Unforgettable Boris Nikolaich! To hell with a candle, to hell with a poker! Everything you wish for yourself Let it come true, dear friend! With the menacing grace of a moose You chased the surrounding foxes... Let all this come true the same way, How your promises came true! What did beloved Yeltsin promise us? Really, will I finish if I start? Was about to lay down on the rails And leave Chechnya alone,≈ And reforms, freedoms, defaults, And the habit of changing prime ministers... However, no.

It all started with the fact that Russell refused to spend Christmas and New Year with Meg, preferring her company to a noisy party with friends. Stunned by this behavior, Ryan started a scandal at the hotel, but Crowe simply left, slamming the door. Since then, she has been looking for an opportunity to correct her “mistake,” but the hero of “Gladiator” simply does not answer the phone when she calls. “Meg looks devastated, absolutely dejected.

Bill Clinton is having a hard time after leaving the White House. Firstly, the ex-president has huge debts - his defense against Paula Jones' charges cost him $9 million. Secondly, the scandal with Monica has not been forgotten, and independent prosecutor Robert Ray hopes that Clinton will be able to be accused and prosecuted, or even arrested. The Gordian knot of these problems can be cut in a rather unexpected way.

February 1 is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Clark Gable, the hero-lover of all times. Money, fame, the love of beautiful women - all this was in his life. But there was also melancholy and loneliness, the death of a loved one and playing with death. At the age of 16, having first seen the play “Bird of Paradise” in a traveling theater, Gable realized that he would be an actor. The father was furious. He believed that his son should be a farmer.

The legendary British intelligence agency MI6 is at a loss, the kind only experienced by a man who suddenly finds himself standing naked in the middle of a noisy street. And whoever stripped the respectable gentleman down to his underwear was former employee Richard Tomlinson, who published the book “The Big Breach: from Top Secret to Maximum Security” in Moscow.

When they were preparing for dinner and clearing away various literature from the table, a book with a strange name caught my eye. To tell the truth, I have ceased to be surprised by the books that my wife, a psychologist of the State Duma, brings home to read at bedtime: that’s her job. But this time it was something ≈ “I see you naked,” the book was called. “What is this?” I ask.

Mordechai Vanunu, 46, who is currently in prison, is competing for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. In 1986, an Israeli physicist and nuclear energy specialist was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison for disclosing state secrets. After working for 9 years at a secret nuclear reactor in Dimona (Israel), the scientist managed to secretly smuggle a camera into a room codenamed “Mahon-2”, where installations producing weapons-grade plutonium are located.

The authoritative global rating agency Standart&Poor▓s published a disappointing forecast for Russia for 2001. Their experts claim that all the main economic indicators included in our budget are overestimated by 2 times. Inflation will not be 12 percent, but 25 percent. Foreign creditors will have to pay back not $1.25 billion, but $3.5 billion. The conclusion is that the government will soon find itself at a crossroads.

Unfortunately, it is time to include healthy people in the Red Book as a rare phenomenon that threatens to soon turn into the rarest. What kind of health can we talk about if, according to statistics, less than a third of pregnant women can boast of it? Until how long can you? A hundred years ago in Russia, people often gave birth, many times, and sometimes entire families at the same time: grandmother, mother, and even granddaughter - all together.

A study conducted by eMarketer found that 75 percent of children agree to provide private information about their parents to Internet companies. Especially if they are promised gifts or money for this. Approximately 44% of children surveyed are ready to tell the names of their parents, 26% agree to talk about the habits of their family. The use of children as a source of information about possible clients began a long time ago.

On January 20, a conference of the Yaroslavl “Yabloko” was held in a secret atmosphere. One of the delegates asked the regional leader (now former) Elena Mizulina where the additional income suddenly appeared in the audit commission report. It turned out that it was from the sale of party property. Elena Mizulina sold office equipment and furniture at half price and... to herself.

The second crayfish boiling tournament took place in one of the Moscow restaurants. The chefs were Lelya Turubara, Yulianna Shakhova, Yuri Longo, Boris Krasnov and other stars, and they were judged not only by the best chefs, but also by colleagues: Lidiya Fedoseeva-Shukshina, Arkady Vainer with his whole family, and Nikas Safronov. Longo put the crayfish into the pan upside down and whispered something, wrinkling his forehead.

The very young singer Yulia Nachalova was legally married to the lead singer of the fashionable boy group “Prime Minister” Dmitry Lansky. They met four years ago while studying at the pop department of the famous school named after. Gnesins. At first there was no talk of any romance, but gradually it got to the point that the young people were forced to ask Yulia’s parents for permission to live separately. This winter, the couple did not care about civil marriages, which are now so popular.

As always, I continue to introduce you only to the good, little-noticed news of the past week. * As Nikolai Aksenenko reported, the construction of a tunnel under the Bering Strait (it was proposed to be built by Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich) has been postponed for now due to the ambitiousness and high cost of this undertaking. But another tunnel may very well appear - this is the widely announced Aksenenko bridge between Primorye and Japan.

Russian will be taught in UK public schools. To implement the new program developed by Lord Nuffield's foundation, the government will create special language colleges where, in addition to European languages, Japanese, Chinese and Russian will be taught.