Yesterday, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Yuri Smirnov made a sensational statement: the murder of opposition journalist Georgy Gongadze is disclosed.

Of the two new gas pipelines, the German concern considers one real The past year 2000 was the warmest in Germany in the last hundred years. As Chairman of the Board Friedrich Spaeth noted yesterday at the annual press conference of the Ruhrgas concern, this is why sales of the company's main product - natural gas - decreased by 1.2%.

Prices for Moscow apartments continue to rise Apartments in Moscow went up in price again in April: prices on average increased by 1.4% compared to March. The main reasons for this are the effective demand of buyers and the traditionally irregular commissioning of housing by builders in the first quarter. Realtors do not expect a summer decline in housing turnover on the Moscow market and predict that prices will continue to rise by another 3-4% before the onset of autumn.

The fight of the ex-world champion Evander Holifield with the owner of the WBA belt in the heavyweight weight category John Ruis will take place in Beijing on August 4. This will be the first battle for the highest title among the boxers-heavyweights in China. Yesterday, the famous promoter Don King with boxers visited the battlefield. Recall that in August 2000, Holifield defeated Ruis by points. However, the latter won their repeated fight on March 3.

Not all current Chernobyl victims will receive new certificates Very soon, a grandiose recount of participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant will begin in Russia. In accordance with last year's government decree, they must receive new documents within three years. This is the first mass exchange of Chernobyl certificates since they appeared in 1991.

Alexander Litvinenko has found a second home The British authorities yesterday decided to grant political asylum to former FSB lieutenant colonel Alexander Litvinenko. After this, the Russian special services, which had opened five criminal cases against the ex-chekist over the past two years, practically lost the chance to catch the fugitive.

The fate of the unified investigative body is in the hands of the president The idea of ​​​​creating a new structure - the Federal Investigation Service, the emergence of which will lead to a radical reform of the entire Russian law enforcement system, will be brought to the attention of the president in the coming days. Deputy The head of the administration, Dmitry Kozak, who oversees judicial reform, sent a report to Vladimir Putin justifying the feasibility of creating the FSR. On Friday, Mr.

Borderline The Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided, as an experiment, to issue visas to foreign tourists directly at the Russian border. Deputy Minister Ivan Sergeev and Director of the Consular Service Department Nikolai Sadchikov signed the corresponding protocols on May 14 with representatives of the municipal authorities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The entry of foreigners into these three regions will be significantly simplified and cheaper.

The Accounts Chamber continues to fight for the status of the main body of state financial control. The new version of the law “On joint ventures,” which is ready for consideration by the State Duma, is no longer enough. In the struggle for leadership among controllers, the chamber wants to change the Budget Code.

On Tuesday night, hundreds of Krasnoyarsk residents lost their acquired property in just 15 minutes. The water level in the small river Kacha, which flows within the city, suddenly rose by almost three and a half meters. In a few minutes, 73 private and apartment buildings, as well as 20 electrical substations, were flooded - because of this, one and a half hundred high-rise buildings were left without electricity. Dozens of houses still have no electricity.

On May 11, the Euro-Asian Transport Union (EATL) was officially registered in Moscow. The organization should promote the development of transport corridors through the territory of Russia and attract to them transit cargo flows that currently flow between Europe and Asia along other channels.

Not all of his compatriots like Hugo Chavez's international activity Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez yesterday became an honorary doctor of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The muscular president, who was accustomed to being seen in military uniform, looked quite natural in a purple robe. The newly minted doctor showed off his eloquence, delivering a bright speech filled with excursions into history and free quotation of modern writers and ancient philosophers.

Alexey Mitrofanov offered to take “our own people” out of Chechnya The LDPR faction in the State Duma proposed evacuating the entire Russian population from Chechnya. The Liberal Democrats managed to get the draft resolution included on the agenda of one of the Duma meetings next week. “We are simply stating the ongoing outrages on the part of illegal armed groups,” deputy head of the faction Alexei Mitrofanov told a Vremya Novostei newspaper correspondent.

The reason for this article was a recent speech on the Ekho Moskvy radio by a person I respect, Pavel Bunich, who said that companies such as Norilsk Nickel and Yukos should be reprivatized on the grounds that the state was underpaid.

Moscow authorities are going to increase rents by 2.5 times Muscovites may become the first Russians who will have to pay 100% of the cost of utilities. In any case, such a promise was made yesterday at a meeting of the capital's government from the lips of Yuri Luzhkov.