A court ruled that a Russian man must pay more than 100,000 rubles ($3,330) for medical bills and damages to the parents of a girl he hit when he jumped from a window in a suicide attempt.
The 7-year-old girl was in hospital for months after the man fell on her when he jumped from a ninth-storey apartment during an argument with his ex-wife, a court in the Siberian city of Omsk heard, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russian police said they have arrested a prankster who hacked into a computer system to show a pornographic movie on a giant advertising screen, causing havoc on a busy Moscow thoroughfare.
The two-minute clip, displayed on a video screen above a main road south of the Kremlin, caused midnight traffic jams and a frenzy of excitement across the Russian blogosphere.
Police said the hacker gained control of the screen by breaking into an online company’s server in the volatile southern region of Chechnya as “he didn’t think the police would go looking for him there.”
“(The hacker) is a highly-educated, temporarily unemployed and extremely advanced Internet user,” police said. “The scandalous film was the talk of the town.”
The 40-year-old man said he wanted to “give people a laugh,” the popular daily Kommersant reported.
Rossiya-24 television said an elderly motorist suffered a heart attack at the wheel after seeing the scenes.
A 63-year-old homeless Russian man has gone from street life to stock market trader after collecting thousands of empty booze bottles for cash, a popular Russian tabloid reported.
Pictured in a majestic purple suit and matching violet jewelry, Leonid Konovalov told the Tvoi Den paper he collected around 2,000 bottles a day over the past year since the economic downturn hit Russia last autumn.
“Russians are drinking a little bit more due to the crisis, and this helped me get out of the rubbish dump,” said Konovalov, an ex-engineer from the industrial city of Kemerovo in eastern Siberia who has spent the last 20 years living in a tip.
Russia’s many homeless are often seen rooting through rubbish for bottles and tins, which they can trade for money. A glas bottle can fetch about 2 rubles ($0.06).
The bearded former tramp said he was encouraged by his two grandchildren to take risks on the stock market and said his first transaction was a 50,000 euro ($74,120) share-purchase.
A Moscow restaurant called ‘Anti-Soviet’ has changed its name under pressure from local authorities who said it offended Russia‘s older generation, the manager said.
‘Anti-Sovetskaya’, which opened in July, was renamed ‘Sovetskaya’, or ‘Soviet’.
“They said it insulted the feelings of veterans,” Alexander Vanin told Reuters, adding local authorities had threatened to fine the kebab-serving restaurant over its name.
Though many Russians view the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 as positive, waves of nostalgia sweep through Russia.
Russian media reports said Oleg Mitvol, a Moscow city prefect and former ecology official known for his high-profile attacks on Western energy firms, had taken exception to the name of the restaurant.
“Such names are insulting to the history of our country,” he was quoted as saying.
Russia closed down all its casinos as gambling was banned nationwide, a move the industry says could throw a third of a million people out of work.
The July 1 ban shut gaming halls, from gaudy casinos crowned by extravagant neon structures to dingy dwellings containing a handful of slot machines.
“I feel terrible. We just let 1,000 people go,” said Yuri Boyev, general director at Metelitsa, an upmarket casino where billionaires rolled the dice and Russia’s gas giant Gazprom held a lavish Christmas party.
Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, came up with the idea in 2006 when he was president after the Interior Ministry linked several gaming operations in Moscow to Georgian organized crime.
The Kremlin plans to restrict gambling to Las Vegas-style gaming zones in four rarely visited regions deemed to need investment, including one near the North Korea border, but nothing has been built and critics say the zones will fail.
The development replacement zones — in southern Krasnodar, the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, east Siberia’s Altai region and the Far East — require investment of up to $40 billion and have not been built.
“The zones have no roads, water or electricity. We fulfilled the law by shutting, the government did not fulfill it as the zones are not ready yet,” said casino director Boyev.
Though gaming establishments knew the shutdown date for at least a year, few thought the government would go through with it.
The industry says the ban will axe at least 300,000 jobs but officials in Moscow put the national figure at only 11,500.
Millions of viewers tuned in to watch the First Semi-Final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest and a surprise performance of 1998′s winning song ’Diva’ by Dana International of Israel.
The show was broadcast live from the Olimpiyskiy Arena in Moscow, and it was presented by Natalia Vodyanova and Andrey Malakhov. Nine qualifying countries were picked by televoting, and a tenth finalist was selected by the national juries all over Europe. All the countries represented in the First Semi-Final were voting, as well as Germany and the United Kingdom.
This is the list of countries that qualified (the full results will be revealed after the Final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest):
Turkey
Sweden
Israel
Portugal
Malta
Finland
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Romania
Armenia
Iceland
These countries did not qualify:
Montenegro
Czech Republic
Belgium
Belarus
Andorra
Switzerland
Bulgaria
FYR Macedonia
That now means that 15 out of 25 participants of the Final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest are known. The remaining 10 finalists will be known after the Second Semi-Final, to take place on May 14th at 21:00 CET!
The 2009 Eurovision Song Contest has officially opened in Moscow.
Moscow won the right to host the event for the first time after Russian pop singer Dima Bilan took first place in last year’s Eurovision, held in Belgrade, with his song “Believe.”
The venue of the competition, Olympiyski Indoor Arena, built for the 1980 Olympic Games, has an impressive record of hosting major TV events in recent years, including the all-European tennis and basketball finals. For the Eurovision, it has been transformed into a giant concert hall.
Representatives of 41 European countries plus Israel will take part in the competition.
Over 8,500 police and security officers will be on duty at the event.
More Eurovision coverage: http://alindenauer.wordpress.com/category/eurovision/
As Europe – no the world – no the universe gets ready for Eurovision 2009, the organizers have released the suite of preview videos and here they are, along with some Eurovision classics:
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/multimedia/videos
Now for the details:
DATES: May 12,14 and 16, 2009
CITY: Moscow, Russia
VENUE: Olympiyski Indoor Arena with an anticpated live attendence of 16,000 and a television audience of 100 million.
Noa and Mira Awad have chosen the song that they will sing at the 2009 Eurovison Song Contest in Moscow – it’s called ‘There Must Be Another Way.’
Noa is a Jewish Israeli and Mira is a Palestinian Israeli. Good luck to them both and enjoy the performance:
Get ready – Eurovision 2009 is coming up. This year’s event is scheduled for May 12, 14 and 16 and 43 countires will participate in the Moscow competition.
Learn everything right here: http://www.eurovision.tv/
In a sign of the times Israel will be represented by the duo of Noa and Mira. The announcement was made on January 11, 2009.
Noa
Mira
Noa, whose real name is Achinoam Nini, is Israel’s leading international concert and recording artist. She has toured and sung with rock superstar Sting, performed her song Child of Man with Stevie Wonder for a CBS TV special in the U.S., and shared the stage and microphone with many well-known artists.
Mira Awad is a well-known Palestinian-Israeli singer, songwriter and actress currently living in Tel Aviv.
Check out Noa and Mira singing the Beetles hit “We Can Work It Out:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9csbv-0A04
