MOSCOW – Moscow's mercurial mayor, famous for seeding clouds to prevent rain during parades, is escalating his war on weather with plans to slash this year's snowfall by one-fifth in the Russian capital.
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's office will marshal the Russian air force and air defense systems to intercept advancing storm fronts and hit them with dry ice and silver iodine particles, city officials reportedly said this week.
The idea is to reduce the amount of snow that clogs Moscow's frigid streets and costs the city millions to manage.
Instead, the snow would be dumped on poor villages and satellite towns far from Moscow city limits — which Luzhkov reportedly suggested would help crops in surrounding regions.
The initiative could cost 180 million rubles ($6 million; euro4 million), but the city hopes to save 300 million rubles ($10 million; euro6.7 million) in snow removal, Moscow public works chief Andrei Tsybin said Wednesday, according to the state-run ITAR-Tass news agency and other Russian media. City officials declined to comment Friday on details of the plan.
Moscow has been hard hit by the recession, and city officials suggested the anti-snow effort — to run from mid-November to March — would help Moscow bring its budget under control.
"If it works out, Chicago or Montreal may want to copy us," said Kremlin-linked lawmaker Sergei Markov, who like Luzhkov belongs to the dominant United Russia party.
Philip Brown, cloud physics research manager at the British national weather service, suggested the idea is relatively untested.
"A lot of work has been done with cloud seeding in terms of trying to enhance rainfall, but I'm not aware of any studies in the scientific literature that have been done for the purpose of snow limiting," he said.
Moscow — which sees snowfalls of more than 60 centimeters (24 inches) — keeps a mammoth system in place to deal with it, including more than 50,000 street sweepers, more than 5,800 trucks and 27 snow-melting incinerators. The city also sprays chemicals and grit over streets to aid traffic, and according to one of Moscow's many urban legends, dogs occasionally die after licking slush off their paws.
But there has been opposition to the anti-snow plan from environmentalists and officials from the province that rings Moscow.
"We'll need extra money for removing the snow. Where will we get it from?" Pavel Lyzhkov, a provincial public works official, told the newspaper Izvestia. He also questioned the environmental effects, saying cloud-seeding operations over the summer had turned cucumbers yellow.
A World Wildlife Fund worker was concerned the effort might end up killing animals. "This technology is still in it's infancy — it should be handled with care," Alexei Kokorin said.
Greenpeace Russia activist Alexey Kisilev predicted serious environmental damage, noting the "huge outdated aircraft" to be used in the effort would "produce lots of greenhouse gases."
"I seriously doubt an effective environmental review would ever allow Luzhkov to undertake such plans," Kisilev said, but added that he thought it unlikely the city would conduct such a review.
One political analyst called the plan a populist measure designed to strengthen the eroding political position of Luzkhov, who has been mayor of Russia's capital since 1992.
"I feel Luzhkov is on his way out as mayor of Moscow," analyst Nikolai Petrov said.
Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader and former regional governor, also denounced Luzhkov's struggle against the snow.

"He is an old man and does not understand you cannot change a millennia-old climate," said Nemtsov, head of the group Solidarity. "This plan will kill Moscow's trees. They need snow to survive the winter. Luzhkov is simply dangerous to the people of Moscow."

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LISBON (AFP) –
Real Madrid striker Cristiano Ronaldo is fit to play in Portugal's crunch World Cup qualifier against Hungary on Saturday after recovering from a twisted ankle, according to coach Carlos Queiroz.

"All the players are fit with the exception of Tiago, who has not recovered," Queiroz said.

Ronaldo, who resumed normal training with team-mates on Friday, added: "I'll be fit for tomorrow's match and the following one."

Portugal, who play Hungary on Saturday and Malta four days later, are third in Group One with 13 points and need to win both matches and for second-placed Sweden to slip up in Denmark, to book their ticket to South Africa.

