Syria and Lebanon have agreed to open embassies in each other's capitals, French leader Nicolas Sarkozy has said.

The announcement came after Mr Sarkozy held talks with Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman and then Syria's leader Bashar Assad in Paris.

Lebanon and Syria broke off diplomatic ties after former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005. Beirut accused Syria of involvement.

Mr Assad's welcome in Paris marks his return to the world stage.

"I would like to say what a historic step forward it is for France that Syrian President Bashar Assad is determined to open a diplomatic representation in Lebanon, and that Lebanon should open a diplomatic representation in Syria," Mr Sarkozy announced after meeting both men.

There has been no announcement by either Syria or Lebanon, but Mr Sarkozy said their leaders had authorised him to speak on their behalf.

A leading German politician is the latest to criticise a tentative plan by Barack Obama to speak at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate.

Erwin Huber, the leader of one of the main governing parties, said the Democratic White House hopeful had played no part in German reunification.

Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier said it was "a bit odd" that Mr Obama should speak at the Cold War landmark.

Mr Obama is to visit Europe and the Middle East in late July.

His campaign team said the Brandenburg Gate was one of several locations they had inquired about as the venue for a speech.

In the spirit of enhancing bilateral relations, Ukraine and Malta will, in the nearest future, take steps to conclude and sign a number of bilateral agreements which will reap mutual benefits to both sides.

The Ukrainian and Maltese sides express their hope that the First Ukrainian-Maltese Business Forum held at the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry during this visit, will be an important step towards improving bilateral economic and investment cooperation between Malta and Ukraine.

Both states confirmed that cultural and humanitarian cooperation, youth and professional exchanges, and an increased cultural cooperation between the two countries should be an important aspect of bilateral cooperation.

Ukraine and Malta are also committed to cooperate actively on a multilateral level, in the framework of international organisations and fora.

Anti-NATO demonstrators in southern Ukraine are refusing to surrender after their camp was violently attacked. Activists from the Progressive Socialist Party are protesting against the alliance-led military exercises to be held in Crimea and Odessa next week.

On July 7, a group of men - some in police uniform, some not - conducted an attempt to forcefully dismantle the socialists' tent camp.

The party's leader, Natalya Vitrenko, says the attack on the camp was totally illegitimate, as the protest site was set up in full accordance with the country's laws.

"If people want to have a rally, a demonstration, or a picket the main thing is to inform the authorities," she said. "We did it in full accordance with the constitution. Our rally is absolutely peaceful, people have no weapons. They neither throw stones nor block roads."

Vladimir Babiy, was among those beaten up during what he described as a violent attack on a peaceful act of civil disobedience.

Remaining Productive

At yesterday's conference, Dennis Stevenson, chairman of HBOS Plc, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, said his 20-year battle with depression showed it is possible to suffer from mental health problems and have a successful career.

Stevenson, 62, said being in the ``trough'' of endogenous depression, caused by a chemical imbalance rather than stress, was worse than the pain he felt when he broke his leg skiing and the paramedics shut the ambulance door on the limb.

``It's by a long way the worst experience I've had in my life, but I managed to keep working,'' he told an audience of 150, including representatives of Credit Suisse Group, Linklaters LLP and Lloyds TSB Group Plc. ``It's the responsibility of the people at the top of businesses to create a culture and an environment in which people know they can be open without damaging their career.''

`Macho' Culture

Mike McPhillips, a London psychiatrist whose client list includes CEOs, company chairmen and their families, says denial about mental health problems is rife in Britain, particularly in the ``macho'' atmosphere of the financial industry.

``English people are very much slower by and large to accept they are suffering with a psychological problem,'' McPhillips says. ``People come along way too late when there's a lot of damage already done to them, their families, to their relationships and to their children.''

ROME - An Italian court has ruled the government must pay 100,000 euros ($157,700) in damages to a man who was told to retake a driving test because he was homosexual.

When 26 year-old Danilo Giuffrida told doctors he was gay at his medical examination for military service, they passed the information to the transport ministry, who told him he must repeat his driving test or have his licence withdrawn due to his "sexual identity disturbance."

