The authorities in Sierra Leone have banned all public celebrations over Christmas and New Year's Day due to the Ebola outbreak. Throughout the holiday, the military will ensure that there are no crowds of people on the streets. Earlier, a ban on mass gatherings was introduced in the country, bars and nightclubs were closed. “We will make every effort to ensure that people stay at home and think about Ebola,” said the head of the Ministry of Health.

Photo: ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) published a color picture of the Cometa Churumov-Gerasimenko. The image was obtained by a combination of three photographs taken in August 2014: Rosetta probe alternately shot a comet on a black and white camera with red, green and blue light filters. Since the photographs were taken in motion, the angle of the comet in relation to the camera on three frames was slightly different - so it was necessary the painstaking work combined images.

Pottermore publishes the first of a series of short stories by author JK Rowling. In the coming days, new stories will see the light of day: the author of the Harry Potter books has promised to publish one short work a day for 12 days before Christmas. The story takes place in Coakworth , the town where Lily Potter, her sister Petunia (mother and aunt of the wizard Harry) and Hogwarts professor Severus Snape grew up.

The airspace over London was completely closed due to a computer malfunction at the air traffic control center in Swanwick, Hampshire. Initially, it was reported that the sky over the city would open no earlier than 19:00 local time (22:00 Moscow time). Soon, the control service said that the airspace was partially open, but the traffic density had to be reduced. Flight delays have been reported at Heathrow and other airports in London and the south of the UK.

The State Duma adopted in the third, final, reading a law allowing in some cases a 50% discount for early payment of a fine for traffic violations. Under the law, which provides a discount when paying a fine no later than 20 days from the date of its imposition, a number of violations of traffic rules have been removed. Thus, the full amount of the fine is paid in cases of repeated violations, for example, speeding, passing a traffic light, driving into the oncoming lane.

Soldiers and officers of the first Chechen: Photo project of Sergey Karpov and Mikhail Mordasov We continue a series of materials dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the First Chechen. Especially for Medusa, photographers Sergey Karpov and Mikhail Mordasov removed portraits and recorded the stories of Russian soldiers and officers who fought in Chechnya in 1994-1996.

The hacker who extorted $1,000 from Oleg Tinkov, the founder of Tinkoff Credit Systems, for stopping a DDoS attack, was fined 12 million rubles. At today's rate, the hacker was fined more than $210,000. In addition, he was sentenced to two and a half years of probation. He was convicted under articles "Extortion" (163 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and "Creation of malicious computer programs" (273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

What will the closing of The Pirate Bay: Vice lead Image: Marek Schwarz / Startitup.sk The largest illegal torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has not been working for three days-the Swedish police confiscated the servers of the resource and brought it to offline. This happened for the first time in eight years.

A bill has been submitted to the State Duma proposing to oblige Russian companies and individual entrepreneurs to partially sell foreign exchange earnings from transactions with non-residents on the domestic foreign exchange market. The draft document was prepared by a group of deputies from A Just Russia.

This is a form of state assistance to Russian families - the state helps people pay for housing, children’s education, or invest in their mother’s future pension. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev proposes to allow maternity capital to be spent on buying a car. The subsidy is given to families that have more than one child from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2016. This also applies to adopted children. Both the child and the mother must be Russian citizens.

Gazprom Neft has filed a second lawsuit with the European Court of Justice, challenging the sanctions imposed by the EU. The lawsuit was registered by the court on December 5. The first statement of claim to the EU court was sent by Gazprom Neft on 24 October. It also became known that an attempt to challenge the sanctions imposed by the EU in court was made by the Turkish subsidiary of Sberbank DenizBank.

Roskomnadzor recommended the editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, Alexei Venediktov, to register as a blogger. The agency asked Venediktov to provide his identification data, as well as information about his Twitter traffic. TV presenters Tina Kandelaki, Ivan Urgant, Pavel Volya and Vladimir Solovyov received the same notifications. Venediktov said that he was not interested in his statistics. Kandelaki clarified when Roskomnadzor will have its own rating of bloggers.

Daniil Turovsky - about how a homosexual teacher was fired in St. Petersburg Photo: Alexey Tikhonov / "Medusa" In December, the leadership of the St. Petersburg school No. 565 for children with disabilities fired a homosexual teacher - with the formulation "For the immoral misconduct". The teacher’s resignation was achieved by the local activist Timur Isaev, who is engaged in “forced out”: he is looking for gays on social networks and reports about their sexual orientation to employers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been named Man of the Year by the Financial Times. In explaining his choice, the Financial Times notes Apple's financial successes under Cook's leadership, the "brilliant new technology" the company has introduced, and Cook's decision to publicly declare his gay identity.

Galina Yuzefovich - about three new books Literary critic Galina Yuzefovich tells weekly on Medusa about important or interesting book novelties. In the next issue - the “Dark Street” of the last Nobel laureate in literature Patrick Modiano, the “Snow Queen” Michael Canningham and the “sphere” of Dave Eggers.