LOCAL NEWS

COURT GIVES BUDANOV 10-YEAR TERM

ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia - A military court on Friday found Colonel Yury Budanov was sane when he strangled an 18-year-old Chechen woman in 2000, sentencing him to 10 years in prison and stripping him of his military rank and awards.

Budanov, 40, wearing black slacks and a blue denim shirt, stood calmly as he listened to the verdict, his hands crossed in front of him and his eyes fixed on Judge Vladimir Bukreyev.

GOVERNOR CANDIDATE DUMPED BY PARTY

The United Russia party's Moscow-based general council on Friday ejected Legislative Assembly deputy Konstantin Sukhenko, the head of the United Russia faction there, from the party after he announced that he would run for governor in September's elections.

GOBLIN MAKES CASE AGAINST DEMONIZING EXPLETIVES

Damn, shoot, darn, hell.

Watch the standard Russian translation of Guy Ritchie's 2001 crime caper "Snatch" and you would think that these are the foulest words known to gangsters in London's criminal underworld.

But watch Dmitry Puchkov's Russian translation of the same film, and you'll hear an array of expletives that would make a sailor blush.

SECOND SUSPECT DETAINED IN CASE OF MURDERED GOVERNOR

MOSCOW - A second suspect has been arrested in last fall's brazen murder of Magadan Governor Valentin Tsvetkov, and prosecutors consider the case largely solved, officials said Monday.

The Town in the Middle of the Yukos Storm

KIROVSK, Murmanskaya Oblast - The 30,000 inhabitants of this Arctic town in the middle of the vast Kola Peninsula pride themselves on being happy and hospitable.

There are reasons for this: For an industrial town, the multicolored buildings look refreshingly pristine and the view is panoramic, especially this time of year, when the sun always hangs in the sky, except for an occasional dip behind the barren and breathtaking Khibiny mountains.

NATIONAL NEWS

FIRE FIGHTERS TAKING THE HEAT OF NEW JOBS

Following a presidential decree in November 2001 ordering the unification of the country's regional fire-fighting services with the respective regional departments of the Emergency Situations Ministry, local firefighters have turned into multi-functional rescue workers - and officials say that the service is feeling the strain.

IN BRIEF

Court Rejects Claims

MOSCOW (AP) - A Moscow court rejected appeals Monday in 21 compensation cases filed by survivors and relatives of victims of October's hostage-taking raid by Chechen rebels at a Moscow theater and the rescue operation that left scores dead, news agencies reported.

LOCAL BUSINESS

TAX CHARGES ADD TO YUKOS WOES

MOSCOW - Prosecutors lashed out at Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Monday for criticizing their investigation of core Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev and widened their politically charged probe to include a new charge of tax evasion.

In a sign that the divide among the political elite is deepening in a vicious war that has pitted conservative Kremlin hawks against the country's biggest oil company, prosecutors accused Kasyanov of trying to pressure the courts.

NEW INVESTIGATORS PICKED TO CHECK ON DIROL PLANT

The Dirol-Cadbury factory, Russia's largest producer of chewing gum, was set to go to court again on Tuesday to contest charges from the Natural Resources Ministry that the manufacturer releases harmful agents into the atmosphere.

MINISTRY TARGETS SECOND GUM MANUFACTURER

MOSCOW - In an echo of an order issued to Dirol-Cadbury earlier this month (see related story, this page), the Natural Resources Ministry has ordered the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the world's largest chewing gum producer, to stop work at its St. Petersburg factory for unspecified ecological violations.

STUDY SAYS CITY IS MIDDLE PRICE

MOSCOW - Moscow is the world's 36th most expensive city in the Economist Intelligence Unit's bi-annual cost of living survey, with St. Petersburg ranking 74th tied with Abu Dhabi, Atlanta and Toronto.

IN BRIEF

Rating Clearing

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Standard & Poor's ratings agency said on Friday that it had raised its corporate-governance score for local electricity utility Lenenergo to CGS-5.9 from CGS-5.7, following improvements in the company's standards of governance regulatory infrastructure of the sector, Interfax reported.

SIBNEFT PAYOUT WILL GIVE $1BLN TO ITS SHAREHOLDERS

New Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich will have even more cash available to go after big players after the $1 billion half-year dividend announced by his oil major Sibneft on Friday.

OPINION

LOSING FAMILY COMFORTS

There is no doubt that the deaths of his two sons will be a devastating blow to Saddam Hussein, but those who hope that their loss will leave him a broken man are likely to be disappointed.

He'll probably release another audiotape in the next few days saying that he has sacrificed his two sons for the struggle and calling on other Iraqis to be prepared to do the same, one veteran of the Iraqi opposition observed.

TAKING LEAVE BUT KEEPING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Volunteers for a number of candidates running in the city's Sept. 21 gubernatorial election made their first appearances outside metro stations over the weekend, handing out campaign literature in what already appears to be an unfair race.

The National Peculiarities of Politicians' Rest

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is off on vacation as of Saturday to Siberia's Lake Baikal and then the warmer climes of Sochi, and this has prompted Itar-Tass to poll Cabinet ministers on how they relax. And hey, they're a bunch of nature-lovin' outdoorsmen.

Yes, outdoors MEN. Itar-Tass reports that the lone female minister, Galina Karelova, vacations like "a true lady": she naps, reads and sunbathes.

WORLD

IN BRIEF

Monster Catfish Dies

BERLIN (Reuters) - A giant catfish that ate a dog and terrorized a German lake for years has washed up dead, but the legend of "Kuno the Killer" lives on.

A gardener discovered the carcass of a 1 1/2-meter-long catfish weighing 35 kilograms this week, a spokesperson for the western city of Moenchengladbach said on Friday.