US President George W. Bush will have to answer a number of questions about the excessive business activity of some members of his administration. In particular, the questions will concern the activities of Vice President Dick Cheney as CEO of Halliburton. Recently, information appeared in the American press that subsidiaries of a Texas oil consortium had entered into contracts for the sale of oil equipment to Iraq.

Malaysian teachers are forced to schedule pregnancies to avoid disruption to work during the school year. The Deputy Minister of Education of Malaysia said that every school should have schedules according to which teachers can go on maternity leave. The fact is that 65 percent of teachers in the country are women, and combining motherhood with the learning process is quite difficult. Therefore, it was decided to regulate the timing of pregnancy “from above,” Ananova.com reports.

From Monday, wholesale trade enterprises are prohibited from importing alcoholic beverages into the flood-hit Yakut city of Lensk. The decision to tighten the regime came after several dozen workers from restoration teams who arrived from other regions of the republic were expelled from Lensk for drunkenness.

US citizen John Edward Tobbin, convicted in Russia for illegal acquisition and possession of drugs to a year in prison, will serve his sentence in the same colony with the Russians. The official representative of the Voronezh Region Department of Execution of Punishments, Alexander Babkin, reported this to Interfax on Monday.

The US Supreme Court ruled that newspapers and magazines do not have the right to publish materials from freelancers in electronic versions of publications without their permission, reports Bloomberg. The decision could mean millions of dollars in new royalties for print writers.

The program of the XXIII MIFF this year will feature retrospectives of cinema from North and South Korea for the first time in the history of international festivals. The festival organizers tried not to pursue political goals and avoid a situation of rivalry. However, the North Korean delegation demanded not only that two different retrospectives be held, but also that films from North and South Korea be separated by showing films from other countries.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, there is a possibility that the US economy is already in a recession. A recession is understood as a significant decline in business activity over several months in the country's economy. Particularly important are indicators of industrial production, employment, real income levels, and trade. A recession begins after the economy has passed its peak.

General Anatoly Yezhkov has been appointed as the new head of the regional headquarters for the counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya. This was reported by Kommersant with reference to the Russian FSB. Sources in this department noted that Yezhkov will replace German Ugryumov, who suddenly died, in this post. Anatoly Ezhkov’s responsibilities will include coordinating the activities of units and divisions of all law enforcement agencies in Chechnya.

In the near future, the body of field commander Arbi Barayev, who was recently killed in Chechnya, will be presented to journalists. This was stated by the official representative of the press service of the FSB Directorate for Chechnya, Lieutenant Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, Kommersant writes on Monday . According to Shabalkin, the military discovered the body of the murdered Barayev and took it to the location of one of the units.

A loud sensation took place on the first day of women's competition at the Wimbledon tennis tournament. The first racket of the world, Swiss Martina Hingis, lost in the opening match to Spaniard Virginia Ruano Pascual and dropped out of the fight. The Spanish tennis player won in a little more than an hour - 6:4, 6:2. Russians Elena Dementieva, Elena Bovina, Tatyana Panova and Lina Krasnorutskaya successfully overcame the barrier of the first round.

South Korean border guards opened fire on Sunday to prevent a North Korean fishing schooner from violating their waters. According to UPI, the ship entered South Korean waters at a distance of 2.5 nautical miles and remained there for 3 hours. After discovering the intruder, the border guards warned the fishermen by radio, but in response they received shots from flares.

On Monday, Vitaly Kaydanovich, general director of the North-West Customs Terminal, was killed in St. Petersburg. According to RIA Novosti , Kaydanovich's body was discovered on Krestovsky Island in the area of ​​Dynamo Avenue. According to the St. Petersburg police department, the murder occurred around nine in the morning. Kajdanovich was killed by three shots to the head from an unidentified weapon.

The Serbian government stated that "concrete cooperation with the tribunal has already begun, in accordance with the resolution of the Assembly." Minister of Justice Momčilo Grubač submitted to the Belgrade District Court the request of the International Tribunal for the extradition of the former president of Yugoslavia. According to a decree approved by parliament on Saturday, the local court will notify the justice minister of its response to the request within three days.

On Wednesday, one of the world's most famous Brazilian writers, Jorge Amado de Faria, was hospitalized with a heart attack and exacerbation of diabetes. Doctors at the Alianca Hospital in El Salvador, where the 89-year-old writer is staying, said his condition is complicated by a pulmonary infection. The health of the author of the book "Captains of the Sand", on which the famous film "Sandpit Generals" was based, noticeably deteriorated on Sunday.

Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn and Lara Flynn Boyle arrived in Moscow on Sunday. A pleasant surprise was that Woody Harrelson flew in with them, information about whose arrival in Moscow had previously been officially declared unreliable. Jack Nicklson, famous for his roles in the films One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Shining and The Batman, was awarded three Oscars. and was also nominated eight times, including for a cameo role in the film Easy Rider.