Oil and gas companies are in no hurry to develop the island's subsoil The development of the Sakhalin shelf may be disrupted due to too high taxes, oil industry workers warn. According to them, the harsh climate and lack of developed infrastructure against the backdrop of high mineral extraction taxes (MET) and export duties make projects operating under the normal tax regime, if not unprofitable, then low-profitable.

Chronicle of sporting events Three Russian tennis players reached the quarterfinals of the US Open, the last Grand Slam tournament of the season being held in New York. Nikolay Davydenko, Anna Chakvetadze and Svetlana Kuznetsova made it to the eight strongest players in the competition. Davydenko confidently beat the Korean Hyung Taik Lee - 6:1, 6:3, 6:4. Now the Russian will meet with Sydney Olympics finalist Tommy Haas.

Vladimir Putin passed the baton of G8 presidency to Angela Merkel Vladimir Putin yesterday received German Chancellor Angela Merkel at his Sochi residence. As the Russian president put it, “there was a kind of passing of the baton from the Russian to the German presidency” in the G8.

London lost its subway for almost three days Even the residents of London were convinced of the truth of the popular statement that Monday is a hard day. On the evening of September 3, almost all employees of the world's oldest London Underground did not go to work. Thus began the promised three-day transport strike, which has only been written about for the last three weeks and which the authorities in the British capital did nothing to prevent.

Yesterday, the first group of American troops arrived in Baghdad as part of the increase in troops in Iraq announced by George Bush. This is 3.2 thousand people out of the 21.5 thousand reinforcements promised by the US President. The US command in Iraq said the new brigade will be involved in joint operations with Iraqi security forces to clear the city and surrounding areas of militants. The day before and on the day of the arrival of reinforcements, 25 American soldiers were killed in Iraq.

The new president of Russia will have to mix ideologies On Monday, the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) published data from a survey on the topic of what the next president of Russia should be like from an ideological point of view.

The Super League started with a hat-trick from Dynamo debutant Fedor Fedorov The championship of the Russian Hockey Super League has begun. The tournament is attended by 20 teams, which will play in three rounds at the preliminary stage, that is, each participant will play 57 matches. The top 16 will get tickets to the playoffs.

The radicals have succeeded, others will form the Serbian government The parliamentary elections held yesterday in Serbia did not reveal a clear leader. There are approximately the same number of Serbs who are ready to continue moving towards a United Europe with pro-Western democrats as there are adherents of radical nationalists. As of yesterday evening, the Serbian Radical Party (SRP) received the largest number of votes.

Fosborne Home has come up with a program for those who could not get a mortgage loan Yesterday, the largest mortgage broker, Fosborne Home, announced the launch of a special product for clients whose applications were approved by banks, but “for some reason they have not yet been able to issue money.” Investsberbank and the Russian subsidiary of the Indian bank ICICI, who are the broker’s partners in this program, will work with these borrowers.

The IV State Duma outlined the legislative priorities of the last session The State Duma, which began its last session of the current convocation yesterday, intends to work at an accelerated pace in the fall. During the last session, deputies intend to pass at least one and a half times more laws than is usually possible. Deputies are spurred on by the upcoming parliamentary elections.

China could agree on space tests of its rocket with Russia A Chinese medium-range ballistic missile with a kinetic warhead shot down a Chinese outdated weather satellite weighing 750 kg, which was in low-Earth orbit at an altitude of almost 900 km. This happened on January 12 at half past one in the morning Moscow time, which Western media reported at least a week late. This news immediately became one of the main ones.

Chavez's mediation mission under threat Yesterday in Colombia, during a military operation, the leader of the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Tomas Medina Caracas, nicknamed Black Acacia, was killed. Washington persistently sought his arrest from the Colombian authorities for smuggling cocaine, weapons and kidnapping. Along with the FARC leader, 17 militants were killed. Guerrilla warfare in Colombia has continued for more than 40 years.

VTB will sell its stake in EADS VTB will finally sell its stake in the capital of the European aerospace and defense concern EADS. The head of the bank, Andrei Kostin, announced this yesterday. "As investors have expressed concerns about our investment (in EADS), we will significantly reduce our equity participation in EADS in the next two to three months," he said at a banking conference in Germany. Last summer, the bank bought a little more than 5% of the shares of the European concern .

The mayor of Arkhangelsk received the first sentence The mayor of Arkhangelsk Alexander Donskoy received his first sentence . Yesterday, the Oktyabrsky District Court of the city found him guilty of using a higher education diploma and illegal entrepreneurship for personal gain. For his crime, the mayor was suspended for a year and will be forced to pay a fine of 75 thousand rubles. Despite the fact that the court did not consider it necessary to isolate Mr.

The first Design Act festival took place in Moscow The general public knows about as much about the existence of Russian industrial design as about life on Mars. Although in everyday life we ​​are surrounded by a lot of things whose appearance has been worked on by domestic designers. Large industrial giants (Toyota, Samsung, BMW) do not hesitate to contact our bureaus for ideas, but the names of these creators are most often known only to the design and journalistic community.