Because of him, the FBI is in for a shock. Timothy McVeigh, the 33-year-old Desert Storm veteran who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995 and was sentenced to death for it, will not die next Wednesday. The execution has been postponed to June 11, but this date is also in question. McVeigh's lawyers say their client, who previously refused to ask for a pardon, may now do so.

Yesterday the Mariinsky Theater presented a new performance - Verdi's opera Un ballo in maschera. This is the second collaboration between director Andrei Konchalovsky and conductor Valery Gergiev. Unlike the first, Prokofiev's War and Peace, which with its pompousness was intended for a local audience, Verdi's opera was made for the West. The production was commissioned by a festival organized to mark the centenary of Verdi’s death in his homeland of Parma.

Georgia will have a prime minister Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze delivered his annual message to parliament on Saturday. The head of state officially proposed introducing the institution of a cabinet of ministers and the post of prime minister in the country. The Cabinet of Ministers was abolished in 1995, and since then the President himself has headed the government. Shevardnadze explained his initiative by the need to deepen reforms.

On Sunday, the authorities of the Krapivinsky district of the Kemerovo region had to attract a unit of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to save a herd of cows. A herd of more than 200 heads forded the local Bannaya river near the village of the same name. After crossing, the shepherds drove the animals out onto fresh grass.

Moscow is preparing to build a Formula 1 track In a couple of years, Moscow will become one of the few cities in the world that has a track for racing cars in the Formula 1 class. This is the result of a short visit to Moscow by the creator of the world championship in car racing in this class, the President of Formula One Association Ltd. (FOA) Bernard Ecclestone, which took place at the end of last week.

Georgian deputy released from captivity 26-year-old Georgian parliament member Petre Tsiskarishvili and his fiancee Anna Surmava, kidnapped in Tbilisi on May 7, were released on Sunday night in the Telavi region in eastern Georgia. This was announced yesterday at a briefing by Speaker of Parliament Zurab Zhvania (the kidnapped man is the head of its secretariat), Ministers of State Security and Internal Affairs Vakhtang Kutateladze and Kakha Targamadze.

Microsoft changes licensing policy Bill Gates is pushing for corporate clients to pay for his software not as a product, but as a service. That is, if previously, by purchasing a certain number of licenses, companies received them as their property, but one day they will simply rent software.

NHL. Stanley Cup. Second round : “Buffalo” – “Pittsburgh” – 2:3 (series score 3:4). Third round: Colorado - St. Louis - 4:1 (1:0), New Jersey - Pittsburgh - 3:1 (1:0). The last team to reach the Stanley Cup semifinals was Pittsburgh, which needed all seven games of the series to defeat Buffalo.

The government has decided how to reform the aviation industry At a meeting on Friday, the government formulated a new approach to restructuring the aviation industry. Its fundamental novelty lies in the fact that it actually recognizes the primacy of the subjective interests of a person (plant director) over bare technological expediency.

The only result of the meeting between the American and Russian military was a mutual feeling of deep satisfaction By the end of this weekend, both Moscow and Washington seemed to have finally decided on how to approach the visit of a high-ranking American delegation to the Russian capital that ended on Friday.

In the Tomsk region, work continued over the weekend to eliminate a break in the oil pipeline of TsentrSibirnefteprovod JSC. It burst on Friday evening in a section running along the bottom of the Ob River. As a result, according to preliminary data, 300 liters of oil spilled into the river. The flow of oil into the pipeline has been stopped, but about 15 tons of oil still remain in the pipe, so it is impossible to carry out welding work due to the risk of explosion.

The Russian national hockey team was again left without medals In Hannover, people in light shirts ride bicycles at breakneck speed and consume immeasurable amounts of beer, and meanwhile the “winter” world hockey championship has entered the home stretch (the final match was played late yesterday evening). It’s just a pity that we are strangers at this celebration of life.

Russian justice chose not to create a precedent for paying compensation to residents of Chechnya who suffered from the actions of federal forces. On Friday, the Basmanny Intermunicipal Court of Moscow rejected Abdulla Khamzaev’s claim against the Russian government, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defense for compensation for moral and material damage in connection with the destruction of his house in Urus-Martan.

For the first time, a wealthy compatriot volunteered to help Russian human rights activists The financial viability of the human rights movement in Russia today is already directly linked to the goodwill of Boris Berezovsky. At the end of last week, representatives of the Civil Liberties Foundation, more often called the foundation named after the oligarch in exile, announced who exactly would receive the $10 million that Mr. Berezovsky promised to allocate to support the human rights movement.

On May 11, the government approved the draft federal law “On the ratification of the Agreement between the Government of Russia and the United States on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium.” The document, signed on August 29 last year, provides for the disposal of plutonium, no longer needed for defense, as fuel for nuclear reactors. According to Russian and Western experts, the implementation of the full scope of work under this program requires funding in the amount of $2 billion.