Photo: NASA Snow fell in Sahara on December 19 - for the first time in 37 years. He melted the next day, but the snowy desert managed to capture the Landsat 7 satellite. In the picture below - a section of the Sahara in the area of ​​the Morocco and Algeria border, south of the city of Boarch. Photo: NASA

Residents of the port of Duluth (Minnesota) saw a giant wall of steam rising above Lake Superior - the largest freshwater lake in the world (part of the Great Lakes system). The steam wall was formed due to the fact that the water in the lake was warm, and the air temperature dropped to -18 degrees. The steam rose tens of meters above the water, making the buildings on the shore and the ships passing by seem tiny.

An unknown man decided to play golf on ice. He put the ball on the frozen lake (or river), swung, hit and missed. And quite quickly he found out why they play on the grass, and not on the ice. Princessofthesummer Playing Golf on Ice, Not A Good Idea

Photo: Anton Belitsky / "Kommersant" The site of the Moscow Mayor "Our City" has stopped taking and consideration of complaints of residents on most of the most important issues. This happened “in connection with a change in processes,” the resource administrators said (published in November, but Muscovites actually do not know about it). The portal, created on the initiative of the mayor Sergei Sobyanin, was very popular among citizens.

Photo: Burhan Ozbilici / AP / Scanpix / Leta The Western media reported on December 22 that the Turkish and Russian authorities turned to Apple Corporation with a request to help open the iPhone Mevlut Altyntash, the murderers of Russia's ambassador Andrei Karlov. The next day, Russian publications began to be reported about this. But, apparently, no one turned to Apple. Russia and Türkiye turned to Apple?

Kirill Prisyazhnyuk, a former member of the Nevograd neo-Nazi gang, has been sentenced by the Supreme Court of Chechnya to four years in prison for recruiting into the Islamic State, reports the Sova xenophobia monitoring center. Prisyazhnyuk was accused of trying in December 2015 to help a resident of Chechnya get to Syria and join the terrorists of the Islamic State.

The former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, called reports of his clinical death "complete nonsense and untruth". He stated this in an interview with RIA Novosti. According to Luzhkov, doctors conducted a full examination and found that he had inflammation of the right lung due to a viral infection. He added that he plans to be discharged from the hospital in "a day or two". “I was given a complete examination, the diagnosis and treatment are clear.

The main topics of the four -hour conversation of the president with journalists Photo: Alexey Druzhinin / Spanpix / Leta On December 23, the traditional annual press conference of Vladimir Putin was held.

The Presnensky Court of Moscow rejected the claim of Vera Serova, the granddaughter of the first head of the KGB, Ivan Serov, who demanded compensation from the Ekho Moskvy radio station and historian Boris Sokolov for insulting the honor and dignity of her grandfather. Together with Serova, the lawsuit was filed by Alexander Khinshtein, who published the book Notes from a Suitcase with the diaries of the first head of the KGB.

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli / AFP / Scanpix / Leta On December 23, two hijackers captured the Libyan Airlines plane, who made an internal flight from the city of Sebha to Tripoli. On board were 118 people. The invaders put him at the Malta Airport. They threatened to blow up the plane if their requirements were not met. What requirements were discussed is unknown. Libyan and Maltese authorities entered into negotiations with them. After three hours, all the hostages were released.

The former head of the Federal Customs Service, Andrei Belyaninov, was returned the money seized during the searches, and was also offered several high positions. This was told by unnamed sources of Kommersant. Information about this appeared shortly after a press conference by President Vladimir Putin, at which he was asked about the extensive coverage of the searches at Belyaninov's. “You said ‘case’ – there was no case against him.

On December 23, students of the Russian Institute of Theatrical Art - GITIS staged a performance against the merger of the theater and production departments, which was initiated by the rector Grigory Zaslavsky. A performance dedicated to the rights of students was held in the courtyard of the building. According to RBC, the secretary of the rector of GITIS Elvira Karyagina came out to the students, urged them to disperse and threatened the police.

Maya Moore, a 23-year-old financial analyst from Baltimore, Maryland, took a job at a new company and decided to enter an ugly office sweater contest. It took her four hours to make the sweater. But in the end, Moore took only second place. According to Moore, the winner was her colleague wearing a "quite ugly" sweater that says "I'm slipping" (the same slogan is also used on Beyoncé's clothing ) .

Photo: From the personal archive of Oksana Sevastidi On December 23, at the annual press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Oksana Sevastidi's “rather tough” sentence. She was convicted in 2016 by seven years-because she, using SMS, reported in 2008 to her Georgian acquaintance about Russian military equipment moving in Sochi towards Abkhazia. Sevastidi’s lawyer Ivan Pavlov said that the president noticed the “obvious inadequacy” of the sentence of his client.

Photo: Yuri Samolyago / TASS On December 18, during a meeting in the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, it became known that the heading helping children in the television program “So far all houses” (Channel One) is paid from the federal budget. The manufacturer "Videoan", the company of TV presenter Timur Kizyakov, received 35 million rubles from the federal budget for three years.