The head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Yuriy Lutsenko, opposed the withdrawal of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from Kosovo, who serve as part of the UN police contingent. According to UNIAN , he stated this at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada. Earlier, a number of deputies spoke out in favor of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry employees in Kosovo returning home.

The United Russia congress, which will be held on April 14-15, will consider proposals for reforming the party, Kommersant reported on Thursday . It is planned to reduce the number of party projects and programs, of which there are currently 27. In United Russia, the existing structure of 15 commissions, 16 working groups and 19 coordinators for areas of work may also be abolished.

Russian traveler Fyodor Konyukhov, taking part in the world race around Antarctica, independently repaired a serious breakdown on his yacht in the open ocean. On the ship "Scarlet Sails" the bolt securing the rudder feather weighing 70 kilograms was cut off. With such damage, the yacht could not reach the finish line, reports the Sportcom news agency . Konyukhov had to carry out repairs in a rough ocean.

On March 19, 2008, a gamma-ray burst was detected, the brightness of which in the optical range reached such a magnitude that it could be seen with the naked eye, reports the Polish research group Pi of the Sky. A gamma-ray burst (GRB) is one of the most powerful types of explosions occurring in the Universe. GRBs are thought to result from mergers of neutron stars (short) or collapses of massive stars (long).

Nikolai Kruglov became the new captain of the Russian men's biathlon team. The four-time world champion will take up his duties at the beginning of the 2008/09 season. According to the team's senior coach Vladimir Alikin, another contender for the post of captain was Maxim Chudov, writes the publication Sport Day by Day . Alikin added that Kruglov became captain of the team based on the results of a vote among biathletes.

English Premier League club Manchester City has offered CSKA Moscow £15.7 million ($31.4 million) for Brazilian forward Jo. The transfer of the striker, who has experience playing for his national team, could take place in the summer of 2008, writes the English edition of the Daily Mirror. The clubs have not yet reached an agreement on the transfer, but, according to the newspaper, CSKA President Evgeny Giner will not prevent the footballer from leaving for England.

On March 20, 2008, London's Tate Gallery launched a fundraising campaign to buy a painting by the 17th-century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. This is an oil sketch for the ceiling painting of the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace. The sketch is now valued at 6 million pounds sterling (approximately $12 million), and, according to The Art Newspaper, the gallery, the Art Fund agency and a group of trustees have already managed to accumulate 1.5 million.

On March 20, King Albert II of Belgium appointed the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats, Yves Leterme, as head of government, AFP reports, citing an official statement from the royal court. At the same time, Albert II accepted the resignation of Guy Verhofstadt, who had headed the interim transitional cabinet since December 2007. The new government will include 15 ministers and 7 secretaries of state.

Famous Finnish hockey player Jere Karalahti received a suspended 20-month prison sentence for his involvement in drug smuggling from Estonia to Finland. The court found the athlete guilty of financing the illegal transportation of banned substances - amphetamines and cocaine last year, reports the Associated Press. In addition to Karalahti, who was also fined $16,000, 19 more people are being charged with drug smuggling.

Physicists have discovered a new violation of the symmetry of the properties of particles and antiparticles, which may explain why there is much more matter in our Universe than antimatter, reports the journal Nature . Employees of the Belle collaboration, which unites more than 50 scientific institutions around the world, studied the decay of B-mesons (the charged B+ meson and the neutral B0 meson) and their antiparticles (B- and anti-B0, respectively).

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which is a division of the Mitsubishi Group, has decided to begin developing the Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ), a medium-range passenger jet airliner, AFP reports. Mitsubishi estimates that Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways will order 70 aircraft, and an order for another 20 will come from other Asian companies. Mitsubishi unveiled the MRJ prototype at the 2007 Paris Air Show, touting it as the quietest, lightest and most efficient in its class.

On March 19, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree prohibiting the connection of information systems, networks and computers used for storing, processing or transmitting information containing state secrets, as well as official secrets, to the Internet. The decree replaces a similar document from 2004. The previous version of the decree prohibited connecting to the Internet only systems related to the processing of data containing state secrets or official secrets.

Russian Post intends to organize a network of mobile post offices-vans to serve customers living in remote settlements of Russian regions. reports this RBC Daily . The company has already completed testing of two prototypes of such departments based on GAZ-33081 and GAZ-33027 vehicles. By 2010, Russian Post plans to put into operation about a thousand such vans.

Nvidia has released a new high-speed video card, the GeForce 9800GX2, according to a company press release. The manufacturer claims that it is 30-50 percent faster than the company's flagship video card of the previous generation, GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU. The GeForce 9800GX2 contains two graphics processors, each running at 600 MHz. The card has 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM, 512 MB for each of the two GPUs.

Control in the new music game for the portable DS console from Activision Guitar Hero: On Tour will be implemented using four buttons that are located on the side of the cartridge and a stylus made in the form of a guitar pick, reports the IGN portal. Before this, amateur images of mini-guitars appeared on the Internet, which were supposedly supposed to be sold along with the game. In fact, no additional devices are needed.