UR TV CAST

He was supposed to guarantee our security, but didn’t keep his word.”Moscow has, however, been doing its utmost to calm a rising tide of sorrow and anger. “Beslan – It’s Russia’s pain,” reads a poster on the town’s outskirts, designed to make people here feel that Moscow cares. Nor has any expense been spared on the town’s eerie cemetery. Eleven months ago it was a river of dirty mud scattered with primitive wooden headstones, a field hastily turned into a graveyard. Now impressive-looking red granite tombs cover those graves, flowerbeds abound and the rivers of mud have become Tarmac.Ordinary photographs pinned to the graves have metamorphosed into intricate, expensive inlaid portraits. Groups of women clad in black wearing the region’s traditional headscarves gathered round some of those graves to tend them yesterday.

Many cried, as they had when the small coffins containing their children were lowered into the ground.Wrapped in blue tarpaulin overlooking the cemetery is a disturbing monument to the dead called the Tree of Grief. It depicts three women with angels above their heads representing their children on their way to heaven. It is to be unveiled on 3 September, the day the siege was broken and most victims died. On the town’s edge is another symbol of Moscow money, a gleaming new children’s playground paid for by Sber Bank, Russia’s state savings bank.Two state-of-the-art schools, said to be the best that Russia can offer, have been built to replace the ruined School Number One.

The gym where many of the victims died has finally been cleaned up, a plastic roof fitted to replace the damaged rafters that remained, and a colour photograph of all the victims pasted to its singed brick walls “Don’t shoot me. I want to study,” reads a prominently displayed poem which praises the bravery of the Russian special forces who died trying to save more children.But a year has done little to dilute people’s sorrow and trauma. “Many children can’t sleep, and fear confined spaces,” a psychologist told The Independent. “Parents come to us and say that their children need help, but really they all do.”. A second deadly blaze in four days in Paris – this time killing seven African immigrants – has triggered protests demanding decent housing for the poor, and promises from the French government to crack down on people living illegally in the country. The fire on Monday in the central Marais arrondissement, popular with tourists, swept through a dilapidated building squatted in by some 40 Ivory Coast nationals. Their threat, which dashed the Kremlin’s hopes that a personal meeting with the President might dull their anger, came as this small town, which lost at least 330 people, more than half of them children, prepared to begin the painful three-day process of marking the anniversary of the bloody school siege.
A year ago most anger was directed at the terrorists who seized School Number One and demanded that Russian troops withdraw from Chechnya in exchange for releasing more than 1,000 hostages.It seemed like a simple case of good vs evil.

Beslan’s grieving mothers have vowed to confront the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in the Kremlin midway through the first anniversary of their dead children’s ordeal and ask him why he had not done more to protect their offspring. One has been rented for the duration of next week’s final Ashes Test and the landlord confidently expects to make in the region of £23,500.. The flats – on the market for a highly realistic £360,000 to £495,000 – occupy the top floor of a Victorian mansion block. For sale are eight, newly refurbished duplex apartments, adjacent to The Oval cricket ground. Constructed out of wood and available in a variety of colours, the interior accommodation totals 24sq ft making it ideal for the hosting of tea parties and as a place for older children to hide from their parents.VIEW OF THE OVAL FOR £360,000For those with more than a passing interest in the newly fashionable game of cricket, estate agent Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward is offering properties which would bowl any sports fan over. Priced at just £2,200, there is no power or running water and planning permission is required to fully modernise this property. The owner is the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal who uses it as his family’s secondary residence It has 11 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms.

We feel this property offers excellent value in a rapidly improving area and could be offered for sale for upwards of £9m.WENDY HOUSE FOR £2,200Having created considerable interest at this year’s Hampton Court Flower Show, these bijou residences offer all the conveniences associated with one-room living. It was most recently used to accommodate an Aston Martin.PALACE FOR £9MOn London’s “billionares’ row” – The Bishop’s Avenue – and a short walk from East Finchley Tube station can be found this example of conspicuous wealth. The lock-up garage, of the highest quality ever to be sold in the metropolis, will house vehicles in close proximity to those belonging to stars such as Stella McCartney, Harry Enfield and Mariella Frostrup. Measuring in excess of 19ft x 16ft and with a substantial forecourt area, the price was driven up from £140,000 by competing bids. Complete with electricity and running water, a double garage on Lansdowne Road in highly sought-after Notting Hill has just been sold for £240,000. Arranged over five floors, it is owned by a fashion photographer of world renown, who is reluctantly selling up after 14 years.
GARAGE FOR £240,000For those frustrated by the capital’s declining parking potential, agent Savills has just the ticket.