Why were journalists attending Vladimir Putin’s annual press conference sprayed with silver particles? Natalya Kolesnikova / AFP / Scanpix / LETA Around 500 journalists were invited to attend Vladimir Putin’s 2021 marathon press conference at the Moscow Manege on Thursday, December 23. But even those with invitations couldn’t just waltz right inside. First, they had to pass through a disinfection booth installed at the entrance, which sprayed attendees with silver particles.

State Duma deputies from United Russia have submitted a bill to parliament to introduce additional checks for those who intend to obtain a license to purchase weapons. The bill card is published on the State Duma website, Kommersant writes in detail about the deputies' proposals. Deputies Aleksandr Khinshtein, Vasily Piskarev and Anatoly Vyborny have prepared a draft amendment to the law "On weapons".

Fans of the football club Zenit from St. Petersburg have announced that they will not apply for Fan IDs to enter the competition. A message about this appeared on the social networks of the Landskrona fan association. Representatives of the movement called the introduction of Fan ID an “opaque, repressive and excessive” innovation and spoke out against this “unreasonable measure.” Such rules of the game are contrary to the interests of fans and football in general.

The Administration of the President of Russia spent 117 million rubles on organizing a large press conference of Vladimir Putin in the Manege, including almost one and a half million on treating journalists with silver particles. This follows from the public procurement materials , which drew the attention of the Daily Storm. The Presidential Administration spent 1,399,000 rubles on a two-day rental of six disinfection booths of the DEZ GATE series (model DG-7.2) of the Silver Mask trademark.

State prosecutors in Belarus have asked a Minsk court to sentence 21-year-old Russian national Yegor Dudnikov to 11 years in prison, reports BBC News Russian. Belarusian authorities opened a criminal case against Dudnikov due to voice-over recordings he did for Belarusian opposition videos. He was charged with incitement to social hatred and appeals to actions harmful to national security.

The US authorities do not agree with some of Russia's proposals for mutual security guarantees with NATO, said at a briefing. White House press secretary Jen Psaki We are working on diplomatic negotiations. Russia has put forward a number of proposals: we agree with some of them, and we definitely disagree with some of them, for example, concerning NATO - this is a good example. And we are working to finalize what they (the proposals) will look like.

Writer and journalist Joan Didyion died in her house in New York at the age of 87, reports The New York Times. The publishing house Knopf, which published the books of Didyon, said that Parkinson's disease was the cause of her death. Janet Fries / Getty Images Joan Didion, April 1981 Joan Didion is one of the founders of New Journalism along with Tom Wolf and Norman Meyler.

Moscow’s Tagansky District Court has fined GitHub 1 million rubles ($13,630) for failing to delete the list of “Smart Vote” endorsements uploaded by Alexey Navalny’s team ahead of the Russian State Duma elections in September.

Putin talks tensions over Ukraine, prison torture, and Santa Claus in annual marathon press conference Sergey Karpukhin / TASS / Scanpix / LETA Vladimir Putin held his yearly marathon press conference for the seventeenth time on Thursday, December 23. Around 500 journalists were invited to attend; the Russian president fielded 55 questions in just under four hours, taking few questions from the foreign press and no questions from the “foreign agent” media outlets present (Meduza included).

How Putin’s press conference went (“foreign agents” did not give words). Whether the covid medicine works from Russia. Friends and colleagues recall Dmitry Zimin Good evening, This message (material) was created and (or) widespread by a foreign media that performs the functions of a foreign agent, and (or) a Russian legal entity that performs the functions of a foreign agent This is the daily newsletter "Medusa" about the main news of the day. This issue is a lot of Vladimir Putin.

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle shared the first photograph of their daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbitten-Vindizor, which was born on June 4, 2021. It is present on the family portrait that fell on the official Christmas postcard Harry and Megan. In the photograph taken by Alexy Lubomirski , Meghan Markle holds Lilibet in his arms, and their son Archi, who was born on May 6, 2019, is sitting on the lap of Prince Harry.

The press conference of Vladimir Putin lasted almost four hours. During this time, the president was asked only a few truly urgent questions about the situation in Russia. Putin answered each of them as a carbon copy - with the obligatory mention that in the West is no better.

Your Browser Does Not Support the Audio Element. In 2021 in Russia, housing went up strongly, and in 2022, a mortgage also rises. What happens to the market? How to behave on it? In 2021, Sberbank raised a mortgage rate four times. By December 19, the weighted average rates amounted to 9.5% in standard loans for new buildings and 9.6% for loans for the purchase of finished housing. Over the year, the average mortgage amount increased by 16%, now it exceeds three million rubles.

American actor James Franco, who was accused of fraud and sexual harassment by female students at his film school, admitted that he had sex with some of them. He said this on Jess Cagle's podcast, excerpts of which were published by the radio station SiriusXM. "I admit that I slept with my students while I was teaching. And that was wrong," Franco said. He clarified that relationships with students were not the purpose of creating the film school.

Alexey Navalny - About Dmitry Zimin George Podkalov The Russian politician Alexei Navalny, who was serving time in the colony in Pokrov, brought condolences to the relatives and friends of the businessman and philanthropist Dmitry Zimin , who died on December 22 in Switzerland. On Twitter Navalny, which is conducted by his associates, several reports of this appeared . Navalny called Zimin a man with an exemplary biography and an example to follow. We will miss him.