The former general director of Kirovles, the key witness for the prosecution in the case of Alexei Navalny, Vyacheslav Opalev, gave “contradictory” testimony on Thursday in the Leninsky District Court of Kirov; the prosecutor’s office obtained permission to read out the testimony he gave during the investigation. Navlany's defense was not allowed to question the witness before the testimony was read out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is auctioning off a coffee meeting with him at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, to raise funds for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center. The meeting with the head of Apple is being put up for charity online auction CharityBuzz . At the time of publication, 49 bids were made at the auction, the current cost of the meeting with Cook is $165 thousand. Bets will be accepted for another 20 days - until May 14.

Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, during a direct line with President Vladimir Putin, said that he does not want to return to work in power because he is not ready to implement the policy of “half measures.” Today, the authorities do not have a program to turn the country away from oil dependence; the system of half measures does not work, Kudrin said. “Perform manual control, inertial processes - I’m not ready to do this,” he said.

Evgenia Rastashanskaya Author Russia is the world leader in the number of non-working days. Who is competing with us? Those who celebrate the Day of the Immaculate Conception, Chuseok Full Moon Festival, Boxing Day and other important events What Russian doesn't like to relax? Experts from the Hotels.com portal calculated that in 2013 Russia turned out to be the laziest country: we rank first in the number of non-working days.

As a result of the actions of the virtual travel company Travel Cash Online (TCO), 100 Russian tourists were injured, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) reported on Thursday. According to ATOR , on April 22, tourists from different regions of Russia were supposed to fly from Sheremetyevo to Venice, where they were supposed to go on a cruise along the Mediterranean Sea. However, on April 20, everyone was informed that the trip was cancelled.

Deputy Minister of Regional Development Sergei Vereshchagin will become the new head of the North Caucasus Resorts (NSK), his candidacy has already been agreed upon in the Kremlin, the Vedomosti newspaper reported on Thursday, citing the head of one of the regions of the North Caucasus. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of KSK will be the Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Southern Federal District Alexander Khloponin.

The “Direct Line” with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, April 25, set a record in terms of duration and number of questions. Communication with the president began at 12.00 Moscow time and ended at 16.47. Putin set the previous record for the length of a “straight line” in 2011 - then he answered questions for 4 hours and 30 minutes. “Direct Line” 2013 also set a record for the number of questions received by the president.

President Vladimir Putin said he sees no signs of a revival of Stalinism in recent high-profile trials: people are being jailed not for political views, but for breaking the law, he said during a “direct line” on Thursday. “I don’t think there are any signs of Stalinism here. Stalinism is associated with the cult of personality and with massive violations of the law, with repression and with camps. There is nothing like this in Russia, and I hope there never will be.

US aviation authorities have decided to resume flights of Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, which were grounded in January this year after a series of problems related to battery fires, Agence France-Presse reported on Thursday, citing a representative of the US Federal Aviation Administration. According to the agency's interlocutor, permission to resume Dreamliner flights will come into force on Friday.

Mail.Ru Group's revenue in the first quarter of 2013 increased by 29.4% and amounted to 6.254 billion rubles, according to the company's financial report. The final audited statements in accordance with IFRS for 2012 and preliminary revenue data for the 1st quarter of 2013 were published on the Mail.Ru Group website. The company's audited revenue and EBITDA for 2012 amounted to 21.151 billion rubles and 11.535 billion rubles, respectively.

The office of the management company ZhKS No. 3 of the Frunzensky District, to which residents complained during a “direct line” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing it of inflating utility bills, is being searched, the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office reported on Thursday.

The CIA officers who worked around Anatoly Chubais in the government in the 1990s were privatization consultants Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay, told RIA Novosti . a person who worked in Chubais' team at the time “Most likely, we are talking about Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay, who actually worked with Anatoly Chubais at that time in Russia,” said the agency’s interlocutor, who wished to remain anonymous.

Photo by ITAR-TASS The authorities are afraid of any manifestation of human independence Our government does not like non-profit organizations. Doesn't love her much and constantly torments her. Either it will pass a discriminatory law, or it will force them to report more than any other organizations, or it will order them to register as foreign agents. The reasons for the current government’s dislike for these very NGOs are quite clear to me.

Russia has not yet abandoned shale gas production and it is hardly worth saying that Gazprom “slept through the shale revolution,” President Vladimir Putin said during a “direct line” with Russians on Thursday. “Did Gazprom sleep through the shale revolution or not, this is a difficult question, there is no answer to it yet... I don’t think we missed anything,” the president said, answering a question from journalist Mikhail Leontyev.

Skolkovo President Viktor Vekselberg (No. 4 on the list of the richest businessmen in Russia, net worth $15.1 billion) promised to sue A Just Russia deputy Ilya Ponomarev if his dishonesty in providing services to the fund is confirmed, RIA Novosti reported . “The situation with Ponomarev is like a bolt from the blue for us,” Vekselberg told the agency.