He took the Russian proverb "trust but verify" and transformed it into an international symbol of U.S.-Soviet relations.
"I taught him the proverb," she said.
Reagan used the proverb in Washington when he and Gorbachev signed the historic INF Treaty, reducing the two superpower's stockpiles of ground-based nuclear weapons.
"Gorbachev said, 'Why do you say that all the time?'" Massie recalled, laughing. "And he said, 'Because I like it.'"
He was better known, however, for declaring the Soviet Union "the evil empire," a name that immediately ignited international debate and has lived in infamy since.
The phrase came at the end of a speech to a group of evangelical Christians in Florida, in the second to the last paragraph, almost "in passing," she said.
"It's amazing to me how it was not only picked out but how it stuck. As far as I know, he never used that expression ever again," she said.
The comment left the Politburo reeling, but some Soviet citizens were quietly cheering Reagan on, Massie said.
"It was not received here everywhere in the same way it was received by the bureaucrats," Massie said. "At the same time, all kinds of people here were cheering him on ... people who basically said, 'Right on, Ron.'"
Massie spoke in a telephone interview during a visit Wednesday to St. Petersburg. She frequently travels to the city, where she is involved with a charity assisting hemophiliacs. She cut short the trip to return to Washington for Reagan's funeral.
Reagan's determination to end the Cold War was evident even before he won the presidency. Reagan's son Michael said he decided to run for a second term as governor of California "to get the Soviets to the table," Massie said.
An assassination attempt early in Reagan's first term in 1981 only spurred him on, she said.
"After the assassination attempt, he felt more strongly that he had a real mission," she said. "He's going to be remembered as the man who did manage to shepherd the end of the Cold War without a single shot being fired - and that's quite an achievement."
Massie met with Reagan 22 times over their four-year working relationship, "which is a lot," she said. "I had more face time with him than anybody on this subject, except his closest adviser."
Each meeting often lasted 1 1/2 hours, a rarity, and she counseled Reagan "before all the big meetings with Gorbachev," Massie said.
"I had a sincere affection for the man," she said. "And I really think I was pretty damn lucky."
TITLE: Students Fear Worst As Firm Disappears
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: About 300 foreign students at St. Petersburg Mechnikov Medical Academy say they face an uncertain future after the firm through which they paid the academy for their education suddenly disappeared in early June.
The students, most of whom are Indians or Sri Lankans with smaller numbers from Arab countries, said the office of Dubai-based Sailan International, which has been in debt to the academy for almost a million dollars of the students' payments for the last two years, was closed Sunday.
According to the academy, Sailan International owes the academy $620,000 (18 million rubles) for 2002-2003, and $310,000 (9 million rubles) for 2003-2004.
A note posted on the door of the closed firm said, however, that Sailan International had paid its debt to the academy. The firm could not be reached for comment.
The academy, however, denies that it received any of that money. The students said they are worried that the academy will make them pay twice.
In the letter that a group of students wrote anonymously to The St. Petersburg Times, the students said that the academy was "giving them pressure to pay the money again," though they had already paid Sailan.
"We have all our payment receipts," the students wrote.
The students also wrote that the academy is not letting them sit exams at the end of the semester until they pay they also said they feared students would not be allowed to leave Russia for their summer vacation if the academy says they have not paid.
However, Alexander Shabrov, rector of the academy, addressed the students Wednesday, saying that students will be allowed to take some exams this month, and the rest of the exams they will take in the fall.
Shabrov also said they would be free to go home, regardless of their payment status.
Shabrov asked the students to make declarations of how much they had paid Sailan.
"We need this information to compare the data on payments we had from Sailan, part of which we have doubts about," Shabrov said.
Shabrov also said the academy would use the students' declarations in a lawsuit it intends to bring against Sailan.
Shabrov said the academy used Sailan because it didn't have agents abroad to market the academy's programs.
He said students who were in debt to Sailan should now pay that money directly to the academy.
All students will be able to return after the summer vacations, he said.
"However, from this fall students will be paying their education fee directly to the academy," Shabrov said.
The Indian Consul General in St. Petersburg, Ashok Kumar Sharma, said the consulate was concerned about its nationals among the students.
"We were always worried that our students could not pay for their education directly to the academy, but had to do it through some other firms, which at times were suspected to be not honest," Sharma said.
Sharma said the consulate planned to talk to the academy about the Indian students' plight.
TITLE: Tax Dispute Over British Council Escalates
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A dispute over whether the British Council should pay taxes has escalated after the organization missed an Interior Ministry deadline to submit its financial records for an audit by Wednesday.
"I think the Interior Ministry doesn't have an accurate understanding of the status of the nature of activity of the British Council, which is a transparent governmental and cultural organization. We can't be likened to some commercial firm," British Ambassador Roderic Lyne told reporters in Novosibirsk on Wednesday according to news reports.
After the Interior Ministry announced their investigation Monday, the council said it operates as a cultural department of the British Embassy and, therefore, has diplomatic status. It also said it operated with the knowledge of the Foreign Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry, however, sided with the Interior Ministry on Tuesday. "The Foreign Ministry doesn't consider the British Council offices in Russian cities as cultural departments of the British Embassy," it said on its website.
The council operates under a 1994 Russian-British cooperation agreement that doesn't say British Council offices have diplomatic status, the ministry said.
The British Council hasn't asked for and the Russian government hasn't granted permission to open additional diplomatic offices, the ministry said.
It said the council's status means it has to pay taxes.
British Embassy officials were not available for comment Thursday.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: TV to Film McCartney
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The management of former Beatle Paul McCartney have agreed to allow his concert on June 20 in Palace Square to be filmed for television, Interfax reported Wednesday.
"Discussions have taken place between the musician's agent Barry Marshall, who represented the organizers of Paul McCartney's concert in Russia and representatives of Channel One," an unnamed representative of the organizers was quoted as saying. "As a result, an agreement has been reached for the concert to be filmed."
Commerce Opposed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Vadim Znamenov, the director of Peterhof, has criticized a plan for the restoration of the Oranienbaum former royal estate that envisages museums and commercial structures occupying the same territory, Interfax reported Friday.
"Oranienbaum is such a delicate, charming structure, such a great monument with an interesting history that one shouldn't treat it roughly," he was quoted as saying.
"When we consider the rather significant decline in culture in Russia today, and sometimes even speak of a crisis, then attempts to adapt tender Oranienbaum to some kind of commerce is simply unacceptable," Znamenov added.
Kholodov Acquittals
MOSCOW (AP) - A Moscow court on Thursday acquitted all six defendants in the 1994 killing of investigative journalist Dmitry Kholodov, citing lack of evidence.
Kholodov, a reporter with Moskovsky Komsomolets who investigated military corruption, died when a briefcase he had picked up at a Moscow train station following an anonymous call blew up after he took it back to his office.
He had been told it contained evidence, colleagues said.
Prosecutor Irina Alyoshina said her office would appeal Thursday's verdict. All six had pled not guilty.
Judge Yevgeny Zubov ordered the case to be sent back to prosecutors to look for new suspects.
Oblast to Sell Aircraft
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The property fund of Leningrad Oblast intends to sell two aircraft by auction on July 6, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The oblast's press center said the two planes are an Antonov 2 and a Yak-40, which will have starting prices of 50,000 and 850,000 rubles respectively.
The aircraft, bought in the early '90s for firefighting and to transport administrators around the region, are no longer economic or suitable, the report said.
TITLE: Land Auction Confusion Soars
AUTHOR: By Sophia Kornienko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two of the four lots presented at St. Petersburg's first open land-leasing auction Wednesday were canceled due to lack of demand. The two remaining lots were sold close to their nominal prices after hardly any bidding.
The two Vyborgsky district housing construction lots, roughly 30,000 square meters each, were offered at their annual rental prices of $1.56 and $1.54 million. The lots went to Pioneer Group, an affiliate of Boston's Pioneer Group, Inc., at $2.028 million and to Lentek, an affiliate of the Finnish YIT, at $1.616 million.
Initially, 15 companies registered to participate in the bidding for the two housing construction lots. Registration involved paying a deposit equal to 20 percent of the annual rental price. The plots outlined for commercial construction in Nevsky and Primorsky districts received only one request each and therefore were not even included in the actual auction.
Although the start-up annual rental price of the commercial estate plots was announced at $250,000 and $680,000, which is by far lower than the price of the housing construction lots, participants were not eager to bid.
"Only the housing construction lots can pay off short term, given that they are purchased at a price close to nominal," said Denis Litov, the general director of Pragma construction company, one of the auction's participants.
The city committee on construction and architecture provided only approximate lot profit-to-price ratio and did not hire experts to calculate more concrete numbers, he said.
Pragma had spent roughly $20,000 on calculating the possible profitability of construction areas, but did not even try bidding for their target lot after Lentek raised their bidding ticket. "The plot has no engineering network and will require comprehensive investments," Litov said. Only 30 percent of the areas purchased will prove efficient, Litov said, "as we are not going to sell elevator shafts or flights of stairs, neither will we be allowed to build additional stories to increase profits."
Foreign companies are subject to the same rules as local ones, but no foreigners took part in Wednesday's bidding. The leasing term is very short, and the amount of investments in the whole of St. Petersburg is smaller than that of one Berlin district, explained Lev Vinnik, director of the city administration's investments division.
Meanwhile, analysts say, the size of the plots on offer at present raises concerns. A medium-range construction company is hardly capable of digesting such enormous chunks. "I think the large plots on sale are a political trick initiated by construction giants," Delovoi Peterburg quoted Evgeniy Kryanin, director of Olven SPb as saying Monday. As opposed to the housing construction market, the commercial construction market does not bring the profits required to cover the payments the city demands, Kryanin said.
"We should be able to start presenting smaller plots for lease in approximately half a year from now," Vinnik commented. "We plan to hold one or two auctions every month," he said.
