Humanizing the other side: Interview with Alex Avakian

This was first publised the March 7, 2009 Armenian Reporter

Photographer Alexandra Avakian seeks to “humanize the other side”
She has worked in some of the world’s most violent places

Alexandra Avakian has been a National Geographic photographer since 1995. Armenia, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Muslims in the United States have been among her assignments. From 1988 to 1996 she worked for Life, Time, and the New York Times Magazine, covering conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union, including the 1988 earthquake in Armenia and the war in Karabakh.

Ms. Avakian recently released a book, Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World, published by Focal Point / National Geographic. She completed it while she successfully battled breast cancer. The book includes a chapter on the former USSR, including a number of photos from Karabakh. She spoke about her work with Washington Editor Emil Sanamyan on February 13.

Professional roots

Armenian Reporter: What brought you to photography?

Alexandra Avakian: By the time I graduated from college, I was already very advanced, soon became a professional, and got my first paid job at Newsweek. And one of the most important reasons is my dad.

Ms. Avakian produces the November 1969 issue of Life magazine (“I just bought it on E-bay”) featuring the work of her father, the late Aram Avakian, a filmmaker best known for his 1969 film End of the Road. The article includes a picture of Ms. Avakian’s mother, actress Dorothy Tristan, and of Alexandra herself.

And the family’s artistic prominence by no means ends there. Aram’s brother George Avakian is a jazz music producer who was honored with a Grammy award on February 7.

Avakian: My dad taught me how to tell stories through pictures from the time I was very, very young. He sat me down on his lap as he was editing a movie, and he would say, “Here is where you cut the story and this is why.” And he would let me make the cut.

I would draw him a story on a blank strip of film that he would run through a Moviola, so that I could see the product. Photography was a way of expressing myself since the time I was very young.

By the time I finished college in 1983, I already had a portfolio of my work in Manhattan. And that was another thing, since I was born in New York City, I didn’t really have to go far to begin working for top magazines.

AR: And how did you end up going that far away from home?

Avakian: Already in college I was very fascinated by revolution and fights for freedom and how far people would go to be free. And it did not have anything to do with ideology.

I covered the Berlin Wall fall [in 1989] and ended up living in Moscow [from 1990 to 1992] during the fall of the Soviet Union, and I was fascinated with all these republics spinning away and what they were doing.

The other important thing that influenced my work deeply is my Armenian heritage. Like many Armenians, my family fled many terrible things, survived many horrors, and that led me to engage in world events and cover people’s suffering.

Learning what my family went through was the ultimate lesson in empathy for others. And working in regions my family had lived in was a way of reaching my ancestors and relatives who have passed and can no longer speak to me and tell me what it was like to live through these things. I felt the need to understand what human beings do to one another and why, and what it is like to be in the shoes of a refugee woman trying to escape with her children.

The strange and awful times in Armenia

AR: You went to Armenia following the earthquake in December 1988.…

Avakian: I did. We were on a family vacation in Egypt. And when I heard [the news] I felt I could never forgive myself if I did not get on the plane and go.

So, I went to the Soviet Embassy and there was an ethnic Armenian diplomat there. And I nagged him, “Please, I am an Armenian, I have got to go.” And he said, “You need an invitation [to go into USSR] but just go.”

When asked if the diplomat in question was the current foreign minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, who worked for the Soviet Embassy in Egypt at the time, Ms. Avakian says: “You are probably right, but that was a long time ago.”

“It is interesting how many people who became well-known Armenians I met over the years while at work,” she adds later. “I met Robert Kocharian while he was organizing a protest in the Stepanakert street in 1989. And Arkady Ghukasian and I worked side by side on the front line when he was a war reporter in 1992.”

So he gave me a visa and I went, and I landed in Moscow, and I could never have imagined myself in that place. I was wearing very light clothing and it was snowing. I could not get a hotel room because I did not have an invitation.

But I had already been working for Time and Life magazines a lot and by the time I arrived in Moscow, I had an assignment to cover the earthquake. I went to their [Moscow] bureau, not realizing at the time that my life would center on that bureau and the former USSR for the next four years.

It took me a while to get permission to get out to Armenia. In the meantime, I photographed children evacuated from Armenia to Moscow and camped out at government buildings there.

