The State Duma approved a new procedure for calculating customs tariffs for oil exports At the end of last week, the State Duma adopted amendments to the law “On Customs Tariffs” in three readings at once, which reduce the period for calculating export duties from two to one month .

Obama shapes his team with Abraham Lincoln in mind At a press conference today, Barack Obama is expected to name the officials who will be responsible for the country's economy. The next series of important appointments will follow immediately after the holiday this Thursday, when Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Obama initially had an enviable choice of candidates for the crucial post of Treasury Secretary.

General Motors continues to open new production facilities in Russia The largest American automaker General Motors, together with Avtotor, opened a new complex for the industrial assembly of Chevrolet Lacetti cars in Kaliningrad last Friday with a capacity of 50 thousand cars per year. GM's investments in organizing full-cycle production amounted to 80 million euros.

October 21 -- November 21, 2008 “Politicians Through the Eyes of the Media,” a joint project of “Vremya Novostei” and the “Medialogia” company, are ratings of political figures who are most actively discussed in the federal press and on central TV channels.

Scandals and shooting on the anniversary of Saakashvili's coming to power The fifth anniversary of the Rose Revolution, which led to the early resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze and his replacement by Mikheil Saakashvili, was marked by scandals. Last night, Polish President Lech Kaczynski made history. He regularly visits Georgia.

The famous Russian coach and consultant to the figure skating team Tatyana TARASOVA summed up the results of the Grand Prix stage that ended in Moscow and voiced the problems that Russian athletes have to face. -- Tatyana Anatolyevna, how would you comment on the performance of Russian athletes this season? - In my opinion, progress is obvious. And this applies not only to dance duets and pairs, but also to singles. There is no point in talking about Kawaguchi and Smirnov.

Kazakhstan has advanced in the fight against the crisis Speaking about the similarity of Russia and Kazakhstan - both in their geopolitical location, which dictates the policy of Eurasianism, and in their economic structure with a pronounced dominance of raw materials, and even in the everyday experience of transition countries building a market economy, they often forget about the differences.

Regional banks find new owners in the capital Russian banks continue to buy other credit institutions with government support. As it became known at the end of last week, Binbank will acquire the Ufa-based Bashinvestbank, and Sarovbusinessbank will become the owner of Nizhegorodpromstroybank. Both transactions are carried out with the help of the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA). Exactly how much funds the state allocates to support Bashinvestbank and Nizhegorodpromstroybank is not reported.

The Russians won three awards at the Grand Prix stage in Moscow The fifth and penultimate stage of the Figure Skating Grand Prix series has ended in the Russian capital. The last day of competition brought the main sensation of the tournament. The second Russian pair, Yana Khokhlova - Sergey Novitsky, beat the 2008 European champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who remained second, by three points.

This coming Wednesday, November 26, the UN Security Council may consider a report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the situation in Kosovo and the principles of the international peacekeeping presence in the region. This meeting has already been postponed twice . The reason is the tough position of the Albanian leaders of Kosovo, who refuse to accept the “Six Point Plan” previously agreed upon by the UN, the European Union and Serbia.

Viktor Yushchenko gave Yulia Tymoshenko five days to solve gas problems Kyiv responded to Moscow's claims over gas debts with another round of political confrontation between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Last Friday, the day after the Russian president ordered Gazprom to collect $2.4 billion in debt on gas supplies , the head of Ukraine convened the country's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) and assigned Ms.

The cyclone brought record temperature and pressure changes to Moscow A record drop in atmospheric pressure for the third ten days of November was recorded yesterday in the Russian capital. Due to the cyclone that literally burst into the Moscow region on Sunday, in the middle of the day barometers showed 716 mm of mercury, which is significantly lower than the previous record recorded 35 years ago - in 1973, the pressure dropped to 724.3 mm.

The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications is looking for options to compensate for the growth of the unified social tax for enterprises in the information technology sector The government continues to focus on the need for an innovative breakthrough to ensure the competitiveness of the Russian economy.

On the European territory of Russia, new evidence has been obtained in favor of a global climate crisis. In the capital yesterday at 10 a.m. the thermometer reached +10.2 degrees (the previous warm record on November 23 belonged to 1923 and was +9.3 degrees). Atmospheric pressure was also record low (716.5 mm Hg) in the capital. The speed of storm winds reached 23 m/s.

The first book of Fetov’s volume “Literary Heritage” has been published “As for us poets, I have come to one indestructible conviction that Holy Rus' does not know or want to know any of us, that all our so-called admirers should be counted in dozens, many, many hundreds, and that all of them - - a drop in the ocean <...> Names and faces may still be of interest to our so-called intelligentsia - but not at all to the Russian people, for whom an acquired kulak or police officer has a hundred