The Christmas International Musical Festival "Bethlehem Star" will begin in St. Petersburg on the feast of the Nativity of Christ , January 7, and will last all the holy days - until January 17, reports with reference to RIA Novosti . The program of the festival, which is conducted by the St. Petersburg Conservatory, connect the ancient church and secular traditions of the celebration of Christmas with modern musical stories on Christmas themes.

On the south-west of Moscow, a terrible incident occurred last Saturday, during which the driver of the Zhiguli crushed a small child. According to Life.ru , around noon a woman walked in the courtyard of house number 8 on Rokotov Street with her 4-year-old son. When she was distracted for a second, the boy ran to the entrance. Just at that moment, the VAZ 2108 or 2109 light color drove into the yard at high speed, the operatives say.

The widespread opinion that Russians are greatly abused by alcohol is largely a myth, the chief narcologist of Moscow Evgeny Brun is sure. In Russia, they drink no more and no less than in countries where alcohol is also free to sell, he said. And the surge of alcohol dependence in the USSR and Russia is explained by the "very long" celebration of victory in the Great Patriotic War. “Today, Russia looks no better, no worse than the rest of the world,” Brun notes.

The organizer of the giant financial pyramid Bernard Madoff, accused of fraud with 50 billion dollars, himself became a victim of robbers. Unknown people made their way into his fashionable mansion in Florida and dragged a weighty sculpture estimated at 10 thousand dollars from the courtyard.

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy chairman of the department of external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate (MPC MP), believes that the new patriarch will be elected at the cathedral by the will of God, and human plans and expectations are not able to predetermine everything, the interfax-religion portal reports. “Now, of course, a lot is said about what candidates are (to the patriarchate. - Approx. Ed. ).

A new traffic accident in which Russian citizens suffered from, occurred outside the country. A passenger bus with Russian pilgrims from Mecca on Tuesday night got into an accident in Azerbaijan. As a result of the incident, five people were injured. "Ikarus" collided with the KamAZ truck on the Baku-Rosts highway near the village of Zeynalabdin Tagiev (20 km from Baku), as a result of various injuries, five pilgrims from Dagestan received.

32-year-old Leslie Porterfield from Dallas, shortly before the New Year, received the official status of "the fastest Motorcyclist of the United States of America" ​​after it dispersed its bike to 234.197 miles per hour (376.9 km/h). The record was set on the smooth surface of the dried salt lake Bonneville in Utah. The Amazon saddled the tuned Suzuki Hayabusa 2002 release, modified by specialists from the APEX Speed ​​Technologies studio.

The British government has developed recommendations to parents to determine a safe dose of alcohol for children aged 5 to 18 years. New norms will be applied since the spring of 2009. According to statistics, British children begin to drink alcoholic drinks before and drink them more and more. At the same time, in general, the number of drinking children and adolescents in average in the country is reduced.

The leadership of the prison hospital in the suburbs, where the former lawyer of the NK Yukos Svetlana Bakhmina, transferred the prisoner along with the newborn daughter from one building of the medical institution to another in connection with preventive work, her lawyer Roman Golovkin transferred his sentence.

The Japanese company Toyota does not intend to abandon the project to create a racing sports Lexus LF-A by 2011. Despite the difficult economic situation, the novelty, as the concern promises, will be born in the deadline. This is reported by WorldCarfans . “The company will not leave Formula 1 races even despite the fact that it is extremely difficult to continue the development of sportsmen in the current financial condition,” says Katsuaki Vatanabe, head of Toyota.

The dinosaur cemetery discovered this year in the East Chinese province of Shandun is perhaps the largest in the world. Such a statement on Thursday was made by the Chinese paleontologist Zhao Sitszin. During large -scale excavations near the city of Zhuchen, 7.6 thousand fossilized bones of lizards have already been found, the scientist said.

A sharp increase in sales of goods that can save money is noted at the end of the year in Japan due to the global economic crisis, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Sankay newspaper. Against the background of the fall of demand in the country, sales of inexpensive household goods of reusable use have grown especially noticeably.

The international organization "Reporters Without Borders" summed up 2008: according to her, less journalists died and suffered than last year, but the general climate of the "Freedom of the Press" did not improve. And with the development of Internet media, another target appeared among the censors and aggressors: five times more information resources were closed on the network than among printed, television and radio sources.

A golf club building will be built on the territory of the Luzhniki Olympic complex, Interfax reports with reference to the city administration. They clarified that the mayor Yuri Luzhkov signed an order of the city government on approval of acts of the permitted use of new construction and reconstruction of multifunctional buildings that ensure the infrastructure of the Luzhniki sports complex, including the golf club building.

The plot of the famous film "Terminal" with Tom Hanks in the title role came to life in the Alma-Ata airport: for several months, a citizen of Nigeria is forced to live in the area of ​​international passport control. However, the foreigner has no right to stay in Kazakhstan or fly abroad: he has expired the terms of all necessary documents and visas, Interfax reports.