SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #986 (54), Friday, July 16, 2004
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TITLE: Kremlin Contradicts Matviyenko's News
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Valentina Matviyenko's statement that some of Moscow's functions as a capital will soon be transferred to St. Petersburg was contradicted by the Kremlin press service almost as soon as she made it.
"A decision to move some capital functions to St. Petersburg has been taken, but until it is officially announced to the public I do not have the authority to give more details about it or about plans to use buildings of Senate and Synod for this purposes," Matviyenko said at a meeting with members of the St. Petersburg chapter of the American Chamber of Commerce.
City Hall is negotiating with the Culture Ministry of Culture, the Federal Agency for Managing State Property and other federal structures to hand over to St. Petersburg the management of architectural monuments of federal significance, she said.
"We don't have to run to Moscow all the time to ask for permission about certain buildings," Matviyenko said. "We have to have these responsibilities [in our hands] here and we will get it as a city of federal significance."
"This will allow us to solve questions of city development in a more dynamic and more effective way," she added. But the federal government was quick to denounce the governor's statement.
"The government has no plans like this," Viktor Konnov, the government spokesman said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I will restrain myself from any further comments."
The most recent mention of plans to move some capital functions to St. Petersburg before Wednesday was on June 1, shortly before a Federal Council meeting, which had been due to discuss the matter, but did not.
Federal and local officials started talking about moving to the supreme, constitutional and arbitration courts, placing them in the Senate and Synod buildings, located on Senate Square. At that time Ilya Klebanov, the presidential envoy to the Northwest region confirmed the plans.
According to Delovoi Petersburg, the plans are to move to St. Petersburg 310 employees of the national court department, 125 judges of the Supreme Court and 687 members of its staff, 60 judges of the Supreme Arbitration Court and 435 members of its staff.
"There's quite a strong resistance in the courts and the [federal] government in Moscow to this idea, Vladimir Yeryomenko, a Legislative Assembly lawmaker in the Mariinskaya faction said Thursday in a telephone interview. "But I think Matviyenko has indirect approval from the president to make such announcements. She is not an inexperienced politician."
"The Kremlin's denial doesn't show the presidential administration in a good light," he said. "It demonstrates there are disputes within the administration and the government and it reflects badly on the president."
Meanwhile, AmCham members were interested to hear more practical things about a wide spectrum of city life ranging from problems with parking to requests to involve foreign businessmen in overseeing tenders for construction that have recently been introduced by City Hall.
"Of course, though, if there is person sitting with a hammer in front of bidders, there is not really much to monitor," Matviyenko said. "But in other questions, involving the work of different commissions, we are ready for cooperation with any association and can include their members in a working group.
"Get ready with your offers," Matviyenko said answering a question from Matthew Murray, chairman of the Center for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance.
Businessmen were in general quite happy with Matviyenko's answers especially considering it was the first meeting of its kind with the foreign community.
"I thought she was very impressive," Murray said Wednesday in an interview. 'I think that the governor has obviously thought through the key problems facing the city and she has many, many ambitions that are very logical and make a big deal of sense.
"The key now is if can she form a coalition of interested parties, honest government officials, honest businesses, honest organizations representing civil society that can actually fulfil these ambitious plans," he said.
Paul Price, vice president of Delta Capital Management, which is a part owner of the city's Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, was concerned about plans of the governor to build more hotels in the city, asking Matviyenko if representatives from the international hotel business can participate in works to set up a concept for city tourism development.
But Matviyenko said the development of the concept is the responsibility of the Boston Consulting Group because City Hall has already signed an agreement with that company.
The hotel businesses can be involved when the concept is ready, Matviyenko said.
"It is encouraging that BCG is involved because they are a very capable consultancy group," Price said after Matviyenko's speech.
"My concern is that when 100 projects are mentioned that it may be very good for the construction industry, but you might get into a situation of oversupply, which ... could be as damaging as undersupply," he said.
After Stephen Gardner, an executive with telecom Peterstar, asked a question about security on city streets, mentioning problems with the local Roma community and illegal actions committed by the police, it appeared that Matviyenko has suffered herself, but in New York, not in St. Petersburg. "My bag was stolen in New York. And when I was in Italy I was always told to be careful about my things because there are people on motorbikes that take bags off very quickly passing you by," Matviyenko said.
Matviyenko said the city police try to deal with the Roma community, but she did not say a word about the police committing crimes.
"I know it's a difficult problem in every city, but I think St. Petersburg has more of a unique problem," Gardner said in an interview Wednesday. "It's not only just the people on the street, I mean criminals, it is sometime authorities that are meant to protect us. She answered a part of the question."
TITLE: Misguided Moves Set Off Run On Banks
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It may not have wanted to boost the business of foreign lenders or strengthen its own de facto monopoly on personal savings, but that is exactly what happened when the Central Bank promptly pulled the plug on a mid-level bank, triggering the biggest bank run since 1998.
Bankers, credit raters and investors all say that the liquidity squeeze that has gripped the financial system since the Central Bank annulled Sodbiznesbank's license in May could take months to fully run its course. But now that one major bank has been essentially nationalized and others have raised new capital, the dust is beginning to settle, revealing a new-look sector in which foreign lenders like Citibank and state-owned Sberbank are playing larger roles.
"Our intention is not to strengthen the role of state banks and ... foreign banks," Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev told reporters in the Federation Council on Thursday, news agencies reported. "It is a simple, natural process that leads to fewer but larger banks," he said. "But this is not the aim of the Central Bank or the government - it is simply a market process."
Spooked by the ease with which the system can freeze, depositors and companies have been pulling their money out of private Russian banks and putting it into perceived safe havens like well-established Western institutions and Central Bank-controlled Sberbank, which enjoys a near monopoly on personal savings.
"The state and the foreign banks are the winners in this crisis," said Oleg Tumanov, deputy CEO of Alfa Bank, the country's largest private bank and the biggest victim of the recent run. "The other main winner is the biggest bank in Russia, the 'mattress bank.'"
Rumors that Alfa and other private lenders were on a "blacklist" of troubled banks added fuel to the fire. Alfa publicly denied the rumors, but to no avail - waves of depositors withdrew more than $200 million from the bank's retail network last week alone, prompting shareholders to put up $700 million so the bank could meet its obligations.
The erosion of banks' confidence in each other inflated short-term lending rates, adding to the instability.
The government's reaction was belated but coordinated. The Central Bank cut reserve requirements twice and introduced a bill guaranteeing deposits up to 100,000 rubles ($3,400), while President Vladimir Putin took to the airwaves to reassure the public that its money was safe.
Concrete figures on exactly when and how much money was pulled out of the system will not be available for several more weeks, but Garegin Tosunyan, president of the Association of Russian Banks, whose members own 90 percent of all banking capital, said all was normal as late as June 5.
"Only at the end of June and start of July, there was a slowdown in deposits and perhaps a reduction in the volume, though according to Central Bank data there was no absolute reduction in deposits," Tosunyan said. "This is a flow from one place to another."
Sberbank and state-owned Vneshtorgbank, or VTB, probably gained the most from that redistribution of money, said Vladimir Romanov, chairman of Bank Elektronika, Russia's 69th-biggest bank by assets according to the business weekly Expert. "Recent events have increased depositors' interest in Sberbank and foreign banks," he said.
"Let's say it this way," Tosunyan said. "The tendency is toward greater monopolization - the same thing happened in 1998 and then it subsided."
However, Sberbank, which says it has 69 percent of all personal ruble deposits and 45 percent of all foreign-currency deposits, insists that it has not been affected one way or another by the crisis.
"There has been no surge of depositors with us," Sberbank president Andrei Kazmin told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "The data just does not confirm this - the clear winner here is the mattress bank."
Even if Kazmin is right about deposits, Sberbank stands to gain from the liquidity crunch in another way. The bank said it would start operating on the interbank market, a service it has rarely performed. Kazmin said Sberbank was prepared to make $500 million available for short-term loans to other banks.
"Sberbank's presence on the interbank market will deepen the market and prevent it from shrinking as fast as it did this month," said Andrew Keeley, banking analyst at Renaissance Capital. "And it is good for Sberbank, since it will potentially earn more on this money than by just parking its excess liquidity with the Central Bank, although its risk profile will be raised and it remains to be seen if this move represents a long-term policy shift."
"The natural move of the vast majority of affected clients has been to look at the state banks, Sberbank and VTB in particular," said Michel Perhirin, chairman of the managing board of Austria's Raiffeisenbank in Russia.
The crisis has been good in other ways for VTB, too.
Guta, the nation's No. 22 bank by assets, which include juicy real estate holdings and chocolate factories, was forced to shut its doors last week after it ran out of money. With a $700 million credit from the Central Bank, VTB bought Guta and will soon reopen it.
Other beneficiaries of the crisis include banks with foreign shareholders, such as International Moscow Bank, Raiffeisenbank and Citibank, banking analysts said.
"We have seen a flow of corporate clients from the small and medium-sized Russian banks, and some of those companies have come to us," said Ilkka Salonen, chairman of the management board of International Moscow Bank, whose shareholders include HVB Group, Germany's second-largest bank by assets, Nordea AB, the biggest Scandinavian lender, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
"They said their old banks had either stopped lending or raised the price and cut the lending periods. It is nothing compared to the flow we saw after 1998, but it is large," Salonen said.
"[Raiffeisenbank's] clientele has regularly increased and broadened with good medium-sized enterprises and companies willing to bank with us," Perhirin said. "The client base is becoming more and more diversified."
"We were not affected by the crisis and continued business as usual," said Allan Hirst, head of Citigroup in Russia. "We observe a growth of clients and we have a net inflow of business - both lending and deposits."
Bank Elektronika's Romanov said he expects to see "certain credit organizations" strengthen through a series of mergers and acquisitions - "possibly with the participation of foreign banks."
In the near term, however, most bankers and analysts said they expect to see more casualties as the "deadwood" in the system is cleared away.
But as long as Russia relies on panic-driven crises to reform its banking system, private domestic banks will never be able to compete with Sberbank, foreign banks or even the mattress bank, analysts said.
For the Central Bank, however, it appears to be back to business as usual.
"There was a crisis of confidence," Ignatyev was quoted by news agencies as saying Thursday. "This crisis has ended. An outflow of funds ended."
TITLE: Rights Group Says Children Victims of Psychiatric Abuse
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: About 600,000 children across Russia, or up to 2 percent of all the country's children, are locked in mental institutions where their rights are violently breached, the international Citizens Commission for Human Rights, or CCHR, said Tuesday.
The commission is the organizer of a traveling exhibition "Broken Life: Psychiatry Exposed" that has run for the last month in the St. Petersburg Peter and Paul Fortress. The exhibition ends Friday before heading for Moscow.
Roman Chyorny, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg branch of the commission, said medical staff torture and maltreat children who are diagnosed as mentally disabled.
"It's a widespread practice for children to be sent to a mental institution simply for bad behavior and after an examination that usually lasts no longer than five minutes that finds them to be mentally ill," Chyorny said Tuesday in an interview.
"Just imagine a six-year-old child -when he meets a doctor, he gets scared and sits in silence," he said. "After the child hasn't said a word for five minutes, doctors diagnose him as mentally retarded and send him to a mental institution."
The conditions in which children must live in for years in mental institutions are awful, Chyorny said.
"Punishments for bad behavior often include forced administration of psychotropic drugs," he said. "The most outrages punishments include the so-called wind torture that was mentioned in a recent Human Rights Watch report.
The staff undress a child, tie up his legs and hang him out a window upside-down."
Another example of abuse had been observed by a colleague during recent visits to a city mental institution, where she saw children lying in beds naked, Chyorny said.
"When she asked why they were naked, a nurse said 'Who cares, they are mentally disabled anyway,'" he said.
Medical staff pay no attention to education, which means that most of the children classified as mental disabled cannot read or write, he added.
"The label of 'imbecile,' or idiot, which signifies "ineducable," is almost always irrevocable," says a U.S. State Department report on Russian mental institutions. "The most likely future is a lifetime in state institutions. Even the label of "debile," or lightly retarded, follows a person throughout his or her life on official documents, creating barriers to employment and housing after graduation from state institutions."
The Rights of the Child program of the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights says that graduating from a state institution for the lightly retarded at age 18, 30 percent of orphans became vagrants, 10 percent became involved in crime, and 10 percent commit suicide, the U.S. report says, quoting a study conducted by the center.
