The business activity index (PMI) of the processing of Russia has decreased to 4.5-year minimum. In January, its level amounted to 48 points - this is a record low in June 2009. In the near future, the sector will face a serious threat to recession, HSBC analysts prophesy .

Canadian researchers from the University of McGill report that they managed to create an super -strength glass, which can only be wrestled from a strong blow. The article about this was published in Nature Communications. The authors borrowed the idea of ​​increasing the strength of glass from the shells of sea mollusks. Their shells are 95% of the chalk, which in itself is very fragile.

The ubiquitous Chinese set a new trend. In recent years, the number of tourists from the Celestial Empire, going to Antarctica, is growing more intensively than the number of citizens of any other country in the world. The Antarctica has become one of the main must-see areas for the rich residents of the PRC, and although the cost of a trip there exceeds $ 30 thousand, the number of Chinese who go annually to look at the “last piece of non-turbulent nature” is growing exponentially.

The rain television channel since February 10 ceases to be broadcast in the Tricolor TV networks, according to the operator’s website. The leadership of the channel believes that in fact, this means closing. On Monday, on the page of the last large operator who worked with the opposition media, the news appeared that a week later, by decision of the Board of Directors of the National satellite company CJSC, the Rain TV channel leaves the Tricolor TV. More precisely, it is taken out.

The Ministry of Economic Development can comply with the government’s long threatening and select uninterior investments from departments that violate budget discipline, Kommersant writes. The Ministry discuss the possible redistribution of part of the funds provided for in the 2014 budget for federal targeted programs - so far we are talking about 57 billion rubles.

At the end of January, as part of the project “exchange of data” of the Zavtra cafe club, a lecture “Social Entrepreneurship was held: how to get rich in good deeds”. The head of the program for the development of the social business of the social business of social innovation Cloudwatcher, Ivan Biryukov, told why people need to be treated as a business project, what a social business is better than usual and how to make money, helping others. Slon gives an abbreviated version of the lecture.

Rosstat claims that from 2011 to 2013, the share of smokers in Russia has not changed and amounted to 24%. And this despite the fact that, according to his own , the average prices for cigarettes for the same time increased by about doubled (1.5–2.6 times, depending on the species). The tobacco lobby reports that the reason for this situation is that legal production of cigarettes is replaced by cheap illegal cigarettes.

Petersburg city defenders have achieved the abolition of the scandalous order of the Committee on the State Use and Protection of Monuments (KGIOP) Smolny, writes Kommersant. In June 2013, KGIOP included the Okhtinsky Cape in the register of monuments and allowed residential and commercial development there, although it is forbidden to build on the territory of archaeological monuments by law.

Humanity has a new obsession: a mobile game called Flappy Bird ( iOS , Android ) from the unknown Vietnamese Indie-developer Juan Ha Dong . Now Flappy Bird is the most popular application in Apple and Google stores in almost a hundred countries around the planet - from the USA and France to Gayan, Angillas and Micronesia (Russia is still behind the trend).

For the first time in Russia, for gay propaganda among minors, a minor was brought to justice. In the Bryansk region, during a certain “preventive work”, a 9th grade student was “revealed”, who “openly recognizes himself as a face of non-traditional sexual orientation,” Znak.com reports .

Holy Inquisition. French engraving at the beginning of the 18th century Fear walks around Russia. Fear of objective truth. The bill introduced by United Russia Remeskov and long-lobbying by General Bastrykin proposes to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure : “The court, prosecutor, the head of the investigative body ...

- So far on the Maidan, everything is relatively calm, Kiev calculates the missing. According to the Euromaidansos group, there are already 36 of them. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine claims that from mid -November to the end of January 26 appeals about the missing were received in the police. - The European Union decided to help Ukraine not only with advice, but also with money.

$ 100 million Ukraine will receive from the EBRD to develop energy. The purpose of the program is to teach local enterprises to modernize and find money for investment programs in the Ukrainian financial sector. One of the largest Russian retailers, the “tape”, is going to conduct an IPO. The company plans to place global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange, and then get a listing on the Moscow Exchange and expects to attract $ 1–1.5 billion.

The debt of Ukraine for gas in January rose to $ 3.35 billion, in total this month the country received 2.4 billion cubic meters from Gazprom . m of gas by almost $ 650 million, writes Vedomosti. If you look at the data for 2013: Naftogaz received about 13 billion cubic meters. m, and the total debt per year is $ 2.7 billion - that is, the company has not paid more than half of last year’s Russian gas.

The world is not to surprise with messages about catastrophes from Indonesia, which is located in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. But the news about the death of 16 people, due to the explosion of the Sinabung volcano on the island of Sumatra, still fall out of the general row. People died after the authorities allowed them to return to places of permanent residence.