MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti) Gazprom to supply electricity to Europe/Russians worried about personal problems, not politics/Genome bank: pros and cons
Vedomosti
Gazprom to supply electricity to Europe
Russian energy monopoly Gazprom and Luxembourg's Soteg will build two power units in Germany worth 400 million euros. Gazprom promises other similar projects, but experts doubt they will materialize because of Russia's complex relations with the European Union.
Gazprom's CEO Alexei Miller, who accompanied President Vladimir Putin on his visits to Austria and Luxembourg, brought back not only gas contracts, but a power generation project as well.
On May 24, Gazprom Marketing & Trading signed an operational agreement with Luxembourg's Soteg to finance the construction of two power units to supply electricity to that country.
The new power units with a capacity of 800MW are to be built in Germany (Eisenhuettenstadt) and commissioned in 2010.
The partners will split the investment, which totals 400 million euros, 50-50, said Sergei Kupriyanov, the Russian concern's representative.
The power units will burn gas, and part of the produced energy will be sold by an operator company set up by the investors, and another part by Gazprom Marketing & Trading and Soteg.
It is the first Gazprom project to build power facilities in Europe, and is based on the "three-in-one-go" principle, Kupriyanov said.
"We create a gas consumer, earn money by producing energy and sell it," he explained. He believes the company will use the same scheme in other European countries, too.
Experts doubt that there will be many such projects. Russia-EU relations are deteriorating and individual contracts with Luxembourg will not remedy the situation, said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor with the journal Russia in Global Politics.
Gazprom is more optimistic. The company will continue to diversify business by going beyond Russia and boosting investment in the European Union, said Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom's deputy CEO, to the Financial Times recently.
Gazprom Marketing & Trading Ltd is controlled by Gazprom. Soteg is the main gas and electricity supplier in Luxembourg. The state holds 21% of its shares and Arcelor and E.ON Ruhrgas 20% each.
Vremya Novostei
Russians worried about personal problems, not politics
Three problems worry most Russians these days - inflation, crime and housing, according to experts of the Russian public opinion center VTSIOM, who conducted a survey of Russia's most pressing problems.
Around 30% of the respondents mentioned price hikes, 29% crime, 27% the economic situation as a whole, 25% the housing problem, and 21% unemployment.
Russians are more like Europeans now, according to Valery Khomyakov, director of the Council for National Strategy (CNS), an independent Moscow-based think-tank.
"I think it encouraging that people are no longer obsessed by politics. They are more interested in issues that concern them personally. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had a feeling everyone was talking politics all the time. It was crazy," he said.
On the other hand, the analyst thinks people's interest in politics will go up again in the run-up to the parliamentary and presidential elections in December and March.
As for economic problems, Russians do not seem to link them to specific policymakers.
"People know that a great deal depends on the politicians," Khomyakov explains. "But they do not expect the federal government to solve their personal problems. They think that housing problems should be handled by local authorities, that crime is on the rise because of corrupt police and court officials, and not because of the flawed political system as a whole. They attribute price hikes to 'profiteers' and crooks who profit from deceiving working people, but not to the faulty economic policy of the government."
Moscow and St. Petersburg residents mentioned the economic situation as a key problem in Russia.
As many as 42% of those polled in the two largest cities singled it out, whereas in other cities and towns 28%-31% talked about the economic situation, and only 21%-24% mentioned it in small towns and villages.
Analysts believe that Moscow and St. Petersburg residents, as well as other big city dwellers, are simply better informed about the problem.
Social issues have not been so acute of late, so people tend to give less attention to health care and pension problems (13%-14% of those polled), terrorism (7%), education (5%), taxes, defense and foreign policy (4%).
Even fewer people, 2%-3% mentioned public transport, immigration and environment among the most important problems this country is facing today.
Kommersant
Genome bank: pros and cons
The Russian Interior Ministry has drafted a bill on state genome registration that it expects will help fight crime, terrorism and extremism more effectively.
Genomes, hereditary information encoded in DNA, store all information on the human body.
The ministry plans to establish a federal genome bank, but opponents say the initiative would violate human rights and possibly threaten biological security.
The bill stipulates compulsory and voluntary genome registration. The proposed genome bank would list the personal data of convicted felons, unidentified accomplices, close relatives of missing persons and unidentified bodies.
All other Russian citizens would be eligible for voluntary genome registration.
Police Major General Tatiana Moskalkova, first deputy head of the Interior Ministry's Main Legal Department, said the genome bank is a key to quicker identification and would help combat crime, terrorism and extremism more effectively.
Gennady Spirin, deputy head of the Interior Ministry's Main Legal Department, said the bill would soon be submitted to the government for consideration and passed by late 2007.
Yury Kalinin, director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, said Russia has to establish its own genome bank. He said this would make it possible to identify the bodies of those killed in the two Chechen campaigns and to locate people more quickly.
"I think every Russian citizen must undergo a genome check," Kalinin told the paper.
Russia's chief sanitary officer Gennady Onishchenko said the biological data bank would help doctors to more quickly detect illnesses in convicts and to prevent epidemics.
Doctor of Biology Irina Yermakova, director of the Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology Institute, said those who know a person's genetic code, could then administer potentially lethal food and medications.
"Genetic information is strictly confidential, and I would not advise anyone to undergo genome checks," Vera Izhivskaya, deputy director for academic issues at the Medical-Genetic Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the paper.
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