Universe from the site www.nature.com/nsu/031006/031006-8.html According to the most authoritative modern cosmological model of the universe, our world is endless and "flat" (that is, it does not have global spatial curvatures).

The prosecutor's office of Naberezhnye Chelny extended until January 25, 2004, the investigation of a criminal case initiated in January of this year on the fact of the activities of five organized criminal communities in Tatarstan, RIA Novosti reports.

The Basmanny Court of Moscow confirmed the legitimacy of the Prosecutor General's Office's refusal to remove investigator Yuri Burtovoy from the investigation into the case of Yukos security officer Alexei Pichugin. This is reported by Interfax. Earlier, Pichugin's lawyers petitioned for Burtovoy's dismissal, but they were denied. The basis for such demands of the defense was, according to lawyer Tatyana Akimtseva, Burtov's violation of the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The Accounts Chamber of Russia asked the Duma members to allow it to apply to the courts directly, bypassing the prosecutor's office. Corresponding amendments to the law "On the Accounts Chamber" have already been submitted to the State Duma. "These proposals are already in the lower house of parliament, but most likely they will be considered by the next Duma," an official representative of the chamber told RIA Novosti on Friday.

The head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, confirmed that the company he heads is interested in developing Iraqi oil fields, Interfax reports. "If tenders are announced in Iraq, we will definitely look at the possibility of our participation," the businessman said, speaking at the Washington headquarters of the Carnegie Endowment. "Iraq is one of the good world (oil) provinces, and, of course, everyone is interested in it. We will try to be there earlier than the rest," Khorodkovsky said.

To date, the fire in a residential 22-storey building on the Kashirskoye Highway in Moscow has been localized, RIA Novosti was told at the State Fire Service of the capital. "The fire started in an apartment on the seventh floor of a 22-storey panel house number 55 on the Kashirskoye Highway at about 15.30," an employee of the UGPS said. According to him, the fire spread to the balconies of the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh floors. About 15 fire brigades worked at the scene.

Henry Reznik, president of the Moscow Chamber of Advocates, sharply criticized the actions of investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office who conducted a search in the office of Anton Drel, a lawyer for the head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and one of the shareholders of the oil company, Platon Lebedev. According to Interfax, Reznik said that since the search was carried out in the absence of Drel, "an encroachment on the absolute lawyer's secrecy" was committed.

As part of the investigation of various criminal cases, including a case of corruption in law enforcement agencies, about twenty leaders of the three most famous St. Petersburg criminal groups were arrested. According to RIA Novosti, such information was made public on Friday by Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation for the North-Western Federal District Vladimir Zubrin.

Due to the hurricane that took place on Friday, thousands of residents of the Kursk region are left without communications and electricity, Gazeta.ru reports with reference to the Civil Defense and Emergency Situations Department for the Kursk region. Almost completely cut off from the world were six districts of the region - Belovsky, Oktyabrsky, Ponyrovsky, Sudzhansky, Khomutovsky and Shchigrovsky. There is no communication here, more than 10 thousand people were left without electricity.

The Uruguayan parliament passed a law on naming secondary school #361 in Montevideo after the Russian Federation, RIA Novosti was told on Friday at the Russian embassy. The diplomatic mission noted that the law introduced by the deputy from the ruling Colorado party, Ruben Diaz, received the unanimous support of all political forces in the country. On the eve of the adoption of the law, the deputies examined in detail the history and prospects for the development of Russian-Uruguayan relations.

US Ambassador Alexander Vershbow is interested in the future composition of the State Duma, Gennady Seleznev, speaker of the lower house of parliament, said after a meeting with an American diplomat. "The ambassador was interested in possible factions and groups in the new State Duma," Seleznev said. According to the speaker, he expressed his opinion to the ambassador on the future composition of the Duma, RIA Novosti reports.

From October 10 to 15, communication traffic will be hindered on many major highways in the Moscow region due to repair work on the roadway, Newsru.com reports. According to the traffic police department of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of the Moscow Region, in particular, traffic will be difficult on the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod highway - 54 km due to the reconstruction of the overpass, in three places on the Moscow-St.

The Primorsky Regional Court on Friday rejected the application of one of the residents of Vladivostok, who sought to cancel the decision of the district election commission # 52 to refuse registration as a candidate for State Duma deputy Viktor Cherepkov, the current State Duma deputy in this district.

The thieves who robbed the United Russia office trampled on Putin's portrait and signed the telephone directory, reports REGNUM news agency . On the night of October 9, in the city of Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad Region, unknown people opened the metal door of the office of the United Russia political party and stole property - a computer system unit, chairs, electric heaters, stationery.

NTV turned 10 years old. From the site www.ntv.ru For some, the decade of the NTV television company is the anniversary of the lost freedom of speech. For some-a triumph of eternal engagement. For me, 10 years ago, in fact, the crisis of the journalism that I would like to see in Russia came. Although this date is inaccurate: it is more about the crisis of the television component of this journalism.