Awarding hero's title to Bandera is unreasonable - Tigipko.

KIEV, January 31 (Itar-Tass) - Ukraine's ex-presidential candidate
Sergei Tigipko has said that awarding hero's title to Stepan Bandera was
an "unreasonable step of Viktor Yushchenko."
"That step split the whole nation. The country's southeast and Kiev
are refusing to understand it," Tigipko said in an interview with the
local radio station on Saturday.
Sergei Tigipko finished third in the first round of recent
presidential elections in Ukraine. The second round finalists, Viktor
Yanukovich and Yulia Timoshenko, are now inviting him to cooperation.
Commenting on the outgoing president's decision on Stepan Bandera,
Tigipko said that Yushchenko was trying to rally national patriots behind
himself in order to create a certain force which could support him in the
next elections and make it possible for him to have at least a small
faction in Ukrainian parliament.
In the meantime, Tigipko believes that assigning the status of the
second state language to Russian could cause a standoff in Ukraine.
"If that is done, it will cause great confrontation in Ukraine, lead
to polarization of Ukrainian society and result in a colossal internal
conflict," Tigipko warned.
He suggests that decision-making on language-related issues should be
handed over to Ukrainian regions. A regional referendum, for example,
could be the right solution. If a decision to make Russian a second state
language is passed at a regional level, then instruction, television and
newspapers can be both in Ukrainian and Russian. Instruction in Ukrainian
should be preserved in schools without fail. All bodies of state power
should be bi-lingual. Tigipko believes that this approach can help
removing the problem and passing over to the equal use of two languages in
the next ten or fifteen years.

.First casino opens in special gambling zone in southern Russia.

AZOV CITY, the Krasnodar territory, January 31 (Itar-Tass) - The first
casino opened in a special gambling zone, called Azov City, in the
Krasnodar territory on Saturday. Visitors to the Oracle casino won a
total of 150, 000 roubles in the first hour of work.
"The very first gain was 12,000 roubles," Valery Saparin, the casino's
marketing director, told Itar-Tass.
He added that about 300 people had visited casino on the first day of
its work. They included the Vice-Governor of the Krasnodar territory,
Aleksey Agafonov, and the general director of the Royal Time Company,
Rashid Taimasov.
The Royal Time company based in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan,
offered 300 pieces of gambling equipment to Oracle's visitors on Saturday
such as one-arm bandits, a roulette and tables for poker and other card
games.
"The Royal Time became an investor in the first casino in the Azov
City gambling area. It plans to invest from four to four and a half
billion roubles in the development of the gambling business in the next
three or four years," Taimasov said at the opening ceremony
"Our Oracle will be the central facility in a future resort area,
which apart from the casino will have an aqua park and other entertainment
spots. A cottage settlement for comfortable accommodation of our guests
may be built in future," Taimasov emphasized.
A federal law on state regulation of gambling activities came into
force in Russia on January 1, 2007. The law provides for the creation of
four gambling zones where gambling enterprise can be set up: in the
Kaliningrad region, the Altai territory, the Primoyre (Maritime) territory
in the Far East as well as between the Rostov region and the Krasnodar
territory in southern Russia.
Elsewhere in Russia, the gambling business has been banned and
declared illegal.

. Vietnam, Russia mark 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations.

HANOI, January 31 (Itar-Tass) - Vietnam's President Nguyen Min Chiet
and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Zung have congratulated Russian leaders on
the occasion of the 60th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic
relations between Vietnam and Russia that was marked on January 30.
"Over the six decades that have passed since Hanoi and Moscow
established official relations, Vietnam and Russia have made substantial
progress in the development of friendly ties and all-round interaction,"
the Vietnamese leaders said in their telegrams of greeting.
They emphasized that the Vietnamese people would always remember
political support and enormous economic and military assistance which
Russia gave to them in the struggle for the freedom and independence of
their homeland and also in peaceful construction and the country's
development.
The Vietnamese president and prime minister noted that the two
countries were determined to strengthen and develop bilateral partnership.
"This contributes to expansion of bilateral ties in all areas of
cooperation from politics and economy to defence, security, culture,
science and education," the telegrams of greeting say.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
sent telegrams of greeting to their Vietnamese counterparts on Saturday.
The foreign ministers of Russia and Vietnam also exchanged greetings.

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