Former first deputy governor of the Oryol region Vitaly Kochuev was taken into custody. agency reported this on December 17 The Interfax . On December 16, the Zavodskoy District Court of Orel changed the preventive measure for Kochuev, who was still under a written undertaking not to leave the place. Also taken into custody in the courtroom was the former first deputy head of the regional state property department, Oleg Kozlov, who was free on bail.

Law enforcement officers began seizing documents from the Barnaul mayor's office. reported this on Thursday, December 17 ITAR-TASS . As Lyudmila Ryazantseva, senior assistant to the head of the investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Altai Territory, told the agency, the operation is being carried out as part of the investigation of a criminal case initiated against the head of Barnaul Vladimir Kolganov. He is suspected of abuse of power.

Apple has secured a permanent injunction against Psystar, a manufacturer of Macintosh clones. Gearlog writes about this. According to the court decision, Psystar will no longer be able to sell computers running Apple's operating system. In addition, it would need Apple's permission to even distribute and sell Mac OS X. Psystar also would not be able to knowingly persuade, assist, or encourage customers to violate the license agreement that came with Mac OS X.

One of the closest black holes to Earth, V404 Cygni, turned out to be twice as close as previously thought - it is located at a distance of only 7.8 thousand light years. Such data were obtained during a study, the results of which were published in The Astrophysical Journal . The portal Space.com writes briefly about the work.

Information about passengers on all types of transport where personalized travel tickets are used will be collected into a single database, writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta . This will allow the Ministry of Transport to track particularly “violent” passengers who regularly violate public order. A special information portal will store information on the movement of passengers and their behavior while driving. Currently, such lists are compiled for internal use only by airlines.

A fortified dugout designed for three people was discovered in the forest in the Sergokalinsky district of Dagestan, ITAR-TASS reports citing the press service of the Dagestan department of the Russian FSB. In the same forest, two militant camps were found with two tents accommodating up to 20 people.

Astronomers have discovered the smallest known object in the Kuiper Belt, a region of the Solar System beyond the orbit of Neptune where many small bodies are concentrated. It is impossible to record this object directly, so scientists used a special technique described in an article in the journal Nature . The discovery is briefly described on the Hubble telescope portal. The diameter of the object is 975 meters, and the distance to it exceeds 6.7 billion kilometers.

Landscape artist from the USA Jim Denevan created the world's largest work of art, writes The Daily Telegraph on December 16 . In the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, Denevan and three assistants drew the Apollonius Ring, a fractal similar to the Sierpinski triangle . The diameter of the largest circle of the fractal exceeds 14.5 kilometers, and the image itself is visible from a height of 12 kilometers. The width of some lines of the drawing exceeds 8.5 meters, and the depth is about one meter.

An earthquake occurred on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal on the night of Thursday, December 17, AFP reports . According to the National Geographic Institute of Spain, the epicenter of the earthquake was in the ocean, 100 kilometers southwest of Cape St. Vincent. The source of the earthquake was at a depth of about 59 kilometers. The force of the tremors was 6.3 on the Richter scale.

To date, 85.6 thousand Russian citizens have partially or fully repaid their mortgage with the help of maternity capital. According to Interfax , this was stated by the head of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation (PFR), Anton Drozdov. According to him, the Pension Fund of Russia transferred 23.2 billion rubles for these purposes. Drozdov also noted that residents of the Volga Federal District most actively use maternity capital to pay off mortgages (more than 31 thousand requests).

The deputy commander of the Zubr riot police unit of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs fell to his death in the Moscow region, RIA Novosti reports , citing a source in law enforcement agencies. The accident occurred in the Pushkinsky district on the night of December 17. A 41-year-old police colonel was returning home from service in his Mitsubishi. On the road, he lost control, drove into a ditch and crashed into a tree. The colonel died on the spot.

Rene Russo has joined the cast of Thor, based on the popular Marvel comic book series. According to Variety, the actress will play Frigg, the wife of the god Odin and the stepmother of the main character Thor. According to the plot of the film, Thor is exiled to Earth as punishment for the war he started in Asgard. Here, in the guise of a man named Donald Blake, he falls in love with a girl named Jane Foster, who looked after Blake, who was in the hospital.

The Russian government has been dreaming of launching a government services portal for several years now. Register a car, issue a foreign passport, send a tax return - if all this can be at least partially done without leaving the computer, officials with a clear conscience will put a tick in their diary next to the line “build an electronic state.” This time the idea was closer to failure than ever.

A resident of Pyatigorsk, Irina Yaralovaya, filed a lawsuit in the city court against Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov due to the fact that her sons were not accepted into the Suvorov School, reports RIA Novosti . The lawsuit states that her children Alexander and Mikhail passed all the tests of the competition commission and scored the required number of points for enrollment in the North Caucasus Suvorov Military School in Vladikavkaz.

Latin Grammy winner Ramon Ayala, who was detained a few days ago at a party organized by a Mexican drug lord, was suspected of having ties to the mafia. This was reported by the Associated Press , citing a statement by the musician’s lawyer, Adolfo Vega Elizondo. According to the lawyer, his client may soon be charged with links to a criminal group and money laundering.