Russia's antimonopoly watchdog examining prices at drugstores.

WASHINGTON, November 12 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's Federal Antimonopoly
Service /FAS/ is examining reports on price increases by drugstore owners
in a number of regions, the FAS's director, Igor Artemyev said here
Tuesday.
He is making a working visit to the U.S.
"We do a daily monitoring of the market of medicines and we've already
taken some measures, like the checking of prices," Artemyev said.
Last week, President Dmitry Medvedev told the FAS and the Prosecutor
General's Office to see to it that the distributors of medicines and
protective outfits do not profiteer on the epidemic of the new flu and
that criminal cases are instituted if they expose facts of a groundless
hiking of prices.
"We shouldn't tolerate it anymore, as grabbing profits on an epidemic
is an outright crime deserving punishment, and the ones who purport it
should face criminal rather than administrative responsibility," Medvedev
said. "We have all the necessary legislative acts for this."

.Unusual frosty weather hits northeast Siberia.

MAGADAN, November 11 (Itar-Tass) - A frosty weather with temperatures
unusually low for this time of the year has descended on the Kolyma River
area in the northwest of Siberia.
Wednesday, the average air temperatures in most parts of the Kolyma
basin sank to minus 40 degrees Celsius, and the Kolyma hydrometeorology
bureau the record of minus 46 degrees was set in the North Evenk district.
Frosts of minus 41 degrees have been registered in the Yagodnoye
district, and weather surveyors in the town of Seymchan reported minus 44
degrees.
Forecasters say the temperature in the central parts of the Magadan
region may go down further to minus 47 degrees in the next two days.
The Kolyma area is literally cooler now than the traditional 'poles of
cold' - the towns of Oimyakon and Verkhoyansk.
No reports on emergency situations in connection with the frosts have
been made so far.

.Officials praise potential of Russian-Japanese cooperation in N-power.

NIIGATA, November 11 (Itar-Tass) - Russian-Japanese cooperation in
atomic energy is developing quite successfully and has a fair potential,
Yuji Muranaga, a deputy director of a department at Japan's Economics
Ministry said here Wednesday at a Russian-Japanese symposium on energy and
ecology.
This promising sphere of cooperation is linked directly not only to
the problem of ensuring energy security but also to the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions.
Russia has considerable experience and capabilities in the
manufacturing of nuclear fuel and in uranium enrichment and it is the
world leader in that sphere, Muranaga said.
These assets furnish Russia with a huge influence on the world market
of nuclear power.
Japan is also interested in increasing the share electricity output in
the country's total energy balance through a broader use of nuclear power,
Muranaga said.
In addition to this, companies in the Land of the Rising Sun have
newest technologies for the production of nuclear power and this creates
more opportunities for mutually beneficial partnership in the nuclear
power industry, he said.
"Russian-Japanese partnership in this area is developing in an
encouraging way," Vladimir Sayenko, a deputy director of the Russian
Energy Ministry's Institute for Energy Strategies said.
"By 2014, imports from Russia will cover some 25% of Japanese nuclear
plants' demand for uranium," he said.
"To step up cooperation between the two countries, a necessary
legislative foundation has been laid, and a bilateral agreement on
cooperation in atomic energy, which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed
during a visit here in May, has special significance in this sense,"
Sayenko said.

.About 250 ethnic Koreans to resettle to Korea from Russia's Sakhalin.

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, November 11 (Itar-Tass) - About 250 ethnic Koreans
will be repatriated to South Korea from the Russian Far-Eastern island of
Sakhalin in 2010.
Wednesday, representatives of the South Korean branch of the
International Red Cross opened talks with heads of public associations of
the ethnic Koreans living on Sakhalin in order to refine the lists of
candidates for repatriation to historical homeland.
The repatriation plan embraces the people who were brought to the
southern part of the island, then under Japanese rule, before the end of
WW II battles in 1945.
Southern Sakhalin went over to Japanese sway in 1905. It was known
then as Karafuto Prefecture.
Under a forcible workforce mobilization plan, the Japanese authorities
brought here thousands of people from Korea, which was then occupied by
the Japanese, too.
In parallel with the repatriation talks, public personalities from
South Korea are getting familiarized with life on Sakhalin.
A delegation led by pastor O Chon-gil has visited the towns of
Nevelsk, Dolinsk, Makarov, and Poronaisk where big Korean communities live.
About 30,000 Koreans, including representatives of the so-called
'first generation' that was brought to the island before 1945, as well as
their children and grandchildren reside in Sakhalin today.
The South Korean authorities have adopted a law on readmission of the
'first generation' Koreans for permanent residence.
A total of 3,500 people have returned to the Korean peninsula from
Sakhalin after 2000.
-0-kle