"I remember visiting one of such institutions located by Smolny Cathedral not long ago," Chyorny said. "When you enter, there is a strong and very bad smell all around and when their lunch starts, the smell becomes even stronger. Children are given bad porridge and old potatoes. They get fruit very rarely."
Besides being damaged physically and psychologically, children classified as mentally disabled face financial extortion in mental institutions, Chyorny said.
"Seventy percent of their monthly welfare payments of 1,000 rubles ($34.40) are usually sequestered by the medical staff to support the medical institution," Chyorny said.
The exhibition has already toured Mexico, the United States, almost all the countries of Western Europe and was brought to St. Petersburg after being displayed in the corridors of Leningrad Oblast government and the Oblast Legislative Assembly.
It was welcomed by the officials of Leningrad Oblast called their interest, CCHR representatives said.
About 10,000 people visited the exhibition in Peter and Paul fortress, including about 600 people who put their signatures on a petition protesting against violence in psychiatry. The petition is to be sent to regional and federal administrators in Russia.
As a result of gathering signatures for a similar petition in Mexico, a bill was passed which forbids forcing parents to give psychiatric drugs to their children.
The exhibition, which details the history of violations in psychiatry throughout the world, has very little material on abuses in Russia because of a lack of financing, but there is a chance there will be more because the most recent research on the abuses of psychiatry in Russia is almost completed. No comment was available from the staff of city mental institutions.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: City Makeover
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Much of the city faces a complete overhaul by 2025 Interfax reported Tuesday, following the announcement by the city government of the concept of a new city plan for St. Petersburg.
With more than 500 hectares of industrial land being converted to other uses, the plan aims to stimulate economic development.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko called for widespread access to the plans in order to acquaint every citizen with the future developments and gauge public opinion.
Support for Girenko
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin met with supporters of the late ethnographer Nikolai Girenko in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
A regular witness in court against nationalists, Girenko was shot dead through the door of his home on June 19.
"This group both wishes to and will continue to work further, even after the tragedy that has occurred" Lukin said to journalists, Interfax reported.
Problems in Prisons
ST PETERSBURG (SPT) - Following customary visits to prisons in Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, Human Federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin reported finding severe cases of professional misconduct even amounting to criminal offenses, Interfax reported Tuesday.
He cited the management of February hunger strikes as testimony to cruel treatment by prison administrators, over which a criminal case has been opened.
Big Brother at Home
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - All domestic apartment buildings are to be fitted with video-surveillance equipment, with householders expected to pay 300 to 900 rubles each for the cameras, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The cameras are intended to make safer entrances and yards, where more than half of crimes in the city occur.
Education Dispute
TALLIN, ESTONIA (SPT) - A wave of failure has struck Russian-speaking applicants to higher education in Estonia, Interfax reported.
While in 1993-4 17.2 percent of such students were Russian speakers, this has fallen to 9.8 percent in 2003-4. Ethnic Russians who comprise 30 percent of Estonia's population, the report said.
"If the state does not provide sufficient resources to Russian-speaking citizens, it should make provision for them to study abroad, perhaps in Russia," said Alexei Semyonov, of the Center for Infor mation on Human Rights.
TITLE: 'It is the Moment of Truth for Russia'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The older brothers of Paul Klebnikov, the Forbes Russia editor who was shot dead in the street outside his office last week, challenged the government Wednesday to solve the murder and show that Russia is becoming a normal country.
"We are confident that such a high-profile case ... is a wonderful opportunity for the Russian government to show the world that it has turned the corner. We think they have every incentive to demonstrate their competence and their interest in solving this case quickly," Michael Klebnikov said.
He and his brother Peter held a news conference at the U.S. Embassy before joining hundreds of mourners at a memorial service at the lower church of the Christ the Savior Cathedral.
"It is the moment of truth for Russia. The country could well have the capacity to build skyscrapers, to solve international conflicts or even win tennis tournaments. But for as long as resolving disputes or removing someone who stands in the way by murder is considered normal, the country is sick," Peter Klebnikov said.
The Klebnikovs had flown to Moscow to accompany their brother's body to New York, where he is to be buried on Friday.
Paul Klebnikov, 41, was shot with an automatic weapon from a passing car last Friday night and died of multiple wounds shortly afterward. His killing is believed to be connected to his work as an investigative journalist.
His brothers said they had no clue as to who might have been behind the murder.
Aside from being a personal tragedy for Klebnikov's family and a worrying sign for journalists working in Russia, the murder also has the potential to affect U.S.-Russia business relations, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said after the memorial service.
"I think certainly there will be concerns on the part of American business, other Americans working in Russia, about this kind of outrageous act. ... If the killers go free, of course, it will send a disturbing signal," Vershbow said.
The Klebnikov brothers thanked the government for giving priority to the investigation, which has been taken over by the Prosecutor General's Office.
Although few high-profile killings in Russia have ever been solved, the brothers said they were confident the prosecutors will do everything they can to bring the killers to justice and had been personally assured of this in a conversation with Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov.
Ustinov paid a brief visit to the memorial service, which was attended by family, friends, a few political figures and some who never knew Klebnikov but were moved by his death.
The service was conducted with the participation of Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, who is known as President Vladimir Putin's confessor, and Father Leonid Kalinin of Christ the Savior Cathedral, both of whom were also personal friends of Klebnikov's. Klebnikov was active in the rebuilding of the cathedral in the 1990s.
Also among those paying a last tribute to Klebnikov was Boris Nemtsov, former leader of the Union of Right Forces.
"Of course I knew Klebnikov," Nemtsov said. "I saw him last time about a month ago. ... We had a heated debate about Russia, about Forbes Russia's 100 wealthiest people list."
The publication in the May issue of a list of Russia's 100 wealthiest people has been among the most popular theories on where to look for the motive behind Klebnikov's murder.
His brothers, however, refused to speculate.
"Regarding the list of 100 people, my understanding is that the investigation is extremely broad-ranging and anybody who had contact with Paul will be looked into," Michael Khlebnikov, 48, said. Anyone who had something to hide and was put into the spotlight as a result of his brother's work could have been behind the murder, he said.
TITLE: Power Agencies Get Restructure Orders
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has cut the number of top officials in the Federal Security Service and the Emergency Situations Ministry in a move widely predicted to herald further reorganization of the government's so-called "power agencies."
The decrees, which Putin signed on Sunday but were made public by the Kremlin's press service only on Wednesday, cut the number of deputies to FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev from 12 to four, and for Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu from 10 to three. Both organizations' central staff will also be restructured and salaries for senior officials will be raised.
Also in the pipeline is the reorganization of other strongholds of the siloviki in government, the Defense Ministry, Justice Ministry and Prosecutor General's Office, Russian media has reported.
Speculation about upcoming reforms in the FSB and Emergency Situations Ministry had appeared in the Russian media before the decrees were officially announced. The Gazeta daily speculated in its Wednesday issue that the reform of the power agencies could lead to the establishment of a Ministry of State Security, which would include the FSB, Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Guard Service (the rough equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service).
However, neither the Kremlin nor Gazeta.ru accounts of the decree mentioned any plans to establish such a ministry, which would be an almost complete replica of the Soviet-era KGB, of which the FSB is the main successor agency.
Nor did FSB personnel chief Colonel General Yevgeny Lovyrev mention any plan to establish such a ministry during his meeting Wednesday with a pool of Russian reporters. Lovyrev said the FSB had played an active role in drafting the decree and that "practically all the suggestions" of the FSB's top brass were taken into account.
This remark indicates that FSB has not lobbied for incorporating either the Foreign Intelligence Service or the Federal Guard Service, said Ivan Safranchuk, a defense and security analyst who heads the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. Safranchuk said such an enlargement would allow the combined organization to cut costs, but would also have a negative impact on overall flexibility in reacting to domestic and foreign challenges.
Lovyrev said the decree "substantially widens" the powers of FSB Director Patrushev.
The decree also provides for the establishment of separate sub-services to incorporate existing FSB departments, such as the protection of constitutional order and personnel departments. The FSB already has one service in its structure - the Border Service, which it engulfed last year along with most of the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information.
The FSB has three months to complete its reorganization, the Kremlin press service said Wednesday.
TITLE: City Journalist Is Still Missing
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Police in St. Petersburg are still looking for journalist Maxim Maximov who was reported missing after failing to turn up for work on July 5.
Police said Thursday they have no information on the whereabouts of Maximov, 41, a correspondent for the Gorod magazine, who had been investigating the Galina Starovoitova murder case.
"We are looking, looking, but there is no news so far. We have no clue where Maximov could be," a police spokesman said Thursday.
The spokesman said that the police have been looking for Maximov's car, a black Ford Escort, and have started checking the calls he received on his cellphone.
He said the police are cooperating with the city's Agency for Journalistic Investigations on the case, but he added he was pessimistic that the journalist could be found. "So many people disappear in St. Petersburg every year and many are never found," he said.
Gorod editor Sergei Baluyev said by telephone Thursday that he had no idea why Maximov had gone missing. "I don't think it is linked to his work at the magazine," he said.
TITLE: Lawyers Appeal Qatar Ruling
PUBLISHER: Interfax
TEXT: MOSCOW - Defense lawyers acting for two Russian intelligence agents convicted by a Qatari court of the assassination in Qatar in February 2004 of a Chechen separatist leader have appealed against the 25-year sentence handed out on June 30.
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former Chechen separatist president, was killed on Feb.13 by a car bomb in the Qatari capital Doha, where he had lived with his family for the past few years.
Three Russians who were on a business visit to the Russian Embassy were arrested on Feb. 19 on suspicion of the assassination. Later one of them was released.
Wednesday was the deadline for the appeal.
Moscow has repeatedly claimed that neither the two arrested or the Russian government had anything to do with the murder.
"The defense demands the cancellation of the sentence and insists on the acquittal of the two Russian citizens," defense lawyer Ilya Levitov said.
TITLE: Matviyenko Scraps Plan to Evict Artists from City-Owned Studios
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Valentina Matviyenko this week canceled a notorious decree by City Hall 's property committee that ordered the privatization of city-owned artists' studios for subsequent sale or rent at market prices.
The decree, issued in the second half of June, called on artists renting the studios to pay in advance all the rent up to 2010 - on average $2,000. Those who failed to pay would be evicted and their studios sold. After 2010, however, all studios were to be subject to privatization, according to the plan.
The plan caused uproar in the city's cultural community. About 1,000 artists, sculptors, designers and writers protested outside the city parliament on St. Isaac's Square in driving rain to voice their anger. Matviyenko then called the decree unethical and has now put an end to the privatization project.
Albert Charkin, head of the city's Artists Union, said the governor hadn't seen the original decree, and found out about it only after it had been issued.
"As far as I know, she wasn't aware of the situation until she personally met with a group of artists at Smolny," Charkin said. "When she realized what is going on, the governor was genuinely upset."
But Matviyenko said City Hall will still inspect each studio, revise all the contracts and check whether they are managed efficiently.
Officials believe many of the studios are either sublet or aren't properly maintained.
Charkin said representatives of the Artists' Union will join the officials in the inspections. Decisions on the fate of every studio will be made by October, he said.
Some 2,000 local artists rent their studios at low prices, with further artists in line to receive studios under the city program. The monthly rent for a studio of 50 square meters is 1,000 rubles to 1,500 rubles. The right to rent the studios survived the demise of the Soviet Union and is granted by the city's artistic unions, under an agreement with City Hall. The agreement expires in 2010.
TITLE: Direct Flights Link City to Eastern Asia
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Korean Air Lines, the biggest air carrier in Korea and one of the biggest in Asia, became the first Asian airline to offer scheduled flights to St. Petersburg this week.
The Airbus-330 jets, which accommodate about 270 passengers, will provide business travelers and tourists with a direct service between Seoul and St. Petersburg three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The jets will arrive to St. Petersburg at 18:40 to depart at 20:40 and return to Seoul at 10:10 the following morning.
Ruslan Maslov, marketing assistant at the Moscow office of Korean National Tourism Organization, said Russia's Northwest and particularly St. Petersburg present a significant interest for Korea in both business and tourism opportunities.
"Tour operators have been working very actively in St. Petersburg, so we expect an increased number of Russian visitors to Korea, but with the new link, there is a possibility of increasing the numbers of Korean travelers as well," he said.
