Lebanon is headed by a general with a bachelor's degree The Lebanese parliament yesterday elected 59-year-old Michel Suleiman (pictured) , army commander since 1998, as president of the country. The general will have to swear in a new cabinet, which will include 16 ministers from the pro-Western ruling coalition and 11 ministers (with veto power on government decisions) from the Iran- and Syria-backed opposition, and also personally appoint three members to it.

A circulation of Olympic champagne was launched in Abrau-Durso Today Russia celebrates Entrepreneurship Day, introduced by presidential decree last year. Exactly 20 years ago, on May 26, 1988, the law “On Cooperation in the USSR” was adopted, which, after a many-year break, again gave citizens the right to engage in entrepreneurial activities.

A new space was created in Kyiv Today, Polish President Lech Kaczynski will take part in the celebrations of Georgian Independence Day in Tbilisi. The day before, the Polish president and the heads of the three Baltic states called on the European Union to discuss the situation in Georgia.

Abraham Grant leaves Chelsea. The day before, he called the season the best in the club's history, in which the Blues reached the Champions League final and took second place in the English Premier League. The owner of this club did not agree with Grant. And the best assessment of the work of the Israeli specialist was given by the former head coach of the “aristocrats” Jose Mourinho: “Chelsea almost won the League Cup, almost won the Champions League and almost won the English championship.

The mayor of Moscow made a second attempt to increase the transport tax At the end of last week, it became clear what exactly Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov had in mind when, at a transport forum in Sochi, he reproached Ministry of Finance officials for the lack of “state thinking” and explained to them that economists “must be able to collect money, but they should also be able to invest it in the development of roads.

The European Union is in a hurry to adopt a directive for negotiations with Moscow On the agenda of the two-day meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the European Union opening today in Brussels, item “A” (“of primary importance”) includes the approval of a directive for negotiations with Russia on a new strategic treaty . A minute is allotted for it - just enough time to vote “for”, without discussing or even reading the draft decision.

The child changed the image of the Belarusian president Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is increasingly appearing in public with a little boy who appears to be about four years old. Few doubt that this is the youngest son of the 53-year-old Belarusian president. Even the state media mentioned in passing several times that little Nikolai (in the picture) is Lukashenko’s son. However, there is no official confirmation of this information.

The Cannes Film Festival has come to an end At the moment you read this article, the winner of the Palme d'Or at the 61st Cannes Film Festival will already be known. So no forecasts - just news from the last three days, very bizarre and varied. Let's start not with the main competition and Wim Wenders, but with congratulations to our director Sergei Dvortsevoy, whose film “Tulip” received the main prize of the “Un Certain Regard” program.

The capital's Dynamo basketball players broke a protracted series of failures in the domestic arena, rising to the podium at the national championship for the first time in three years.

Thanks to Dima Bilan, Eurovision 2009 will be held in Russia They stopped believing. And hope. And they came up with a bunch of reasons why Russia will never win Eurovision. True, we took the Eurovision for children a couple of years ago, but it was still for children. Is an adult weak? No, no... It's all politics. They won't! However, they won dry (I write in the plural, because victory has many fathers).

Yesterday, the Colombian government confirmed the death of the founder and leader of the radical left-wing extremist organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Pedro Antonio Marin, known under the nicknames Manuel Marulanda and “Straight Shot”. He was nearly 80 years old.

The authorities of the north-west are concerned about the availability of fire protection Residents of remote areas in the Northwestern Federal District (NWFD) are practically not protected from fires. Such sad conclusions were announced by the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Northwestern Federal District, Ilya Klebanov, speaking last week in St. Petersburg at a meeting with the heads of the district’s regions.

The Curonian Spit is overrun by insects Holidays in the Kaliningrad National Park “Curonian Spit” , endowed with the status of a special tourist and recreational zone, have recently become significantly more complicated - almost everywhere near the bay there are huge swarms of pusher mosquitoes hanging in the air. Each individual lives only a few days and is harmless in a single copy. However, in large numbers, insects cause serious inconvenience.

The time boundaries of a civil war are almost always arbitrary. If only because no one, as a rule, declares it, no one signs capitulation. The fighting ends, but the bitterness remains, sometimes for many decades. In this situation, the winners usually choose one of two paths - revenge or reconciliation. The Bolsheviks took the first path, but the USA and Spain preferred the second. The American Civil War broke out in 1861 after eleven southern slave states seceded to form a confederacy.

The final application of the Russian national team for Euro 2008 will become known on May 28. It is on this day that the coach of our national team, Guus Hiddink, will finally decide on the candidacies of 23 players who will go to Austria and Switzerland. The Russian coaching staff also keeps the name of the captain a secret. However, in the match with Kazakhstan - the last rehearsal on home soil - the Russian team was led onto the field by Sergei Semak.