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Anti-corruption Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze believes that the scale of corruption in the country has reached a level where it “poses a threat even to the existence of the state.” By his order, since July, a group of experts led by the Chairman of the Supreme Court, Vladimir Chanturia, has been working on this problem, and yesterday a report entitled “Main Directions of the National Anti-Corruption Program” was published.

By the end of this year, another banking-insurance alliance may be formed in the domestic insurance market.

After a conversation with Vladimir Putin, Arkady Volsky decided to leave Inkombank's creditors Today's meeting of the Inkombank creditors' committee promises to be very interesting. At it they will discuss Arkady Volsky’s resignation from the post of committee chairman and decide through which bank settlements with Inkom’s private depositors will be made. The intrigue is that Mr.

Microtest is preparing to be listed on NASDAQ Summing up the decade of existence of the Ekaterinburg system integrator Microtest, its management for the first time yesterday revealed the company's turnover figures and announced its intention to list its shares on NASDAQ in 2002.

Three students from school No. 415 in the South-Eastern District of Moscow were hospitalized yesterday morning with a diagnosis of poisoning. At approximately 11 o'clock, the city's operational services received an alarm from an educational institution in Tank Proezd: many children and teachers complained of headaches and a metallic taste in their mouths. These symptoms are the first signs of mercury vapor poisoning, and several teams of doctors and rescuers immediately rushed to the scene.

The government is updating the Tax Code on the move Only 29 chapters of the Tax Code, perhaps, separate Russia from the road leading to prosperity and well-being. As First Deputy Minister of Finance Sergei Shatalov said yesterday, “the dust of the summer tax shocks has settled” and the first estimates can be made.

The Ministry of Railways reacted sharply to the statements of the Samara governor The Ministry of Railways ordered the Kuibyshev Railway (KZD) to stop financing the construction of a railway station in Samara. As reported by KZD, this is due to the fact that the regional administration has not yet fulfilled its obligations to finance construction.

Tomorrow at the Mariinsky Theater the first premiere of the season is Richard Strauss's opera Salome. This music is not new either for the theater or for its artistic director Valery Gergiev. Salome was last staged here in 1995 by Julia Taylor. The production was a success. Now director David FREEMAN has taken on it, with whom our correspondent Gulare SADYKH-ZADE managed to talk before the premiere. — How do you see the place of opera in the modern world?

Sergei Panov will be discouraged from “committing outrages” The scandalous story of forward Sergei Panov, who played for basketball CSKA last season, and this year decided to move to Perm Ural Great, received the most unexpected development. As our newspaper has already reported (see Vremya Novostey, October 30) , Panov even signed a contract with the Permians, but, as it turned out, until next fall he is a long-term serviceman.

Federal troops fired at the head of Chechnya The head of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, who miraculously escaped a kamikaze bomb on Tuesday, came under fire in the evening of the same day. As the Interfax agency reports, on the way from Severny Airport to the village of Tsentoroy, where Akhmad Kadyrov lives, the convoy accompanying him came under massive fire from machine guns and grenade launchers.

The “secret protocols” scandal is unlikely to survive the elections Days before the US presidential election, documents relating to a secret 1995 agreement between Viktor Chernomyrdin and US Vice President Al Gore sparked a confrontation between the Republican congressional leadership and the Clinton administration.

ZIL’s cooperation with Renault is complicated by the high cost of the French engine, said ZIL General Director Valery Nosov. The cost of a Renault engine that meets Euro-2 standards is about $5,000. Currently, cars are equipped with engines from the Minsk Motor Plant costing $1,600. According to Nosov, ZIL offers Renault to transfer production of at least six main parts of the French engine to Russia. This should reduce its cost by about half.

Women don't like to talk about their age On Tuesday, October 31, at the Kinotavr World cinema, a creative meeting took place with the famous French actress Annie Girardot, who starred in such films as “Rocco and His Brothers” by Luchino Visconti, “Les Miserables” by Claude Lelouch, “Thank You, Life” by Bertrand Blier . This is not her first visit to Russia - she has already been to Sochi at Kinotavr, and came to Moscow with the play “Zambezi Falls,” which was staged at the Vakhtangov Theater.

"Woe from Wit" by Sergei Zhenovach on the stage of the Maly Theater The premiere, played yesterday in the bastion of theatrical traditionalism, is one of those for which critics and theatergoers have special hopes. If we evaluate the production in the light of these hopes, we can safely say that it was not a success - it did not open up new theatrical names to Moscow, did not amaze with the novelty of the concept, and did not become a turning point in the director’s work.