Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Minsk talks on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass "are going actively, better than super." Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov said the talks were going well. Members of the delegations left the hall where the meeting is taking place. Negotiations continue in a narrow format - with the participation of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

The captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, Francesco Schettino, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for a disaster that killed 32 people. Schettino is found guilty of manslaughter and flight from the ship. In addition, the court recognized his actions as the direct cause of the crash of the liner. Despite the verdict, Schettino will remain at large until the end of the appeal process, which could take several years.

Shot: Russia-1 Before the start of the Minsk negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in the Donbass, the cameras captured a short struggle of Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin for a chair. The Russian president tried to move his chair, whose back the president of Belarus was holding on. As a result, Putin had to give in and wait until Lukashenko finishes the conversation with the angel Merkel and removes his hand from the back of the chair.

Continuation: The participants in the Minsk talks on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass moved on to discussing the technical details of a new agreement that could be signed following the meeting. This was reported to RIA Novosti by a source in the German delegation. The talks continue in an expanded format - the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany were joined by members of the delegations, including the foreign ministers of these countries.

One of the largest experts on the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Carlo Pedretti (director of the Leonardo Center at the University of California), said that he never attributed to the artist a portrait of Isabella d'Este, seized from a Swiss bank. In 2013, the Italian media wrote that Pedretti saw the hand of the Renaissance master in the found painting and he had no doubt that this was the work of Leonardo.

The Art Museum in the Estonian city of Tartu removed two exhibits from an exhibition about the Holocaust after protests from the Jewish community in Estonia and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The exhibition no longer shows the videos of the Polish artist Artur Zmievsky "Pyatnashki" and "80064". In the first video, naked prisoners of Auschwitz are playing tag in the gas chamber, in the second, an old man who survived the Holocaust asks in a tattoo parlor to renew his tattoo with a serial number.

CSKA Moscow in a regular match of the Continental Hockey League beat Slovan on home ice with a score of 12:0. There have never been such defeats in the history of the KHL. CSKA scored six goals in the first period, two in the second and four in the final. Of the 12 goals, three each were scored by Alexander Radulov (he also scored two assists) and Igor Grigorenko. Vladimir Zharkov, Maxim Mamin (twice), Stefan da Costa, Nikita Kvartalnov and Simon Hjalmarsson also scored.

In the village of Chernukhino, Luhansk region, 340 prisoners escaped from the colony. This was reported by the OSCE with reference to the Ukrainian and Russian military. The OSCE report said the prisoners escaped after heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces and separatists. About 30 people remain in the colony.

A Russian journalist from the pro-Kremlin media outlet LifeNews barked in the face of two Ukrainian colleagues today at Independence Palace in Minsk, as negotiations over the situation in eastern Ukraine got underway. Ukrainian journalist Olga Koshelenko wrote about the incident on Facebook moments after it occurred: “And it’s true. Sasha from LifeNews jumped up to us and barked in our faces like a dog. It came quite naturally to him. Thankfully, he didn’t bite.

The debate began in the Moscow Regional Council in the Born case: reporting Andrei Kozenko Figure: Victoria Lomasco / "Medusa" The Moscow Bloodwood completed the investigation in the case of the “combat organization of Russian nationalists” (BORN). Its participants are accused of murders, attempts, creating a gang and extremism.

The correspondent of the Lifenews television channel covered on Ukrainian colleagues in the Independence Palace in Minsk while waiting for the start of negotiations on the situation in the Donbass. This was written on her page by the journalist of the channel "1+1" Olga Koshelenko. Post by Olga Koshelenko . “And this is true. Sasha and Lifeyus jumped on us and banged, naturally, like a dog. Fortunately, I did not bite. Video later.

Four-party talks on settling the conflict in Donbass have begun in Minsk. They are attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. The meeting takes place at the Palace of Independence. Before the start of the four-party talks, Poroshenko met with Hollande and Merkel. In addition, the Ukrainian President spoke with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

The Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation proposed to increase the terms of use of rehabilitation facilities for the disabled in order to optimize budget expenditures. The draft of the relevant departmental order has been published for public discussion. According to the project, a manual wheelchair can be used not for 4 years, as provided for by the current order, but for 6 years. It is also proposed to extend the use of hearing aids from 4 to 6 years.

has been submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation A bill to ban the use of anti-icing chemicals outside the carriageway of roads. For violation of this ban, it is proposed to issue fines. For individuals, the fine will be up to 10 thousand rubles, for officials - up to 100 thousand, for legal entities - up to 1 million rubles. The author of the bill is a deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Oleg Lebedev.

The VKontakte social network has updated the client for the iPhone and returned the iPad application to the App Store. From both applications, the section with music has disappeared - as the company explains, such a decision is related to Apple policy. VKontakte recommends users to listen to music to open a mobile version of the site in the browser.