Officials of the Southern Federal District love to joke about geography: to what northern limits the North Caucasus extends. In the sense of whether the plains of Stavropol region belong to the Caucasus and whether the left bank of the Don in Rostov is considered foothills. This fall, these hypotheses have faded. In September 2006, the North Caucasus reached the Karelian city of Kondopoga. At its best, with inter-ethnic clashes and rumors of an impending landing of Chechen special forces.

Russian sprats fell under the hot hand of Voronezh sanitary doctors The campaign to remove Latvian-produced sprats from Russian shelves, which started in early November, also “hooked” Russian producers. The sanitary doctors of the Rospotrebnadzor department in the Voronezh region, who zealously took up the task of protecting the consumer table from poor-quality canned food from the territory of the new NATO member, also discovered harmful canned food of domestic production.

Former top manager of RAO will give advice on the construction of energy facilities The Board of Directors of RAO UES of Russia yesterday finally decided who would head the investment board commission created a month ago.

Benedict XVI supported Turkey's accession to the EU Today, Pope Benedict XVI is visiting Istanbul, where he meets with the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I. For the remaining days of the pontiff's four-day visit to Turkey, conversations are planned with the heads of other Christian communities, as well as Muslim and Jewish leaders of this predominantly Islamic, but constitutionally secular 71- country of millions.

CLUBS The Russian reggae festival will take place on Wednesday. It will feature groups such as Jah Division , DUB TV and Trio Positiva . At the B2 club, 20.00. CONCERTS Famous American-French jazzwoman Dee Dee Bridgewater , as well as musicians Patrick Manugian (guitar), Minino Garay (drums and percussion), Ira Coleman (double bass) and Marc Berthumier (accordion) will perform French songs in a jazz arrangement.

The Stavropol governor wants to be personally responsible for all water supply systems in the region The Governor of the Stavropol Territory, Alexander Chernogorov, as they say, is an experienced apparatchik. From the “steering wheel of the state farm” (this position is listed in his official biography), he rose to the rank of governor of the Stavropol Territory and has not legally given his place to anyone for ten years.

Exhibition “State security of Russia. 1881--2006" in the hall of the federal archives How beautiful was the Caucasian convoy of Emperor Alexander II: Cossacks, Lezgins, Ossetians, a uniform tied at the waist with gazyrs, epaulettes, elegant daggers in the belt! The colors varied depending on the nationality of the unit. You can see from the uniforms what stately handsome men were recruited into His Imperial Majesty’s Own convoy.

Gazprom and Rosneft agreed on the principles of peaceful coexistence The heads of the two main state-owned companies - Gazprom and Rosneft - Alexey Miller and Sergei Bogdanchikov yesterday signed a long-announced agreement on strategic cooperation until 2015 . It turned out that in the five months that have passed since the public announcement of the proximity of this event, the parties have not agreed on anything specific.

Capital power engineers are already limiting electricity consumption The cold has not yet set in, but power outages have already begun in Moscow and the Moscow region. As Vladimir Kimerin, general director of Mosenergosbyt, said yesterday at a joint press conference of the heads of the capital's energy companies, restrictions have been introduced at 75 industrial enterprises with a total capacity of 50-150 MW over the past two weeks.

Sudan refuses UN peacekeepers Africans are distrustful of UN peacekeepers. Sudan has not given the green light to the deployment of UN blue helmets in its western Darfur province, where a bloody civil conflict has continued since 2003. Instead, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (pictured) yesterday proposed increasing the number of African Union peacekeepers stationed in Darfur since 2004 from 7,000 to 17,000. It is also necessary to extend their mandate, which ends on December 31.

Vladimir Putin gathered for Jacques Chirac's birthday Yesterday the NATO summit opened in Riga. High-ranking officials of the Alliance have repeatedly emphasized that this event is “for our own”, in which exclusively the heads of state and government of NATO countries take part. However, yesterday there was sensational information that Russian President Vladimir Putin may arrive in Riga today.

Banks will be forced to be honest when issuing consumer loans The Central Bank will no longer ask banks to be honest with their clients. The regulator will simply oblige its wards to do this. As Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Gennady Melikyan said yesterday, banks will have to disclose in contracts all the conditions for issuing consumer loans. The Central Bank's innovation should open the eyes of private borrowers to the rate at which they actually take out a loan.

Russian journalists announced a boycott of the President of Belarus The anniversary summit of the CIS, which President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko so sought to hold in Minsk, ended in an embarrassment unprecedented in the history of meetings of the leaders of the Commonwealth. Russian journalists from the Kremlin pool, accredited at the summit, refused to participate in the final press conference and left the National Library, where it was supposed to take place.

In the north of European Russia, Atlantic cyclones replace each other, protecting the central and southern regions from the icy breath of the Arctic. As a result, in most of European Russia the air temperature will remain 5-7 degrees above the long-term average. In the northwestern regions there will be light rain in places, the prevailing temperature will be +4...+9оС.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine intends to allow the processing of radioactive metal from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Ukrainian metallurgists expect the ban on the export of radiation scrap metal outside the Chernobyl exclusion zone to be lifted.