"We have conducted a thorough market research, showing that the route should be in comparable demand among business people as well as tourists. There has been much interest in this flight in other regions of Russia because in some cases it is most convenient to use as a hop [or transfer] flight."
Seoul is frequently referred to as a gateway to Eastern Asia, so the new flight provides opportunities to link St. Petersburg to Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia. These countries' national carriers are not represented in the city, while local airline Pulkovo does not serve these routes.
Anton Burenin of the St. Petersburg office of Korean Air Lines said tickets cost from $550 round trip plus taxes, which are about 50 to 60 dollars. This price compares favorably to the offers of European airlines, which are at least 30 percent more expensive.
Pulkovo, which has recently suspended its twice a week flights to Seoul, signed a code-sharing agreement with Korean Air Lines, getting a fixed block of six seats on each flight. These seats will be sold through Pulkovo's own sales offices or travel agents, with all the airline's discount systems applying.
"It is more profitable for us to have this deal, rather than use our own planes on this route," said Pulkovo spokeswoman Alexandra Cherkasova. "But once the destination gets developed, we may well consider resuming our own flights and have two carriers on the route."
There are some Asian businesses that operate locally, but Asian tourists never counted among those to frequently visit the city. Absence of a moderately priced direct air service was seen as the major obstacle.
Earlier this month Sibir Air Lines opened a route linking St. Petersburg with Niigata, Japan via Irkutsk.
TITLE: City Cancels Bombardier's Project
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city government has turned down Canadian Bombardier's $527 million monorail project, as one that St. Petersburg can no longer afford.
The decision was made after Moscow refused to extend any financial assistance to several other city construction projects last weekend.
The first 20-kilometer long section of express monorail, called the Overland Express, connecting the city's expanding southern districts with Obukhovo metro station, had been included in St. Petersburg's general development plan earlier this year as the most efficient way to relieve the city's worn and crowded subway system.
The Overland Express' automatically driven carriages were to make 12 stops along the route, carrying 260,000 passengers per day. Bombardier, a Canada-based transportation manufacturer, had completed similar projects in several cities around the globe, such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Vancouver, Canada.
Bombardier had been aiming for the project in St. Petersburg since 1998. The first agreement of the company's intended cooperation with the city was signed in 2002 under former Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. In April this year, Bombardier submitted a two-volume report on technological and economic feasibility of the project to the city government. The Overland Express was expected to pay off within 11-15 years.
"The Canadian project is of high quality, but expensive, and the city needs to save money," an anonymous source at the city government's committee on investments told Delovoi Peterburg on Wednesday. "There are also other companies in the market," the source said.
According to Delovoi Peterburg, one of the companies most likely to take part in the project at the engineering stage is the Moscow-based state construction institute Metrogiprotrans, which built the so-called light or overland Butovskaya metro line in Moscow.
Another source at the city government told Interfax on Tuesday that it is more sensible for the city to build new metro stations, as the St. Petersburg subway is maintained by a state organization submitting its profits to the city budget, while Bombardier is a private company.
Some of the metro's new stations to be built in Frunzensky district can be constructed as overland stations, which should reduce the costs by half, Governor Matviyenko said earlier.
"I strongly support the idea of attracting private companies to take part in the project on the basis of a public-private partnership," said Pavel Brusser of the investments committee on Thursday. A number of proposals from other Western companies is being reviewed by the city government, but it is too early to make any predictions, he said.
While it will be private investments covering the monorail's construction, the city will provide its share of the project by extending a series of concessions to the tender winner, such as land, Brusser said.
Smolny was counting for federal support in its other major construction initiatives, such as the Western Express Diameter and the new passenger marine terminal, worth a total of over $1.7 billion.
Bombardier's proposal was rejected after Economic Development and Trade Minister, German Gref visited the city last weekend. Gref said that no federal financing will be allocated to St. Petersburg until its construction projects are overseen by large Western consultants.
Meanwhile, Gref promised to provide 1 billion rubles ($34 million) to develop the Ust-Luga port in the Leningrad Oblast.
The investments committee said that the rejection of Bombardier's project is not connected with Gref's visit.
The city government was originally expected to reach a decision about Bombardier's proposal only in autumn this year.
One kilometer of subway construction is estimated at $80 million, while one kilometer of Bombardier's Overland Express would amount to about $21 million. The light metro in Moscow cost $17 million per kilometer. Overland monorail is the most environment and infrastructure friendly of the above, experts say.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Taxi Routes Cut
ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - The amount of routes for fixed-route minibuses, or marshrutki will be reduced next year from 460 to 303, Rosbalt News Agency reported Vice-Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky as saying.
The administration plans to switch the fixed-route service from vans to larger buses and to increase qualification standards for taxi drivers, Oseyevsky said.
Bank Conference
St. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The 9th Northwest banking conference opened Thursday in the city.
The main theme of the conference is the role that banks play in regional economic development, organizers say.
Representatives from the administration, Central Bank officials, as well as CIS and international banks leaders will take part in the conference, which will be end July 17.
Intel Center Opens
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Intel Corp., a global computer software and microprocessor manufacturer, opened its second research center in Russia in the city, an Intel spokeswoman said.
The center, located on Leninsky Prospekt, opened at the end of June, but it is set to be officially presented next week, with Intel's top management coming to the city to explain the new site's main objectives and activities.
Intel's only other development site operating in Russia is in Nizhny Novgorod.
TITLE: Yukos Court Case Starts, Marshals Eye Wells
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky pleaded not guilty to charges including fraud and tax evasion in a Moscow court room on Thursday.
"I plead not guilty to all the points on which I have been charged," Khodorkovsky told the court, as prosecution began to lay out its fraud case, a process that could last days, but will include details of the sentence it is seeking against him.
His co-defendant Platon Lebedev, also a key shareholder in oil giant Yukos also entered a not guilty plea.
Meanwhile court marshals moved one step closer to seizing Yukos' Siberian oil wells Wednesday, confiscating the share registries of Yukos' Samaraneftegaz and Yuganskneftegaz production units, even as the embattled oil firm went public with details of a tax restructuring scheme to stave off asset seizures or bankruptcy.
The company's mounting tax debt could soar to $10 billion, well beyond the $3.4 billion for 2000 Yukos already says it cannot pay immediately.
Yukos is offering to pay this month up to $1.3 billion of the $3.4 billion bill that fell due last week, the company said in a statement Wednesday. The rest, Yukos said, could eventually be raised by increasing debt or disposing of assets, which is possible only if a court-ordered asset freeze is lifted.
The offer seems like a futile shot in the dark to a government relentlessly moving closer to seizing assets, analysts said.
By confiscating share registries, the marshals will be able to make an inventory of assets that could later be seized and sold.
In a sign of Yukos owners' frustration over the company's inability to enter a dialogue with the government, Khodorkovsky called for recently elected board chairman Viktor Gerashchenko to be fired.
"Since the last meeting of the board of directors on June 24 it has become clear that shareholders' hopes for a dialogue with the government with the help of Viktor Gerashchenko have collapsed," Khodorkovsky's lawyer Anton Drel said, Interfax reported.
Khodorkovsky is asking the board to dismiss Gerashchenko, Drel said.
In a further blow to Yukos in its tax troubles, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said Wednesday he still had not seen any proposals from Yukos on restructuring its tax bill. But he added the government could offer a six-month deferment if it received an official offer.
The company claims it sent a letter to the government last Thursday offering to pay up to $8 billion in back taxes for 2000 to 2003. Yukos spokesman Hugo Erikssen said Wednesday the company had proposed to pay $2.5 billion this month, $3.5 billion next July and the remainder in July 2006.
He would not say how the company could come up with $2.5 billion this month, only saying "that's a challenge for Yukos."
Other reports have suggested the company could offer its 35 percent stake in Sibneft as collateral. That stake has a market value of $4.7 billion.
But attempts to use the stake as collateral have been complicated by an unexpected ruling by Chukotka Arbitration Court to freeze a 15 percent stake held by Yukos in Sibneft, leaving it with only 20 percent.
Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich owns Sibneft.
"I would assume [the suit] was filed by shareholders concerned that [Sibneft] shares were being publicly offered as collateral for tax debts as opposed to being used to complete the de-merger," the source said.
The Yukos-Sibneft merger was called off last year.
Yukos said in the statement Wednesday that it could fund $550 to $600 million of the $1.3 billion it could pay this week by foregoing un-refunded VAT repayments on export sales.
Yukos has said it has about $1.4 billion on its accounts.
TITLE: A Tragically Curtailed Experiment
TEXT: The editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, Pavel Yuryevich Klebnikov, an American citizen with a Russian name, was murdered on Friday evening as he was heading home from work. Thus was tragically cut short the experiment that this "Russian foreigner," who took a professional interest in Russia and loved the country, chose to perform on himself.
Paul Klebnikov was a descendant of emigres who fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Born in New York in 1963, he spoke Russian from childhood, and, apart from English, had a good command of French and Italian.
The Klebnikov family had a long history of military service. Two great-grandfathers on Pavel's father's side were generals who distinguished themselves in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. His grandfather, Sergei Vladimirovich, fought in World War I and then in the Civil War under the White generals Anton Denikin and Pyotr Vrangel. Yury Sergeyevich Klebnikov, Paul's father, was born in emigration and worked as an interpreter - notably at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46 and later at the UN, where he headed the interpreting department.
On his mother's side, Klebnikov's great-grandfather, Arkady Konstantinovich Nebolsin, served as a senior naval officer on the Aurora battle cruiser during the Russo-Japanese war and gained renown for saving the cruiser during the Battle of Tsusima. In March 1917, he was killed by mutinous sailors.
Pavel received an excellent education. He graduated from Berkley in 1984, earned a master's degree in government from the London School of Economics in 1985 and a PhD in 1991. In 1989, before completing his studies, Klebnikov went to work for Forbes as a reporter and stayed true to the publication right up until his tragic death.
As a journalist, he went through the classic Forbes school, writing in-depth articles about major companies. Inter alia, he also wrote about the rise of xenophobia in Europe, traditions of tax evasion in Italy and problems of secondary education in France, as well as analyzing conservative trends in America's black population.
But Paul Klebnikov's true passion and love was Russia. He first came to Russia as a student in 1984. He studied Russian history and made great strides together with his studies. In 1985, just before the beginning of perestroika, he defended his master's thesis on Communist Party membership in the Soviet Union. As a doctoral student, he worked on the Stolypin reforms, considering Russia's experience in land reform at the beginning of the 20th century to be important to understanding Russia's subsequent path of development. Of fundamental importance to Klebnikov was the fact that Stolypin abandoned primitive village commune socialism in favor of private property.
"The lesson of Stolypin's reform is that given economic freedom, even backward peasants can become entrepreneurial and politically conservative. Simply put, privatization pays," Klebnikov wrote in 1990 in a comment piece for The Wall Street Journal. In that article, the 27-year-old Forbes journalist urged Mikhail Gorbachev to speed up the pace of reform, pointing out that five years had already elapsed since he had become General Secretary and yet still there was no coherent economic reform program. "Vacillation only leads to economic deterioration and political polarization," he wrote.
A few years later, the pace of change accelerated, indeed overtaking all expectations. But Klebnikov quickly became disillusioned with the way the reforms were being carried out. He became absorbed in studying post-Soviet Russian capitalism. His research focused on the privatization of former soviet assets, in particular the 1995-96 loans-for-shares auctions and their aftermath. He was probably the first person to draw attention to this subject in the West. In 1996, amidst the general euphoria over Russian reforms, he published an article about Boris Berezovsky and his behind-the-scenes role in Kremlin politics. The most notable fruit of Klebnikov's laborious research into the oligarchs, which brought him fame not only in the West but also in Russia, was his book, "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia."
Setting up the Russian edition of Forbes was a natural progression for Klebnikov and the realization of a life-long dream: to recreate the values and standards of an American business magazine on Russian soil, to put together a team of Russian journalists and to write about Russian reality very much from the inside. This was completely in keeping with his proactive approach: Not content just to analyze from afar, he wanted to come here and try to make a difference - by his presence and the presence of the magazine on the Russian market, by the combination of Forbes' traditions and a talented team of young Russian journalists. This most viable of ideas had fatal consequences for him personally.
