SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #988 (56), Friday, July 23, 2004
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Uproar At Honor For Putin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Plans by Hamburg University to award President Vladimir Putin an honorary doctorate in economics for his efforts when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s have set off a furor in Germany.
 
Putin is likely to face protests on Sept. 9 when he will arrive in Hamburg, St. Petersburg's sister city, for the annual Russian-German summit known as the Petersburg Dialog. He and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder founded the summits in St. Petersburg in 2001.
 Schroeder received an honorary doctorate from St. Petersburg State University last year.
 During Putin's visit German students and politicians plan to organize mass protests against the award, saying it is inappropriate because in the five years of Putin's presidency the administration has violated human rights in Chechnya and deprived the public of an independent media.
 The German Society for Threatened Peoples said this week that Putin is not worthy of the award and accused him of being a "Killer of a Nation," stating that during his presidency "80,000 Chechen children, women and men and 13,000 Russian soldiers have been killed."
 "I ask you to resist giving the award to a man, who is responsible for the destruction of Russian democracy and the murder of people in Chechnya," said Tilman Zuelch, the secretary-general for the Society for Threatened Peoples in an open letter placed on the organization's website www.gfbv.de Tuesday.
 In mid-July, 30 Hamburg University professors from the social sciences faculty asked the administration to abandon the plan to award Putin. The decision to give the award was taken by the university's economics faculty, but on the second vote after the first attempt failed to gather the necessary support of a two-thirds majority, newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt reported Tuesday.
 "The necessary number of votes were mustered only after the argument was made that this would avoid getting involved in an even worse situation," the newspaper quoted a member of the faculty board as saying on condition of anonymity. One professor left the board after the second vote, having suffered a nervous breakdown, the paper said.
 Wilhelm Strobel, a former economics professor at the university, reminded his colleagues that in 1980 the economics faculty considered awarding Helmut Schmidt an honorary doctorate. Schmidt was then German Chancellor.
 "Back then we came to the conclusion that it is not a good idea to award politicians who were still in office ... Not to award Schmidt, but to award Putin - that would be quite strange," the newspaper quoted Strobel as saying.
 Karen Koop, deputy head of the Christian Democrat faction that rules the Hamburg city government, blamed the spat on Schroeder, saying that if he had not accepted his honorary doctorate "it wouldn't be necessary to give another in return."
 Karl-Werner Hansmann, vice-president of the university said: "Schroeder has not put any pressure on the university" and added that the award will be given to Putin for his work in St. Petersburg City Hall in 1994-1996. While Putin was "a deputy to the mayor and reformer Anatoly Sobchak he started large-scale economic reforms in Russia's Northwest," the Hamburger Abendblatt quoted Hansmann as saying.
 Henning Voscherau, mayor of Hamburg in 1988-1997, and Klaus Asche, head of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce in 1990-1996, came out in defense of Putin in a comment printed in Die Welt newspaper on Thursday.
 "Vladimir Putin is a friend of Germany. He was a good partner 12 years ago. He was the man who forced Soviet and Russian border officials of Leningrad/St. Petersburg to let humanitarian aid from Hamburg into the country," Voscherau and Asche wrote.
 "If Russia was still on a road full of potholes on its route to democracy, Russians would have elected not Putin, but [General Alexander] Lebed. West German democracy developed under the protection and with the assistance of Britain and the United States for 40 years. Isn't it easy to condemn from our comfortable positions?" they wrote.
 In 1992, Putin pushed forward negotiations on the opening of the St. Petersburg's Currency Stock Exchange, signing an agreement with KPMG to provide consulting services for City Hall and assisting the opening of representative offices of a range of German companies and BNP-Dresdner Bank (Russia) office in the city, one of the first big international banks to operate in Russia.
 But in 1990, Putin was at the center of a corruption scandal linked to humanitarian aid deliveries to St. Petersburg. A city council commission, set up by deputies Marina Salye and Yury Gladkov, the current vice speaker, concluded that Putin issued licenses to export non-ferrous metals valued at a total of $93 million from St. Petersburg in exchange for food aid from abroad that never came to the city.
 The deputies recommended that Sobchak fire Putin, but the scandal was played down in the next couple of years.
 Nicolas von Podlewski, head of the Hamburg University Students' Committee, said Putin will be met with protests when he comes to get the award.
 Putin is to receive the award on Sept. 10, with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust participating in the ceremony.
 But it already looks as if he will be able to distance himself from the arguments. The Kremlin had no comment Thursday and could not say if Putin would participate in the ceremony.
 "It's up to Hamburg University to award him, not us, and I think if they award him they know what they're doing," said Sergei Kovalyov, rector of the science department of St. Petersburg Financial and Economics State University, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
 Putin has six degrees from different universities. In 1997, he defended a doctoral thesis at St. Petersburg Mining Institute, his future presidential campaign headquarters, on the topic that Russia's economic development strategy has been developed on the basis of a detailed analysis of its mineral and raw materials potential.
 "The Germans are absolutely right," Yury Vdovin co-head of local human rights group Citizen's Watch human rights group said Thursday in a telephone interview. "It is nonsense when a democratic country awards [the president of a country] where the war in Chechnya has lasted for more then 10 years, where democracy is being brushed aside, where FSB takes everything into its hands." 
 "I am glad that there are 30 professors who can say the war is bad. This is a positive sign in conditions when there is no freedom of speech in this country. It says there is freedom of speech in the world," Vdovin said. 
 "At one time [Josef] Stalin wanted to be head of everything and everywhere, like a friend of sportsmen and so on. This guy [Putin] also can't resist the temptation."

TITLE: Will City Sink Like Atlantis?

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Built on the edge of the Gulf of Finland and on the banks of
 the mighty Neva River, St. Petersburg is surrounded by and threatened
 by water.


But could the 300-year-old city, like the mythical Atlantis and
 Russia's Kitezh, one day disappear under the waves? Prominent
 Moscow geologist and oceanographer Alexander Gorodnitsky thinks
 so, giving the city as little as another 20 years before rising
 seas caused by global warming overwhelm it.

"In the next 20 to 30 years St. Petersburg, like many other coastal
 cities in Europe, is under threat of being totally or partly
 submerged," he said this year. 

Gorodnitsky, a native of the city where he lived for 40 years,
 said that melting Arctic ice resulting from global warming would
 lead to surging sea levels across the planet. 

Not only St. Petersburg, but also Venice, Amsterdam, Hamburg,
 London and other cities located below or just above sea level
 may go under, local media reported him saying.

"The Neva is not a river, but a strait that connected the Gulf
 of Finland with Lake Ladoga several thousand years ago, and therefore
 there is a high chance of tectonic movement there," Gorodnitsky
 said, urging haste on the $900-million dam across the Finnish
 Gulf, which is due to be completed in 2009 to save the city from
 being deluged by the sea.

Work on the project, which was started in 1978, is proceeding
 slowly.

The worst floods in the history of St. Petersburg occurred in
 1824 and 1924, when the flo
A Short History of the Russian 
Political Joke

Russian jokes come in all varieties, from the ÷àñòóøêà (chastushka, a four-line, rhyming verse), to the áàéêà (a tall tale), to elaborate comic stories that lead inexorably to the punch line. Perhaps because ðóññêèå àíåêäîòû (Russian jokes) come out of the storytelling tradition, rather than the vaudeville-Hollywood-sitcom tradition, there isn’t an exact Russian word for punch line.
You can call it the ðàçâÿçêà (“the denouement”). Punch line or no, of all these traditions, I revere Russians for their genius for topical political jokes. Take this one that appeared during the recent “banking crisis”: Èç çàÿâëåíèé Öåíòðî áàíêà: Íåò íèêàêèõ ïðè÷èí äëÿ ïàíèêè.  Ðîññèè íåò íèêàêîãî áàíêîâñêîãî êðèçèñà. Âûïîëíÿåòñÿ îáû÷íàÿ øòàòíàÿ ïðîöåäóðà èçúÿòèÿ äåíåã ó íàñåëåíèÿ. (From an announcement by the Central Bank: There is no reason for panic. There is no banking crisis in Russia whatsoever. We are simply carrying out the usual standard procedure for expropriating money from the population.) This is what Russians call ñìåõ ñêâîçü ñëåçû (laughter through tears). I call it brilliant.
The Stalin jokes often deal with his cruelty. Lenin jokes often make fun of his accent or debunk the myth of Lenin as a kindly man. Khrushchev jokes often involve corn and other harebrained schemes. Brezhnev jokes mostly make fun of him in his later years, when he was not quite all there: Èäåò Áðåæíåâ â ïàñõó ïî Êðåìëþ, åãî ïðèâåòñòâóþò: “Õðèñòîñ Âîñêðåñ!”, îí êèâíóë è èäåò äàëüøå. Ñíîâà: “Õðèñòîñ Âîñêðåñ!”, à Áðåæíåâ îòâå÷àåò: “ß çíàþ, ìíå óæå äîëîæèëè.” (At Easter, Brezhnev is walking in the Kremlin when he is greeted with the traditional, “Christ has risen!” Brezhnev nods and walks on. Again someone says, “Christ has risen!” And Brezhnev answers: “I know, it’s already been reported to me.”)
Gorbachev jokes play on his accent, his policy of glasnost and his anti-drinking campaign. Yeltsin jokes play on his personal pro-drinking campaign, as well as his language tick of “you know.” And Putin jokes? There aren’t many. Maybe it’s just not funny anymore. But there is an old joke (àíåãäîò ñ áîðîäîé — literally “a joke with a beard”) that has been updated to include Putin: Åõàëè âîæäè â ïîåçäå. Âäðóã ïîåçä îñòàíîâèëñÿ. Âïåðåäè îòñóò-ñòâîâàëà æåëåçíàÿ äîðîãà. Ëåíèí: “Íàäî óñòðîèòü êîììóíèñòè-÷åñêèé ñóááîòíèê.” Ñòà-ëèí: “×òî áû áûñòðî ðåëüñû áûëè — èëè ðàññòðåëÿþ!” Õðóùåâ: “Äàâàéòå ðàçáåðåì ñçàäè è ïîëîæèì ñïåðåäè.” Áðåæíåâ: “Äàâàéòå êà÷àòü âàãîí è ãóäåòü — äåëàòü âèä, ÷òî åäåì.” Ãîðáà÷åâ: “Îá ýòîì íàäî ñêàçàòü îòêðûòî!” Åëüöèí: “Äàâàéòå, ïîíèìàåøü, ïðîäàäèì íåôòü çà ãðàíèöó è êóïèì ðåëüñû.” Ïóòèí: “Ýòî òåððîðèñòû!” (The leaders are in a train when it suddenly stops. There is no track ahead. Lenin says: We should organize a voluntary communist workday! Stalin: If that track isn’t laid soon, I’ll call the firing squad! Khrushchev: Let’s take the track from behind and put it up ahead. Brezhnev: Let’s shake the train and hoot — and pretend that we are moving forward. Gorbachev: We have to speak openly about this! Yeltsin: Let’s sell oil overseas and buy the track — you know? Putin: Terrorists!) Sadly, the “train with no track” scenario is all too fitting a metaphor for Russia’s development.

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpretor. d ecocide,
 genetic changes and cancer in aquatic flora and fauna." Znamensky
 said no economic justification of the dam has been made. 

"After the 1924 flood [the biggest in the last century], heads
 of all organizations were asked to report the damages to the
 authorities, with heads of these organizations being held personally
 responsible," Znamensky said. "Naturally, nobody reported anything."
 

Later, to estimate the financial damage, the heads of local companies
 were asked to offer their prospects of losses. 

"Then, of course, everyone reported big figures, because the
 higher the flood, the bigger the losses - and the bigger the
 compensation payouts they got," Znamensky said.

"The examination of the ecological impact of the dam has also
 been superficial," he added. "It is hard to imagine the consequences
 on nature of such a huge intervention."

But Gerritsen and Villars say worries about the Gulf of Finland
 turning into a swamp due to poor water circulation are unfounded.
 They said the best approach for the city is a two-pronged strategy
 of protecting itself from flooding and improving the environment
 by completing the dam and improving the treatment of wastewater.

Pollution of Neva Bay and the Gulf of Finland is mostly due to
 discharge of untreated sewage, they added.

Mikhail Probirsky, deputy head of local water-and-sewage monopoly
 Vodokanal, said 25 percent of sewage and industrial waste released
 into the Neva River is untreated due to the shortage of water-treatment
 facilities in the city. 

But Dmitry Artamonov, head of the city's branch of Greenpeace,
 questions Probirsky's figures, suggesting that the untreated
 waste exceeds 30 percent.

In 1990, an international commission of experts, including several
 specialists from Wl/Delft Hydraulics, was asked to examine the
 dam project and possible dangers. 

"The commission, although confirming the endangered state of
 the Neva Bay environment, concluded that the impact of the barrier
 was negligible," Villars said. "The current plans for completion
 of [St. Petersburg's] Southwest Wastewater Treatment Plant will
 play a major role in improving the ecology."

But the dam is not the only way to protect the city from flooding.
 

Znamensky said several small barriers placed at the most endangered
 sites would cost less, cause no environmental problems and be
 more efficient. 

Is the future of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast a series
 of dykes and polders, following the example of the Netherlands
 where about a quarter of the surface area of the Netherlands
 is below sea level?

Amsterdam, which has many similarities to St. Petersburg and
 on which Peter the Great had intended to model his city, is in
 a similar position with regard to floods.

Both cities are located in low-lying delta regions where a river
 meets the sea, and coastal protection by large infrastructure
 works is required. Amsterdam is protected by the North Sea Canal
 Navigation Sluices.

"These structures have been dimensioned to take into account
 the expected natural sea level rise of 20 centimeters per century
 and provide the desired level of flood protection," Gerritsen
 said. 


TITLE: Russian Sex Revolution Moves to Office
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia, or at least St. Petersburg, is undergoing a sexual revolution.
 