Giuffrida agreed to re-take his test, passed it for a second time, but the ministry renewed his licence for just one year rather than the usual 10 years because of his homosexuality.

The judge ruling on the case in Catania, on the southern island of Sicily, said the actions of the defence and transport ministries showed "evident sexual discrimination" against Giuffrida and ran counter to his constitutional rights.

The behaviour of the ministries led Giuffrida to have "a grave sense of mistrust towards the state," added the judge, who ordered them to pay him 100,000 euros of damages in his verdict issued on Saturday.

i hope the € comes right out of the transport minister's pocket, lol.

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

Struggling Danish bank Roskilde secured a bailout of 750 million crowns ($158.6 million) from the central bank and put itself up for sale on Friday in the face of bigger than expected writedowns on real estate loans.

Against a backdrop of a slowing economy, falling house prices and an absence of buyers, the small bank's shares sank more than 50 percent in developments recalling last year's collapse of British mortage bank Northern Rock.

...

Roskilde, with 24 branches and about 100,000 customers, is the second small Danish bank to face a liquidity crunch. Earlier this year, Trelleborg was forced to sell itself to bigger rival Sydbank.

Found while searching for stories on banks following the failure of IndyMac.

"C'est bien vrai, n'est-ce pas, que les moutons mangent les arbustes?" — Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Zimbabwe has hailed the failure of a UN Security Council resolution to impose new sanctions on the country's leaders.

Russia and China vetoed the resolution, saying the situation in Zimbabwe posed no threat to international security.

The UK said it was incomprehensible, while the US said the veto brought into question Russia's reliability as a G8 partner.

But South Africa said sanctions would interfere with attempts to form a national unity government.

The measures proposed in the draft UN resolution had included an arms embargo and a travel ban for President Robert Mugabe and 13 of his key allies.

Negotiators from six-nation talks in China have agreed steps to verify North Korea's nuclear disarmament.

Officials from China, the US, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas agreed Pyongyang would finish disabling its main nuclear facility by October.

The other nations will complete deliveries of fuel and economic aid ahead of visits by verification teams.

The deal comes after South Korea's leader proposed reviving direct talks with the North in a major policy shift.

President Lee Myung-bak told parliament on Friday he was willing to carry out previous bilateral summit accords and provide the impoverished North with food aid.

Fine details

The agreement is the latest stage of a six-party deal reached in February 2007, when the North said it would scrap its nuclear ambitions in return for aid and diplomatic concessions.

Last month, North Korea handed over a long-delayed list of its nuclear activities and demolished the cooling tower at its main plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear reactor, in a symbol of its commitment to talks on ending its nuclear programme.

Militants in north-west Pakistan have killed at least eight soldiers, officials say.

At least 22 other troops were wounded in the attack on their convoy outside Hangu city, near the border with Afghanistan, they said.

Three militants were said to have been killed as the soldiers returned fire.

Hangu is in Pakistan's restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which has seen increased military activity from pro-Taleban militants.

Militants attacked the convoy as it approached a fort near the border with Afghanistan, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, local police officer Shakirullah Jan told AFP news agency.

NIAMEY, July 12 (Reuters) - Tuareg-led rebels in Niger have fired mortars in an attack on the main town in the uranium-producing north, but authorities said on Saturday there had been no serious damage or casualties.

The Niger Justice Movement said its fighters launched the raid on the garrison town of Agadez late on Thursday to counter government claims the rebels had been weakened by the death of their deputy commander in battle last month.

"This raid is the prelude to an offensive ... we are going to launch on Niger's army and the authorities in Niamey," the rebel group said on Saturday on its website http://m-n-j.blogspot.com/, urging civilians to move away from military posts and governmental buildings.

Agadez governor Abba Malam Boukar told Radio France Internationale (RFI) that the rebels failed in their attack.

The rubbish collectors never come to Kamikatsu, a town on Shikoku Island in eastern Japan.

The local council decided to go "Zero Waste" as it was cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying an incinerator.

Everything must be composted or sorted into one of 34 recycling categories. Environment analyst Roger Harrabin paid a visit.

