Grani.ru collage US Secretary of State Colin Powell is found today with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. The date of the diplomats is by no means passing to exchange courtesies. At a recent OSCE meeting in Maastricht, Russia was severely criticized, and one of the criticized was the Secretary of State of the United States. Even when Russia was not called by name, hints of its role in the post -Soviet space were fully guessed. And there is nothing to be surprised here.

The Federation Council will set the date for the presidential elections in Russia on March 14 next year, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Sergei Mironov, told reporters. It is reported by RIA Novosti. According to him, the senators will decide this issue at the plenary session of the House on December 10th.

The threat of an explosion in the building of the State Television of Georgia turned out to be false. This was reported to RIA Novosti by the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. According to the representative of the press service, the country's law enforcement agencies opened a criminal case under the article "sabotage".

The trained bear Dodon, who killed an auxiliary worker at Durov's Corner on Wednesday, may enter the stage in a week, NTV reports. At the same time, conflicting reports appear about the further fate of the animal. According to Interfax, the administration of the theater center "Grandfather Durov's Wonderland" intends to transfer the Dodon bear to the zoo. "We intend to offer various zoos to take Dodon.

Grani.ru collage Pragmatic Muscovites never, except at the very beginning of the 90s, have been demonstrated in the election of the mayor of the radical-democratic model of electoral behavior, inherent, for example, to Peter. And now, the mayor’s elections in Moscow are following the usual referendum scheme on trust in the city’s leading city since 1992 to Yuri Luzhkov.

In the Krasnoyarsk regional court at the trial of the crash of the Mi-8 helicopter, in which Governor Alexander Lebed died, on Thursday the defendants, helicopter pilots Takhir Akhmerov and Alexei Kurilovich, made their final statements. The pilots expressed remorse for the tragedy. According to the pilots, the hardest thing for them is not the verdict of the court, but the fact that they will have to live with guilt for what happened.

At a meeting of the Council of Ministers of Crimea, an agreement was reached to end the confrontation between the Tatars, who arbitrarily seized land in the village of Partenit, and local residents. It is reported by Gazeta.ru with reference to Interfax.

In Switzerland, the prefecture of the canton of Lucerne imposed a fine of 200 francs on a 41-year-old artist for polluting a local lake, RIA Novosti reports. The artist decided to do body art and created his works on the bodies of 124 women. After that, they bathed in the lake, washing off the paint. The local Bureau of Nature Protection conducted special studies of the reservoir. It turned out that the paint used by the artist contained substances harmful to flora and fauna.

Georgian police carry out an emergency evacuation of employees of the State Television. This was reported to RIA Novosti on Wednesday by the Interior Ministry. "One of the TV companies received an anonymous call. The caller said that a powerful explosive device was planted in the television building, which should work on December 4 at midnight," the source said.

The Supreme Court of Russia reduced the term of Larisa Romanova, one of the defendants in the criminal case of explosions near the FSB reception building in August 1998 and April 1999, from 6.5 to 5.5 years. It is reported by RIA Novosti. The Supreme Court excluded from Romanova's charge one of the episodes related to illegal trafficking in explosives during the blowing up of the monument to Nicholas II in Podolsk near Moscow in November 1998.

On Wednesday evening, the duty department of the Leninsky District of Kaluga received a report of an explosion at secondary school #45, Newsru.com reports . An investigative team was immediately sent to the scene of the incident. Employees of the Leninsky Department of Internal Affairs found damage to the emergency exit door and several window panes. Soon the suspect in organizing the explosion was detained. He turned out to be a student of the 11th grade of the same school.

Vladimir Putin discussed on Thursday evening at a meeting with Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov the issue of passing a draft budget for 2004 in the upper house of parliament, RIA Novosti reports. Opening the meeting, the head of the Russian state noted that the State Duma had recently completed its work and all the bills it worked on had been submitted to the Federation Council, including the 2004 budget bill.

On Thursday, Georgian State Security Minister Valery Khaburdzania said that MGB officers found 200 kg of TNT and a large number of detonators in the town of Vaziani near Tbilisi. According to RIA Novosti, the minister said that, in his opinion, there are such warehouses both in Tbilisi and in the suburbs. Now MGB officers are looking for explosives, Khaburdzania said.

The Supreme Court of Russia has considered applications to cancel the registration of Murtaza Rakhimov and Ralif Safin as candidates for the presidency of Bashkiria and decided to leave them in the elections, Gazeta.Ru reports citing Interfax. Another contender for this post, Khasan Idiyatullin, demanded to remove Rakhimov from the election race.

The Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation will be transformed into a trade union of film workers, RIA Novosti reports with reference to a statement by the chairman of the RF IC, film director Nikita Mikhalkov. He stressed that it is very difficult to combine all the functions that the Union performs today. This is work related to social problems, and creative issues related to the "round tables" and the youth movement.