18-year-old Dynamo and Russian national team forward Alexander Ovechkin is the country’s main hockey hope. He has yet to go through the draft - a procedure that promises enormous benefits for obtaining a worthy place in the overseas hockey society. At the moment, no one doubts that Alexander will be chosen first number and he can easily follow in the footsteps of his compatriot Ilya Kovalchuk.

Our young talents are lost on the way to the top of hockey Our team is the world champion in hockey! A fairly forgotten phrase is relevant again, as in the era of the almost endless victorious march of players with the abbreviation “USSR” on their chests. Only now the country’s “gold reserve” is replenished not by the main team, but by juniors and young people.

The mayor's office again blames Mosenergo for the incident in the metro. Yesterday's accident in the capital's metro, when due to a power surge during rush hour traffic was stopped on the section of the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line from Belyaevo to Oktyabrskaya, gave the capital's authorities a new reason for reproaches against Mosenergo OJSC.

Yerevan and Baku are preparing to resume direct dialogue Today, the new American co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group (MG) on Nagorno-Karabakh, Stephen Mann, arrives in Baku. Before that, he visited Yerevan, where he met with President Robert Kocharyan and held consultations with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Ashot Ghulyan.

The Duma denied foreigners the right to acquire Russian citizenship in exchange for investments Only three deputies voted yesterday for a bill on granting Russian citizenship in a simplified manner to people who have invested money in the Russian economy.

Corrie Sanders intends to defeat his second brother Late Saturday evening, Ukrainian heavyweight Vitali Klitschko will step into the ring at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It was in this hall last summer that he suffered a very controversial defeat from Briton Lennox Lewis and was unable to take possession of the most prestigious championship belt in the world of professional boxing according to the WBC organization.

NASA refuses to increase the duration of orbital missions The US National Aerospace Agency yesterday seriously complicated the lives of its Russian colleagues who were planning to patch up the space industry budget through commercial projects. NASA leaders said they are not currently ready to change the work schedule on the ISS from six-month missions to year-long missions in orbit.

Cult musician David Sylvian created a real sensation at the Moscow Youth Palace Who would have thought that the former vocalist of the neo-romantic group Japan, whose solo work has a pronounced experimental character, would sell out the MDM? Nevertheless, month-long lively conversations about “Sylvain coming” made the work more effective than any sophisticated PR. Which, by the way, didn’t exist at all.

The Polytechnic Museum was saved by a foam attack In the center of Moscow yesterday, another architectural and historical symbol of the city almost burned down. At about 11.40 a fire broke out in the building of the Polytechnic Museum on New Square, building 3/4.

The Football Association of Wales (FAW) has appealed for the third time against the results of the play-off matches for the final part of the European Championship with the Russian national team. This time the Welsh turned to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. “We believe that the UEFA control and disciplinary committee did not fully appreciate the weighty arguments that we presented in connection with the use of doping by Russian national team midfielder Yegor Titov.

SBS-Agro depositors were paid at par The story of SBS-Agro, the largest bank that collapsed in 1998, is coming to an end. The report on his bankruptcy, submitted by the Agency for Restructuring of Credit Institutions, was approved by the court yesterday. It turned out that SBS-Agro investors who did not sign a settlement agreement with ARCO received 100% of their claims during bankruptcy proceedings (an average of $7 thousand each). According to analysts, the discount was over 40%.

Japanese automaker Mitsubishi may soon become a division of the German-American automobile concern DaimlerChrysler. The Japanese news agency Kyodo Tsushin reported this on Tuesday. The concern now owns 37.5% of the shares of the Japanese company. DaimlerChrysler management has raised the issue of purchasing a controlling stake in Mitsubishi more than once, but so far it has not been possible to agree on the terms.

The current situation with young players in domestic hockey is somewhat reminiscent of the old comedy “Volga-Volga”. There is a wonderful episode in the film when talent is literally rushing through windows and doors, and the official responsible for culture reports that there are none. It’s the same in Russian hockey: the junior and youth teams often win world championships, but the coaches of the “adult” teams are in no hurry to give the young team the green light.

The government forces the Duma to introduce a temporary water tax The government, it seems, can no longer stop in its tax rule-making. Yesterday, at a meeting of the State Duma tax subcommittee, the government proposed that deputies adopt a temporary 29th chapter of the Tax Code called “Water Tax.” In a few years, this tax will be replaced by non-tax payments.

The case of Khabarovsk doctors turns from criminal to economic The authorities of the Khabarovsk Territory seem to be trying to hush up a loud scandal that erupted after the details of a criminal case were made public on the facts of illegal human organ transplants in the 1st and 2nd regional hospitals.