At the European Fencing Championships, held in the capital's CSKA sports complex, our athletes confirmed their superiority in saber, winning two gold medals in this discipline. The first gold medal for our team was won by Olympic champion and multiple world champion Stanislav Pozdnyakov. However, even if luck had not smiled on him in the decisive match, the “gold” would still have gone to the Russian - the champion’s opponent was his compatriot Sergei Sharikov.

The administration of St. Petersburg managed to solve two problems at once - to settle an overdue debt of $150 million to the Austrian bank Creditanstalt and to find an operator and investor for the five-star Sheraton Nevsky Palace hotel, which is located in the very center of the city on Nevsky Prospekt. In accordance with the agreement, the Maltese hotel company Corinthia Hotels International, which owns 18 hotels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, will pay the bank this amount.

Results of the 2001/02 ballet season Ballet just seems like a very special, airily planned city. In fact, this city has everything that other cities have: factories, parks and residential areas. During the season that just ended, the domestic public had the opportunity to watch a wide variety of dances. Ballet construction continued. The new neighborhoods were like... Stadium The Bolshoi Theater competed with the Mariinsky. Local celebrities - with invited guest performers.

Black American women played fairly among themselves The youngest of the Williams sisters, Serena, managed to win the Wimbledon tennis tournament for the first time in her career, defeating the eldest, Venus, in the final match - 7:6 (7:4), 6:3. Two decades ago, after the birth of his second daughter, Richard Williams said that the time would come when his children would top the world tennis rankings.

or Take care of honor from a young age The phantasmagoric story of the “shelling” of an Israeli passenger airliner in the sky over Dnepropetrovsk last Thursday looks like someone’s bad joke. After the terrible tragedy last October, when a Ukrainian missile shot down a Russian plane with Israelis on board, a bright flash in the immediate vicinity of the El Al plane alarmed everyone.

Employees of the capital's law enforcement agencies managed to identify the person who committed suicide on Friday at the reception office of the President of the Russian Federation. He turned out to be 76-year-old Sergei Romashkin, who lived in Moscow and was registered at a psychoneurological dispensary with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. On the afternoon of July 5, he came with a large bag in his hands to the reception office of the presidential administration on Ilyinka Street.

In captivity, pythons rarely reproduce, and for members of a circus troupe to give birth to offspring is a completely unprecedented event. The Vremya Novostei newspaper already wrote about this when the python Masha had just laid down on the masonry. And then it happened: the snakes crawled out of the eggs. The albino python Masha, who became a mother, produced offspring for the first time. The story itself began more than a month ago.

SPS and Yabloko will not allow Russians into United Russia The Democrats have begun traditional unification games, which they use every time to spice up the upcoming elections - both Duma and presidential. At the end of last week, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces traditionally exchanged mutual assurances that they consider each other close allies, but do not see any need to merge into a single bloc in the 2003 parliamentary elections.

The legality of the sales tax is again being challenged in court. Lawyers from the Yekaterinburg Taxpayers' Rights Protection Fund intend to recognize the collection of sales tax as illegal, at least in Moscow and the Moscow region. On July 8 and 10, two trials will take place in the Moscow City Court and the Moscow Regional Court on complaints from this public organization.

Camel is no longer a man's cigarette Japan Tobacco Int. (JTI), owner of one of the oldest tobacco brands in the world - Camel, this year began to radically change the image of these cigarettes. The macho man driving a jeep and tearing his way through the jungle has been replaced by a “modern individualist” - a successful man who knows how to enjoy life, despite its fast pace. And although the famous camel remains a symbol of Camel, now these are unisex cigarettes for successful urban residents.

The first year of work of justices of the peace in Moscow In the near future, Muscovites should feel that the red tape in the capital's courts has become significantly less. District courts will be relieved of their burden on minor cases. Criminal cases where the maximum penalty does not exceed three years, most administrative offenses, divorce proceedings, and small property claims will be handled by magistrates.

Rostovugol requires special treatment On January 22, a conference of the labor collective of the largest coal miner in Eastern Donbass - the Rostovugol association - will be held. The miners are preparing for protests if, the day before, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko nevertheless rejects the Rostovugol rehabilitation scheme, which involves leasing the association’s property for ten years to a specialized enterprise under the presidential administration.

The gas alliance was hampered by the absence of Turkmenbashi The Russian President has clearly fallen in love with Kazakhstan - he has visited here three times already this year. First in winter, at the informal CIS summit in Chimbulak. Then in the spring in Almaty at a meeting of Asian leaders, where he tried to extinguish the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Finally, in the summer, he arrived in Aktau, Kazakhstan's sea gate on the Caspian Sea.

Two major “deserter” emergencies were registered last weekend in the Russian army. On Friday evening, a serving member of one of the military units in the Ural Military District, taking with him a machine gun, left his native unit. All local special services were sent to search for him, and they were soon crowned with success. In the morning, the private was found sleeping peacefully under a bush not far from the unit.

The LUKOIL shareholder once again won against Minister Artyukhov, to the latter’s delight The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) announced yesterday the cancellation of licenses for large oil fields in the Nenets Okrug, issued in April last year to the Severnaya Neft company. The company itself, however, does not believe that this statement will have any significant consequences, and expects to begin test oil production in the disputed fields in the summer.