In the Iraqi city of El Falluj, located 50 km west of Baghdad, a American military helicopter is shot down, Iraqi electronic media reported on Wednesday. Details of the incident are not yet known. The day before, fierce clashes between Iraqi rebels and the American military took place in El Falluge. As a result of the air shelling by US aircraft of the eastern and southern parts of the city, at least 100 people were killed from the Iraq side, RIA Novosti reports.

About your departure Leonid Tyagachev promised to leave the post of president of the Russian Olympic Committee after the Beijing Olympics.

Russia comes to Formula 1. According to the newspaper Corriere Della Sera, the Russian business structure ordered the building of the Bolid for Formula 1 to the Italian company. The pilot will be Jacques Vilnev. The new team, financed with money from Moscow, is ready to enter the Major Car Sports on the eve of the Grand Prix in Moscow. This information is not officially confirmed, however, intensive attracting qualified technical personnel and preparatory work give indirect certificates.

In Uruguay, the Festival named after M.I. Glinka, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding Russian composer. Uruguayan spectators were able to get acquainted with the overture of the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, as well as listen to the Kamarinskaya and other well -known works of the founder of Russian classical music. The audience warmly met the game of the State Symphony Orchestra "Sodra", which was conducted by Andrei Kruzhkov.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will take preventive measures to destroy terrorists anywhere in the world. This was stated on Wednesday by the chief of the General Staff of Russia, Yuri Baluevsky. “We will take all the necessary measures and actions to eliminate all gangs and cells of terrorists,” Baluevsky said.

The international press of the press, based in Vienna, said that the Russian authorities prevented the work of journalists during a terrorist attack in Beslan, Radio Liberty reports. The institute’s statement mentions, in particular, the resignation of the editor-in-chief of the Izvestia newspaper Rafa Shakirov , the arrests of the reporter of the Al-Arabia television channel and Georgian journalists .

Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation Vladislav Surkov was elected chairman of the board of directors of AK "Transnefteprodukt. His deputy in the Council of Directors was the Deputy Minister of Industry and Energy Andrei Reus. The board of directors also appointed two new members of the company's board. According to Interfax, they were the first vice president of Transnefteprodukt Vladimir Karamanov and vice president of the company Philip Nikonov.

The leaders of the opposition parties of Belarus at an emergency meeting on Wednesday agreed to join forces in order to "confront the threat to the establishment of one person in Belarus of the lifelong and unlimited power." About this, as stated in the text of the declaration of opposition parties in Belarus, adopted at the meeting.

Tom Cruise rose to the first stage of the rating among Hollywood actors in terms of income. This happened after the signing of the contract, which can bring Cruz $ 519 million for a role in the epic of Stephen Spielberg "War of the Worlds".

The Israeli nuclear physicist Mordechai Vanun, released from prison, intends to ask Palestinian citizenship. “I will turn to the chairman Yasir Arafat and I hope that he will not refuse me. I want to become a Palestinian,” said Vanun, who spent 18 years in Israeli prisons.

In Michigan City (Indiana), a 10-year-old boy who walked next to his house on wheels was shot from a gun with his 13-year-old friend. When the police arrived at the scene, the child was already dead. The culprit of the incident was immediately placed under the supervision of the police. As the investigation established, both boys lived in the campsite of residential wagons located approximately 25 miles west of the South band. This was announced by camping manager Mark Stantz.

Among the participants on the eve of the anti -terrorist rally on the Vasilievsky descent, in Moscow, there were Moscow Krishnas, who arrived there as part of a delegation from the Khoroshevsky municipal district. Even earlier, immediately after the Beslan tragedy, the Center for Society of Consciousness of Krishna in Russia (Tsoskr) made a statement in which he expressed condolences in connection with the death of innocent people, primarily children.

In the hospitals of North Ossetia, 318 victims are currently remaining, including 191 children, as a result of the capture of the school in Beslan. This was announced on Wednesday by a source in the Ministry of Health of the Republic. According to him, at 7:00 Moscow time 33 people remain in serious condition, including 9 children. Another 17 victims are in Moscow hospitals, 11 in the medical institutions of Rostov-on-Don, Interfax reports.

The quarrel of two employees of the Chelyabinsk restaurant "Badgastein" ended in the hospitalization of one of them. On Monday, September 6, at two in the morning from one of the houses along Sonya Krivoy Kryvo, a 23-year-old man with an open cranial injury, a fracture of the skull, a cerebral borrow and numerous abrasions on his head was delivered to a neurosurgical department of the city hospital.

Russian and international human rights defenders express serious concern due to the fact that the authorities hid the scale of the tragedy in Beslan, including misinforming the public regarding the number of hostages, the program director of the Moscow Helsinki group Tatyana Lokshina said on the air of the Echo of Moscow radio station.