After being mortally wounded, Paul Klebnikov said that he did not understand why he had been shot. Indeed, he had not been involved in any journalistic investigations in recent months. Thus, one can conclude that people are still killed in this country for their ideas. It was for this reason that his family left Russia almost a century ago and that he was born abroad.
But in the end, Russia reclaimed one of her lost sons.
This comment first appeared as an editorial in Monday's edition of Vedomosti.
TITLE: The Question That Tikhonov Was Not Asked
TEXT: I never have given even a single thought to becoming a politician - I don't want to be a part of a dirty game. But Wednesday last week I regretted that I could not become a Legislative Assembly lawmaker for just a couple of hours.
Valery Tikhonov, former deputy head of the Federal Guard Service, or FSO, the organization that provides security for high-ranking authorities, including the president, was being appointed by the Legislative Assembly to run law and order in the city. The city parliament deputies asked Tikhonov many questions, but did not mention one that seems to me very important.
On June 28, Vechernyaya Moskva reported that the police had detained an FSO employee and charged him with child sex abuse.
Vera S., a 40-year-old woman, called law enforcers saying that her 6-year-old daughter was the victim of a pervert, the paper said, quoting the police of the Southern District of Moscow.
The woman had had to go out for some business for a couple of hours and left her daughter with a 28-year-old friend, who has a five-year-old child, and paid no attention to the man, aged 23, who was staying in the friend's apartment on Ulitsa Generala Kuznetsova.
When Vera S. took the daughter home and asked how she had spent the time, the mother was terrified. She said "the man" undressed in front of the children and asked them to touch his sexual organs. Fortunately, things went no further than that, the report said. The detainee appeared to be an employee of FSO department for special communication and information, the report said.
I have no goal to discredit the guard service, knowing perfectly well the meaning of a popular expression "a freak can be found in any family." But subsequent events suggest that the FSO decided to respond in a way that discredited itself.
After the above-mentioned article was published, the police denied everything it had said before and said that nothing had happened.
It is well known that police all over the country, the military in Chechnya and federal law enforcers do all they can to protect their employees if they do something nasty enough that it could seriously damage their reputation.
The recent case of Russian soldiers killing peaceful Chechen construction workers and then being vindicated by a jury is another example that shows how this is a widespread practice.
I am afraid FSO officials took that approach this time. Somehow it's very hard for Russian officials to understand that if a small violation is hushed up once or twice then there will be many serious violations in the future.
A lot of people tell me that by revealing such stories to the public we journalists are "taking rubbish out of a hut," a popular expression that suggests the hut should look good from the outside no matter what's going on inside.
Well, if that's the case, it's quite clear that hushing up staff misdemeanors is one of the main reasons why there is so much rubbish in Russia.
If the FSO wants to look better its management should have straight away told the truth about the 23-year-old. Was he sent to a court and jailed for three years, which is the punishment for child sex abuse in the Criminal Code? Was he fired to rid the FSO family of freaks? Because if not, I won't even try to imagine what mothers will feel when confronted by a young representative of the guard service.
If I was a lawmaker, I would ask these questions of Tikhonov because he was a deputy head of the FSO and will know what happened. And I definitely will ask him if I have an opportunity in the future.
TITLE: unlocking classical brackets
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: David Byrne, former frontman of Talking Heads, the band that revolutionized music in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, brings his My Backward Life Tour to Russia, performing a one-off concert in St. Petersburg, in between dates in Tampere and Stockholm. His most recent album, "Grown Backwards," saw the innovative musician and singer adopting a new songwriting technique, mocking the Republican Party and even singing opera arias.
"I think maybe I'm, of course, older, but maybe I'm still a little younger, in some ways," said Byrne about the album's title during the U.S. leg of his current tour, in a phone interview from a hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
While working on the album, Byrne would hum bits of melodies that occurred to him into the mini-recorder, something that he has never done before, preferring to start from rhythms and textures.
"I work often at the beginning with melody, which is very strange for me since I always thought that as being kind of a typical Western-European approach," he said.
"In fact, it's a hierarchy; the melody's on top, and everything else is below that, like in a triangle. So, I thought of it as being, whatever, a typical imperialist form of music. This kind of music is kind of the musical equivalent of that kind of thinking in politics, in economics, so for the most of my life I stayed away from it, but I think music written that way does have a kind of a greater emotional resonance. I think that's what drew me to it this time."
The album features an ironic traditionalist anthem, "Empire," which Byrne wrote four years ago.
"It's difficult to write about politics, I think, because it's something that changes all the time," said Byrne. "I think that sometimes, if you want to make a comment on a particular issue or an event, it's maybe better to do that in a newspaper, or on posters in the street, rather than taking out advertisements in newspapers with other musicians, because then you can do it very quickly - just react to a particular event.
"This particular song, of course, is completely ironic, which in a way makes it very difficult, because almost everything it says is the opposite of what it's meaning. And yet, because the melody is quite typical for this kind of anthem, it's also very good to sing to. [Laughs.] Yes, it creates this sort of good feelings when you sing it, but of course I'm trying to criticize that at the same time."
Byrne who was seen performing a brief, four-song set with Talking Heads at the band's induction into the Rock and Roll's Hall of Fame in 2002 does not like to discuss the band's possible reunion. Nonetheless, he throws a bunch of his Heads-era songs into concerts, finding that some of them sound oddly relevant these days. Take, for instance, "Life in Wartime."
"Some of the songs that I wrote a long time ago seem oddly prescient," said Byrne. "It's a song almost from the point of view of urban terrorists; it talks about car bombs, and all this kind of things are mentioned in the song. But, the really strange thing is, of course, when we play a song which has this subject - it is really about what is going on right now, and, of course, everybody's dancing. So, the song presents this really strange image: the words, and the audience dancing to it."
From songs on the new album that Byrne enjoys performing live, he cites "Dialog Box" and "Why."
"I like ['Why'] because I make allusions to chaos theory and particles going around this nucleus of an atom, and all these kinds of things," he said. "And then in the end I make a connection with a relationship. Two people meeting in a supermarket - this kind of thing. For me it has a kind of a beautiful melody, almost like a melody from a very old song, and then it brings together chaos theory and a personal relationship. I thought that was a very funny but in a way very moving combination of things."
Apart from Byrne's own material, "Grown Backwards" features two opera arias, "Un di Felice, Eterea" from Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" and ''Au fond du Temple Saint'' from Georges Bizet's "Les pecheurs de perles.''
"OK, I can get some criticism here," he said. "I think I felt that I could maybe treat them just as songs, which maybe they were originally. They've been kind of locked up in an opera house, and I thought, 'Oh, maybe I can treat them more or less as songs, I could give them a techno treat or anything like this, but I'm not going to try to sing it with an opera voice. And not do it with a full orchestra but just do it with a small chamber group.' So, I thought, 'Why not? It feels good, they are beautiful songs, and I can maybe treat them as the beautiful songs that they are.' And maybe emotionally it unlocked some of the other songs on the record also."
Byrne, who brought his "Evidence of Human Habitation" exhibition of photos to St. Petersburg in 1995, says that visual arts allow him to express things that music does not.
"I think there are certain things that are just impossible to do with music," he said. "I mean sometimes to express something in words, in a song, it would be too direct, but doing it in images you can leave a certain amount of ambiguity, which is very nice."
"I remember St. Petersburg being beautiful and very energetic, but I know it was a kind of a strange time for the artists," he said. "It was a decaying, transitional time - for the artists and musicians anyway. But, I don't know what has happened to the music and art now."
David Byrne at the Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa at 10 p.m. on Saturday.
Links: www.davidbyrne.com.
TITLE: diamonds turn a knavish trick
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the most scandalous and provocative artistic movements in Russia, Bubnovy Valet ("The Knave of Diamonds") is enjoying its largest ever exhibition at the Benois Wing of the State Russian Museum, showcasing some of the most acclaimed names of the Russian avant-garde.
The display takes its title from the group of avant-garde artists who from 1910 until the Bolshevik Revolution united the crop of the Russian avant-garde. Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Olga Rozanova, Ilya Mashkov, Natalya Goncharova, Aristarkh Lentulov and Pyotr Konchalovsky were involved with the group at some stage in their careers. The movement also had a radical side-project in the shape of "A Donkey's Tail."
The extensive exhibition is set in chronological order, starting from early paintings, which made the movement's first display in Moscow in 1910, and progressing to the works of the group's followers. The intention was to reconstruct the atmosphere and style of the movement's original exhibitions in juxtaposing several hundred paintings with a performance, which if successful, would call for the police! At the exhibition's opening on July 8, acrobats wandered through the halls on stilts, while female gymnasts, armed with giant fake weights and decorated with artificial breasts of similar size and shape, were trying to exercise. Alas, no police could be spotted.
"The Knave of Diamonds", with its brutality of lines, bright colours and an often grotesque approach, emerged as a response to the poetic, refined and thoughtful symbolism movement of the era. In French gambler slang, the term "knave of diamonds" was a stigma with which to brand a foul player, so even in its name the artists teased and mocked the romantic symbolists, who united under such tender titles as "The Blue Rose".
The Russian artistic movement was largely inspired by French post-impressionism. Most of the paintings bear tangible influences of Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Henry Matisse in style, technique, sense of colour and even philosophy, celebrating le joie de vivre.
The Russians, however, transformed and developed the French ideas by creating new genres, such as abstract art, performance and body-art, all of which thrived in the 20th century. Mikhail Larionov painted over the body of his own wife Natalya Goncharova, while Kazimir Malevich organized extravagant performances on Moscow streets.
The exhibition unveils over 160 works from 17 collections including the museum's own funds, Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery and dozens of provincial museums and private collections.
"No museum would be able to mount such a project single-handedly, as it is a truly Herculean task to represent fully such an important artistic movement, which influenced the development of European art in first half of the 20th century," said museum's Vladimir Gusev at the exhibition's opening.
"This exhibition is especially important because it shows Russian art within a European context, providing an opportunity to trace mutual influences," Gusev said. "Until the 17th century painting in Russia was limited to icons, with other genres virtually unknown here until Peter the Great sent the first Russian artists to study abroad. Russian avant-garde is also the first ever Russian artistic phenomenon to have made an impact on the art world."
Yevgenia Petrova, deputy director of the Russian Museum said one of the major criteria for the exhibition's organizers was to select paintings which were not only representative, but also able to showcase the highlights of non-St.Petersburg collections.
"In comparison to the Soviet era, when exchange exhibitions were funded by the state and therefore organized with quite some frequency, these days we have very few such opportunities," she said. "So, if there was a choice between one of our paintings and a painting from another collection, the guests had the priority."
"The Knave of Diamonds" can be seen until October, 10, when it travels to Moscow.
Links: http://www.rusmuseum.ru
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Eduard Ratnikov of the Moscow-based promoters T.C.I., described the U.K. rock act DIO as "naphthalene", in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant last week. The band are fronted by Ronnie James Dio, memorable for his mid-1970s heydays as singer of Rainbow. Such sincerity from Ratnikov sounds intriguing, as it is his company that promotes the band's lengthy Russian tour, set to arrive in St. Petersburg on Saturday. However, it is the other two international acts whose concerts make this weekend possibly the highlight of the summer from the point of view of exciting music. Both Stereolab and David Byrne (see interview, this page) are credible, if very different artists, who are - unlike dusty hard rockers brought to Russia a little too often - capable of writing good new songs to this day.
Stereolab, who will perform at Theater of Young Spectators, or TYuZ, on Friday, are driven by the songwriting force of guitarist Tim Gane, responsible for the band's music, and singer Laetitia Sadier, who writes the lyrics, mostly in her native French.
The band, having recently finished a tour to promote its most recent album "Margerine Eclipse" - the first full-length album of new material since the 2001 offering "Sound-Dust" - is coming to the city for a one-off Russian concert.
According to Gane, who is busy working on remixes at the moment, the band has no immediate plans for the next album. "I don't want to just release another LP; I want to think about how to do music," he said on the phone. "So we're going to start a series of maybe smaller EPs or singles just to try different things and see how it works."
He explained that work on remixes of other people's material gives him ideas that could later be used in Stereolab's own music.
Gane also revealed plans for a representative, two or three CD plus a DVD compilation of Stereolab's work, probably to come out before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, singer Sadier, who released a solo record, "Monade: Socialisme ou Barbarie," last year, sounds excited about her own band. In an email interview, she wrote that her four-piece band has recorded five new songs and is planning to put together a whole new album by the end of this summer. "I am getting excited as the songs are becoming more and more concrete, developing into real entities for the band," she wrote.
