US President Barack Obama will not travel to Vladivostok for the APEC summit, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday. Rumors about Obama's possible absence from the APEC summit in Vladivostok have been circulating in Western media reports for a long time. So Carney’s statement, which he made in New York in front of reporters, was, in fact, expected, Interfax reports .

Apple is preparing to introduce a line of new, thinner MacBook laptops running on more powerful processors from Intel, Bloomberg reports , citing sources familiar with the situation. The new laptops are expected to be unveiled on June 11 at Apple's annual developer conference. They will feature high-definition screens like those on the iPhone and iPad, as well as flash memory to reduce startup times and extend battery life.

A group of Russian artists decided to organize a walk along Moscow boulevards on Saturday, May 19. A week before, on Sunday, May 13, famous writers walked along Moscow boulevards as part of the “Control Walk”. Boris Akunin, Dmitry Bykov and others wanted to make sure that one could walk along the capital’s boulevards without permission from the authorities.

The founder of the RosPil project and a member of the organizing committee of the winter protests on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue, Alexey Navalny, reached an agreement with one of the banks to issue a co-branded debit card in July, the Vedomosti newspaper reported on Tuesday .

The federal budget deficit in April, according to preliminary estimates, decreased by 2 times from 121.3 billion rubles in the first quarter to 60.3 billion rubles in 4 months, the Ministry of Finance reports. The budget surplus in April amounted to 9.8 billion rubles (0.2% of GDP), while in March this figure was at 78.4 billion rubles (1.7% of GDP). The primary surplus in the first 4 months amounted to 58.7 billion rubles (0.3% of GDP), of which 17.5 billion rubles (0.4% of GDP) was in April.

The head of the Moscow department of Rospotrebnadzor, Nikolai Filatov, has been removed from his position, according to a message published on the official website of the department on Tuesday.

French President Francois Hollande appointed the leader of the Socialist faction in the National Assembly, Nantes Mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault, as Prime Minister. This was announced by the Secretary General of the Elysee Palace, Pierre-René Lema. “The President of the Republic appointed Jean-Marc Ayrault as Prime Minister and instructed him to form a new government,” RIA Novosti quotes Lem’s speech to reporters.

Photo by Fotobank/Getty Images Wikimart founder Kamil Kurmakaev on what to do for a businessman who wants to change the system Late last year, at the height of the rallies in Moscow, one former Wikimart employee wrote a call on Facebook: “Internet entrepreneurs, use your customer base to send ordinary people the truth about the rallies.” Before the March elections, a good friend of mine asked me if we had regional distribution capacity to disseminate reports on Putin’s corruption.

illustration Fotobank/Getty Images VEB wants to expand its ability to invest pension money. Nothing good will come of this idea Mandatory pension savings don't often make the news.

Selected works from the exhibition “Motherland”, attempts to open which in different halls did not lead to anything The exhibition “Motherland” by gallery owner Marat Gelman, dedicated to post-Soviet Russia in the perception of contemporary Russian artists, lost its venue in Novosibirsk for the second time.

photo by Max Novikov for Forbes The authorities are going to implement the court's decision immediately. The oppositionists are not going to leave yet. Chronicle of events, comments from lawyers 18.55. Lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant about appealing the court decision (about doubts about the possibility of appealing, see below). The decision of the Basmanny Court is not final; it can still be appealed (a court press secretary said that a month is given for this).

Greek President Karolos Papoulias will appoint on Wednesday a so-called "service" government that, in accordance with the country's constitution, will govern the country for 30 days until new elections are held, the presidential administration said on Tuesday. The meeting of political leaders, at which the composition of the transitional government will be decided, will be held on Wednesday at 13:00 local time (14:00 Moscow time), RIA Novosti cites a statement from the administration.

Employees of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation conducted searches at the head office of the Eldorado company in a criminal case of tax evasion on a particularly large scale. This is stated in a message from the press service of the Investigative Committee. Case under Part 2 of Art. 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is being investigated by the department’s main department for St. Petersburg.

The international rating agency Moody's on Monday, May 14, downgraded the credit ratings of 26 Italian banks. This was reported in a press release from the agency. The ratings of the country's two largest banks were downgraded by one notch - UniCredit dropped to A3, while Intesa Sanpaolo dropped to A2. The outlook for their ratings is “negative”. The ratings of another eight banks were also downgraded by one notch, and eight banks by two notches.

In the Michurinsky shopping center in the west of the capital, building structures collapsed. One person was injured. “As a result of the collapse of the ceiling in the Michurinsky shopping center, on Ozernaya Street, building 42, one person was injured,” told Interfax . a representative of the press service of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations in Moscow He found it difficult to name the gender, age and nature of the wounded man’s injuries.