By John Helmer in Moscow
It’s a pity Vladimir Lenin was tone deaf, and dismissed music (along with chess) as an entertainment for the ruling class. Had he an ear and taste for classical music (like Karl Marx, who was keen on Beethoven, and Leon Trotsky, who loved Verdi), he might have devised a revolutionary doctrine for the performing arts. This could have protected Russia from the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich the cellist, Nikita Mikhalkov the filmmaker, Valery Gergiev the conductor, and X the theatre director.
I regret I am obliged to avoid using X’s, or his Moscow theatre’s real name, because he and his colleagues are so thin-skinned, so despotic, and so vengeful, they brook no criticism, and would react by attacking the livelihood of a member of my family.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
If life were a circus, then the only reason a contemplative man would walk behind an elephant in a ring, wielding bucket and shovel, would be for the money, not for the laughs.
John Lloyd, a onetime Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times, has made many of his colleagues and readers laugh at him. But it was his eulogy upon the death of ex-President Boris Yeltsin, just published by the Financial Times, that has been convincing. Lloyd hasn’t been clowning all this time for laughs. He’s been putting shit in a bucket for the money.
And good money it was, certainly when his then wife headed the Moscow office of a well-known English law firm, and Lloyd filled his Moscow despatches with tales of the good fortune falling from the parapets of the Kremlin for her clientele. There was the odd and embarrassing pratfall; the time, for example, when Lloyd reported, and the FT printed, that Yegor Gaidar had been voted in as prime minister, when that favourite of Lloyd, his wife’s law firm, and the FT had in fact been trounced by Victor Chernomyrdin. Thus did Gaidar’s high political career end – in retrospect, we can now say, for good – while Lloyd was telling the FT audience the reverse.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Oleg Deripaska is under unexpected personal pressure, at home and abroad, just when his plan to take control of one of the largest bauxite and aluminium producers in the world is close to final government approval. And that is exactly why the trouble for Deripaska is growing now.
Russian government authorization this month of the creation of a monopoly aluminium concern, integrating domestic and foreign bauxite, alumina, and aluminium production assets, has followed a no-objection ruling from the European Commission (EC) in Brussels. The unconditional ruling was issued by the EC on February 1.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Did Nicolas Sarkozy, the small rightwing candidate for President of France, benefit from the brief imprisonment in Lyon of one Russian billionaire, and from the award of a medal, days later in Paris, to another Russian billionaire, who happened to be the business partner of the first?
And was Sarkozy helped by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, ministre blanchisseur, official custodian of French culture, receiver of kickbacks, and arranger of unorthodox donations to presidential campaign chests?
In short, on January 30, when Donnedieu de Vabres awarded the medal of Officer of the Legion of Arts and Letters to Vladimir Potanin, was this the end to an ingenious quartet of hostage-taking and ransom on the French side, procuring and precious metals on the Russian?
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An explosion ripped through the subway of Minsk, the capital of Belarus. The cause of the explosion has not been determined yet, officials said. The explosion occurred at Oktyabrskaya station. This is the first time when such an incident takes place in the Minsk subway

A strong earthquake rattled Japan’s northeast coast and sparked a fresh tsunami alert, one month after the worst ever natural disaster devastated the country.

