Main News of March 1

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours.

RUSSIA

* About 10,000 rallied against local administration in the town of Quba in northern Azerbaijan on Thursday, clashing with police swiftly brought in from neighboring regions.

* Almost 700 international observers will arrive in Russia to monitor the March 4 presidential elections, Russia’s Central Electoral Commission chief Vladimir Churov said on Thursday.

* A parliamentary deputy with the A Just Russia party said that the authorities in St. Petersburg are preparing to falsify the presidential vote on Sunday and are willing to pay 5,000 rubles ($170) to each election official willing to participate.

* Days of tense negotiations between opposition leaders and Moscow City Hall about a rally that would follow the March 4 presidential elections ended with a compromise that suited both parties, activists said.

* Protesters against local administration in the southern town of Lermontov were convinced to end their 10-day hunger strike by a Kremlin envoy on Thursday.

WORLD

* The setting up of polling stations for Russian presidential elections in Moldova’s breakaway Transdnestr region is an unfriendly move, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

* North Korea has agreed to a nuclear and missile moratorium and to allow IAEA inspectors back into the country, the U.S. State Department triumphantly announced following talks with North Korea. But this is just the latest episode in this endless and tedious soap opera.

* Serbia and Romania signed a treaty on the protection of minorities on Thursday, clearing the way for EU membership for Serbia, the country’s news agencies reported.

* Policemen in the central Russian city of Pskov detained a correspondent from the Estonian public broadcasting company ERR and confiscated his video material, the company said on Thursday.