At the end of the Soviet era there was the declaration on television that "we don't have sex in the U.S.S.R." 
 Just last year, St. Petersburg was promoted as the nation's erotic capital. But since the people threw out Communism, they have also had to work for a living and many spend long hours in the office. 
 "It's almost a second home," says Neonilla Samukhina, director of the city's Soitology Institute, who has just written "Kamasutra in the Office," which advises people on how to get extra pleasure out of the place where people spend such a big part of their lives.
 Soitology is the study of the art and science of coupling, Samukhina said. 
 "Our purpose is to educate people about sex," she said in an interview. "And there is nothing to giggle about for it is one of the most important sides of human life."
 Each page of the book is illustrated with vivid pictures of sex in the office. Samukhina thinks that breaks in the office should not be limited to enjoying an abundant lunch, but might also include something spicier. 
 Her book gives readers ideas on how to use the office space and objects for having intimate moments in the middle of a working day.
 Turntable chairs, window sills, office desks, leather sofas, office restrooms and staircases - all can be used as propos for passionate lovemaking in front of computers, printers, photocopy machines, and in-house telephone exchanges.
 By the way, she recommends that telephones be turned off during such "little breaks."
 In her book even an elevator in the office building has a special role.
 "On the way to the office, when you go for lunch or head home, an elevator offers a big temptation for passionate lovers, who have to hide their feelings all day long," Samukhina writes.
 A lot of attention is paid to office chairs, which often have wheels that can provide extra, unusual sensations during lovemaking. 
 "People, who will be able to get special pleasure from intercourse performed as the chairs are rolled all over the office, are sure to be found in an office," Samukhina wrote.
 The author says that sex in an office bathroom "should be fast," so as not to keep waiting those who use the room for its main purpose. 
 The author does not neglect the reality that many offices are in old buildings, which usually have a main entrance and a so-called "black" staircase, or back door. Since this staircase is rarely used, lovers could find peace and joy on a windowsill there. 
 The book says companies that hire equal numbers of men and women have higher labor productivity.
 This is because the presence of people of the opposite sex makes the other half of humanity pay attention to their appearance and be in a better mood, Samukhina writes.
 Women's dependence on the lunar cycle often makes them nervous and unproductive at a certain phases of the Moon. Therefore, the presence of men balances the atmosphere, she says.
 Men are said to have unfavorable physiological cycles in the 20th day of each month. So it's also not good if a company employs men only, she says.
 Samukhina wrote her first sex education book, which was titled 'Stars and Sex" in 2000, and later other books, which covered the topic of sex positions, erotic massage, and other related issues.
 In January this year, she opened her institution called Soitology Institute, which does scientific research on various aspects of sexual life.
 Samukhina said sex was taboo during Soviet times and many Russians have never discussed it. This often leads to problems, with family life becoming boring which may lead to infidelity and even divorce.
 "We write our books to awaken people's fantasy, show them that sex is a cheerful activity," Samukhina said. "Kamasutra in the Office" was a bit of a joke and was also part of gathering information for an institute's investigation of office affairs.
 "It's also a certain warning for the partners of those people who work in offices, that such things happen and they should do their best to prevent their partner from being tempted into an office affair," she said.
 She said the danger of an office is that people there are well dressed, while at home they relax and don't pay attention to their appearance.

TITLE: Greenpeace Files Suit Over LAES' Action
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Greenpeace has filed a lawsuit against the Leningrad Nuclear Power Station, or LAES, for allowing Ecomet-S, a private plant for welding radioactive metals, to use its territory without the statutory environmental impact report being performed, environmentalists say.
 
Ecomet-S has been operating next to the power station since 2001, they added.
 The company welds up to 8,000 metric tons of radioactive metals a year that it sells in Russia and abroad. Its products include stainless steel and non-ferrous metals, which could be used to make household items, such as frying pans and saucepans, according to Greenworld, a local environmental organization, which provided Greenpeace with information on the plant's activity.
 "For a few years the plant has been working without any ecological assessment and has worked with welding metals delivered not only from LAES only, but also from other regions of Russia," said Dmitry Artamonov, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg branch of Greenpeace said Wednesday in a telephone interview. Greenpeace says it can not understand how it is possible for a private company to be allowed to work on the territory of a state-owned site with a high-security rating.
 In addition, Greenworld spokesman Oleg Bodrov, said Ecomet-S had provided no proof its products are safe. 
 "There are plants of the same kind working in Germany, for instance, but the final product is used to make containers to transport radioactive waste," Bodrov said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "That way the material taken from nuclear power plants is kept within a closed system. What is happening here is quite different."
 Ecomet-S' management is negotiating with German investors to get financing to increase its capacity with plans to weld metals from other European countries and from scrapped Northern Fleet nuclear submarines, Bodrov said.
 "I think there is a big-scale corruption involved," he said. "How can such a plant keep working for so many years without an official environmental impact report having been done?" 
 In February 2002, the Leningrad Oblast Prosecutor's Office for nature protection ruled that Ecomet-S must get an environmental assessment done within the next six months, but the firm did not comply, Bodrov said.
 The local environment is also suffering because of the high concentration of facilities dealing with radioactive materials near Sosnovy Bor, the town where LAES is located, Bodrov said. 
 From 1997 to 2001 specialists of the National Institute for Agriculture Radiology studied the forest near the plant. Its report showed that pine trees in the area suffer genetic damage at rates several times higher than trees growing 20 kilometers from the nuclear power plant. 
 Some of the damage observed was very rare, even in the area radiated by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the report said.
 "The radiation background is at acceptable levels there, but it [the damage] might be linked to contamination of the air with some chemicals that are coming from the station," Bodrov said.
 LAES and Ecomet-S management could not be reached for comment Thursday.

TITLE: Landmark Dom Knigi Stops Selling Books
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city's premiere bookstore, Dom Knigi, has stopped selling books in its main office in the landmark former Singer House, while the building undergoes major renovations. 
 
The store's main office is now located at 62 Nevsky Prospekt, with several other branches across the city.
 Founded in 1919, Dom Knigi was the first bookshop in Soviet Russia. Some of the country's most prominent writers, including Mikhail Zoshchenko and Samuil Marshak once worked as salesmen there.
 Since the Bolshevik Revolution the building has always belonged to the city government. In 1998 the private company St. Petersburg Real Estate Agency signed a deal to rent it for 49 years - the maximum term allowed by federal legislation. Since then, bookseller Dom Knigi has sublet its home from the agency.
 Tatyana Prosvirnina, spokeswoman for the city property committee, or KUGI, said Wednesday the main reason for the local authorities to rent the building was that it was becoming dilapidated. A condition of the lease was that the agency does major renovations, which have already begun and are due to be completed at the end of 2005. The renovations are expected to cost more than $20 million.
 The only previous restoration of Dom Knigi was after a series of bombings during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II.
 "Dom Knigi just couldn't maintain the large building on their own," Prosvirnina said.
 Dom Knigi is pleased with the new location, which will allow it to display more books. It intends to keep operating from there even after its original home again becomes available.
 "When I saw the halls at the Nevsky 62 building I immediately felt we must move there," said Dom Knigi's director Galina Samokhvalova.
 According to the contract, Dom Knigi will be back at the Singer buildings after the end of renovations, but only to occupy the ground floor. The rest is to be turned in a shopping mall - at least, until the end of the lease. 
 The building was constructed between 1902 and 1904 as the head office of the German-owned Singer Sewing Machine Co. in Russia.

TITLE: Police Probe Girenko Case
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Police have conducted more than 30 raids and searches in St. Petersburg and Novgorod in their investigation of the murder of Nikolai Girenko, an expert on skinheads. 
 Before he was killed on June 19, Girenko had been due to testify at a trial of an extremist group in Novgorod.
 St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko met top law enforcers this week to discuss progress on the case.
 "It is a matter of professional honor for law enforcement officers to find those who killed Nikolai Girenko and those who ordered his murder," said Matviyenko, who has taken personal control of the investigation. 
 A nationalist website claimed responsibility for Girenko's murder on June 24 and police have targeted youth groups known to have nationalist leanings and have seized a substantial amount of neo-Nazi literature. The possibility of opening a second criminal case related to the murder - of organizing an extremist group - is being considered, the police said.
 Sixty-four-year-old Girenko was killed on June 19 when he was shot as he went to answer the doorbell. Girenko assisted the city prosecutor's office in several high-profile trials, including that over the 2002 murder of Azeri watermelon vendor Mamed Mamedov. Over the past two years he performed about two dozen studies of neo-Nazi and skinhead organizations for Moscow and St. Petersburg authorities. His work led to several convictions.
 Local human rights group Citizens' Watch is consulting lawyers about having the investigation reclassified from one of murder to murder of a statesman or a public figure. Reclassification would mean those convicted of the murder would spend longer in jail. "That step alone would help to protect the experts better as the criminals would understand such cases will be investigated more closely and the punishment will be much more severe," the group's head, Boris Pustyntsev, said Tuesday.
 In the meantime, a second petition has been sent this week to President Vladimir Putin in connection with Girenko's murder. More than 1,000 people from 39 countries signed the petition asking the president to take more active measures in combating nationalism and extremism in Russia.

TITLE: Eight Injured in Dagestan Blast
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MAKHACHKALA - Twin explosions outside an Interior Ministry police base in Dagestan wounded eight people Thursday, the latest in a series of bombings and criminal violence that has shaken the region bordering war-wracked Chechnya. 
 
There was no claim of responsibility for the two homemade, remote-controlled bombs, which twisted the gates at the OMON paramilitary police base and shattered the windows on two buses bringing ministry employees to work for the day. 
 The first bomb exploded at 7:45 a.m. The blast left a 1-meter-wide crater in the road, and sent shattered glass flying through both buses. One man lost an eye and a woman suffered serious skull fractures, authorities said. 
 The second bomb, which caused no injuries, exploded about 10 minutes later, across the road from the base, officials said.

TITLE: Shares Hit Lows At More Yukos Shakes
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yukos shares hit a new 30-month low of $5.30 on Moscow's RTS exchange after the company made a statement that it will go bankrupt should the state proceed with the sale of its main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz. 
 
Yukos said it did not expect to see any money from the Yuganksneftegaz's forced sale to recover a $3.4 billion back-tax debt. 
 "The Company management is currently making every effort to raise additional funds in order to repay, as soon as possible, the tax liability and to finance current operations," a statement by the company said. 
 "However, should those efforts prove unsuccessful and Yuganskneftegaz is sold, in the present circumstances, the management of the Company would be compelled to announce the bankruptcy of Russia's largest oil company," it said. 
 Chief Executive Steven Theede told a news conference that Yukos valued the unit at over $30 billion, but that "we cannot expect to get any change back." 
 John Bates, emerging market strategist at WestLB in London, said the statements had shed little light on the company's future. 
 "I don't think the statement gives us any new information. It still leaves us guessing. The problem government has is that they are basically taking control of the existence of Yukos but they are not making the market attractive for potential buyers," Bates said. 
 The news conference was called amid market speculation that Yukos, which pumps 1.7 million barrels per day of oil, may file for bankruptcy. 
 Yugansk accounts for 60 percent of Yukos output, and was described by Theede as the company's "backbone".
 Government officials opened the way for a fire sale of Yuganskneftegaz as payment for the oil major's crippling tax debts Tuesday, in a move that in effect meant the end of Yukos as Russia's leading oil producer.
 In a statement that shocked a market that had still hoped Yukos would not be broken up, the Justice Ministry said it was earmarking the Siberian production unit, which produces 60 percent of Yukos' total oil output, for sale. 
 "After valuation, the stake in Yuganskneftegaz will be handed over to a special organization for sale," the Ministry said in a statement, as it announced that court marshals have frozen the shares of all Yukos production units - Yuganskneftegaz, Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft VNK.
 Two days after the statement, shocked investors continued to pile out of Yukos stock. Even normally bullish analysts said minority investors risked being steamrollered in what seems like an unstoppable fight between the state and Yukos' majority shareholder, Group Menatep.
 "It looks like Menatep is trying to bring down everything with it, while the government appears to be willing to inflict as much damage as need be," said Eric Kraus, Sovlink's chief equity strategist. "The only innocent victims are going to be international investors."
 Some market watchers still hoped that the Justice Ministry was bluffing in its attempt to force Yukos' owners into a deal on the government's terms.
 But others said the politically charged standoff, which has already led to the arrest of Yukos billionaire owners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev on charges of fraud and tax evasion, already looked to be snowballing out of control.
 "This is starting to look like a game of chicken and neither side is swerving," Kraus said. "If this is a bluff, they're bluffing very close to the edge."
 Investors fear that if the government moves to sell Yukos' stake in Yuganskneftegaz, it could be sold off at a knockdown price to a company close to the Kremlin such as Surgutneftegaz, or sold to state-owned energy companies such as Gazprom or Rosneft, a move that would be tantamount to the first re-nationalization in the country's post-Soviet history. 
 Already, Yuganskneftegaz is valued at around $30.4 billion by leading consulting firm DeGolyer and MacNaughton, way above the $3.4 billion back tax claim.
 <i>

 Reuters, AP, SPT </i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Lavrov to Resolve Ban
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Dutch counter-part, Ben Bot, said Wednesday they are working to resolve Russia's ban on Dutch flower imports that is costing companies in the Netherlands an estimated $500,000 per day. 
 Russia imposed the ban last month after crop-eating insects were found in a shipment of Dutch plants that was accompanied by forged documentation. 
 "The discussion of this issue is a matter of purely technical questions," Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow after discussions with Bot. "Russia has all rights to control the import of goods on its territory," Bot said. 
 "We hope the problem will be solved by August, because every day we are losing a lot of money," he said. 
 
 
<b>Gazprom Battles Costs
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer, said Tuesday that it's forming a working group to cut expenses amid rising costs for pipes, transport and labor.
 The group will be led by CFO Andrei Kruglov, the company said in a statement. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller ordered the group to draft cost-cutting programs that will be reviewed by Gazprom's management and board.
 Investment banks such as Moscow-based Renaissance Capital this month urged Gazprom to cut spending, saying it suffers from "a cost overrun" and that management is showing "negligible zeal." Gazprom last week said operating costs rose 19 percent to 593.4 billion rubles ($20 billion) in 2003, when reporting 2003 financial results based on international accounting standards. <b>Baltika Boosts Sales
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (Reuters) - Baltika's second-quarter revenues rose 15 percent year-on-year due to an overhaul of its logistics and a new marketing strategy, the brewery said Wednesday. 
 April-June revenues rose to 7.5 billion rubles ($257.9 million) from 6.5 million in the year-ago period, with sales in unit volumes rising to 5.5 million hectoliters, the firm said in a statement. 
 Baltika added that sales volume rise was at double the pace of growth in the Russian beer market, which rose 6.8 percent year-on-year. It estimated its market share at 22 percent versus 20 percent in the first quarter.
 
 
<b>IKEA Heads to Kiev
 </b>

ST.PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) - IKEA, the world's biggest home-furnishings retailer, plans to open its first store in Ukraine within a year to tap Eastern Europe's fastest growing economy.
 The store in Kiev will cost about 250 million euros ($310 million), Irina Vanenkova, head of information at IKEA's Moscow office, said in a telephone interview. Construction will be completed in about a year, she said. 



TITLE: New Fund Achieves Early Profits
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Svinin and Partners Co. reported their closed-end fund made a profit of 5.6 million rubles ($193,000) during its first 100 days of operation, the fund being the first in the country to invest in commercial real estate.
 