After the sale of the two lots Wednesday, the city budget received $6.4 million, said Andrey Stepanenko, acting director of the St. Petersburg Property Fund at the city government. Six more lots, three in Vyborgsky district and one each in Kalininsky, Nevsky and Krasnogvardeisky districts, will be presented at the auction on June 30.
On June 22, a large 12.6 hectare plot on Prospekt Prosvyaschenia will be offered on yet more complicated conditions - on top of the rental payments, the auction winner will be obliged to provide $28 million for the infrastructure, as the unfinished building of the Postgraduate Medical Academy located in the area has to be dismantled.
TITLE: A6 Invades the Local Market, Sales Begin
AUTHOR: By Sophia Kornienko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Official sales of the new Audi A6 in Russia start Friday. Dealers in Europe and Russia have already received 12,000 orders. St. Petersburg's Rus-Auto officially presented the model Thursday.
Russian dealers have ordered little over 400 cars so far, and most of those cars had found their future owners long before the new model hit the country's market. Some cars were even sold at Thursday's presentation.
It is the new Audi's combination of a dynamic sports design and the comfort level of a sedan that account for the model's popularity, experts say.
"Even though this new premium class sedan has been exhibited only at a few car shows, and its potential buyers had no opportunity to test-drive it, the release of this most luxurious of sports cars and the sportiest of luxury cars is promising to become this year's main event," Russian car magazine Kolyosa wrote last week.
Prices for the Audi A6 in Russia were first announced in late May. The cheapest car in the A6 family, equipped with a V6 2.4 engine and a mechanical gearbox, will cost $49,564 in basic complication. Audi A6 3.0 Multitronic with a V6 petroleum engine and a CVT variator will be sold at $61,300. The only diesel car in the series, a Quattro with a V6 TDI engine and an automatic gearbox will be offered at $73,400. Finally, the most expensive piece among the A6 models is the Audi A6 4.2 Quattro, priced at $90,400. The Audi A6 requires maintenance every 15,000 kilometers in Russia and every 30,000 in Europe.
Over 1,000 A6 cars are projected to be sold in the country by the end of the year. Car dealers are still offering the previous generation models, but those are "leftovers" - of the old Audis, very few models are produced, such as the Audi S6 Avant. The new A6 Avant will appear next year, to be followed by the Audi S6 new generation sedan in 2006.
The 1998 version of the Audi A6 was claimed to have a weak suspension mechanism and a high level of theft due to low protection efficiency, said Alexander Korpusenko, sales specialist at VEHO, St. Petersburg's Mercedes-Benz dealer. However, Korpusenko said, Audi is a steady German brand, very popular in Russia. The Audi A4 is reported to have the best sales, he said.
According to the safety rating published last week by the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil Club or ADAC, owners of five-year-old Audis A6 apply for repairs at ADAC half as frequently as the owners of five-years-old Opel Omegas, but twice more frequently than those who drive Nissans Almera of the same age. MINI, Audi A2, Toyota Avensis and Toyota RAV4 were named the safest cars in their categories. Among sports cars, ADAC cited Mercedes-Benz SLK as the most reliable, and gave the lowest mark to Audi TT. Among other cars often demanding repair were Renault Clio, FIAT Punto, Scoda Felicia, FIAT Bravo, Renault Kangoo, Renault Megane, Alfa Romeo 147, Opel Omega, and the 1998 Mercedes Vito.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Yukos Shares Drop
MOSCOW (SPT) -Yukos shares dropped by as much as seven percent on Thursday after the firm's chief executive said a $3.4 billion tax bill could damage production forecasts for the year.
Chief Executive Simon Kukes told the Wall Street Journal that failure to overturn the tax demand at the next court hearing on June 18 would mean the company slashing investments and missing a 10 percent output growth target for this year.
Yukos' locally denominated stock was down 4.61 percent at 221.60 roubles on the MICEX exchange.
"People are really getting concerned things are starting to fall apart," said Steven Dashevsky, an analyst at brokerage firm Aton. "There's no one minding the ship ... and it's starting to affect operations, which is what everyone feared."
EU Asks to Stop Row
BRUSSELS (SPT) - The European Union's executive told Russia on Wednesday to stop creating a row over food safety certificates in which Moscow slapped a ban on meat imports from the 25-nation bloc.
Last week, Russia lifted the blockade until October 1 after the two sides set a new deadline for resolving the dispute, but the European Commissioner for External Relations Chris Patten said it was now up to Moscow to deal with the issue "responsibly".
"It's a matter that politicians at the top in Russia should deal with," Patten told a news conference.
TITLE: Spammers Traced to Russia
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian gangs of spammers are so prolific that by December 2004 junk e-mails could account for 90 percent of all messages sent via the Internet, and Moscow doesn't want to do anything about it, a leading anti-spammer said Wednesday.
Steve Linford, director of London-based Spamhaus, a research and lobby group that works closely with U.S. and European law enforcement agencies, said that Russian computer gangs are directly responsible for some two-thirds of the 21 billion junk e-mails that clog up inboxes all over the world each day.
And the explosive growth of junk e-mails from 20 percent of all messages at the end of 2002 to 55 percent at the end of last year is due almost entirely to Russian groups who sell "trojan" programs and lists of infected computers that can be used to send out messages to fellow spammers abroad, Linford said.
A Russian, Alexei Panov, is No. 3 on Spamhaus' list of the world's most notorious spammers, and another Russian, Ruslan Ibragimov, is not far behind. "We have been tracking Panov for a long time," Linford said. "We know that he prefers to work alone and has a very expensive flat in Germany."
Trojans are viruses that turn ordinary computers into untraceable mini-servers used to send still more viruses and unwanted spam messages. Distributing these programs is a criminal offence in many countries, including the United States and Britain, where it is punishable by lengthy prison terms. In Russia, however, there is no anti-spam legislation, although sending out so-called "harmful programs" is considered illegal.
Anatoly Platonov, spokesman for the Interior Ministry's cyber-crime squad, said the police closed 6,000 computer-related criminal cases last year. "But we can only operate within the framework of existing legislation, and there are no laws that directly target spam," he added.
There are thought to be around 200 computer gangs in the world, nearly 100 percent of which are staffed by Russians, Linford said.
"Although Americans send most of the spam, they are using programs and untraceable computers provided by Russians," he said.
Many of them operate by using connection services provided by state-owned fixed-line monopoly Rostelekom, which has been reluctant to take action against spammers, Linford said. "This is a big problem."
"We have approached Rostelekom many times asking them to switch off the service to known spammers, but they have ignored the problem hoping it would go away," he said.
On one occasion Spamhaus was so frustrated with Rostelekom that it blocked e-mails from the phone company's server to the hundreds of millions of users Spamhaus protects, a measure usually reserved for the spammers themselves.
"When we did that we actually got the attention of the top management of the company," Linford said. "But they did the minimum of our requirements - they blocked one spammer. It's very hard to get them to understand that this is a serious problem."
A Rostelekom spokeswoman contacted on Wednesday refused to give her name or comment on the issue.
TITLE: Yukos Relieved of Drug Lawsuit
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yukos has won a rare court victory. It can now legally sell Cannabis Vodka. The oil giant and its billionaire owners, who are fighting multibillion-dollar tax claims, as well as tax and fraud charges, may rest a little easier after a Voronezh court threw out a lawsuit claiming they were promoting drug use by selling the vodka at one of their gas stations.
The case started when three drug agents confiscated a bottle of the Czech-made vodka from Gas Station No. 26 in Voronezh on April 2nd, said Prokhor Merkushov, spokesman for Voronezhnefteprodukt, the Yukos subsidiary that owns the station.
The Federal Anti-Drug Service then filed a complaint that Voronezhnefteprodukt had violated Article 6.13 of the Administrative Code, which forbids the promotion of drugs, and the law on advertising, which forbids the promotion of drinking and drugs.
It said the court could just read the label of a bottle to see the merits of the case. Cannabis Vodka is sold in a clear glass bottle with a green marijuana leaf. Its label reads, "Cannabis vodka. An alcoholic drink prepared from hemp seed extract. Try this wonderful drink, but don't forget its extraordinary powers."
The Central Voro-nezh Court ordered a psycholinguistic examination of the label and ruled Monday that the text promoted vodka sales rather than drug use. The court also found that Voronezhnefteprodukt was not in violation of the advertising law since it has not promoted the vodka in any way. Merkushov said Tuesday that his company has no plans to take the case further. He said, however, that he found it strange that the vodka, which is sold in stores across the country, was only confiscated from the one gas station. "Why was only Yukos mentioned in this case? This suggests that it was done for show," Merkushov said. He said the vodka bottle has been returned. An anti-drug official, however, suggested that the case was not over. "They won today, but who knows what will happen tomorrow?" said the official, who spoke on condition that his name not be printed. Cannabis Vodka is made by the Czech-based L'OR, which also produces a range of absinthes. Robert Gross, L'OR's spokesman for Russia and English-speaking countries, said he was unaware of the Yukos case but not surprised by it.
He insisted that the vodka is absolutely safe and legal since it contains no delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main chemical ingredient in marijuana.
Rotor House, which has been distributing Cannabis Vodka in Russia for two years, said it has won several cases filed by the anti-drug service this year. Anti-drug officials took an interest three months ago when Rotor House starting selling the bottles in a gift box with shot glasses decorated with marijuana leaves, said a senior company official, who asked not to be identified.
TITLE: Joint Venture Asked to Iraq
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, - A Ukrainian-American joint venture was awarded with a US$78 million delivery order aimed at equipping the new Iraqi army and security troops, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday.
The order is the first that involves an Ukrainian business venture in U.S.-funded postwar reconstruction of Iraq, Foreign Ministry spokesman Markian Lubkivsky said. He refused to name the company or give any details.
