Alexander Shadrin, one of the pioneers of modern Russian economic journalism, has died at the age of 51, reported today. Interfax Shadrin started working at Kommersant as a reporter back in 1991, eventually becoming the head of the business department. Later he worked in the Russian Telegraph newspaper, returned to Kommersant in 2005–2006 as deputy editor-in-chief.

The world's leading certification company, Norwegian DNV GL, refused to service the Nord Stream 2 export gas pipeline project from Russia, not only during construction, but also after its completion. This led to new US sanctions. “DNV GL will cease all verification activities of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline system in accordance with the sanctions and for as long as these sanctions remain in place.

Tesla Elon Musk reported on the implementation of the production plan for 2020 - almost 500 thousand electric vehicles were delivered to consumers, and even a little more was produced. Elon Musk founder of Tesla “I am proud of the Tesla team that was able to achieve this important milestone.

Quotes of the main cryptocurrency of the world - bitcoin - exceeded the important psychological mark of $30,000 on the second day of 2021. According to the integrated data of crypto-exchanges with CoinMarketCap , at 15.30 Moscow time on Saturday, January 2, bitcoin went up by almost 3%, to $30,180. Then on the same day, quotes overcame the level of $31,000. Just before the New Year, bitcoin crossed the $29,000 mark.

Seven of the 10 countries with the highest GDP growth in 2020 are in Africa, writes Bloomberg. The agency estimates that only three of the top 10 countries by GDP growth are not in Africa - Bangladesh, Vietnam and China. The remaining seven, with growth from 1% to 3%, are African Ethiopia, Uganda, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Rwanda and Kenya. Bloomberg predicts that five of these seven will remain in the top 10 in 2022.

The Russian film distribution market in 2020 decreased by almost 60%, follows from the data of the Cinema Fund. The box office of Russian cinemas decreased by 58.8% compared to 2019, to 22.8 billion rubles. A total of 88.7 million tickets were sold, of which 68.6% were sold in the first three “pre-quarantine” months of the year. Russian cinema accounted for almost half of the total box office, and the drop in this category was much less than the total - 12.6%.

Russia in 2020 reduced oil production by 8.6%, gas - by 6.2% by 2019, TASS writes, citing data from the CDU TEK. This means that oil production has fallen to a minimum in a decade. According to accounting data, in 2020 the country produced 512.7 million tons of oil (with gas condensate) and 692.3 billion cubic meters. m of gas. This is in line with the forecasts of the Ministry of Energy (514 million tons and 690 billion cubic meters, respectively).