The United States notes the deterioration of relations with Belarus. According to Ekho Moskvy, this was stated by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Steven Pifer. Over the past year, the Belarusian leadership has done nothing to improve the situation, the diplomat said. In his opinion, most likely the US Congress will adopt the so-called "Belarusian Democracy Act".

A compromise has been found in settling the scandal over "the biggest pharmaceutical fraud in US history". According to Reuters, Bayer AG agreed to plead guilty in court and pay a $257 million fine and damages to the United States. Last year, US law enforcement agencies received a denunciation that Bayer AG was selling medicines at inflated prices to the American state company Medicaid. Medicaid provides medical care to the poor and the disabled.

250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, a plant called Glossopteris homevalensis grew in the southern hemisphere. It grew on the "supercontinent" called Gondwana. A well-preserved fossil found in Australia shows that in that distant era, some plants reproduced with the help of floating spermatozoa, identical to those of mammals, writes Le Figaro . Translation of the article leads InoPressa .

The State Duma Committee on International Affairs will invite deputies to consider the issue of ratifying the Russian-American treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive potentials (SOR) on May 16. This was reported to RIA Novosti by the chairman of the committee, Dmitry Rogozin. According to Rogozin, the decision on the date of consideration of the document was made at today's meeting of the committee.

Grani.ru collage The head of the European Convention on the Arrangement of the Future Giskar d'Esten, who is responsible for the creation of a pan -European constitution, supported the plans of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair to create a post of permanent president of the EU. According to Times, Blair is the most likely candidate for this post, which can be created by 2006. The President will be permanent in the sense that they will not be re -elected every six months.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/dark_matter_animated_030415-1.html As if there are not enough oddities in the world, associated with the fact that the cosmos is filled with an invisible and elusive substance called "dark matter"!

US military officials said on Thursday, Reuters reports, that the US is trying to reach a truce with Iranian opposition members of the Mujahideen Khalq organization, which is based in Iraq. The day before, the American army attacked the positions of the militants, however, according to the representative of the Central Command in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, there is hope that an agreement on a ceasefire and surrender of the Mujahideen will be reached in the next few days.

The decision to lift sanctions from Iraq can only be taken by the UN Security Council on the basis of the conclusion that there are no prohibited weapons in this country, made by the UN Commission for Verification, Inspection and Control in Iraq, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told Interfax.

Japanese police caught a robber trying to rob a bank. This operation was simple - the criminal fainted from hunger immediately after he demanded money from the cashier, showing him a kitchen knife. The police brought 39-year-old Yukiharu Akamine to his senses, took him to the station and fed him. According to Ananova, the offender was terribly happy to see the food. "I was left penniless and lived on the same water for a whole month," the robber said.

An unpleasant incident occurred during a meeting of the head of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma, Gennady Zyuganov, with voters, which took place on Thursday at the House of Knowledge in the Saratov region. According to Interfax, 10 minutes after the start of the meeting, six young people aged 16-18, who were sitting at the end of the hall, shouting: "You are fascists!", tried to throw crumpled pieces of newspapers and small garbage at the participants of the meeting.

3,000 shallow graves have been discovered in a military camp near Kirkuk, UPI reports citing a Kurdish satellite TV channel. In the graves lie the corpses of people in civilian clothes. They were probably really civilians. The cemetery is located near the house of "chemical Ali" - the recently murdered Ali Hasan Al-Majid. The journalists were taken there by one of the local residents.

In the Bulgarian version of the TV show "Russian Roulette" it is forbidden to participate in overweight people. According to Ananova, the producers of the show made this decision after one lady, who weighed about 115 kg, broke her leg. The producers had to pay her £2,300 in compensation. 50-year-old Diana Pavlova could not answer the next question correctly, and, according to the plan of the program, she was lowered right on the chair under the stage on a moving hatch.

The lifetime monument to Alla Pugacheva, which was unveiled for a long time and solemnly on April 15 in absentia, stood in the courtyard of the house on Zemlyanoy Val for only a few hours, according to the Dni.Ru website. There are no witnesses. A plaster monument to the Primadonna was erected in the courtyard of Alla Borisovna's house by the Express Newspaper. It was assumed that if the monument was to the liking of the People's Artist of the USSR, then it would be cast in bronze.

The Americans discovered a training camp for terrorists in Iraq, reports AP. According to US Marine spokesman John Hellworth, the camp consists of 20 buildings located on 10 hectares of land. Hellworth stated that the Iraqi government and the Palestine Liberation Organization ran the camp. According to Hellworth, in the camp, future terrorists learned how to make bombs. The Marines found chemicals and bomb parts there, as well as student profiles.

The US military has already spent $20 billion on the war in Iraq, according to Reuters. According to the representative of the US Department of Defense Control Department Dov Zaheim, 7 billion were spent on the maintenance of personnel, about 10 billion were spent on military operations, and ammunition and equipment cost the Americans about 3 billion.