However, a report published on the U.S. Defense Department web site on May 27 said that the $120 million deal was tailored to meet the needs of 15 Iraqi battalions and 6 brigade headquarters units by the end of September 2006.
The contract was awarded to the Vienna, Virginia-based ANHAM joint venture but will involve several countries and companies, including companies from Ukraine, Britain, Canada, Romania and China. Ukraine's portion amounts to about 65 percent of the order and is worth about $78 million, the report said.
Dozens of oil, construction and engineering companies from the former Soviet republic have unsuccessfully applied to win subcontracting work from American companies involved in Iraq's reconstruction.
Ukraine maintains the fourth largest non-U.S. military contingent in Iraq, with some 1,700 troops serving under Polish command. Six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, three of them in combat.
TITLE: Why Putin Refused an Invitation to Istanbul
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: Organizers of the NATO summit later this month will have their work cut out for them as they try to justify dragging the leaders of the 26 member states to Istanbul. It now seems clear that the NATO Council will not discuss two major initiatives planned for the summit - on cooperation in the Black Sea region and the so-called "greater Middle East." And President Vladimir Putin, whose presence would have symbolized how much the military and political situation in Europe has changed in recent years, has chosen not to attend.
Off the record, Foreign Ministry officials say that Putin's decision to stay home is an expression of Russian irritation at recent actions taken by NATO. The alliance did not properly appreciate Moscow's measured response to the recent expansion of NATO, which included not just four former Warsaw Pact countries but the three former Soviet Baltic republics, they say. Moreover, NATO member states are in no hurry to ratify the updated Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). As a result, the possibility remains that the alliance could proceed with a major military build-up on Russia's northwest border. Moscow is also irked by NATO's receptive attitude toward the expressed desire of Georgia and Ukraine to join the alliance.
None of these issues can be considered legitimate threats to Russian security, however. In the last two to three years, the transformation of NATO that Russia has been calling for throughout the past decade has in fact occurred: From a military alliance dedicated to the collective defense of its members, NATO has become a political association. This transformation resulted not from Russian insistence, but from the ever widening gap in military capability between the United States and its European allies. The countries of Western Europe cannot and will not make the enormous investment required to increase their military operational capacity to meet U.S. standards. From the U.S. perspective, figuring their allies into strategic planning is an unnecessary headache.
This explains why Washington haughtily rejected NATO's proposal to take part in the anti-terrorist war in Afghanistan. Once it had launched the war in Iraq, the United States itself pushed NATO to take over the reins in Afghanistan.
It has become clear that in its strategic planning Washington views NATO as an occupying force, capable of controlling the territory of an enemy whose army has first been destroyed by the United States. Obviously this does not refer to military operations in Europe. It is no coincidence that European countries are now considering a transformation of their armed forces not based on the defense of national borders. Nor are we talking about aggression directed against Russia.
In the future NATO is planning to create an expeditionary force of just over 20,000 soldiers and officers. Attacking Russia with such a small force is, of course, unthinkable. The decision to move to an all-volunteer army deprives NATO of even the hypothetical capacity to launch a large-scale attack.
As a result of these changes, the CFE itself is becoming obsolete. The treaty, after all, was designed to prevent the concentration in any European country of enough soldiers and weaponry to launch a quick strike against its neighbors.
For this reason, too, Foreign Ministry statements about NATO's continued adherence to an offensive strategy should be viewed as a ritual, part of the strange game that Russian diplomats play with the West. If you take all of Moscow's complaints at face value, sooner or later you will get the sense of a split personality at work. On one hand, lawmakers and generals regularly hold hearings at which they drone on about the potential threat of NATO expansion. They calculate how long it would take NATO cruise missiles and bombers launched from the territory of the alliance's new member states to reach key Russian targets. They even count the days it would take enemy tanks to reach the Moscow-Maly Yaroslavets line. You would think that the enemy had amassed a numerically superior force on our borders. High time for a general call-up!
On the other hand, Putin and his Cabinet regularly hold amicable meetings with NATO officials, plan joint maneuvers and even -horror of horrors -discuss an agreement that would see NATO troops stationed on Russian soil.
"Though this be madness," as Polonius said, "yet there is method in't."
The Kremlin is less concerned about its military inferiority to the West than revealing how far it lags behind in the protection of basic human rights and freedoms. And to make sure that the West not go too far in its criticism of Moscow's policy in Chechnya, of the assault on the freedom of the press or the thoroughly compromised judicial system, the Kremlin indulges in a little NATO-bashing whose function is simply to tell the West to cool it.
The implicit threat is that the current, level-headed and predictable regime could lose power to the "extremists" who are wheeled out from time to time to strike fear into Western hearts.
The main problem is that Putin wants to maintain good relations with the civilized world without making any attempt to close what U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow and others have diplomatically alluded to as a "values gap." The Kremlin understands perfectly well that bringing Russian institutions such as the army, the courts and the police into line with European standards would reveal the urgent need for the sort of systemic reforms that the bureaucracy has thus far proven so adept at undermining. And Putin is not yet ready for a protracted stand-off with the bureaucracy, particularly in the so-called power ministries.
When you get right down to it, all Putin really needs is membership in an international club for the elect. A club where he can shake hands with George W. Bush and Tony Blair and be treated as an equal, as he is this week at the G-8 summit. Putin regarded the role he would have played at the NATO summit -a second-stringer mixed in with the Bulgarians and Slovenians -as beneath him. And that is why he turned down NATO's invitation.
Alexander Golts, deputy editor of Yezhenedelny Zhurnal, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Broken Promises Prompt Public Anger
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: Most Russian citizens have a specific streak in their character that distinguishes them from Europeans and North Americans. It is an unlimited trust in relation to officials, whatever they have done.
In the first four years of his presidency Vladimir Putin has been responsible for killing thousands of Chechens, destroying independent media, callously disregarding the lives of more than 100 Muscovites, their families and friends, and failing to stop explosions in different cities across Russia and still he got re-elected.
The result is quite understandable in conditions where human rights issues are less important to citizens than, for instance, financial stability. Explaining to an ordinary man in the street that this stability is based on extremely high oil prices would be pointless.
More than 70 percent of Russian citizens would say it is thanks to Putin.
But since last month I have seen the foundations on which the trust is based start to shake.
I am referring to the residents of numerous city districts where Governor Valentina Matviyenko has allowed in-fill construction projects. There are hundreds of such projects about to be started or already under way in St. Petersburg. They directly harm the interests of tens of thousands of people who stand to lose the land where they walk with their children, enjoy the view, or chat with their neighbors.
"It was you and people like you who voted for all these Putins and Matviyenkos! Now get this ... ," I heard a resident say to his neighbor when talking about an in-fill construction project about to be started at 51 Zanevsky Prospekt.
"What's the difference - Matviyenko or Yakovlev, they are all thieves.
"Yeah, Matviyenko ... I thought she would change something, but ... ," a woman replied.
A sign of awakening consciousness was a protest in the Vyborg district this week when residents blocked traffic on Institutsky Prospekt for two hours to defend their rights to the land they live on. For quite some time I thought the apathy Russians have for politics would have grown even greater in the last few years, but I was wrong. Matviyenko has really messed up her credibility with these voters.
Another conversation that supports my theory that the masses have had enough was one I heard about two weeks ago on a bus, when two old ladies were talking about the planned hike in payments for communal housing services. "If it was in my power, I would rub her face in the dirt with my own hands," one lady said. "She [Matviyenko] made so many nice promises, and now what? Prices go up!"
It seems to me that Matviyenko has broken the record.
She deserves an award for starting to be hated by her voters so rapidly, just a little over half a year after she was elected. I don't remember any heavyweight politician that managed to make people turn away from them so fast and I am glad St. Petersburg's governor has such a specific talent.
There is a Russian popular expression that says a peasant won't cross himself until a fried rooster pecks him on the head, which is to say no action will be taken until some misfortune is imminent. The rooster is finally here and the peasants have no idea how to deal with it.
I am happy this has happened. I hope this way citizens will realize that they have certain rights and that they will demand a stop to violations the authorities are committing whether it is in Chechnya or their own yard.
Citizens have started realizing one simple thing: that City Hall, which has strong ties with big businesses, can easily steamroll them like a huge construction crane if they don't stand together in its way.
If Matviyenko continues to ignore and to lie to her voters it may be good, because this way there is a chance that the controlled democracy that we face now will one day spiral out of control or, in other words, will become normal.
TITLE: dacha offers hamburg on the neva
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dacha, a brand new downtown art bar operated by the pairing of a local musician and a German DJ has become hugely popular over the past couple of weeks since it opened. Cozy and friendly, with music that is difficult to hear anywhere else, the place, however, aims at a limited circle of artists, musicians and expats.
"I fell in love with the city immediately, but after I'd stayed here for a while I realized that I miss bars as I know them from Hamburg where I come from," said Anna-Christin Albers, who co-owns Dacha alongside Anton Belyankin, bass player for the local ska band Dva Samaliota, and Griboyedov club's art manager and DJ.
Albers, who combines her duties at Dacha with weekly performances at Griboyedov as DJ Schwester, has lived in St. Petersburg since February, although she admits she has frequently visited the city over the past five years, at one point staying here for six months.
"I was studying linguistics but after a while I understood that I won't make a great linguist and looked at what else I could do - sell beer! So it all came together."
According to Albers, Dacha operates mainly for her friends.
"We aimed it at our friends from the very beginning," she said.
"We missed good places ourselves and we knew that many of our friends have no place to go at night, without loud concerts, with a good, cozy atmosphere, although it's a matter of taste.
"We counted on people like us, artists, musicians, journalists, the lost foreigners who don't know where to go. I think it worked, we have such a mixture here."
Although DJs occupy a place behind two Technics turntables at nights, there is no techno, but many kinds of 1960s to 1980s music, with a slant toward rock and even punk, from The Doors and Deep Purple to The Sex Pistols and The Ramones.