Eventually, I went to Armenia for a month and lived with Armenian doctors from MSF [Doctors without Borders] in a broken-down school in Leninakan, now Gyumri.

It was a strange and awful time.

When I first arrived our plane had to land in Georgia because of the weather – I think a plane had just crashed trying to land in Armenia – and we drove in.

The first place we stopped was Spitak, and there were these trenches for the coffins. It was extremely difficult. To see people suffer is difficult enough and that was in a country where I have roots.

I saw very moving and very surprising things. Like in a war, [in a major calamity] you see the seemingly weak become strong and strong become weak; I saw a lot of that. ¬ere were villages where people were looking after one another and villages where aid trucks were attacked.

After covering the earthquake area, Time magazine had me stay on to cover some of the skirmishes on the border with Azerbaijan [in early 1989]. It was in the Kapan area [in southern Armenia].

There were these villagers mostly with hunting rifles and some with Kalashnikovs patrolling the area. I stayed at the home of one of their grandmothers, who was a very classic Armenian lady.

And then, being based in Moscow, I kept coming back to Armenia. But I also went to the Baltic states, Central Asia, and to Georgia and covered the wars there. (In fact, my grandmother was an Armenian from Tbilisi, whereas my grandfather was from an Armenian village in northwestern Iran.)

AR: When did you cover the Karabakh war?

Avakian: I got out there five or six times during the war and afterward as well.

The first time I really covered Karabakh was for the New York Times with Bill Keller in August 1989. We arrived in Baku – it was still possible for me to do this in the Soviet period – and we went by train to Aghdam and then to Shushi and Stepanakert.

There was not an out-and-out war yet. Armenians and Azeris were fighting village to village. [The Soviet envoy] Arkady Volsky was still in [charge of Karabakh] and Soviet troops were very much there.

The next time I went in March 1992. Things got really intense by then. My Armenian colleagues in Yerevan discouraged me from going, but I again really felt like I had to go. In the end they gave me a bulletproof vest and a map. We took a small plane in that landed like this [makes a corkscrew motion].

AR: What did you see?

Avakian: It was bad. People were losing their minds because they were living underground [in bomb shelters] for so long. 158 or 159 Grad missiles landed on Stepanakert in one day. It was nuts.

It was also fascinating because I got permission to work at the front line in the trenches between Askeran and Aghdam. And it was as wild and out of control as wars get.

I went to one of the exchanges, where prisoners, civilians, as well as bodies were traded. And as we were driving away a shell flew right over the hood of the Armenian commander’s car we were in. ¬

They tried to kill us. And it was not the guys with whom the trade was done because their commander was actually a friend of the Armenian commander’s. And you could tell the shell came from another direction.

I could no longer cross the line to the Azeri side – it was impossible at that time. And in fact it was not possible for a while before and after. As a journalist you want to reach the other side but it was just not possible [because of my Armenian background].

Windows of the Soul is not about Armenia – that I will get to, perhaps when I do a book on the fall of Communism or something – but I decided to include Karabakh.

The last time I went to Karabakh was in 2003 when I did a story on Armenia for National Geographic.
I guess I have been to Armenia 15 times all together.

AR: And how did Armenia strike you that time?

Avakian: The previous time I went was in 1994, shortly after the cease-fire, so there was a big difference. But there were three things that were challenging for Armenia.

In Gyumri, there were still people living in a bad situation in makeshift housing. There were so many Armenian men going to work in Russia, leaving women and children alone. And something that former Soviet republics have difficulty focusing on with all the other problems – the environmental issues, like industrial waste.

But it was a much happier time and I really felt the country was really healing at that time.

Importance of mutual respect

AR: You worked in Iran – covering Ayatollah Khomeini’s funeral in 1988 and again later – and you worked with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Was it especially challenging for a woman?

Avakian: I had to wear extremely strict hijab (modest dress with head covering) in 1988. Now it is much looser, you can show more hair, but then it was really strict. It was never my role to challenge those mores at all. For me wearing a scarf was like having a passport. And when I wear it, I am treated with respect and people know that I respect their culture. And I am happy about that.

There is a chapter in the book about Muslim-Americans. I spent almost two years with them after the September 11 attacks. In one of the assignments, I photographed the Muslim population of Graterford prison in Pennsylvania – some 800 inmates, mostly African-Americans – they are mainstream Sunni Muslims and just a few Nation of Islam guys.

