In Sevastopol on Monday, they said goodbye to 25-year-old journalist Anastasia Baburova, who was killed in Moscow during an attack by an unknown person on lawyer Stanislav Markelov, RIA Novosti correspondent reports. Lawyer Markelov, known for a number of high-profile cases, was killed on January 19 in the center of Moscow. The perpetrator also wounded Anastasia Baburova, a freelance correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, who was leaving the press conference with her lawyer.

The Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, held in Moscow on Sunday, elected Metropolitans Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk, Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk as candidates for the Moscow Patriarchal Throne out of 145 hierarchs. The names of the candidates were announced by the chairman of the counting commission of the Council of Bishops, Metropolitan of Ekaterinodar and Kuban Isidor.

When the crisis hit enterprises, the mayor of Chelyabinsk, Mikhail Yurevich, proposed a cunning rescue plan: to guarantee loans to businesses with urban real estate. In mid-January, the Chelyabinsk Forge and Press Plant received 50 million rubles from Sberbank. And the city laid ten non-residential premises for this. The trick is that these premises have already been rented by Sberbank from the administration of Chelyabinsk.

“Don't ask me how much we reduced production. We don't have any production. We stopped the plant and sent people on vacation, ”says Boris Marishchuk, general director of Tver Polyether, bitterly. And he immediately tries to find out from a Newsweek correspondent where he can get a loan at moderate rates. Tverskoy Polyester produces car seat covers. Consumers have not paid Marishuk for 1.5 months. AvtoVAZ offers its suppliers bills of exchange payable in six months instead of money.

Next year, environmentalists will save the Australian island of Macquarie. First, helicopters will scatter poison baits around the island. The airstrike would be GPS-guided and therefore would be accurate and deadly: all the rodents and 95% of the rabbits would die on Macquarie. The remaining survivors will be finished off by landing forces - the island will be combed by hunters with dogs and fumigators. Then observers will land on the island.

In mid-January, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov reminded himself of himself by convening an international conference on gas transit. "Issues of transit of energy resources should not depend on political, economic and other problems spontaneously arising in the world," the President of Turkmenistan, which provides a quarter of Russian gas exports, frightened.

The newly discovered asteroid 2009 BD passed Earth on Sunday, only 700,000 kilometers away - about 1.8 times the distance to the Moon. Data on the orbit of this celestial body, whose dimensions do not exceed 10 meters, are given on the NASA website, RIA Novosti reports. The asteroid was discovered at the beginning of last week by specialists from the Mount Lemmon Observatory (USA, Arizona) and, according to scientists, does not pose a direct threat to the Earth.

The fact that on the site zapatriarha.ru the new Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' was elected Metropolitan of Tokyo and All Japan Daniil, the creator of the site Alexander Korsunov first accused hackers. On the site, one could vote for any bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, but for some reason, the native Japanese Nushiro Ikio became the favorite. Korsunov repulsed the hacker attack, but it soon turned out that Ikio was ahead again. These were no longer hackers, but a flash mob.

Saturday evening in one of the Moscow bars. The visitors drink lazily and look at each other with a bored look. Suddenly, young people in elegant short-sleeved jackets, wide trousers, tight ties burst into the hall with noise and laughter; the girls are wearing fitted dresses of bright colors. The DJ smiles broadly, puts on a wide-brimmed hat, and puts on the song You never can tell Chuck Berry, to which John Travolta and Uma Thurman danced in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

Bryan Singer's film "Operation Valkyrie" is released in Russia and Western Europe on January 29th. It will not become an Oscar hit - the picture did not receive a single nomination. Although until recently it seemed to many that academics would definitely mark a film about the legendary conspiracy of senior German officers who planned to kill Hitler in 1944. Now the performer of the role of the main conspirator - Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg - Tom Cruise is betting on box office success.

Japanese gangsters receive unemployment benefits despite a ban on providing social benefits to members of organized crime groups. The recession that the Japanese economy has entered has led to a reduction in the income received by the yakuza from the real estate and construction markets - the mafiosi do not have enough money. In addition, the tightening of laws against organized crime groups had a negative impact on income from prostitution and usury.

Gomel pensioner Anatoly Zaichenko, after he lost all his savings in the early 90s, no longer trusted anyone and kept his money at home - "in a drawer." No one - except for President Lukashenko. The pensioner preferred native "bunnies" to foreign currency. On New Year's Eve, the president gave the pensioner a surprise - he devalued the national currency by 20%. Zaichenko has lost everything he put aside over the past year.

Icelandic Prime Minister Geir Horde announced on Monday the immediate resignation of the government due to the collapse of the coalition, RIA Novosti reports citing Agence France-Presse. The government coalition, which is formed by the Independent Party, chaired by Jorde, and the Social Democratic Alliance, was supposed to work until 2011.

The first trial of the International Criminal Court (ICC) began on Monday in The Hague, RIA Novosti correspondent reports. In the dock is 48-year-old citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Tom Lubanga Dyilo. He is accused of recruiting children under the age of 15 into military formations under his control and involving these children in hostilities during the inter-ethnic conflict in the Congolese province of Ituri in September 2002-August 2003.