Funds such as Svinin and Partners' First Closed-End Fund are referred to as &quot;closed&quot; because investors deposit their finances for a prolonged period of time - several years - and cannot make a withdrawal until the fund completes its work. 
 The First Fund's annual dividends at present are 17.64 percent. While in May this year, the fund's single share could be purchased for 157,315 rubles ($5,400), the same share can be sold for 165,100 rubles today. 
 Starting from October, the company plans to begin paying the dividends to investors on a quarterly basis. At the same time, the managing company's commission will be reduced from 8 to 1.5 percent, which will help cut the annual costs by 7 million rubles ($240,000). 
 The First Fund has 12 investors - nine individuals and three companies, including the Progress Neva insurance company. 
 As of late June 2004, the fund's assets were reported to have grown by 5.1 percent over three months, amounting to 135.5 million rubles ($4.66 million).
 To overcome the legislative gaps in opening the fund, Svinin and Partners created a positive precedent in mid-March by registering real estate with a closed-end fund at the city bureau of real estate rights registration, or the GBR. 
 This allowed investors to directly become co-owners of the 8,330 square meter Narvsky business center, their rights registered at the GBR.
 Narvsky business center will be reconstructed and sold by Svinin and Partners, with proceeds going towards First Fund's profits. The company increased the project's profitability by selling the business center in parts. An agreement on selling two of the center's floors has already been signed, the company's general director Vladimir Svinin said. &quot;The smaller the piece, the more buyers wish to purchase it,&quot; Svinin said. 
 &quot;I am sceptical about modern investment companies, who have resources circulating exclusively within their holdings. Pension funds are equally fictional, operating within a closed circle,&quot; Svinin said. Buying company shares of Gazprom or Yukos is &quot;playing Russian roulette,&quot; he said, while taking part in a closed-end fund is predictable and transparent. 
 Svinin's target clients are individuals and insurance companies, which became profitable due to the recently introduced compulsory civil responsibility insurance.
 Closed-end funds are an easier way to invest in real estate than investing into construction projects or buying actual apartments, but the entrance barrier introduced by fund managing companies is remaining high, Expert Severo-Zapad magazine wrote in June. 
 Promstroibank's Housing Realty Fund has its minimal investment barrier at 1 million rubles ($34,400). In this respect, Svinin's fund is more comparable to foreign funds. The Baltic Realty Fund, investing in real estate in Latvia and managed by a Parex Bank affiliate, has its low limit at $5,000.
 In future, closed-end funds will lower their single share costs to several thousand rubles, Andre Gorianov of Web-invest Bank, CIT Asset Management, said Thursday. Closed-end funds secure transparency of the investor's entrance and exit, Gorianov said. Optimization of taxes - mainly thanks to the respite in profit tax payment - is another strong advantage the funds offer, he said. 
 &quot;This is why we believe closed-end funds have a great potential. They will show higher net asset value growth rates than open-end funds,&quot; Gorianov said. However, he added, a number of legislative gaps remain open, hampering those growth rates.
 Over the past one and a half years, the number of closed-end funds and their total net asset value has doubled, Gorianov said. 
 CIT manages two closed-end funds with a total net asset value of 900 million rubles ($31 million).
 Meanwhile, Svinin said that his company will shortly launch two more funds. One will form another closed-end fund. The decision to create it was taken upon the clients' demand, Svinin said. However, he added, closed-end funds have their limitations - such funds' assets can not be mortgaged, which secures the rights of the investors, but limits the instruments available to take loans.
 The second fund will be a stock investment fund. Svinin and Partners bought part of the industrial premises from the Elektropult factory. The premises will be developed to form plants, warehouses and industrial offices, and sold. 
 The existing power system will also be modernized and later sold as a separate business, Svinin said. After the reconstruction, industrial real estate is estimated to bring Svinin and Partners a total of 200 million rubles ($6.9 million) in assets, Svinin said. The deal has allowed Elektropult to continue operation on the remaining premises, he said.
 Svinin and Partners is part of the Okhta Group holding, which owns 85 percent of the company. Vladimir Svinin owns the remaining 15 percent of the company shares.

TITLE: Intel Opens R&amp;D Center, Set to Grow
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Intel, the world's leading micro processor producer, has opened a research and development center in St. Petersburg. 
 
The new center will boost the city's economy and help propel Russia to the forefront of computer technology, company executives said during the center's opening announcement at a news conference Tuesday.
 &quot;This is good for Russia because ... ultimately what we want to do is help Russia be competitive in the worldwide economy,&quot; said Stephen Chase, president of Intel Russia. 
 Wen-Hann Wang, director of Intel's core software division, said that the St. Petersburg center will play a key role in developing the basic building blocks of &quot;Management Runtime Environment&quot; or MRTE technology. That will ultimately help applications run faster and more efficiently, easing the burden on programmers and freeing up the creative process.
 &quot;The major function of this St. Petersburg site is to develop these Management Runtime MRTE building blocks so that the software industry can use, can leverage [this technology] and then together help developers develop much higher quality software much faster,&quot; he said.
 Eventually, this will benefit the user and increase their numbers, he said. 
 &quot;The market in Russia and St. Petersburg continues to grow and we need to have smart people to serve this market, to better help this market, to serve this market's need and for these reasons, we decided to open the lab here,&quot; Wang said.
 &quot;Then there will be a lot of market [opportunities] for computers and there will be a lot of market [opportunities] for our product,&quot; Wang said. &quot;If the markets grow...we benefit, the user benefits, developers benefit, the country benefits - everybody wins - the economy grows,&quot; he said.
 The &quot;lab,&quot; as officials called it, employs 49 researchers and Intel projects having 100 employees by the beginning of 2005. 
 All 49 of the employees were subcontracted from Elbrus MTsST, a leader in computer technology research, including Igor Kaloshin, Intel St. Petersburg's new manager.
 There has been no merger or acquisition and Elbrus will continue to operate independently of Intel. 
 The contract has been signed and will be finalized in the coming weeks, Alexander Palladin, Intel's PR manager, said in a telephone interview. 
 &quot;We signed a deal with Elbrus in May of this year which provides Intel with an opportunity to hire Elbrus employees, those wishing to join Intel,&quot; Palladin said. &quot;Elbrus as a company continues operating and will continue operating.&quot;
 Kaloshin, Elbrus St. Petersburg's former director, called St. Petersburg a city with &quot;very high potential.&quot;
 In St. Petersburg &quot;5,000 students start studying computer programming every year,&quot; he said.
 The city is fertile ground for research and development and is home to some of the best computer engineers in the world, the officials told reporters.
 &quot;We have discovered for ourselves that Russia has very big potential, a very big pool of talent, lots of excellent bold caliber engineers capable of doing great things,&quot; Palladin said in an interview before the conference.
 Applications being developed and produced in Intel's Nizhny Novgorod Center are used by the company on a global scale, he said.
 &quot;This project is very good for Russia because this actually means that local, talented engineers can stay on, be employed by one of the biggest, world-class companies,&quot; Palladin said. 
 &quot;They can apply their knowledge and expertise on the world level to see the fruits of their labor ... be used and also they can [earn] decent salaries,&quot; he said.

TITLE: New Rubles More Secure
PUBLISHER: rosbusinessconsulting
TEXT: New banknotes with denominations of 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 rubles are set to enter into circulation.
 Their design will remain the same but some new features will appear that will be easy to notice but difficult to counterfeit.
 
The new notes differ from the old banknotes by the level of protection. According to the rules and recommendations of criminalists, it is necessary to introduce changes to the design of banknotes and securities once in every 5 to 7 years. This is the second modernization&iacute; of notes introduced since 1997. 
 The first one took place three years ago.
 The new notes have a special pattern. Its color changes depending on a visual angle. 
 In addition, a security magnetic thread has been embedded in the paper, which previously was on notes of some other countries only. 100-ruble notes and higher are protected more seriously. 
 Another important protective feature that helps identify a note easily is microperforation, which is made by a very complicated laser. Counterfeiters cannot afford to buy such equipment, experts believe. The 1000-ruble note, on which the emblem of the city of Yaroslavl changes its color depending on a visual angle, has the best protection.
 The new banknotes entered into circulation on July 21, Rossiya television channel reported and the old ones will be gradually withdrawn from circulation and will disappear in 12 to 18 months. 
 According to experts with Gosznak, the Russian printing and engraving association, after changes have been introduced, the ruble will be protected against forgery better than the world's two most popular currencies - the dollar and the euro.

TITLE: Worried About Yukos
TEXT: I recently approached a number of Jewish businessmen in Russia about contributing money to an American charity, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
 HIAS was founded by Russian Jews in New York in the 1880s to assist those fleeing the pogroms in the Pale of Settlement. Over the years, it helped generations of Jewish refugees, including thousands of Holocaust survivors, to resettle in a safer diaspora. Half a million Soviet Jews have come to the United States under its auspices since 1967. But now, the flow of refugees has slowed to a trickle, and HIAS is facing an uncertain future. 
 I was initially skeptical about discussing HIAS with successful Russian Jews. I had interviewed some of them for an article in 2002 and found them uninterested, even hostile, to the idea of leaving Russia. They were putting their money and effort into strengthening the Jewish community in Russia, and they supported local charities and organizations that helped Russian Jews stay put, not emigrate.
 Most of them still say they do not want to leave. But all of a sudden they feel that a Jewish refugee organization is worth preserving, and are willing to fund it. This response will no doubt hearten HIAS, but it left me extremely uneasy. What has happened over the past two years to change their minds?
 Although many of the disgraced oligarchs running foul of President Vladimir Putin - notably Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky - are either wholly or partially Jewish, even the president's harshest critics have not accused him of singling out Jews in his attack on private business. Many things in Putin's Russia are reverting to the Soviet model, but official anti-Semitism is not one of them. The bad old days when Jews were barred from prestigious universities, denied employment and promotion and vilified for wanting to go to Israel are no more. Anti-Semitism may be more in the open in post-Soviet Russia, and some prominent members of the State Duma are given to making nasty, bigoted statements, but it is definitely not the policy of the Russian government.
 Nevertheless, the state's campaign against Yukos is the main reason why Russian Jews, especially those in business, are starting to feel nervous. Since time immemorial, Jews have been blamed for economic failures. The Russian government may not currently pursue anti-Semitic policies, but Russian society remains intolerant of foreigners. For now, its prejudice is directed predominately against immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Persecution of such &quot;blacks&quot; has a semi-official flavor: the government often closes its eyes when they are harassed by the police and government officials.
 At the height of the anti-Jewish campaign in the Soviet Union, the following joke used to make the rounds in Moscow. An old Armenian is dying. His family is waiting for some parting words of wisdom, but all he keeps telling them instead is that they will have to protect the Jews. 
 &quot;Why should we bother with the Jews, grandpa?&quot; they ask him. &quot;Because once they're done with the Jews, they'll start on the Armenians.&quot;
 Now this joke has been turned on its head. The hardships of everyday life, such as rising consumer prices, are being blamed on &quot;blacks,&quot; who are seen as street vendors and petty merchants. But the Jews may once more become scapegoats if Russia suffers another economic crisis. Because the Jews, as is well known, control big business and the financial markets. 
 With its attack on Yukos, and the systematic return of large-scale private enterprise to bureaucratic control, the Putin administration is making sure that Russia's economy will eventually go down the drain. The Kremlin has been determined to squander the opportunities that high oil prices and the weak ruble have thrown its way in the early years of the millennium. Instead of promoting foreign investment, strengthening market mechanisms and modernizing the legal and physical infrastructure of the country, it is steadily re-Sovietizing the economy. 
 The era of high oil prices will not last forever. But even if Russia continues to derive strong earnings from oil, gas and other commodity exports, the money is certain to be wasted. Places like Nigeria and Venezuela have shown how a rapacious, incompetent bureaucracy can make hundreds of billions of dollars disappear without a trace. The Soviet-Russian bureaucracy, still very much in charge of the country, has a remarkable track record of turning a fabulously resource-rich country into an economic, environmental and social basket case. 
 The post-Yukos Russian economy will be a precarious construct. It will combine inefficiency, rigidity and corruption characteristics of a state-run system with half-baked financial markets and a rudimentary banking system. It will be an environment ripe for a major economic crisis and, ultimately, for another surge of anti-Semitism. It will be tempting, of course, for the government to blame an economic debacle on the rapaciousness of the Jews, rather than admit its own ineptitude. 
 It would be a good thing for HIAS if wealthy Russian Jews came to its support. But this might also presage another wave of Jewish immigration. Russian Jews are the last significant Jewish community in Eastern Europe. Moscow, with its extensive and varied Jewish cultural and religious life, its Jews prominent in the arts, sciences, commerce and the white-collar professions, is the heir to such brilliant early 20th-century cities as Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw. It would be a tragedy for Jews, Russia and, ultimately, Europe, if this community were to follow the others into oblivion. 
 
 <i>Alexei Bayer, a New York-based economist, writes the Globalist column for Vedomosti on alternate weeks. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Robbing The Robber Barons
TEXT: Good spies make their living by not attracting attention. When they get caught, two explanations are possible: Either they slipped up, or they wanted to get caught all along. 
 Apply this logic to operation &quot;Get Yukos,&quot; the hostile corporate takeover orchestrated by the FSB alumni running the Kremlin. If their goal was to confiscate the main revenue source of an influential and ambitious rival to the president, then &quot;Get Yukos&quot; is an unqualified success.
 But it's hard to believe that the Kremlin would hatch a plan that entails the president compromising his integrity as well as parading the country's dysfunctional judicial system before the entire world. 
 President Vladimir Putin has publicly contended, without the slighest trace of irony, that the personal fraud and tax-evasion charges against Yukos founders Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are unrelated to the tax charges against Yukos itself.
 &quot;The case is about Yukos and the possible links of individuals to murders in the course of the merging and expansion of the company,&quot; Putin said in his first public statement on the issue back in September. &quot;In such a case, how can I interfere with the prosecutors' work?&quot;
 How indeed? Another good question is how we got to the point where Yukos is about to be &quot;de-privatized&quot; for a back tax bill that it could easily pay if the government hadn't frozen all of its assets.
 Putin sent the markets soaring last month when he announced that bankrupting Yukos was not in the state's interests. But he also said the judicial system should punish companies that don't pay their fair share of taxes.
 If this were simply about taxes, then Yukos wouldn't be alone. Another major oil company, acquired just as cheaply and scandalously, paid taxes at the same, or even lower, effective rate during the years in question. The only apparent difference between the two is that Yukos is not known to swap favors with the Kremlin.
 Taxes are not the issue. We are witnessing the manipulation of the system to achieve a desired result. The only question now is why &quot;Get Yukos&quot; has been such a public, clumsy and farcical game of judicial pursuit.
 Either the spies in the Kremlin are struggling with serious command-and-control issues, or they intended from the start to make this a Russian &quot;shock and awe&quot; campaign. Either way you look at it, it's not good. In fact it's dangerous. A decade after privatization turned a handful of insiders into billionaires, the government seems to be modeling itself on the very robber barons it once vilified.
 Russians and foreigners alike have every reason to be afraid.