The rock influences seem to stem from Belyankin, who last year launched "Heavy Mondays," all-rock weekly parties at Griboyedov while Albers performs on Sundays with her set of danceable soul and funk music. At Dacha, Belyankin has his set on Sundays, while Albers spins vinyls on Saturdays.
"It was the main principle from the start that just about any music could be played here - except techno, house and drum 'n' bass," she said.
"First, it's everywhere, secondly, I don't like it myself, and we wanted to have a definite music style and atmosphere on any definite day of the week."
In the future, Albers is planning to broaden the repertoire, hosting occasional acoustic concerts, dance parties and sports broadcasts.
Although there is no food available at the bar, except for basic snacks, visitors are advised to have a bite at the nearby shaurma cafe.
The word dacha stands for a normally spartan-style country house that Russians use in summer, usually equipped with the belongings that owners do not want in their city apartments.
Dacha is decorated exactly in this style, complete with homely wallpaper, the occasional plastic object on the walls, and a collage of 1970s soft porn in the bathroom.
But according to Albers, it also owes much to the interiors of certain bars in her home town.
"It's purely Hamburg design, there are a plenty of small places like this in streets near the Reeperbahn - strangely designed, with a mix of everything," she said.
"I describe our interior as 'New Year's Eve at a dacha,' with grandmother's old things around, and some glittering garlands that make a very good mixture.
"You can find something new in every corner, every time."
Unlike many other local artsy joints, Dacha is happily located on the first floor with the daylight coming through the windows, rather than in a basement.
Dacha sports a "For Members Only" sign at the entrance, but Albers says there is not a formal membership system.
"It should be understood in a broad sense," she said. "It's the right of the owner not to let in people that I wouldn't like to sit at the same table with."
Dacha opens nightly, 6 p.m.-6 a.m. 9 Dumskaya Ul. M: Nevsky Prospekt. No telephone so far.
TITLE: arthur h reinvents chanson
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Sometimes he is referred to as the "new Serge Gainsbourg," sometimes as "France's Tom Waits," but Arthur H - a big name in the French-speaking world even if not well-known in Russia - says his musical turning point was hearing Jim Morrison and The Doors.
"Mainly The Doors for its mixture of poetry and rock," he noted when asked about what made him want to become a singer in a recent email interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
"I have always looked for Jim Morrison's sensuality."
Born Arthur Higelin to singer Jacques Higelin and music producer Nicole Courtois in Paris in 1966, he describes his music as a "mix of chanson, techno, funk and European atmospheric music."
However, the Gainsbourg comparison is apt.
"Serge Gainsbourg proved that rock could be French," wrote H, adding that Gainsbourg is still one of his favorite artists, alongside Bjork and Tom Waits.
"Tom Waits showed me that one could be modern while using acoustic instruments, that one could mix modernity and emotion and atmosphere."
According to his biography on the web site of Radio France Internationale, H left school at 16 and and went sailing in the West Indies for three months. His parents then sent him to Boston in the U.S., where he studied music at university for a year and a half, but showed little interest in his formal education.
Upon his return to Paris, H started a few bands to perform his early songs, but he did not meet his first success until December 1988 when he put together a show with British bassist Brad Scott for a three night booking at La Vieille Grille, a small, 60-seat venue. The show did so well, that the duo stayed on for the next three months.
However, even though H is praised for his poetry and humor, the meaning of his lyrics is largely lost outside the French-speaking world. H admits the problem.
"I have been lucky enough to go on tour three times in Africa," he wrote.
"There are still many French-speaking countries, but otherwise French is almost never heard. It's a shame."
But in any case the tradition of French chanson is still going strong, he argues. "There is still a strong tradition of chanson," wrote H.
"The language needs to be worked on, invented by poets, otherwise it withers." Listening to H's recordings, one cannot help but notice the attention he pays to how the record sounds.
"Sound is essential, it is what makes a song modern," he wrote.
"I like it when a classical song has a modern sound. One should be able to play a song at the piano.
"I make arrangements with musicians in a democratic way. We dream together."
Speaking about Russia, H admits he likes Russian classical music.
"I listen to a lot of Russian classical music: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, etc.," he wrote.
"I am very curious about new Russian music."
In concert, H, who plays keyboards as well as singing, will be backed by Nicolas Repac on electric guitar, Jarome Goldet on bass and Frank Vaillant on drums.
Arthur H performs at Red Club at 8 p.m. on Saturday.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: A show by Diody, or ALLA, as it is now called, is this week's most intriguing gig and will unveil the much talked-about "electro-pop project" by Sergei Shnurov of the hugely popular ska band Leningrad.
Shnurov came up with the idea of Diody (Diodes) some 18 months ago, but after recording a few tracks put the project on the shelf. Since then some tracks found themselves either on an occasional video (the hilarious "PC," where Shnurov and Leningrad percussionist Seva Andreyev dressed as surgeons and made manipulations over a bleeding computer which was banned by MTV Russia as "too bloody") or on a compilation released by Shnurov's new label Shnur'OK.
More recently, Diody's song "Roboty Yeboboty" was released on Leningrad's new album "Babarobot, or How to Compose Soundtracks." According to reports, Shnurov, who was not available for comment as the paper went to press, changed the project's name to make it reminiscent of both ABBA, the Swedish band immensely popular in the former U.S.S.R., and the Soviet Union's No.1 pop diva Alla Pugachyova. In a mischievous gesture typical of Shnurov, the concert will be dedicated to the band Diody changing its name to ALLA on its debut. ALLA will play at Red Club on Friday.
Meanwhile, Leningrad played a great, unannounced open-air concert in the course of a local beer festival last Sunday - promptly followed by a fight between some members of the audience and the police who were supposed to guard the event.
The seminal local band Akvarium will play its traditional summer concert on Saturday, but it will exchange its usual venue, the Lensoviet Palace of Culture, for the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall.
It will be Akvarium's first local concert at a large venue since last year's celebrations of frontman Boris Grebenshchikov's 50th birthday which saw the rock guru mixing with such people as Boris Gryzlov, the then interior minister and leader of the pro-President Putin party United Russia, and St. Petersburg's governor Valentina Matviyenko. The arrival of the latter at the birthday concert to decorate Grebenshchikov with the Order of Merit of the Motherland medal for his "great contribution to the development of the art of music" looked so out of place that it caused quite a few boos from the audience.
However, Grebenshchikov's most recent gesture, when he announced that he would support Amnesty International, counters the President Putin's sniping at non-governmental organizations in his State of the Union address last month.
"Amnesty International works wonders when it saves just one person and I'm ready to take part in making such wonders," he was reported as saying at the organization's news conference last month.
Speaking about the future concert by phone, Grebenshchikov compared it to a Rubens exhibition.
"Our concert is like a Rubens exhibition," he said. "When you go to a Rubens exhibition, you probably don't know what pictures you will see, but you have a general idea of what to expect. With Akvarium, it's just the same."
Also this week: French singer Arthur H will play at Red Club on Saturday (see article, this page), while this year's KlezFest will feature singer/accordionist Lorin Sklamberg of the U.S. band Klezmatics at Red Club on Sunday and Beloselskikh-Belozerskikh Palace on June 16.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: food for optimists and dreamers
AUTHOR: By Brid Higgins
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The name of this restaurant promises just a little too much. You can't help feeling slightly cynical about a place called The Optimist's Dream. Nevertheless, my dining companion and I were curious to find out what was the fantasy of the unidentified optimist, and so we decided to find out last Monday afternoon, when we were badly in need of a late lunch/early dinner.
The surly security man and the waitresses seemed surprised to see us at such an early hour, but they received us hospitably enough and seated us at a heavily clad table just in front of the door. As we looked around the empty room and dance-area, we felt sure that this was more of a night-time sort of place, despite the fact that it opens at eleven. Described as a "restaurant and club," the interior is dim and lit with disco-ball fragments of reflected light and colored light-boxes glowing on the walls.
Ravenously hungry, we decided to put observation aside for a moment in order to read the menu.The selection of salads, hot and cold starters, main courses and side dishes are a decidedly half-full glass. There are all sorts of exotica and Russian cuisine classics to choose from. Salads range in price from 100 rubles to 190 rubles ($3.45 to $6.55) and include the likes of Hunter's Salad of rabbit and potatoes (described as "the most digestible from the series of meat salads") for 130 rubles ($4.48). There is a selection of meat, poultry and fish main courses (from the latter, the tiger prawns appeared tempting) and there also are some delicious-sounding garnishes, such as "cheese and zucchini rolls." The price of entrees ranges from about 200 rubles to 1000 rubles ($6.90 to $34.50). I imagine thrift is not usually a feature of optimism.
Mechta Optimista also has an extensive wine list; most wines are expensive - up to 2000 rubles ($69) and for sale by the bottle. However, you can also get some of the wines by the glass for between 120 rubles and 140 rubles ($4.13 and $4.82). We got a glass each of a very acceptable Chilean red (120 rubles per glass), the only kind available to us by the glass that particular Monday, and one bottle of sparkling water for 30 rubles ($1.03).
The waitress brought a basket of starkly socialist-realist stale bread with the wine, which we fell upon hungrily, but luckily the starters weren't too long in arriving. My dining companion chose a baked avocado half with melted cheese and bacon for 150 rubles ($5.17), which he deemed tasty enough. I had a camembert and pear salad with honey dressing for 180 rubles ($6.20), which I very much enjoyed, although the cheese wasn't as oozy as it should have been.
By this time, we were fit to take in the details of the interior design. Judging by the wall-decoration, the optimist dreams of large donut-shape clouds, crooked silhouettes of urban dereliction and wrought iron trees. It's all quite Halloween-like, but by no means unpleasant. The tables in the bar area are more casually laid, and it seems as if you can just sit there to have a beer and listen to the live music that the Optimist's Dream provides at weekends. Only imported varieties are available with the cheapest draft beer costing 80 rubles ($2.75) for half a liter. The music we had to listen to was some kind of synchronised salsa, which was, fortunately, not intrusively loud.
