Sharon received new arguments against negotiations with Arafat There was no truce between the Israelis and Palestinians. Yesterday in the Gaza Strip, Israeli tanks moved towards Palestinian police posts, destroying everything in their path. A post near the Palestinian town of Beit Lahia was simply destroyed by a tank shell, along with four military personnel.

Russia proposes to expand not a military, but a trade organization On the eve of yesterday's Russia-EU summit in Brussels, Russian officials urged not to have any illusions about its possible results. According to a senior Kremlin official, the European bureaucracy is “drowning” all political impulses emanating from EU leaders. However, the result exceeded expectations.

The “Teacher of the Year” competition is overshadowed by uncertainty regarding teachers’ salaries The Russian 12th annual competition “Teacher of the Year 2001” was solemnly opened yesterday in the Column Hall of the House of Unions. From October 4 to 10, 77 nominees will conduct lessons in Moscow schools in the North-Western District, competing with each other in knowledge of the subject, methodological knowledge and artistry.

Valentin Kovalev was found guilty but left free The former minister was sentenced for the first time in modern Russian history yesterday by the Moscow City Court. Former head of the Ministry of Justice Valentin Kovalev, who previously became famous as the hero of the so-called “bathroom scandal,” was found guilty on all counts of a major corruption case in his own department.

“The situation both inside Chechnya and in the refugee camps is gradually normalizing,” said Alexander Blokhin, Minister of Federation Affairs, Nationalities and Migration Policy, in an interview with the REN TV channel’s “Fifth Column” program. The situation in the republic remains difficult, but positive changes cannot be ignored. “Just a peaceful life began.

French citizen Gilberton Yannick, who produced mineral water in Russia under the famous brand “Kristalin”, was recently detained by police in Klin, near Moscow. A Frenchman who lived in Moscow headed OJSC Klinskiye Drinks and established the production of artesian water in Klin. At the beginning of this year, the company, without a license, began producing Kristalin drinking water.

The editor-in-chief of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Pavel Gusev, was interrogated yesterday in the Moscow District Military Court as a witness in the case of the murder of MK journalist Dmitry Kholodov. At the trial, held in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, Gusev renounced the words he allegedly said shortly after Kholodov’s death that the FSK (the current FSB) was involved in the journalist’s death.

American passengers were attacked Of the 38 passengers on the Greyhound bus, 6 people were killed and 32 were injured, the severity of which authorities prefer not to talk about yet. The tragedy occurred in southern Tennessee as a result of a gunman attacking a bus driver traveling yesterday from Louisville, Kentucky, to Atlanta, Georgia.

IBS and Cable&Wireless launched a software rental center The Russian company IBS is betting on the as yet non-existent market for leasing software to domestic companies. The largest Russian system integrator (supplier of corporate solutions based on computer networks and software) announced yesterday the joint commercial launch of the Data Fort project with the international telecommunications operator Cable&Wireless.

Weapons of mass destruction themselves need protection Today Russia celebrates the professional holiday of the “space front” fighters. As Colonel-General Anatoly Perminov, commander of the Space Forces (HF) of the Russian Federation, said the day before, his subordinates greet this day fully armed.

Rumors that some countries withdrew their candidacies to host the 2012 Summer Olympics in favor of New York turned out to be unreliable. This was announced by the President of the Russian Olympic Committee Leonid Tyagachev, returning from Lausanne. Several hundred athletes have already signed their signatures in support of the Russian capital. Among them are figure skaters Irina Slutskaya, Alexander Gorshkov, as well as IOC member Shamil Tarpishchev.

Army generals found themselves "near Lubyanka" The signing of a presidential decree on ending the military phase of the “counter-terrorist operation” in Chechnya had been expected for a long time. Active rumors about the upcoming reduction of the expeditionary force in the rebellious republic and the transfer of leadership of the operation from the Ministry of Defense to “another law enforcement agency” circulated in the Russian military-political leadership even on the eve of the New Year.

In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, under mysterious circumstances, nine volumes of a criminal case against drug dealers disappeared from the investigation department of the Internal Affairs Directorate. According to the most conservative estimates, the intelligence services lost not only the materials about the drug network in the city, which had been carefully collected over the past years, but also all the information about the connections of local drug lords with their “colleagues” in Russia and abroad.

The Ministry of Railways wants to get to Sakhalin Transport Minister Nikolai Aksenenko loves large-scale projects. Today, at a meeting of the cabinet of ministers, he will have to defend one of these ideas - the construction of a railway connecting the mainland with the island of Sakhalin.

The Interros-Soglasie company announced the creation of a united insurance group, Soglasie. In addition to itself and its subsidiaries (Marisk, Neptune, Belstrakhinvest, Alskom and the recently created IR-Soglasie-Vita), the group also included other companies - Soglasie, Selecta and Eurostandard. The Alliance is a non-profit partnership whose members will remain independent.