The national organizing committee for celebrating the Freedom Day launched a press-conference, whose theme was to hold the festive assembly in connection with the passage of the Belarusian national anthem. Organizing committee members revealed the assembly’s agenda. It will start on Sunday, March 10 at 12 o’clock at the Palace of arts. The delegates will represent parties and public movements, creative and scientific intelligentsia. There’ll be read out variants, proposed for the nomination. The most likely variants are “The Almighty God”, “Pagonya”, “My viydzem schylnymi radami”, “Radzima maya daragaya”.

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In the near future there’ll happen a serious staff redundancy in state editions. The editorial boards received letters from the Ministry, in which they are recommended to curtail their personnel by 20%. The curtailment is carried out in connection with the tough financial situation in the editions. However, the financial problems of state newspapers didn’t touch upon Alexander Lukashenka’s main mouthpiece – “Sovietskaya Belorussiya”.

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47 percent of Minsk residents asked by the pollsters, expressed their negative attitude towards the possible privatization of the Belarusian enterprises by Russian companies. 24% of them answered that their attitude is “absolutely negative”, and 23% said that their attitude is “rather negative than positive”. The survey was held on February 25-28 by the sociological service “Zerkalo” of the BelaPAN information agency.

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The verdict on the case of the son of the former prime minister of Belarus Alyaxandar Chyhir was pronounced today in the Lenin Court of Minsk. The judge sentenced Alyaxandar Chyhir to 7 years of imprisonment, Anton Yashyn – to 7 years of imprisonment, Dzmitser Yutskevich – to 11 years. Besides, the court ruled to confiscate the property of the accused. You must remember that Chyhir, Yashyn, and Yutskevich were accused of selling spare parts of stolen cars and were detained in the February of the last year.More tan a year they have spent in a pre-trial detention center. The political underlying reason of the case is evident.

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The Zubr movement informed the ecological organizations that a repository for radioactive waste by Brest. The Zubr addressed the European nations and governments with an appeal to take all possible steps to press on the Belarusian government to stop the construction of the radioactive dump in the center of Europe. “Belarusian youth movement ZUBR, -- the address says, -- notifies you that at the territory of Belarus construction of a repository for spent nuclear fuel has started. The future repository will be situated by Brest, near the village of Struha, at a distance of 25 kilometers from the Ukrainian border and 15 kilometers from the Polish border.”

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Olga Zavadskaya’s lawyer Igor Aksenchik faced legal action on libel charges. The attorney may get sentenced to social works, fine or up to two years of jail. Radio Svaboda was told this by the press-secretary of the Belarusian procuracy Aleksei Taranov. On February 13 the lawyer publicly accused the prosecutor general Viktor Sheiman of his implication in the disappearances of the Belarusian opposition members. About Dmitry Zavadsky’s case the lawyer said that they are trying the executors of the murder rather than those who masterminded it.

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The State Secretary of the “union state” of Russia and Belarus, Pavel Borodin, was found guilty by the justice of Geneva of laundering money in Switzerland for a total sum equal to 38 millions Swiss francs (22.4 mln dollars), received as a commission. He was sentenced to a fine equal to 300 thousand francs (175 thousands dollars), informed on Wednesday night the Swiss agency ATC, referring to the statement of the Prosecutor General of canton Geneva Bernard Bertossa.

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At the moment at many country’s state enterprises they created conditions for spending money without any money. One may buy without money various goods (the sum gets deducted from salary), including TV sets, furniture and stuff like that at the stores, that operate on the basis of their plant. By the way, not so long ago the Gomel plant “Izmertel” bought jubilee gifts for its workers at the cost of trade union dues, which haven’t been transferred.

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According to BelaPAN agency, a prohibited substance nandrolon was fond in a test of one of the Belarusian sportsmen. The doping test was taken in the last days of the XIX Olympic Games. The name of the sportsman is known, but it can be revealed only after the analysis of the test “B”. It will happen in a week. In any case it is not Alyaxei Hryshyn (free style), who won the only golden medal for Belarusian team.

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