It was a maximum-security facility, a lot of [people] sentenced to life in prison. But when I went in, even though it is America, I went in full Islamic dress to show respect to the Muslim elders at the prison. I was coming to ask them if I could photograph their Friday prayers.

And they were very welcoming to me. Moreover, they protected me in this very dangerous facility, because when you are deep inside a prison like that there are no armed guards around.

World’s least frequented places

AR: What was the most dangerous place that you have been to?

Avakian: There are different levels of danger.

Living in Gaza, anything could happen any time. I was shot at by an Israeli sniper and beaten bloody by Hamas just doing my job. It was at the time of riots against Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian authority.

[In the latter case] I had to go the Hamas sheikh in the area that I lived in to complain, because I could not be beaten like that and continue living in that place. And the next day they ordered from the minarets that journalists are not to be attacked.

Somalia definitely was most dangerous in terms of going from place A to place B. You could not do it without bodyguards. ¬They could kill you for a can of coke, your sunglasses, or nothing. I was there for five months and people were dying from starvation all around and clans were fighting each other.

In the book there is a story about a 12-year-old boy trying to kill me. For nothing. His gun was practically as big as he was. And I yelled at him, “I could be your mother.” And other gunmen around actually took his gun away from him. It was a gamble, but it turned out OK.

AR: And how was southern Sudan? How did you even get in there?

Avakian: I was in Nairobi, Kenya, and wanted to cover Sudan, where the famine was getting worse. With a few journalist friends we rented a little plane, with Time magazine and Reuters splitting the costs.

We went and spent some time in Ayod, this tragic village with the Irish aid group Concern. ¬The people were starving to death there in large numbers. And the axle on the plane breaks as it hits a hole in the earthen landing strip on takeoff and we wait for another plane.

And then we fly to this other village, Yuai, to photograph the rebel chief and his guerilla fighters. The writers, including the Time correspondent, did their interviews and they said “we are done” straight after they finished their interview with the commander.

And the United Nations [people] said, “we are done too,” because they could not operate anymore with the front line getting so close. All the aid agencies left and I stayed along with two other journalists because I did not have my story yet. (In addition to starving civilians I needed to cover the rebels.)

I finally got out of there after being stranded with no way out after my work was done, when an aid plane dropped some bags of food and I jumped aboard. But all the people of that village were massacred a couple of weeks later if they were too weak to run. I can never forget them.

From violence to dialogue

Now, for many years I no longer cover open conflicts. By the time National Geographic first hired me in 1995 I felt I was really done. I had seen too many funerals and I felt lucky to be in one piece.

But before that, [covering conflicts] was my job and my calling. Starting with the Haitian uprising against Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986 and through 1995, I was covering conflicts.

But I am still interested in revolutions and revolutionary societies are fascinating. And I love culture. I am always interested in covering the other side.

Iran, for example, is fascinating for all those reasons. It is a very old culture, by now also an old revolution and also a long-time enemy of the United States.

It is very interesting to go to the other side and capture the humanity of people. How they get up in the morning and have breakfast. How they dress. How they worship, whatever their religion. All these things humanize the other side and this is especially important in a post 9/11 world of deep misunderstandings. Because then I feel like there is a chance for dialogue.

AR: The recently elected President Barack Obama has been talking about the need for dialogue with the Muslim world. Having spent so much time in that world, what advice can you offer?

Avakian: I am not an advocate. I always try to cover both sides. I think that is my duty as a reporter. What I think I have learned is that all over the world people want to feed their families, they want freedom of speech and security, they want respect. ¬This is what all people share.

Now, looking back at the many conflict areas I covered it seems economics are at the root of many conflicts. People need to have an opportunity to make a living, to protect their families, and to build a decent life.

Alexandra Avakian is a senior member of the prestigious Contact Press Images, N.Y. photo agency. For Avakian’s National Geographic blog, book, gallery, bio and more visit:
http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/photography/windowsofthesoul

Briefly: Lantos retires, Gül to visit U.S., Russia supplies Iran with nuclear fuel and Putin “Person of the Year.”

