The NATO leadership decided to further reduce the buffer zone in the south of Serbia near Kosovo. Representatives of NATO in Brussels reported that the Yugoslav troops would take two more sectors in the five -kilometer zone installed after the deployment in the Keifor Council forces. The zone consists of five sectors. Now only two - they remain under the control of peacekeepers.

The Russian State Duma today has removed from the agenda the consideration of bills allowing the import and burial of the spent nuclear fuel in Russia. The decision was made in connection with the appeal to the Supreme Court of Ecological Organizations protesting against the adoption of amendments to the law on environmental protection. Today, Greenpeace activists held a protest rally near the Russian Parliament building.

Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, who is on a visit to Paris, said that his country and France consider Afghanistan the main terrorist threat to the whole world. Ivanov made this statement on Wednesday after negotiations with France President Jacques Shirak and other leaders of the country.

Doctors from England and the United States have published new evidence of the benefits of bay -hay tea and oatmeal . Tea not only contains a large number of antioxidants, but also prevents the formation of blood clots, protecting the integrity of blood plates. Doctors from the University of North Carolina came to the conclusion that three cups of tea drunk daily, by about ten percent reduce the chances of myocardial infarction.

Interest on pension deposits posted before January 1, 2000 for six months or more, will not be taxed - the State Duma adopted such an amendment to chapter 23 of the second part of the Tax Code. In the Far East, the import of meat and milk products into the Russian territory is controlled by employees of 22 border veterinary points , the Office of the Main State Veterinary Inspectorate of the Khabarovsk Territory said.

The American authorities ordered four Russian diplomats to immediately leave the United States. This was announced today by the representative of the US State Department, who said that the expulsion of diplomats was directly related to the recent arrest of the FBI officer Robert Hansen, who is accused of espionage in favor of the USSR and Russia. The American press reports that in the coming months, apparently, 50 Russian citizens will be sent from the United States.

The Moscow City Court sentenced the sculptor Alexander Suslikov to six and a half years in prison, who fired at the US Embassy in Moscow two years ago. On March 29, 1999, during a rally, the American Embassy of Gopherikov opened fire from a machine gun. According to him, he wanted in this way to protest against the bombing of NATO Yugoslavia.

Mikhail Sokolov: The campaign to create a single legal field in Russia calms down. The elections of the State Council of Adygea were held contrary to the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia, but the head of the Central Election Commission Alexander Veshnyakov did not demand the abolition of illegal voting.

On March 23, in Moscow, the performances of the “Black Monk” Kama Ginkas , “One Absolutely Happy Village” by Petra Fomenko and “Constant Suicide” by Anton Adasinsky, the competition of the Russian National Theater Prize “Golden Mask”, which will last until April 7.

In St. Petersburg, from the Hermitage today, a picture of the 19th century, Jean-Leon Jerome “Basin in a harem” was stolen. According to the Radio Liberty correspondent, the museum's caretakers discovered the disappearance of the picture quite quickly - the kidnapper cut it out of the frame. The guard immediately blocked all the entrances and exits and did not release visitors and employees from the museum before the arrival of a special investigative group.

On Friday, at half past ten in the morning Moscow time, the Mir Orbital complex will be flooded in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. This was announced to reporters by the representative of the press service of the Russian Space Agency Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko. According to him, at about 4 a.m. the station will receive the first impulse for braking. Fragments of the Mir complex should fall into the ocean between Australia and South America.

The Supreme Court of Russia approved the decision of the Central Election Commission that prohibited the conduct of the environmental referendum. According to environmentalists, two and a half million signatures of citizens from 60 regions of Russia were submitted for the referendum. However, the Central Election Commission recognized 600 thousand signatures invalid and refused to conduct a referendum on this basis.

Two policemen were injured in the south of France as a result of clashes between the police and local winemakers requiring imports to the country of cheap foreign wines. On a high -speed highway near the city of him, about eight thousand demonstrators entered into a fight with security forces. Participants in the action set fire to several police vehicles. The riots also occurred in a number of other South French cities.

The military prosecutor’s office of Russia is investigating 62 criminal cases on charges of Russian troops of crimes committed in Chechnya. This was announced by the chief military prosecutor of Russia Mikhail Kislitsyn at today's meeting with members of the joint working group PACE and the State Duma of Russia to normalize the situation in Chechnya. According to Kislitsin, in most cases the military is accused of killing civilians and theft of property.

Sergey Sleptsov, Rostov-on-Don: In Rostov-on-Don, the funeral of 40 bodies of victims of the First Chechen war from among the civilians, mainly residents of the city of Grozny, took place. All these years of the bodies were stored in the 124th forensic laboratory of the North Caucasus Military District. As the head of the laboratory Vladimir Shcherbakov noted, experts have exhausted identification opportunities to establish names of civilians. There were no requests for relatives.