An artist who specializes in reconstructing the appearance of people based on their bone remains has recreated the skull of an ancient European (or European woman). The Independent newspaper describes briefly the features of the first inhabitants of the Carpathians from the genus Homo . According to artist Richard Neave, the appearance of the ancient inhabitants of Europe was a mixture of features of different races.

A fire broke out in one of the residential buildings in the center of the town of Ramenskoye near Moscow on Sunday evening. This was reported by the Vesti TV channel. According to the TV channel, the fire broke out in one of the apartments of the five-story building located at Guryev Street, 8. As a result of the fire, the roof of the house was almost completely burned, ITAR-TASS adds . The residents of the burning house were evacuated in a timely manner, none of them were injured.

A Russian Navy ship freed eight Iranian citizens who were held captive by Somali pirates. This was reported on the website of the Iranian Embassy in the Russian Federation. In addition to the Iranians, several Pakistanis were released from captivity. There is no information about the identities of the former hostages at the Iranian Embassy yet. What is known is that they were held captive for approximately 80 days. The pirate boat was sunk as a result of an armed conflict.

All participants in the 1/4 finals have been determined in the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs. The last of them was the Atlanta Hawks, which won the decisive (seventh) match of the 1/8 finals series against the Miami Heat on the night of May 4-5. The game, held in Atlanta, ended with a score of 91:78, reports the Associated Press . The Hawks' top scorer was guard Joe Johnson, who scored 27 points. Johnson also had five rebounds, five steals and four assists.

The American space agency has begun to reduce employees who maintain shuttles, reports the portal Space.com. The first 160 people were laid off on Friday, May 1, 2009. In total, the agency plans to release more than 900 jobs by September 2009. Some of these people will be fired, and some will be transferred to other projects. Most of the first wave of layoffs were technicians who worked at the space agency's production facilities in Utah and New Orleans.

The match of the ninth round of the Russian football championship between CSKA and Zenit, which will take place on May 17, has been postponed to the evening (20:00) due to the Eurovision music competition. The match has been postponed so that the police officers who will work at the Eurovision final have time to rest, writes Sport-Express .

In Tbilisi, pickets have resumed near the Georgian public television building, Interfax reports . Journalists from Georgian TV channels working in the television center get to work through living “corridors of shame” built from oppositionists and cages symbolizing prison cells. As a result, not only employees of the state Georgian television channel, but also employees of other media outlets located in the building are experiencing problems with entering the premises.

Head coach of the Russian national hockey team Vyacheslav Bykov , whose team will play with Belarus in the 1/4 finals of the World Championship, called the Belarusians a serious opponent. According to Bykov, the Belarusian national team has skilled hockey players from the NHL and a good goalkeeper, RIA Novosti reports .

Authorities in Gong'an County in China's Hubei province have decided to take drastic measures to save the local tobacco industry. A decree was issued ordering local government officials to smoke 230,000 packs of local brand cigarettes in a year, worth about 4 million yuan (approximately $590,000), the Global Times newspaper writes. The document describes in detail which brands of cigarettes and in what quantities employees of each department of the county administration should consume.

One of the members of the municipality of the Israeli city of Kiryat Gat proposed changing the colors of the city flag because of its similarity with the flag of Iran, writes Yediot Ahronot . The flag of Kiryat Gat was created 56 years ago. It depicts a wheat sickle and a cotton flower surrounded by red, white and green stripes. The Iranian flag was adopted in 1980 after the Islamic Revolution and features the same green, white and red stripes with four crescents and a sword in the middle.

US President Barack Obama has announced a plan according to which American corporations should be deprived of the opportunity to evade “home” taxes by holding funds abroad. reported this on May 4 The Associated Press . According to Obama's calculations, the implementation of his plan will allow the budget to receive additional revenue in the amount of $210 billion over 10 years. The plan should also help combat unemployment.

CSKA Moscow lost the Euroleague basketball final to the Greek Panathinaikos. The decisive match of the Final Four took place on the evening of May 3 in Berlin and ended with a score of 73:71 in favor of Panathinaikos. The Greek club won the Euroleague for the second time in the last three years. The first half of the final match was held with a big advantage for "Pao". By the big break, the Greeks were leading by 20 points - 48:28.

A third suspect of involvement in the murder of people at the State Oil Academy in Baku has been detained in Azerbaijan, RIA Novosti reports with reference to a message from the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan. He became a Georgian citizen of Azerbaijani origin, Javidan Amirov. He is currently under arrest. During a search in his apartment, 12 cartridges from a machine gun and a pistol were found, as well as 5.4 grams of hashish.

Cognac production in Armenia fell by 36.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009, the Interfax agency reports , citing data from the Republic's Ministry of Agriculture. In total, 2.339 million liters of cognac were produced in the first three months of this year. Representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture associate the reduction in cognac production with the negative consequences of the global financial and economic crisis.

Director Peter Ware, famous for such films as "The Truman Show" and "Dead Poets Society", is making a film with the participation of the Abu Dhabi-based company Imagenation about the escape of a group of foreigners from the Soviet Gulag. According to ArabianBusiness, the film, called “The Return,” will take place in 1940.