The St. Petersburg-based television broadcaster Liubimyi Gorod will develop websites for the city's schools. Funding for the project is expected to come from sponsors, who will receive eternal banner space in return. Liubimyi Gorod deputy general director Pavel Sadovnikov estimates that each project participant will get 1.5 million unique visitors each, drawing on the local population of school students and their parents. Liubimyi Gorod estimates the development cost of each website at 5,300 rubles (200 US dollars). The broadcaster has signed contracts for 10 websites and is in partnership talks with the hypermarket chain Lenta. The municipal education committee has readily endorsed the project, as only a quarter of the city's schools have websites.

The Federal Tax Service plans to start implementing an electronic system to monitor the payment of taxes in real time. The automated tax administration system will monitor only those taxes which citizens pay themselves, namely the transport, land, and real estate taxes. Simultaneously with sending a payment order to a citizen, the system will automatically send its electronic copy to the bank where the database of future payments will be formed. As soon as the bank receives taxes, information will be electronically transmitted to the tax authorities. Despite the new system's obvious convenience, its economic effectiveness raises doubts. The taxes in question form a small percentage of budgetary receipts, while system administration costs may turn out significantly higher.

Charged with anti-Russian propaganda on the Web, Novosibirsk resident Taras Zeleniak, 31, faced a prison term of up to two years. Yesterday the court satisfied a motion by Zeleniak's lawyer Vladimir Melnikov to return the case for further investigation on the grounds that the accusation makes no references to any specific acts of wrongdoing. The criminal charges have been prompted by Zeleniak's comments posted at the www.proua.com forum. A linguistic examination has established that abuse of derogatory terms "katsap" and "moskal" fuels interethnic strife. Lawyer Melnikov insisted in court that a person may not be criminally prosecuted for one's "thoughts and feelings."

Bad couriers is a big problem for Russian Internet stores. Two years ago courier wages at Internet stores averaged $150 - $200 and now stand at $300. Wages of Divizion delivery service couriers start at $450, while Ozon.ru couriers rake in as much as $500 to $1,300. Nonetheless, many couriers steal, fail to show up for work, are rude to clients, and view their work as a stopgap job. Oftentimes companies seek to cut costs, hiring physically challenged or intellectually inferior individuals. Meanwhile, the Russian Internet commerce market grows at the annual pace of 50%, while for individual companies this figure is an impressive 100%. In most cases, delivery service workers are the only company representatives with whom clients have direct contact.

By year's end residents of a neighborhood in Dneprodzerzhinsk, Ukraine, will be able to monitor their electricity usage via the Internet. The first residential building has been already connected to the system. Information about current meter readings and monthly electricity usage will be available to both consumers and dispatchers. This will eliminate the need for controllers to visit households and check meter readings. The experiment will end next year. Depending on the results, the program may be implemented in other areas of the region. It is believed that this accounting system will make it possible to automatically prepare electricity bills, ruling out any errors. The likelihood of the system's vulnerability to hacker attacks has not been discussed yet.