The Malaysian Ministry of Defense intends to lease new fighter jets because it does not have sufficient funds to purchase such aircraft. According to Defense News, the leased combat aircraft will have to replace the outdated MiG-29 fighters in the Malaysian Air Force, which may be decommissioned as early as 2015. As part of the Malaysian Air Force, the new aircraft will complement the fleet of existing F/A-18D and Su-30MKM.

A court in the Chinese city of Guigang (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) sentenced to death a police officer who shot a pregnant woman, reports Agence France-Presse . In addition, Hu Ping was ordered to pay compensation to the family of the deceased in the amount of 73 thousand yuan (more than 420 thousand rubles). According to Xinhua, the incident occurred on October 28, 2013, when a police officer, while intoxicated, entered a grocery store.

Lebanese authorities admitted that they provided news agencies with a photo edited in Photoshop. reported this on February 16 The Associated Press . The photo, released by the Associated Press and other agencies on Feb. 15, showed Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Tamam Salal and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri posing with members of the new government in front of the presidential residence.

The administrative building in Kyiv, where the city administration and the local legislative assembly are located, will be closed for several days for sanitation. This was reported by Vesti with reference to the deputy head of the capital’s administration, Alexander Puzanov. “Everything here needs to be cleaned and sanitized. I don’t yet know how many days it will take for all these remedies to take effect and stop being harmful to people,” the official said.

French scientists have discovered that people who remember their dreams well have two areas of increased activity in the cerebral cortex that operate both while they are asleep and while they are awake. The study was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology briefly about it , Inserm writes . During the study, neuroscientists composed two groups of volunteers. One of them included people who at least five times a week clearly remembered their dreams after waking up.

The US Army command has purchased about seven thousand Samsung Galaxy Note II phablets, which will be worn by soldiers on their chests, The Wall Street Journal writes, citing a military source. In addition, it is expected that the South Korean company Samsung may receive an order from the US National Security Agency to supply several thousand such devices. Note II phablets will be supplied to the US military in the Nett Warrior version.

The rebel Free Syrian Army has changed its commander-in-chief, Agence France-Presse reported on February 16 . In a video message released on February 16, representatives of the Free Syrian Army said that the organization's military council decided to replace General Salim Idris due to the "difficulties faced by the Syrian revolution" in the fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Abdel al-Illah al-Bashir was appointed in his place.

In Moscow, police detained crime boss Miro Amadyan, known under the nickname Miron. reports this RIA Novosti with reference to the capital's department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to a police representative, Amadyan, a native of Georgia, lived in Moscow illegally and now the authorities are going to deport him to his homeland. The Prime Crime agency, however, claims that the Meshchansky court has already made a decision on deportation.

Rowling's second novel, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, will be released on June 19, 2014. This was reported on the website of the publishing house Little, Brown, which collaborates with the writer. The book will be called “The Silkworm”. The detective novel is about a writer named Owen Quine who writes a manuscript containing scathing descriptions of almost everyone he knows, and then goes missing.

In the end, only one “31 controversial issue” of Russian history will remain: how Stalin eliminated party competitors Joseph Stalin. Photo: Evgeny Khaldey / RIA Novosti archive Even without a special list of “controversial issues” compiled for the preparation of a unified school textbook on the history of Russia, it is clear that the figure of Stalin is still capable of generating the most heated and uncompromising disputes.

Three defendants in the “Bolotnaya case” - Richard Sobolev, Alexander Kamensky and Oleg Arkhipenkov - have been amnestied, reports Russian Planet. As Kamensky told the publication, investigators first charged him with participating in mass riots, and two minutes later they issued an amnesty decree. This happened on January 31st. It is not specified when the resolution to terminate the case was received by Sobolev and Arkhipenkov.

The group’s new album “Moral Code” topped the ratings of the Russian branch of the iTunes chart from February 10 to 16. Data on the most downloaded recordings for this period is available to Lenta.ru. The album “Winter” went on sale on February 14. It became the sixth studio work of the Moral Code team. There are 11 tracks on the album in total. The group's previous album, entitled "Where are you?" came out in 2008.

Another – the second in a row – amnesty for protest participants has been announced in Ukraine. For the law to come into force, activists had to vacate all city and regional administration buildings they occupied and unblock “transport communications” on Grushevsky Street in Kiev, as well as other streets and squares throughout the country, with the exception of those where peaceful protests are taking place.

The Peruvian shipbuilding company SIMA has begun building patrol ships with a displacement of about 500 tons, Infodefensa reports. It is not specified what project the ships will be built according to; it is known that they were designed on the basis of a South Korean project developed by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. Five patrol boats are expected to be built in Peru. The laying ceremony of the first ship took place on February 17, 2014 at the SIMA facility in Callao.

The group "Spleen" announced the name of the new album. According to the band’s official website , the album will be called “Resonance, Part 1.” The cover of the disc has also been revealed on the website. "Resonance, Part 1" will go on sale March 1, 2014. In total, it will include 14 compositions, a list of which is presented below.