TITLE: Kremlin Should Grasp Prosperity Begins at Home
TEXT: The Russian government should seriously review its regional development policies priorities in the light of news about investment plans in the Northwest region.
 While in 2003 about $696 million in foreign money was invested in St. Petersburg, with the lion's share coming from Britain, Germany, Cyprus, the United States and Finland, this year the regional investment leader could be, surprisingly enough, China. Chinese investors are planning to spend up to $1 billion to build a satellite city in Krasnoselsky district with residences and a factory where the firm Chonghun will make electronic equipment.
 This is a very worrying sign for the national government, that it's mismanaging the country's economic development, when even China, with 10 percent of its population, or over 130 million people, living behind the poverty line, can invest abroad huge amounts of money. I am very glad for China, but very worried for Russia. 
 The Central Bank reports that during the last couple of years the outflow of Russian capital abroad has shown a strong tendency of drying up in the near future. Oil and gas are still the main sources of an income for the country.
 There has been very little of Russia buying up factories in western countries in the last decade. Russians prefer to store their profits in offshore zones and western banks, which is understandable - the risk is lower.
 The only manufactured product and probably for this very reason the most significant item imported from Russia I ever saw were razor blades in a store in Chicago.
 &quot;Made in St. Petersburg,&quot; was written on the pack.
 &quot;That's a good start,&quot; I thought, although the main label on the blades belonged to a famous French company.
 I have a feeling China kicked off its economic miracle by producing the same kind of small consumer goods and then expanded into building factories to make clothes and electronics for world-famous companies.
 I was a bit surprised last year to see that in major U.S. stores it is quite hard to find anything that is not made in China.
 Unfortunately, federal tax laws and conditions that allow neither small or medium-sized businesses to set up shop or to thrive, does not allow Russia to follow the same economic path as China.
 Some might say Russia's troubles stem from administrators who can't live without taking bribes. But this guess would be wrong because in China bribery of officials is widespread and no less frequent than in Russia. Over the past decade, corruption cost China the equivalent of roughly 15 percent of its gross domestic product annually in lost taxes, tariffs and skimming of public funds, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, with up to 90 percent of low ranking officials involved in corruption.
 Transparency International estimates corruption in Russia as accounting for about 12 percent of GDP, or up to $36 billion.
 The difference might be that in China businesses can go ahead as long as they pay bribes once or twice, while in Russia the demand is so huge that payments must be made every month a few times in a row ... to district officials, customs, police, sanitary inspectors, fire inspectors and so on.
 But City Hall and the federal government are worried about something else: &quot;Everybody was scared that a ghost of a Chinatown is to appear on Neva River,&quot; Komsomolskya Pravda reports. &quot;However, the Chinese have confirmed their intention to invest in our economy and agreed that construction works would be undertaken by local companies.&quot; 
 While Russia is concerned about NATO and EU expansion to the East, China expands economically to the West. I think the Chinese language could become as popular as English some day.
 There is nothing bad about it. The disturbing thing is that the word cosmos would still be the only one people of different nations know from Russia. And that would be thanks to the Kremlin, which worries about Chinatown and NATO more than about its own economy.

TITLE: performing good and pure
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The summer doesn't usually have many treats in store for theatre-goers - the majority of theatres are closed until mid September. Here's where the Molodyozhny Theatre makes a pleasant exception, with its doors opening from the beginning of August.
 
The season opens with Alexei Tolstoy's famous play &quot;The Swallow&quot; (&quot;Kasatka&quot;), which has become the theatre's &quot;trademark&quot; production. Its invigorating portrayal of the search for love and happiness was deemed worthy of nomination for the State Prize, and at the first International Festival on the Volga in 2000 it was awarded both the spectators' prize and the prize for best production. Acclaimed not only in St. Petersburg and Moscow, it travelled as far as the International Theatre Festival 2002 in Kiev.
 Molodyozhny Theatre often stages works of classical authors, such as Ostrovsky's &quot;Love laces&quot; (&quot;Lubovnie kruzheva&quot;), Shakespeare's &quot;Othello&quot;, and Babel's &quot;Cries from Odessa&quot; (&quot;Kriki iz Odessi&quot;). The aim, however, is to present classic art accessibly in the real, contemporary world.
 &quot;Our director looks to adapt serious material to the a mass audience, at the same time never transgressing the borders of art,&quot; explains the manager of the Molodyozhny Theater, Maria Dolmatova.
 The theater space is small, there is no stage as such. Using reduced scenery actors seek to involve the audience, make spectators part of the spectacle: a unique chamber atmosphere where feelings acted are closely felt by all present.
 Even the first visit to the theater produces an impression that you have already been here, everything strikes as familiar. Here, you feel at home, and can trust those around you. 
 Molodyozhny Theater's company consists of 40 actors who often vary their roles. &quot;Every new part is another life, and you have to live it differently. It is what every artist enjoys,&quot; say some of the actors. The company boasts many genuine masters, eminent artists, holders of prizes and titles. In addition, there are many outstanding young actors who have already won prizes such as the &quot;Petersburg Debut&quot;.
 Naturally, nobody can tell about the theater better than the actors themselves. &quot;I have grown up in this theater and made a great amount of friends here. We have a warm, kind company. We have a great leader in Simyon Spivak - and that's so important for a theater,&quot; says Alla Oding, an actress at the theater.
 Indeed, a good director is vital. It is he who sounds the key, chooses plays, approaches and ideas. And the Molodyozhny Theater is rightly proud of its director Spivak, who arrived in 1989 and introduced a new, lyrical note in the theater. He started an era of profound, yet accessible lyrical and philosophical performances. The troupe themselves consider Spivak's style to be characterized by a subtlety of spirit, the importance of the non-rational in man, and an absence of restrictions in form. In every performance he raises the eternal questions: how can one live a life and realize one's ideals, how to love and be honest, how to achieve harmony with one's own self, and should it happen exactly at the sunset of one's life, as is the case with the main hero of &quot;Cries from Odessa&quot;?
 At the theater, a phrase has come into use: &quot;Spivak always advocates for his heroes&quot;. No matter where they find themselves or how they behave, the director tries to make the audience really listen to them and, if possible, understand them. This does not mean that actors simplify or popularize their heroes - there is enough irrelevance, non-entities or just plain trash in everyday life as it is. What is involved then, is a kind of hope and a sturdy positivism.
 &quot;Spivak is capable of finding something bright and good in the most hopeless and sombre situation,&quot; summarises the manager, Dolmatova. That is Spivak's special merit. Even in tragedies, he seeks to leave the spectator with an urge to find hope and believe in the goodness of man. It almost leaves one light-headed, wanting to daydream and downplay life's imperfection.
 The full house at almost all performances speak for itself: people appreciate the work Molodyozhny Theater is putting out, because deep at heart, perhaps people just long for the good and the pure.


TITLE: electrifying the '80s with zoot
TEXT: Zoot Woman, a U.K. electronic trio, writes what are initially good pop songs, their mood shifting from melancholic to euphoric, and then disfigures them with every possible break and beat to leave the tracks even more memorable. 
 
Coming to St. Petersburg on the strength of their second album, &quot;Zoot Woman,&quot; the band's lyricist, guitarist and singer Johnny Blake claims the band, which has been frequently described as being part of the 1980s revival, is becoming more able to express themselves.
 &quot;With the '80s, erm... Yeah, it all is very true, but I think it's not much true of us anymore,&quot; said Blake speaking on the phone from outside the band's rehearsal room in Reading, near London.
 &quot;With 'Living in the Magazine,' our debut album in 2001, that was very much rooted in the '80s revival - not just that our songs were a little bit more '80s, our <i>look</i> was a little bit more '80s. But I think with the second album we want to try and be ourselves a bit more. It's a much more natural progression, it's not so 'Here we are, this is the '80s revival...' And even with the third album that we're working on now, we're moving away from the '80s. But, I think when someone gives you that label, 'the '80s,' it's kind of hard to get away from, because we're an electronic act, there's always an element of '80s, because that's kind of where the roots are.&quot;
 Zoot Woman formed in Reading in 1995, where two Blake brothers, Johnny and Adam, who play keyboards, and bassist Stuart Price grew up and went to the same school.
 After the band released its first, self-financed single, Price left to join the 1980s-inspired dance band Les Rythmes Digitales, where he became renowned under the moniker Jacques Lu Cont, but returned to record Zoot Woman's critically acclaimed debut album, &quot;Living in a Magazine&quot; which came out in summer 2001.
 Both the music and their image - white suits and makeup - designed by stylist and fashion designer Fee Doran, ignited a massive media interest, but on the threshold of the band's big breakthrough the Blake brothers were left alone again when Price left, this time invited by Madonna, to become musical director on her 2001 Drowned World Tour. While the Blakes went on to play live without Price, he returned just in time to work on the band's second, eponymous album, which came out last September.
 Zoot Woman has emerged from a mix of very different influences. According to Blake, he has always liked 1960s music, from The Beatles to Rod Stewart, and at the same time The Cure and Depeche Mode, citing the latter as his all-time favorites. Meanwhile, Adam was more into the 1970s prog-rock thing as well as The Who; and Price's tastes lie with The Stranglers and The Pixies. 
 Even if Zoot Woman's songs - unlike those of many other electronic/dance acts - still make sense when played on acoustic guitar, it's the production work by Adam Blake and Stuart Price that render them unique, according to Johnny Blake.
 &quot;We always try to write traditional pop songs and attempt to modernize. We always add our own sound which leans towards an electronic sound, but the structure of the songs is traditional, and I particularly like keeping to that,&quot; he said.
 &quot;But from the production point of view I think we always felt that going to an electronic field lifted the songs, it made them more interesting and more unique for us as a band.&quot;
 
 <i>
Zoot Woman will perform as part of the Olmega Fire Party on the beach of the Peter and Paul's Fortress at 11 p.m. on Friday. Links: www.zootwoman.com
 </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The summer's almost gone. Or, at least the best part of it, which seems to have ended last weekend with a magical couple of concerts by Stereolab and David Byrne, both playing for the first time in the city. Unless there is last-minute news of a concert by, say, Morrissey, it could be said that there will not be anything of that standard until, maybe, September 17 when <strong>Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds</strong> play a scheduled gig at the not-as-prestigious-as-it-claims-to-be Oktyabrsky Concert Hall.
 There should be a good U.K. band called Zoot Woman this week, however, which will play an open-air concert at the beach by the Peter and Paul's Palace on Saturday (see interview, this page).
 And yet, it is probably time to take a look back. The <strong>Stereolab</strong> concert at the Theater of Young Spectators turned out to be a real wonder. The new-look band, which turned out to feature seven members, three of whom played keyboards, pumped out a loud, intense set - a far cry from the band's much softer, atmospheric studio work. Singer Laetitia Sadier turned out to be a trombonist - an instrument she bought in the city just before the concert - as well as an able player of assorted percussion. It is a shame that the show was not a sellout.
 For Stereolab, kudos must go to the British Council who backed the band's one-off local concert, despite it, seemingly, not fitting well with the institution's cultural-political views in the past. As far as so-called popular music goes, the British Council formerly seemed to concentrate on DJs as representatives of &quot;youth culture&quot; and &quot;multi-national acts,&quot; most memorable being The Courtney Pine Band in 2000.
 To help in bringing an innovative, experimental U.K. band that sings <i>in French</i> (!) was a courageous and clever decision. It gives hope that the organization might even assist in flying over Morrissey - a man who will hardly draw hordes of screaming fans in Russia, but who <i>is </i>Great Britain for many a Russian with an interest in all things British.
 Against Stereolab even <strong>David Byrne,</strong> who performed the next night, sounded almost traditional. Byrne's concert attracted many more people, some coming because they go to every party of the trendy electronica Stereoleto festival. However, the overall impression was somewhat diffused by impossibly poor organization.
 There were time discrepancies not only between the posters, with some versions stating 10 p.m. and another 8 p.m. for the starting time. Even the tickets were printed erratically (some informing 9, some 10 p.m.). In the end, the concert only started shortly before midnight. Uninformed fans, some of whom duly arrived by 8 p.m., were not let in and had to humbly hang outside on the Neva embankment, with no food outlets or any other conveniences. Rumor had it that the delay was caused by border customs who would not let Byrne's equipment from Finland into Russia for several hours. 
 When the doors finally opened, the public found out that it had to spend even more time in a line before passing through three lines of security. While those at the end were yet to enter the venue, the concert began.
 Such treatment proved to be too much for some in the audience, including Stereolab, who chose to make a night tour of St. Petersburg instead.
 
 <i>
- By Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: soviet dressing suits a greek diana
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It's not often that you find yourself to be the only guest in a restaurant on a rainy Monday night. Such seeming unpopularity may warn you against the place; or, it could just signify a bad day for a restaurant. In the case of &quot;Diana&quot; - promoted as a &quot;Greek restaurant&quot; and a &quot;comfortable home on the Mediterranean coast&quot; - we decided to venture a visit without either a previous recommendation or any visible punters. As it turned out, the main reason for the emptiness of the place was the road works on Sadovaya Ulitsa. 
 
