Forbes magazine has published a ranking of the most expensive residential properties for sale in the world. The total value of the mansions on the list exceeds a billion dollars.

A former employee of the British security service MI5, who sued Alexander Lebedev's London Evening Standard newspaper for revealing his identity, was investigating the kidnapping of a British girl, Madeleine McCann, in Portugal. This became known from copies of the newspaper’s publication posted on blogs, the original of which was removed from its portal. One such copy is posted on the Blogspot page dedicated to the search for McCann.

18.11.2009, 18:06:16 version Print | PDA/PDA Cell in Guantanamo Bay prison. Photo from defenselink.mil Obama delays closure of Guantanamo Bay prison US President Barack Obama said that the closure date of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay military base will have to be postponed from January 2010 to a later time, reports BBC News . Obama did not specify when exactly the prison would be closed, but said it would happen in 2010.

A Copenhagen court has ordered fan Ronnie Norvig to pay 900,000 kroner ($180,000) in compensation to the Danish Football Federation because his interference caused the 2008 European Championship qualifying match between Denmark and Sweden to be stopped, reports the Associated Press . In this game, which took place on June 2, 2007, a drunken Norvig ran onto the field and tried to hit the referee.

Square Enix Europe has announced a sequel to the 2007 game Kane & Lynch, Eurogamer reports. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days will be released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and personal computers in 2010. The exact release date has not yet been announced. The sequel will take place in Shanghai, and the heroes of the game will remain psychopathic criminals Kane and Lynch.

On October 20, Apple announced the Magic Mouse, a new mouse that replaced the standard Mighty Mouse. The “magic” of the new mouse is that it does not have the usual buttons - it is completely multi-touch. For now, the Magic Mouse can only be purchased with a new iMac computer. One of these computers was provided to Lente.ru for review by the Apple press office. The new iMacs are a little different from their predecessors.

The Moscow Criminal Investigation Department has blocked the supply channel for weapons and explosives to the capital, Interfax reports , citing Alexei Bakhromeev, a representative of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. A criminal group from different regions of Russia was engaged in smuggling weapons to Moscow and the region. A number of members of this group have been detained, but the number of suspects and their names have not been specified.

The son of the head of the administration of the Dagestan city of Buinaksk, Gusein Gamzatov, was kidnapped by two unknown people on Tuesday, November 17, RIA Dagestan reports . The republic's Ministry of Internal Affairs told the agency that 30-year-old Shamil Magomedov was captured at 10:00 p.m. by people in camouflage from a construction site in the Druzhba microdistrict. The criminals put the man in his own VAZ-21099 car and drove away in an unknown direction.

Larry Bill Elliott, a former counterintelligence officer sentenced to death for the 2001 murders of a couple in 2001, was executed in Virginia on Tuesday, November 17, the Associated Press reported. Larry Bill Elliott killed 30-year-old Robert Finch and 25-year-old Dana Thrall near their home in front of Troll's two children. The reason for the murder was a trial between Finch and his former mistress Rebecca Gragg over the custody of their children.

The NATO Council is concerned about the scale of the Russian-Belarusian exercises that took place in September 2009, and views them as a violation of Moscow’s international obligations. , this According to RIA Novosti was stated by official representative of the alliance James Appathurai.

A North Korean cargo ship sank on Tuesday 90 nautical miles off the coast of China, Xinhua reported. The ship, which had 20 crew members on board, was traveling from the Korean port of Nampo to the Chinese city of Dalian. The SOS signal was received by the Chinese side on Tuesday afternoon - helicopters and rescue ships were sent to the disaster site. By Wednesday morning, rescuers managed to find 14 Korean sailors floating on the water using special rafts.

As a result of interethnic clashes in southern Sudan, 47 people were killed, Agence France-Presse reports , citing representatives of the military command. The incident occurred in Lake Vilayat (province). Armed members of the Mundari ethnic group attacked two villages inhabited by members of the Dinka ethnic group. The attack occurred on Monday, November 16, but this became known only now. Sudan People's Liberation Army spokesman Dame Kuol said the Mundari lost 37 people killed.

At the Sotheby's auction, a record price was set for jewelry with rubies, Bloomberg reports . On November 17, at an auction in Geneva, earrings and a necklace with rubies and diamonds were sold for 5.8 million Swiss francs ($5.7 million) to two buyers from Asia. The total cost of the two lots exceeded the estimate by more than five times. In addition, the auction set records for the cost of a carat of green and rich blue diamonds.

The panorama of Paris is the most recognizable in the world: even without the Eiffel Tower, two-thirds of Americans and three-quarters of Japanese and Australians recognize the view of the city. As reported in a press release received by the editors of Lenta.Ru, these results were obtained from a study conducted by Hotels.com . Users were asked to identify the city in a photograph from which part of the panorama, the most recognizable landmark, had been removed.

The Chinese patent court has ruled to stop sales of Windows XP and a number of other Microsoft operating systems, in particular, Windows 98 SE, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000. The Financial Times writes about this. The decision states that the corporation violated the intellectual property rights of the Beijing company Zhongyi Electronic, as it included two Chinese fonts of its production in Windows without the necessary license.