Concluding sentence:  Is this a weird exception, or is it the future for us all?

Full video at BBC website.

... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.
(apologies to G.B. Shaw)

"I am Not Paid Enough to Deal with This Lying Bullshit"

Brad DeLong gets Bush-whackoed:

Every Time I Try to Crawl Out, They Pull Me Back in!, by Brad DeLong:

You know something?

I hate yelling shows.

No, that is not right:

I HATE YELLING SHOWS!

No, that is still not right:

I HATE YELLING SHOWS!!

Maybe this will do it:

I HATE YELLING SHOWS!!!!

Called on forty minutes' notice, I trot over to the J-School studio to be a talking head on BBC/Newsnight about Fannie and Freddie. I have my talking points ready:

...[extensive list of points]...

In short, I trot over to the J-School TV studio as part of the sober, sensible, bipartisan consensus, intending to carry water for Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.

And what do I find also on BBC/Newsnight when I get there?

I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!! I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!!! WHO HAS THREE POINTS HE WANTS TO MAKE:

• Barack Obama wants to take your money by raising your taxes and pay it to the Communist Chinese.
• Oil prices are high today and the economy is in a near recession because of Nancy Pelosi: before Nancy Pelosi became speaker economic growth was fine--and she is responsible for high oil prices too.
• Economic growth is stalling because congress has not extended the Bush tax cuts. Congress needs to extend the Bush tax cuts, and if it does then that will fix the economy, and if it doesn't then the economy cannot recover.

I am not paid enough to deal with this lying bullshit. I am not paid enough to deal with Grover Norquist and his willful stream of defecation into the global information pool.

It is as Paul Krugman says somewhere: Grover Norquist's M.O.--George W. Bush's M.O.--the entire Republican Party's M.O. these days is (a) find a problem (i.e., financial crisis and threatening recession), (b) find something you want to do for other reasons unrelated to the problem (i.e., extend the Bush tax cuts), (c) claim without explanation that (b) will solve (a), and so (d) profit--because Peter Cardwell of BBC/Newsnight is too busy being the objective journalist referee of the yelling match to do his proper job and say:

Come, come, Mr. Norquist, are you serious? Your claim to believe that Nancy Pelosi's actions are responsible for the rise in oil prices is risible!

OK. Calm down. Adjust my meds...

Mr. Paulson? Ben? Are you there?

I have been carrying water for the two of you for a year now, as you have tried to do your jobs and contain the ongoing slow-motion financial crisis. Lots of us have been carrying water for you. Now you owe us a favor.

Will you please call John McCain Saturday morning. Call him jointly. Tell him that there is serious public business that needs to be done, and that pseudo-ideologues like Grover Norquist are not helping.

Tell him that unless he can control the swine like Grover Norquist and his ilk who work for him, that both of you are going to, Monday morning:

• announce your support for Barack Obama for president
• announce your change of affiliation from the Republican to the Democratic Party

You owe it. You owe it to me after that TV appearance. You owe it to all of us in the sober, sensible, bipartisan consensus. You owe it to your country. You owe it to the world.

Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 11, 2008

lunchtime lipo!

