In besieged Gaza, the most densely populated place on earth, people grow cucumbers, watch the World Cup and sell illegal toys in the market, smuggled in through the tunnels on the border with Egypt. "Do you follow the World Cup?" was the first question I was asked in Gaza. The locals, of course, watched. Large screens were installed on the streets, around which crowds of fans gathered. While they were watching the game, they were also watching them.

In Russia, there is a surge in the trade in fakes of expensive brands. Following the fakes, the robbers also pulled up On his 30th birthday, an engineer from a Moscow construction company, Nikita R., made himself a present—he bought a used Vertu mobile phone for 170,000 rubles. Came home with it and found it was a fake. Nikita rummaged through his memory and understood everything: when he bought a phone, he was holding a real Vertu in his hands.

Dmitry Medvedev managed to dismiss a significant number of old-timer governors. On his initiative, 16 heads of federal subjects of the “Yeltsin call” resigned, including such heavyweights as Yegor Stroev, Eduard Rossel and Mintimer Shaimiev. Nevertheless, at the moment, 17 more people are sitting in their chairs, who became heads of regions under Yeltsin.

In ten years, Sergei Pugachev went from the closest financier to the Kremlin to bankruptcy Countess Tolstoy stops her luxury limousine in the center of Paris near the gastronomic boutique Hediard. A second later, she appears with purchases—boxes of high-end chocolate worth a few hundred euros. In December 2009, when this commercial was launched, it surprised no one—financier and industrialist Sergei Pugachev, owner of Hediard and husband of Alexandra Tolstaya, was thought to be doing well.

Germany proposed to create a mechanism for the bankruptcy of the EU countries. Nobody wants to go bankrupt Last Tuesday, Greece started borrowing again—it issued €1.6 billion worth of bonds. Instead of being scared, the players were delighted. Demand for Greek securities exceeded supply three and a half times, and the European currency strengthened against the dollar.

Reporting from the battlefield. In the South of Russia, the Orthodox community rebelled against Anatoly Kashpirovsky Anatoly Kashpirovsky claims that he has not practiced hypnosis for many years, but last Tuesday a Newsweek correspondent heard his voice through a dream. Kashpirovsky called to find out how he turned out in the photographs taken the day before in the darkness of cinema hall number 8 of the Krasnodar Kinomax.

Governor elections and business wars are a thing of the past. Now PR agencies and the press make money on government propaganda Three years ago, it seemed to officials and employees of PR agencies that serious budget spending on the promotion of state projects was about to come to naught, along with national projects that, before the 2008 presidential election, required strong PR support. The state was ready to pay at market prices.