Hollywood actor Brad Pitt responded to a story about scammers who, posing as him, defrauded a 53-year-old French woman out of hundreds of thousands of euros. This is reported by E! News. A 53-year-old interior designer named Anna divorced her millionaire husband after scammers posing as Brad Pitt contacted her on Instagram. According to French media, the attackers sent Anna photos and videos generated using artificial intelligence.

The conductor of the Barnaul-Aleysk train dropped an 81-year-old passenger off the train in the middle of a forest in the Altai Territory. The West Siberian Transport Prosecutor's Office reported that an elderly woman asked to open the door for her at another station, but an employee of a passenger company left the pensioner in the middle of the night at a remote stop in the taiga in twenty-degree frost. The Barnaul publication “VKurse 22” was the first to report on the incident.

Various studies have shown that smokers earn less than their peers who abstain from the habit, reports the South China Morning Post. The publication refers to a study by a group of scientists from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. They found that young people who smoke have lower incomes than their work colleagues who do not take smoke breaks.

The 100-year cooperation agreement concluded between Ukraine and Great Britain on January 16 contains a secret clause. President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky wrote about this in his Telegram channel. “The agreement provides for economic, technological, and educational interaction - the development of our schools and universities together with British ones. There is also a closed, secret part of the deal. Everything that really adds stability and opportunities for us to develop,” he wrote.

Users of Apple smartphones are massively complaining about problems with the operation of the eSIM module (electronic SIM card without physical media) in their devices. The Kommersant newspaper writes about this, citing complaints discovered by the publication online. As the newspaper writes, the editorial correspondent discovered dozens of posts dating only to January 2025. In them, iPhone owners report that the eSIM has failed.

Moscow activist Konstantin Kotov, who was accused of financing an extremist organization with donations from FBK and was put under house arrest, left Russia. The former defendant in the case of the 2019 Moscow protests reported to OVD-Info about his departure to Lithuania. “I realized that playing some kind of roulette with the court and the investigation makes absolutely no sense. It’s better to take fate into your own hands and gain your own freedom,” Kotov said in an interview with Mediazona.

Villages in Russia are dying out: there are more and more places where no one moves anymore, and there are fewer inhabitants every year. Over the past 20–30 years, tens of thousands of settlements have disappeared from maps. In the Tver region, for example, the share of empty villages is close to a third. There is the village of Pronino, where only 44 people remain: almost all of them work in one building, where the whole village celebrates holidays, birthdays and weddings.

Prime Minister of Thailand Phathong Than Shinawatra said that she almost became a victim of cyber fraudsters who used the voice of the head of another state generated using artificial intelligence. This was reported by CNN. “The voice was very clear and I recognized it immediately. First they sent a voicemail that said something like: “How are you? I want to work together,” and so on,” said Phethongthan, without specifying the leader of which state the attackers were trying to imitate.

In the Omsk region, a 19-year-old woman kicked her 11-month-old child. A criminal case was opened against her for causing grievous harm to the health of a minor (clause “b”, part 2 of article 111 of the Criminal Code), the local investigative committee reported . According to investigators, on the afternoon of January 12, a resident of the village of Yuryevo kicked her son at least three times.

A new type of counterfeit gold has spread widely in Turkey, causing panic among citizens and participants in the jewelry market. According to CNN Türk , even experienced jewelers have difficulty distinguishing fake gold from real gold. According to the publication, concerns about counterfeit gold in the market have reached a peak amid rising prices for this precious metal. Now citizens have begun to panic due to the spread of counterfeit gold.

An online coach and expert on quick stress relief committed suicide in Moscow, writes the Mash telegram channel close to the security forces, adding that the woman took such a step because of stress. Thus, according to the telegram channel, a 52-year-old woman named Maria called herself an anxiety relief specialist. She allegedly talked about how to manage your emotional state, as well as explain how to unleash creativity and increase mental resilience.

The Petushinsky court of the Vladimir region announced the verdict to three former lawyers of politician Alexei Navalny, who died in a colony in February last year, Vadim Kobzev, Alexey Liptser and Igor Sergunin, assigning them five and a half, five and three and a half years in prison, respectively. In addition, all three were banned from practicing law for three years after serving their sentences. Mediazona reports this, citing a correspondent in the courtroom.

US President-elect Donald Trump announced that he has appointed three "special ambassadors to the great but very problematic place of Hollywood." The “ambassadors” will be actors Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight, the politician wrote on his social network Truth. These three people will be Trump's "eyes and ears" to help make Hollywood "bigger, better and stronger than ever." Hollywood has lost many foreign clients, the American president-elect explained.

While doing a lot of things to prepare for her wedding with her Italian boyfriend, 27-year-old Alina from Rtishchev, Saratov region, fully experienced Italian traditions: she met an aristocratic family, attended courses for future spouses, and encountered sexism during a mandatory interview in church, which is required to obtain a wedding permit. This experience allowed her to look at Russia in a new way.

In 2024, China's population decreased by 1.39 million people, reaching 1.408 billion. Such data, as reported by Reuters, is contained in the annual report of the State Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China.