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

McGuinty is wrong-headed on nuclearby Konrad Yakabuski, The Globe and Mail

July 10, 2008

MONTREAL -- Dalton McGuinty is no different from any politician. He only wants the same thing as Gordon Brown, John McCain, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi and Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha. They all want power, yes. But not just any kind. Nuclear is their preferred choice. George Bush is keen, too, even if he can't pronounce it. China, where "new" is done at Western levels times 10, is a convert. Saskatchewan and Alberta might be next. Even Angela Merkel is musing about reversing a deal worked out by her predecessor to close all of Germany's existing reactors by 2020. When mainstream leaders are no longer scared by the issue that made the German Greens the first of their ilk to wield real political power 30 years ago, you know you've entered a new nuclear age. It will make the last one look like an appetizer. "We talked about the need to start planning and building more than 1,000 nuclear plants in the world," Mr. Berlusconi revealed at this week's G8 summit in Japan.* *run and overseen by presidentially approved b-movie wannabe starlet bimbos!, ed Why do we have this funny feeling that nuclear power is the best idea since crop-based biofuels? While all politicians have domestic reasons (or constraints) leading them to push for more nuclear power - Mr. Sarkozy has a "national champion" riding on the issue - they all tell us more reactors are part of the solution to climate change. Okay, so nuclear plants don't produce greenhouse gas emissions. And their other advantages are what, exactly? Well before any of the planned nuclear plants get built - but possibly long enough after it will be too late to stop them from going up - the economics and logistics of wind energy, solar power and carbon capture will have evolved favourably enough to have changed the game. "Within three to seven years, unsubsidized solar power could cost no more to end customers in many markets, such as California and Italy, than electricity generated by fossil fuels or by renewable alternatives to solar," according to an article in the June issue of The McKinsey Quarterly. So why bet on a horse - nuclear power - that eats budgets the way Homer Simpson downs doughnuts, and leaves behind the most deadly waste known to man - waste for which there is still no permanent disposal solution? It's easy to understand why Mr. Sarkozy would. France has staked its energy present - it derives 77 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power - and its future on splitting the atom. It has also built an entire industrial policy on the idea. State-owned Areva is the world leader in nuclear energy - and the manufacturing of the components needed to produce it. Mr. Sarkozy will stop at nothing to promote nuclear power globally, sometimes in the most questionable of places, such as Libya and Algeria. He's even got Ontario in his sights. The McGuinty government announced last month that it will soon award a contract to build two new reactors at Ontario Power Generation's Darlington site. Areva is up against Atomic Energy of Canada, which sometimes looks as if it has Homer himself at the control panels, and Japanese-owned Westinghouse. So far, Ontario has not provided an updated estimate of the $26-billion it predicted in 2006 it would cost to build the new reactors and refurbish existing ones. All that's certain now is that the $20-billion in so-called stranded debt that Ontario had left over in 1999 from the last nuclear age (1966-1993) will look like pocket change if Mr. McGuinty's current plan is realized. It's not Mr. McGuinty's fault. That great sucking sound you hear is proposed or in-the-works nuclear plants blowing their budgets everywhere. Areva's first EPR project, in Finland, is two years behind schedule and at least $1.5-billion over budget. Its second, in France's Normandy region, is headed in the same direction, after construction stalled for several weeks recently. It's not just the skyrocketing price of basic materials, such as concrete and steel, that's driving costs upward. So-called third generation reactors - such Areva's EPR and Atomic Energy's ACR-1000 - are still works in progress. And the two decades during which nuclear power faced desert-like prospects has left the industry grappling with a severe shortage of skilled workers. In the United States, the escalating cost of nuclear power has led Warren Buffet to reconsider the idea. In January, Berkshire Hathaway-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings suspended plans to build a nuclear plant in Idaho saying it "does not make economic sense." Still, Congress is offering loan guarantees and tax credits worth billions to electricity providers that take the nuclear plunge.

Addressing the ECOSOC meeting last week, the current president of that Council, Leo Merores, said: "In the wake of rising prices for food and fuel, the deepening credit crisis, persisting global imbalances, and the declining growth of the world economy, we are facing serious threats to our efforts to lift people out of poverty."

He said that rising food and fuel prices, in particular, are also leading to social unrest and instability.

"If we do not take urgent collective action, then we may face turmoil in these countries," he warned.

Meanwhile, the U.N. survey says recent optimism that the corner was being turned on poverty -- thanks to faster growth in emerging markets and even some very poor economies -- "is turning to anxiety".

This is due to downshifts in the global economy, price hikes and weaknesses in formal-sector employment.

"Left to their own devices, markets are not delivering the desired levels of economic security," the survey says.

As a result, the report calls for "steps to narrow the pendulum swings of economic cycles, reduce dependence on debt and finance instruments for economic growth, tailor macroeconomic policies to development priorities and inject new life into multilateralism."

As an example of "misconceived policies", it cites the case of agriculture, where pressure on developing economies to open trade and finance markets preceded the means to build productive farms and rural infrastructure.

"This lack of capacity has now become a destabilising factor in a bedrock feature of personal and social security-- the ability of a country to feed its citizens."

