A camouflaged gunman was killed and a 6-year-old hostage was shot in the leg during a two-hour standoff with police Tuesday that began when the man snatched the child off a sidewalk and barricaded himself in a restaurant east of

Several reports due Wednesday are expected to provide more evidence that consumers are cutting back on spending and companies are eliminating jobs in the face of a deepening recession.

From a series of street bashings in Seattle to the baseball bat murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant in New York, episodes of anti-gay violence punctuated a year now ending with police investigating the alleged gang rape of a lesbian near

Ukrainian News learned this from a statement by the NBU governor.

The press service of the Health Ministry announced this in a statement.

According to the President of Ukraine, today, all branches of power should endorse the state budget for the following year. It should not have the deficit and should be balanced," she said.

If speak today, the presidential election campaign starts in six months. Is there any sense in speaking today of the system of two votes at a time: the parliamentary and the presidential; would this make any good to the country?

The press service of the Prosecutor General's Office told this to the press quoting Mykola Holomsha, the deputy prosecutor general.

The ambassador said that substantial part of the daily work on assistance in the integration with the international organizations takes place in the committees in Brussels and Kyiv.

At the same time, he criticized the draft state budget for 2009 worked out by the Cabinet of Ministers.

Today talks of Dmitry Medvedev and Alyaksandr Lukashenka are to take place in Moscow. The Belarusian leader hopes to agree on gas cost and new multibillion credit, "Kommersant" writes.

One of the responses of Russia to deployment of elements of the US missile shield in Europe could be placing Topol complexes in Belarus.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka finds the work of the government in regulating individual entrepreneurship activities in the country ineffective.

The chamber of representatives" has decided to postpone discussion on the subject of South Ossetia and Abkhazia recognition till spring, as "it is not pressing and not simple".

Charter'97 has granted National Human Rights Award 2008 to human rights activists and former political prisoners. Prize "For Personal Courage" is given to Alyaksandr Barazenka, Andrei Kim, Syarhei Parsyukevich, and Halina Yubko.

Dmitry Medvedev and Alyaksandr Lukashenka agreed on principles of Russian gas supplies to Belarus in 2009, Natalya Timakova, press secretary of the Russian president, said after the negotiations of the leaders of the two countries.

The results of the talks between Alexander Lukashenka and Dmitry Medvedev are kept secret. But mass media are learning some details: what the gas price for Belarus would be and whether Russia would give 3.5 billion dollar loan.

Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych has met with G-7 ambassadors in Kyiv. They focused on the domestic situation in the country, ways of overcoming the effects of the global recession and some international issues. "The inefficient and crowd-pleasing policies

We have seen a political war between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko declared," this is how political expert Andry Yermolayev commented to ZIK Dec. 22 on recent mutual accusations by the premier and president.

Former presidential candidate Alyaksandr Kazulin resigned from the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada).