Also on Saturday, tens of thousands of supporters of Manuel Rosales, Chavez's main challenger in Dec. 3 presidential elections, staged a 16-mile march through the capital Caracas. More than 1,000 police were deployed along the route to prevent clashes between Rosales supporters and "Chavistas" who gathered on street corners shouting "Viva Chavez!" and "Oh, No! Chavez Won't Go!" as the marchers passed.

The opposition has accused Chavez's administration of political coercion after Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez was caught on videotape threatening to fire employees of state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, who oppose Chavez.

"If they try to destabilize PDVSA, if the empire and its lackeys in Venezuela attempt another coup, ignore the outcome of the elections or cause election or oil-related upheaval, we won't send another drop of oil to the United States," Chavez said in a speech to PDVSA workers in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz, 150 miles east of Caracas.

Chavez - a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro - said President Bush "had better tie down his crazies here in Venezuela" to prevent a possible end to petroleum exports.

Venezuela supplied 12 percent of U.S. crude oil imports last year and the U.S. remains the top buyer of Venezuelan oil.

On Friday, Chavez suggested anyone who does not like his leftist policies should go somewhere else, like Miami.

Television footage released during the week by opposition supporters showed Oil Minister Ramirez telling PDVSA workers to back Chavez or give up their jobs. Opposition leaders said it was clear proof of political coercion which violated rules against the use of state institutions as campaign tools.

Earlier Saturday, Rosales urged PDVSA employees to help vote Chavez out of office.

"They can be assured that nobody is ever going to know for whom they voted," he told reporters during the march through the capital.

Rosales' campaign says electoral officials can impose a maximum fine of $7,800 on Ramirez if it finds campaign rules have been broken. It also is demanding an investigation by prosecutors.

In comments published by the Venezuelan daily newspaper Ultimas Noticias on Friday, Ramirez said he did nothing to violate campaign rules because there was no explicit call "to vote for one candidate in particular but rather we backed President Chavez as head of state." He said more internal videos would be released to quell any doubts.

"I hope Georgia will not follow the bad example of Ukraine," Medvedev said on the sidelines of a briefing late Tuesday.

Gazprom last week said it wanted to charge Georgia $230 per 1,000 cubic meters, more than double what Georgia now pays and an amount comparable to what European countries pay.

The demand provoked accusations from Georgia that Gazprom was playing power politics amid a bitter dispute between Moscow and Tbilisi that began with a spy row and led to Russia imposing a trade embargo and deporting hundreds of Georgian nationals. Tension has been rising for months as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili seeks to move his country out of Moscow's orbit and integrate it into the West.

Medvedev denied the price increase was a political move and said Georgia could lower the price by offering some of its energy assets -- a demand that Gazprom has made of other countries, including Belarus.

"Georgia has the opportunity to offer assets as does any other country," Medvedev told the news briefing with foreign reporters. "But if there is no contract, there will be no supplies.

"I would not say this is a cutoff," he added.

Medvedev said accusations often voiced by Western politicians that Gazprom was using its might as the world's largest holder of gas reserves as a political weapon were unfounded. "It was politics when there were subsidies [to former Soviet republics]. Today it is pure commerce," he said.

"We're treating all former Soviet republics equally," he said in response to a question over a lower price for Belarus, which has remained in Moscow's sphere of influence.

He defended the price of $110 per thousand cubic meters of gas for Armenia, a Russian ally, as being set one year ago, while Gazprom had recently clinched a deal with Armenia's Armrosgazprom for joint control of energy assets, he said.

Gazprom hopes to reach a similar deal for joint ownership of Belarussian energy assets, he said. Gazprom has been in talks about a stake in Beltransgaz, the Belarussian pipeline monopoly. Gazprom has been threatening to hike Belarus' gas price to $200 from the $47 it currently charges.

Medvedev could not resist a dig at critics of Gazprom's increasing might. "Independent media," he said, are intent on making Gazprom look like a "monster, while the others follow like sheep."

Invoking Lenin, Medvedev dismissed reporters' calls to disclose the details of a gas contract with Ukraine that raised the price to $130 this year, saying the details should be left to professionals. Otherwise, "everybody will be able to do business in gas," he said, citing Lenin, who is thought to have said that every cook should be able to run the state.

Tuesday's briefing was the first time a senior Gazprom executive had appeared before the media since the gas giant shocked investors by announcing it would go it alone on developing the vast Shtokman gas field beyond the Arctic Circle after years of talks with foreign oil majors on joint development.

Medvedev defended the decision as a response to the low quality of assets that prospective foreign partners had offered in return for their participation. "We were not satisfied with the value and the quality of the assets that were offered to us," he said. "Value comes first."

He said stalled talks on Gazprom taking a stake in the huge Sakhalin-2 project being run by Shell could only start once Shell had cleared up problems with the authorities over accusations of ecological violations and a massive hike in costs for the projects. Shell could lose a key license after the Natural Resources Ministry started investigating environmental standards at the project.

Talks with Italy's ENI were progressing well, Medvedev said, but he denied reports that Gazprom might offer the firm its stake in independent gas producer Novatek. "Today almost all differences with ENI have been cleared, and the remainder are likely to be cleared during a meeting of the firm's heads in mid-November," he said.

Buksman's remarks were the first time that a senior official has put a monetary figure on the problem of corruption. A study published in September 2005 by Indem, the anti-corruption think tank, found government officials and state-paid workers, including police officers and doctors, were collecting bribes of $316 billion per year, a nearly tenfold increase from 2001.

