Elise Andre (photo: Interpol), click on image to view larger
Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Elise, a three-year-old who was kidnapped Friday in Arles, southern France, as she returned from school with her father, is still being sought by Interpol with police in France, Switzerland and Russia. TSR carries a headline, “confusion reigns,” with Russian authorities saying the girl is not, to their knowledge, in Russia, after they were reported by Russian media over the weekend as saying she was there.
The former deputy mayor of Grozny, Gelani Shapiyev, was shot three times in the head and killed, outside his apartment building in an “affluent” neighbourhood in western Moscow, near the Krylatskaya metro station. He is the third former Chechan official to be shot in three years on the streets of Moscow, according to the Moscow Times.
When Russian dissident writer Alexander Sozhenitsyn died in August 2008 the Russian president suggested that Moscow should name a street after him. The street where he was born is now changing its name for what would have been the writer’s 90th birthday, but residents and companies are grumbling about the inconvenience.
The funeral of Russian Orthodox patriarch Alexiy II takes place today, 9 December, in Moscow, and Russian media are canceling entertainment programmes to broadcast the funeral. Some 80,000 people have marched past the coffin since he died 5 December, the BBC quotes Moscow police as saying. The Moscow Times reports that traffic came to a standstill Monday and that people are being urged to use public transport today to attend the funeral.
