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In their essence, the amendment in the Electoral Code, recently approved by the Parliament of Azerbaijan, create no legal guarantees for eliminating the main problems on the road towards free and fair elections. This conclusion was made by the experts of the Election Monitoring Centre (EMC).

The bodies of three young men killed in the Hasavyurt District on June 7 as a result of a skirmish with militiamen in Dagestan have been identified. Two of them had been searched.

In the district of Vanatur of the Razdan city in Armenia, a hunger strike with a demand to release all political prisoners was launched by war veterans of the voluntary regiment Arshavir Bazinyan, Ashot Nersisyan, Norik Sarkisyan, Samvel Panosyan, Eduard Sarkisyan and widow Janet Nersisyan.

In Rostov-on-Don, ecology activists have started to bag subscriptions under a petition of townspeople to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev with an appeal to refrain from building new nuclear power plants.

Today, the capital of Georgia hosted the first sitting of the parliament of the new convocation elected on May 21. The sitting was attended by President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili and Catholicos Patriarch of all Georgia Elias the Second.

Tonight, Sochi will host the opening ceremony of the 21st "Kinotaurus" Open Russian Movie Festival. In total, the jury will choose among 14 films, 9 of them made by debutants.

Restoration of the railway in Abkhazia can take more than two months, said Sergey Shamba, head of the Abkhazian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when making comments on the statement of the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation Anatoly Serdyukov that the units of the railway troops of Russia will leave the territory of Abkhazia within the nearest two months.

President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has signed a new law on election of deputies to the Parliament of Chechnya, according to which the legislature will become unicameral.

Despite the doubts of its individual members, the United Opposition of Georgia sticks to its decision to boycott the work of the new parliament, which has appointed its first session on June 7.

Yuri Trutnev, Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation, believes that the claims put forward by ecologists in the context of preparation for 2014 Sochi Olympiad can undermine the image of Russia.

St-Petersburg was the venue of the first meeting of Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, where Serzh Sarkisyan and Ilham Aliev have agreed to continue negotiations on settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the basis of Madrid proposals.

Today, the Kuntsevo District Court of Moscow has stopped the operation of the website "Ingushetia.Ru", thus having satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor's Office of Ingushetia, which stuck to the opinion that the site was disseminating extremist information.

Javier Solana, High Commissioner of the European Union on Foreign Policy and Safety, has discussed the issues settling the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict with Abkhazian leaders.

Tigran Sarkisyan, former Chairman of the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia and nowadays the Prime Minister of the country, has lodged a claim on protection of his honour, dignity and professional reputation against Grant Bagratyan, leader of the oppositional non-parliamentary party "Azatyutyun" (Freedom), who was the prime minister of Armenia in 1993-1996.

During several recent days, in the Gudermes and Vedeno Districts of Chechnya, several burials have been detected. The authorities of Chechnya assert that all the casualties fell victims of extrajudicial executions of the militaries of the "Vostok" (East) battalion commanded by Sulim Yamadaev.

Javier Solana, High Commissioner of the European Union on Foreign Policy and Safety, who has arrived today to Tbilisi, has stated that he would not mediate the conflict between the opposition and the authorities of Georgia.

Three oppositional parties - the People's Front, Party of Citizens and Development and Liberal Party of Azerbaijan, united into the block named "Azadlyg", have officially declared their boycott of the presidential election appointed for October 15, 2008.

In Ingushetia, representatives of the opposition have made a decision to postpone for indefinite time the rallies in five dwelling settlements of Ingushetia, which were appointed for tomorrow, June 6.

The Central Electoral Commission of Georgia has promulgated the final totals of the parliamentary elections held May 21. Five parties will form the parliament of the country.

Dmitri Kozak, Minister for Regional Development of the Russian Federation, has stated that the final construction cost of all the objects erected for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympiad will be defined by the end of 2008 after finalizing the project and budget documentation.