Russia has dismissed allegations by Britain and the Netherlands of running a global campaign of cyber attacks to undermine democracies, including a thwarted attempt to hack into the United Nations chemical weapons watchdog while it was analyzing a Russian poison used to attack a spy.

A leading law enforcement official has been killed in a helicopter crash in central Russia.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said three bodies were identified in the Kostroma region crash. It opened a criminal case into safety rule violations that led to the deadly crash. The incident became the second aviation accident this week after a helicopter crashed in Siberia on Monday, killing two passengers.

The epic international legal drama that has pitted a Russian billionaire against a Swiss art entrepreneur took a new turn on Tuesday with Dmitry Rybolovlev slapping Sotheby’s auction house with a $380 million lawsuit in New York.
Rybolovlev, who sold two Russian fertilizer producers for almost $7.5 billion in 2010 and 2011, has been pursuing Yves Bouvier around the globe for several years, claiming the art dealer owes him more than $1 billion. Rybolovlev accused Bouvier of overcharging him on 38 artworks that he purchased for $2 billion over more than a decade.

Russia Listed Among World Leaders in Selfie Deaths – Study
Russia was the world’s second-leading country in deaths caused by selfies in the last six years, a recent study has found.
India was the runaway winner at 159 out of 259 overall deaths, according to the study published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care. Drowning and transport-related incidents were named the leading causes of selfie-related deaths, and men made up around three-quarters of all victims.

Trust in the Russian presidency has dropped to pre-Crimean annexation levels amid rising anger over a new law that raises the population’s retirement age, according to a recent survey.
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed into law controversial legislation to raise the pension eligibility age to 65 for men and 60 for women starting in 2019. The changes are the most unpopular government measure since a 2005 move to scrap Soviet-era benefits, which led to nationwide pensioner protests.

People in Moscow reportedly spent up to five days in the bitter cold and thousands of dollars for a chance to be among the first to buy new iPhone XS models, with sales kicking off in Russia on Friday.
In addition to the XS, Apple Inc. introduced its largest-ever iPhone XS Max and an aluminum lower-cost XR this month. The new souped-up devices cost 87,990 rubles ($1,3400) and 96,990 rubles ($1,500) in Russia. Reports in the run-up to the sale said some people were selling their place in line for as much as $6,000.

An activist famous for eccentric anti-government demonstrations has been detained at an art installation against torture in central Moscow. Yekaterina Nenasheva was detained at a Labor Day parade in May 2018 as well as in June 2017, reportedly for refusing to remove a virtual-reality headset outside the Kremlin.

Russian politicians have criticized a new law passed in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv that bans “Russian-language culture products” in public places amid tense bilateral relations between the two neighboring countries. On Tuesday evening, deputies of Lviv’s regional council passed a law banning the public use of “Russian-language cultural products” in the region.