Chronicle of sporting events The leader of the Brazilian national team and Milan won the Ballon d'Or, a prestigious award awarded annually by France Football to the best player in the world. The information that Kaka will win the award, the winner of which is chosen by voting by 96 journalists and 50 football players, was distributed by Italian publications a long time ago, but only yesterday France Football officially confirmed it.

The difficult stories of searching for a head coach for the England and Australia national teams, as well as conflicting information surrounding the extension of the contract with the coach of the Russian national team, Guus Hiddink, are links in the same chain.

At the non/fiction intellectual book fair, according to its invariable custom, the winners of the Andrei Bely Prize - the oldest underground-avant-garde-current literary award - were named.

The US team took the Davis Cup from Russia The sixth racket of the world Andy Roddick, the 13th number of the individual ATP classification James Blake and the best couple of the planet, brothers Bob and Mike Bryan, ensured that the US team won the third major team trophy in the last fifteen seasons - the Davis Cup.

At the end of this week, Lebanese politicians will again try to elect the country's president. The elections were scheduled for last Thursday and were postponed again. This is already the sixth postponement since September of this year. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced that elections will take place on December 7.

A powerful Atlantic cyclone is moving with precipitation to the west of European territory. Southerly winds blow in its front part, and therefore it will be warm. In the northwestern regions today there will be snow at times, wet during the day, snowstorms in places, wet snow sticking here and there during the day, strong wind, gusts up to 15-17 m/s in some places. Tuesday will also be windy and wet.

Russia will cancel export duties on leather and tea In the near future, Russian shoemakers, tanners and tea producers should start producing more and selling without significantly increasing prices. The government has created all the conditions for this: from December 10, a duty-free customs regime will be introduced for bulk tea and raw hides. True, the operation of such a customs regime on a temporary basis has not yet brought the desired results.

Disgraced security officer Mikhail Trepashkin returned home from prison Former FSB colonel Mikhail Trepashkin served his sentence for disclosing state secrets and was released last Friday from penal colony IK-13, located near Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk region. Arriving in Yekaterinburg, the disgraced security officer immediately told reporters that he intended to seek a review of the verdict in his case and prove that it was fabricated. In the evening of the same day, Mr.

Summing up the election results at the Central Election Commission turned into a show “Thank God, the election campaign is over. I am sure that the voter has decided on his preferences, and now you just need to come and vote for the party whose program seems convincing, vote for those people you trust,” said the main winner of yesterday’s Duma elections, President Vladimir Putin, immediately after I voted myself.

Vladimir Alekno's team will go to the Olympics in Beijing At the World Cup that ended in Tokyo, the Russian men's team took second place and won one of three tickets to the 2008 Summer Olympics. The main trophy of the competition went to the Brazilians, who have not known failure in the largest international competitions since 2002, another ticket to Beijing was given to the Bulgarians who completed the top three.

Turks attack Kurds with an eye on the USA Turkish President Abdullah Gul yesterday confirmed Ankara's "readiness and right" for a military operation against bases and militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in neighboring Iraq. In turn, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the decision to conduct a cross-border operation was made by the government on November 28 as part of the anti-terrorism law approved by parliament in mid-October.

The Russian national team recognized their opponents for Euro 2008 Guus Hiddink had a chance to clearly show how much the Russian football team has changed under his leadership. Yesterday, at the draw for the final stage of Euro 2008 in Lucerne, the Russians faced almost all the same opponents as three and a half years ago at the European Championships in Portugal . Once again our team will play with the teams of Greece and Spain. Only this time, instead of the Portuguese, there will be Swedes.

At the end of last week, a statement by its director Valentin Rodionov appeared on the website of the Tretyakov Gallery regarding the appeal of far-right organizations to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Viktor Zubkov with a demand to remove the director of the Tretyakov Gallery from his post.

How Kazakhstan became the OSCE chairman The skill with which Kazakh diplomacy achieved the OSCE chairmanship for its country evokes sincere admiration. A compromise on this issue appears to be the only serious result of the meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers (CMFA) held in Madrid late last week. Kazakhstan will receive the chairmanship in this organization that it has cherished for several years, but not in 2009, but in 2010. In Astana this decision is considered a great success.

Total may try its gas luck at the Astrakhan field The head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, paid a short but eventful visit to Paris last Friday. During the day, he managed to hold the next meeting of the European Business Congress and meet with the main French partners - the heads of Gaz de France and Total Jean-François Cirelli and Christophe de Margerie. During a discussion at a congressional meeting, Mr. Miller said that the era of cheap gas, as well as cheap oil, was over.