AA:    I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: a collection of life stories told in just six words.  RS:  
 But first, we have a report on a linguist in Virginia who collects
accents from across America, and across the world, and posts them on a
Web site. Reporter Nancy King spoke with him.STEVE WEINBERGER:
“Everybody has an accent. And if we simply listen to people, we get an
immediate impression of them. We compute their sounds. And we make
judgments about them.”NK: That's Steve Weinberger, a linguist
at George Mason University. He believes we are taught early on in our
lives to make biased social judgments about people based on their
speech patterns. While this is normal human behavior, the results are
frequently flawed. STEVE WEINBERGER: “This will give you an example of how we judge accents. Let's listen to this Brooklyn speaker:SPEAKER: “Please call Stella, ask her to bring those things with her from the store.”STEVE
WEINBERGER: “It's a very, very distinct accent, and people might be
startled to learn that she is a PhD and a professor of French at a
major university.”NK: So much for the abused “Working Girl”
stereotype. How and when do we learn our accent? Well, surprisingly,
Weinberger says, it's not from our family.     STEVE
WEINBERGER: “We get them from our peers, most linguists believe.
Somewhere between ages two and five we develop our native language. And
we typically get it from our playmates. If we got our accents from our
parents, then we'd all speak like immigrants.”    NK: Steve
Weinberger runs the Speech Accent Archive, an online collection of
nearly nine hundred examples of accents - from both native and
non-native English speakers. The site is used by linguists,
researchers and the occasional actor who needs to master an accent.
But Weinberger says that's one tough job.  STEVE WEINBERGER:
“I'm sure these actors sound perfectly legitimate to listeners who
aren't native. So, for example, maybe Dick Van Dyke sounds OK to us.”(MOVIE SOUND)”That
cockney accent goes over quite well for young American children who
watch 'Mary Poppins.' But for any Londoner, it's just simply horrible.”NK: You can find the Speech Accent Archive at accent.gmu.edu.  I'm Nancy King.AA: That report came to us from the radio program “With Good Reason,” produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. RS:  
 Now, on to those six-word memoirs. Earlier this year on WORDMASTER,
our colleague Adam Phillips told you about a book called “Not Quite
What I Was Planning.” It's a collection of more than eight hundred
memoirs all six words long. For example: “Found true love. Married
someone else.” “Young, skinny: ridiculed. Old, skinny: envied.” They
were chosen from among more than fifteen thousand six-word memoirs
submitted to Smith Magazine, an online journal devoted to storytelling.
AA:    The editors of the book, Rachel Fershleiser and Larry
Smith, offered WORDMASTER listeners five slots in their next volume.
Well, here's a bonus: we're going to read you seven of them.  RS:  
 Grace Liu in Taiwan writes: “Unexpected, surprised, change, I love
challenge!” Grace explains her six-word memoir this way: “Everything in
my life is always full of the unexpected. I have to accept the world
around me, but these challenges could inspire me to overcome!”AA:  
 Ki-Hong Park from South Korea writes: “I'm interested in learning
English though I don't have any chances to use it. Anyway, here is my
six-word memoir: Out of Here, but Still Here.”RS:    A listener named Austin Garruba sent us this one: “Baptized: Conformed: Revolted: Disillusioned: Born … Again!”AA:    From India, Karma Lhamo writes: “Was born confused, will die confused!”RS:    W. K. Eranda from Sri Lanka sent us this six-word memoir: “Listen to your mom unless deaf.”AA:  
 Ali Almasi is a medical products engineer in the American state of
Pennsylvania. He sent us a six-word memoir — plus a title: “3T's law:
Trust heart. Think seriously. Take actions.”RS:    And Carmen
McGee is a clinical supervisor in Texas at the University of Houston
speech, language and hearing clinic. Her six-word memoir? “Master of
none; okay with that.”AA:    And that's WORDMASTER for this
week. To find Adam's original story, go to our Web site,
voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.aa/rs/rms  

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.<!– IMAGE –>More
than three billion people are at risk from indoor air pollution because of the
heating or cooking fuels they use. Most live in Africa, India and China. They
use biomass fuels like wood, crop waste, animal waste or coal. These solid
fuels may be the least costly fuels available. But they are also a major cause
of health problems and death.For more than thirty years, the Aprovecho
Research Center has been designing cleaner, low-cost cooking stoves for the developing
world. Dean Still is the director of the group which is based in the United
States. He notes a World Health Organization estimate that more than one and a
half million people a year die from breathing smoke from solid fuels.DEAN STILL: “And half of the people on planet Earth
every day use wood or biomass for cooking. These are the people on Earth who
have less money, and the richer people use oil and gas. It's been estimated
that wood is running out more quickly than oil and gas. And so it is very
important for the poorer people to have very efficient stoves that protect
their forests and that protect their health.”Every
year Aprovecho holds a “stove camp” at its testing station in Cottage
Grove, Oregon. Engineers, inventors, students and others come together to design
and test different methods and materials for improving stoves.Over
the years, the group has made stoves using mud, bricks, sheet metal, clay, ceramics
and old oil drums. Most of the stoves look like large, deep cooking pots. They
have an opening at the bottom for the fire and a place on top to put a pot.In the late nineteen seventies,
Aprovecho produced a popular stove called the Lorena. The Lorena was very good
at reducing smoke and warming homes. But new tests years later found that it
was not very efficient. The Lorena used twice as much wood as an open fire, and
took much longer to heat food.Since then, Dean Still says they have experimented with
countless other designs.DEAN STILL: “Our goal is to make a very
inexpensive stove — let's say five dollars — that makes very, very little
smoke, so it's safe for health, diminishes global warming and diminishes
deforestation. And so it's an ongoing problem to work on.”Aprovecho has now partnered with a stove
manufacturer in China. The company is making Aprovecho's first mass produced
stoves. They are said to use forty to fifty percent less wood than an open fire,
and produce fifty to seventy-five percent less smoke. A company called StoveTec
is selling them through its Web site for less than ten dollars. Dean Still says
that more than one hundred thousand have been sold so far.And
that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. I'm Howard
Neuberg.

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

World
leaders have been congratulating Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine's next president.