By coincidence, the innovative U.S. band Tortoise, whose drummer and producer John McEntire produced a number of Stereolab albums in Chicago, will come to Moscow to perform at the club 16 Tons on July 24. During an exchange of emails this week, McEntire, who cites Stereolab's "Dots and Loops" and "Sound-Dust" as his favorite works as a producer, explained why he likes the band.
"There are many things that I find appealing: the overall approach to songwriting and arrangement, excellent lyrics, and always an openness to trying new things, to being exploratory. Plus, they are some of the nicest people I know!"
Even though TYuZ seldom holds concerts, the atmospheric sound of Stereolab seems to be perfect for the venue which held brilliant concerts by The Tindersticks in 2001 and David Sylvian earlier this year. According to the promoter, several of the first rows in the theater will be removed to make space for a standing ground.
By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: madridsky dvor fit for a fiesta
TEXT: The outside of the Madridsky Dvor (Madrid Courtyard) gives the wrong impression. Don't be fooled by the garish plastic, yellow and blue signs - rather take note of the wrought iron door furnishing and the tasteful dried orange slices decorating the windows and you'll get a better idea of the class of restaurant you're entering.
My dining companions and I were slightly taken aback by the apparent poshness of the place (glamorous clientele, unusually polite and well-dressed service staff and a live and tuxedoed Spanish guitar band), but we straitened our t-shirts, raised our chins and sallied fourth to a beautifully-laid table at the back of Madrid Courtyard.
Once comfortably seated on the wonderful, high-backed 17th century (presumably) Spanish chairs, we took some time to take in the surroundings.
Not a flamenco dancer, fan or matador in sight! Oh no, Madridsky Dvor is fashioned in elegant 17th century carved wood, featuring faded frescoes of Quixotic knights and delicate damsels. There's a flower-festooned balcony under which the pleasantly unobtrusive quartet plays, as if invoking the attentions of some modest Helvetian maiden within.
Having taken all of this in, we turned our attention to the gilt and leather-bound menus. The first chapter in this elegant tome comprised of the extensive wine list. We thought it would be appropriate to choose a Spanish wine, but, frightened by the costliness of these bottles, we chose a Chilean red instead (850 rubles), which was the cheapest bottle of wine available. We sipped on the Santa Ines Karmener, a delicious, slightly fruity, dry red wine, and nibbled some fresh, white bread and salsa while trying to decide which tapas to order.
For starters, there's a list of about 12 different kinds of tapas, as well as some salads and crudités. Everything sounded tempting, but in the end we decided to share a Tortilla Espagnol (180 rubles) and Gambas al Akhie (260 rubles) between the three of us. Both of these dishes came to the table sizzling in hot pans and gave off such a mouth-watering aroma that waiting for them to cool down was a serious challenge to our patience.
The tortilla was a small, tasty and delightfully yellow, potato and green pepper omelette. One of my dining companions complained of blandness, but I didn't agree with this critique; I mean why would one expect eggs and potatoes to be piquant? The second tapas was a big hit with all of us, however. In retrospect, we agreed that the Gambas al Akhie, mushrooms and shrimps in a hot garlic-and-olive-oil sauce, was the best dish of the evening. The shrimps were fresh and succulent and the sauce was so tasty that we had to order more bread to lap it up.
The main courses range in price from about 200 to 900 rubles, and include a selection of barbequed meat and fish cuts. One of my companions chose the Classic paella, thinking it would be a good gauge of the Spanishness of the cuisine in general. Although the paella was presented beautifully - juicy-looking, golden rice and sculptural shell fish pointing in all directions around the edge of the plate - and artistically assembled at the table by the chef, my friend was not overly impressed. She thought it lacked in "oomph and spice," and said that the seafood, with the exception of the shrimp, was tough and had probably been removed from the sea quite some time ago.
While impatiently waiting for his main course, my other companion decided to kill some time checking out the gent's room. He returned to the table, a couple of shades paler, shuddering and shaking his head. After a large gulp of Santa Ines he described the horrific, antique instruments for castration that decorate the men's loo. That gave the girls a laugh, and luckily it didn't ruin my friend's appetite for his main course. The color came back to his face when he saw his Mignon fillet (350 rubles) and Aylahie potatoes (60 rubles) being placed in front of him. This fillet steak was allegedly the best piece of meat my companion had tasted in a year of being in St. Petersburg. It was tender and juicy, and the garlic-and-herby potato wedges complimented it fantastically.
As for my main course, Fresh Vegetable Brocheta (180 rubles) - it was certainly nothing to write home about. I picked this dish from the barbeque section, but it was astoundingly unimaginative; a plate of almost-raw chunks of aubergine, courgette and mushroom. I'm not sure what I expected, but what I did get shouldn't be described as a main course at all.
Having said that I wasn't overly upset by the raw vegetables because we were having such a thoroughly good time in the atmospheric Madrid Courtyard and the service was really excellent.
The selection of deserts is unsurprising and ranges from 120 to 190 rubles, featuring ice cream and tiramisu, and that kind of thing. We decided to skip on the sweets, though, and stick to the wine, which we were really getting a taste for.
I would recommend this place for any special fiesta. It's not budget dining, but then you really will get some warm hospitality as the business card promises. We had an enjoyable stay and it was a great pity to have to finally leave the sunny warmth of the Madrid Courtyard to exit into the sticky St. Petersburg streets.
Madridsky Dvor, 26 Suvorovsky Prospekt, on the corner of 8th Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 271 20 94. Open every day 12 a.m. till late. Reservations, credit cards accepted and menus available in English. Meal for three including water and wine, 3,110 rubles.
TITLE: high art hits mobile set
TEXT: The State Hermitage Museum, Infon Russia, a cell-phone service provider and Rosbalt News Agency have forged a strategic trinity to attract the sophisticated young generation to classical values by making the museum's treasures available on mobile phone screens.
"To mobilize the youth into cultural awareness we have to be innovative and smart enough to make the cultural aspect of life fashionable and more accessible through simple and modern technology," said director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, adding that the latest endeavor would also enable the wider audience to gain an easy access to the museum's collections.
The tripartite project, "Mobilization of Everlasting Values" initiated by the Hermitage in collaboration with Infon and Rosbalt is aimed at adopting the youth into arts cultural awareness through the easiest available visual aids.
"One must not be afraid of new ways of promoting culture," head of ethno-psychology department of Moscow State University, Alexei Nagovitsin, was quoted as saying.
Asked if an easy visual access to the museum's treasures would not lower the prestige of one of the world's greatest museums, Piotrovsky answered: "It's just the way of bringing the sleeping beauty of art into the open, into our daily life... not a single world museum is yet to adapt this method."
However, he said only about 100 masterpieces ranging from applied arts, ethnic artifacts, sculptures and paintings have been selected for display on mobile phone screens at the early stages of the project. The initial display that was up and running as of last week includes Scythian gold, ancient sculptures and works of the masters like Rembrandt.
According to www.infon.ru, subscription to one Hermitage masterpiece would cost $1, while a captioned picture with text and graphic image would cost $2.5.
Pavel Kolesnikov, Infon's general director, believes it to be "only a negligible amount of money that has been put into the project" so far, and stressed that commercial gains were not a motive behind the scheme.
"We want to be the first, and world's number one, to make mobile phones an instrument for calling teenagers from their pop subcultural hideouts to the high values of the world of arts," he said.
While youth is the trio's main target, they also aim at a secondary wider audience including people of all ages, said Rosbalt's director Natalia Cherkesova in response to doubts over whether budget teenagers could shift to the relatively more expensive and less interesting mode of entertainment than pop subcultures they are used to.
Moreover, Kolesnikov stated that the success of the scheme is betting precisely on its ability to "form a marriage bond between 'melody' and the 'image on the screen' as two elements that reflect teenagers' world of fashion and style."
TITLE: special effects shine in 'night watch'
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "Night Watch", Timur Bekmambetov's science-fiction thriller, released July 8, is being aggressively marketed as the first Russian blockbuster. The reception has been enthusiastic.
"Our answer to Tarantino," proclaimed director Nikita Mikhalkov at the Moscow International Film Festival in June. "Hollywood-standard special effects," say millions of estimated fans who have seen the film since its premiere in over 300 theaters in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
"A golden opportunity for product placement shamelessly exploited," say those in the audience amused at the lingering shots of brands names. In this film, bad guys drink blood, good guys - Nescafe.
"Night Watch", an adaptation of Sergei Lukyanenko's 1998 novel of the same name, is set in contemporary Moscow. The city is the site of a simmering battle between the forces of Light and Darkness, who are otherwise bound to peace by an ancient treaty. Members of the Light and Dark forces are inoi, or "different" in Russian: they have superhuman powers, and every inoi can choose their affiliation.
To ensure that the fragile truce is upheld, the Light Forces have a night patrol, the Dark Forces a day patrol. The film depicts a night patrol, when Anton, (Konstantin Khabensky) a good vampire, is assigned to protect a mysterious boy, an inoi whose destiny is linked to the ancient treaty. At the same time, in the suburbs, a flock of ravens gathering over a block of flats show as a sign of impending catastrophe that is somehow linked to the timid and frumpy Svetlana (Maria Poroshina), an inoi who has not yet realized her powers.
In a labored 'ironic twist', the boy Anton has to protect is, in fact, his son, whom he tried to kill 12 years ago as a revenge on his unfaithful wife, then pregnant. Anton saves the boy from crazed vampire Andrei (Ilya Lagutenko from the group "Mummi Troll") in a gripping fight scene, only to lose him at the end of the film to Zavulon (Victor Vepzhbitsky), chief of the Dark Force's day watch.
Meanwhile, impending catastrophe looms nearer, in the shape of a faulty Aeroflot plane and over 300 unlucky passengers. Night Watch members and shape changers Ilya and Lena (Alexander Samoilenko and Anna Slyu) are no closer to discovering the connection between Sveltana, the bunch of ravens over her house and the electrical storm raging over Moscow. Ignat (Gosha Kutsenko, revered for his role in Anti-Killer) tries and fails to elicit some information from her. His brief appearance, looking like a Columbian drugs baron and wearing a long, glossy black wig, is the highlight of the film.
The resolution of both strands of action is disappointing, especially regarding Svetlana's plotline. Yet, maybe to look for a plot of some substance is to miss the point of this film: it betrays its origins as a proposed television serial and comes off as too episodic. After a strong beginning, the story wanders aimlessly, with too many over-long scenes that add little to the story's progress but showcase the great special effects.
However, the special effects are indeed fantastic, and in some scenes utterly spell-binding, as in the arrest scene at the beginning, or the medieval bridge that appears over Moscow, the ravens swarming above a tower block, and the scene tracking a bolt from a plane as it plummets through the sky to find its way into a cup of coffee.
There are very few thrills or scary moments, but there is plenty of blood and some very funny, extremely weird moments that rarely find their way into American blockbusters - Kutsenko's wig and the stuffed owl Olga among them.
The blatant promotion of brands like Nokia and Channel 1, who financed the film, are also part of its quirky charm. Are they an ironic nod to the director's past career as a director of award-winning advertisements? Probably not, but they are an apt reminder that this film is not only a triumph for Russian special effects artists, but also a much needed boost for the Russian film business.
TITLE: young fashion blossoms orange
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Like many in the fashion design trade, Asya Kogel has a signature color. You'll find it on her business cards, in her collections of women's clothing, and splashed on the walls of her comfortable studio: bright orange, like the sunny hue you'd find in a child's crayon box.
"Orange is the color of the sun, tropical fruit, optimists," says Kogel. "I always add a few drops of orange to every collection I do, whatever the color scheme."
Kogel is one of the few younger designers slugging it out in Russia's fledgling fashion industry today. Although she graduated from the State Academy of Service and Economics with a degree in costume design only a year and a half ago, Kogel has now been working as a designer for almost five years. Between participating in leading St. Petersburg fashion shows like "Modny Desant" (Fashion Landing), "Defile na Neve" (Catwalk on the Neva), and Fashion Week at Lenexpo, as well as running her own label, Kogel finds time to work as a costume designer for various independent films. No small feat for a twenty-three year old.