This was originally published in January 5, 2008 Armenian Reporter.

by Emil Sanamyan

Congressman Lantos announces retirement
Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Tom Lantos (D.-Calif.) said on January 2 that he will retire from Congress at the end of 2008. “Routine medical tests have revealed that I have cancer of the esophagus,” Rep. Lantos said in a statement. “In view of this development and the treatment it will require, I will not seek re-election.”

Rep. Lantos, together with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, played a key role in assuring the passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution in the Foreign Affairs Committee last October. Rep. Lantos described that vote to PBS as “a significant step in restoring the moral authority of U.S. foreign policy.”

Until 2005, Mr. Lantos – the only Holocaust survivor in Congress – opposed similar resolutions, citing Turkey’s importance to the U.S. and Israel. Rep. Lantos, who will turn 80 next month, has represented a San Francisco-area congressional district since 1980 and for over a decade has been one of the most influential congressional voices on foreign affairs.

Should Democrats retain their congressional majority next year, Rep. Lantos is likely to be replaced as committee chair by Rep. Howard Berman (D.-Calif.), a member of the Armenian Caucus and a supporter of Armenian-American issues.

On January 3, Rep. Lantos’ hometown newspaper, the San Mateo Daily News, reported that former California State Senator Jackie Speier (D.-San Mateo), who is of Armenian descent, had been planning a run for Rep. Lantos’ seat even before his retirement announcement. At this time, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D.-Calif.) is the only member of Congress of Armenian descent.

Turkish president to visit United States
President Abdullah Gül of Turkey has been invited to visit the United States next week. He will meet President George W. Bush at the White House on January 8 and will then travel to New York for a meeting with the United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Turkish media report that talks in Washington will focus on Turkey’s concerns over Kurds and in New York – over Cyprus. Gül’s will be the first visit by Turkish president to the United States since 1996.

“Obviously President Gül’s visit to the White House will reconfirm the importance attached to our bilateral ties,” the Turkish Daily News cited an anonymous Turkish diplomat as saying on January 2. “We are satisfied with the new intelligence sharing system and looking forward to deepening our cooperation,” he said in reference to assistance the U.S. has begun to provide Turkey since an early November meeting between President Bush and visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The visit also comes shortly after Iraqi Kurdish leaders said they would postpone by six months a referendum on the status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Turkey has long objected to making that majority Kurdish-populated (and de facto controlled) city part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Russia resumes nuclear fuel shipments to Iran
With international pressure at least temporarily off Iran over its nuclear program, following the publication of the most recent U.S. intelligence assessment (see this page in the Dec. 8, 2007 Armenian Reporter), Russia at the end of December resumed supplying nuclear fuel to an Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Senior officials in Tehran also suggested that Russia would supply the Iranian armed forces advanced air defense systems, news agencies reported. But Russian officials would not confirm that the deal to supply the S-300 surface-to-air missile systems was currently on the agenda.

Last fall, Russia suspended the fuel supplies, as the U.S. prodded the international community to take a tougher stand against the Tehran government, which it accuses of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. But the U.S.’s own intelligence estimate released a month ago determined that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.


Time names Putin “Person of the Year”
In its annual selection, Time picked Russian President Vladimir Putin as its “Person of the Year 2007.” The magazine said that the Russian president was chosen because he performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power.”

Mr. Putin, who was chosen over former U.S. vice president and Nobel laureate Al Gore, became the fourth Russian leader to be selected since Time began the selections in 1927. The others chosen included Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957), and Mikhail Gorbachev (1989).

Putin picks successor and is likely to become prime minister

This was originally published in December 15, 2007 Armenian Reporter.

by Emil Sanamyan and Nareg Seferian

WASHINGTON – Russia’s president ended months of speculation about his likely successor when he approved the choice of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as the ruling party’s candidate for president in the elections set for March 2008.

President Vladimir Putin said on December 10 that he “fully and completely” supports the choice of United Russia and three smaller pro-presidential parties of the 42-year-old Mr. Medvedev as a candidate for president, news agencies reported. Another deputy-Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, who oversees security agencies, was believed to be the other top contender.

Mr. Putin remains overwhelmingly popular in Russia and his endorsement is seen as decisive for Mr. Medvedev’s election. On December 2, the Putin-led United Russia and other pro-presidential parties won an overwhelming majority of seats in parliament.