Our server was efficient and pleasant, if not optimistically bubbly, and our main courses were served simultaneously and promptly after we'd finished the starters. My dining companion had ordered a beefsteak sandwich with a garnish of fresh vegetables in vinaigrette for 220 rubles ($7.58). The beef was apparently delicious and tender and presented with an elegantly wrought dough thing sticking out of it. There were two problems, however: the beef wasn't in a sandwich and the vegetables were served without any dressing, vinaigrette or otherwise. My main dish was a made-to-order selection of side dishes: "chateau potatoes" (of the small, buttery, radish-shape variety) and ratatouille, which was more stir-fried than stewed for 200 rubles ($6.89). This dish was unsurprising but perfectly tasty.
We wanted to order a dessert but our high hopes were dashed as the cheese-cake and the apple pie were unavailable, so we had some very un-milky cappuccinos for 45 rubles ($1.55) each instead.
If we were idealists, we might have been disappointed with the meal, but with a touch of pessimism, you can't be too dismayed with the Optimist's Dream experience.
Meal for two with alchohol, 1,190 rubles ($41). Mechta Optimista 18 Vosnesenskay Ulitsa (near St Isaac's Square). Tel. 117 06 47. Menu in Russian and English. Open daily, 11 a.m.-2 a.m.on weekdays, and 11 a.m.-4 a.m. at weekends. Master Card and Visa accepted.
TITLE: on message
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The "Message To Man" International Documentary, Short and Animated Films Festival kicks off at the Rodina cinema and Dom Kino on June 15 and runs through June 22 showcasing literally hundreds of films from around the globe. This year's special program includes Russian animation from 2001-2004, early films by British director Peter Greenaway and Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, as well as the best of European experimental films.
This is the fourteenth time that the "Message to Man" festival has taken place. It was established in December 1988 as the International Non-Feature Film Festival by the State Committee of Cinematography of the U.S.S.R., the Film Makers' Union of the U.S.S.R., the State TV and Radio Committee of the U.S.S.R. and the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council.
In 1994 short feature films and animated films were included in the festival program, while the festival itself changed its name to "Message To Man."
The name change was an explicitly political action which distanced the festival from its Soviet roots.
"For us, man as an individual is sacred," Mikhail Litvyakov, director of the festival, has said about its guiding principles. "I believe that if there are more individuals in the world, it will be a better place."
In its first years the festival was held once every two years, but now it's an annual event. From the fifth festival in 1995 onward, the debuts have been reserved for a separate competition and have been judged against each other, rather than against films which have been shown elsewhere previously.
The first part of this year's festival program includes the International Competition for which 42 films have been selected. Among them are works by animators such as Gerrit van Dijk from the Netherlands, Paul Driessen from Canada, Alexei Dyomin and Sergei Ainutdinov from Russia, along with the documentary film makers Ulrike Koch from Germany and Sergei Loznitsa from Russia, and short-film masters, such as Gerardo Tort from Mexico and Per Carleson from Sweden.
The jury of the International Competition consists of Israeli director Amos Gitaai, Japanese animator Sayoko Kinoshita, professor and sociologist Kristian Feigelson from France, Russian director Alexander Khvan and Slovakian film critic Miro Prochazka.
The second part of the festival is the International Debut Competition, containing 37 films from all over the world. Forty-two films make up the national "Documentary films of Russia" competition.
"Message To Man" this year features Russian animated films made in the 21st century, early works by Peter Greenaway and Krzysztof Kieslowski (supported respectively by the diplomatic missions of Britain and Poland in St. Petersburg), the premiere of "Docs in Europe-3," a program of short films from Europe, the best Italian short films and many others.
Alexandra Leibovich, the festival's chief coordinator, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that this year "Message To Man" is returning to its Russian roots.
"We've decided to meet Russian films half-way. For example, it was our initiative was to organize the festival of Russian documentary films," Leibovich said.
"As there's no such thing as the Russian state promotion agency for exporting Russian films, our festival helps foreign buyers and selectors find new Russian documentaries and animated films," Leibovich said.
Message to Man festival at Dom Kino, June 15 through June 22. Full program and screening details in English at www.message-to-man.spb.ru
TITLE: prokofiev makes classical debut
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: LONDON - Some of the rhythms of a new String Quartet which, unusually, was premiered recently in an underground club in East London, pay tribute to its British composer's experience of almost ten years of making modern dance music. Nevertheless, classical music critics gave the work positive reviews, with some noting the concerto's curt, sharp and scattered textures - similar to those in the work of Igor Stravinsky.
The tense rhythms of the third movement are stern, and a distinct association with mid-20th century Soviet music reflecting Stalin's rigorous purges arises. But the dictator's name and echoes of Russian classical traditions more forcefully come to mind when you know the surname of the composer in question - Prokofiev.
Gabriel Prokofiev, whose String Quartet No. 1 is to be released on CD next month after its live debut in March, has been producing music for years, but not the kind of music people expect when they hear his famous name.
That is why when the 29-year old grandson of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev produced dance music in clubs across London, he did so under various pseudonyms.
With the impending release of his first classical CD however, Prokofiev decided to use his own name for the first time.
Prokofiev started writing songs when he was 10 and composed his first classical piece at age 15.
Writing music was something he couldn't really help doing. Gabriel's father, Oleg Prokofiev (son of Sergei) was a sculptor and artist, so there was a creative atmosphere at home. Oleg liked music but didn't really play much.
"It was too hard for him: he had such a successful father," Prokofiev recounted in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
"He took some piano lessons but the pressure on him was so high for him to be good that he just couldn't have the confidence. But my father was very musical, he really understood music and knew so much more about it than I do, despite my studies."
A Soviet defector, Oleg Prokofiev went to Britain in 1971. He didn't teach his children any Russian, which he later regretted. He left Russia in bitter circumstances (Sergei Prokofiev had died in 1953) and wanted to start a new life in Britain. The artist had waited for seven years to marry his English fiancee because the Soviet government wouldn't let him travel abroad and marry a foreigner at the height of the Cold War. A year after they were finally able to marry, she died of hepatitis.
"We could hear Dad speak Russian to his friends, but he was probably too upset with his home country to bring himself to teach us the language," Prokofiev said.
Three years ago Prokofiev visited Russia for the first time. His three-week stay in Moscow and St. Petersburg was an overwhelming experience.
"It was probably then that I felt more Russian than ever before, because I felt very natural and comfortable there," he recalls. "There are more people who take culture, art and music more seriously than here, while in England people are more commercially minded when it comes to culture. I loved the energy there, and I definitely would like to go back."
When Prokofiev was at school, he was acting as well as playing music, and he almost had to choose between going into theater or music.
"[But] music had a much deeper resonance for me," he recalls. "Writing music means creating something."
In his early years, writing songs was very much a childish thing, pure indulgence and fun. But at the age of 15, when he wrote some serious pieces, something happened.
"At that age I realized that music had a really powerful and profound resonance for me," Prokofiev said. But his famous name only made it more difficult for him to start a career in music. "Instantly people will judge your music and listen to it in a different way," he explains. "Instead of just listening, they would draw comparisons."
Prokofiev avoided writing classical music because he was afraid of that kind of comparison. When he was a student in Birmingham and York universities where he studied music and composition, he felt he was treated in a slightly different way.
"They were people who love music, so for them Prokofiev was something quite exciting, and so I knew they sort of expected me to be an amazing pianist or coming up with the most talented symphonies," he said. "I just found it all a bit too stressful. It made me more shy, and probably shrink away from being as creative as I would have been."
Perhaps the most traumatizing experience was when at 14, Gabriel, a member of a pop-group, keen to experiment with types of music other than classical, became the subject of articles in British newspapers.
"Composer's Grandson Goes Pop," read one headline.
"Instead of being about our music, it was about the family connection," Gabriel shrugged.
Inevitably, publicity for the CD release of String Quartet No. 1 has also taken this tack. "Prokofiev Goes Clubbing," wrote Britain's Daily Telegraph in March.
But it was the Elysian quartet, which performs the work on the new CD, that were instrumental in Gabriel feeling confident enough to dispense with aliases and pseudonyms.
Formed in 1999, the group features Emma Smith (first violin), Jenny May Logan (second violin), Vince Sipprell (viola) and Laura Moody (cello). A chance meeting with Laura, resulted in her request for Gabriel to compose a piece for the quartet.
The whole experience with the Elysians has had a liberating effect on the composer. The quartet, which performed his music with spark and inspiration without looking for parallels, insisted that he used the Prokofiev name because not using it would mean hiding his true identity.
Now, Prokofiev already has another two pieces in progress.
"I enjoyed it much more than a lot of other music I have made," he said. "It was very natural and liberating for me, and I want to continue doing it. With the quartet, I just followed my instinct. I did want to make something lively and energetic, and because I am interested in other types of music, it came out naturally. If you set too many outside aims when you are trying to create something, it could be quite dangerous, as you risk abstracting the creative process."
During his studies in Birmingham and York, Prokofiev composed instrumental classical music, and even started a symphonic piece about three years ago but never finished the work.
"I didn't know who was going to play it ... a symphonic piece is a lot of work," he explains. "I was enjoying it but I realized that I had to spend another several months on it, and if I didn't know who was going to play it, it was like the work might be for nothing."
Prokofiev's main interest as a student was electroacoustics. In 1998 he was awarded a composers residency in Seattle after winning the Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic music.
"It seemed there was more freedom there, and there were less problems with harmony and tonality or rhythm in the way you could do anything really, just create the sound," he says of his choice of electroacoustics.