"Russian designers have to work much harder than their Western counterparts to survive in this difficult market. They are heroes!" says Kogel. "Designing a collection is an amazing amount of work. It involves a lot more that just being creative. It's technically very difficult, and, of course, there are financial considerations. The government and investors support the movie industry, because they consider it real art, but as for fashion design - they are as yet undecided."
After several years of working from home together with her business partner, tailor Nadezhda Orlova, Kogel now rents a studio where she employs a team of five to cut fabrics and assemble her designs. She sells to both private clients and on consignment to boutiques, though it hasn't been easy building a client base. "A few years ago, there was this stereotype that clothes made exclusively for you, even if they were cut from expensive fabrics, were inferior to that which you could buy in stores," she said. "Only now people are beginning to realize the true worth of designer-made clothing and are ready to pay for it."
Kogel's latest spring collection numbering twenty different outfits sums up her fashion ideology of "originality combined with ultimate comfort." Kogel, who studied painting, is greatly inspired by color, and this collection features "rich dessert colors" like chocolate brown, deep cherry red, strawberries in cream, and of course, juicy orange. "I know exactly who I'm making clothes for," says Kogel. "Young women - not necessarily young age-wise, but at heart. Woman who are upbeat, mischievous, flirty, busy, optimistic, people of many interests." Knit and cotton fabrics are mixed with chiffon and silk, with clever detailing found in whimsical pockets and buttons.
"Ideas come from everywhere," she says. "I'll walk to the car, and the wind will blow an idea into my head. Maybe I will see a tree at an usual angle, or see something on TV, listen to a concert, travel."
Last autumn, Kogel collaborated with the up-and-coming young director Artyom Antonov on his film, Stolichny Express (Capital City Express), a "little student film" that made it all the way to Cannes, part of an official selection for the Best Newcomer category. Kogel is scheduled to begin work designing costumes for Antonov's next film in September, a big budget affair with a professional screenplay. "A costume in a movie is something you use to highlight a character or a situation. A good costume is the kind that looks so natural you don't notice it on-screen," she explains.
"Artyom is very attentive to detail, not a dictator, but he doesn't let anything slide. I'm really looking forward to working with him again."
Like the women she designs for, Kogel has many interests and it's hard for her to nail down any specific plans for the future. "I'd like to continue working as a costume designer; I will show a new collection in autumn; maybe I'll get involved with graphic art. I hope I'll never come to a point where I don't know where to go next," she says. "I love my work."
For more information, please call Asya Kogel's studio 528-1790 or e-mail kogel@mail.ru
TITLE: who leads the theater of generations?
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Not long has passed since the death of national artist of Russia Zinovy Korogodsky to leave the "Theater of Generations" troupe (Teatr Pokoleny) without its founder, leader, and chief director. The fate of the troupe now looks uncertain, worrying even for those trying to fathom where there might be a new leader to not only take up the task of building a theatre venue, but who will also save the unique atmosphere created by Korogodsky.
The founder's achievements certainly stretch far: winner of the International Stanislavsky Prize, head of the theater department and professor at the St. Petersburg State University of Trade Unions, outstanding director, author of well-known books on pedagogy, and reformer of the children's theater.
In particular, Korogodsky had always been concerned with children, their education and spiritual state. He regarded them as equals and believed children to be no less important than adults, to feel everything better and to harbour no prejudices. He also believed that parents' love was often limited to caring about their children's health and well-being, but rarely about their heart and soul. It is the reason for parents losing their children when they leave their homes and "hit the road".
"You must not abandon the interest of your children," he said. "You must not bar them from your 'forbidden' circle; you must find spheres where your interests will overlap. The theater must be the simplest yet the most exciting opportunity for the family to be together, and, moreover, to love the theater and partake in it".
Fourteen years ago, on Oct. 19 in 1990, during the time of troubles Korogodsky founded his creative center "Family" and its inalienable part, its heart, the "Theater of Generations."
Children from ordinary families were given an opportunity of finding themselves through art, and it was free. They were no longer abandoned to play on the streets. "By involving a young person in art, the theater cultivates his ability to see, to take part in the theatrical performance - without which a performance as a work of art cannot be," said Korogodsky. "By living the lives of characters, mastering the language and the laws of the theater the child comes to understand moral and aesthetic values. Theater must teach to sympathize and to love, to unite the family spiritually."
After receiving a special education, children could go on to be teachers and form their own groups. Many chose to be actors and went to Korogodsky's course of Theater Studies at the University, while at the same time performing with the "Theater of Generations".
Artists worked at this theater not for money but for an idea. The theater didn't have rich sponsors. Because of the low ticket prices, intake from performances didn't cover expenses, and there was little, if any, profit. However, the name of Korogodsky lent the theater great support, a kind of support the theater no longer has.
"Too little time has passed to speak about who will be the person to head the center and the theater. Many of Korogodsky's followers are too young to do the work of their teacher and to act as chief director," says Maria Maslova, a graduate of St. Petersburg State University of Trade Unions' theater department. She is sure, however, that Korogodsky's idea will not die.
"The current manager of the center, which was renamed as The School of Arts after Korogodsky death, is a Korogodsky follower, the teacher of creative workshops, V.A. Zinoviyev. He is acting director, but of course he doesn't call himself that. But everything is on him in the theater. It's only due to his merit that the theater didn't break up and actors didn't leave it," continues Maria, one of Korogodsky's last students.
The sad event has, it seems, brought those involved even closer together. Many of Korogodsky pupils after the death decided to support the students who remained without care and who were trying to preserve the life-work of the founder. Three new plays are being prepared for production: "The house on the border" (Dom na granitse)and "Penguin" (Pingvin) by Strindberg, and "Girl-typists" (Mashinistki) by M. Shizgall. Actors of the theater's company will be joined by third-year and fourth-year students for these performances.
The theater company itself is rather small: 8 to 10 actors from different generations taught by Korogodsky. They hope, however, that soon there will come a new generation to help them in their task. It's not for nothing that the theater was named the Theater of Generations.
TITLE: tikhvin icon inspires mariinsky
TEXT: TIKHVIN, Leningrad Oblast - With its performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Kitezh" in Tikhvin on Sunday evening 11 July, the Mariinsky Theater brought to a close the two-week long national celebration surrounding the return of the revered icon Our Lady of Tikhvin from more than 50 years of exile in Chicago. Senior administrators at the Mariinsky hope the performance acted as the laying of foundations for a national center of Rimsky-Korsakov operas in Tikhvin, similar to the Wagnerian center in Bayreuth, Bavaria.
Situated 220 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg, along the main highway to Murmansk, the town of Tikhvin with its population of 40,000 is solidly part of Russia's "rust belt." The town's major employer from Soviet times, the Kirov factory branch, closed years ago. Yet the mood in Tikhvin on the eve of the concert was deeply patriotic, emotional and optimistic.
Since transfering from Chicago, via Moscow and St Petersburg, the Tikhvin icon has attracted thousands of worshippers. In Tikhvin itself, there arrived close to 20,000 pilgrims who then settled in a specially-built tent in the town to participate in a welcoming program.
Tikhvin is also the birthplace of Rimsky-Korsakov, who spent his childhood here, and who later returned regularly as an adult. The Rimsky-Korsakov Memorial House and Museum is situated just outside the walls of the monastery. The locale inspired the composer to set four of his operas in the north of Russia of the 16th century, amid surroundings like Tikhvin.
Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "Legend About the Invisible Town of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia" premiered in the Mariinsky Theater in 1907, and over time acquired a reputation as the Russian 'Parsifal'. Its highly religious atmosphere juxtaposes a mundane, lowly Kitezh with the holy, invisible, elevated Kitezh.
The opera 'Kitezh' has appeared and reappeared in several different productions in the Mariinsky over the past decade. For the latest performance of this most mystical work of Rimsky-Korsakov, the theater loosely followed its 1994 production.
The setting within the walls of Tikhvin's Great Monastery of Our Lady could best be described as cinematographic, even more impressive than the musical component. The orchestra was situated by the whitewashed walls of the monastery encircling the cathedral of the Assumption. Above rose the newly-restored bell tower, its glorious bells resonating with the notes normally executed on more modest theatre equipment.
"The conditions were difficult," explained Mariinsky conductor Sergei Kalagin. "However, in spite of that, there were moments of awe. In the first act the sound of the horn signaling the hunting scene started in the fortress and then was repeated in the orchestra. For me it was a moment of great beauty. In the theater it is artificial, whereas here it all sounded natural."
The audience was divided between two platforms on either side of the "stage" area. On the far side of this stage, was the backdrop of a large monastic pond, fed by natural springs. Still farther away, across the pond, were the illuminated outer walls of the monastic complex with another spectator gallery.
The lighting effects included the dramatic introduction of billowing 'smoke' in bright red, blue and white to illustrate the pillage and the destruction wrought by the invading Tatars, and also to emphasise Russia's national colors. The smoke poured down from the top of the bell tower producing an unforgettable image in a highly-charged spiritual experience.
"The performers were inspired emotionally by the place, the monastery, the icon," said Alexei Stepanyuk, author of the 1994 version and in charge of this Tikhvin production. "And I think the spectators felt the energy, the dedication of the troupe. The whole country was waiting for this event."
Just as in the recent Mariinsky performance of the "Flying Dutchman" in Vyborg castle, at Tikhvin the orchestra, performers, as well as the spectators, were completely exposed to the elements. This gambled on favorable skies, and placed great pressure on the entire Mariinsky troupe. In the end, they performed like true heroes in the face of sprinkling rain which plagued the day, and also returned before the end of the second act.
The overwhelming majority of the about 1,000 spectators at the Kitezh performance were from Tikhvin, and despite the rain everyone stayed till the end. Enthusiastic applause and cries of "Spasibo, spasibo" were heard after the curtain calls, along with "Please, come back!" For many it was their first chance to see the Mariinsky Theater.
"I believe many Tikhvinites never saw anything like it," said Stepanyuk. "They know this place well, but now they will look at it differently, because the Mariinsky troupe, chorus, orchestra have changed it for them."
Regrettably, due to the severe drenching and to untested microphones, the performance's start was a little wobbly. However, the quality of sound improved as the evening went on, reaching an almost intimate balance of voices and orchestra at the finale.
TITLE: reporting a russian kind of saint
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Death threats were a fact of life for Yury Shchekochikhin. As an investigative journalist who had been exposing high-level corruption since the 1980s, Shchekochikhin often received sinister, anonymous notes and calls; he usually brushed them off with idealistic bravado and a flippant sense of humor. So when he died under mysterious circumstances on July 3 - one year ago this Saturday - his friends suspected the worst. The hospital's diagnosis was severe allergic reaction. But his friends, colleagues and family believe he was poisoned.
The approaching one-year anniversary has led to a flurry of activity among Shchekochikhin's friends, who are determined to preserve the memory of the late journalist, playwright and State Duma deputy. Many of them have offered their personal tributes in a new book titled "With Love: Works of Yury Shchekochikhin, Reminiscences and Essays on Him." With essays by figures like Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and filmmaker Alexei German Sr., the book portrays him as a larger-than-life hero.
Writer Leonid Zhukhovitsky, a close personal friend recalls: "Yurka was already a saint in his youth," he writes in his essay. "But this wasn't noticeable, because, as Andrei Voznesensky formulated it so precisely, he was a Russian saint: drinking, slovenly, jovial, with a broken destiny and without the slightest hint of a halo."
Shchekochikhin's career began early; he was 14 years old, freelancing for Moskovsky Komsomolets. Moving to Komsomolskaya Pravda, he made a name for himself by writing about troubled youth, drugs and black marketeering - subjects rarely discussed in the Soviet press. At the same time, he began writing plays on similar issues.
According to Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Shchekochikhin's former wife and a secretary of the Russian Journalists' Union, the writer was always drawn to social problems. "What he had was an instinctual flair for finding the material of a story - for finding out where, at that exact moment, society was hurting."
In the 1980s, Shchekochikhin went to work for Literaturnaya Gazeta, traditionally the most liberal Soviet newspaper, where he devoted himself to exposing corruption in the Party and upper ranks of the government. When the death threats began coming in, Azhgikhina said, Shchekochikhin was unperturbed. "Personal threats and danger could never scare him or force him to change his way of life." she recalled.
Shchekochikhin's political career started in 1990, when he was nominated and elected to the Supreme Soviet (Congress) by voters from the Voroshilovgrad region of Ukraine, who knew him only from his newspaper articles.
