Bureaucrats and technocrats have forgotten about the people After the failure of the European constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands in late May and early June, the European Union is looking for those responsible for the current state of affairs. The EU summit on June 16 in Brussels will also be dedicated to this.

Two state-owned companies are awaiting government approval Russian Railways promised Rosneft, headed by Sergei Bogdanchikov, exceptional tariffs for transporting oil to China. “We signed an agreement with Bogdanchikov that after 5 million tons of oil in the Chinese direction, each subsequent ton will cost less,” Russian Railways President Gennady Fadeev said yesterday at a conference dedicated to industry reform.

A closed seminar opened at the Anatoly Vasiliev Theater “Culture is not an engineering skill, it is a gardener’s skill” - this is how Thomas Richards, head of the Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards Work Center, formulated his credo at the end of yesterday’s press conference. The press conference at the School of Dramatic Art was dedicated to the project that the Work Center is starting in Moscow in collaboration with the Anatoly Vasiliev Theater.

The Russian Orthodox Church did not like the caution of Catholics in matters of religious education at school The improving good-neighborly relations between the Orthodox and Catholic churches in Russia suddenly showed a crack. The reason for this was the recent careless speech of the leader of Russian Christians of the Latin rite, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz.

The Duma does not want to abandon popular presidential elections Two proposals for radical changes to the Constitution were on the agenda of yesterday's plenary meeting of the State Duma. The author of the first of them, independent deputy Viktor Pokhmelkin, proposed establishing direct elections of members of the Federation Council.

Two of the association's most cautious teams will meet in the NBA finals America is waiting for the most boring NBA finals of all. The reigning association champion Detroit Pistons and former champion San Antonio Spurs will meet in the playoff title decider. Two teams that never make a show of their matches. Two teams, the main thing for which is the result. However, there are no boring finals in the NBA.

The prosecutor gave the policeman who missed the terrorists six years to reform The trial in the case of police captain Mikhail Artamonov, an employee of the line department of internal affairs (LOVD) of Domodedovo airport, accused of negligence in connection with the death of two passenger planes in August last year, has reached the home stretch. As Judge Natalya Mishina said yesterday, in two and a half weeks the Domodedovo court is ready to put an end to this process.

The championship had barely ended for Avangard when the most valuable player of the 2004 Super League season, Oleg TVERDOVSKY, disappeared from the press. And the “news” came - Tverdovsky refused to go to the national team, Tverdovsky signed a contract with CSKA. Today, in an exclusive interview with Vremya Novostei, the unique defenseman, who won the Stanley Cup, Super League gold and the Champions Cup, dispels rumors and reflects on the fate of the NHL.

Turkmenbashi did not approve of LUKOIL's plans to acquire Dragon Oil Things are not going very smoothly for LUKOIL in the Caspian Sea. The Russian holding was going to acquire a stake in the Dragon Oil company, the only one conducting exploration in the Turkmen shelf area, but yesterday the oil workers admitted that the country’s leadership “did not support LUKOIL’s proposals for joint activities with Dragon Oil.” The meeting between Mr.

Alexander Sadovnikov has been appointed Russian Ambassador to Iran. He is 56 years old, married and has a daughter. Mr. Sadovnikov is an Iranian scholar and speaks Farsi. He had previously visited Iran, where since 1989 he worked for several years as an adviser to the USSR Embassy. Until last year, Alexander Sadovnikov was Russia's ambassador to Uganda. After his return, he was appointed deputy director of the personnel department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Abkhazia is preparing for unprecedented exercises Abkhazia is preparing to conduct military maneuvers that will be the largest in the 12-year history of won independence. Command and staff operational-tactical exercises will take place in August, at the height of the holiday season, at several training grounds in the unrecognized republic. Five thousand military personnel and reservists will be involved in them.

Forecast for the coming days The invasion of southern cyclones on the European territory of Russia will continue. With one of them, it will rain next night in the northwestern region, in the east of the Leningrad region it will be heavy in places, during the day +15...+21оС. In the central region the weather is unstable due to the cyclone.

Annual pruning of poplars does not save the capital Moscow has an annual June natural disaster - poplar fluff. For at least a week, all the roads and lawns of the capital are covered with gray-white cotton wool, ubiquitous fluff flies in the air, getting into the nose, mouth and hair, poplar seeds penetrate even through tightly closed windows and clog vacuum cleaners...

Mosenergo asked the Moscow Government for $7 billion in exchange for its own shares Moscow City Duma deputies yesterday tried to figure out how to prevent large-scale power outages. And although it was not possible to figure it out, nor to develop any measures, the deputy general director of Mosenergo, Dmitry Vasilyev, suggested that the people’s representatives find 200 billion rubles in the capital’s budget. ($7 billion) until 2010, which will save outdated power equipment.

The Moscow passport and visa service lacks one and a half thousand employees The reorganization of passport offices and OVIRs, which was supposed to make it easier for an ordinary citizen to obtain a passport, led this citizen to hours-long queues that begin at the window for submitting documents.