The State Duma Committee on International Affairs will invite deputies to consider the issue of ratifying the Russian-American treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive potentials (SOR) on May 16. This was reported to RIA Novosti by the chairman of the committee, Dmitry Rogozin. According to Rogozin, the decision on the date of consideration of the document was made at today's meeting of the committee.

Grani.ru collage The head of the European Convention on the Arrangement of the Future Giskar d'Esten, who is responsible for the creation of a pan -European constitution, supported the plans of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair to create a post of permanent president of the EU. According to Times, Blair is the most likely candidate for this post, which can be created by 2006. The President will be permanent in the sense that they will not be re -elected every six months.

The United States notes the deterioration of relations with Belarus. According to Ekho Moskvy, this was stated by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Steven Pifer. Over the past year, the Belarusian leadership has done nothing to improve the situation, the diplomat said. In his opinion, most likely the US Congress will adopt the so-called "Belarusian Democracy Act".

A compromise has been found in settling the scandal over "the biggest pharmaceutical fraud in US history". According to Reuters, Bayer AG agreed to plead guilty in court and pay a $257 million fine and damages to the United States. Last year, US law enforcement agencies received a denunciation that Bayer AG was selling medicines at inflated prices to the American state company Medicaid. Medicaid provides medical care to the poor and the disabled.

250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, a plant called Glossopteris homevalensis grew in the southern hemisphere. It grew on the "supercontinent" called Gondwana. A well-preserved fossil found in Australia shows that in that distant era, some plants reproduced with the help of floating spermatozoa, identical to those of mammals, writes Le Figaro . Translation of the article leads InoPressa .

Geneticists have discovered that premature aging syndrome in children (Hutchinson-Gilford progeria) occurs due to a mutation in just one gene - the LMNA gene, writes Nature. The discovery was made by a group working within the framework of the Human Genome Project, in collaboration with the Progeria Research Foundation. This syndrome was first described in 1886. Since then, more than 100 cases of its manifestation have been recorded.

The UN Commission on Human Rights adopted an EU resolution accusing Turkmenistan of violating human rights, Reuters reports. 23 people voted in favor, 14 voted against, and representatives of 16 countries abstained. The resolution states that Turkmenistan is accused of arbitrary detentions and arrests, as well as harassment of family members accused of involvement in the assassination attempt on Saparmurat Niyazov.

UNESCO creates a special fund for the protection of the cultural heritage of Iraq, ITAR-TASS reports. Opening a meeting at the organization's headquarters in Paris, with the participation of 30 international experts, designed to assess the full scale of the problem and determine urgent measures to solve it, UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said that Italy has already made the first major contribution to this fund.

Georgia deported, not extradited to Russia, a resident of the North Caucasus, Georgian intelligence agencies say. As RIA "Novosti" was informed in the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the North Caucasus, a native of Kabardino-Balkaria, 22-year-old Amirkhan Ligidov, who was detained in August 2002 with a weapon in his hands on Georgian territory, was extradited from Georgia to Russia. According to operational data, Ligidov was a member of Ruslan Gelaev's group.

The board of directors of Channel Six CJSC will consider the issue of early termination of the powers of the current Director General of Channel Six CJSC Ruslan Terekbaev and the appointment of a new one at a meeting on Thursday, Interfax reports. Oleg Kiselyov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Channel Six, declined to say which candidates for this position are being considered.

UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix demanded that the coalition forces in Iraq allow the resumption of inspections in that country. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel cited by AP, Blix said: "Now we'll see if London and Washington were right. I'm very curious and I can only wish them success in their quest." Blix also urged the White House to provide evidence of the accusations against Syria, which the United States suspects of possessing chemical weapons.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk, the Russian government decided to make lump-sum payments to the participants in the battle and the widows of the dead. As Interfax was informed in the department of government information, the participants will receive 900 rubles each, the widows of the dead (deceased) participants in this battle who did not remarry - 450 rubles each.

Photo from Newsru.com On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation refused to cancel the accusatory verdict issued by Italy to Nadezhda Fratti, involved in the illegal export of 558 orphans from the Volgograd region. This is reported by Interfax. Thus, the highest court upheld the verdict issued by Fratti and three of its accomplices to the Volgograd Regional Court on December 30. The case was considered on the cassation appeal of the lawyers of the defendants.

The decision to lift sanctions from Iraq can only be taken by the UN Security Council on the basis of the conclusion that there are no prohibited weapons in this country, made by the UN Commission for Verification, Inspection and Control in Iraq, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told Interfax.

An unpleasant incident occurred during a meeting of the head of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma, Gennady Zyuganov, with voters, which took place on Thursday at the House of Knowledge in the Saratov region. According to Interfax, 10 minutes after the start of the meeting, six young people aged 16-18, who were sitting at the end of the hall, shouting: "You are fascists!", tried to throw crumpled pieces of newspapers and small garbage at the participants of the meeting.