The killers of another foreigner are being sought in St. Petersburg St. Petersburg, it seems, is once again regaining its dubious laurels as a criminal capital. True, this time not because of high-profile contract killings, but because of xenophobia. On Wednesday evening, in one of the most fashionable areas of the northern capital, 20-year-old Vietnamese student Tuan Vu Anh was brutally murdered on the street.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, during his trip to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, hopes to agree on the opening of transport traffic throughout the Transcaucasus. According to Igor Levitin, the volume of transportation in the South Caucasus region in the future is about 15 million tons. “This volume of traffic today goes to other routes,” the Russian minister emphasized yesterday in Yerevan.

Sakhalin Energy sold some Russian gas to the USA The first batch of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which will be produced in Russia, has been sold to North America. Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin-2 project, announced an agreement with Shell Eastern Trading Ltd for the supply of 37 million tons of LNG over 20 years. The majority shareholder of both the seller (55%) and the buyer (100%) is the Anglo-Dutch corporation Royal Dutch/Shell.

Moscow authorities demonstratively punished 30 motorists The Moscow authorities have once again demonstrated that they intend to solve the capital’s transport problems exclusively through repressive measures. Pretending to be diligent in the fight against traffic jams, as well as against traffic rule violators, city traffic inspectors yesterday carried out a demonstrative “flogging” of motorists.

Yesterday, a fierce debate broke out in the Russian Duma about whether the October session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which ended a week ago and was largely devoted to the problem of Chechnya, was successful for Moscow.

Memorial lawyer and lawyer for the applicants Kirill KOROTEEV told Vremya Novostey correspondent Yuri KOLESOV about the details of the meeting that took place yesterday in Strasbourg. - Russian representatives tried to present several new evidence. For example, a letter from the Ministry of Finance, which concerns the possibility of the applicant Magomed Khashiev receiving damages awarded to him.

No one else will answer for the murder of Dmitry Kholodov On Sunday, the ten-year statute of limitations for bringing to justice the people who killed Dmitry Kholodov, a correspondent for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, expires.

In 2005, officials will begin to be paid according to the results of their work and for the atmosphere in the team Perhaps next year in Russia the word “official” will sound no less proud than, for example, “banker”. The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade is maturing revolutionary plans to reduce the gap between the income of private businesses and government employees.

The Russian national team begins the Olympics in Mallorca not in full strength The matches of the 36th Chess Olympiad start today in Mallorca. Before leaving, the Russian team was received at the Government House by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, who encouraged the team to perform successfully. “The level of such a meeting is difficult to overestimate,” emphasized the senior coach of the national team, grandmaster Sergei Dolmatov.

The government wants to stop money emigration by 2007 The Russian authorities do not give up hope that after many, many years of outflow, private capital will still flow to Russia. In an interview published yesterday in one of the German publications, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, German Gref, said that the Russian government intends to completely stop the outflow of capital by 2007.

Georgy Yartsev blamed his players for Russia's crushing defeat So we have lived to see the time when Russia acquired the status of a “football dwarf”. The national team of the country, whose clubs, shocking Europe with their millions, buy everything that moves on the football markets at unimaginable prices, loses to Portugal with a score of 1:7! The same Portugal that played a draw with Liechtenstein a few days ago.

Officials have launched pre-sale preparations for Yukos The scandal surrounding the future sale of Yuganskneftegaz is growing more and more. On Tuesday, a representative of the Russian Ministry of Justice announced that the bank hired by the department, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), has completed an assessment of Yuganskneftegaz, and the lower limit for the company’s value is $10.4 billion.

Russia and China have completed border demarcation On the first day of Vladimir Putin's visit to China, 13 documents were signed, and among them, one claims a place in the history books. This is an Additional Agreement on the Russian-Chinese state border on its eastern part, which decided the fate of the disputed islands on the Amur and Argun rivers. The agreement completed a forty-year journey to clarify the boundary between the two huge countries.

The government will hold a competition for pension savings management by the end of the year Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov recently approved new rules for holding a competition among management companies for the right to manage pension savings. After the official publication of the relevant government resolution, the Federal Service for Financial Markets (FSFM) will set a date for the competition. It must be completed no later than in two months.

The new king of Cambodia was dragged to the throne by force In the kingdom of Cambodia (formerly Kampuchea), a new monarch was elected yesterday - Prince Norodom Sihamoni, one of the sons of the world-famous elderly king Norodom Sihanouk. A week ago, a seriously ill Sihanouk stunned his subjects by unexpectedly announcing his abdication.