The head coach of the Russian Olympic hockey team, the famous former hockey player Vyacheslav Fetisov, may soon return to Russia to raise the level of domestic hockey. This topic was again the focus of Fetisov’s informal meeting with President Vladimir Putin yesterday. During the conversation, Fetisov touched upon the problems of the development of children's and mass hockey, which form the basis of elite sports, as well as the situation of hockey veterans in the country.

The conservative public turned deaf to the avant-garde One of the world-famous musicians said that the Russian public is the friendliest in the world. This was interpreted in the most unfavorable light - as Russian unpretentiousness. In the West, the audience is supposedly much more peremptory and categorical in demonstrating its attitude to what is happening.

Basketball. NBA. Regular season. “Boston” – “Cleveland” – 96:70, “Charlotte” – “Indiana” – 94:88, “Philadelphia” – “Miami” – 77:82, “New Jersey” – “ Portland - 97:72, San Antonio - Lakers - 108:90, Denver - Washington - 75:107. Michael Jordan's expected return next week, to everyone's amazement, happened on Thursday night. Just one training session after recovering from the consequences of a difficult knee operation was enough for Michael to decide to return to the game.

In less than a week, on March 27, the name of the winner of the competition for the right to broadcast on the sixth meter channel will become known. Almost two months ago, the deprivation of Evgeniy Kiselyov’s team of the right to broadcast on the “sixth button”, the announcement of a competition to fill a vacancy, the formation of a list of applicants - all this was among the most important political events of the winter-spring of 2002.

Washington is ready to reconcile Transnistria and Moldova If the negotiation process to resolve the Transnistrian problem “hangs” for a long time, and the guarantor countries Russia and Ukraine do not decide how and under what conditions Transnistria can be returned to the common Moldovan home, a new mediator is likely to emerge. Moreover, one who knows what to do and has the necessary means to do it.

The metro was left without an oligarch Yesterday the Meshchansky Court of the capital sentenced Alexander Babayan, the owner of almost the entire Moscow metro business, to seven years in prison with confiscation. Representatives of Themis found him guilty of a series of crimes, including robbery and extortion. The entrepreneur's lawyers consider the punishment to be excessively cruel and argue that the story underlying the charges only amounts to arbitrariness.

A memorial plaque in memory of the outstanding artist Alexander Vertinsky was unveiled yesterday at house No. 12 on Tverskaya, where the poet and singer lived after returning from emigration from 1943 to 1957. The right to open the plaque was granted to the relatives of Alexander Vertinsky - the widow Lydia Vladimirovna and daughters Anastasia and Marianna.

They ask the government to introduce additional duties Today, the working group of the Commission on Protective Measures in Foreign Trade will consider the issue of introducing a temporary special duty on the import of raw sugar. Thus, the Union of Sugar Producers, which unites the main players in this market, is trying to increase the profitability of domestic beet sugar production. However, not all market participants believe that the authorities will support the farmers’ initiative.

The dean of the Faculty of History at Moscow State University, 54-year-old Sergei Karpov, was brutally beaten by unknown criminals in Moscow on Tuesday evening. They attacked the scientist right at the entrance of his house on Paustovsky Street, 4. After working in a service Volga, he drove up to the house, and the driver of the car, as he drove away, saw Mr. Karpov using the intercom asking his wife to open the door. What happened next, on the stairs, is still unclear.

Security services found a mass grave of emigrants from the USSR The ghost of the sinister mafia from the former Soviet republics has reappeared in the United States, this time in Los Angeles. The other day, the police recovered the bodies of four major entrepreneurs, emigrants from the USSR, from a local lake, and, as the intelligence services suspect, this is not all. The list of missing Russian-speaking Americans (all living in the most prestigious areas of Los Angeles) is much longer.

The Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region yesterday appointed Dmitry Georgievsky as the external manager of the Red Triangle. He is supported by managers who were removed from their posts in the fall of 2001, after the start of bankruptcy proceedings for the enterprise. The plant's accounts payable exceed 300 million rubles, about half of which is controlled by firms close to the former managers.

The former first deputy head of the criminal police service of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Smolensk Region, Colonel Alexander Pantukhov, was shot yesterday morning in Smolensk. His corpse with five gunshot wounds to the head and back was discovered by passers-by at about 7.30 am near his own house on Kirov Street. Mr. Pantukhov retired in 2000 and most recently served as deputy chairman of the Party of Pensioners of the Smolensk Region.

In Omsk they will make new ones from old tanks Omsk Transmash received a state order from the Ministry of Defense to modernize old T-62 and T-72 tanks. The administration of the Omsk region reported this. This is the first government order received by the plant over the past few years.

It's time for the semifinals in the Russian hockey championship The first round of the Russian Championship playoffs plunged the fans into a real ocean of passion, although none of the series required a fifth match to determine the winner. No less spicy dishes await hockey gourmets in the semi-finals, where the stakes are at least doubled. And the composition of the couples who will continue the fight tomorrow is a feast for the eyes. "Lokomotiv" - "Metallurg".

There may be fewer Ingush candidates Six presidential candidates in Ingushetia risk losing their registration. Their constant calls to vote for the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic, Khamzat Gutseriev, caused such a flow of complaints from voters that the Republican Electoral Commission asked the Central Election Commission about what could be done in this case.