In the Tretyakov Gallery on the evening of March 20, one of the visitors stripped down to his underwear and walked in this form through several halls. The man was able to leave the building unhindered. “The museum employees called the police, but the hooligan left quickly, and he could not be detained immediately,” told a law enforcement source TASS. The police are now looking for him.

In the outskirts of Milan, a school bus driver deliberately deviated from the route, and after the bus was pursued by police, he doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. According to eyewitnesses, the driver, a 47-year-old from Senegal, shouted that he wanted to stop the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and that no one on the bus would survive. Police officers knocked out the windows of the burning bus, and all 51 children and adults accompanying them were able to get out.

Journal entries from life in the USSR’s drunk tanks Vladimir Velengurin / TASS Men detained at a drunk tank in Moscow. January 1, 1999. Russian senators are entertaining the idea of resurrecting the country’s vytrezviteli (sobering-up centers, or drunk tanks) and empowering the police to lock up people caught intoxicated in public.

The Board of Directors of "Echo of Moscow" approved the candidacy of Alexei Venediktov for the post of editor-in-chief of the radio station. The decision was taken unanimously. Venediktov will remain Echo's editor-in-chief for the next five years. On March 14, the editors of Ekho Moskvy re-elected Venediktov to the post of editor-in-chief. He received 79 votes, his rival, radio station host Alexei Golubev, 22 votes.

The Federal Open Market Committee of the US Federal Reserve System has decided to keep the base rate at the previous level of 2.25-2.5%. Fed officials also said they do not plan to raise rates in 2019 due to concerns about weak economic growth. Previous forecasts had called for one or two hikes over that period. The Fed has pursued a policy of consistently raising the rate over the past three years. In 2018, there were three increases, each by 0.25 percentage points.

Police in Moscow have reportedly opened a criminal investigation in response to defamation charges filed by Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, against Internet publications that have criticized his job performance. Sources in law enforcement told the newspaper Kommersant that Rogozin singled out the websites Rospres.org and Kompromatural.ru . According to Kommersant , Rogozin originally complained to the Attorney General’s Office.

The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Moscow is investigating a criminal case of libel in the media (Article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) based on a statement by the head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, to protect honor and dignity, Kommersant writes, citing a law enforcement source.

Nail Fattakhanov / TASS / Scanpix / LETA Chelyabinsk Oblast Temporary Acting Governor Alexey Teksler, presidential representative for the Ural Federal Okrug Nikolay Tsukanov, and former Chelyabinsk Oblast Governor Boris Dubrovsky. March 20, 2019 On March 19 and 20, three Russian regional leaders all handed in their resignations. Even more regional government heads are expected to join their colleagues from Chelyabinsk Oblast, Kalmykia, and the Altai Republic and resign in the coming weeks.

The head of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said that the UK will be able to get a "short delay" of Brexit if the country's parliament approves an agreement on the conditions for leaving the European Union. The length of the delay remains an open question, he said. So Tusk commented on the request of British Prime Minister Theresa May to postpone the exit of the country from the EU from March 29 to June 30.

Australian winemaker Tim Whitrow spoke about a collision with a curious koala who decided to rest in his car. On March 18, Whitrow came with his dog to inspect the vineyards; He left the car door open so that the pet could get out. When the Australian returned to the car, he found a koala chilling in the back seat (the air conditioner was working). Alluca Wine Vineyards Releasing hitch hiker "Caramello" the Koala to the Alluca wines vineyard scrub in Blewitt Springs McLaren Vale.

The defendant in the “Penza case” Yuliy Boyarshinov admits guilt and will ask for his case to be considered in a special order, his lawyer Olga Krivonos told OVD-Info. Boyarshinov will not enter into an agreement with the investigation or testify against other defendants in the case, according to the report. The court will consider Boyarshinov’s motion on March 25. Industrial climber Yuliy Boyarshinov was detained in January 2018 in St. Petersburg.

The head of the Novosibirsk Council of Deputies, Dmitry Asantsev, publicly criticized the journalist of the publication "Sibkray" Riharda Lem, who, due to poor health, did not stand up during the performance of the anthem at the council session. Asantsev addressed Lem twice, at the beginning and end of the session.

The YouTube channel “Movement,” dedicated to “monitoring violators at all levels of government,” reported the beating of its hosts Andrei Orel and Alexander Dorogov. According to activists, the victims are in City Clinical Hospital No. 1, one of them underwent surgery.

Dmitry Korotaev / Kommersant In a new report , the newspaper Novaya Gazeta studied 780,000 verdicts issued by Russian courts between 2017 and 2018, and found that 50,000 of these rulings were at least 80-percent copied from decisions previously issued by the same judges. Mostly copied verdicts are most common in rulings against defendants convicted of illegally acquiring and possessing narcotics.

A St. Petersburg court has sentenced Vladimir Barsukov, born Vladimir Kumarin, to 12 years in a high-security prison for founding a criminal society. Barsukov is known as a leader of the so-called Tambov gang, which rose to be one of the most notorious criminal organizations in Russia beginning in the late 1990s. The gang leader had previously been sentenced to 23 years for murder and will spend a total of 24 years behind bars.