In May 2007, a fax arrived at the London office of the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat from a shadowy figure in the radical Islamist movement who went by many names. Born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, he was the former leader of the Egyptian terrorist group al-Jihad, and known to those in the underground mainly as Dr Fadl. Members of al-Jihad became part of the original core of al-Qaeda; among them was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant. Fadl was one of the first members of al-Qaeda's top council. Twenty years ago, he wrote two of the most important books in modern Islamist discourse; al-Qaeda used them to indoctrinate recruits and justify killing. Now Fadl was announcing a new book, rejecting al-Qaeda's violence. 'We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that,' Fadl wrote in his fax, which was sent from Tora Prison, in Egypt.

Police say two people have been found dead at a music festival in southern Norway headlined by Alice Cooper.

The victims were found in or near a bus at the Norway Rock Festival in Kvinesdal, 270 miles southwest of Oslo.

"We do not know exactly how they died, but we assume they suffocated on fumes while they were on the bus," said police spokesperson Asbjorn Enoksen.

Six more festival-goers were taken to hospital after being found outside the vehicle, he told the AFP news agency.

Former White House press secretary Tony Snow, 53, has died of cancer.

He resigned as President George W Bush's spokesman in August 2007 - after just 17 months in the job - citing financial reasons.

Mr Bush described him as "a devoted public servant and a man of character". "He brought wit, grace, and a great love of country to his work," he said.

The father-of-three had joined President Bush's team from Fox News TV in April 2006.

Mr Snow had his colon removed in 2005. In 2007, he announced that his cancer had recurred and had spread to his liver.

GORE, Jul 12 (IPS) - The U.N. High Commission for Refugees says that in the five years since camps were established in Southern Chad for Central African refugees, U.N.-administered agriculture programs have reduced external food assistance to a minimum.

<...>

IPS: You have different programs for farmers and herders, right?

BA: Yes. The farmers, they need research. They have very little land, less than 1.5 hectares apiece, so they need the best methods and the best tools. But there's not enough of anything. The refugee farmers came here with nothing, so it has been necessary to cover them, especially in the beginning, and particularly as far as seeds are concerned. HCR and our partner Africare give them seeds.

Every year we draw up an agriculture plan and discuss it with the farmers. For example, we found that each worker on a farm needs his own hoe. So we make a budget and give it to UNHCR. Now, UNHCR has a lot of refugees to take care of - 250,000 in the east - so there's never enough to go around. But WFP contributes, and Africare does, too - they have some big American donors. We got around $1 million from UNHCR last year. One thousand dollars can set up the cultivation of 10 hectares.

The toughest thing for farmers' self-sufficiency is access to land. Really, each family needs 2.5 hectares. Right now the average in Gore is just 1.3 hectares. So we have tried to introduce better production systems.

For instance, we're trying to introduce the farmers to "rest crops," to take better advantage of the land. Many refugees grow rice, but it requires lots of fertiliser and depletes the land, so you need rest crops between rice harvests that can restore the land. Also, we've introduced "kitchen gardens" for growing small batches of vegetables. The refugees love these.

If you ask me, it's not just about the quantity of land. It's about the methods of production. You can get more out of land if you use good processes. With the right methods, you can be self-sufficient.

UPDATE: OK, so it seems I might have been pwn3d a little bit, as this guy apparently was trying to write something satirical. All the same, he wrote it in a way that made it virtually impossible to tell if he was being funny or being just another dumb-ass right-winger. There's virtually zero difference between this op-ed and your typical Jonah Goldberg column, so you can see why I had such an itchy trigger finger. At any rate, I think my take-down still stands, since it's entirely possible that Fred Hiatt actually took this seriously and thought this would be informative commentary. After all, this is the same guy who regularly publishes Kathleen Parker's rants demanding that women be banned from serving in the armed forces. Hell, just today the SOB published a completely-serious op-ed by Amity Shlaes called "Phil Gramm Is Right."

In other words, this is all central to my point. Dig?

