A Turkish Airlines plane made an emergency landing due to a bomb threat, AP reported. The plane was making a domestic flight to Istanbul from the city of Mardin in the southeast of the country. After reporting a bomb on board, he landed at the airport in Malatuya. The police searched the plane, but the bomb was not found. According to the Anatolia news agency, after that the plane continued flying.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Sunday in connection with the events in the Central African Republic. The document notes that none of the Russian citizens in the CAR were injured. The Russian Embassy in Bangui carries out its activities in working mode.

The Iraqi authorities on Saturday invited Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei to come to Baghdad to speed up the process of cooperation on the disarmament of Iraq. This is reported by AP with reference to the statement of the country's Foreign Ministry. The document states that Blix and ElBaradei were invited to Iraq by Saddam Hussein's aide Amir al-Saadi. ElBaradei's press secretary, Melissa Fleming, said that ElBaradei had indeed received an invitation letter from Baghdad.

The tripartite statement by Russia, France and Germany on the need to hold a meeting of the Security Council on Iraq at the ministerial level was circulated on Saturday evening as an official document of the UN Security Council.

A 43-year-old resident of the Udmurt village of Endovki hit her fellow villager on the head with an ax during a quarrel, reports Regions.ru. A 42-year-old man was admitted to the central district hospital with a traumatic brain injury. Currently, the woman is under house arrest. The matter is under investigation.

An earthquake of magnitude 6.4 occurred off the coast of Kamchatka on Sunday at 7.40 local time (22.40 Saturday Moscow time). As a representative of the Kamchatka Experimental and Methodological Seismological Party told RIA Novosti, the epicenter of the earthquake was located 150 km east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Pacific Ocean. In the regional center, a seismic event was felt with a force of 2-3 points on the Richter scale. There are no casualties or destruction.

In Yakutsk, the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Yakutia burned down, reports Regions.ru. The fire started the day before at four o'clock in the morning. Two people died, another in serious condition was taken to the burn center. The building, which was built in 1903, also housed all the services of the city police department and the criminal police service.

Francois Bosiz. Photo by the Air Force About a thousand rebels captured the airport of the Central African Republic, its capital Bange and several presidential residences, AP reports. According to BBC, the rebels did not meet resistance from the government forces. ITAR-TASS reports that the rebels established full control over the capital. The invaders support Francois Boziz, the former chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the country.

On Sunday, in the Babayurtovsky district of Dagestan, 200 residents of the village of Kachaloy defeated a polling station, Interfax reports. In Dagestan, elections to the People's Assembly of the republic and to local legislative and executive bodies are being held simultaneously.

The right-opposition parties of Azerbaijan, united in the Opposition Coordinating Center, held a rally in the center of Baku, RIA Novosti reports. The protesters demanded the resignation of President Heydar Aliyev, the fair formation of election commissions at all levels and the holding of free democratic elections. The leaders of the opposition parties sharply criticized the internal policy of the authorities.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said that UN support is not a necessary condition for the start of hostilities in Iraq, reports the BBC. According to him, this support "is desirable from a political point of view, and politically it would be better, but from a legal point of view, it is not mandatory." Aznar, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will hold talks on Sunday in the Azores.

On Sunday, the law enforcement agencies of the Chechen Republic placed all the polling stations in Chechnya under round-the-clock protection. According to Interfax, this was done in connection with the referendum on the Constitution of the Chechen Republic scheduled for March 23.

On Saturday, a protest rally against the war in Iraq was held in Kyiv, RBC reports. About 150 people marched through the central streets of the city and held a rally outside the US embassy. The demonstrators condemned the intention of the President of Ukraine to send a Ukrainian chemical defense battalion to Kuwait.

In all the churches of the island of Terceira in the Azores, Portuguese Catholics will pray for peace in Iraq. As RIA Novosti reports, prayers will be held on Sunday at the same time as an emergency meeting between US President George W. Bush and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal. This meeting has already received the official name "Atlantic Summit".

Two serious shipwrecks have occurred in southeastern China, ITAR-TASS reports. The first disaster occurred on Saturday off the coast of Fujian Province. A steamboat coming from Shanghai rammed a fishing boat. All 12 crew members of the boat ended up at sea. Three people are reported to have been rescued. Nothing is known about the fate of nine more sailors. The second accident occurred at the mouth of the Minjiang River. Two ships collided there, one of them sank.