Azhgikhina had doubts about her husband's decision to enter politics. "It seemed to me that this wasn't right for him," she said. "In my personal opinion ... he was more of a journalist than a politician. But changing his mind was completely impossible."
In 1995, Shchekochikhin became a Yabloko deputy in the Duma. His career in the Duma was distinguished by a series of high-profile investigations, such as into an alleged tax evasion scheme at Tri Kita furniture store, which the government officials may have helped to cover up, and about FSB involvement in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings.
One of Shchekochikhin's most daring achievements was a campaign to free kidnapped Russian servicemen in Chechnya. Working with Novaya Gazeta colleague Vyacheslav Izmailov, he convinced prosecutors around the country to release ethnic Chechens being held for minor crimes in Russian jails, on the condition that they help secure the release of Russians in Chechnya. Over 170 Russian prisoners were freed in this way.
Shchekochikhin died at the age of 53. Witnesses who saw his body said that his hair had fallen out, a symptom consistent with thallium poisoning. In the December elections that followed his death, Yabloko lost its representation in the Duma, and investigations he was pursuing were never resumed.
TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: Собачник/собачница: dog lover.
Russian dog lovers are no less passionate about their pets than their cat-loving cousins. A dog in Russian is собака or пёс. Both words are usually made into a million loving diminutives: собачка, собачонка, пёсик. A pedigree dog is either породистая or родословная (a pedigree is a родословие, the same word you use to describe a person’s illustrious parentage). A mutt is a дворняжка or дворняга, from the word for courtyard (двор). But folks who love their noble beast despite its dubious bloodline often pun and call their mixed-breed дворянин, “nobleman,” since двор also refers to the royal court.
Breeds have various functions, which Russians take seriously. There are служебные собаки (work dogs, often referring to guard dogs), сторожевые (guard dogs), гончие (racing dogs), охотничьи (hunting dogs), пастушьи (shepherds), норные (burrowers, like dachshunds) or легавые (pointers, setters). The classic Russian breeds include the ethereal борзая (borzoi), who looks two-dimensional, лайка самоедская (Samoyed, who looks like a polar bear), and the московская сторожевая (Moscow guard dog), who looks a bit like a St. Bernard, but will take your hand off with one bite. The opposite is болонка, a lap dog.
If you have a pedigreed dog, you might think about continuing the line. In Russian, the words you use are разведение (breeding) or вязка (the process itself; also the word you use for knitting — go figure). Most of the time the dogs figure it out: You just introduce your bitch (сука) to a handsome sire (кобель) and nature takes care of things. In a couple of months, you have a litter (помёт) of puppies (щенки).
If you run in a park and are plagued by unleashed dogs chasing after you, you can first call out to the owner: Ваша собака кусается (does your dog bite)? If the answer is a smirk and the dog is still coming at you, shout: Держите вашу собаку на поводке (leash your dog)!
The kind of owner who lets his dog chase after hapless joggers needs a дрессировщик (trainer). You can also get a trainer to teach your dog tricks. If it’s a fancy trick, you can call it трюк — but this is more like what animals do in the circus.
Every dog owner needs a vet: ветеринарный врач. Раз в году врач делает собаке прививки (once a year the vet gives my dog her shots). The vet (or pet store) can also help you with other problems that plague dogs that spend time at the dacha: fleas (блохи) and ticks (клещи). Мы купили ошейник от блох (we bought a flea collar). Врач дал спрей от клещей (the vet gave us some anti-tick spray).
Judging by common expressions, dogs in Russia have, well, a dog’s life (собачья жизнь). The adjective from dog — собачий — appears as an intensifier in not very pleasant expressions, like собачий холод (freezing cold, literally “dog cold”), чушь собачья (utter nonsense, bull), собачья усталость (being dog-tired). It’s also handy to know the expression: Какое твоё собачье дело? (It’s none of your damn business!) Two other canine qualities show up in common metaphors: Он был злой, как собака (he was as mean as a junkyard dog); and Он был предан ей, как собака (he was as devoted to her as a dog).
Sobachnik/sobachnitsa: dog lover.
Russian dog lovers are no less passionate about their pets than their cat-loving cousins. A dog in Russian is sobaka or pyos. Both words are usually made into a million loving diminutives: sobachka, sobachonka, pyosik. A pedigree dog is either porodistaya or rodoslovnaya (a pedigree is a rodoslovie, the same word you use to describe a person’s illustrious parentage). A mutt is a dvornyazhka or dvornyaga, from the word for courtyard (dvor). But folks who love their noble beast despite its dubious bloodline often pun and call their mixed-breed dvoryanin, “nobleman,” since dvor also refers to the royal court.
Breeds have various functions, which Russians take seriously. There are sluzhebnye sobaki (work dogs, often referring to guard dogs), storozhevye (guard dogs), gonchie (racing dogs), okhotnich`i (hunting dogs), pastush`i (shepherds), nornye (burrowers, like dachshunds) or legavye (pointers, setters). The classic Russian breeds include the ethereal borzaya (borzoi), who looks two-dimensional, laika samoedskaya (Samoyed, who looks like a polar bear), and the moskovskaya storozhevaya (Moscow guard dog), who looks a bit like a St. Bernard, but will take your hand off with one bite. The opposite is bolonka, a lap dog.
If you have a pedigreed dog, you might think about continuing the line. In Russian, the words you use are razvedenie (breeding) or vyazka (the process itself; also the word you use for knitting — go figure). Most of the time the dogs figure it out: You just introduce your bitch (suka) to a handsome sire (kobel`) and nature takes care of things. In a couple of months, you have a litter (pomyot) of puppies (shchenki).
If you run in a park and are plagued by unleashed dogs chasing after you, you can first call out to the owner: Vasha sobaka kusaetsya (does your dog bite)? If the answer is a smirk and the dog is still coming at you, shout: Derzhite vashu sobaku na povodke (leash your dog)!
The kind of owner who lets his dog chase after hapless joggers needs a dressirovshchik (trainer). You can also get a trainer to teach your dog tricks. If it’s a fancy trick, you can call it tryuk — but this is more like what animals do in the circus.
Every dog owner needs a vet: veterinarnyi vrach. Raz v godu vrach delaet sobake privivki (once a year the vet gives my dog her shots). The vet (or pet store) can also help you with other problems that plague dogs that spend time at the dacha: fleas (blokhi) and ticks (kleshchi). My kupili osheinik ot blokh (we bought a flea collar). Vrach dal sprei ot kleshchei (the vet gave us some anti-tick spray).
Judging by common expressions, dogs in Russia have, well, a dog’s life (sobach`ya zhizn`). The adjective from dog — sobachii — appears as an intensifier in not very pleasant expressions, like sobachii kholod (freezing cold, literally “dog cold”), chush` sobach`ya (utter nonsense, bull), sobach`ya ustalost` (being dog-tired). It’s also handy to know the expression: Kakoe tvoyo sobach`e delo? (It’s none of your damn business!) Two other canine qualities show up in common metaphors: On byl zloi, kak sobaka (he was as mean as a junkyard dog); and On byl predan ei, kak sobaka (he was as devoted to her as a dog).
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: Suicide Bomb Targets New Iraqi Government
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb Wednesday outside the fortified enclave housing the headquarters of Iraq's interim government, killing at least 10 people, and gunmen in northern Iraq assassinated a provincial governor.
The bombing - which also wounded 40 people - was the worst attack in the capital since the United States transferred power to the Iraqis on June 28. The violence sent a strong signal that insurgents view the new government as an extension of the U.S. occupation.
"This is a naked aggression against the Iraqi people," interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said as he toured the bombing scene. "We will bring these criminals to justice."
Allawi said the bombing was retaliation for the government's arrests of terror suspects. Police said they rounded up over 500 suspected criminals in one sweep this week.
The violence Wednesday began about 9:15 a.m. when a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with 1,000 pounds of explosives at a checkpoint just outside the so-called Green Zone, former site of the U.S. coalition authority and now home to Iraq's interim government and the U.S. and British embassies.
The blast killed 10 Iraqis, many as they waited to apply for jobs with the government, the Health Ministry said. The U.S. military said 11 people were killed.
The blast ripped a deep crater in the road, left five cars charred skeletons and partially destroyed a wall meant to protect the area. Black smoke rose into the air.
"I'm sure that those who committed this were targeting the Iraqi Defense Ministry and its employees, not Americans," said Iraqi air force staff Colonel Ather Burham Shafiq, 39, as he lay in al-Karama Hospital with a broken leg and shrapnel wounds.
Also on Wednesday the Philippines said it was withdrawing its small peacekeeping contingent from Iraq early to save the life of a kidnapped truck driver, a dramatic turnaround by one of Washington's biggest backers in the war on terrorism.
The Southeast Asian country earlier vowed it would not yield to pressure to move up its previously scheduled Aug. 20 withdrawal.
Wednesday's announcement was a blow to the U.S.-led international contingent in Iraq, already weakened by Spain's pullout following the deadly terror attacks on Madrid's train system.
"The Philippines, a country with millions of its nationals working overseas and with a domestic Islamic insurgency of its own, is a country with a lot to lose from acceding to terrorist blackmail," The Asian Wall Street Journal said in a Thursday editorial.
"That it finally did so yesterday, by agreeing to pull its troops out of Iraq in order to save the life of a Filipino hostage, may trouble the life of this nation for years to come."
Officials kept mum about developments Thursday amid a news blackout.
U.S. and Australian officials as well as Iraq's new interim government had expressed displeasure that Manila was even considering caving in to the kidnappers' demand.
Captors holding Filipino truck driver Angelo dela Cruz said they would treat him like a prisoner of war if Manila made a good-faith move toward withdrawing early and would free him if the pullout was completed by July 20.
It was unclear when the withdrawal would be finished.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Officials Receive Implants
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico's top federal prosecutors and investigators began receiving microchip implants in their arms in November in order to get access to restricted areas inside the attorney general's headquarters, said Antonio Aceves, general director of Solusat, the company that distributes the microchips in Mexico.
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 of his employees were implanted at a cost to taxpayers of $150 for each rice grain-sized chip.
More are scheduled to get "tagged" in coming months, and key members of the Mexican military, the police and the office of President Vicente Fox might follow suit.
Macedo said the chips were required to enter a new federal anti-crime information center.
"It's only for access, for security," he said.
The chips also could provide more certainty about who accessed sensitive data at any given time. In the past, the biggest security problem for Mexican law enforcement has been corruption by officials themselves.
Yemeni Terrorist Charged
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The United States has charged a Yemeni described as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden with conspiracy, making him the fourth Guantanamo prisoner to face trial before a military tribunal, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, one of 594 prisoners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit murder, attacks on civilians and terrorism.
The charge sheet does not refer to any killing or other specific act of violence committed by Hamdan.
The U.S. government will not seek the death penalty against him, said a Pentagon spokesman.
Jews Immigrate to Israel
BEN GURION AIRPORT, Israel (AP) - About 500 Jewish immigrants from North America, including 400 from the United States, arrived in Israel on Wednesday, one of the largest single-day numbers in recent months.
The immigrants are backed by the Jewish Souls United group, which gives financial support to Jews wanting to move to Israel. The group expects to help 1,500 North American Jews immigrate to Israel by the end of summer, group leaders said.
So far this year, 930 U.S. residents have immigrated to Israel, the Tourism Ministry said.
Israel tries to attract as many Jews as possible to live in the country. Jews are eligible for automatic citizenship, and newcomers receive substantial government assistance.
TITLE: Mountains Sift the Brave from the Peloton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAINT-FLOUR, France - Two riders who already have made huge impressions in the Tour de France are stepping up their bids to make history.
With cycling's premier event moving closer to the daunting Pyrenees mountains, Lance Armstrong and Richard Virenque put in strong performances Wednesday in the longest stage of the race.
Virenque, a superb mountain climber with a past checkered by a drug scandal, won the 147-mile ride from Limoges after a superb solo breakaway. He finished in 6 hours, 24 seconds.
But Armstrong, trying for an unprecedented sixth straight championship, took some critical time from two key rivals. Still, he was unable to pull farther ahead of his main challenger, German Jan Ullrich, the 1997 champion.
Armstrong was among five riders called for drug tests after the 10th stage and did not talk to reporters.
