The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Army General Yuri Baluevsky, proposed refusing to maintain the quantitative parity of the Russian armed forces with a potential enemy. This is stated in Baluevsky’s article, which was published by the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

The European Commission has approved the acquisition of the American sportswear and footwear manufacturer Reebok by the German company Adidas. The Antimonopoly Committee of the European Commission found no obstacles to the merger of the two largest manufacturers of sporting goods, AFP reports. In a statement, the European Commission said that despite the same field of activity, the companies have slightly different positioning and prices for their products.

France will bear part of the costs of developing a promising aircraft carrier project, which is being handled by the British Ministry of Defense, according to the website of the British military department . This decision was made during negotiations between British Defense Minister John Reid and his French counterpart Michel Alliot-Marie. France decided to pay a third of the costs of the so-called "demonstration phase" of the contract's development.

American television networks Warner Bros. and United Paramount Network, which are subsidiaries of CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc., respectively, announced their merger, scheduled for fall 2006. As a result of this action, a CW television channel aimed at young people should appear. The stated target audience is people aged 18 to 34 years, reports Reuters. WB and UPN, which went on the air in January 1995, were initially aimed at a younger audience than their main competitors ABC, CBS and NBC.

A group of Buddhist monks from Thailand decided to release the canonical treatise "Tripitaka" in the form of dialogues on 250 CDs, the Guardian newspaper writes . In this way they hope to revive the interest of the common people in Buddhism. The monks suggest that it is precisely because of the complexity of the canon that the number of believers in the country has been declining for many years.

A century of will not to be seen Viktor Yanukovych wants to be removed from the election race as a hardened criminal The criminal past of Viktor Yanukovych occupies the average Ukrainian citizen an order of magnitude less than the hairstyle of Yulia Tymoshenko or the mobile communications of Andrei Yushchenko .

Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Yuri Baluevsky, commenting on the hazing incident at the Chelyabinsk Tank Institute on Wednesday, expressed “deep indignation” that “the leadership of this institution, the leadership of the military district, and the Ground Forces did not know the true state of affairs,” RSN reports . Baluevsky promised that those responsible for hazing at the university would be severely punished, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reports .

The managers and journalists of the Ekho Moskvy radio intend to sell the FM radio station Arsenal, which they own. Yuri Fedutinov and Alexey Venediktov - the general director and editor-in-chief of Echo, respectively - told the Kommersant newspaper that negotiations on the sale are being conducted in several directions. The deal could be completed within three to four months. Among Arsenal's potential buyers are several Russian media players.

The Federation Council approved on Wednesday, January 25, the candidacies of four judges of the Supreme Court proposed by the President of the Russian Federation. They were Viktor Ermilov, Andrei Starkov, Stanislav Razumov and Veniamin Stepanov, reports the Interfax agency . In total, 18 people applied for the vacant positions of judges of the Supreme Court. Stepanov has been a judge of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation since October 1986.

The famous Argentine football player Diego Maradona was sued by the former beauty queen of the island of Bora Bora in French Polynesia, AFP reports. Tumata Vaimarae claims Maradona threw a glass at her in a nightclub. Shards of glass injured the former “Miss Bora Bora” and doctors had to put eight stitches on her body. The incident, the lawsuit alleges, occurred last weekend at a nightclub at one of the island's hotels, where the famous football player was vacationing with his relatives.

Gazprom intends to acquire the Gorky film studio. According to the Vedomosti newspaper, representatives of the gas concern began consultations with the Federal Property Management Agency on the purchase of a controlling stake in the studio. As Vedomosti wrote on Wednesday, the auction for the sale of a package of 75 percent minus one share of OJSC TPO Film Studio named after M. Gorky was supposed to take place at the beginning of 2005.

BMW intends to begin sales of its newest sports coupe, the BMW Z4 M Coupe, this summer. As we wrote earlier, this car will borrow from the previous generation BMW M3 not only a powerful engine, but also a number of other components, including the braking system, and it will have to compete with the recent new Porsche Cayman S. Under the hood of the BMW Z4 M Coupe there will be a 3.2-liter six-cylinder engine producing 343 horsepower, which is mated to a six-speed manual transmission.

Negotiations between Russia and Belarus on a single currency have reached a dead end, Kommersant reports with reference to Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. As Kudrin explained, Belarusian negotiators estimate the direct damage from the introduction of a single currency for Belarus at $1.8 billion and want Russia to transfer this amount to them annually. According to Kudrin, the Russian side offered this money to Belarus as a loan, but agreement on this issue could not be achieved.

Vladimir Putin proposed creating an international center in Russia for the provision of nuclear fuel cycle services, including enrichment, which would operate under the control of the IAEA. The President of the Russian Federation stated this at a meeting of the EurAsEC Interstate Council held in St. Petersburg, RIA Novosti reports .

The General Staff and the tasks of military development The Chief of the General Staff discusses threats to the security of Russia, ways to counter them and the principles of building the country's armed forces Chief of the Russian General Staff Yuri Baluevsky published an article in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper in which he spoke about plans for the development of the armed forces, taking into account the threats and challenges to the Russian state.