US President Donald Trump expressed support for Libyan General Khalifa Haftar's offensive on Tripoli in a telephone conversation, Bloomberg reports, citing sources. As the agency notes, such statements by Trump are at odds with the official position of the United States. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on April 7 that Washington opposes Haftar's military operation and demands its immediate end.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has launched his own podcast called Technology and Society with Mark Zuckerberg. The first two episodes have already been published on Spotify. In one of them, Zuckerberg discusses the legal aspects of technology companies with Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain, in the other, the impact of social networks on journalism with the head of Axel Springer publishing house Matthias Dofner. In early January, Mark Zuckerberg published a post with promises for 2019.

The pumping of Russian oil through the Druzhba oil pipeline from Belarus to Poland has been suspended due to its poor quality. The BelTA agency reports this. As the Belarusian Gomeltransneft Druzhba explained, the Polish side refused to accept the oil. In Poland, they clarified that refineries in this country and in Germany cannot accept and process oil at the rates with which it is supplied now.

Vladimir Putin's decree on the simplified granting of citizenship to residents of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR undermines the implementation of the Minsk agreements and the process to return the territories to Kyiv's control. This was stated by the US State Department Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker. “The decision to issue passports is extremely provocative and taken straight from the ‘occupation plan’,” Volker tweeted.

In the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, two detainees died of a drug overdose, Valery Maksimenko, deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, said. “Two people died and two are in intensive care in a serious condition. They used the drug delivered in the food parcel, allegedly by wetting the fabric with it, ”the official said. The circumstances will be established during an internal audit of the Federal Penitentiary Service.

The film "Avengers: Endgame" broke the record for advance ticket sales in the history of Russian film distribution, Disney announced. The total amount for which tickets were sold amounted to 127 million rubles. "Avengers: Endgame" will be released in Russia on April 29 - five days after the world premiere. According to unofficial information, the Russian premiere was postponed at the insistence of the Ministry of Culture due to the domestic film "Billion".

How the Russian government uses laws against ‘undesirable organizations’ to target activists from a single human rights group Dmitry Tkachuk / URA.RU / TASS Supporters of Open Russia activist Anastasia Shevchenko picket in Tyumen. February 10, 2019 In early April, Russian investigators opened three new criminal cases against members of the nonprofit organization Open Russia, which is associated with exiled opposition politician and former oil company executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The defense of millionaire Robert Durst, accused of murdering his girlfriend Susan Berman, will call to court as witnesses the authors of the documentary series "Secrets of a Billionaire", dedicated to his life, The New York Times writes. An episode of Billionaire Mysteries showed Durst accidentally confessing to the murders after an interview for the show, unaware that he was still being recorded.

In the Khabarovsk Territory, right before the primaries, members of United Russia created the public movement Time for Change, which will conduct the preliminary vote. The initiative was supported by the secretary of the general council of the faction Andriy Turchak. “The future of the region depends on which team will go to the polls, what program of changes this team will offer people,” he said.

Ford is investing $500 million in electric vehicle company Rivian Automotive LLC. In addition, the automaker said in a statement that Ford and Rivian will work together to create a “fundamentally new” electric vehicle. Details are not disclosed, only that it will be on a “ skateboard platform ” developed by Rivian. In February, Amazon decided to invest $700 million in Rivian. Rivian was founded by American engineer RJ Scaringe in 2009.

The current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and the elected head of state Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin on simplifying the issuance of Russian citizenship to residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Poroshenko called the decree "yet another unprecedented interference" by Russia in Ukraine's internal affairs.

How calling Vladimir Putin a ‘fuckwit’ became illegal On April 22, a court in the Novgorod region fined local resident Yuri Kartyzhev 30,000 rubles (about $470) for violating Russia’s new law against insulting state officials. The man was found guilty of sharing two posts on the social network VKontakte where he allegedly wrote “Putin is an unbelievable fuckwit.” Kartyzhev’s sentence marks the first known enforcement of this new curtailment of free speech.

In the Frunzensky district of St. Petersburg, at the intersection of Dimitrova and Budapeshtskaya streets, a pipe with hot water burst. On the carriageway flooded with boiling water, a passenger bus got stuck - it hit the wheels in the resulting ravine. Passengers from the bus, surrounded by hot water, had to be evacuated through a hatch on the roof. None of the 19 passengers, according to Fontanka, was injured. The routes of public transport in the area of ​​the scene have been changed.

In Magadan, former members of the Yunarmiya patriotic movement accused 31-year-old head of the regional headquarters of the organization Pavel Podporin of harassment. This is written by the local information resource "Very". 11 teenagers wrote an appeal to the Secretary of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Bocharov, in which they said that Podporin persuaded a 17-year-old schoolgirl to be close - she recorded what happened on a voice recorder.

Three officers from Orekhovo-Zuevo became defendants in the criminal case under articles on abuse of powers and intentionally causing serious harm to health. This was reported by the Office of the Investigative Committee for the Moscow Region. According to investigators, on April 11, the police, due to “suddenly arising personal hostile relations,” beat a 46-year-old man into Orekhovo-Zuevo. He went to the hospital with a closed head injury and died a week later.