As a composer Prokofiev aims to be aware of Arab, Persian, and Islamic music, in fact all kinds of world music. Before attending university, he traveled to Tanzania as a volunteer. Armed with microphones and equipment, he wandered about recording Masai and other traditional music.
It made a very strong impact on Prokofiev although he hasn't tried to use the music in his compositions. It simply served "to open his ears."
"Some people seem to be able to live in just one type of music but I live in the world around me, and that incorporates all types of music," he said. "There are different needs from art and music: sometimes you want a song or you want to dance but sometimes you want to sit and really concentrate on a concert."
String Quartet No. 1 had its premiere in Cargo, an underground dance club in East London, where Prokofiev used to play with his band.
"They might have typical house music and dance music over the weekend but sometimes they'll have some African groups playing there or maybe some slightly more experimental dance music, rock concerts, techno dance, etc., but it is normally focused on dance music.
"I am influenced by modern trends, and styles are always evolving, and I am really interested in all that music. I mean, if you look at someone like Chopin or Mozart, or any classical composer, they always adopted popular dance. For instance, Chopin took the polonaise and the waltz."
When Prokofiev played the quartet to some friends who aren't interested in classical music, they gave it a very enthusiastic welcome.
"And I thought, why don't I play this quartet in a club: as younger people are more used to going to clubs," he said. "For a lot of people concert halls feel a bit stuffy, conservative and old-fashioned."
The quartet has since also been performed at a traditional classical venue, London's Blackheath Concert Hall, also to high acclaim.
"Almost everyone in the audience had gray hair," he recalls. "I don't have a problem with that, that is fine, but the contrast is so interesting. You just change the venue, the time and set up, and suddenly the same work gets a new audience."
Prokofiev believes for music to live it has to communicate with the public. The composer must feel the connection. Otherwise the music becomes too introverted and too internal within the composer, and there is a danger of the music becoming distanced from audiences.
On the CD the quartet is followed by a series of remixes, from hip-hop to art-punk, which bridge classical music with the club sound.
"It worked in a very natural way, it didn't feel like we were trying to be really trendy or pretending to do something clever," he said. "The whole experience has encouraged me to keep writing more classical music."
Links: www.elysianquartet.com
TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: Colors are tricky across languages and cultures. You wouldn’t think they would be — after all, yellow is yellow, right? Well, you don’t have to live in Russia long to discover that one man’s purple is another man’s blue. Let’s start with human coloring, since even this can be a linguistic challenge. Russian tends to be more specific and elaborate than English. Take hair: English gives us four basic hair colors — blond, brown, black and red, which can be modified with “light,” “dark” or “medium.” Russian divides up the colors a bit differently. In Russian, a blonde woman can be blondinka (a blonde, having any shade of blonde hair), svetlovolosaya (fair, fair haired, any shade of light hair), belokuraya (pale blonde), or even zolotovolosaya (golden-haired). She might be described as having l`nyanye volosy (ash-blonde hair). Someone who is belobrysyi is white blond, which seems to have a negative connotation (i.e. so pale in coloring that they seem almost albino). As far as I can tell, strawberry blondes don’t exist in Russia, or at least there is no easy way to describe them. You might say: Ona blondinka s ottenkom ryzhego (literally, she’s a blonde with red highlights). Rusye volosy refers to any shade between dark blonde and medium brown. Kashtanovye volosy is literally “chestnut” colored hair: brown with red highlights. People with this color hair are called (from the French) shaten (for men) or shatenka (for women). Bryunet(ka) is used for a dark-haired person (immortalized in Ilf and Petrov’s “Twelve Chairs” as pyshnaya bryunetka — a curvaceous brunette). Black hair is chyornye volosy. Redheads are ryzhie in Russian. There doesn’t appear to be a specific word to describe that bright red hair color achieved with henna. You can say: u neyo medno-ryzhie volosy (she has coppery red hair) or ona krasitsya khnoi (she dyes her hair with henna). If this all seems a bit complicated, you can simply say, ona — svetlovolosaya (she’s fair) or ona tyomnovolosaya (she’s dark-haired). As people age, they first get some gray in their hair: u nego tyomnye volosy s prosed`yu (he has dark hair streaked with gray). A few more years and you can say: u nego pepel`nye volosy (he has salt-and-pepper gray hair). And finally: on sedoi (he’s gray.) Or if his gene pool is a bit different, you can say: on lysyi (he’s bald). A person with fair skin is described as belokozhii; olive-skinned or dark-skinned people are smuglye. You can also hear the rather baffling phrase, ona absolyutno zdorovyi chelovek — krov` s molokom! (literally, “she’s an absolutely healthy person — blood with milk!”), which seems to refer to white skin with rosy cheeks. If you want to say that someone’s skin is smooth, you can call it barkhatistaya kozha (velvety skin) or kozha, kak persik (downy skin, literally “skin like a peach”). And then there are eyes — a field day for Russian poets. Eyes can be chyornye (dark brown, so dark they appear black), karie (brown), tyomnye (dark), zelyonye (green), temno-zelyonye (dark green), bledno-zelyonye (light green), bolotnye (hazel), golubye (blue), sinie (dark blue), serye (gray), fioletovye (violet), biryuzovye (turquoise blue) or akvamarinovye (aquamarine). Not all of this is poetic hyperbole; I had never met anyone with sinie glaza until I came to Russia and swooned over a pair of brilliant, dark, sapphire blue eyes. Colors are tricky across languages and cultures. You wouldn’t think they would be — after all, yellow is yellow, right? Well, you don’t have to live in Russia long to discover that one man’s purple is another man’s blue. Let’s start with human coloring, since even this can be a linguistic challenge. Russian tends to be more specific and elaborate than English. Take hair: English gives us four basic hair colors — blond, brown, black and red, which can be modified with “light,” “dark” or “medium.” Russian divides up the colors a bit differently. In Russian, a blonde woman can be áëîíäèíêà (a blonde, having any shade of blonde hair), ñâåòëîâîëîñàÿ (fair, fair haired, any shade of light hair), áåëîêóðàÿ (pale blonde), or even çîëîòîâîëîñàÿ (golden-haired). She might be described as having ëüíÿíûå âîëîñû (ash-blonde hair). Someone who is áåëîáðûñûé is white blond, which seems to have a negative connotation (i.e. so pale in coloring that they seem almost albino). As far as I can tell, strawberry blondes don’t exist in Russia, or at least there is no easy way to describe them. You might say: Îíà áëîíäèíêà ñ îòòåíêîì ðûæåãî (literally, she’s a blonde with red highlights). Ðóñûå âîëîñû refers to any shade between dark blonde and medium brown. Êàøòàíîâûå âîëîñû is literally “chestnut” colored hair: brown with red highlights. People with this color hair are called (from the French) øàòåí (for men) or øàòåíêà (for women). Áðþíåò(êà) is used for a dark-haired person (immortalized in Ilf and Petrov’s “Twelve Chairs” as ïûøíàÿ áðþíåòêà — a curvaceous brunette). Black hair is ÷¸ðíûå âîëîñû. Redheads are ðûæèå in Russian. There doesn’t appear to be a specific word to describe that bright red hair color achieved with henna. You can say: ó íå¸ ìåäíî-ðûæèå âîëîñû (she has coppery red hair) or îíà êðàñèòñÿ õíîé (she dyes her hair with henna). If this all seems a bit complicated, you can simply say, îíà — ñâåòëîâîëîñàÿ (she’s fair) or îíà ò¸ìíîâîëîñàÿ (she’s dark-haired). As people age, they first get some gray in their hair: ó íåãî ò¸ìíûå âîëîñû ñ ïðîñåäüþ (he has dark hair streaked with gray). A few more years and you can say: ó íåãî ïåïåëüíûå âîëîñû (he has salt-and-pepper gray hair). And finally: îí ñåäîé (he’s gray.) Or if his gene pool is a bit different, you can say: îí ëûñûé (he’s bald). A person with fair skin is described as áåëîêîæèé; olive-skinned or dark-skinned people are ñìóãëûå. You can also hear the rather baffling phrase, îíà àáñîëþòíî çäîðîâûé ÷åëîâåê — êðîâü ñ ìîëîêîì! (literally, “she’s an absolutely healthy person — blood with milk!”), which seems to refer to white skin with rosy cheeks. If you want to say that someone’s skin is smooth, you can call it áàðõàòèñòàÿ êîæà (velvety skin) or êîæà, êàê ïåðñèê (downy skin, literally “skin like a peach”). And then there are eyes — a field day for Russian poets. Eyes can be ÷¸ðíûå (dark brown, so dark they appear black), êàðèå (brown), ò¸ìíûå (dark), çåë¸íûå (green), òåìíî-çåë¸íûå (dark green), áëåäíî-çåë¸íûå (light green), áîëîòíûå (hazel), ãîëóáûå (blue), ñèíèå (dark blue), ñåðûå (gray), ôèîëåòîâûå (violet), áèðþçîâûå (turquoise blue) or àêâàìàðèíîâûå (aquamarine). Not all of this is poetic hyperbole; I had never met anyone with ñèíèå ãëàçà until I came to Russia and swooned over a pair of brilliant, dark, sapphire blue eyes.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: Nation Pays Its Respects to Ronald Reagan
AUTHOR: By Mark Sherman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - They came in limousines and dark suits, then they came in shorts and T-shirts, after waiting hour upon hour in sweltering heat. The mighty and the average paid tribute Wednesday to Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, lying in state under a soaring dome where Americans once said goodbye to Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Official Washington hailed Reagan as "a graceful and gallant man," in Vice President Dick Cheney's words.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, speaking at the state funeral ceremony opening the 34-hour period of Reagan's lying in state, said, "It is altogether fitting and proper that he has returned to this Capitol Rotunda, like another great son of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, so the nation can say goodbye."
Once the dignitaries had departed, average Americans who had waited much of the day began to stream past Reagan's flag-draped casket.
