Japan will be forced to introduce the regime of economic sanctions against the DPRK if Pyongyang does not provide information about Japanese citizens stolen by the North Korean intelligence services. This was stated on Sunday by Takenori Kanzaki, the head of the New Komayto party, which is part of the ruling coalition. “I can’t hide my irritation regarding the insincerity of the North Korean side,” he said in a speech on the state television channel.

Two armed military personnel who deserted from the military unit of the North Caucasus District of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, deployed in Krasnodar, were detained in the Tyustelhablsky district of Adygea. This was announced on Sunday by Interfax-South, a source in the Republican Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The number of persons in the institutions of the Russian criminal-executive system was reduced by 150 thousand last year and is now 700 thousand people, Yuri Chaika Minister Yuri Chaika told Interfax. He noted that such a significant reduction became possible due to changes in criminal legislation aimed at the liberalization and humanization of the punitive policy of the state.

A comprehensive agreement on a peaceful settlement of the conflict in the south of Sudan, where two million people were killed in two decades, and was consistent with one hundred percent. This was announced the night before in the Sudanese capital, First Vice President Ali Osman Tah. He returned to Hartum after negotiations in Kenya with the leadership of the Sudan's rebel library army (Noas). “The peace treaty is completely ready,” the vice -president of Sudan emphasized.

In Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, 35 apartment buildings were left without heating. According to RIA Novosti in the city emergency dispatch service of the housing and communal services, the heat supply was stopped due to an accident on the heating main. As expected, it will be possible to eliminate the consequences of the accident only on Sunday, January 2, the agency’s interlocutor added. Currently, the city is minus temperature - about one degree below zero.

Boris Nemtsov, a member of the Political Council of the Union of Right Forces party, believes that in the past 2004, the political situation in Russia worsened.

Iraq security forces were arrested today by seven employees of the charity organization for aiding terrorists. According to the Kuna news agency, the head of the El Amara province General Ismail Arar said that five people were detained in the administrative center of the province in the south-east of the country who tried to acquire a large batch of weapons. They turned out to be employees of a charity, based in Baghdad.

Scotland Yard announced today the beginning of an emergency investigation of the facts of glaring mockery of the feelings of the British, whose relatives are listed in the lists of missing after the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Some attackers send alarmed families by e -mail false notifications of allegedly the death of their loved ones as a result of a natural disaster.

In the Khasavyurt district of Dagestan, a large base of militants was discovered. As Interfax was told in the press service of the Dagestan Ministry of Internal Affairs, on Sunday, Dagestan and Chechen police officers during a joint operation in the Forest Massif near the village of Osmanurt of the Khasavyurt district discovered a base of militants. She was three insulated dugouts.

The lives of several hundred tourists relaxing on one of the beaches of the Poucet were saved thanks to the British girl and her geography teacher. Ironically, the ten -year -old Tilly Smith recently studied such a rare phenomenon as tsunami at school. As soon as the water began to retreat, the student told her surprised parents that in a few minutes a giant wave would come to the shore.

More than 500 passengers-Russian passengers proceeded during the first day of the New Year on trains of the Kaliningrad direction according to the new transit rules through the territory of Lithuania. The rules have been introduced from January 1, 2005. As ITAR-TASS reported today in the Office of the Kaliningrad Railway, not one of the passengers at the border stations was planted.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the restoration of countries affected by the disaster could go up to 10 years. He stated that on Thursday he was going to visit Indonesia - a country that suffered more than others from a tsunami strike. There, Annan will hold a meeting with the heads of state, whose purpose will be the coordination of rescue and restoration work, reports the Air Force .

The Latvian police managed to identify seven of the nine Russians who died on December 31 in a bus accident, RIA Novosti was told in the Main Police of Latvia. On the morning of December 31, in Latvia, in the town of Steirnien, a flight bus with 62 Russian tourists crashed. 9 of them died, 31 were injured of varying severity. The Latvian police suggests that the driver of the bus, which excessively exceeded the speed, is to blame.

Former hostages and relatives of those who died in a terrorist seizure of a school in Beslan on September 1-3 transfer 1 million rubles to the Fund for helping to the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Such a decision was unanimously made at a meeting of the Beslan Public Commission, its chairman Mairbek Tulaev told it. “In the most difficult moments of life, we learned what the support of the planet means,” he said. “There are no borders and distances when people happen in the world and people die.

At least 4 police officers died today in the Peruvian city of Andauaylas during a shootout with militants who captured the police commissariat. This was reported by the Peruvian media with reference to sources in the city hospital. On the eve of President Peru Alejandro Toledo introduced a state of emergency in the Apurimak department, in which Andauaylas is located. Toledo said that he would personally manage measures to liberate hostages and restore public order in the city.