The part of Sadovaya which goes beyond Sennaya Ploschad further down to Ploschad Turgeneva seemed to have been turned into trenches at least half a dozen times recently, and the road-works are being done yet again. It comes, therefore, as no surprise that this district is not too popular for its dining facilities, and thus not well-known to hungry visitors in that part of downtown. There are exceptions, though.
 The first impression of &quot;Diana&quot; was of a Soviet-like restaurant, extremely popular with our grandmothers and grandfathers for wedding celebrations, anniversaries, and other &quot;memorable dates&quot;. An old doorman invited us into a red and white colored entrance hall with fake marble vases placed in-between large wall mirrors. After our overcoats were taken, we passed through a bar and entered a main hall, rather small (five dining tables, each one set for four), decorated in dark-red colors, with niches on the walls, a fake golden statue of Diana in the middle, and a ceiling done up as a star-filled sky, the stars appearing lit from time to time. To an amateur astronaut - all the constellations were accurate, and the bright Milky Way shone vigorously. Nonetheless, heavy curtains with valances (ones you used to find on most Soviet bastions of officialdom - from city administration to school buildings) prevented any street light from sneaking inside, which made the place seem a bit too dark, especially for my far-sighted companion. A tired-looking and taciturn waitress, however, lit up an ancient-looking candelabrum, and some upper lights, which at least allowed us to see the menu.
 The whole design of the place and the presence of a synthesizer made us think that it was so-called &quot;Russian chanson&quot; type of music we were mostly likely (but not lucky) to hear. Fortunately, we were wrong. For about one and a half hours the music played in the restaurant consisted of Leonard Cohen albums, while later on it was changed to some kind of indefinite easy-listening.
 When asked about the restaurant's history, the waitress got more lively and told us that it was founded in 1984, but several years ago closed for a reconstruction. And only recently, opened the &quot;Diana&quot;. According to the waitress, the name Diana comes from both the Roman goddess of wild animals, hunting, and child-birth, and from the name of the owner's daughter.
 The menu, which surprised us by a wide selection of both starters and main courses reflected more the wild animals and hunting side of things - it contained a whole lot of different meat and fish dishes, divided into meat categories (beef, veal, pork, lamb, chicken, duck, with a good 7-8 dishes in every section). The starters varied from 120 to 300 roubles. One that attracted our attention was the Norwegian salmon with apples salad, although several others also sounded intriguing.
 Being not very hungry, we began straight from the main courses - a lucky guess, since the portions were more than generous. I chose &quot;Chateau Brien&quot;, which came as 300 grams of rump steak with foie gras in Bordeaux sauce, with pine nuts, garnished by cauliflower, and fried in almonds and broccoli stems wrapped in bacon. The meat was really well-cooked (slightly roasted outside and tender in the middle), while the cauliflower tasted dry and crispy. My companion decided on &quot;The favorite dish of the cook's wife&quot;, which turned out to be slices of beef fillet with mushrooms with a fresh salad, farmhouse style. Although the fillet was well-cooked and the sauce was smooth and refreshingly sweet, the potatoes were a bit over-done with too many onion rings.
 &quot;Diana&quot; also offers a wide selection of wine from all over the world. When we asked what wine would be best to go with our dish, our waitress hesitated for a moment, then answered that &quot;all our wines go with all our dishes&quot;. In a couple of minutes, however, a manager approached us with a bottle of wine and suggested we try that one, based on our selection of meals.
 Right in the middle of our meal, along with the man who started to pack the synthesizer, there appeared a gray cat which started walking around, stretching out its paws and enjoying itself in every possible way. Finally, it got under our table, and although the waitress offered to take it out (the cat belongs to the owner of the restaurant), we assured her that we generally like cats and do not mind it at all. The cat was hardly seen and not at all heard, hidden under the table until it was time for us to leave; then the waitress didmanaged to take it out.
 Having enjoyed the main course, only my companion was eager for a dessert. Among the selection were different ice-creams, blinis, berry and fruit cakes. We stopped at a three-layer-dessert, built from fruits and berries, whipped cream, nuts and ice-cream.
 When we were ready to leave, the manager of the place, Natalia, started talking to us about the place and showed pictures of famous people who had been guests of the restaurant. In the pictures we recognized Chris Norman, Suzie Quatro, the band Eruption, as well as a bunch of Russian pop-singers and comedians, both from the 80s and the present, followed by the creator of the infamous machine-gun, Mikhail Kalashnikov. Natalia told us that &quot;Diana&quot; is not widely advertised and is more known among the art-scene of St. Petersburg, while the management of the place is planning to turn it into a &quot;club-restaurant-theater&quot; kind of place.
 She also said that the rain and road works are at fault for the emptiness of the restaurant that evening. Judging by the cuisine, we had reasons to believe her.
 
 <i>
Diana, 56 Ylitsa Sadovaya, Tel: 310 9355. Open daily until midnight. Menu only in Russian. All major cards accepted except for the American Express. Dinner for two with alcohol 1,431 rubles ($49) </i>

TITLE: letters show language of art needs no translation
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: On the face of it, Australian art curator Victoria Hammond seems not particularly suited to writing a book about late 1990s Russia, mainly set in St. Petersburg. She doesn't speak the language, and misses out certain themes altogether.
 
Describing herself as an Australian schooled in traditions of liberal democracy, feminism, and postmodernism, how could she possibly understand a society that often keeps its true face hidden and where many of the population are unreconstructed <i>Homo Sovieticus?
 </i>The book records times of na&iuml;vety.
 &quot;I tell them that in Australia women are equal with men and sometimes don't need husbands. Occasionally the man stays at home and looks after the child while the woman works,&quot; she tells a group of friends.
 The men in the group look appalled, she records.
 Nevertheless, her views do appeal as refreshing and her perspective, as a woman from Down Under, different to that of many other books about Russia.
 &quot;The Japanese gentleman on my right sitting down to a gelatinous lunch of king prawns and trout with nuts has done so since before European settlement of Australia [1788],&quot; she writes, reminding the reader that 300 years is young for a European city, but not for locations in the New World.
 Hammond's lack of language makes her a kind of representative of the floods of foreigners who briefly visit Russia. Her shortcomings in this area put her in situations that we all dread; once having lost her notebook and not sure where she is her pitiable plea for help is the only words she knows: &quot;<i>Gde musei?&quot;</i> (Where is the museum?).
 She is oblivious to politics. She records - clearly incorrectly - that Mikhail Kasyanov was the prime minister, although she says that during her stay she heard the shots that killed city property head Mikhail Manevich. His assassination in August 1997 and her time in Russia were before the re-denomination, when the ruble lost three zeros off its face value.
 However, Hammond's lack of Russian is well compensated for by her knowledge of the arts, her insight and her empathy for the plight of ordinary people.
 There is a marvelous musing from her friend's husband about the fate of the cultural life of St. Petersburg: &quot;I often ask myself if St. Petersburg still exists. I say to myself, what is a city? Is a city a place and its buildings, or is a city its people? If the life of a city is its people, and its buildings and bridges the empty stage where people enact their lives, then St. Petersburg no longer exists.&quot;
 Hammond herself can muse quite ably about the formation of the city with its classical center and dispiriting outer suburbs.
 &quot;Peter [the Great's] broad prospects with their vistas stretching into infinity symbolize hope and possibility,&quot; she writes. &quot;Stalin created the very opposite of a liberating environment - spaces of psychological entrapment. The buildings around me are designed to dull the mind with standardization and endless repetition, to block the view. It's a way of life with no prospects.&quot;
 Hammond is certainly interested in relationships, links both contemporary and historic.
 &quot;There was something of the warrior queen about Catherine [Peter the Great's wife],&quot; Hammond writes. &quot;She always accompanied Peter into battle. So it's not entirely incongruous that Peter, who was so in love with knowledge should have loved a woman who was illiterate.&quot;
 What the book suffers from are Russian spellings, which were not properly proofread. Kunstkamera is strangely referred to as the Wunderkammer.
 Or, there are the tangential glitches in the narrative, such as the perfectly offbeat excursion into the metro after Hammond becomes sexually aroused, observed by a military man as she tries on some boots.
 However, such discrepancies can be overlooked, since the retelling of the history of the Kunstkamera exhibits, the descriptions of sites linked to Nabokov and Dostoevsky, and Hammond's examination of the merits of the restored palaces all help to make this book a worthwhile read.
 <i>

 Letters from St. Petersburg, by Victoria Hammond, published by Allen &amp; Unwin. </i>

TITLE: yards of beauty
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Part of the old quarter of St. Petersburg, the house at 84 Naberezhnaya Reiki Moiki, is preparing for a delectable and rare celebration - its own birthday party on July 31 in the shape of an installation exhibit.
 
One of the residents, artist and writer Nadezhda Anichkova, has created a project &quot;The Birthday of the Old Yard&quot; (&quot;Den Rozhdeniya Starogo Dvora&quot;) to revitalize the history and atmosphere of the building's <i>dvor</i>, its yard, and establish a corner of the city where locals, artists, and guests can discover the warmth of St. Petersburg's culture - its soul.
 &quot;The old yards of St. Petersburg,&quot; Anichkova says, &quot;the ones that you walk through, the ones with wells, with their remnants of former glory, aging trees, dusty bushes, with litter - do, in fact, comprise the socio-historical center of the city. In their depths the hidden soul of the city lives on.&quot;
 To see beyond a daily scene of scattered trash, beggars, or drunks, Anichkova needs only to understand the history of where she stands, to collect images that connect the past with the present.
 &quot;I've been living on the Moika exactly a year,&quot; Anichkova says. &quot;And through noticing the details, this amazing realization of where I actually am and live has transferred into a love, a passion for the surroundings.&quot;
 &quot;At times, walking around with my easel by the embankment, near the Pochtamtsky Most, or even inside my yard, I get this feeling as if I am on a stage.&quot;
 &quot;The border with reality as I imagine it, influenced by the golden shine of St. Isaac's domes, begins to encompass not only St. Petersburg's history, but starts to include the musicians that I see around me, neighbors, people with tales of the city.&quot;
 After some research, Anichkova learned that in 1826 her house used to part of the estate of General Lansky, second husband to Pushkin's widow Natalya Goncharova. During the period of 1832 and 1834 it is also where writer and poet Mikhail Lermontov resided.
 &quot;It is quite possible that Alexander Pushkin and the then military cadet Lermontov met, and more than once, along the Moika embankment,&quot; suggests Anichkova.
 It is to relate these historical and literary anecdotes, and concentrate on the beauty of the cityscape that the project was arranged, displaying history and art in the living space of the yards that inspired them.
 &quot;On my birthday, July 31 last year, together with friends I arranged a celebratory installation in our yard on the theme of Romance in the Old Yards of St. Petersburg. You see, these buildings are all architectural monuments, yet they are in dire need of restoration work and safeguarding from vandalism or misuse.&quot;
 &quot;Last year the musician Viktor Ivanov performed an improvisation piece. We sang songs about the old tales of the city. There was a violinist, somebody on the guitar... A magical evening of colors, with candlelight and wine. None of the neighbors complained, instead they opened their windows to gaze and applaud.&quot;
 This year promises to be an even grander event. For her birthday Anichkova has collected paintings, photographs, sculptures, her own and works of others. Whose?
 &quot;I cannot reveal everything - that would spoil the atmosphere we wish to create. But, let's just say the guests should arrive well-dressed, cheerful, and ready for anything.
 &quot;We are going to show people not only what a house-monument with an old yard is, but how to live in one.&quot;
 
 <i>
The installation will be held throughout the day in the yard of 84 Naberezhnaya Reiki Moiki, with the musical events culminating in Nadezhda Anichkova's own apartment, No. 19. </i>

TITLE: gallop on the trail of the golden horde
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Watching pretty woman Julia Roberts in a U.S. network documentary on Mongolia pour nauseating compliments about &quot;the world's most <i>bloody </i>warriors&quot; who she benevolently finds to be &quot;friendly, gentle and kind,&quot; I grew oddly excited about a visit to Mongolia.
 
What would I find there? I did not have Roberts' exclusively smiling mien, nor the ready lean of the head on the perplexed, yet brave shoulders of Mongolian herdsmen.
 But a chance to ride horses on the steppes where once galloped the Golden Horde ... 
 
 <strong>
THE CITY
 </strong>The capital of Mongolia, Ulaan Baatar, lies an imposing 9,000 kilometers or so from St Petersburg. Upon arrival it may surprise by its rather small town posterior, low-level housing, few modern constructions outside the center, and a distinct, yes, a very obvious trace of the U.S.S.R. 
 
Much of the housing in the center and in its immediate outskirts is the trademark 5-story blocks of the Brezhnev period, painted in gaudy yellow or cloudy gray too long ago. In fact, if you have an interest in seeing &quot;Soviet conditions&quot; of life before the reforms of the Yeltsin era, alive and unadulterated, paradoxically, there are few more apt places than Ulaan Baatar.
 After just a bus ride from the airport or a short taxi jaunt from the train station, you arrive in the central part of the town for no more than a few dollars. The very center comprises of a Sakhbaatar (Red Hero) Square crossed through by the main thoroughfare, Peace Avenue. The avenue's many arteries abound with various versions of Volga, GAZ, and UAZ cars among others. Even the recently emerging trend for Western cars seems to take precedent from Russia - most of Mongolia's nouveau riche opt for bulky off-roaders that also parade their pregnant, wasted power on the promenades of St. Petersburg. 
 The majority of hotels in the capital (and there are few outside of it) are blank, ugly monstrosities that offer little for a high price. Expect to pay at least $40 for a basic room: that means a roof over your head and a bed. Another option in the city would be to follow the backpackers, and for an affordable $4 a night enjoy comfortable dormitory beds, kitchen, shower, bathroom facilities, and cable TV at a guest house. 
 A minute's walk from Sakhbaatar Square down a road cum footpath behind the main Post Office will bring you to a shady-looking, earth-forgotten apartment block wherein you'll find the surprisingly cosy Nassan's Guesthouse. Another five minutes along and on Baga Toiruu Street, street entrance, the UB Guesthouse sign will offer another attractive option. More guesthouses, can be found further north.
 Unpacked, first things first - let's look to the stomach. Mongolian cuisine developed from a nomadic lifestyle. Dishes are centered around meat and milk; noodles being the only main exception. Much like its Asian neighbors, Mongolia specializes in dumplings (<i>buuz</i>): fried, boiled, and steamed. Another option, similar to the Russian <i>cheburaki</i> is <i>khuurshuur</i>, beef-filled pitta bread, or a great stomach-filler - the national dish of <i>guriltai shul </i>which amounts to a mixture of slightly-fried, then boiled carrots, potatoes, onions, and finely sliced lamb with thick, white and purringly greasy noodles. A cheap, yet filling meal at a dumpling caf&eacute; (look for the sign &quot;Buuz&quot;) can be had for less than a dollar. If your tastes are more delicate, however, then a number of restaurants on Peace Avenue provide a mixture of European, Mongolian, and Russian cuisine. For one of the best steaks in Asia, and fresh, German-style beer brewed on the grounds, applause must go to The Chinghis Club, at 10 Sukhbaatar Street.
 If museums and art galleries are your thing, then, frankly, your best bet is to stay in St Petersburg. Of course they do exist in Ulaan Baatar, as part of the slightly neglected minority, but an energetic day (maximum two) can almost certainly cover the Winter Palace of Bogd Khaan, Museum of Natural History (with a special exhibit of dinosaur skeletons), and the Museum of National History. Perhaps the best thing about the latter's average collection with a starved smattering of captions translated into English is a plaque at the end, which without a hint of irony announces: &quot;Chinghis (Ghenghis) Khan - father of Mongolian democracy&quot;. 
 For the souvenir-hunter, small arcades and markets offer eclectic collections of goods brought over from China by bustling entrepreneurs. Most shops will allow some bartering, but in Mongolia it's nothing like the pastime that it is in the country of the goods' origin. A 10-minute walk from Sakhbaatar Square along Peace Avenue will reward with a classic, GUM-style, State Department Store which offers a plethora of mostly Western and Russian goods. It may not frazzle you with excitement to learn that the store has what surely must be the largest back catalogue of Russian magazines outside of the country. However, it is a useful stopping off point for leather goods and (almost) genuine travel necessities you forgot to pack.
 
 <strong>
THE COUNTRY
 </strong>Mongolia occupies 1.5 million square kilometers (three times the size of France), yet its population is barely 2.5 million (in fact, the number of Mongolians living in the U.S. alone surpasses that); the majority live in the countryside. To find the people where they're at, I went up country. 
 