Pretend you're Fred Hiatt. You run the Washington Post editorial page. You have the ability to seek out and publish some of the most intelligent and thoughtful writers and scholars in the world, many of whom are clamoring to gain exposure to a mass audience. So what do you do? Do you scour the globe for unique, fresh and informative voices to provide the very best expert commentary that will give your readers a better understanding of the world we live in? Or do you publish editorials like this one that call environmentalists a bunch of fags? Take a look:

Hummer, How We Need Thee

By Matthew DeBord

When General Motors announced that it would subject its Hummer division to what in the automotive business is known as a "review," you could hear the tree huggers, the unreconstructed hippies, the postmodern Greens, Al Gore's organic peanut gallery, every single customer at the Pasadena Whole Foods and the United Prius Owners of America shove aside their alfalfa sprouts and commence clapping.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. OMG ROFL IT IS TOO FUNNY FOREVER. PEOPLE WHO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT NOT POLLUTING THE FUCK OUT OF EVERYTHING ARE A BUNCH OF VA-JAY-JAYS!!!!1!! WHO EAT HEALTHY FOOD!!!! OMG WHO THE FUCK EATS HEALTHY FOOD THEY ARE TEH F4GZ!!!!!

It goes on like this:

[I]t would be a mistake for GM, assisted by the raving grease-monkey CPAs of Citibank, to sell the brand to an upstart carmaker in India or China or to breed it as a hybrid, as some have suggested. GM desperately needs an obnoxious, attention-grabbing brand to keep from turning into a dreary shadow of its former self. And America needs the Hummer to remind us of what has always made our automobiles stand out, from the tailfin 1950s to the muscle car 1960s and '70s: swagger.

Uh, yeah. Enjoy your "swagger" when you're paying $600 a month for gas, asshole. Bling-bling!

This will only get funnier:

Gramm Remark Adds to McCain's Difficulty Addressing the Economy

Sen. John McCain ventured to an auto-parts supplier in this hard-hit Detroit suburb to express sympathy for those affected by Michigan's economic malaise and to talk up his ideas for creating jobs in the region.

But a day after a top McCain economic adviser dismissed the nation's struggles as a "mental recession," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's message landed with a thud, as workers sat in stony silence.

McCain was already running into a stiff headwind because of an ailing economy, and his task only became tougher after former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) suggested that the United States has "become a nation of whiners."

Gramm, who has helped shape McCain's presidential campaign and is a close friend of the candidate, expressed no regret on Thursday for the comments he made in an interview with the Washington Times, saying: "I'm not going to retract any of it. Every word I said was true."

See, Gramm's "let the whiners eat goddamn cake" statement doesn't really qualify as a "gaffe," because he actually meant it to come off as it did. Gaffes are statements or phrases that are poorly-worded and that can be interpreted as crude or offensive. When Crazy Phil Gramm says that the economy is really in awesome shape and that the American people are just a bunch of sissified whiners, he really means it. This, my friends, is the crux of right-wing ideology: the idea that non-rich people are entirely to blame for any misfortunes they encounter. T'ain't no gaffe, son.

Good luck dispwning this fool, St. BBQ.

Bush Lifts Ban on New Solar Projects
 They got caught and people objected

 Link

 Excerpt:
Under increasing public pressure over their decision to temporarily halt all new solar development
on public land, the Bush bastards said Wednesday that they was lifting the freeze, barely a month
after it was put into effect.

The bastards had announced on May 29 that it was no longer processing new applications to build
solar power plants on land it oversees in six Western states after federal officials said they first needed
to study the environmental effects of solar energy, a process that would take two years.

But amid concerns from the solar power industry, members of Congress and the general public that
the freeze would stymie solar development during a particularly critical time for energy policy,
the bastards abruptly reconsidered.
 

You mean if the people rise up and complain, we can change things?
 

yeeehah!

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

and last but not least, our very own 21st C Lao Tzu

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

In a catalogue "1000 Best Beaches of the World" recently published in the USA Russia is represented only by the beach of the "Naturist Society" in the Gulf of Finland under St. Petersburg. The beach administration has demonstrated the colourful illustrated catalogue and marks that no other Russian beach was included in the rating.