Austrian Strabag will build Sochi The large Austrian construction company Strabag SE and structures controlled by Oleg Deripaska's Basic Element holding company agreed yesterday to acquire each other's shares. Mutual participation in capital, as the partners expect, will allow them to jointly participate in the construction of Olympic facilities in Sochi.

Fight erupts over bill to change senator confirmation process Members of the Federation Council at tomorrow's meeting will have to decide on the actual restriction of the rights of their chairman, speaker of the upper house Sergei Mironov.

The Tchaikovsky Competition has decided on the jury, orchestras and music authors The next meeting of the organizing committee of the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition, with the participation of Valery Gergiev (chairman of the organizing committee and the locomotive of this story), Richard Rodzinsky (an experienced international specialist and head of the working group, invited to raise the prestige of the competition), the main Russian pianist Denis Matsuev and the director of the

State Duma deputies intend to remake their own amendments to the law on rallies The veto of President Dmitry Medvedev, which he imposed on the scandalous amendments to the law “On rallies, demonstrations, processions and pickets,” does not mean that this document, which tightens the requirements for organizing public events, will be shelved in the offices of the State Duma.

If civil society helps Three weeks remain until the opening of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana, which will take place on December 1-2. This event should sum up the current year of Kazakhstan’s chairmanship in this organization, which unites 56 participating countries. Events of this scale have not yet been held in Central Asia; the last time the OSCE summit was held in Istanbul was 11 years ago, in 1999.

Gazprom does not consider the deal with Severenergia to be a sale of core assets Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom Alexander Medvedev explained why the company decided to sell its core assets with decent reserves - 51% of the shares of the Severenergia company - to a joint venture of Gazprom Neft and NOVATEK (see Vremya Novostey on November 8) .

The New British Film Festival has ended The traditional British film festival, held in Moscow last week, clearly demonstrated that island cinema is equally different from both the Hollywood model and the European one.

The winners of the Big Cartoon Festival have been announced As has been said more than once, the Grand Cartoon Festival does not have a jury; here everything is decided by the audience by voting with questionnaires, and this immediately cancels accusations of judges’ bias. But, as experience shows, the audience’s choice looks no worse than many picky juries and speaks no less about the current life of short animation, both ours and foreign ones.

The ruling party won the elections in Azerbaijan Today in Azerbaijan the summing up of the results of the parliamentary elections held last Sunday will continue, but yesterday the Central Election Commission announced their preliminary results. They allowed the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (New Azerbaijan) led by President Ilham Aliyev to begin celebrating the victory.

The leadership of the NATO military-political bloc has decided on the candidacy of the new director of its information bureau in Moscow. This is Polish diplomat Robert Pszel (pictured) , who worked in the press service of the Brussels headquarters of the North Atlantic Alliance. He will arrive in Moscow in December. The author of Vremya Novostey attended Mr. Pschel’s briefings in Brussels.

In Brazil, the winner of the Constructors' Championship was determined The double success of the Red Bull drivers at the penultimate stage of the Formula 1 World Championship (the race was won by Sebastian Vettel, and his teammate Mark Webber finished second), held on Sunday in Sao Paulo, Brazil, provided the Austrian team with an early victory in the Constructors' Championship.

The weather of most of the European territory of Russia on Tuesday will be determined by the Atlantic cyclone. In the North-West region there will be precipitation (in the form of sleet and rain), a slight drop in temperature, -3...+2оС. In the Central region there is rain, in the north-east of the territory there is occasional precipitation (rain, sleet), during the day +3...+8оС. In the Central Black Earth region, light rain in places, +9...+14оС during the day.

Sergei Sobyanin surrounds himself with people from the federal government After two weeks of governing the city, the new mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, apparently came to the conclusion that some officials from the old team can’t make porridge. The new working week at the mayor's office began with regular layoffs.

TV and film producers give pirates one last chance Last weekend, November 6 and 7, the public movement “Pirate Party of Russia” held protests in Moscow against the government decree on a mandatory one percent levy on electronic media and equipment. Their appeal to State Duma deputies was signed on the spot by about 1,500 people. Another 8 thousand signatures were collected on the Internet.

The government begins the transition to new budgeting rules The government is completely ready to transition to a new format of budget planning - state programs that will replace the currently existing federal target programs. Now the money will be distributed by area, and not just by department.