Buksman said 9,000 bribery cases were uncovered in the first eight months of this year. In one case, the deputy head of the state property fund's branch in Krasnodar is accused of taking $410,000 in bribes, he said.

In all, prosecutors exposed 28,000 cases of corruption, he said.

Buksman praised a drive by recently appointed Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to root out corruption as a "principally new approach to the problem." He said prosecutors uncovered 47,000 violations among federal and municipal civil servants since July, when that plan was unveiled. As a result, 600 bribery-related criminal cases have been opened, and almost 2,700 officials have faced disciplinary action, he said.

Buksman said officials often moonlighted as businesspeople and founders of firms, noting that the head of a federal hunting regulator in the Altai region is accused of doubling as the co-owner and director of a firm that organized hunting trips.

Buksman, an ally of Chaika from his previous tenure as justice minister, was appointed to his current post in July. Chaika took over as prosecutor general in June.

The average windfall for each individual at the five largest U.S. securities firms will be enough to buy a $165,000 Bentley Continental GT, the two-door coupe favored by Paris Hilton and Cher. They'll have plenty of change for a box of Romeo y Julieta cigars and a case of Pol Roger champagne - the stuff enjoyed by Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister in the 1940s and 1950s.

Credit-default swap specialists, who speculate on companies' ability to repay debt, won't be the only winners this year.

New York City cut the estimate for its budget deficit by 87 percent last week, in part because of the investment banks' better-than-expected earnings. The state comptroller's office said Oct. 17 that tax receipts from the financial industry's wages will rise 14 percent, to $2.4 billion in fiscal 2006.

Dolly Lenz, Manhattan's doyenne of high-end properties, is timing some of her best listings to coincide with bonus season. Ever since the 1970s, the UJA-Federation of New York has held its annual bankers' fundraiser on the first Wednesday in December, the date when Bear Stearns told employees what their bonuses would be.

"When Wall Street does well, we do well," said Richard Koppelman, owner of Greenwich, Conn.-based Miller Motorcars. Koppelman is readying a $150,000 red 2005 Ferrari 360 Modena F1 convertible for a customer who will be getting his first bonus since graduating two years ago from business school.

Leveraged-buyout firms attracted more than $170 billion in new money this year, helping to drive $2.9 trillion in takeovers and a surge in loans, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and London-based Private Equity Intelligence Ltd. More than $110 billion poured into hedge funds in the first nine months, beating the last annual peak in 2002 and fueling demand for stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives, which are used to hedge risks and for speculation.

Combined, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill, Lehman and Bear Stearns earned $21.3billion in the first nine months of 2006, surpassing 2005's full-year record of $20.4 billion.

Year-end rewards at top-5 firms

The following table shows the calculations for total and average bonuses for each of the five biggest U.S. securities firms, based on estimated revenue, compensation and benefits, and number of employees.

Firm	Total revenue*	Total Comp.*	Bonus pool*	Employees	Average Comp.	Average Bonus
Goldman	$35.7	$16.9	$10.2	25,647	$658,946	$397,707
Morgan	$33.6	$14.0	$8.4	54,349	$257,594	$154,556
Merrill	$32.5	$16.1	$9.7	55,300	$291,139	$174,683
Lehman	$17.4	$8.7	$5.2	24,775	$351,160	$210,696
Bear	$9.0	$4.4	$2.6	13,000	$338,462	$203,077

*(in billions)

How the figures were calculated:

Total revenue: Average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Total compensation: Estimated revenue multiplied by the average ratio of compensation to revenue.

Bonus pool: 60 percent of estimated total compensation.

Employees: Total number of full-time employees reported at the end of the third quarter.

Average compensation: Estimated compensation divided by total number of employees.

Average bonus: Estimated bonus pool divided by total employees.

Referring to terrorist measures adopted by terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) to damage ties between Tehran and Paris, he said, "There is no a good or bad terrorist in the world."

The minister pointed to France's special cultural and scientific position in the world and called on the country to resist to scientific apartheid and discrimination among countries on peaceful use of nuclear energy.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is against production, proliferation and test of nuclear weapons," Mottaki said.

The French MP, for his part, assessed as "very pivotal" Iran's role in establishing regional and international peace and security.

He said France has an independent stance on regional and international developments, adding cooperation with Iran to establish peace and security in the region would be inevitable.

He stated that his country's officials regard the MKO as a terrorist group.
On Iran's nuclear case, he stressed that Paris has never opposed to Tehran's right to have access to peaceful nuclear energy and expressed his country's readiness to cooperate with Iran in this field.

"Worldwide, a lot of the developed countries are not graduating as many IT students as they were in the past, which is kind of ironic as it does mean it does increase the opportunities," Gates said.

Russia loses around 700,000 people each year -- about 0.5 percent of its total population -- to emigration, disease and alcoholism.

Many Western firms have also outsourced data management, software development and other high tech operations to lower cost operators in Asia, where education standards are high in some countries but wages are still comparatively low.

"There is a shortage of IT skills on a worldwide basis. Anybody who can get those skills here now will have a lot of opportunity," Gates said.

Gates spoke for about 30 minutes at the 2006 Microsoft Business Forum in Moscow in a speech in which he emphasized the need to retain the pace of research in the IT sector.

He said roll-up and stuff-in-your-pocket screens would be available in the next few years and students would study from portable computer tablets that act as interactive tutors.

"The curriculum will be redesigned in such a way around that device," he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gates attended a seminar on innovation and information technology for regional officials from across Russia alongside First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a man touted as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, whose second and final term in office expires in 2008.