The past day of the US Open tennis championship US Open did not bring any special surprises to Russian fans. As predicted, Elena Likhovtseva lost to American Lindsay Davenport - 3:6, 6:0, 3:6, and Yevgeny Kafelnikov won against Argentinean David Nalbandian - 3:6, 6:4, 6:2, 6:2. Now the Russian is waiting for the Frenchman Arnaud Clement. Let us remember that Kafelnikov reached the fourth round of the US Open twice - in 1994 and 1998.

Russia is invited to talk seriously about Kaliningrad Germany is conducting secret negotiations with Russia on the return of Konigsberg - this is the sensational news that the British The Daily Telegraph told readers yesterday. According to the newspaper, which cites German sources, this issue was discussed at the Christmas informal meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Washington invites Beijing to nuclear race The indomitable desire to build a missile defense system is pushing the Bush administration to take decisive steps designed to reassure foreign opponents of the anti-missile umbrella. While negotiations with an intransigent Kremlin were stuck at the stage of repeating the same arguments, Washington made an unexpected attempt to achieve a breakthrough in the Chinese direction.

Two courts are fighting for one NTV package at once Understanding the relationship between Media-Most and Gazprom-Media is becoming increasingly difficult. Despite the supposedly approaching outcome of this conflict, new details are emerging, indicating that it is too early to draw an end to this matter. Chris Renaud, head of corporate finance at Media-Most, made a surprising announcement on Friday.

“Presidential lists” allow you to do without the president The export of Russian weapons is becoming more transparent: the government has declassified two fundamental documents on which the entire system of military supplies abroad is built - the so-called presidential lists No. 1 and No. 2. The first of them determines what types of weapons and military equipment are allowed to be sold to foreign customers. The second contains a list of states that may become buyers of products from “List No.

Investigator of the Khamovniki Department of Internal Affairs Leonid Tishin died yesterday from severe injuries in a Moscow hospital. Last night, the police received a message that a brutally beaten 36-year-old police officer had been delivered to the emergency room at clinic No. 56 in serious condition. Despite all the efforts of the doctors, he soon died without regaining consciousness. Unknown people attacked Tishin on Smolensky Boulevard when he was returning home after service.

The crash of the Il-76 transport aircraft, which occurred on July 14 in the Moscow region, was accompanied by special, atypical violations. This was stated yesterday by First Deputy Minister of Transport, Head of the State Civil Aviation Service of Russia Alexander Neradko. Nine crew members and an instructor pilot died in the crash near the Chkalovsky airfield.

Deputy Prime Minister of the Moscow government Joseph Ordzhonikidze will, apparently, be discharged from the Sklifosovsky Research Institute one of these days. Doctors assess Ordzhonikidze’s condition as satisfactory and are already preparing him for sanatorium treatment. A special room has been prepared at the dacha in Barvikha where the official will be examined by doctors. On Saturday, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov visited his assistant at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.

Shareholders of the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant held an extraordinary meeting last Friday, at which they almost unanimously approved the actions of external manager Anatoly Smolyaninov to issue an additional issue of shares. The paradox of the decision is that in this case the “old” shareholders of the enterprise lose a lot. Currently, the authorized capital of Zapsib is 2.5 million rubles, and after the additional issue it will exceed 5.5 billion rubles.

Vladimir Putin returned last night from Helsinki, where he held official talks with Finnish President Tarja Halonen. “Relations between Russia and Finland are free of political problems,” Mr. Putin said at a joint news conference with Ms. Halonen. However, as it turned out during the visit, there are not many economic problems. An agreement on mutual protection of investments is being prepared for signing, and yesterday a framework agreement on supporting small businesses was signed in Helsinki.

A serious car accident occurred on Sunday night on the Moscow ring road. At 2.15 a.m., a car driving along the Moscow Ring Road hit two pedestrians crossing the road at the intersection with Mozhaisk Highway. When the driver suddenly braked to avoid being hit, two other cars crashed into his car. As a result of this accident, both pedestrians died on the spot, and the drivers of all three cars received injuries of varying degrees of severity.

For two days at the Cosmos Hotel, human rights activists from all over the country discussed the human rights situation in Russia, which, in their opinion, is extraordinary and requires immediate intervention. Representatives of 250 humanitarian organizations from 64 regions came to the first extraordinary all-Russian congress in defense of human rights. Such a massive “turnout” has never been observed in the domestic human rights community.

At the seventh stage of the athletics Golden League, the most commercially attractive competition on the international calendar, Russian Olga Egorova set a new European record in the 5000 m distance on the track of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin - 14:29.32. Egorova’s main rival last season, Romanian Gabriela Szabo, did not take part in this race. She has already announced that she is taking a short break from her career.

The Israeli Prime Minister will be frank in the Kremlin Today, the Russian leadership will have to demonstrate miracles of balancing act so that, while warmly welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it does not offend Moscow’s Arab friends. They will never come to terms with the fact that Russia’s return to a one-sided, pro-Arab policy, like under the USSR, is impossible. Now the Arabs are especially jealous: there is a war in the Middle East.

They are already looking for those responsible for this Residents of Kamchatka have dramatically changed their opinion about the profession of fisherman - once one of the most honorable and still remains the most important for the peninsula. A recent study by local sociologists revealed that only 33% of Kamchatka residents today consider this occupation to be prestigious, and 38% as allowing them to earn good money.