The Association for the Protection of Voters' Rights "Voice" presented the preliminary results of monitoring the elections to the State Duma on December 7. According to Novye Izvestia, human rights activists claim that there was a massive stuffing of ballots during the elections, and the counting of votes in most polling stations was carried out with gross violations of the law. On December 7, observers from the Golos association were present at 4,500 polling stations in 30 regions of Russia.

Russia has no operational weather satellites left, Vasily Asmus, director of the Planet State Research Center, told RIA Novosti. "Russia cannot receive weather data on Earth from its only meteorological satellite, Meteor-3M, due to the failure of its weather sensors," Asmus said. According to him, in order to replenish its space meteorological group, Russia urgently needs to send at least one more satellite into orbit.

Russia is in favor of transferring control of the Internet to an international organization, Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman, who heads the Russian delegation at the World Summit on the Information Society, said on Wednesday. "It should be an international organization and national organizations associated with it," Reiman said, answering RIA Novosti's question about which structure should regulate the Internet.

"Adzharia is not the property of Aslan Abashidze, and he has no right to dictate whether to hold presidential elections in it or not," leader of the United National Movement party, Georgian presidential candidate Mikheil Saakashvili, said Wednesday at a congress. This is reported by Interfax. "Whoever decides to isolate Adzharia from the rest of Georgia will pay the price, and four walls have already been prepared for him," Mikheil Saakashvili said.

The military prosecutor's office refused to open a criminal case on the fact of chlorine poisoning of soldiers in the Moscow region. As a representative of the prosecutor's office told RIA Novosti, the prosecutor's check on the fact of chlorine poisoning of soldiers from one of the Moscow military units has been completed. "Since there was no harm to the life and health of the soldiers, it was refused to initiate a criminal case on this fact," a representative of the prosecutor's office said.

From the site www.strana.ru The Federation Council on Wednesday at the last plenary session this year considered the issue of appointing the date of the presidential election. According to RIA Novosti, the elections are scheduled for March 14, 2004, as recommended by the Constitutional Committee of the upper house. As the Chairman of the Committee Yuri Sharandin told reporters, neither the Constitution nor Russian electoral legislation provide for other terms.

On December 10, the seventh book about the young sorceress Tanya Grotter went on sale - "Tanya Grotter and Noah's pince-nez". While the whole country was deciding on the choice between national patriots and liberals, the matured heroine of the book by Dmitry Yemets also pondered which of the two admirers to prefer: the kind and slightly lazy Vanka Valyalkin or the self-confident Gury Pupper.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has sentenced former Bosnian Serb general Dragan Obrenovic to 17 years in prison for "crimes against humanity," AFP reports. Obrenovic was found guilty of complicity in the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. Then 7,000 people died.

The Russian delegation at a high-level political conference in Mexico signed the UN Convention against Corruption. This was reported to Interfax by the Russian Foreign Ministry. The conference opened on December 9th. On the opening day, in accordance with the instruction of the President of the Russian Federation, the head of the Russian delegation signed the UN Convention. The Convention against Corruption was adopted by the UN General Assembly in October this year.

Block 'Homeland'. Logo from the site www.rodina-nps.ru The election commission of the Chechen Republic on Tuesday near midnight summed up the official results of the elections of deputies of the State Duma of the fourth convocation, held on December 7.

The well-known criminal authority in Moldova, Grigory Karamalak, nicknamed "Bolgar", was detained by the Moscow police, a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moldova said on Wednesday. According to the source, in the coming days, Caramalac will be handed over to the law enforcement agencies of Moldova for prosecution. For the first time "Bolgar" was arrested in 1998.

Vasily Shandybin, a candidate for the Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who lost the elections in his native district in the Bryansk region, told a Gazeta correspondent about his plans for the future. According to him, he will run in the by-elections in a single-mandate constituency in Ulyanovsk, where the candidate "against all" won for the first time. “The people there know me, they support me very much, they asked me to become a candidate again!” Shandybin said.

British Petroleum may run into trouble with its merger partner, Russian TNK. According to the Guardian, CIA documents have recently been released that set out accusations against former TNK president and current Yukos CEO Semyon Kukes. Kukesa, a small Canadian oil and gas company, NoreX, is accused of paying a bribe. The case is being considered by one of the New York courts. BP declined to comment on this information.

On the official website of the elections to the State Duma cikrf.ru discrepancies were found in the data on the number of voters included in the voting lists, Kommersant reports . Anticipating the elections, the head of the CEC, Alexander Veshnyakov, reported that there were about 109,000,000 voters in the country. According to the cikrf.ru website, as of December 7, 15:00, 107,048,432 people were included in the voter lists.

The owners of the nightclub Station (Rhode Island), which in February 2003 there was a terrible fire during the performance of the group Great White, was charged with the unintentional murder of 100 people. Together with them, the tour manager of this group was in the dock, who gave the order to launch fireworks in the club hall.