Among Western leaders, President Obama phoned on Thursday
to welcome the opposition leader. The White House said he called the election a
peaceful expression of the political will of Ukrainian voters to strengthen
democracy.<!– IMAGE –>Official results are expected by
Wednesday. A final vote count showed that Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko lost
by forty-five and a half percent to forty-nine percent last Sunday. But she
refused to accept defeat and resisted calls to resign as prime minister. Her aides
have said she planned to challenge the election results in court, and not
concede defeat until appeals are completed.

She has accused Yanukovych supporters of cheating in
Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.
On Thursday she told the cabinet that Viktor Yanukovych had already broken
campaign promises to improve living conditions for Ukrainians. She criticized
his party for missing a chance to vote in parliament to increase social
spending.

His
Party of Regions has been negotiating to form a new coalition in parliament. A
long political battle could worsen the economic troubles of the former Soviet
republic. Last year the International Monetary Fund suspended sixteen billion
dollars in lending to Ukraine over the issue of financial restraint. 

NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Friday that the elections were “free,
fair and democratic.” That was a change from past elections in
Ukraine. A public opinion survey by the Horshenin Institute found that more
than sixty-eight percent of Ukrainians trusted the results.Outgoing President Viktor
Yushchenko is pro-Western. He did not receive enough votes in the first round
of elections last month to qualify for the run-off election last Sunday.

Six
years ago, Viktor Yanukovych won the presidency, then lost it. Official results
showed him the winner over Viktor Yushchenko. But reports of election fraud led
to huge protests known as the Orange Revolution. A new election took place and
Viktor Yushchenko won.

<!– IMAGE –>He
took office in January of two thousand five with Yulia
Tymoshenko
as his prime minister. But their partnership ended in disputes over
presidential powers.

Yulia Tymoshenko helped lead the Orange
Revolution, named for the color worn by protesters. The protests brought
Western-like democracy to Ukraine for the first time.

Some
people say the results of Sunday's election suggest that Ukrainians have
rejected the Orange Revolution. But others point to the reported fairness of
the election itself as evidence that the spirit of the revolution lives on.Viktor
Yanukovych supports closer relations between Ukraine and Russia. Russia
welcomed his election. But political observers noted that it was very different
from the election of Dmitri Medvedev as Russia's president two years ago. In
that election there was never any question who the winner would be.

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, written
by Brianna Blake. I'm Steve Ember.

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

Yemen
is the poorest Arab nation. Poverty can help breed extremism — al-Qaida is a
growing concern for the Yemenis. But the government also faces an armed
rebellion in the north and a separatist movement in the south.

<!– IMAGE –>In Sanaa, fears of an al-Qaida attack led to temporary
closures this week of the American, British and French embassies. Yemeni officials
say they have increased protection of foreign interests in the capital. They
have also sent thousands of troops to Arhab and other areas to battle the local
al-Qaida group.

Yemen also plays a part in the case of Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is the man accused of trying to bomb an American plane
with explosives in his underwear.

A
Yemeni deputy prime minister said Thursday that the twenty-three year old
Nigerian met last year in Yemen with Anwar al-Awlaki. The American-born Muslim clergyman
is accused of supporting al-Qaida.

But
the deputy prime minister said al-Qaida first recruited the young man in
Britain when he was a student in London. The official also warned against
foreign military intervention in Yemen, saying that could strengthen al-Qaida.

Britain is organizing an international
conference later this month to discuss the security problems. And the United
States is expected to nearly double its seventy million dollars in security
assistance to Yemen.

Earlier
this week, President Obama said no additional prisoners from Guantanamo Bay
will be released to Yemen. The president wanted to close the American prison in
Cuba this month. But the recent developments seem to have only made the issue
more difficult.

The failed attack on the plane happened December
twenty-fifth, Christmas Day. Almost three hundred people were on the flight
from Amsterdam. It was preparing to land in Detroit, Michigan. Passengers and
crew restrained the man and put out the fire caused by a mixture of explosives.

<!– IMAGE –>He could face life in prison. He appeared
in federal court in Detroit for the first time Friday. He did not answer the
charges himself but his lawyers entered a plea of not guilty. Some people say
the case should have been handled in the military justice system. 

On
Thursday President Obama blamed the incident on what he called a “systemic
failure across organizations and agencies.” “Rather than a failure to
collect or share intelligence,” he said, “this was a failure to
connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

He
is ordering steps to improve airport security and the handling of intelligence
information. But he admitted there is no perfect solution. “As we develop
new screening technologies and procedures,” he said, “our adversaries
will seek new ways to evade them.”

Last
week, the Central Intelligence Agency suffered a setback in its efforts against
al-Qaida. A suicide bombing at a C.I.A. base in Afghanistan killed seven
Americans and a Jordanian intelligence officer. The bomber was identified as a
Jordanian doctor who was supposed to be informing on the terrorist group.And
that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, written by Brianna Blake. I'm Steve
Ember.