I am in a Russian jeep UAZ69 with my three-toothed driver Hassa, and a guide - a young, talkative Mongolian who shortens his already curt appellation to Aha, blissfully unaware of the musical connotations. Already three hours out of the capital Ulaan Baatar, heading towards Arburd Sands, the edge of the Gobi desert, we turn off the main road (dare I say motorway?) and follow no tracks in particular on the Mongolian plains - green and yellow conglomerations which spread and spread until all you see around you are the hill ridges and the sky.
 At rare intervals, Hassa stops and points to where, with difficulties, I make out the shape of a bird: eagle or vulture. This time, he spots a herd of gazelles and, seeing me reach for the camera, he yanks the gear stick into what I presume is top gear and the race for gazelle bottoms is on.
 Despite the eventual paucity of my snapshots, the race - with its imitation of being in an amusement ride on hydraulics - proves thrilling. Gazelles win, though through no fault of the UAZ jeep, I hasten to add. 
 The vehicle suits Mongolian character, it corresponds with the people's sturdiness, puzzling mobility through the worst terrains and survival in unyielding conditions. No Mongolian seems to read the manual, but they can fix any ailing of this motor, sometimes even making spare parts from wood.
 &quot;How does Hassa know where we are going?&quot; comes my challenge to the guide, after our two hours of eyeing similar landscape. 
 &quot;All Mongolians know how to get to their destination,&quot; arrives Aha's cryptic answer. &quot;He knows,&quot; and that is that. 
 As much as they know, it still takes us several stops along the route to ask families on trucks who are transferring from the foot of the mountains to their spring homes on the steppe. Indeed, how <i>do </i>you find a nomad? Despite no regular address, the immense sense of community among the nomadic countryside families indicates that everyone does know where the others are. 
 How? I fear Aha's mysticism may strike again, so I don't ask. 
 None of the families have telephones, and no computer Internet access. The quickest route to the nearest village is a horse, or, recently, the red-backed IZH Planeta, a Russian motorbike. That quickest route can be a couple of hours.
 We arrive at a couple of <i>gers</i>, traditional Mongolian tent-houses, constructed from wooden brackets, felt lining, and a wooden door with its own decorated frame. These tents can be put up in an hour, and are used not only by the nomadic animal farmers, but in Mongolia's towns too (almost half of Ulaan Baatar's population still lives in a ger). A motorbike and a mound of dried horse dung separate the two gers from a pen for kids and young sheep. I wonder where I'll be pitching my tent, and hope that my morning view will not be of the dung.
 On entering the family's ger there is a short greeting, and a few words from the host, mainly to the driver who knows the family well. My guide translates a little about the host's status, his achievements and medals. A former Herdsman of the Year, the old man is dressed in a wadded coat, <i>deel</i>, a traditional Mongolian dress with a cloth orange belt, as are the rest of the family. We sit and drink some <i>suutei tsai</i>, a kind of salty tea, made from a combination of hot water, mare or yak milk, butter, rice, and lots of salt, grouped around a black, iron stove the pipe of which is akin to a maypole, reaching the top of the tent. The interior floor and walls are laden with carpets: chests of drawers, two beds, and a large chest for clothing and valuables are pushed against the wall. Only a Casio clock and radio announce something of the western world. 
 Everyone stares at me, pretty much all the way through my meals, and a little at other times, although I am told the family regularly receives travelers. Each time guests arrive, there is the polite offering of predictable gifts to the main members of the family (vodka for men, chocolates for women, sweets for children), but beyond that, communication can be limited. Men of the steppe maintain the image of stern-faced philosophers, and inspire me to do the same.
 In the space of three days, camel riding, horse riding, herding animals, and (literally) shoveling shit form an interactive part of my &quot;homestay.&quot; The winds on the steppes never let up hollering into my unprotected ears. 
 As I ride a real Mongolian horse, there is a feeling of a kind of majesty, of power. There are also the friendly bumps of the animal that accentuate the sharpness of the metal studs just in the place on the saddle where it will leave you without a shadow of a doubt that you will never have children. With a wince at yet another bump, I nonetheless think to myself that this kind of existence, as tough as it seems, is much more natural, in the real sense, than any life we lead, and even a glimpse, a touch, a feel of it is memorable to the bone. 

<strong>GETTING THERE AND AWAY:
 </strong>All travel, by plane or by rail, necessitates starting from Moscow.
 Train is the cheapest option. A 2nd class ticket on the Moscow-UB express which leaves on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for its 101-hour journey costs 3,829 rubles. First class, is nearly double at 6,168 rubles per adult. Return trains embark north on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. For group bookings of 6 or more there is a 25 percent discount on the ticket (but not the <i>platskart</i>) price.
 Planes alleviate the time in transit, but also the foretaste of the steppes at a merciless $645 round trip, not including tax (Aeroflot).
 
 <strong>LANGUAGES:
 </strong>Khalkha Mongolian, which uses mostly the Cyrillic script plus a couple of characters. There exists also the traditional Mongolian script, but, as opposed to the Chinese Inner Mongolia it is seen infrequently, and is infrequently understood by the locals themselves.
 
 <strong>BEST TIME TO GO: 
 </strong>From the end of May to mid September if you are planning a lot of outdoor activities, camping, treks. Outside this peak season there are few tours, but the lack of crowds lend its own charm.
 
 <strong>HOMESTAY IN THE STEPPE:</strong>
 Prices vary, but any trip out of Ulaan Baatar will be more than $50 a day with a car and guide, and much more if you are staying at tourist ger camps. Group discounts are available, and although you can book over the Internet, it is best to do so in Ulaan Baatar itself.

TITLE: movies, spies, and hitler's doll
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It won't take long for the reader of Antony Beevor's latest contribution to European historical studies to feel like a victim of the old bait-and-switch. As if the book's title were not sufficiently enticing, the dust jacket asks coyly, &quot;Was Hitler's favorite actress a Russian spy?&quot; and features a photograph of the Russian stage actress and star of the German silver screen seated next to the Fuhrer himself. Whether such promises of an interwar potboiler are the result of an overzealous marketing department or not, there is, in fact, no mystery. Olga Chekhova <i>was </i>a Soviet spy while a star of the Nazi cinema, more garden-variety informant than cloak-and-dagger, poison-in-the-fountain-pen foreign operative, but a spy nonetheless. This is a foregone conclusion from the book's very beginning.
 
In all fairness, &quot;The Mystery of Olga Chekhova&quot; does not really endeavor to tell a spy story. Instead, Beevor offers his readers a portrait of a remarkably talented and idiosyncratic Russo-German family during a period of extraordinary historical upheaval. Far as the book's subject may be from what its packaging promises, it is an important and compelling story, presented here with a masterful balance of narrative momentum and scholarly insight.
 Olga Chekhova, rightly the centerpiece of Beevor's account, was Anton Chekhov's niece twice over: Her father's sister was Olga Knipper-Chekhova, wife of the great Russian playwright and star of the Moscow Art Theater, and her first husband was Mikhail Chekhov, another exceptional actor, whose father was Anton Chekhov's brother. This tangled genealogy provides only hints of the book's dizzying procession of names and liaisons. In fact, at times this family chronicle strongly echoes Anton Chekhov's own domestic dramas: The characters are constantly coming and going, and the only thing that saves the audience from being dragged headlong into their stew of personal resentments and collective tragedies is their unusually colorful catalogue of poor conduct.
 Beevor himself is well aware that his story is fueled by his heroes' prodigious sexual appetites and fondness for drink, and his prose delights in all the titillating details, especially in the steady march of Olga Chekhova's much younger lovers. Yet to his great credit, the author does not allow his project to descend into the kind of gossip that might diminish the cultural stature of his protagonists or trivialize the very real horrors they endured. Beevor's prose is direct, discriminating, and sober, and while this is often more than can be said of the book's heroes, it helps demonstrate - as effective cultural histories often do - how closely great human achievements are tied to animal behaviors, particularly sex and violence.
 How did it happen that Olga Chekhova, who claimed falsely that she had studied under Konstantin Stanislavsky, and whose artistic gifts were frequently exceeded by those of her illustrious family, not only managed to live through the bloodiest and most merciless period in modern history, but also starred in scores of films in the process? After all, history is not without its clever double-agents, those who manipulate Hitlers against Stalins, but it is a much smaller club that can boast of having manipulated <i>the</i> Hitler against <i>the</i> Stalin, all the time leading a very public, even extravagant life. &quot;The simple answer,&quot; Beevor writes, &quot;is that Olga Chekhova... had been a determined survivor, prepared to make whatever compromises were necessary. She had a number of failings, particularly her relationship with the truth, yet she remained a brave and resourceful woman whose main priority was to protect her family and close friends.&quot;
 This is a reasonable conclusion, and perhaps too reasonable for the story Beevor tells. After all, a great many people who had made &quot;whatever compromises were necessary&quot; through the Civil War, the Stalinist Terror, and the ravages of World War II did not survive, and many of Olga Chekhova's actions as depicted here seem to have been motivated more by caprice than calculation. Chekhova was fortunate enough to have been non-threatening to the Nazi leadership, which admired her, and which appears to have been completely unaware - as she herself may have been - of a Soviet plot to use her &quot;to eliminate Hitler and his close associates if they turned up in Moscow after its capture,&quot; according to Pavel Sudoplatov, the Soviet general in charge of intelligence operations in Germany during the 1930s. Meanwhile, Beevor points out that &quot;Soviet intelligence had almost certainly over-estimated the effectiveness of Olga Chekhova's contacts.&quot; As is so often the case during periods of historical catastrophe, Chekhova seems to owe her survival to a fortuitous combination of opportunism and dumb luck.
 This is perhaps less true of Lev Knipper, Chekhova's brother and a celebrated Soviet composer. Knipper had been a White Guard officer before reinventing himself as a communist true-believer. It was Knipper who recruited Chekhova into Soviet intelligence and served as her contact while she was enjoying her celebrity in Babelsburg. Unlike his sister, Knipper was a dedicated spy, an adventurer and avid mountaineer whose exploits, both tactical and romantic, add a great deal of interesting detail to Beevor's storytelling. Whereas Chekhova spends most of the book basking in the limelight, Knipper is crossing borders, training soldiers, having secret meetings, and abandoning one beautiful woman for the next. He is not an entirely sympathetic personality, but his is the closest this book comes to what could be called a genuine spy story.
 Although written for a popular audience, Beevor tells this story with a historian's attention to detail and a healthy dose of skepticism regarding his sources, particularly Olga Chekhova herself, whose own memoirs are so rife with fabrication that Beevor cannot help but vent his frustration by finding increasingly clever ways of poking fun at her. The author is careful to explain disparate possibilities when the facts cannot be established with absolute certainty. Most of all, Beevor successfully conveys his good-natured affection for his subjects, their foibles included, which adds a little light to otherwise very dark times.
 <i>

 The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, by Antony Beevor, is published by Viking. </i>

TITLE: a dubliner's merit is in immortality
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Samuel Beckett once said, &quot;His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.&quot; From D.H. Laurence we hear: &quot;Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindedness - what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new!&quot;
 Who could incite such quotes? For the answer head to the Vladimir Nabokov Apartment Museum, which during the next few days, is hosting a travelling display on one of the best known names among Irish novelists - James Joyce. 
 The exhibit, a series of panels that chronicle the author's life, occupies two rooms, and is in English. Museum director Tatiana Ponomareva says, &quot;Most of the visitors to the museum are people with a wide interest in literature and know some English, so they are able to read the notes.&quot; There are brief explanations about the exhibit in Russian also, near the entrance.
 Thanks to the Irish Embassy and the Irish Cultural Committee, Nabokov Museum has been able to form this exhibit with some information and pictures to whet the viewer's appetite, describing the author's hardships and influences, tidbits that decorate the timeline of his life.
 Moreover, the museums' display is part of a larger collection of exhibits dealing with world literature of the twentieth century, since this year is an especially important one for Joyce. It saw the hundred year anniversary of what has come to be known as &quot;Bloomsday,&quot; or in more common terms, June 16th - the day described in Joyce's epic work <i>Ulysses</i>. Die-hard fans of the author commemorate the day every year, following the footsteps of its hero, Leopold Bloom. This year's celebrations will extend over five months in honor of the centenary.
 Known by many a high school and college student for the weight of his lengthier novels, Joyce also authored <i>Dubliners, Finnegan's Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</i>, as well as many short stories. He is known for his attention to detail and respect for the classics, and of <i>Ulysses</i> said that he desired &quot;to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.&quot; He will always remain one of the most radical innovators of twentieth century writing.
 &quot;Unfortunately, there aren't any ties between Joyce and St. Petersburg,&quot; Ponomareva said, trying to explain why the exhibit should come to the city, &quot;But there are ties between Joyce and Nabokov. They met twice. However, it wasn't a friendship. They were literary colleagues.&quot; Both were also expatriates, and lived in Paris at the same time. It is in this sort of collegial spirit that the display fits into the museum.
 Ponomareva also described how Nabokov, so critical a reader, held Joyce in great respect, and always included his work in the courses he taught in America. &quot;He considered Joyce's work of the highest order,&quot; she said.
 &quot;I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality,&quot; said Joyce of his work. With very little argument, this exhibit is a testament to that immortality.
 Visitors will want to get to the museum quickly, however, as the display will be leaving on Monday. It can be found at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa, not far from St. Isaac's Square.

TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: A Short History of the Russian Political Joke
 Russian jokes come in all varieties, from the ÷àñòóøêà (chastushka, a four-line, rhyming verse), to the áàéêà (a tall tale), to elaborate comic stories that lead inexorably to the punch line. Perhaps because ðóññêèå àíåêäîòû (Russian jokes) come out of the storytelling tradition, rather than the vaudeville-Hollywood-sitcom tradition, there isn’t an exact Russian word for punch line.
 You can call it the ðàçâÿçêà (“the denouement”). Punch line or no, of all these traditions, I revere Russians for their genius for topical political jokes. Take this one that appeared during the recent “banking crisis”: Èç çàÿâëåíèé Öåíòðî áàíêà: Íåò íèêàêèõ ïðè÷èí äëÿ ïàíèêè.  Ðîññèè íåò íèêàêîãî áàíêîâñêîãî êðèçèñà. Âûïîëíÿåòñÿ îáû÷íàÿ øòàòíàÿ ïðîöåäóðà èçúÿòèÿ äåíåã ó íàñåëåíèÿ. (From an announcement by the Central Bank: There is no reason for panic. There is no banking crisis in Russia whatsoever. We are simply carrying out the usual standard procedure for expropriating money from the population.) This is what Russians call ñìåõ ñêâîçü ñëåçû (laughter through tears). I call it brilliant.
 The Stalin jokes often deal with his cruelty. Lenin jokes often make fun of his accent or debunk the myth of Lenin as a kindly man. Khrushchev jokes often involve corn and other harebrained schemes. Brezhnev jokes mostly make fun of him in his later years, when he was not quite all there: Èäåò Áðåæíåâ â ïàñõó ïî Êðåìëþ, åãî ïðèâåòñòâóþò: “Õðèñòîñ Âîñêðåñ!”, îí êèâíóë è èäåò äàëüøå. Ñíîâà: “Õðèñòîñ Âîñêðåñ!”, à Áðåæíåâ îòâå÷àåò: “ß çíàþ, ìíå óæå äîëîæèëè.” (At Easter, Brezhnev is walking in the Kremlin when he is greeted with the traditional, “Christ has risen!” Brezhnev nods and walks on. Again someone says, “Christ has risen!” And Brezhnev answers: “I know, it’s already been reported to me.”)
 Gorbachev jokes play on his accent, his policy of glasnost and his anti-drinking campaign. Yeltsin jokes play on his personal pro-drinking campaign, as well as his language tick of “you know.” And Putin jokes? There aren’t many. Maybe it’s just not funny anymore. But there is an old joke (àíåãäîò ñ áîðîäîé — literally “a joke with a beard”) that has been updated to include Putin: Åõàëè âîæäè â ïîåçäå. Âäðóã ïîåçä îñòàíîâèëñÿ. Âïåðåäè îòñóò-ñòâîâàëà æåëåçíàÿ äîðîãà. Ëåíèí: “Íàäî óñòðîèòü êîììóíèñòè-÷åñêèé ñóááîòíèê.” Ñòà-ëèí: “×òî áû áûñòðî ðåëüñû áûëè — èëè ðàññòðåëÿþ!” Õðóùåâ: “Äàâàéòå ðàçáåðåì ñçàäè è ïîëîæèì ñïåðåäè.” Áðåæíåâ: “Äàâàéòå êà÷àòü âàãîí è ãóäåòü — äåëàòü âèä, ÷òî åäåì.” Ãîðáà÷åâ: “Îá ýòîì íàäî ñêàçàòü îòêðûòî!” Åëüöèí: “Äàâàéòå, ïîíèìàåøü, ïðîäàäèì íåôòü çà ãðàíèöó è êóïèì ðåëüñû.” Ïóòèí: “Ýòî òåððîðèñòû!” (The leaders are in a train when it suddenly stops. There is no track ahead. Lenin says: We should organize a voluntary communist workday! Stalin: If that track isn’t laid soon, I’ll call the firing squad! Khrushchev: Let’s take the track from behind and put it up ahead. Brezhnev: Let’s shake the train and hoot — and pretend that we are moving forward. Gorbachev: We have to speak openly about this! Yeltsin: Let’s sell oil overseas and buy the track — you know? Putin: Terrorists!) Sadly, the “train with no track” scenario is all too fitting a metaphor for Russia’s development.
 ********************* Russian jokes come in all varieties, from the chastushka (chastushka, a four-line, rhyming verse), to the baika (a tall tale), to elaborate comic stories that lead inexorably to the punch line. Perhaps because russkie anekdoty (Russian jokes) come out of the storytelling tradition, rather than the vaudeville-Hollywood-sitcom tradition, there isn’t an exact Russian word for punch line.
 You can call it the razvyazka (“the denouement”). Punch line or no, of all these traditions, I revere Russians for their genius for topical political jokes. Take this one that appeared during the recent “banking crisis”: Iz zayavlenii Tsentro banka: Net nikakikh prichin dlya paniki. V Rossii net nikakogo bankovskogo krizisa. Vypolnyaetsya obychnaya shtatnaya protsedura iz`yatiya deneg u naseleniya. (From an announcement by the Central Bank: There is no reason for panic. There is no banking crisis in Russia whatsoever. We are simply carrying out the usual standard procedure for expropriating money from the population.) This is what Russians call smekh skvoz` slezy (laughter through tears). I call it brilliant.
 The Stalin jokes often deal with his cruelty. Lenin jokes often make fun of his accent or debunk the myth of Lenin as a kindly man. Khrushchev jokes often involve corn and other harebrained schemes. Brezhnev jokes mostly make fun of him in his later years, when he was not quite all there: Idet Brezhnev v paskhu po Kremlyu, ego privetstvuyut: “Khristos Voskres!”, on kivnul i idet dal`she. Snova: “Khristos Voskres!”, a Brezhnev otvechaet: “Ya znayu, mne uzhe dolozhili.” (At Easter, Brezhnev is walking in the Kremlin when he is greeted with the traditional, “Christ has risen!” Brezhnev nods and walks on. Again someone says, “Christ has risen!” And Brezhnev answers: “I know, it’s already been reported to me.”)
 Gorbachev jokes play on his accent, his policy of glasnost and his anti-drinking campaign. Yeltsin jokes play on his personal pro-drinking campaign, as well as his language tick of “you know.” And Putin jokes? There aren’t many. Maybe it’s just not funny anymore. But there is an old joke (anegdot s borodoi — literally “a joke with a beard”) that has been updated to include Putin: Ekhali vozhdi v poezde. Vdrug poezd ostanovilsya. Vperedi otsut-stvovala zheleznaya doroga. Lenin: “Nado ustroit` kommunisti-cheskii subbotnik.” Sta-lin: “Chto by bystro rel`sy byli — ili rasstrelyayu!” Khrushchev: “Davaite razberem szadi i polozhim speredi.” Brezhnev: “Davaite kachat` vagon i gudet` — delat` vid, chto edem.” Gorbachev: “Ob etom nado skazat` otkryto!” El`tsin: “Davaite, ponimaesh`, prodadim neft` za granitsu i kupim rel`sy.” Putin: “Eto terroristy!” (The leaders are in a train when it suddenly stops. There is no track ahead. Lenin says: We should organize a voluntary communist workday! Stalin: If that track isn’t laid soon, I’ll call the firing squad! Khrushchev: Let’s take the track from behind and put it up ahead. Brezhnev: Let’s shake the train and hoot — and pretend that we are moving forward. Gorbachev: We have to speak openly about this! Yeltsin: Let’s sell oil overseas and buy the track — you know? Putin: Terrorists!) Sadly, the “train with no track” scenario is all too fitting a metaphor for Russia’s development.
 <i>Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpretor.
 </i>

TITLE: 9/11 Report Faults Government
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The Sept. 11 commission concludes that a &quot;failure of imagination,&quot; not governmental neglect, allowed 19 hijackers to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. The panel calls for an intelligence overhaul to confront an al-Qaida organization intent on striking again.
 
While faulting institutional shortcomings, the bipartisan report being released Thursday does not blame President George W. Bush or former president Bill Clinton for mistakes contributing to the 2001 terrorist attack, White House officials familiar with the findings said.
 The report, which is the culmination of a 20-month investigation into the plot that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, describes the meticulous planning and determination of hijackers who sought to exploit weaknesses in airline and border procedures by taking test flights.
 A surveillance video that surfaced Wednesday shows four of the hijackers passing through security gates at Washington Dulles International Airport shortly before boarding the plane they would crash into the Pentagon. In the video, the hijackers can be seen undergoing additional scrutiny after setting off metal detectors, then being permitted to continue to their gate.
 White House officials and congressional leaders were briefed on the panel's findings, and Bush was to receive a copy just before the release Thursday on the commission's Web site and in bookstores.
 The president, bracing for a report that will be sharply critical of the government's intelligence-gathering, said Wednesday he looked forward to reading it. He also said his administration was doing everything possible to combat terrorism, a major theme of his re-election campaign.
 &quot;Had we had any inkling whatsoever that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America,&quot; Bush said. &quot;I'm confident President Clinton would have done the same thing. Any president would.&quot;
 One administration official said the 575-page report concludes that Bush and Clinton took the threat of al-Qaida seriously and were &quot;genuinely concerned about the danger posed by al-Qaida,&quot; but didn't do enough to stop the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden.
 There was a &quot;failure of imagination&quot; to provide either Bush or Clinton with new options - particularly military approaches - to deal with al-Qaida, the official said. There also was a failure to adapt to the post-Cold War era, and people just kept trying the same kinds of things that didn't work, the official said.
 As expected, the report will propose a national counterterrorism center headed by a new Cabinet-level national director of intelligence. The director would have authority over the CIA, FBI and other agencies, while congressional oversight also would be strengthened.
 The commission described a rapidly changing al-Qaida threat that has become more dispersed and harder to detect. A national intelligence chief would coordinate information-sharing and intelligence analysis to thwart al-Qaida terrorists who are keenly interested in launching a chemical, biological or nuclear attack, commissioners say.
 The Bush administration is reserving judgment on that recommendation, and officials doubt it could be approved by Congress this year.
 The report lists a series of missed operational opportunities to stop the hijackers, such as the bungled attempts to kill or capture bin Laden and the FBI's handling of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001 before the hijackings.
 It also &quot;debunks&quot; some theories that once circulated widely, such as that the Saudi government had funded the hijackers and that the White House allowed a group of Saudis to slip out of the country just after Sept. 11 when all planes were grounded.

TITLE: More Hostages, Demands in Iraq
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants took six foreign truck drivers hostage and threatened Wednesday to behead them unless their company ends its business in Iraq, and their countries - India, Egypt and Kenya - pull all their citizens out.
 
The threat came two days after the Philippines withdrew its 51-troop contingent from Iraq, giving in to the demands of militants holding a Filipino truck driver. 
 The threat to behead the hostages - and separate warnings against Bulgarian, Polish and Japanese troops - is the latest development in a violent campaign to scare off foreigners, who play a vital role in supporting the new U.S.-backed government and in the reconstruction of Iraq.
 Iraqi and U.S. officials had warned of a potential surge in threats and hostage-taking when the Philippines withdrew its troops.
 A militant group calling itself &quot;The Holders of the Black Banners,&quot; announced Wednesday it had taken two Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian hostage, and said it would behead a captive every 72 hours beginning Saturday night if their countries do not announce their intentions to withdraw troops and citizens from Iraq.
 None of those countries is part of the 160,000-member U.S.-led coalition. However, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi appealed last week to India and Egypt to send in troops.
 &quot;We have warned all the countries, companies, businessmen and truck drivers that those who deal with American cowboy occupiers will be targeted by the fires of the Mujahedeen,&quot; read a statement from the group that was obtained by The Associated Press. &quot;Here you are once again transporting goods, weapons and military equipment that back the U.S. Army.&quot;
 More than 60 foreigners have been taken hostage in recent months in Iraq, where thousands of foreigners toil as contract workers for coalition forces, in crucial reconstruction jobs or as truck drivers hauling cargo for private companies.

TITLE: 3 American Vigilantes On Trial in Afghanistan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - Three Americans went on trial Wednesday on charges they tortured eight prisoners in a private jail, with the group's leader saying he had tacit support from senior Pentagon officials who once offered to put his team under contract.
 
The U.S. military says the men were freelancers operating outside the law and without their knowledge.
 Jonathan Idema, Brett Bennett and Edward Caraballo were arrested when Afghan security forces raided their makeshift jail in Kabul on July 5.
 Standing before a three-judge panel in a heavily guarded Afghan national security court, the men listened quietly to the charges - including hostage-taking and &quot;mental and physical torture.&quot;
 Three of their former captives described being beaten, held under water and left without food.
 The Americans didn't testify. But Idema said afterward that the abuse allegations were invented. He said his men had arrested &quot;world-class terrorists&quot; and said he was in daily telephone and e-mail contact with officials &quot;at the highest level&quot; of the U.S. Defense Department, including in Pentagon chief Donald H. Rumsfeld's office.
 Idema said a four-star Pentagon official named Heather Anderson &quot;applauded our efforts&quot; and wanted to place the group &quot;under contract&quot; - an offer they refused for fear it would limit their freedom to operate.
 There are no four-star female officers in the entire U.S. military. The name Heather Anderson is not listed in the Pentagon phone book.
 &quot;The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did. They absolutely supported what we did,&quot; Idema told reporters crowding around the dock. &quot;We have extensive evidence of that.&quot; A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no evidence that Idema or the two other Americans were in contact with the Defense Department.
 Idema was in the Army reserve from 1975 through 1984. He did receive special forces training, the official said. An official from the U.S. Embassy observed the trial but declined to comment on the proceedings, where only one of the Americans had a lawyer.
 Afghan and U.S. officials have left open whether the men, who face up to 20 years in Afghan jails if convicted, might be sent to the United States to face charges.
 Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari adjourned the case for two weeks to give the three Americans and the four Afghans accused of helping them time to prepare their defense.
 There was no attorney for Idema, a bearded former American soldier once convicted of fraud, who appeared in court in a khaki uniform with a reversed American flag on the shoulder.
 Idema wore sunglasses in the courtroom, completing a look that once fooled even NATO peacekeepers, who sent explosives experts to help him with three raids before realizing they had been duped into thinking he was with U.S. special forces.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>U.S. to Sell Arms to Iraq
 </b>

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration cleared the way Wednesday to sell arms to Iraq just as it does to other allies, reversing the ban in place for much of Saddam Hussein's regime.
 Bush made a presidential determination that the standard methods of engaging in munitions transfers with friendly nations are now appropriate in the case of Iraq and will promote democratic reforms, help achieve reconstruction and strengthen the Iraqi government.
 
 
<b>Cruz back in Phillipines
 </b>

MANILA, Phillipines (Reuters) - Freed hostage Angelo de la Cruz arrived home to a hero's welcome Thursday as Manila started to count the diplomatic cost of its decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq to save him from beheading by militants.
 His long hair tucked under a baseball cap, the 46-year-old was embraced by his eight children as he stepped into Manila international airport. He said he was still too shocked by his two-week ordeal to say how it had affected him.
 "I am sorry I can't answer you because I am still confused and I want to spend time with my family," he told a news conference. Close to tears and looking tired and worn, de la Cruz wore a shirt printed with the words "I am a Filipino" on the front and "To work is honorable" on the back.
 
 
<b>China Costly for Expats
 </b>

BEIJING, China (AFP) - Companies are increasingly moving staff and offices to global investment hotspot China, but while still a developing country it has some of the world's highest living costs for expatriates, according to a new survey.
 Conducted by the US-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting firm, the survey says the cost of apartments and tuition for children in China's expat hubs was even more expensive than cities like New York and Tokyo.
 A 200-square-meter furnished house at prime locations for expats in the eastern metropolis Shanghai, for example, rents at 9,400 US dollars a month.
 This is higher than 7,500 dollars in New York, according to results seen by AFP.
 Beijing topped the chart of the most costly Chinese city to live in for expatriates, followed by Shanghai and Shenzhen in the south.
 
<b>Hostage's Head Found
 </b>

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi security forces found the head of American hostage Paul Johnson in a freezer during a raid on a suspected al-Qaida hideout that came days before the expiration of a month-long amnesty offered to militants, officials said Wednesday.
 The raid targeted the hideout of the Saudi al-Qaida chief and killed two other militants, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. It was not clear whether Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi, the man believed to be the top al-Qaida leader in the kingdom, was among three militants reported wounded. Three Saudi security officers also were wounded in the gunbattle Tuesday night.
 Security forces also seized weapons - including an anti-aircraft SAM-7 missile - explosives, chemicals, video cameras and cash from the al-Qaida house. 
 Johnson, a 49-year-old engineer with Apache helicopter maker Lockheed Martin, was kidnapped and beheaded by militants in Saudi Arabia last month. Only his head was found, the Interior Ministry said, and a search continued for the rest of his body. 



TITLE: Lance Climbs Past Competition in Alps
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: L'ALPE D'HUEZ, France - Lance Armstrong shut out the cheers and taunts on one of cycling's most famous peaks in the Alps on Wednesday to focus on finishing off his chief rival and locking up a record sixth straight Tour de France title.
 
