A brief look at the stories making headlines in the Russian-language press

Robert Vittek scored three minutes from time to earn Slovakia a 1-1 draw against Russia in the teams' World Cup European zone Group Three qualifier on Saturday.

A staggering series of recent terrorist attacks rooted in the Chechen conflict have been both horrific and remote to most Americans. It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada.

The Federal Tax Service slapped Yukos with a $4.1 billion back-tax bill for 2001 on Friday, $700 million more than its original claim, which was announced July 1.

$12Bln Budget Surplus MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia has posted a 351.8 billion ruble ($12.04 billion) budget surplus in the first eight months of 2004, or 3.4 percent of gross domestic product, a Finance Ministry official said Friday. Revenues were 2.115 trillion rubles, spending 1.763 trillion. The primary surplus, which discounts debt payments, was 507.2 billion rubles, or 4.9 percent of GDP. UES Spinoffs MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- Unified Energy Systems will spin off some of its assets to set up two wholesale power generating companies, Interfax reported Friday, citing an unidentified person close to the company's board. Thermal power generating plants, including those of Permenergo and Sverdlovskenergo, will form the first of the two companies, and the other wholesale power generator will be formed using assets form Chitaenergo and Buryatenergo, the news agency said.

LUKoil, the world's second-largest private oil major by crude reserves after U.S. giant ExxonMobil, boosted its reserves by 440 million barrels of oil equivalent in the first half of the year from new deposits in the Far North and the Caspian Sea, the company said in a statement Friday.