The public viewing was to continue until Friday morning. The length of the line stretched outside at midnight assured the flow of mourners would continue thru the night.
Donna Hand of Ashburn, Virginia, waited five hours to see the casket and spent about three minutes inside.
"It was a very moving experience for me. It was very solemn," Hand said. "It made you feel patriotic."
"I thought he was a great leader," said George Ford of Cabin John, Maryland. "He was just a great guy. He told you like it was."
Reagan's casket lay in state in the center of the Rotunda, a room ringed with statues of some of his predecessors and paintings depicting the founding of the nation. It rests beneath "that big white dome, bulging with new tax revenues," as Reagan would say in his frequent criticism of the Congress. But the scolding was forgotten Wednesday.
His body was flown in from California on one of President George W. Bush's jets and brought to the Capitol on a century-old, horse-drawn caisson for an honor last accorded a president in 1973 when Lyndon Johnson died.
Crowds 15 deep watched the procession advance slowly up Constitution Avenue.
A riderless horse with boots reversed in the stirrups followed the caisson, and drums sounded, marking the cadence of the marchers.
Cheers broke out briefly for Reagan's widow, Nancy, riding in a limousine at the head of the procession. She waved repeatedly, looking wan.
"God bless you, Nancy," a man cried out.
In her husband's death as in his life, she was beside him at every step. When his casket reached the landing of the Capitol, she reached out and touched it.
Most members of Congress, much of Bush's Cabinet, four Supreme Court justices and a large contingent of diplomats attended the service.
Republicans and Democrats alike offered warm praise for a man who often had his differences with Congress. Reagan, who died Saturday at 93 at his home in Los Angeles, will be buried Friday in a sunset ceremony in the grounds of his presidential library in Simi Valley, California.
Bush planned to come back from the Group of Eight meeting of leading industrial nations in Georgia on Thursday and, with his wife, Laura, call on Nancy Reagan at Blair House, the official guest residence across the street from the White House.
Aides said Bush would visit the casket Thursday evening. Bush and his father, who was Reagan's vice president and succeeded him in the White House, will be among the eulogists Friday.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Pandas Bounce Back
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's giant pandas are coming back from the brink of extinction, thanks to an improved and expanded habitat, but they are not out of the woods yet, forestry officials say.
The first comprehensive Chinese study of the mammal since 1988 showed that more than 1,590 giant pandas now roam China's forests, and another 161 have been raised in captivity.
The State Forestry Administration said a 1985-88 study identified about 1,110 pandas in the wild in China.
"We can say with complete confidence that our panda protection has achieved important results," Zhuo Rongsheng, director of the Department of Wildlife Conservation under the State Forestry Administration, said at a news conference on Thursday.
Sharon in Minority
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will have to bring the opposition Labor party into his government to secure a parliamentary majority for his Gaza pullout plan, a senior government official said.
Although the government is in no immediate danger of being toppled despite losing its parliamentary majority with the resignation of two ministers Tuesday, the official said it would have to be restructured.
"The government in its present structure sooner or later will discontinue," the official told journalists on condition of anonymity.
Taliban Rebels Killed
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - An Afghan commander said Wednesday that Afghan and U.S. forces killed more than 70 Taliban rebels in a seven-day operation in a mountainous southern district, including at least 20 militants who died in a single clash.
Coalition and Afghan forces returned late Tuesday from the scene of the fighting - the rugged Daychopan district of Zabul province - as the Taliban fighters they had been hunting had either been killed or fled the area, said Jan Mohammed Khan.
Terrorist Sentenced
FLORENCE, Italy (AP) - A key member of the radical leftist Red Brigades terror group was found guilty Wednesday of a train shooting last year, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Nadia Desdemona Lioce was arrested in March 2003 after a gunbattle on a Rome-Florence train that left another suspected terrorist traveling with her and a police officer dead. The new Red Brigades group is an offshoot of the radical organization that terrorized Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.
Lioce is separately suspected in the killing of two government labor consultants in separate attacks a few years ago that fuelled fears of a resurgence of domestic terrorism.
Spears Has Surgery
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop princess Britney Spears has undergone arthroscopic knee surgery in New York after injuring herself during a late-night video shoot, according to her record label.
Spears, 22, had just completed a scene with rap star Snoop Dogg for a video of her latest single, "Outrageous," and was dancing under the L Train line on Roosevelt Avenue in Manhattan when her left knee gave out, Jive Records said in a statement Wednesday.
"She obviously took a wrong step and blew out her knee," a spokeswoman said. "It was an old dance injury."
TITLE: History Weighs Against Russia at Euro 2004
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Russia needs to look back a long way to the last time it conquered European football.
When the Soviet Union won the first Europe Cup in 1960, Khrushchev controlled the Kremlin and not one of today's Russian players had yet been born.
Russian striker Dmitry Alinichev, on the other hand, only needs to look back a couple of weeks.
On May 27, Alinichev scored the goal that sealed victory in the European Cup final for his club, Porto.
To repeat the achievement and win the European Championships which begin Saturday in Portugal, Alinichev and his teammates face more than the weight of history.
With a team missing some of its most familiar faces, Russia must see down the challenges of two of Europe's strongest teams - Spain and Portugal - to even reach the second round.
On Friday, British bookmaker Ladbrokes was offering odds of 66/1 for Russia to win. Favorite France was quoted at 3/1.
But Alinichev can take heart from the knowledge that Ladbrokes rated Porto's chances of winning the Champion's League at 50-1 when the competition began last year.
Neither he nor his teammates are about to accept being written off before a game has been played.
"Russia is a clear favorite to win the title," claimed Russia's No. 1 goalkeeper Sergei Ovchinnikov at the team's training camp near Moscow last Thursday as the team prepared to leave for Portugal.
"You may laugh at what I say, but I'm a member of the Russian squad and I'm serious about our chances," he said.
Russia will not have to wait long for a chance to silence the doubters. The team faces Spain - ranked No. 3 in FIFA's world rankings - on the tournament's opening day, June 12.
Group A's other teams, host nation Portugal - Ladbroke's No. 3 favorite to lift the trophy - and Greece play in the tournament's opening game in Porto earlier that day.
Portugal then plays Russia while Spain face Greece before the showdown between the group favorites on June 20 in Lisbon, by which time both sides desperately hope to have secured qualification.
To beat the odds, Russia will need to overcome the loss of some of the pillars of its squad.
Skipper Onopko, fellow central defender Sergei Ignashevich, and midfielder Titov will all miss the tournament and it will be down to young newcomers - like winger Vladimir Bystrov and full backs Alexander Anyukov and Alexei Bugayev - to fill in the gaps.
While the absence of Spartak Moscow captain Titov had been factored in, the late loss of Onopko and Ignashevich was hard for coach Yartsev to swallow.
"What can you say," said Yartsev when he announced his final 23-man squad, having lost both of his starting central defenders to knee injuries.
"Everyone knows that injuries are part of the game but when you lose seven players to various injuries in the last two weeks [of the league season], that's a bit too much."
The coach said the loss of Onopko was especially painful.
The 34-year-old will have to wait for a chance to break Russia's appearance record of 112 set by former European Footballer of the Year Oleg Blokhin from 1972-88. "We've waited until the last possible moment, hoping Viktor would be able to overcome his injury, but when [top Russian surgeon] Sergei Mironov gave us his verdict, we knew it was just not meant to be," Yartsev said.
"But it will give our younger players a chance to show the world what they are capable of."
One such player is Bystrov, who lived up to his surname, which means quick or fast, with his blistering runs down the right flank in Wednesday's friendly against Russia's foreign contingent.
Bystrov, playing for the foreigners because they only had 12 players on the roster, had a much better game than fellow winger Rolan Gusev, who until now was almost assured of being among the first eleven in Portugal.
"After today's match it would be hard for me to overlook Bystrov for the starting role in our first game against Spain," said Yartsev. "He certainly made me think about it."
Yartsev will need to break from recent history if his team is to progress.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia qualified for the finals of the European championships in 1992 and 1996, but remained winless. Four years later, the Russian squad watched Euro 2000 from home.
No better was Russia's performance at the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Poor play and only one victory in three games forced head coach Oleg Romantsev to resign.
His successor Valery Gazzayev, who also coached CSKA, scored two convincing victories at the beginning of the Euro 2004 qualifying round. But a humiliating 3-1 loss to Albania and a 2-2 tie with Switzerland last summer put Russia on the brink of another elimination. Yartsev replaced Gazzayev just two weeks before Russia's crucial qualifier against Ireland on Sept. 6, 2003, to be the seventh coach at the helm of the team in 12 years. Yartsev rebuilt a struggling team by recalling veterans Alexander Mostovoi of Celta de Vigo, Porto midfielder Alenichev and Spartak playmaker Titov. He also retained key defender Onopko.
With Yartsev, Russia held Ireland to a 1-1 draw, and beat Switzerland 4-1 and Georgia 3-1 to finish second in Group 10.
In playoffs against Wales in November, Russia played to a scoreless draw in Moscow and scored a narrow 1-0 victory in Cardiff to secure one of the 16 places at the Euro 2004 finals in June.
But Russia's participation was questioned again when Wales asked UEFA to kick Russia out of Euro 2004 because midfielder Titov tested positive for the banned substance bromantan after the playoff in Moscow. Titov was an unused substitute in that match, but started the return leg in Cardiff four days later.
UEFA turned down the complaint and rejected Wales' appeal later. The Court of Arbitration for Sport also dismissed the Welsh Football Association's attempt to expel Russia.
Off the field, Russia has already scored a victory of sorts at Euro 2004.
For the first time in the post-Soviet era, Russia's entire ticket quota - about 20 percent of the stadium capacity - has been bought up.
Russia will have 6,000 fans on its side against Spain and Greece in Faro, and about 12,000 against host Portugal in Lisbon in Group A matches.