The Texan won the first time trial to the L'Alpe d'Huez ski station, surging up the legendary 15.5-kilometer climb to establish beyond any doubt that he is unmatched on the mountains.
 He finished his second consecutive stage victory in 39 minutes, 41 seconds, his legs whirring through 21 hairpin bends lined with hundreds of thousands of spectators honking horns, ringing cowbells and yelling in a cacophony of languages.
 The performance was so dominant that Armstrong overtook his last true challenger for the overall title, Ivan Basso, even though the Italian started two minutes earlier.
 With four days left in the three-week cycling marathon, only disaster could prevent Armstrong from adding to his string of five consecutive titles.
 &quot;I'm real careful about counting to the number six,&quot; Armstrong said. &quot;I'll do that on the final lap on the Champs-Elysees.&quot;
 Only three riders, including Armstrong's teammate Jose Azevedo, finished within two minutes of the American. The others were 1997 champion and five-time overall runner-up Jan Ullrich, 61 seconds back in second place, and his teammate Andreas Kloden, 1:41 behind in third.
 Basso was eighth, 2:33 off Armstrong's pace. While still closest to Armstrong, his total deficit grew from 1:25 to 3:48.
 &quot;I hoped to lose less time,&quot; Basso said, &quot;but Lance was superior.&quot;
 Armstrong caught Basso and passed him just after riding over a red-white-and-blue Texas state flag drawn on the black pavement. Basso glanced left at Armstrong, who just looked straight ahead.
 &quot;That is incredibly motivating for a rider when you see you're catching somebody,&quot; Armstrong said. &quot;I have a ton of respect for Ivan. I think he's the biggest threat in the race. I think he's the brightest future for the Tour.&quot;
 Ullrich climbed from fifth to fourth overall, but his deficit grew to 7:55. Kloden lags by 5:03. Azevedo was fourth Wednesday, 1:45 back, and is fifth overall - remarkable for a rider who has concentrated on helping his team leader.
 Armstrong now has three individual stage victories this Tour - all in the mountains, taking his career total to 19. He trained relentlessly on climbs before the Tour, repeatedly scaling L'Alpe d'Huez.
 Last year, Armstrong wound up just 61 seconds ahead of Ullrich in Paris. The shakiness of that victory - by far his narrowest winning margin since he came back from cancer to take his first Tour in 1999 - spurred his preparations.
 &quot;This is not a final exam you can cram for. This is the Tour, and it requires a yearlong commitment. You come here in the month of May when it's a ghost town, and you simply ride up and down the mountain,&quot; Armstrong said. &quot;These are things we do, have always done, and personally love more than anything. The only people here are those paving the roads or working in the one or two hotels that are open. There's not a million people on the side of the road. Just a few people, and that makes it beautiful and makes the difference between winning and losing.&quot;
 As overall leader, Armstrong had the advantage of being the last of the 157 riders to start Wednesday's individual race against the clock. That enabled him to measure himself against his opponents - notably Basso.
 Wearing black shoes, black socks and his coveted yellow jersey as overall leader, which he reclaimed Tuesday by winning the first stage in the Alps, Armstrong found energy for a sprint finish.
 &quot;I didn't expect to gain so much time on Ivan Basso,&quot; he said. &quot;When I set out, I didn't know how fast I was going, how my form was. But a spectator said, 'A minute ahead.' I replied, 'No, no, that's not possible.'&quot;
 At times, crowds covered the road, parting only at the last moment as riders approached. Some fans ran alongside the bicycles, waving flags that came close to catching handlebars or wheels. Others forced riders to swerve.
 It was the first time Tour organizers held a time trial on the legendary climb. Armstrong said it was &quot;a bad idea,&quot; adding: &quot;It's not safe for anybody.&quot;
 Some riders said fans booed or offered beer. Armstrong complained that some German fans were &quot;horrible&quot; but said crowd animosity &quot;motivates me more than anything.&quot;
 &quot;What I don't understand is when I watch the television, they cheer for everybody. They don't spit on them,&quot; he said.
 But he added: &quot;This is big-time sport. People are emotional and excited.... It doesn't take away from my desire to win. I think it puts a little fuel on the fire.&quot;

TITLE: U.S. Sends Special Ops To Greece
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS, Greece - Responding to a request from Greece, the United States committed 400 American special operations forces to help protect the Olympic Games, a U.S. counterterrorism official said Wednesday, as security costs for the games swelled to a record-breaking $1.5 billion.
 
It was not yet decided where the U.S. soldiers would be based: in Athens, on the island of Crete or on alert in Europe, where they are based in Germany. The United States is in the process of discussing with the Greek government where the soldiers will be positioned, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official did not specify which branches of the U.S. military would be involved.
 The decision on where to send the troops is mostly up to the Greek government, but will be made jointly with General James Jones, the top NATO commander who also is commander of U.S. forces in Europe, the official said in Washington.
 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated in Washington that any possible involvement of U.S. troops would be under a NATO umbrella.
 Greece's top law enforcement official, meanwhile, said foreign leaders and other dignitaries can use their own armed guards at the Aug. 13-29 games, but athletes will be under the exclusive protection of Greek forces.
 International demands to boost Olympic security have pushed costs, already the highest in Olympic history, to at least $1.5 billion - 25 percent higher than previously estimated, Greek Deputy Finance Minister Petros Doukas said. These may include expanded roles for NATO anti-terrorism units and armed agents from the United States and other nations.
 &quot;There are new bills coming up,&quot; Doukas told The Associated Press, adding that Greece did not want to &quot;risk the reaction&quot; by denying foreign appeals for added security.
 The United States has led demands to expand anti-terrorism measures for the first summer Olympics since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
 Among the added costs, said Doukas, is more than $2.4 million for a blimp outfitted with high-resolution cameras and chemical detection systems.
 Greek officials also are seeking to resolve the politically sensitive issue of armed security contingents planned by the United States, Israel and possibly other nations.
 Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis insisted athletes will be under the exclusive protection of Greek forces. But he noted that foreign leaders and other dignitaries can use their own armed guards as part of an established &quot;security protocol&quot; that covers such visits.
 Heads of state and other prominent figures, including former President George Bush, are expected in Athens and normally have a security entourage.
 The issue facing Greek officials is how much extra foreign security to allow and how freely to let it operate. Greece would have to bend state laws prohibiting armed security beyond diplomatic protection.

TITLE: Miami Turns Out to Greet Shaq
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MIAMI, Florida - Shaquille O'Neal weighs 340 pounds, and he's hungry. He wants to show the NBA that the Los Angeles Lakers kept the wrong All-Star. And he plans to do it by leading the Miami Heat to a title.
 
O'Neal made a grand entrance Tuesday at a rally welcoming him to Miami. He arrived in a semi-tractor trailer with the words &quot;Diesel Power&quot; on the side, emerged from the cab firing a plastic water cannon at the crowd of several thousand, then followed a red carpet up the steps to the Heat's arena.
 Once at the top, he pledged that an even bigger celebration is in the future.
 &quot;I'm going to bring a championship to Miami,&quot; O'Neal told the fans. &quot;I promise.&quot;
 At a news conference that followed, O'Neal spoke little about his differences with Kobe Bryant and Lakers management that triggered the trade. But he said he appreciates the way he has been embraced in Miami.
 &quot;I told my wife when I was rolling up, I felt like the president,&quot; he said. O'Neal then hummed &quot;Hail to the Chief.&quot;
 The rally came six days after the Heat acquired the 11-time All-Star in a trade that sent three starters to Los Angeles. Such festivities might seem premature to some cities, but Miami loves celebrities - and winners.
 Heat president Pat Riley remembers the sellout crowds the attendance-challenged Florida Marlins drew for last year's World Series, and he anticipates the same kind of box-office boost from O'Neal, especially if he leads the Heat to their first NBA title.
 &quot;We have definitely been blessed,&quot; Riley said. &quot;Somehow he found his way down here to Miami - the most talented, most dominant player in the world.&quot;
 The first game is still 3 1/2 months away, but O'Neal already is the most entertaining act in town, and he never went long without a quip.
 On buying a home in South Florida: &quot;I will be walking naked on the beach. If you take pictures of me naked on the beach, don't sell them to the Enquirer unless I get 15 percent.&quot;
 On being 32 years old: &quot;I'm like toilet paper, toothpaste and certain amenities - I'm proven to be good. I've still got five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years left.&quot;
 On his weight: &quot;I play my best ball at 345. I need my meat, because I'm going to take a beating. If you put a guy in front of me who eats salad and cucumber and baked chicken all day, I'll kill him.&quot;
 O'Neal will need help transforming the Heat into champions.
 They've lost the entire front line from a team that went 42-40 last season and made an improbable run to the second round of the playoffs. 
 O'Neal offered to help Riley recruit free agents to fill the roster openings created by the departure of center Brian Grant and forwards Caron Butler and Lamar Odom to the Lakers.
 And O'Neal is happy to join a team that still includes guard Eddie Jones, Miami's top scorer the past four years, and guard Dwyane Wade, a standout last season as a rookie.
 &quot;They could have easily been in the Eastern Conference championships,&quot; O'Neal said. &quot;They're one or two pieces away. And you've got a big piece now.&quot;

TITLE: Empty Stadiums Await Athletes at Athens Games
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS, Greece - The Athens Games were supposed to make this ancient land a top tourist destination. But with just three weeks left before the opening ceremonies, the figures are hardly encouraging.
 
More than half the tickets for the games remain unsold, tour operators are reporting sluggish bookings and up to 6,000 of Athens' 62,000 hotel rooms are still up for grabs despite earlier fears of a serious accommodation shortage.
 In fact, fewer tourists are expected in Greece this summer compared to last year.
 &quot;Generally, it looks like this year we will have less people,&quot; George Drakopoulos, head of the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises, told The Associated Press. He said some parts of Greece have seen a 10 to 15 percent drop in bookings.
 Tourism is a vital industry in Greece, where island vacations at beach resorts and visits to archeological monuments bring in 18 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
 Last year, Greece attracted about 12 million visitors, 85 percent of them from Britain and Germany.
 Olympic construction delays and the threat of terrorism have hurt bookings. Evidently, many tourists are not comforted by the record $1.2 billion being spent on protecting the Aug. 13-29 games.
 A weak international economy and a strong euro - the currency Greece shares with 11 other European Union countries - have also lowered travel interest.
 Aliki Hamosfakidou, who works for Athens-based Dolphin Travel, said the response from potential tourists has been lukewarm.
 Don Williams, vice president of sales and marketing for Cartan Tours in Manhattan Beach, California, said his company decided to allocate fewer tickets for Athens than it did four years ago for the Sydney games.
 &quot;We anticipated Athens would be lighter,&quot; Williams said. &quot;The venues are smaller, the dollar's weaker and some people have security concerns.
 &quot;The ticket prices are 30 percent lower than at Sydney,&quot; he added. &quot;But the accommodations are more expensive in Greece, and they haven't really backed down.&quot;
 Greeks' spirits have soared since the country pulled off a major surprise to win the European soccer championship this month.
 A weekend opinion poll found 60.2 percent of all Greeks were &quot;interested&quot; in attending an Olympic event, with 21.3 percent saying they will buy a ticket before the start of the games, compared to 15.9 percent in a May survey. No margin of error was provided.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Brazil Through to Final
 </b>

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Brazil reached the final of the Copa America for the first time since 1999, beating Uruguay 5-3 on penalty kicks following a 1-1 tie Wednesday night.
 Brazil advanced to Sunday's South American championship game against Argentina, which beat Colombia 3-0 Tuesday. The Brazilians won when goalkeeper Julio Cesar stopped Vicente Sanchez's penalty kick.
 "The best two teams have reached the final," Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira said.
 Both Brazil and Argentina were missing many of their top players, who were bypassed for the tournament following long European club seasons and tense World Cup qualifiers. 
 
 
<b>Bruins Sign Samsonov
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - The Boston Bruins re-signed star wing Sergei Samsonov on Tuesday while the Calgary Flames agreed to terms with Marcus Nilson, locking up one of their key players from this spring's playoff run. Samsonov agreed to a one-year, $3.65 million offer. "This is great news for us," Bruins general manager Mike O'Connell said. "Sergei is one of the most creative and dynamic players in the game, and he's an exciting player for our fans."
 
 
<b>Coach Klinsmann?
 </b>

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) - Former star player Juergen Klinsmann met with top German soccer officials, who are seeking a new national team coach.
 Klinsmann, a star for Germany at the 1990, 1994 and 1998 World Cups, met in New York on Tuesday with German Soccer Federation president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder and general secretary Horst Schmidt.
 "Naturally I will help the DFB, regardless of function," Klinsmann said in a statement, referring to the German federation by its acronym. "In New York, we had a constructive and open talk analyzing the national team. I declared there my willingness to shape and work toward building new structures. We agreed to continue those talks."
 Rudi Voeller quit after Germany was eliminated in the first round of last month's European Championship. Former Bayern Munich coach Ottmar Hitzfeld and Greece coach Otto Rehhagel turned down the job.
 
<b>Athens Gets Rivaldo
 </b>

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek Champions League hopefuls Olympiakos have signed former World Player of the Year Rivaldo, the club announced Wednesday. "Rivaldo is coming from Madrid tonight with [senior club official Giorgos] Louvaris," said a spokeswoman for Olympiakos, who finished second in the Greek first division last season. A club source described the Brazilian's move as a "done deal" while coach Dusan Bajevic said the World Cup winner's impending arrival in Athens was another huge boost for Greek football after their Euro 2004 success. Greek media have billed the deal as the "biggest-ever transfer in Greek football history", speculating the 32-year-old would earn up to 1.5 million euros per year.
 
 
<b>Aussie Boxer to Athens
 </b>

MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - The Australian Olympic Committee has cleared boxer Peter Wakefield to compete at next month's Athens Olympics despite being on bail over an alleged assault charge. The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper reported on Thursday that the 26-year-old Wakefield had been scheduled to stand trial this month with two co-accused but the court case had been postponed until June 2005.
 The paper said Wakefield's trial was postponed at a hearing in May because of his likely selection to compete in the 48kg division at Athens. "Wakefield has pleaded not guilty and the court has varied his bail conditions to allow him to join the team in France and then go on to Athens for the Games," AOC spokesman Mike Tancred told reporters.
 
 
<b>India Blasts Bangladesh
 </b>

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Part-time spinner Sachin Tendulkar has snapped up three wickets as Bangladesh was bowled out for 177 by India in the second round of the Asia Cup at the Sinhalese Sports Club. 
 Tendulkar took three for 35 after 19-year-old left-arm seamer Irfan Pathan had done the early damage Wednesday, taking two wickets in two balls to leave Bangladesh reeling on 10 for two in the third over. 
 Pathan bowled captain Habibul Bashar for two before trapping Rajin Saleh leg before. He also removed the last Bangladesh batsman to complete figures of three for 32.