A monument to Russian President Vladimir Putin was solemnly unveiled in the park in front of the building of the Pskov Children's Regional Hospital, Pskov News Tape reports. The bust of the president was erected on the initiative of the public organization “Motherland against Mikhailov,” which was created by opponents of the governor of the Pskov region, Evgeny Mikhailov.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case on grounds of violation by Gazprom OJSC and its subsidiaries, Mezhregiongaz LLC and Surgutgazprom LLC, articles 5 and 6 of the Law “On Competition and Restriction of Monopolistic Activities in Commodity Markets,” it reported on Thursday RIA News" .

The American command in Iraq plans to deliver food to soldiers using special parachutes equipped with a high-precision navigation system, the World Tribune reports. The Sherpa device, developed in Canada, consists of two parachutes - the main one and the small one, which regulates the position of the platform with the load. The built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) system allows you to set the coordinates of the crash site with high accuracy.

On Thursday, a major accident occurred in Ukraine. As a result of a collision between two regular buses near Uman, more than twenty people were injured, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Novosti-Ukraine agency. The accident occurred on Thursday morning on the Kyiv-Odessa highway near the village of Sobkovka, Uman district, Cherkasy region.

Moscow's Tverskoy Court rejected the claims of Muscovites whose cars were damaged during the riots on Manezhnaya Square in June 2002, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Thursday. At the same time, the court recognized that the broadcast of the Russia-Japan football match on Manezhnaya Square was a spontaneous event to which the city authorities had nothing to do. Mass riots on Manezhnaya Square occurred on June 9, 2002 during the broadcast of the Russia-Japan football match.

Microsoft suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, according to the Guardian newspaper website . On the time zone map in Windows 95 installations, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was placed outside the country's borders. As a result, due to criticism from the Indian authorities, the corporation was forced to redo the corresponding section of the operating system. In Age of Empires 2, the Arabs were portrayed as brutal conquerors who converted Christian churches into mosques.

On Wednesday, the famous trainer Valery Zapashny committed suicide in a room at a circus hotel in Kursa, Interfax reports . A note was found in the room where he lived with his family: “I left, I love you and my son.” An hour before he was found hanged, the trainer was calmly communicating with his one-year-old child and his wife, who did not notice anything strange in his behavior. Zapashny was without real work for a long time and was only involved in rehearsals.

The chief editor of the online publication Dossier.Ru, Yulia Pelekhova, could be sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of extortion. This punishment was demanded by the state prosecutor at the trial, which resumed in the Tverskoy Court of Moscow, as reported on the Rossiyskaya Gazeta website. Pelekhova’s case was initiated at the request of businesswoman Oksana Tokareva, who contacted the Department for Combating Economic Crimes in January of this year.

Heavy equipment is being transferred to Tskhinvali from the Georgian city of Gori on Thursday night, RIA Novosti reports . As stated at the duty station of the South Ossetian Ministry of Internal Affairs, 30 units of equipment, including 150-mm howitzers, are already 10 kilometers from Tskhinvali. Currently, the northern part of Tskhinvali is under fire from large-caliber mortars. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, no one has been admitted to the city’s hospitals yet.

Experts from the European Environment Agency (EEA) predict that three-quarters of Alpine glaciers may melt by 2050, and global warming will result in the complete disappearance of cold winters in Europe by 2080, NBC reports. According to EEA forecasts, warming will primarily affect the south and northeast of the European continent, and the process itself will be more intense in winter than in summer.

The flight of Russian entrepreneur Sergei Polonsky to the International Space Station (ISS) is in jeopardy due to disagreements over the terms of the contract. The Federal Space Agency does not intend to guarantee Polonsky a refund if the flight does not take place for objective reasons. The businessman categorically refuses to pay for flight risks and insists on canceling this clause of the contract, obviously appealing to the law on consumer rights, writes the Vremya Novostei newspaper.

On Thursday evening, the Russian government will submit a draft budget for 2005, RIA Novosti reports . According to the head of the Ministry of Finance, Alexei Kudrin, the project includes an inflation rate of 7.5-8.5 percent. “The Ministry of Finance defines inflation as the main target indicator for which we will be responsible,” the minister said.

Muqtada al-Sadr reneged on Wednesday's promise to lay down his arms and leave the mausoleum of Imam Ali, prompting renewed military clashes between the US army and Shiite rebels, Reuters reports. There were at least five strong explosions in the city on Thursday. According to witnesses, sniper shots are periodically heard.

Units of the Ministry of Defense and Internal Troops of Georgia are leaving positions at strategic heights near Tskhinvali. Instead of Georgian soldiers, peacekeeping forces are setting up posts. The withdrawal of Georgian troops is being monitored by the commander of Russian peacekeepers Svyatoslav Nabzdorov and Georgian Defense Minister Georgy Baramidze, RIA Novosti reports . Strategic heights near Tskhinvali were occupied by Georgian units on Thursday morning.

The Japanese authorities refused to accept the statement of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and the head of the Japanese Chess Association Miyoko Watai about their desire to get married. Fischer's lawyer, Masako Suzuki, said the application was not accepted due to a lack of necessary documents, including Fischer's passport, which was revoked by the US government.