Railway life is getting better The long-suffering package of bills on the reform of the Ministry of Railways will finally be considered at a government meeting on Friday. Transport Minister Gennady Fadeev is confident that the laws will no longer encounter any obstacles. According to his estimates, the Duma has every chance to begin considering them at the spring session.

Spaniard Carlos Moya failed to break into fifth position in the ATP Championship Race, as he lost the final match of the Masters tournament in Monte Carlo to his compatriot Juan Carlos Ferrero - 5:7, 3:6, 4:6. In addition, the more experienced Moya was not able to completely collect a unique collection of “scalps of the favorites.” Before the final, Moya successively removed the first racket from the tournament - Lleyton Hewitt, third-seeded Marat Safin and fourth-seeded Tim Henman.

Rostov region will triple sunflower processing The once largest oil extraction plant in the south of Russia, the Millerovsky oil extraction plant (Rostov region), intends to carry out reconstruction and equal the volume of sunflower oil production with the largest enterprise in Europe - the plant of the Rostov agricultural union "South of Rus'".

The Russian team became second in the Eurotour The tournament in Finland traditionally became successful for our ice team, which recently regularly took second place there. Although the current result can be looked at differently: without losing even once in regular time of the match, Boris Mikhailov’s team, unfortunately, failed to climb to the top step of the podium.

The Buryatia prosecutor's office has launched an investigation into the mass poisoning of students from the Cossack Cadet Corps for orphans located in Ulan-Ude. Since the end of last week, 141 teenagers and four teachers have been hospitalized. After examination, doctors diagnosed all of them with food poisoning. According to preliminary data, the lives of the victims are not in danger, and the cause of the emergency was poor quality food prepared in the canteen of the cadet corps.

The next round of negotiations on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization began yesterday in Geneva. On April 24-25, at a meeting of the working group, the first reading of the draft final report prepared by the WTO secretariat will take place. Based on the results of this meeting, it will be possible to judge the successes achieved by the Russian side in the negotiations and how long they will continue.

Moscow decided to disarm unilaterally Last weekend, Moscow unilaterally came up with unprecedented peace-loving initiatives. Russia voluntarily gives up one of its main atomic trump cards - the world's largest arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW).

Governors have come to terms with the purchase and sale of farmland The governors who gathered yesterday for a meeting of the State Council seemed to capitulate to the onslaught of the president and the government. With the exception of the six most stubborn regions, the heads of all other subjects of the federation declared their support for the draft “Law on the Turnover of Agricultural Land” proposed by the government.

People's Artist Accused of Drug Trafficking The head of the famous gypsy vocal and instrumental dance ensemble (VITA) "Romen", People's Artist of Russia Anatoly Savelyev, was detained over the weekend by employees of the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

Energy workers are at war with RAO Norilsk Nickel JSC Taimyrenergo demands that the management of the mining and metallurgical company (MMC) Norilsk Nickel either sit down with the power engineers of the Arctic at the negotiating table, or protest their actions in an arbitration court. Otherwise, it threatens to turn off the switch for metallurgists again.

State Duma deputy, member of the budget committee and the People's Deputy group Alexander Vereteno, as it became known yesterday, died tragically on Saturday in Omsk. Together with the director of the Osha distillery Yuri Rekalo, his assistant Natalya Starovoytova and the foreman of the private security department of the Leninsky district police department Oleg Zaulitsky, he set off on a boat of the Amur type to hunt along the Irtysh to the southern regions of the region.

The government promises to create a unified database of vacancies The Russian government is preparing in advance for a surge in unemployment that could happen in a few years. A concept will soon be developed that will define the long-term tasks of planning and developing the labor market in Russia. The head of the Ministry of Labor, Alexander Pochinok, recently introduced journalists to the results of a government meeting devoted to this issue.

They want to turn from “pocket” to universal Since the beginning of spring, at least four banks from the category of the most active players in the financial market - Avtobank, Guta-Bank, Gazprombank and Petrokommerts - have announced a radical change in their development strategy and their intention to join the fight for the retail sector. According to analysts, this is the beginning of the global expansion of “pocket” banks to private clients.

Milorad Pavich’s play “Eternity and One More Day” was staged at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater We overtook everyone, got ahead of everyone. It's no joke - Pavich himself was installed. And placing Pavic is not just a difficult task. She is very complex. Moreover, this complexity is of a special kind. “The Cherry Orchard” at first glance is much simpler than “The Khazar Dictionary”. But this is a mystery that has no solution (or even solutions).

There are almost no heroes left in the case of the CIS weapons mafia The scandalous investigation by international intelligence agencies into the smuggling of weapons from the CIS to Yugoslavia, apparently, has died out for a long time.