A dangerous power vacuum has formed in Chechnya While Moscow experts were vigorously discussing the possibility of introducing direct presidential rule in Chechnya, the president himself was exercising this rule. Yesterday morning, Vladimir Putin flew to Grozny to talk with the surviving Chechen leadership and military commanders. This was his third blitz visit to Chechnya. The first two took place while active hostilities were still going on.

Pilots and air traffic controllers are to blame for the Boden tragedy The crew of the Russian Bashkir Airlines and the Swiss air traffic control service Skyguide were named by the investigation, according to informed sources of the Vremya Novostei newspaper, as the main culprits in the plane crash over Lake Constance on July 1, 2002. Then, in a collision between a Bashkir Airlines Tu-154M and a DHL Boeing cargo plane, 71 people died, including 45 Russian children flying to Spain on vacation.

The Americans declared the Brazilian leader a drunkard On Sunday, the authoritative American newspaper The New York Times tried to divert the attention of fellow citizens from the scandal of violence against Iraqi prisoners, turning the arrows on the fate of the Brazilians, who are allegedly threatened by the alcoholism of 58-year-old President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Because of this, the head of state forgets “some Portuguese words”, and if sometimes he says something, it’s strange things.

The Russian stock market is “tired” after the May holidays After the holidays, European stock exchanges, including Russian ones, opened with a sharp drop in indices and quotes. The Dow Jones fell 1.3% on Monday and fell below 10,000 points for the first time since December last year. The aggregate indices of European exchanges also decreased: Zurich - by 3.19%, Frankfurt - by 2.85%, Paris - by 2.73%, Amsterdam - by 2.52%, London - by 2.29 %.

In the Moscow region, on the night of May 10, State Duma deputy from the LDPR faction, member of the commissions on international affairs and on mandate issues and issues of parliamentary ethics, Alexey Ostrovsky, was involved in a car accident. According to the LDPR press service, Mr. Ostrovsky was returning from Moscow to his country house along Rublevskoye Highway. The deputy himself was driving the BMW, and his wife, 31-year-old Nadezhda Sevostyanova, was riding in the passenger seat.

As is known, as part of the cabinet reform, powers to license insurers were transferred from the Department of Insurance Supervision of the Ministry of Finance to the newly formed Federal Insurance Supervision Service FSSN. Its head, Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev, explained yesterday to the Vremya Novostei newspaper that the publication of the ministry’s official statement does not mean the cessation of licensing.

Stolen painting by Lucas Cranach returned to museum The canvas “The Gathering” by the great artist of the Northern Renaissance, the German Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), stolen from the Georgian Museum of Art in 1994, was returned to the state by operatives. On Tuesday, the painting was brought to the residence of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who ordered awards for distinguished police officers.

Yesterday, the last, fifth stage of early elections to the 543-seat parliament ended in India. For the first time in history, the votes of 252 million voters are counted by electronic machines. The results will be officially announced tomorrow.

The resort's mayor's office asks to protect the festival from disgruntled extras The opening ceremony of the 57th Cannes International Film Festival scheduled for today could turn into a huge scandal. The main festival of world cinema may not take place this year - just like last year’s theater festival in Avignon, which, as you know, was disrupted by the so-called “temporary film and theater workers” who were dissatisfied with their pay.

The Royal club lost everything it could this season The richest club in the world, Real Madrid, was left without a single trophy this season. Failure in the Champions League, an inglorious run for the Copa del Rey and a lost championship title at the last moment - this is the result of head coach Carlos Queiroz's year-long work. You cannot imagine a greater humiliation for the Royal club, whose annual budget is about 300 million euros.

Netanyahu explained to Sharon that the peace plan is not dirty socks Yesterday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon canceled his visit to Warsaw and convened a meeting of the so-called “narrow cabinet” on security issues. This is caused by a new aggravation in the Palestinian territories. Yesterday morning, six Jewish soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip - the crew of an armored personnel carrier, shot down by militants from the extremist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But they most likely won't allow him to do that. The North Caucasus District Military Court (SKOVS) yesterday announced the final verdict in the case of Captain Eduard Ulman and his colleagues, who on January 11, 2002, during an intelligence operation, shot six civilians in Chechnya.

Team Canada defended the title of world champions One gets the impression that the World Hockey Championship could not have been held in the Czech Republic. Because, as it turned out, the disposition of forces in world hockey has remained virtually unchanged over the past year. It's all the same: Canada and Sweden are in the final again (and the founders of hockey won again - 5:3), and last year's bronze medalist, Slovakia, was just a little short of repeating its Finnish success.

Ruhrgas summed up the results of 2003 The head of the board of Ruhrgas, Burkhard Bergmann, held a press conference yesterday at the company's headquarters in Essen on the results of the company's activities last year. He reported with satisfaction that Ruhrgas sales volume in 2003 reached the highest level in the entire history of the company. True, in this case the weather played along with the gas workers - average annual temperatures turned out to be lower than usual. But, according to Mr.

The militants began preparing an assassination attempt on Akhmat Kadyrov more than a year ago By the end of the third day of emergency work, investigators and operatives from all the Russian special services that had gathered in Grozny, it seems, had not been able to get on the trail of the terrorists who managed to almost completely decapitate the leadership of Chechnya on the morning of May 9 with just one bomb.