Microsoft's Xbox Game Console on Thursday went on sale to European stores. Many stores selling computer games opened at midnight on Wednesday so that the most impatient buyers could get a new prefix as soon as possible, the Air Force notes. In Europe, the prefix costs 479 euros, and Microsoft hopes that even at such a rather big price, the first one and a half million prefixes will be instantly sold out. However, competitors are not asleep.

10 TNT checkers with a total weight of 2.6 kg seized during operational events police officers from two criminals in Khabarovsk, Interfax reports. According to the press service of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the region, as part of measures for the search for stolen vehicles, employees of the criminal investigation department of the railway district of the regional center were searched in a concrete garage along Karl Marx Street.

The International Olympic Committee has repeatedly been concerned about the low pace of preparation of Athens for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. Experts estimated that if the construction continues the current pace, then the capital of Greece will be ready for games only by 2005. By November last year, only three percent of the objects of the Olympic village were built, which could not but cause anxiety.

On Friday, the Ministry of Press of the Russian Federation will publish the results of consideration of applications for participation in the competition for broadcasting on the sixth meter television channel. This was reported to "Interfax" by Deputy Head of the Ministry Mikhail Ceslavinsky. Some applicants, according to him, will not be allowed to participate in the competition, since their applications do not meet the requirements.

Evgeny Kafelnikov and Marat Safin confidently overcame the barrier of the second round of the Masters tennis tournament called Pacific Life Open, which takes place in the American Indian Wells. The prize fund of the competition is almost three million dollars.

President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma considers the response of the State Committee on Religious Affairs about the legality of registration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC -KP) final and calls not to speculate on the topic of the interfaith world in the country. Having stated that "it is impossible to prohibit a person to believe", the president recalled that the UOC-KP unites more than 300 thousand parishes, reports Interfax-Ukraine.

The Russian government approved today the investment program of the gas industry for 2002 in the amount of 158 billion rubles. This was announced according to the results of the Cabinet of Energy of the Russian Federation Igor Yusufov, clarifying that out of this amount 140.8 billion will go to the development of the Gazprom concern.

The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC -KP) Filaret (Denisenko) states that the UOC -KP "acts legally" and calls on the Prosecutor General "not to make inter -religious hostility.

On March 14, in the Zhukovsky journalists near Moscow, a layout of the world's first reusable spacecraft for tourists will be demonstrated. This was reported to RIA Novosti by a specialist in the Myasishchev experimental engineering plant, the leading specialist of the project Svetlana Dyundykin. A spacecraft for tourists is designed by designers of the KB of the Myasishchev plant by order of Soborbital Corporation CJSC.

The outstanding “success” of Canadians in paired figure skating at the last Olympiad in Salt Lake City, where they managed to “gild” silver medals as a result of backstage protests, inspired Zeeliger’s novel, the son of the Austrian skater Eva Pavlik, the son of the novel by Zeeliger, Itar-Tass.

The Headquarters of the OGV in the North Caucasus reported the details of the special operation in the Chechen village of Starylya Atagi, ITAR-TASS reports. The headquarters statement states that the purpose of the special operation was to neutralize a group of militants, headed by field commanders, Rizwan Akhmadov and Issa Sadaev. The operation was carried out from March 5 to 11 in the villages of the Old and New Atagi.

Deputies of the Union of Right Forces faction of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg prepared a bill "On Amendments to the Charter of St. Petersburg", which proposes to completely eliminate the Institute of the City Administration and abolish vice-governors, reports Business Petersburg. Instead, the right ones propose to create a new structure of the executive branch in the image and likeness of the federal.

$ 50 million was allocated for the creation of the Institute of Military Nanotechnology in the United States, which will purposefully deal with the development of ammunition of the future, reports New Scientist . The purpose of the institute is to develop technologies, which will further serve as the basis for improving the uniforms of the military. For example, it is assumed that the clothes of the future itself will be able to respond to fractures with hard fixation, stop bleeding.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry was announced by the person of Non Grat, the adviser to the Moldovan, Moldova in Bucharest, Jacob Popovich and invited him to leave the country's territory within 10 days. This was announced on Wednesday evening by the head of the diplomatic mission of Bucharest Mircea Joana after a meeting with the Ambassador of Moldova, who was awarded the corresponding verbal note, RIA Novosti reports.

The Japanese crane is stolen from the Novosibirsk Zoo, ITAR-TASS reports. Last night, the unknown hacked the aviary, which contained a couple of Japanese cranes , and stole the male. The Japanese crane is a unique bird listed in the Red Book. The cost of one individual is estimated at 5 thousand dollars. In total, the European zoos currently contains about 200 Japanese cranes. Most likely, thieves are going to sell a bird, said Olga Shilo, deputy director of the Novosibirsk Zoo.