Deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov publicly admitted for the first time that a political system is being created in Russia with one consistently dominant party - United Russia.

Dmitry Medvedev will lead the campaign to combat and prevent bird flu. In Moscow, starting March 15, vaccination against the virus will begin in the zoo, animal corners and other places where birds are kept. To date, cases of wild bird influenza have been identified in six regions of Russia: Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan, Chechnya, Kalmykia, Krasnodar and Stavropol territories. Poultry is affected by bird flu in Dagestan, Kalmykia, Stavropol and Krasnodar territories.

On Monday, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, serving his sentence in a colony in the city of Krasnokamensk, Chita Region, was given the opportunity to meet his wife. This meeting is the second during the ex-head of YUKOS's stay in the colony. The meeting between Khodorkovsky and his wife was supposed to take place on January 30, but was cancelled. As explained by the administration of the penitentiary institution, due to renovations in the building intended for such meetings.

A delegation of the radical Hamas party will arrive in Moscow on March 3. This was announced by official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Mikhail Kamynin. He did not rule out that the head of the ministry, Sergei Lavrov, would meet with Hamas.

In 1985-1986, world oil prices fell several times. And yet, the USSR collapsed not because of bearishness in the oil market. Bulat Okudzhava said this well at his last concert in Paris on June 23, 1995. He then read this short poem: “Universal experience says, That kingdoms are perishing Not because life is difficult Or terrible ordeals...

I don't understand anything about the problems of the army. I don't understand anything about sergeants, foremen, majors, midshipmen and generals. However, I seem to understand about generals... But this, I admit, is a debatable issue. But I definitely understand my son’s problems, and I really want him to live more than 20 years. It’s hard for me to even imagine what I’m not ready to do to make sure he lives for more than 20 years.

The Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case against the former general director of Mosenergo OJSC Arkady Evstafiev and the company's chief accountant Tatyana Dronova. The reason was the materials of the audit of the company’s financial and economic activities, law enforcement agencies clarified. In particular, former employees of Mosenergo are suspected of falsifying accounting documents and evading taxes by the organization in the amount of more than 105 million rubles.

Murphy rose to fame in the 1960s by stealing a collection of gems from the New York Museum of Natural History, including the world's largest Star of India sapphire, the size of a tennis ball. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In prison he managed to become famous as a violinist, tennis player, artist, actor, and also as the organizer of the largest prisoner riot. He believed in God and after 19 years was released - for exemplary behavior.

On Monday, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow satisfied the claim of Colonel Pavel Popovskikh for compensation for moral damage caused in connection with the illegal criminal prosecution in the case of the murder of journalist Dmitry Kholodov. However, the court decided to pay Popovskikh instead of the 52 million rubles requested by his lawyer Igor Yartykh, only 150 thousand rubles.