In Strasbourg, a 39-year-old native of Albania attempted to set himself on fire near the building of the European Parliament. This is reported by the local edition Les Dernieres Nouvelles dʼAlsace. The man, shouting the word "injustice", doused himself with gasoline and set fire to his clothes with a lighter. At that moment, a demonstration of immigrants from Guinea was taking place near the building - its participants put out the fire.

The Al-Taji military base north of Baghdad, where US troops are stationed, came under rocket attack. It is reported by Reuters with reference to the official statement of the military. No casualties or injuries have been reported. According to the Al-Hadat TV channel, a total of five missiles were fired at the base from multiple rocket launchers. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the incident.

Back in 2017, Lion Air approached Boeing with a request to train pilots to fly the newly acquired 737 MAX, but was denied. This became known from the internal correspondence of Boeing employees, which was published by Bloomberg. “Now the damn Lion Air is asking for a simulator to fly the MAX, perhaps because of their own stupidity. I'm climbing the wall, trying to figure out how to sort it out, idiots, ”says one of the letters.

Tolga Akmen / AFP / Scanpix / Leta On Monday, the Queen of Great Britain Elizabeth II officially supported the decision of her grandson Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle to abandon some royal privileges and live more independently.

Russia appoints a decorated investigator to head the probe into December's shootout at the FSB, where friendly fire may have cost a life Emin Dzhafarov / Kommersant General Uladi Uladiev has been placed in charge of the investigation into last month’s shootout at Lubyanka Square Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin has reportedly appointed Uladi Uladiev, a veteran of the agency, to head the team now studying the shootout outside the Federal Security Service’s Moscow headquarters on

President Vladimir Putin's annual address to the Federal Assembly will be shown on the largest media facades in Moscow. It is reported by RBC. The President's speech will be broadcast on the facades of the Cosmos Hotel, one of the houses on Novy Arbat, the Central Telegraph, the House of Books, the Oktyabr cinema and the Yerevan Plaza shopping center. The organizer of the campaign to promote the President's message is the All-Russian People's Front.

Norwegian chess player Magnus Carlsen has broken the world record for the most unbeaten games in classical time control chess. On January 14, he drew with the Dutchman Jorden van Forest in the Wijk aan Zee Super Tournament, after which his unbeaten streak reached 111 games in a row. The previous achievement - 110 games - belonged to the Soviet and Dutch grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov, as well as the Croatian Bogdan Lalich. Carlsen last lost on July 31, 2018.

Russia’s Supreme Court has ruled in accordance with a request from the Justice Ministry to put a temporary ban on the Civic Initiative party’s activities. The shutdown order will last three months. Alexey Obukhov, the press secretary for party chair Dmitry Gudkov, first told Interfax about the order.

Billie Eilish will perform the title song in the new James Bond film. This was reported in the official twitter of the franchise about agent 007. Billie Eilish is said to be the youngest Bond soundtrack performer in the history of the franchise. The song, whose title has not yet been revealed, she wrote with her brother Finneas O'Connell. The 25th James Bond film is titled No Time to Die. The main role, as in several previous films, will be played by Daniel Craig.

Meduza special correspondent Ivan Golunov has been named as a victim in an investigation into the abuse of power by the Moscow police, a state investigator working on the case told Golunov, who’s been invited to testify against the suspects on January 20. In June 2019, police arrested Golunov on suspicion of intent to distribute illegal narcotics. He says the drugs were planted on him.

The creators of the serial film "Dow", who cannot get permission to rent all parts of the film in Russia, are planning to sue the Ministry of Culture. Interfax writes about this with reference to an unnamed representative of the film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky. According to the interlocutor of the agency, the decision to go to court was made after the repeated refusal of the Ministry of Culture to issue a rental certificate.

Reuters / Scanpix / Leta Number Reuters on the fourth floor of house No. 85 per Fleet Street. London, 1950s The British government secretly financed the Reuters news agency in the 60s and 70s on the instructions of the Foreign Ministry, which was responsible for anti-Soviet propaganda and related to British intelligence. The money went to the work of the agency in the Middle East and Latin America, follows from historical documents declassified by the British Foreign Ministry.

Updated . At about 18:20 Moscow time, the site was restored for most users. The work of the social network "VKontakte" failed. Users, according to Downdetector, mostly complain about the site (72%), problems with receiving and sending messages (24%). The press service of VKontakte confirmed the failure. “Users may have had problems loading some sections of VKontakte, but we are promptly restoring work,” a VK source told Meduza. VKontakte is the most popular social network in Russia.

In 2019, 1.76 million new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) were sold in Russia. This is 2.3% less than the year before, said Joerg Schreiber, head of the Association of European Businesses (AEB) Automobile Manufacturers Committee. As RBC notes, this was the first decline since 2016, when the domestic market fell by 11%. The AEB expects that sales of new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles will fall by another 2.1% in 2020.

The Russian Book Union, which is led by the former Prime Minister of Russia Sergey Stepashin, for four consecutive years without a competition receives a contract for book festivals on Red Square. This is stated in the investigation of the Corruption Fund. According to the FBK, during this time the Union received 250 million rubles from the budget for the organization of the festival.