The Don-Stroy company announced its intention to sell the Shchuka shopping center, located in Moscow near the Shchukinskaya metro station, as well as two shopping centers as part of residential complexes - Izmailovsky and Mosfilmovsky. Don-Stroy intends to use the proceeds from the sale of the shopping center to complete the construction of already begun projects.

Opponents of outgoing US President George W. Bush intend to celebrate it by throwing shoes. The Indypendent newspaper (part of the international Indymedia network) will hold a protest on Tuesday in which participants will throw shoes at a portrait of Bush. In this way, the opposition is imitating the act of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi, who, as The Indypendent writes, “became a hero to millions” by throwing his shoes at Bush during a December press conference in Baghdad.

The house of Palestinian Ala Abu Dein, who shot eight people in a religious Jewish school in March 2008, was filled with concrete by the Israelis. This was reported on the website of the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper . The operation to pour concrete on two floors of the building in East Jerusalem, where Abu Dein's family lives, was carried out by the Israeli Home Front Administration. The terrorist's father failed to get this decision overturned.

On January 19, the Israeli authorities announced that they were giving Hamas two days to finally stop shelling Israeli territory with Qassam rockets, otherwise threatening to end the unilaterally declared truce and strike back, the Kursor online publication reports. link to Israeli television. For two days, Israel promised not to respond to provocations by Islamic militants from the Gaza Strip.

The Russian Gazprom and the Ukrainian company Naftogaz of Ukraine signed a contract for a period of 10 years. The agreement between the two companies was reached in the presence of the prime ministers of Russia and Ukraine. As Vladimir Putin noted , all intermediaries were excluded from the gas agreement. The press conference following the signing of the agreement was broadcast live by the Vesti24 TV channel. The signed document implies the supply of gas to Ukrainian consumers.

A bill has been introduced into the Illinois General Assembly that would introduce licensing for dog breeders who operate commercial dog breeding operations. According to the local newspaper Chicago Sun-Times, such businesses will be regulated at the state level to prevent dogs from being kept in overcrowded and dirty premises. In particular, each license holder will be able to keep no more than 20 dogs, and will also be required to provide them with veterinary care during pregnancy.

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak has dismissed two key government members - Finance Minister Kang Man-Soo and Unification Minister Kim Ha-Joong, AFP reports . An official from the Ministry of Finance and the head of the Prime Minister's Secretariat also lost their posts. The post of Finance Minister will be taken over by former head of the Financial Supervision Service Yoon Jeung-Hyun. As AFP notes, Kang Man-soo has recently been criticized for his actions during the economic crisis.

The publication of the Ogonyok magazine has been suspended due to “the troubling times” that the editors are going through due to the restructuring of the Ogonyok publishing house and a possible change of owner. The editor-in-chief of the magazine, Viktor Loshak, stated this to the Interfax agency . At the same time, he denied rumors about the closure of Ogonyok. “First of all, I want to note that Ogonyok did not close, which was some information.

The Russian economy will contract by 3.1 percent in 2009 if the average annual oil price is $32 per barrel. This forecast was released by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (TsMAKP), writes the Kommersant newspaper . It is the TsMAKP forecast that will serve as the basis for the chapter on Russia in the UN report on the development of the global economy.

As a result of the riots that occurred on January 16 near the building of the Seimas of Lithuania, the building suffered damage not to two million litas, as previously reported, but only to 233 thousand litas (about 90 thousand dollars). The updated data, as reported by Delfi.lt , was made public by the head of the parliament's public relations department, Egle Trembo. According to her, the bulk of the amount that will have to be spent on repairs will go to replacing broken glass.

Stock devaluation The MICEX index has significantly outperformed the RTS At the beginning of 2009, for the first time in several years, the value of the MICEX index turned out to be greater than the RTS. In the first week, the lag of the RTS increased significantly, and the indices increasingly began to close in different directions. The reason is simple: the devaluation of the ruble increases the cost of securities traded in Russian currency.

The Israeli military calls effective cooperation between various army units one of the most important factors in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, reports DefPro . In particular, during the armed conflict, as a result of which the losses of the Israeli army were minimal, unmanned aerial vehicles were widely used to coordinate the actions of ground forces.

Italian atheists failed to place advertisements denying the existence of God on Genoese buses, Sky News reported on Monday. A local advertising agency refused to accept an order for billboards that read, "The bad news is there is no God. The good news is we don't need one." According to the organizers of the campaign, the agency refused the order under pressure from the authorities and the Roman Catholic Church.

On January 19, AMD announced a new budget 760G platform with a powerful integrated video system, writes Electronista. The processor for the platform should be the Athlon X2 7000. It is assumed that the 760G video system will provide good performance in games. The AMD graphics solution supports DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2, and also contains a Radeon HD 3000 core. It is stated that it is much faster than the integrated Intel GMA 4500 solution.

Astronomers were able to establish that the smallest exoplanet discovered in 2008 weighs even less than previously thought. The scientists reported the results of their work at the Royal Astronomical Society conference in London. A retelling of the report is available on the New Scientist magazine website. Planet MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b was discovered using the microlensing method .