Sixth overall, Armstrong sits 55 seconds clear of 17th-place Ullrich entering Thursday's relatively comfortable 11th stage, a 102-mile ride to Figeac.
Previously unheralded Frenchman Thomas Voeckler leads overall.
Armstrong put seven precious seconds on American Tyler Hamilton and Spaniard Roberto Heras, his former U.S. Postal teammates.
Although trailing Voeckler by 9 minutes, 35 seconds, Armstrong extended his lead over Hamilton to 43 seconds and was 1:52 ahead of Heras at the halfway mark of the competition.
Hamilton's Phonak team manager Urs Freuler put the time loss down to misfortune.
"Tyler was not in a good position in the last kilometer of the race, which is why a few seconds were lost,'' Freuler said.
Virenque could become the best climber in race history. Virenque, Spaniard Federico Bahamontes and Belgian Lucien Van Impe have six mountain titles each.
Stage 11 on Thursday has only one climb of note. The ascent up Cote de Montsalvy stretches 4.9 miles at a grade averaging 6 percent. It is unlikely to tempt either Ullrich or Armstrong out of cruise control.
Little or no time is to be gained from attacking in such a quiet stage, so both will save energy for Friday's first of two daunting Pyrenees stages.
Stage 12 is a 122.7-mile trudge from Castelsarrasin to La Mongie that features two steep climbs close to the finish.
Saturday's 13th stage, a 127.7-mile grind from Lannemezan to Plateau de Beille could break weaker riders. Armstrong and Ullrich might claim huge time gains there.
On Wednesday, Virenque thrilled French fans celebrating the Bastille Day holiday with a long and daring burst. The Morocco-born Virenque rode out in front for 125 miles en route to the seventh stage victory of his career.
After dropping Axel Merckx, he rode the last 40 miles alone - his tongue lolling from dehydration and exhaustion.
"I was at the end of my strength,'' he said. "I had cramps everywhere.''
Virenque was a member of the Festina team that was ejected from the 1998 race after customs officers found a large stash of banned drugs in a team car. He was banned for seven months.
However thrilling Virenque's win, it should be put into perspective. Neither Armstrong, Ullrich, Hamilton nor the other main challengers attempted to match his pace.
Armstrong wound up sixth, 5 minutes, 19 seconds behind. Ullrich finished 19th in the same time. Hamilton was 26th, 5:26 off the winning time.
Johan Bruyneel, Postal's sports manager, reserves judgment on whether Armstrong is stronger than Ullrich or the other principal challengers.
"We're still very far from the finish of the race, so we can't really know now who is good and bad,'' Bruyneel said. "Everybody gets more tired. It's the ones who are fresh and who maintain condition who will win.''
TITLE: Team Schedule: Another Day, Another Record
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONG BEACH, California - Six world records were set during the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, raising already-high expectations of another big American medal haul in Athens.
Four years ago, the U.S. team led all nations with 14 golds and 33 medals overall.
Much of the pressure in Athens will be on Michael Phelps, who said Wednesday he will swim five individual events and up to three relays in his attempt to break Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in one Olympics.
Phelps gave up his spot in the 200-meter backstroke, putting Bryce Hunt on his first Olympic team. Hunt finished third in the trials behind Aaron Peirsol, who broke his own world record, and Phelps.
"I'm pretty excited," Hunt said. "People were telling me that he might drop out of the 200 backstroke, but I didn't think it was going to happen. I just hope I can bring back a medal."
So does Jenny Thompson, who won the 50 freestyle on the final night of the eight-day trials. She had already qualified in the 100 butterfly.
Thompson, who made her fourth Olympic team at 31, won in 25.02 seconds, while Kara Lynn Joyce finished second (25.11) to earn the second Olympic berth.
Thompson has won 10 medals - more than any other U.S. woman - but her eight golds have all been in relays.
Individually, Thompson has been limited to a silver and a bronze, both in the 100 free. She failed to qualify for that event in the trials, the two spots going to Joyce and Natalie Coughlin.
"I feel like I'll be complete whether I win an individual gold medal or not," said Thompson, who is likely to be part of the relay teams again. "I'm just going to try to soak up as much of the atmosphere as possible. The first time I went, it was kind of a whirlwind."
Coughlin, swimming in the 50 after qualifying in two other events, finished sixth at 25.31.
"I'm very happy," she said. "I had three best times in 1 1/2 days and I learned a lot of good things for my 100 free."
Larsen Jensen set an American record in the 1,500 freestyle, becoming the third U.S. man to go under 15 minutes at 14:56.71. He bettered the mark of 14:56.81 that earned Chris Thompson a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics.
The 18-year-old Jensen is a rising star of distance swimming, though he'll have his work cut out for him in Athens. The Australians, led by Hackett, have dominated the mile.
Hackett's world record (14:34.56) is more than 22 seconds faster than Jensen's winning swim in Long Beach.
"It shows how far ahead he is in the sport of distance swimming," Jensen said. "We're behind. The whole world is behind."
Erik Vendt claimed the second spot in the 1,500 at 15:11.96. Chris Thompson got into the final because another swimmer scratched but finished far back in seventh at 15:44.57. He didn't have enough time to prepare after fracturing both elbows during a training mishap in May.
USA Swimming selected the staff that will work with head coaches Eddie Reese (men) and Mark Schubert (woman) in Athens. The assistants include Bob Bowman, Phelps' personal coach, and Teri McKeever, the first woman coach ever picked for the team.
"If you had told me this five years or even three years ago, I wouldn't have believed it," said McKeever, who coaches Coughlin.
TITLE: British Open Provides a Feast
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TROON, Scotland - The world's best players came to Royal Troon knowing the front nine was there for the taking in the British Open. It didn't take long Thursday to prove them right.
Birdies were plentiful, eagles were available and a rare double eagle was made by Gary Evans in the opening round on a front nine playing even easier than imagined on a calm coastal morning.
Ernie Els joined the fun with a hole-in-one on the famed Postage Stamp hole. Els hit a wedge that took three bounces on the 123-yard eighth hole, then backed up into the hole as he grinned with delight and the Scottish spectators roared their approval.
With former PGA champion Rich Beem leading the way, the early starters took dead aim at the pins on a day when the wind off the Firth of Clyde was unusually quiet.
Beem eagled the sixth hole on his way to a 5-under 31 on the front nine, but he wasn't alone. A cluster of players made the turn only a shot or two back, and more anxiously awaited their turns in the 133rd Open.
Players had expected the front nine to play easier, mostly because it almost always plays downwind. The second nine on the links course returns directly into the prevailing wind, forcing players to hang on to try and protect their scores.
Of the first 42 starters who had played at least two holes, 25 were under par, something almost unheard of in a major championship.
Evans of England, best known for losing a ball on the 17th at Muirfield to wreck his Open chances, made a double eagle on the par-5 fourth by holing a 5-iron from the fairway. It was the first double eagle in the British Open since Greg Owen on the 11th hole at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in 2001.
On the other end of the spectrum was Tom Weiskopf, the '73 Open champion at Royal Troon playing in his first major since the 1995 British Open. The 61-year-old Weiskopf took a quadruple-bogey 8 on the easy opening hole and shot 45 on the front nine.
David Duval didn't even make it to the first tee, withdrawing because of a sprained muscle in his back. Duval played his first tournament of the year last month in the U.S. Open, shooting 83-82 to miss the cut.
Defending champion Ben Curtis was among the late starters. He will be introduced as the defending champion, and get a nice round of applause.
That's better than the title he had last year, which was rookie PGA Tour member and first-time major player.
Curtis was then a 500-1 shot just trying to figure out how to play links golf, so unknown that when he asked for a local caddie, the caddie replied: "Ben who?"
His visibility hasn't improved much since last year, and neither have his odds. British bookies make him a 200-1 pick to successfully defend his title, something that hasn't happened since Tom Watson turned the trick in 1983.
Still, Curtis likes his chances even though he's done little to impress anyone since he held the silver claret jug aloft on the 18th green last year at Royal St. George's.
"I think you've got to look at it, anybody who defends their title is a threat," he said. "Especially in a major because I've won this before and I feel like I can do it again."
While all eyes won't be on the understated Ohioan, they will be on Tiger Woods as he tries to snap out of a slump that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Woods, also a late starter, has failed to win any of the last eight major championships, after winning seven of the previous 11. He comes to Troon with a big new graphite-shafted driver and lowered expectations, mired in a slump so bad he's winless in stroke play events since last October.
"You go out and try your best," Woods said. "That's all you can do. You can't do anything more than that."
The Open is back at Royal Troon for the first time since 1997, when Justin Leonard won his only major championship.
The links course on the Irish Sea plays relatively easy on the outward front nine, but can be brutal with the wind blowing in a player's face on the inward nine.
TITLE: Golden Balls' Kick Is Missing Millions
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MADRID, Spain - David Beckham's flubbed penalty kick in the shoot-out of the Euro 2004 quarterfinal against Portugal was costly for England. But the ball the soccer star blazed into the stands on June 24 is proving even costlier.
It has attracted a bid of $12.4 million on the Internet auction site eBay and promises to make a multimillionaire of the Spaniard who claimed it as it sailed through the air.
Pablo Carral, who was sitting high in Lisbon's Luz stadium, was soon made aware that he had not just acquired a souvenir when he received an offer of $22,271 from a British newspaper.
Corral, 25, then decided to test the water by offering the ball for sale on eBay's Spanish site.
Starting at $1.24, bids for the Thailand-made ball, which bears the date and venue of the game, have soared as high as Beckham's misjudged shot that led to England's elimination from the tournament.
"The incredible thing was that the ball reached our row because we were sitting a long way from the goal," Corral told the sports daily As. "To leave the stadium, I was guarded by two friends while I hid it in my clothes."
Corral must wait until July 22 when the auction closes to claim his windfall.
Ebay's conditions state that bids can only be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances.
Naturally, Corral has offered to pay the charges incurred in sending the ball to its eventual purchaser.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: France Hires New Coach
PARIS (AP) - Raymond Domenech was hired as the coach of France's national team on Monday, taking over a squad that won the World Cup in 1998 and European championship in 2000.
Domenech replaces Jacques Santini, and was selected over former team members Laurent Blanc and Jean Tigana. Domenech says it is his job to restore France's former glory on the soccer field.
"The objective is simple," Domenech said, looking ahead to 2006. "We have to qualify for the World Cup final.
"My mission is, above all, to win."
A former defender who played eight times for the French team, Domenech coached the under-21 team since 1993 and led the junior team to the European Championship final in 2002.
US To Wear 'Swift Suit'
SACRAMENTO, United States (AFP) - The United States athletics team at next month's Athens Olympics will be garbed in the latest aerodynamic apparel, high-tech fine fashions ranging from full body suits to crop tops, shorts, singlets and briefs.
The "Swift Suit", two years in the design process, features a white torso with blue lower-body coverings and red sleeves. While the torso is smooth, the arms feature dimples like a golf ball to better move through the air.
"It's the greatest uniform I ever put on," 100m Olympic qualifier Justin Gatlin said at Tuesday's unveiling of the outfits at the US Olympic Trials.
Seams were moved to the back of the uniform to provide a tight fit and decrease drag upon competitors, with jumpers having different designs than sprinters to match their differing needs.
Belarus Coach Perishes
MINSK, Belarus (AP) - The head coach of a Belarussian soccer team died of a heart attack as his team celebrated a last-minute winning goal in a weekend match.
Torpedo Zhodino coach Yakov Shapiro was rushed to the hospital from his team's home stadium on Saturday after feeling ill following the 90th-minute goal, which gave Torpedo a 1-0 win over Neman Grodno. He died midday Sunday, Torpedo's press service said.
Shapiro, 42, had coached Belarussian teams since 1993 and had been head coach of Torpedo Zhodino since 2001. A public funeral ceremony will be held Wednesday in Shapiro's native Minsk.
Paraguay Stuns Brazil
AREQUIPA, Peru (AP) - Fredy Bareiro scored in the 71st minute Wednesday night as Paraguay upset Brazil 2-1, winning Group C in Copa America.
Paraguay finished atop the group with seven points in three matches, setting up a quarterfinal game against Uruguay on Sunday. Brazil, which was second with six points, will face Mexico in the quarterfinals .
Costa Rica, which eliminated Chile 2-1 on an injury-time goal earlier Wednesday, advanced as the second-best third-place team and will play Colombia this weekend.