The inauguration ceremony of Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic, re-elected in April this year for a second term, was held on Monday in the country's parliament, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Associated Press. In the presidential elections that ended in Slovakia on April 4, 2009, Ivan Gasparovic won a landslide victory, gaining 55.53% of the vote. Opposition candidate Iveta Radichova received 44.47%. Ivan Gasparovich was born on March 27, 1941.

Last Thursday, the swine flu epidemic was officially recognized as a global one. The World Health Organization has raised the pandemic threat level to the sixth highest level. The last time this happened was 41 years ago. In 1968, Asia experienced a major outbreak of the Hong Kong flu. It quickly spread around the world - 33,800 people died from the virus. The WHO was in no hurry to recognize the swine flu pandemic. This could very well have happened last month.

Newsweek is like vinegared lollipops. The smell of peach is round. The letter "U" is golden. Such is the world of synesthesia. Now scientists are trying to understand its laws Once I had an argument with a girl about the color of the letter "R". She thought the "R" was green, and I said it was black. Friends could not understand why the letter should have a certain color. If you write in blue, it will be blue; if you write in yellow, it will be yellow.

Good-natured nannies are being replaced by bodyguard governesses Housewife Marina Piskareva once noticed that reports of missing children began to appear on television with some frightening frequency. And the housewife, of course, was frightened: she fired the nanny of her 11-year-old son, a good-natured elderly lady from Kharkov, and hired a tutor-bodyguard instead of her.

There is a criminal revolution going on in Russia. Very handy: both convicts and their victims suffer from punitive justice The prisoners had previously worked for the businessman Aleksey Gornev, who was engaged in cargo transportation - they repaired his cars. A month ago, as an experiment, Gornev opened a hostel for former prisoners in Yekaterinburg: they provide both a bed and work with a salary of 12,000 rubles.

The financial crisis has reached the top heavyweights. TV companies save money, fights break down one by one Everything was ready for the duel between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye: all tickets for the 60,000-seat Feltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, were sold, expensive contracts were signed with major television companies, including HBO. Klitschko himself volunteered to defend his IBF and WBO titles.

Russia has found new friends: withdrawal from negotiations with the WTO has become a political gesture Tired of it! The country was kept on a short leash; other countries take five to seven years to join the WTO, but we take all 16, a Russian government official is offended. Last Tuesday, Vladimir Putin ended the negotiations. The routine meeting of the EurAsEC prime ministers ended in a sensation.

Last Thursday, President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed Viktor Chernomyrdin from the post of Russian ambassador to Ukraine and appointed him special presidential envoy for economic cooperation with the CIS countries. Chernomyrdin wrote his resignation himself, and, according to some information, six months ago.

Russia's Chief Sanitary Doctor Gennady Onishchenko banned the import and sale of more than a thousand Belarusian dairy products in Russia - from milk to glazed curds. Formally, the ban is explained by the fact that Belarusian producers did not re-register the documentation and packaging of their products in accordance with the new requirements of the Russian technical regulations for milk. In particular, he forbids calling milk a product restored from a dry powder - now it is a "milk drink".

It is not the Criminal Code that needs to be humanized, but investigators, judges and prosecutors Here, they say, we need humanization of criminal legislation. In this regard, I have a question: to whom? Neither me nor my husband, who has been in prison for a year, needs it. And all the talk about humanization is false and harmful. For a year now, I have watched drug dealers, murderers, robbers and rapists being released with a little scolding.

In addition to softening certain articles of the Criminal Code, Dmitry Medvedev instructed the government to develop measures to support victims of crime. We are talking about financial compensation. This practice exists in many countries of the world, but not yet in Russia. The only exception is the Kemerovo region. There, the governor Aman Tuleev five years ago created a program to help victims of thieves and murderers. The governor of Kemerovo told Newsweek how this program works.

Last week, Vladimir Putin once again demonstrated to the people his love for art. Last spring, he watched Woe from Wit in Sovremennik and called Chatsky a whiner in front of the cameras of the central television channels. Now he came to the gallery to the artist Ilya Glazunov and called the saints Boris and Gleb wimps. “They gave everything without a fight. They lay down and waited to be killed,” the Prime Minister was indignant, examining the paintings.

A resident of Germany, Michael Basting set a world record for speed kissing - in one minute he kissed 111 women on the cheek. The 31-year-old web designer stood on the curb near one of the discos in Berlin and kissed passers-by women, among whom were numerous tourists. The show was carefully planned, Basting actively prepared for it: he trained on his colleagues. Personal record, according to him, is 136 kisses per minute.

Refusal to join the WTO means much more for Russia's domestic policy than for foreign At first, I did not believe the news that Russia was terminating negotiations on joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). To integrate into the global economy in the company of the Belarusian and Kazakh dictatorships? This is probably a joke. “Who said this? - Asked me a familiar economist. - Putin?

Cartoons instead of memories: the global boom of documentaries has reached Moscow The documentary genre has nothing to do with objectivity. In non-fiction films, everything depends on the director's eye - just like in quantum physics, the very observation of an experiment affects the result. Some documentary filmmakers shoot using the “fly on the wall” method - this is when all events are given as if from the point of view of a fly that does not have a point of view.