Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Mikhail Margelov said Thursday that the presidential elections in Azerbaijan will be discussed at the PACE session in January 2004.

The SCO Group announced that it is giving corporate users an extra two weeks to purchase licenses to use the Linux operating system, which SCO claims contains fragments of the company's Unix code. Under the previous version of the SCO plan, license prices were to double as of October 15; that deadline has now been pushed back to October 31, according to CNET News.com.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, according to the BBC. They are demanding the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada. The police say that this is the most numerous protest in the last 3 weeks. The life of the capital, as well as the cities of Cochabamba, Potosi and Oruro, is paralyzed. The inhabitants of these cities do not have enough food and fuel. The entrances to the cities are blocked by barricades.

The government of Chechnya has taken strict control over the payment of compensations for destroyed housing and loss of property to the affected residents of the republic. It is reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the press service of the government of the Chechen Republic. On Friday, Grozny hosted a meeting of the Commission under the government of the Chechen Republic for the payment of compensation.

The State Duma is eliminating a contradiction in Russian legislation on the issue of land use by religious organizations, RIA Novosti reports.

In connection with the demonstration show of Renault cars on Saturday, traffic will be closed on Sparrow Hills, the propaganda and information department of the Moscow traffic police department said on Friday. It is reported by Gazeta.Ru with reference to ITAR-TASS.

Over the past two years, Mont Blanc - the highest mountain peak in Europe - has become almost two meters lower, AP reports. This is evidenced by the results of measurements presented on Friday by a group of researchers in the French city of Saint-Gervais (Department of Haute-Savoie).

All taxes collected on the territory of Chechnya should be directed to the development of the republic, Rudnik Dudayev, secretary of the Security Council of the Chechen Republic, said on Friday. According to RIA Novosti, Dudayev said that this could be one of the clauses of the agreement on the delimitation of powers between the federal government and the republic, provided that Chechnya is declared a special economic zone.

On Friday, the State Duma adopted in the first reading (for - 417 votes) a bill that provides for military service under contract in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for citizens of other states. The bill was submitted to the Duma by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vasily Shakhnovsky. Photo from the site www.old.echo.msk.ru The General Prosecutor's Office of Russia charged a member of the Board of Directors of the Yukos NK, President of Yukos-Moscow, Vasily Shakhnovsky, Interfax reports. According to the Office of the Information and Public Relations of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, one of the major shareholders of Yukos is accused of tax evasion of 29 million rubles for 1998, 1999 and 2000.

More than 20 thousand Kaliningraders living on the outskirts of the city in the village of Chkalovsk were left without water as a result of an accident on the water main. As RIA "Novosti" was informed in the press service of the regional department for civil defense and emergency situations, a breakthrough occurred on a new water conduit, which was laid this year.

Grani.ru collage These days, when the tragedy on Dubrovka marks a year, in many countries of the world the film "Terror in Moscow" will be shown. One of the main issues that the English director Dan Reed (production of the British independent Mentorn studio is trying to find an answer: why so many hostages died during the exemption operation? The film was first shown on the fourth channel of British TV on May 12, 2003. The tape has already managed to visit Moscow.

The mayor of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky faces up to 5 years in prison if he is charged with negligence that entailed grave consequences, said the regional prosecutor Alkesandr Voytovich. It is reported by RIA Novosti. Voytovich sent a petition to the regional court, which must agree to the temporary removal of deputy powers from the mayor in order to charge him under Part 1 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code - negligence.

Jan Live. Shot CNN Washington Times found out what the first taiconaut Jan Lee Wei did in space. He spy! Together with him, a spy spy was brought into orbit, about which the official press, of course, was silent, writes, the newspaper writes. In addition, as the unnamed sources of the newspaper in the Pentagon claim, a special infrared camera was installed on board the ship, capable of fixing ground objects, the dimensions of which are at least one and a half meters.

The tallest building in the world was inaugurated in the capital of Taiwan. Taipei's 508-meter skyscraper inherited the title from the 452-meter twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, Reuters reports. The new giant is A 101-story office building crowned by a 60-meter spire. The architects who designed the Taiwanese skyscraper claim that their building is better suited to possible terrorist attacks than the World Trade Center in New York, which was destroyed on 9/11 by planes crashing into it.