Jobless hung, drawn and quartered

Suspicious minds have queried the State Statistics Committee's move to announce quarterly unemployment figures, instead of monthly ones, according to Reuters.
While the World Bank, among others, has suggested the Russian economy can't go on without a sizeable round of government spending, officials have been highlighting positive indicators in the country's markets.
But rising unemployment threatens to undermine their optimism, possibly prompting the change in reporting.
"The shift (in jobless data reporting) could imply a huge leap in March that the State Statistics Service is seeking to smooth over with this new reporting method," said Rory MacFarquhar, chief economist for Goldman Sachs in Moscow. But quarterly reports could also iron out statistical spikes in a volatile market, he said.
The statistics service, which uses internationally-established methods to calculate unemployment, gives a total of 7.1 million Russians out of work - rather different from the State Employment Office, which claims just 2 million are jobless.
The upper figure represents an eight-year high, and is 1 million above the Finance Ministry's projections for the whole of 2009.
And Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted Unicredit's Vladimir Osakovsky warning of a decline spreading to consumer demand and urging a cut in interest rates and a controlled fall of the rouble to boost exports.
Tanks in a minefield
It's time for Russian companies to stand on their own two feet and stop bleating about the crisis, according to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
Having rudely eschewed "populist" proposals for VAT cuts tentatively put forward by Kremlin economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich, he went on to tell Vedomosti that state aid was set to decrease.
The government has abandoned a proposed $50 billion bail-out after distributing just $11 billion, and Kudrin said: "We can already say that however things develop, state aid will decrease."
He also dismissed Dvorkovich's suggestions of tax breaks, implying they were reckless in the current climate.
"The economy in its current state is like a mine field. You have to dig out each mine carefully or go around it. You don't go charging through in a tank," Kudrin added.
All roads lead to Sochi
Russian car manufacturers are carrying a torch for the Sochi Olympics, hoping the big event can light up their prospects between now and 2014.
GAZ spokeswoman Yelena Matveyeva told Vedomosti the company would like to become an official Olympic partner, promising new auto models in time for the Games.
AvtoVAZ has also been invited to bid for a role as a transport provider at the showpiece event, and is still weighing up a verdict.
With about 1,000 vehicles needed for the Games, and a further 3,000 due to be made available for the national team as it prepares for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the programme could allow car plants to skate over some of their current difficulties with a raft of new orders.
The extent of the crisis in the auto industry was driven home once again as Toyota's St Petersburg plant announced a second temporary shutdown, from May 1 to May 11. The plant had earlier closed for the first week of April.