Minsk city hall allowed to commemorate in the capital the Ancestors’ Remembrance Day, which is annually marked in the country on November 2. BPF Christian Conservative Party received a permit to hold a rally on November 2 from the Tolbukhina boulevard (“Park Cheluskintsev” metro) along the Skarina prospect to the “Vestok” tube station and further to the “Kuropaty” memorial site. The final meeting will take place there. The concomitant request had been submitted to the Minsk regional committee. BPF “Adradjenne” members also petitioned local authorities to hold their action on the same day.

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Fear lives in every person, even in those, who decided to commit suicide, taking with them as many souls as possible. This thought has sounded many times during my conversation with Tatiana Tkachuk, midwife of the Minsk regional maternity home, who was taken hostage in Moscow. Tatiana confessed that every time when they heard gunshots they were panicking from fear, the power of which was incomparable. Then it somehow faded away with the thoughts about relatives and children. Living for three days in the atmosphere of constant fear was a terrible nightmare.

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Over a third of respondents – 38% - from Minsk city believe that the outcomes of the forthcoming local elections in spring 2003 will be forfeited. 14% are fully convinced of that, while 24% say that “they are likely to be fabricated”. These data were received by the BelaPAN’s “Zerkalo” service.

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Soviet district procuracy of Minsk passed an appeal against the court’s decision on the lawsuit, filed by the ZUBR activist against the newspaper “Sovietskaya Belorussiya” and personally its editor-in-chief Pavel Yakubovich.

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“We consider it necessary to sell, if there’s a chance, our military machinery and ammunition to the greatest possible number of consumers,” – said at the October 31 briefing the head of the department for international security of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Alexander Baichorov. “That’s a normal international business practice,” – said he.

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Yesterday there saw light the first issue of the new non-state periodical “Mestnoe vremya” (Local Time). According to the editor-in-chief Anatoly Gulayev, the newspaper will be different from other editions, which fill the Belarusian newspaper market. In an interview to the Radio Ratsya Anatoly Gulayev spoke about the goals and perspectives of the new periodical:

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Phone calls and women’s tears are an ordinary phenomenon for the “Narodnaya Volya”. Last Monday the call for help came from the Slepyanka residential district (4th Slepyansky street). The callers were the tenants of small houses, which are being brought down upon the state’s order, so that they could build another Belarusian “miracle” in their place.

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Frunzensky district department of KGB financial investigation for Minsk region and Minsk city initiated legal action against the director of “Vastan”. The case files read that the head of the company in 2000 submitted to “TehnoBank” phony documentation in order to obtain loan. The earmarked credit, worth $299thsd, is yet to be returned in full volume. Under art.237 of the Penal code the man may well face up to five years of jail.

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