Russia will transfer another 10 million dollars to the autonomy Yesterday's international conference in Paris , where the foreign ministers of donor countries, ready to provide financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority, ended with success for the Palestinians. The international community returned to the previous pattern, in which the embryonic economy of the future state of Palestine somehow kept afloat thanks to cash injections from outside.

The Russian political situation, even after the well-known decisions of the United Russia congress, can with equal grounds be called absolutely predictable and absolutely unpredictable. The predictability of the election of a successor as president and the subsequent appointment of the president as prime minister under the successor president is not a way out of the trap into which the power elite has driven itself by choosing a fundamentally wrong way to build a system of power.

In the new year, the first special port zones will appear in Russia The main result of the outgoing year for the Federal Agency for Special Economic Zones (RosSEZ) was the official opening of a zone in Alabuga (or, more commonly in our ears, Yelabuga ). Plans for next year include opening zones in Dubna, Tomsk and Lipetsk. However, the main event of the coming year should be the emergence in Russia of a new, fourth type of zone - port .

Russian dancers took first place in the Grand Prix final The final of the Grand Prix in figure skating, in which three Russian pairs also participated, ended in Turin, Italy. The only medal, also of the highest standard, was won by Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin. The second domestic dance duo, Yana Khokhlova - Sergei Novitsky, as well as representatives of pair skating Yuko Kawaguchi - Alexander Smirnov, became fifth.

Gata Kamsky won the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk The World Chess Cup has ended in Khanty-Mansiysk. Gata Kamsky won the final match against Alexey Shirov with a score of 2.5:1.5 and received the right to a match with Veselin Topalov. This match is part of the ongoing cycle of the individual world championship, and the winner will play the final match for the world title against the winner of the Anand-Kramnik main match. Kamsky's victory is a kind of finale of his return to big chess.

Vladimir Putin agreed to head the government after the election of Dmitry Medvedev Yesterday, Russians were officially told who will govern the country after the 2008 presidential elections. The Russian political lexicon now includes the concept of “Putin-Medvedev tandem.” Moreover, President Medvedev promised in his post to implement Putin’s plan, although it is Mr. Putin who will work for the new president as prime minister, that is, the head of the executive branch.

The first suspect in the bus bombing in Nevinnomyssk was detained The FSB Directorate of the Stavropol Territory yesterday reported the arrest of the first suspect in a terrorist attack on a passenger bus, which resulted in the death of two people and the injury of 13 others. On the evening of December 9, during an intermediate stop of the Ikarus bus traveling along the Pyatigorsk-Stavropol route, an explosion occurred at the bus station in the city of Nevinnomyssk .

Another accused has appeared in the case of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak In the scandalous criminal case of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak , who was arrested a month ago on charges of attempting to steal $43 million from the budget, another, fourth defendant has appeared. The Basmanny court issued a warrant for the arrest of Igor Kruglyakov, a member of the board of directors of the Interregional Investment Bank (IIB), who is also the president of VO Vneshtorgbiznes CJSC.

The state-owned company admitted that it did not enter into a deal with Vnesheconombank President of the state-owned Rosneft Sergei Bogdanchikov admitted yesterday that his company never sold a 50% stake in Tomskneft to Vnesheconombank , despite the fact that on July 2 it issued a press release about the deal as a fait accompli. This fact, by the way, was immediately denied by the management of VEB. “Rosneft still has 100% (of Tomskneft shares - Ed. ). We would like to complete the deal.

The court returned the “Khlebnikov case” to the prosecutor’s office The retrial in the Moscow City Court of the scandalous case of the murder in the summer of 2004 of the editor-in-chief of the Russian version of Forbes magazine, Paul Klebnikov, ended yesterday before it had even really begun. Court hearings were suspended more than six months ago due to the disappearance of one of the defendants, Kazbek Dukuzov .

The evolution of human races was tested on small fish Genetic mechanisms, for all their complexity and intricacy, often work the same way in a wide variety of organisms. A group of scientists from the United States and Portugal were able to show that the evolution of human races is very similar to the evolution of the small, bony fish stickleback, which is found in Eurasia and North America.

The case of corruption in the German concern continued in Norway and Nigeria Siemens' financial activities continue to be at the center of legal proceedings around the world . As it became known over the weekend, the Norwegian government has decided to exclude the company from the system of distribution of government orders.

The premiere of Alvis Hermanis’ new play “The Sound of Silence” took place in Riga. This performance has an intriguing subtitle: “The 1968 Simon and Gorfunkel concert in Riga that never happened.” But there is no need to wait for the reconstruction of the mythical concert of American stars - this is a performance about Riga in the late 60s, about the time and young people in whose ears the sweet songs of Simon and Gorfunkel sounded, promising happiness.

Lukashenko reforms social policy Yesterday, the Belarusian authorities took the first step towards reforming the social assistance system. A law has come into force that significantly reduces the amount of social benefits. At the same time, a presidential decree was promulgated on providing targeted support to low-income citizens. The cumbersome benefits system was part of the Belarusian economic model, which President Alexander Lukashenko called “market socialism” in the late 1990s.

To independently decide the fate of the Serbian region Kosovo is a problem that cannot be solved either in Washington or Moscow. After yesterday’s termination of the mandate of the international “troika” (USA, EU and Russia) on a settlement in Kosovo, the European Union adheres to this position.