News

The MPs of the State Duma have passed in the third and final reading the law giving the regions the power to determine the procedure of electing their governors.

The decision on the claim of defamation lodged by Khachik Khachatryan, the owner of the Yerevan poultry factory, to the newspaper "Zhokhovurd" and its correspondent Sonia Grigoryan will be made on March 27, as Judge Ruben Apinyan said during his consideration of the lawsuit.

The Georgian party has denied the information that the ship "Aydar" sailing to Turkey from Abkhazia was detained in international waters and escorted to the port of Poti. According to the Georgian party, the ship could not continue its way because of a storm.

The Georgian parliament has adopted in the second reading the draft constitutional amendments, aimed at partially restricting the presidential powers. Georgian political analysts believe that in the case of the final adoption of the amendments the power to dismiss the government and dissolve the parliament will be beyond Saakashvili's powers.

The car of Victoria Sopoleva, the chair of the public movement "People's Stroykontrol", was fired on March 22 from a traumatic pistol in the yard of a house in Lavochkin Street of the Voroshilov District of Volgograd, the woman herself told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent about it.

The Taganrog observers over the election of Anapa Mayor were forced to return home after their buses were stopped by GIBDD (traffic police) inspectors, who also took away the number plates from the buses.

Tonight, during a search of the house of the lawyer Musa Suslanov in the village of Kalininaul, Kazbek District of Dagestan, 11 persons were detained, the lawyer Sapiyat Magomedova told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. Suslanov was not at home at that time.

Inspectors of the Taganrog GIBDD (traffic police) have detained a bus with 42 residents of the Rostov Region, who were on the way to Anapa as observers at the election of the mayor of the city, as Alexei Tsivenko, the coordinator of the project "Citizen Observer" told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The whereabouts of the missing resident of Kaspiisk Murad Aliev has not yet been established. According to Sapiyat Magomedova, the family lawyer, Aliev could be taken out of the IVS (temporary detention facility) in Kizilyurt.

Vrezh Galstyan, 25, a resident of the city of Masis, armed with a knife, tried to get into the National Assembly of Armenia. According to the General Public Prosecutor's Office, he had two previous convictions and was registered as a patient with a psychiatric disorder.

The criminal case opened after a scuffle near the Shopping Centre "Evropeisky" in Moscow has been sent to the Moscow City Court (MCC), the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia reports.

On March 21, the deputies of the Volgograd Regional Duma Natalia Latyshevskaya and Sergey Popov turned on in the Central District Court of Volgograd with a claim against the department of urban maintenance of the city administration on their obligations of road repair and maintenance of pavements.

Employees of law enforcement bodies have completely destroyed a private house in the township of Semender in the outskirts of Makhachkala, which is under the CTO regime since March 20, said a source from law enforcement bodies of the city.

The Stavropol Territorial Court has dismissed the suit lodged by the lawyer Murad Musaev in protest against the decision of the Stavropol territorial government on introduction of the school uniform and ban on hijabs.

At the consideration of the suit lodged by Fuza Makhotlova, a resident of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), against the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the KBR on protection of her honour and dignity and compensation of moral harm caused by an erroneous putting her on the wanted list as a suicide bomber, the court has granted the advocate's motion to appoint a complex forensic and psychological-psychiatric examination.

About 42 million roubles have been allotted in the budget of Ingushetia as compensations for rental of housing for displaced residents of Chechnya.

The Central Election Committee (CEC) of Armenia has finished receiving applications for participation in the elections to the Board of Elders of Yerevan. The proportional lists have been filed by six parties and one political bloc.

Plenty of Kalmykia residents are now receiving decisions of the Evropeisky Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) stating that their complaints to the refusal of Russian authorities to compensate the moral harm suffered by them in the years of repression are non-eligible for the court.

Today, the village of Dylym – the centre of the Kazbek District of Dagestan – hosted a meeting of delegates from local villages, where demands for resignation of the head of the district Abdula Makhachev and dissolution of the local assembly of deputies were voiced out.

135 MPs have unanimously voted in support of the draft amendments to the Constitution of Georgia aimed at limiting the powers of the president. Thus, the bill was adopted in the first reading.