Many fans have purchased tickets from free sale and Russian expatriates from all over Europe are also expected to come.
Only a few dozen saw the Soviet Union win 1960's Europe Cup - the country's only international title.
Now team officials say they expect about 14,000 supporters in Portugal.
But will the team rise to their expectations?
(Reuters, AP, SPT)
TITLE: Coach Has Ability to Beat Odds
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - In less than three months between August and November last year, coach Georgy Yartsev transformed an also-ran Russian side into a contender that beat all odds by qualifying for Euro 2004.
When Yartsev replaced Valery Gazzayev, Russia was in third place in Group 10 behind Switzerland and Ireland with only three games left in its qualifying campaign.
Yartsev was appointed just 12 days before a crucial match against Ireland. A defeat in Dublin would have eliminated Russia, but the new coach made it clear that wasn't the plan.
"We have no right to miss these European Championships," were Yartsev's first words when he took charge of the team - and he stood by them.
He recalled several veterans, including Alexander Mostovoi, Yegor Titov and Dmitry Alenichev, most of whom had been dropped by his predecessor following Russia's dismal showing at the 2002 World Cup.
"I was relying on the players I had known for years," said Yartsev, who installed Titov and Alenichev along with other youngsters in Spartak Moscow's first team in 1996 and guided them to the Russian title in his debut season.
Yartsev also found a place for newcomer Dmitry Bulykin who, playing only his second international, responded by scoring a hat-trick in a 4-1 win over Switzerland.
Yartsev was also prepared to vary the team's tactics, from conservative against Ireland in Dublin to all-out attack for the next two home matches.
Russia then completed a remarkable turnaround, finishing second in the group after winning the remaining two games and beating Wales in the playoffs.
To many, Yartsev's appointment as national coach came as a big surprise.
"I hesitated a bit because the situation with the team was at a critical point," said Yartsev, 55, who had been out of coaching since leaving struggling Rotor Volgograd more than three years previously.
"But I still believed there was a chance and somehow we could find a way out of the crisis." Above all, Yartsev improved morale, instilling confidence in his players and bringing back the fans, who have given the team their unequivocal support. In an instant, he became the media's darling.
The charismatic coach was hailed as a national savior by the very same Russian press who for over a year had insisted on the necessity of hiring a foreign manager for the team. The charismatic Yartsev is Russia's sixth national coach since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993, and wants to be the first to bring his country any kind of success.
Once a medical assistant in a Soviet province, Yartsev soon took up soccer full time and played in several second division teams before winning the league title with Spartak Moscow in 1979 at the age of 30. He was the league's top scorer the year before.
The highlight of his coaching career came in 1996, when he led Spartak Moscow to the Russian league title and was named the country's Coach of the Year.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Andreychuk Gets His Name On the Stanley Cup Trophy
AUTHOR: By Fred Goodall
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAMPA, Florida - Music blared, champagne flowed and Dave Andreychuk struggled to contain his emotions.
After 22 seasons in the NHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning captain will finally have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup. "You dream about this day for a long time, obviously," the 40-year-old Andreychuk said after Monday night's 2-1 victory over the Calgary Flames in Game 7 of his first Stanley Cup final.
"It's taken me a while to get to this point, and I don't believe you can put into words the things that are going through your mind. The years that you got knocked off in the first round. The years that you didn't make the playoffs."
Andreychuk was the first player to hoist the NHL's most coveted prize. He hopped twice in jubilation and skated around to the cheers of a sellout crowd of 22,717 before passing it to Tim Taylor, another veteran brought in three years ago to provide leadership for a young club.
"It's awesome for him," Taylor said. "We kept saying this wasn't about Dave. It was about our team. It's special because Dave led the team. Twenty-two years and now he's a Stanley Cup champion. I'm proud to be part of it."
No one had stepped on the ice more times without winning a title than Andreychuk, who won in the 1,759th game of what is likely a Hall of Fame career.
He finished the biggest game of his life in the penalty box, drawing an infraction for tripping with 22 seconds left. He bolted out of the box when it was over, dropped his stick and joined teammates in mobbing goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin behind the net.
"This guy wanted it bad," Lightning coach John Tortorella said, adding that Andreychuk tried hard to give outsiders the impression that winning the Cup wasn't as important to him as others imagined.
"He didn't need this to validate his career. I mean, he's a Hall of Famer. But for him to get this, what a sight to see."
Andreychuk had played a record 1,597 regular-season games, and another 161 in the playoffs, without winning an NHL championship. The closest he had come to playing in a Cup final was with Toronto in 1993 and Colorado in 2000, and both times his team lost Game 7 in the conference finals.
The big question now is whether Andreychuk, a first-round draft pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 1982, has played his last game, following the lead of one-time teammate Ray Bourque, who retired after finally winning the Cup in his 22nd season in 2001.
"I am going to savor this moment with my teammates and my family, and this is going to last a while," Andreychuk said. "Then I will make a decision. Obviously this is the pinnacle. This is what we play for, and it's taken me a while to get here. But I'm going to wait and see what happens."
Darryl Sydor, acquired in a midseason trade that solidified the Lightning defense, also won the Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1999. He said you could see how much it meant to Andreychuk.
"It almost brought tears to my eyes that this guy has been here so long, hasn't been to the finals, and to get him the Cup is awesome," Sydor said. "This is for Dave Andreychuk. This is for the guys that have been here."
A scorer for 19 seasons with Buffalo, Toronto, New Jersey, Boston and Colorado, Andreychuk signed with the Lightning as a free agent in July 2001 and accepted a role as a checking forward and faceoff specialist to fit into Tortorella's plans.
This season was the 19th in which he's scored at least 20 goals. Only two players - Hall of Famer Gordie Howe (22) and Ron Francis (20) - have had more.
But Andreychuk's biggest contribution to the Lightning probably has been in the locker room, where he has been a leader for a team that lacked discipline on and off the ice while struggling through a NHL-record stretch of four consecutive seasons with at least 50 losses.
He finished these playoffs with one goal and 13 assists in 23 games, with a league-high eight of those assists coming on power-play goals. He didn't score a goal in his last 13 postseason games, but that meant nothing Monday night when he was skating around with the Cup.
"It was a moment that has gone through my head lots of times," Andreychuk said. "Finally, it happened."
TITLE: Bryant Leads Lakers to 99-91 Victory
AUTHOR: By Greg Beacham
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Kobe Bryant hit a game-tying 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds left Tuesday, then scored four of his 33 points in overtime to lead the Lakers to a 99-91 victory over the Detroit Pistons in Game 2, evening the series at one game each.
Bryant loves a challenge as much as Los Angeles loves drama. And when he had everything he wanted, Bryant did what the greats do - he made a shot that might have changed the NBA Finals.
During the most trying year of his life, Bryant has found his greatest peace on the court - the place where he feels he always can control the outcome. The Pistons thought they had their second straight victory after taking a six-point lead in the final minute of regulation, but Bryant still was in control.
"It's all about rising to the challenge," Bryant said. "High stakes. I know I can rise to that."
Shaquille O'Neal added six of his 29 points in overtime against the demoralized Pistons, who were 45 seconds away from a shocking two-game series lead.
Instead, Bryant's shot over Richard Hamilton provided the shock, and Detroit stumbled to the lowest-scoring overtime in NBA Finals history, managing just two points on 1-for-9 shooting.
In the locker room, the Pistons wore the dazed looks of so many Lakers opponents over the past five seasons. There was unspeakable frustration of playing a superb game, yet still not being good enough to overcome the sheer will of Shaq and Kobe.
Instead of criticizing his team for blowing its lead or freezing up in overtime, Pistons coach Larry Brown had nothing but praise for everyone - particularly Bryant.
"That's why he's so special," Brown said. "After what the kid's been through all year, more power to him, because he's a great, great young man. The way he conducts himself on the court and the way he plays this game makes me feel kind of good I'm part of it."
Game 3 is due to be played on Thursday night at The Palace of Auburn Hills, the first of three straight games in the Detroit suburb.
The Pistons outplayed the Lakers in the second half of both games at Staples Center. They won Game 1 going away, an 87-75 victory that should have snapped the Lakers to attention.
Instead, Los Angeles again struggled to execute its offense, and Chauncey Billups again shredded the Lakers' perimeter defense for 27 points and nine assists. Hamilton also returned to playoff form, scoring 26 points and keeping Bryant busy with his perpetual-motion style.
The Lakers took an 11-point lead in the third quarter, but Detroit tied it early in the fourth. The Pistons made a 14-6 run in the final minutes, capped by Ben Wallace's rebound dunk for an 89-83 lead - their biggest of the game - with 47.8 seconds left.
"We're been through a lot together, and we've been in situations like this before," O'Neal said. "We know that [with] a minute left, anything could happen."
O'Neal got free in the paint with 35.9 seconds left, hitting a layup and the ensuing free throw. Billups couldn't make a tough runner, setting up Bryant for one more career-defining shot on his overstuffed resume.
"Me and Kobe have been going at it for a long, long time," said Hamilton, Bryant's high-school rival in Philadelphia. "That wasn't the first big shot he made, you know, but he made it. It's tough to take it."
O'Neal and Bryant both played with five fouls in the closing minutes, but neither made a mistake that might have been catastrophic to the Lakers' hopes for a fourth title in five seasons. No team has rallied to win the NBA Finals after losing the first two games at home.
Rasheed Wallace had just 11 points on 5-for-14 shooting for the Pistons, while Tayshaun Prince scored just five points in 47 minutes.
If the NBA Finals turn into a game of two-on-two, the smart money always will be on Shaq and Kobe.
"As far as my professional career goes, this is probably the biggest shot I ever hit, period," Bryant said, before adding with a grin: "I have to put it second behind a shot that I hit to beat Rip in high school."