After the explosions in Buncefield, the police first began to refute the version of a terrorist attack Three powerful explosions sounded yesterday morning, less than half an hour apart, at one of Britain's largest oil terminals, Buncefield, near the town of Hemel Hampstead, 40 km north of London. After this, a strong fire broke out. The flames shot up to a height of more than 60 m. About 20 tanks with a capacity of 3 million gallons each (1 gallon equals 4.5 liters) ignited.

Interview with Boris Vainzikher, Technical Director of RAO UES of Russia Over the past two weeks, top managers of RAO UES of Russia, led by Anatoly Chubais, have been talking almost every day that the wear and tear of equipment in the industry is about to reach a critical point. Because of this, in particular, in Moscow, in 25-degree frosts, a power outage is possible.

Vladimir Lisin earned more than $600 million from NLMK shares The head of the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works, Vladimir Lisin, earned $609 million last Friday. His personal Cypriot offshore Veft Enterprises Ltd. presented for IPO on the London Stock Exchange 420 million shares of NLMK (7%), united in 42 million global depositary receipts, the placement price of which was $14.5 per GDR (i.e. $1.45 per share). Thus, the company's capitalization is estimated at $8.7 billion. Mr.

The President and the Public Chamber corrected the State Duma Last Friday, President Vladimir Putin proposed that the State Duma very radically soften the bill on non-profit organizations (NPOs) adopted in the first reading. Thus, the head of state, in fact, took the side of the Public Chamber, which recommended revising the provisions of the law.

PROFESSIONAL BOXING. December 17. Fight for the WBA world heavyweight title. Nikolay Valuev (Russia) - John Ruiz (USA). Berlin (Germany). For the first time, a Russian heavyweight will fight for the championship belt of one of the three most influential professional boxing organizations in the world. The fight will take place in the arena named after the great German boxer, Max Schmeling Halle.

Islamists took advantage of Hosni Mubarak's reforms Tomorrow the first meeting of the new Egyptian People's Assembly will take place in Cairo. Multi-stage elections to the lower house of parliament lasted more than a month and ended last week. The voting results showed: as soon as an Arab voter is given more freedom than usual, he immediately begins to vote for extremely religious parties. That is, for the Islamists. This has never happened before in the history of Egypt.

In Austria, Russian biathletes finished second four times Russian relay teams at the second stage of the World Cup in Hochfilzen (Austria) were content with two sets of silver medals. Although both in Saturday’s competition for the fair sex and in yesterday’s men’s race, our biathletes had excellent chances for the first victory of the season in this most spectacular discipline.

On December 12, debates traditionally revive about whether it is worth changing the Basic Law The Russian Constitution, which has not changed at all over all these years, is celebrating its 12th birthday, in fact, in another country and in the midst of a dispute over the Basic Law. In December, the Constitutional Court intends to announce a decision on the most high-profile trial in the Constitutional Court in recent years - the abolition of direct gubernatorial elections.

Hearings begin in case of corruption among UN employees Today, a hearing in the case of 48-year-old Russian Vladimir Kuznetsov is scheduled to take place in the southern federal court of Manhattan, New York. “The hearings will begin at 11.30 local time, and an employee of the Russian consular office will definitely be present,” a representative of the Russian Consulate General in New York told Vremya Novostei yesterday.

November 11 -- December 9, 2005 The ratings were calculated using the Medialogy information and analytical system based on materials from 1,500 Russian media. The system processes all categories of central and regional media in Russia - TV, radio, press, news agencies, online publications. The mention rating reflects the total number of posts in which a given person appears.

The premiere of Prokofiev's War and Peace took place at the Bolshoi Theater There is some kind of bad pattern in the fact that almost every new production of the Bolshoi Theater has a loud and scandalous backstory, which in many ways depreciates the value of the subsequent performance. No sooner had Moscow survived the difficult birth of the “Children of Rosenthal” than a scandal broke out with Mstislav Rostropovich, of whom only the deaf had never heard.

Young Catholic priests beg the Vatican to end celibacy The heads of parishes from Australia recently called on Pope John Paul II to make the earthly life of priests of the Roman Catholic Church easier and to make serving the Lord more attractive to young people. In their opinion, the pontiff should think about abolishing celibacy - the vow of celibacy, which is a prerequisite for ordination among Catholics.

The employees of the Krasnoturinsky maternity hospital were sentenced The court of the city of Krasnoturinsk (Sverdlovsk region) on Friday completed the announcement of the verdict in the scandalous case of employees of a local maternity hospital, in which five newborns died due to infection with a dangerous infection two years ago. All four defendants - the head physician of the maternity hospital, Marat Salakhov, acting.

The appointment of Gerhard Schröder to the post of head of the shareholders committee of the supervisory board of the North European Gas Pipeline consortium caused a stream of negative reactions in German economic and political circles. In fact, the public found itself faced with a sudden political decision on an important economic project. This style is contrary to the norms accepted here: upcoming appointments to leading positions in business become known, as a rule, many months in advance.

Governors are trying to pass off their reforms as national projects While the government is only setting deadlines for the implementation of the national projects announced by the president, it turned out that the governor of the Pskov region, Mikhail Kuznetsov, is already actively implementing two of them - in the fields of healthcare and education. The head of the region spoke about how he succeeded at a press conference in Moscow. Mr.