MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he is satisfied with the current status of Russian-Israeli relations and he thanked the visiting Israeli President, Shimon Peres, for a fruitful dialogue in the course of Thursday’s negotiations.
Russia and Israel have fair prospects for joint efforts in a wide range of areas today including power engineering, agriculture, high technologies, space exploration, and transport infrastructures, Putin said.
MOSCOW — The Russian Jewish Museum and the Center of tolerance opened in Moscow on Thursday. Visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attended the opening ceremony.
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, Andrei Vorobyov, to take the post of the Moscow Region’s acting governor.
MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a resolution on the measures to fulfil the Russian presidential decree number 1199 issued on August 21, 2012 over the assessment of the efficiency of the Russian executive authorities, the Russian governmental press service reported on Thursday.
The resolution approved the rules to allocate grants to the federal constituent territories as inter-budgetary transfers in order to assist in the achievement and (or) promote the achievement of the best indicators upon the results of the assessment of the efficiency of the executive authorities in the constituents in the Russian Federation; the methods to assess the efficiency of the executive authorities in the constituents of the Russian Federation; the list of individual indicators to assess the efficiency to the executive authorities in the constituents in the Russian Federation.
The document also envisages the assessment of the efficiency of the executive authorities in the constituents of the Russian Federation based on the indicators set in the decree that embrace the results of the activities of the executive authorities in the constituents of the Russian Federation in economy, state and municipal management, health care, education and housing construction.
MOSCOW — Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff General Nikolai Makarov will be relieved of his post soon, Colonel-General Valery Gerasimov will be appointed at this post, a source in the Russian General Staff told Itar-Tass on Thursday.
MOSCOW — A state program for the development of the healthcare sector till the year 2020 has been submitted to the Russian government and will be considered at its meeting on November 15, Russian Health Minister Veronia Skvotsova said on Thursday.
The program is aimed to improve the quality and accessibility of medical help. For these ends, it is planned to amend sectoral laws to grant patients the right to choose a doctor, a hospital and an insurance company. Apart from that, the program is geared to encourage hi tech medicine, to improve the quality of medical education, and to prompt the establishment of medical research clusters. Another section of the program focuses on steps to promote preventive medicine, to popularize healthy lifestyles and to encourage the younger generation to undergo medical examinations.
MOSCOW — Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves tumbled by 0.1 billion dollars (or by 0.02 percent) from 526.5 billion dollars to 526.4 billion dollars as of October 26-November 2, the External and Public Relations Department of the Central Bank said on Thursday.
The level of gold and foreign exchange reserves totaled 498.649 billion dollars as at January 1.
MURMANSK — Murmansk Governor Marina Kovtun and Secretary-General of the Nordic Council of Ministers Halld·r ·sgr·msson determined priorities of cross-border cooperation between Russia and Norway at a meeting on Wednesday.
The Nordic Council of Ministers is the forum for Nordic governmental cooperation. The Prime Ministers have the overall responsibility for Nordic Cooperation. In practice, responsibility is delegated to the Ministers for Nordic Cooperation and to the Nordic Committee for Cooperation, which coordinates the day-to-day work of the official political Nordic cooperation.
LONDON — Capital flight from Russia continues to weaken, Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Erik Berfglof told Itar-Tass on Wednesday at a press conference on the occasion of the publication of the new annual report Transition Period 2012, prepared by the international financial institution. The capital flight volume is decreasing, he said.
KIEV — Ukraine's Central Electoral Commission will not do a recounting of ballots in the five precincts where major problems were registered during the October 28 parliamentary election.
"There's no way to avoid a runoff election there," Andrei Magera, a deputy chief of the country's Central Electoral Commission told a news conference here Thursday.
"The recounting procedures should be observed from A to Z and if the CEC organizes it in at least ten precincts, then we'll be unable to wind it up until next summer," he said. "That's why we should treat the issue critically."
LVOV — The Sikhivsky District Court of Lvov satisfied a request for arrest of real estate and assets of several companies, which business tycoon Boris Berezovsky owns in Ukraine.
The court ruling contains a long list of Berezovsky’s enterprises in the Lvov and Poltava Regions, including the property of a mineral water plant, land plots and buildings. Berezovsky’s assets of more than ten companies, joint stock societies in Kiev, Lvov and other Ukrainian cities were arrested. The alienation of this property is banned and it is also stated that the court verdict “is final and cannot be appealed.”
TBILISI — Georgia’s parliamentary minority made up of members of the United National Movement, a party led by President Mikhail Saakashvili, has supsneded its work in parliament but says “it is not a boycott.”
The move is “neither a boycott nor a protest action,” lawmaker Pavle Kublashvili, one of the leaders of the parliamentary minority, told journalists on Thursday.
According to earlier reports, the parliamentary minority suspended its work in parliament in protest against the arrest of Chief of Staff of the Georgian Armed Forces Georgy Kalandadze and a tax audit of the Georgian Public Television.
MOSCOW — A court in Moscow has warranted the arrest of Dmitry Vinogradov, an employee of a pharmaceutical company Rigla, accused of killing six of his colleagues at an office in northwestern Moscow on Wednesday.
The investigator asked the court to remand the man in custody, because he posed a real threat to society, if allowed to stay free. Also, he might go in hiding and continue his criminal activity.