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The Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria has acquitted Michel Krilaans, a journalist from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, chief-editor of the Moscow bureau of the NRZ newspaper, who was earlier accused of breaching the migration accounting regulations and sentenced to a fine of 2000 roubles and extradition out of Russia.

For several days the nature is storming in Kakheti - the winery area of Georgia. As a result of rains, apartment houses and vineyards were flooded; roads and bridges were damaged. The damage is still computed.

In the village of Bavtugay, Kizilyurt District of Dagestan, 35 local residents, including 19 children, fell sick with sharp intestinal infections, presumably, after using poor-quality potable water. The poisoning episodes have been registered from September 10.

The authorities of Georgia are going to submit a claim to the International Maritime Court in the context of the situation in the Abkhazian section of territorial waters, where Russian military ships appeared.

On September 22, it became known about kidnapping of three young men in Makhachkala; however, in spite of the witnesses present in the case, none of them is ready to testify, as reported by Svetlana Isaeva, an activist of the NGO "Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights".

The Investigatory Committee at the Prosecutor's Office (ICPO) of the Russian Federation has presented a charge of murdering Hero of Russia, ex-deputy of the State Duma Ruslan Yamadaev to Aslambek Dadaev. According to the investigation, Dadaev was the direct gunman.

The murder of Ismail-Hadji Bostanov, Deputy Chair of the Spiritual Department of Moslems of Karachai-Circassia and Stavropol Territory and Rector of the Islamic Institute, committed on September 20 in Cherkessk, can be connected with Mr Bostanov's visit to Istanbul this summer, where he agreed on the visit of the Supreme Mufti of Turkey to his republic. This is the opinion of a source, close to Bostanov.

On September 22, the participants of the regular five-sided meeting in the city of Gale (Abkhazia) discussed up to 10 various agenda points within the mechanism on prevention and reaction to incidents. The meeting lasted for about four hours, but no particular decisions were adopted. Both the Georgian and Abkhazian parties found the event fruitless.

Sozar Subari, whose term of office of Ombudsman of Georgia expired in September, and who was replaced in that post as of September 16 by Georgiy Tugushi, started active political life and will stand for the Tbilisi local government body.

The new pentalateral meeting in Gali (Abkhazia, September, 22) within the mechanism on prevention and reaction to incidents was a failure, the Georgian party asserts.

Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia has published a statement with accusations addressed to Moscow of ignoring the norms and principles of the international law in the context of the entrance of the Russian coast guard ship "Novorossisk" into Abkhazian waters area and intention to deploy more frontier guarding boats there.

On September 21, Hadjimurad Gatsalov, a sportsman from Vladikavkaz, won the first golden medal for the national team of Russia at the world championship in free-style wrestling, held in Danish city of Hoerning. After defeating Khetag Gozyumov, Azerbaijan, a prize-winner of the Beijing Olympiad, Gatsalov became the quadruple world champion.

President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili has expressed his resolute discontent, while making comments on the conclusion of the unpublished report of the European Union's independent commission set up for investigating the reasons of the armed conflict in August 2008 in South Ossetia that Georgia was the initiator of the war.

The situation around Deni Baisarov, son of the Chechen businessman Ruslan Baisarov and singer Christina Orbakaite, will be considered at parliamentary hearings of the State Duma of the Russian Federation on October 5.

For three hours on September 21 residents of Makhachkala blocked the highway in protest against electric power cut-off, as a source in law enforcement bodies has reported today. The protesters demanded to restart electricity supply, which failed after an accident at the power plant caused by pouring rains.

Armen Arutyunyan, Ombudsman in Armenia, said, in his comments on the report, published on September 17, of the interim parliamentary commission for studying the events on March 1, 2008, in Yerevan, when the authorities dispersed mass actions of the opposition, that the actions of power agents had been approached too mildly.

In the Kizilyurt District of Dagestan and in the city of Derbent the recent downpours have flooded more than 500 houses. Because of incessant rains, in a number of villages of the Sergokalin District, rivers have overflowed the banks and flooded power substations, transmission lines and transformers.

Mayor of Elista Radiy Burulov has offered himself to local members of the "Edinaya Rossiya" Party as a candidate to the post of Kalmykia's Premier. Mr Burulov said that he would like to share the power in the republic among the Prime Minister and the President and offered the latter to deal exclusively with political matters and not to interfere with operation of the government.

The new law on gambling business in Batumi will be discussed at the autumn session of the parliament of Georgia. According to the bill, all the hotels with more that 100 rooms will be exempted for 10 years from the annual license fee, which in Batumi makes 250,000 laris.

The believing Moslems of Chechnya celebrated their Uraza-Bairam ('Id al-Fitr) yesterday, on September 21. Like in recent years, the celebrations in the republic passed later than in other Russian regions and other Moslem countries. The believers blame local clergy for these discrepancies and doubt the reason of their actions.