NEW YORK – Federal investigators have questioned two men whose photographs were shown to a Muslim religious leader along with a picture of an Afghan immigrant accused of plotting a bomb attack in New York City.
Adis Medunjanin, a Bosnian immigrant, met voluntarily with investigators for 14 hours, said Robert Gottlieb, a New York lawyer representing him. Zarein Ahmedzay, a 24-year-old New York City cab driver, also was interviewed by the FBI, said his brother, Nazir Ahmedzay.
Both men's photos were among four shown to Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam at a Queens mosque accused of tipping off Najibullah Zazi (nah-jee-BOO'-lah ZAH'-zee) that New York Police Department detectives were searching for him. Ron Kuby, a New York lawyer representing the imam, confirmed that detectives showed Afzali photos of Medunjanin and Ahmedzay along with Zazi's.
Naiz Kahn, a high school friend of Zazi's who allowed him to stay in his Queens apartment last month when prosecutors say Zazi was preparing his attack, said he also has been questioned by the FBI. But his photo was not among those shown to the imam, said Kuby. The imam did not know the identity of the man in the fourth photograph, Kuby said.
Neither man is tied to the terror plot prosecutors claim Zazi was pursuing, said Gottlieb and Ahmedzay's brother.
Prosecutors and the FBI declined to comment.
Afzali, a reliable police source in the past, has pleaded not guilty to lying to federal agents who asked him about his phone calls to Zazi after detectives showed him the photographs. Kuby said Afzali was only doing what police asked him to do.
Zazi, 24, who left New York earlier this year to take a job driving an airport shuttle in Denver, is the only person charged in an international terror investigation described by Attorney General Eric Holder as one of the most significant plots uncovered in this country since 9/11. Zazi, who's being held without bond, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction.
Prosecutors have said Zazi and others they have not identified received explosives training at an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan. U.S. intelligence and senior administration officials have said they became aware of Zazi's connection to a possible plot in late August. They said he was recruited and trained by al-Qaida, and he had contact with a senior al-Qaida operative.
Investigators are still hunting for additional players and expect to make more arrests. Officials say Zazi's suspected accomplices are under surveillance and are no longer a threat because the plot was thoroughly disrupted.
Gottlieb said Medunjanin has met with investigators, who have not been in contact with him since the interview weeks ago. After that meeting, Gottlieb said Medunjanin hired him.
Medunjanin agreed to meet with investigators after they raided his apartment last month, Gottlieb said. "He had nothing to hide," Gottlieb said.
FBI agents seized computers and cell phones from the apartment, but returned them later, he said.
"There's no indication of any evidence that he was involved in a crime," he said. "There would be no basis for charging him with anything."
Investigators had an interest in Medunjanin before the raid, Gottlieb said. He wouldn't elaborate. "The reasons are not any evidence of wrongdoing or crimes," he said.
Gottlieb did not confirm that his client's photo was among those shown to the imam.
Medunjanin grew up in the same area of Flushing, Queens, as Zazi, Gottlieb said, declining to elaborate.
Medunjanin lives in a Flushing apartment with his parents and sister. He works for a property management company, Gottlieb said.

"He's going through hell right now," the lawyer said. "His entire family finds this unbearable. They just wait everyday for some word about how this will turn out."

Gottlieb declined to discuss Medunjanin's travel.

Zarein Ahmedzay, the other man identified by the Queens imam in the photos with Zazi, has no connection to Zazi's case, other than being interviewed by the FBI, and was not involved in a plot, said Nazir Ahmedzay, his brother. "No, never," Nazir Ahmedzay said during a brief interview outside his apartment.

Zarein Ahmedzay, a U.S. citizen, lives with his brother in a Flushing apartment in the same neighborhood as the one Zazi's family shared before moving to Denver in January.

Nazir Ahmedzay said his younger brother has never been to Colorado. He said Zazi has never been to their apartment.

Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, also faces a charge of lying to investigators. A Denver grand jury indicted the 53-year-old Aurora, Colo., resident Thursday for making a false statement.

He is free on $50,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in federal court Friday.

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Associated Press writers David Caruso, Adam Goldman and Michael Rubinkam in New York and Eileen Sullivan in Denver contributed to this report.