Russian stock markets have rallied on the news. Mr. Medvedev said on December 11 that, if elected, he will invite Mr. Putin to serve as prime minister.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent member of the outgoing parliament, said that Mr. Medvedev was picked as successor because he would “without a doubt give up the path” for Putin, if he should choose to return to the Kremlin at some future time, The AP reported.

Like Mr. Putin, the would-be successor is a native of Saint Petersburg, where he was trained as a lawyer. Mr. Medvedev began his professional career in 1994 as an aide to Mr. Putin, then a mid-level official in the city government of Russia’s second-largest city, and then followed him to Moscow in 1999.

There Mr. Medvedev rose to become Mr. Putin’s chief of staff in 2003 and then deputy- Prime Minister in 2005. Mr. Medvedev has also served as the chair of the board of Gazprom, the state-owned oil and gas conglomerate, which also co-owns Armenia’s natural gas monopoly.

In addition to other duties, Mr. Medvedev coordinated the Year of Armenia in Russia in 2006. In May 2005, while working as Mr. Putin’s chief of staff, he visited Yerevan to discuss bilateral cooperation.

Briefly: U.S.' Iraq policy, anti-Americanism in Turkey, Georgia and U.S., Armenia’s nuclear neighborhood, Russia’s new PM

First published in the September 15, 2007 Armenian Reporter

From Washington, in brief
by Emil Sanamyan

Bush Administration resists calls for withdrawal from Iraq

Speaking in Congress this week, the U.S. commander in Iraq made the Bush Administration’s case for maintaining the American military presence in the country at about the current level, at least until next summer. Democratic leaders continued to call for a substantial withdrawal sooner rather than later.

On September 10 and 11, Gen. David Petraeus pointed to some progress made in establishing security in central Iraq since the U.S. began its “surge” earlier this year to the current troop level of over 160,000. But the pressure has been building from both Democrats and Republicans to begin to pull troops out of the increasingly unpopular conflict in Iraq, particularly ahead of November 2008 presidential and congressional elections.

The war launched by the United States in March 2003 and the subsequent insurgency and civil war in Iraq have so far resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. and coalition military personnel, and well over 70,000 Iraqi civilians, displacing about two million more.

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 55 percent of Americans want U.S. troops out of Iraq by early 2008. Gen. Petraeus could only see up to 30,000 U.S. personnel possibly withdrawn by summer of 2008 – something that would reverse this year’s “surge,” but would also almost certainly leave the Iraq conflict for the next American president to sort out.

A small Armenian contingent is set to remain in Iraq until the end of 2007, when the Armenian government may seek another extension for the deployment. It is based near the town of Al Kut, in the same area near the Iraq-Iran border where the U.S. is planning to build a large military based, according to the September 10 report in the Wall Street Journal.

Poll: Anti-American sentiments in Turkey not limited to U.S. government

Turks continue to have some of the strongest anti-American sentiments in the world, according to a study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project conducted earlier this year. The findings, circulated by www.worldpublicopinion.org on September 5, show that more than 83 percent of Turks hold an unfavorable view of the United States, and 77 percent dislike Americans.

The Pew study also confirmed findings of a Bilgi University study (see this column in the June 16 Armenian Reporter ) according to which Turks view the United States, their country’s longtime NATO ally, as the greatest threat to their security; 64 percent in the Pew study said the U.S. was a threat to Turkey, and 35 percent in the Bilgi study said the U.S. posed the biggest threat (more than any other source).

Commentators see the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq as the main reason for the increase in anti-American attitudes. Turks are particularly unhappy with the strengthening of a de facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq and simultaneous intensification of insurgent attacks in majority Kurdish southeastern Turkey. The intermittent clashes so far this year are believed to have killed 300 Kurds and about 100 Turkish security forces, the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation reported on September 5.

Turkish dislikes of America are spilling into apolitical spheres as well. Thus, 81 percent “dislike American ideas about democracy,” 83 percent dislike “American ways of doing business,” 68 percent dislike “American music, movies and television,” and up to 51 percent say they do not admire the United States for its “technological and scientific advances.”

Georgian foreign minister works to retain U.S. support

The U.S. secretaries of state and defense offered continued support for Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration (also known as NATO membership), the Georgian Foreign Ministry reported on September 11, after Minister Gela Bezhuashvili met with Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates.

