Victims of Beslan tragedy to be remembered in Russia.

VLADIKAVKAZ, September 3 (Itar-Tass) - A requiem service in memory of the adults and children, who did not survive the seizure of a general school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan by a group of Caucasian and international terrorists precisely five years ago, will be held in the courtyard of Beslan's former school No. 1 Thursday.

A bell will be rung at exactly 13:05 and a minute's silence will be
called, after which children will release 335 white hot air balloons into
the sky.
The Beslan tragedy claimed 335 human lives, including 186 children.
Following the solemn ceremony in the courtyard of the former school,
participants in the commemorative events will then move to the memorial
cemetery. Names of the victims will be read out to the ticking of the
metronome and a minute's silence will be called once again after that.
In Moscow, a requiem service for the people victimized by terrorists
in Beslan will be chanted in the Holy Trinity Church at Khoroshovo. It
will be led by the Right Reverend Vsevolod Chaplin, the chairman of the
synod department for relations between the Church and society.
Members of Moscow City's Ossetian ethnic community, as well as the
city's public organizations and movements are expected to attend the
service.
A group of terrorist seized the school September 1, 2004, taking more
than 1,200 children and grownups hostage. A total of 335 persons died of
wounds of otherwise, some of them after the finale of the tragedy.
As many as 126 former hostages turned into the disabled, with children
making up seventy of that number.
A total of 124 survivors still need one or another form of medical
rehabilitation.

.China's Central TV to launch broadcasting in Russian.
BEIJING, September 3 (Itar-Tass) - September 10, China's Central
Television launches a Russian-language channel, the TV's Vice-President
Zhang Changming told reporters Thursday.
He indicated that the main objective the international channel in
Russian will be to consolidate mutual understanding, cooperation and
exchanges between the People's Republic of China and the former Soviet
republics making up the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Following the establishment of strategic partnership relations between
China and Russia, the tendency towards a full-format, steady and healthy
development of this relationship has taken hold, Zhang said.
The Russian channel will lift off on the background of gala events
dedicated to the Year of the Russian language in China and the 60th
anniversary since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the
People's Republic and the former USSR.
Russian will be the sixth international language, in which TV programs
will be broadcast from Beijing. At this moment, the Central Television has
international channels in Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
Future plans indicate the opening of a channel in Portuguese.
News and information programs occupy the greater share of broadcasting
from Beijing. The format also envisions the entertaining and educational
formats filling the audiences in on the China of nowadays, as well as its
history and culture.
On the whole, the Russian-speaking audiences will be offered fourteen
shows, including five information and nine documentary ones.
The signal will be transmitted via the satellites Chinasat 6B, EB and
9A.
It is expected transmissions will cover Asia and the Pacific, the
Middle East, and Europe.
Central Television's officials believe the audiences will come to
about 300 million people, mostly residents of the CIS and former Baltic
Republics of the USSR.