Grani.ru collage Eduard Ambrosievich Shevardnadze sent a letter to George Bush. It contains fraternal solidarity and simple confidence that "the regime that produces weapons of mass destruction must be punished." Behind the stingy lines of the official press release are sudden confusion. The President of Georgia on his channels somehow found out there that Iraq owns biological and chemical weapons, and is also busy developing nuclear weapons.

In Khabarovsk, as a result of a special inspection of one of the primary schools, police officers detained two female accountants who embezzled 1.5 million rubles of budget funds as a result of fraud during the year. This is reported by Interfax.

The Progress M-47 cargo spacecraft docked with the International Space Station at 17.50 Moscow time on Tuesday at 17.50 Moscow time. This was reported to Interfax at the Mission Control Center. The transport ship delivered to the ISS components of fuel, consumable equipment for scientific experiments, containers with food and parcels for the crew, and sets of onboard documentation. In addition, Progress carries scientific equipment for conducting experiments on the ISS.

The Vatican has admitted that the Harry Potter books help children "understand the difference between good and evil," according to the BBC. "I am sure that there is no person in the world who did not live in a fantasy world as a child - with magic, fairies and angels," - said the representative of the Vatican, Father Peter Fleetwood. At the same time, many religious groups accuse the author of the Harry Potter books of over-idealizing wizardry and the occult.

The command of the federal forces in Chechnya refutes the report, circulated by the media, about Aslan Maskhadov's speech on local television in the Vedensky and Nozhai-Yurt regions, ITAR-TASS reports. According to the Deputy Commander of the United Forces Alexander Starunsky, the statement of the leader of the Chechen separatists was distributed only on videotapes and only in two regions of Chechnya.

On Tuesday in the Philippines during fireworks, a high-voltage wire fell on the crowd. As a result, several people suffered from electric shock. According to the NTV television company, the tragedy occurred near a Catholic church in the city of Silang, south of Manila. According to police, the high-voltage cable was interrupted by one of the festive rockets. As a result, three boys died from electric shock and five more are in the hospital.

On February 4, the theater center on Dubrovka will host a pre-premiere screening of the restored musical Nord-Ost, Ekho Moskvy reports. The first performance will be seen by the relatives of the artists. The show will be the last for the first part of the children's troupe - the actors have grown out of their roles, and now they are ready to be replaced by others. The official premiere of the revived "Nord-Ost" is scheduled for February 8.

On Monday, the Indian military landed an American transport plane in Bombay after it deviated from its route. According to Reuters, 11 crew members were taken in for questioning. According to a spokesman for the Indian Civil Aviation Ministry, the Boeing-757 belongs to the American airline Comco Corp. he followed the route from Karachi to the Maldives. The plane was flying 70 nautical miles from Bombay.

An extraordinary incident occurred in the 76th airborne division stationed in the Pskov region, reports Newsru.com. When performing training jumps from a height of 800 meters, one of the contractors' parachute did not open. The 21-year-old boy miraculously survived, but is now in critical condition in one of the Pskov hospitals.

The Moscow regional center Ostankino received an order to turn off the transmitter broadcasting the Radio Jazz transmission at a frequency of 89.1 MHz. According to "Gazeta.Ru", they want to turn off the transmitter because of the interference it creates on the 4th and 5th television channels. The order was issued by the Radio Frequency Center of the Central Federal District.

Members of the faction of the national-patriotic movement "Our Ukraine" are outraged that Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate Volodymyr (Sabodan) donated fragments of the relics of 14 saints to the St. Dimitrovsky Church in the city of Rostov-on-Don, whose remains are in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. According to PRIMA, the faction demands from the Verkhovna Rada to condemn the actions of the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

At a meeting of the Moscow government, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov presented collective letters from Muscovites who had recently moved to new buildings, Gazeta.Ru reports. The authors of the letters complain about the low quality of housing, in particular, in new houses on Ostrovityanova Street. Luzhkov said that while the "glorious SU-155" is reporting success, the residents of the capital are suffering from the low quality of the builders' work.

US President George W. Bush is scheduled to attend a funeral ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Tuesday in connection with the death of seven crew members of the space shuttle Columbia. The president and his wife will be accompanied by NASA chief Sean O'Keeffe. The event will take place at the same place where the ceremony of symbolic farewell to the crew of the Challenger shuttle took place 17 years ago.

In Nacodoches County, Texas, collectors have already stolen about a hundred pieces of the Columbia shuttle, writes the Washington Post. The county authorities are having great difficulty guarding the shuttle fragments due to a shortage of people. The FBI promised to start catching the kidnappers and bringing charges against them, but in reality, the authorities and intelligence agencies can hardly really control the situation.

Iraq reported that on February 3, UN inspectors at one of the factories found a missile warhead, reports ABC News. The experts themselves have not yet had time to publish data about their find. According to Baghdad, we are talking about a damaged warhead of the Russian Luna tactical missile, which is not prohibited by UN Security Council resolutions. In January, inspectors found 12 empty warheads at one of the Iraqi sites, intended for the distribution of poisonous substances.