According to information received on June 20, in Chechnya, on the outskirts of the village of Mekhkety, unknown persons kidnapped the head of the administration of the village of Benoy, Nozhai-Yurtovsky district of the republic, Leida Mezhidova. As ITAR-TASS reports, citing sources in the FSB Directorate for the Chechen Republic, along with Mr. Mezhidov, the director of the local House of Culture, Zhansari Rakhaeva, and the head of the state farm, Muskhab Dudayev, were kidnapped.

On June 20, the Yugoslav government declassified a document confirming that since 1997, Slobodan Milosevic personally exercised command of Yugoslav security forces. Yugoslav Justice Minister Savo Markovic has already assured that this document will soon be submitted to the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY).

personnel 34 1 min. ... Yesterday, the Smolensk Regional Duma voted to recall its representative, the former leader of the Communist Party faction in the regional Duma, Vladimir Berezov, from the Federation Council. Instead, Smolensk deputies delegated the former vice-governor of the Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiev, to the upper house. The new appointment of Sergei Antufiev, who worked as vice-governor under the former head of the region Alexander Prokhorov, was not unexpected.

BMW 530i 8700 km. In May, we drove away from the capital for almost half a hundred kilometers in the depths of Russia. The car with honor withstood the test of mediocre roads, unpredictable fuel, as well as certain cases of class hostility. Only with a mileage of 7200 km, the machine, through the inscription on the dashboard, demanded to pay attention to the oil level - the probe was almost dry.

On June 20, the state news agency of Saudi Arabia , Saudi Press Agency ( SPA ), disseminated a report that a British citizen was killed in the capital of the country, Riyadh, as a result of an explosion of an as yet unidentified explosive device. According to Metropolitan Police Chief Major General Abdullah Al-Shahrani, the victim's name was Simon John Fence. He was an employee of the Saudi-French Bank.

20 June Türkiye takes over British command of the international security forces in Afghanistan. A solemn ceremony will be dedicated to this, which will take place today in Kabul. The Turkish Ministry of Defense agreed to lead the ISAF force following lengthy negotiations with the United States and Britain.

On the morning of June 20, a burnt car was discovered in a vacant lot not far from the scene of the assassination attempt on Moscow Vice-Mayor Joseph Ordzhonikidze. In the car was the corpse of one of the criminals who shot at the official. Traces of bullet wounds were found on the killer's body. According to some reports, the criminal was wounded by the vice mayor's bodyguard, Alexander Golikov. However, his colleagues could “finish off” the attacker.

Igor Rudinsky 47 3 min. ... General Director of SIA International “There are no examples of a successful merger yet” — Experts say that the process of business concentration in the pharmaceutical market is proceeding at a very fast pace and in a few years there will be no more than a dozen distribution companies left in Russia. Are these predictions destined to come true?

1K 1 min. ... Owner Share in Group MENATEP Ltd. (%) Value of Yukos shares per owner ($ billion)* Mikhail Khodorkovsky 9.5 1.22 Special Trust Arrangement 50 6.41 Leonid Nevzlin 8 1.02 Platon Lebedev 7 0.9 Vladimir Dubov 7 0.9 Mikhail Brudno 7 0.9 Vasily Shakhnovsky 7 0.9 Other 4.50 0.58 *In total, all persons listed in the table account for 61% of YUKOS shares. Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 104 dated June 20, 2002, p. 13

At a regular meeting on June 20, the Russian government finally approved the main parameters of the draft federal budget for 2003. As Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Alexei Kudrin said, the project plans to increase expenses, but not more than by the overall GDP growth rate. Among the priority areas for spending budget funds are support for education, healthcare, national defense, law enforcement, science and the judicial system.

In what direction should we reform the media? 20 1 min. ... Georgy Boos, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma: — We need to make the media financially independent. Ideally, the press should not engage in political “business”, receiving money from private hands or from the state, but should earn money itself by performing an informational role. Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Zavtra": — The media must be left alone and given the opportunity to exist immanently.

Throughout yesterday, investigators from the North-Western Prosecutor's Office of Moscow, working 24 1 min. ... Investigators from the North-Western Prosecutor's Office of Moscow, who were working on Bykov's case, spent the entire day yesterday at their workplaces awaiting the verdict. Its outcome did not add joy to them.

On June 20, sources in the administration of the Kamchatka region reported that it is planned to create a plant for processing volcanic raw materials in the region. The plant should be commissioned by the summer of 2004. This was reported by the online publication gazeta.ru . According to the project developers, the production of silicates from volcanic rock is a very profitable business that does not require significant capital investments.

rules of the game 35 1 min. ... Yesterday, the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (AIPM) and the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights (CIPR) held a press conference on the fight against counterfeit medicines. Last year, pharmaceutical companies lost a quarter of a billion dollars due to counterfeits. Losses may increase this year.

Nowadays it is impossible to completely abandon the use of sirens in car alarms. 41 1 min. ... Now it is impossible to completely abandon the use of sirens in car alarms. Almost all security system sellers interviewed by Kommersant spoke in this spirit. For now, the siren remains the cheapest and most effective signaling device. But there is an alternative to the traditional howler - these are alarms that transmit an alarm signal to pagers and cell phones.