Mr. Bezhuashvili told the Associated Press that Georgia hopes for a formal invitation to join the alliance in April 2008. “This is the highest priority of our foreign policy,” he told AP.

The U.S. supports Georgia’s membership, but it is unclear whether the country would be able to win unanimous backing from alliance members wary of expansion and Georgia’s volatility (see this column in the September 8 Armenian Reporter).

Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington on September 10, Mr. Bezhuashvili sought to play down continued tensions with Russia and said Georgia would respond “moderately” to future “provocations.” He also argued that Georgia’s increased military spending was needed to fund its armed forces’ reform and missions abroad – particularly in Iraq, where it is in the process of increasing its presence to 2,000 service members.

Mr. Bezhuashvili’s talk focused on improvements in Georgia’s business climate, noting the growth in foreign investments from $400 million in 2005 to $1.5 billion in 2006, which he said had resulted from reduced corruption and increased transparency.

Asked by the Armenian Reporter why the investors who last month secured the rights to manage Georgia’s railroad (see this column in August 25 Armenian Reporter ) have not been named, Mr. Bezhuashvili claimed that he was not familiar with the deal since he had been traveling for weeks.

A Georgian business tycoon, Badri Patarkatsishvili, denied media speculation that he had taken control of the railroad in exchange for his TV holding, www.civil.ge reported on September 10. Mr. Patarkatsishvili recently relocated to London after he claimed his Imedi television station came under pressure from the Georgian government.

The Georgian Messenger daily reported on September 7 that the railroad’s formal owner, the Britishregistered Parkfield Investments, was a shell company backed by two other offshore groups registered respectively in the Bahamas and Cyprus.

Armenia’s neighbors are also interested in nuclear energy

According to preliminary estimates, a new nuclear power plant will take four-and-a-half years to build and cost $2 billion, Armenian news agencies cited Energy Minister Armen Movsisian as telling the National Assembly on September 7. A project feasibility study, currently being developed together with Russia, the U.S., and the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA), is to be ready by next year, Mr. Movsisian said.

Despite the steep price tag, Mr. Movsisian said that “only a new nuclear plant can become an alternative for the existing power plant” at Metsamor, which is slated to be decommissioned in the next decade, PanArmenian.net reported.

He added that due to the efforts of the Armenian government, key international players “now realize that Armenia must have an atomic power plant.” In addition to Iran’s widely publicized nuclear efforts, Armenia’s three other neighbors are also looking to benefit from nuclear technology. The Turkish government still plans to have nuclear energy by 2020, although construction plans for a plant were scrapped during the economic crisis in 2000.

Last month, the Georgian government established a state commission headed by its energy minister to look into the possibility of constructing a nuclear reactor in Georgia, Prime News reported on August 16 (also see this column in
the June 23 Armenian Reporter ). And on August 24, the Azeri Trend news agency reported that, with help from IAEA, the Azerbaijani government is planning to begin building a nuclear reactor near Baku in 2009. Azerbaijan is reportedly looking to build a nuclear power plant later this century, when its oil and gas resources are expected to run out.

Around the world, there are 31 nuclear reactors now under construction, with 439 reactors currently working, the Economist reported on September 8. In the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to receive a total of 27 applications in 2007–8 for building new nuclear reactors.

Russian President appoints new Prime Minister

With just six months left before the Russian presidential elections, President Vladimir Putin replaced his prime minister on September 12, international news agencies reported. But instead of naming his likely successor to the post, Mr. Putin appointed a largely unknown bureaucrat, Viktor Zubkov, to take over from another political lightweight, Mikhail Fradkov.

After more than seven years in office, Mr. Putin remains popular in Russia, but he will not stand in elections when his second term runs out in March 2008. Speculations have focused on three influential deputy Prime ministers – Sergei Ivanov, Sergei Naryshkin, and Dmitri Medvedev – as his most likely successors.

On the day of the reshuffle, Vedomosti, a leading Russian business daily, cited a source close to the Kremlin as saying that Mr. Ivanov would be named prime minister. But instead Mr. Zubkov – a 66-year-old, longtime colleague of Mr. Putin, who until now had headed a state committee combating money laundering – was appointed.

Most Russia watchers have ruled out Mr. Zubkov as a potential successor, and still see Mr. Ivanov as the most likely next president of Russia.