On January 27 the Legal Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe confirmed Christos Pourgourides’ report on the missing people in Belarus. The proposal not to admit the Belarusian “MPs” to the PACE sessions was also supported, as Radio Freedom reports.

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The civil initiative “For the Freedom of Worship” carried out a monitoring of the situation after the new law on religion has been passed. According to the results, the authors of the periodical “white book” came to the conclusion that the Belarusian authorities use religion in pursuing their political goals.

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It is easy to get lost in “the average data”. For instance, from October to November the average salary seems to be increasing, but not substantially. But in December the data rises substantially. “It can be easily explained: by the end of the year all the enterprises try to manage the debts, payments are made more actively and the average salary rises distinctly. Something like that is observed during holiday time,”-as they explained at the Ministry of Statistics. According to the data, in comparison to November 2003 in December we got by 25,000 rubles more, specifically 300, 000. If in January the enterprises will pay salaries by the principle: in a new year without debts and new debts in a new year, it might be that “the average income” will decrease again in January 2004. The average yearly salary is a more trustworthy data. For 2003 it made up 254,000 or $115, as “Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus” writes.

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The roof of a school gymnasium in Belarus collapsed Tuesday, killing three students and a teacher, officials said. Eleven students were injured. The roof gave way during a physical education class in the three-story middle school in the village of Krasnopolye, 185 miles southeast of Minsk, officials at the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

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