The first thought that comes to mind when meeting with Jay Dobyns: "I wonder if this thug is going to kill me?" His shaved head, matted goatee, tattooed turtles everywhere, and silver rings on each finger somehow make you doubt that this is a peaceful and law-abiding citizen. His muscular arms are painted from wrists to shoulders, and his sky-blue eyes are hard and merciless. When he's angry - and now Dobyns is very angry - he curses non-stop.

Turkish doctor Oktar Babunu was offended by evolutionists. At a conference in Rome, having the opportunity to ask a question to the speaker, Babuna began to expound the views of creationists - those who oppose the theory of creation to evolution. “If evolution is a fact, then we must see transitional fossils,” shouted Babuna.

Two years ago, state-owned companies and banks - VTB, Sberbank and Rosneft - sold their shares to the public. They were bought by about 250,000 people. All of them lost their money: the securities never rose in price. The problem was recognized as a national one. And then the crisis broke out, and there were many more affected shareholders in Russia. Only Mikhail Prokhorov - the first number of the Russian Forbes list - did not pay off hundreds of thousands of shareholders.

Taiwan will lift a years-old ban on casinos by allowing no more than two gambling resorts to be built. The construction of resorts with a casino is planned in the Penghu archipelago (Pescadores Islands) in the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. It is assumed that gaming establishments will annually attract about half a million tourists to the archipelago and will create 50,000 new jobs.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation has begun developing a sketch of new 10-ruble coins dedicated to the 1150th anniversary of Veliky Novgorod, which will be celebrated in September, a representative of the Novgorod mayor's office told RIA Novosti on Monday. “According to the message from the Department of Cash Circulation of the Central Bank, a draft design of a commemorative coin is being prepared at the moment,” an employee of the mayor's office said.

The thriller The Omen with Nicolas Cage, which hits screens this week, was made by Alex Proyas. Proyas has established himself as a specialist in mystical and fantastic detective stories - "The Raven", "Dark City", "I, Robot". "The Sign" is also a detective, also fantastic, moderately mystical. How the case will end - you do not understand until the very end. What is "The Sign" about? The film "I, Robot" Proyas dedicated to approaching the Apocalypse.

Statements by Latvian politicians about the crisis have become part of the national folklore. “Nothing special,” Finance Minister Atis Slakteris said in December when asked about what is happening to the country. The phrase was immediately replicated on T-shirts, they began to write on the walls, even a musical group of the same name appeared.

Ye Chien-Wei, a four-year-old boy from China, won the right to dispose of one of the uninhabited islands of the Penghu archipelago in the Taiwan Strait in a lottery. Now the boy and six members of his family will be able to go to the island 5 times between May and October 2009. The duration of one trip should be no more than three days - these are the conditions of the competition. The island has housing, running water and electricity.

In Khabarovsk, a philosophy teacher will be tried for promoting scientific atheism and non-pedagogical methods of work. 40 students of the local industrial and economic technical school wrote a statement to the prosecutor's office against their teacher Vladislav Radchenko, who, according to them, staged a real persecution of believing students. “He [Radchenko] told us directly that whoever believes in God will not pass his test or exam in philosophy,” says one of the signatories.

A careless father would rather die than give his ex-wife a quarter of his salary to support his own child. Nikolai N. practically did just that: he forged documents about his own death, and a few months later he “resurrected” - in the neighboring region. Another father said that he was abandoning his daughter when a calf was taken away from him as part of the payment of alimony debt. “Fuck me this daughter! If it’s not right, return the cow !!! ” he shouted to the bailiffs.

Which of the following statements are incorrect? The sun heats because heat is necessary for life. Worms dig underground passages so that the soil is saturated with air. Zebras have black stripes because they eat coal. Microbes mutate to become resistant to antibiotics. Answer: everything. The third incorrectly indicates the cause of the phenomenon, and the rest attribute to the process a goal that it does not have. People tend to attribute a purpose to everything.

"Pidorasi - all!" - such a provocative refrain is a poem on a political theme, dictated by Sekleta Gulvisa, a 90-year-old resident of the village of Belodidy, Dnepropetrovsk region, by the spirit of Taras Shevchenko. In the first half of the 2000s, the ghost of Kobzar - that is Shevchenko's name in Ukraine - regularly visited the prophetess, dictated to her his poetic reflections on the fate of the Ukrainian people and vigorously agitated in support of Viktor Yushchenko.