Rallies in Russia are equal to violation of sanitary standards, and it may entail a real prison term Coronavirus turns into a powerful weapon of the authorities against oppositional citizens - especially those who have a large number of subscribers in social networks. But to keep this in mind is worth everyone who speaks out about protests and planned shares in their accounts. Before Sunday rallies, the authorities launched a large campaign with searches, detention and new criminal cases.

Some members of the British Parliament called for sanctions against Russian “oligarchs.” The names of Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov have been named - both not only appear on the “Navalny list”, but also have real large assets in the UK. Lib Dem Lila Moran and Labor MP Margaret Hodge have called for sanctions in connection with the poisoning and arrest of Alexei Navalny (as well as protesters in Russia).

) Wall Street Commission-free investment app Robinhood, which provided retail investors with the opportunity to play against (and win in the "battle for GameStop", has decided to wind it down. The frustrated audience immediately lowered the rating of the application to one.

Lawyers for the arrested shareholders of one of the largest retailers of computer equipment Merlion today declared the innocence of the defendants. According to them, the case is based on the false testimony of former CEO Vyacheslav Simonenko, who demanded $4.5 million from them. A week ago, Simonenko outlined to Kommersant his vision of the criminal case, in which Merlion co-founders Oleg Karchev, Vladislav Mangutov, Alexei Abramov and top manager Boris Levin were detained in October 2020.

US GDP in 2020, according to the first estimate of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, decreased by 3.5% year-on-year. But in the fourth quarter, it rose 4% from the third, suggesting a strong recovery in 2021. The annual figure is the worst since the Second World War: in 1946, US GDP fell by 11.6% on the curtailment of military production, and grew in subsequent years. During the crisis of 2009, the fall was less - by 2.5%.

In the ranking of the global automotive industry, for the first time in several years, the leader has changed : instead of the German Volkswagen in sales in 2020, the Japanese Toyota came out on top. Toyota has published a report stating that it sold 9.528 million vehicles for the entire 2020. This is 11.3% worse than the results of 2019, but better than the results of competitors. Quotes of Toyota on Thursday at the premarket rose slightly towards the close.

The decline in the permanent population of Russia in 2020, according to Rosstat , exceeded 500 thousand people. The last time such a high level of decline was observed in 2005. Rosstat published an estimate of the population of Russia as of January 1, 2021 - 146.238 million people. As of January 1, 2020, it was 146.739 million people. Thus, the decline for the year amounted to 511 thousand people. In 2019, the decline was only 35.6 thousand people.

After a long search for a partner in the Russian market, E-commerce “Sber” finally announced a deal with the owners of the Goods.ru online retailer, a member of the M.Video group. We reported about the impending transaction at the end of November. What is known about it and what are the prospects of this union in the material of The Bell. What we agreed Sber will become the main owner of the marketplace with a share of 85%. M.

The Moscow Regional Court left Alexei Navalny under arrest, rejecting the appeal of the defense. Navalny will remain in jail until February 15. Navalny participated in the court hearing via videoconference from the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center. Despite this, as notes , security around the Moscow Regional Court was strengthened, paddy wagons and additional fences were put up.

How the pandemic influenced the digitalization of the financial sector, how to remain positive on the remote and what to do with the female sense of guilt. About this, Elizabeth Ossetian, founder of The Bell projects and “Russian norms!”, On the air of Bell.club Live, spoke with Ekaterina Petelina, senior vice president and Chief Operational Director of Visa in the North America (USA and Canada). Recently, Catherine was headed by Visa Global Business Operations and now combines both positions.

The Just Russia parliamentary party of Sergei Mironov today signed a manifesto on merging with the national-patriotic party "For Truth" of Zakhar Prilepin and "Patriots of Russia" of Gennady Semigin. The last two parties are disbanding - that is, we are actually talking about their absorption.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade is ready to subsidize the costs of exporting Russian goods not only to domestic marketplaces, but also to companies of this profile with foreign participation, writes RBC with reference to an updated draft government decree.

The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against the head of the regional headquarters of Navalny Leonid Volkov - he is suspected of inciting teenagers "to illegal actions" via the Internet. The release of the Investigative Committee says that the department found videos in which Volkov appeals to minors to participate in "illegal actions." We are talking about the rallies that took place throughout the country on January 23.

American big tech held a parade of brilliant reports last night: Apple and Facebook announced record quarterly revenues, and Tesla announced its first annual net profit in its history (although it turned out to be lower than forecasts, which put the company's ultra-high valuation at risk).

Forbes has published a new rating of "kings of Russian real estate" - billionaires God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev, who own Kievskaya Ploshchad, topped the rating. As the newspaper notes, during the year of the pandemic, the largest rentiers lost a quarter of their income. If in 2019 the participants in the rating of the largest landlords in Russia, according to Forbes, earned a total of $ 7.7 billion, then in 2020 - $ 5.8 billion.