Lego Russia office

Here is a glimpse of Lego's office in Russia. Once you step in you are greeted by a 150 kilo doorkeeper made of Lego bricks. The office is filled with such Lego structures including traditional Russian figures like the Matyushka doll. A picture is worth a 1000 bricks words and we have tons of them after the jump.

Endangered seed bank

One of the world's foremost seed banks is in deep trouble after a Russian court ruled yesterday that the Russian Housing Development Foundation can take the land the seed bank is on and sell it to private home developers.

Currently, Pavlovsk Experimental Station is home to 5,500 varieties of edible plants, mostly fruit. The collections survived World War II and many of the varieties can be found nowhere else on Earth. Losing a seed bank would represent more than just a loss of biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. Collections like this can be used as breeding stock, imparting useful traits like drought tolerance or weed resistance to more commonly grown varieties. As the effects of global climate change increase, such breeding could become crucial.

The only chance left to stop the razing of Pavlovsk is a direct appeal to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

That's where you come in. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is collecting signatures on a petition that will be presented to Medvedev and Putin. The hope is that the show of global support for the Pavlovsk station might incline the men to step in and save it.

Sergey Larenkov's Photoshopped historic photos blend past with present

Russian photographer (and Photoshopper) Sergey Larenkov merges WWII-era photos with contemporary shots of identical locations in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Leningrad, and other European cities, to haunting effect. Many entries filled with images in sets organized by city at his livejournal.

Desperate Russian mother demands exorcism for Mayor

A single mother of three young boys has appealed to Pope Benedict XVI to send exorcists to her Volgograd region town after the mayor failed to provide suitable housing for her family. The letter by Svetlana Shults, a Russian Orthodox believer living in Kamyshin, a town of 117,300 residents located about 200 kilometers north of Volgograd, was published in Novaya Gazeta on Monday. Shults said she decided to appeal to Benedict after Kamyshin Mayor Alexander Chunakov told her that he would not help her find a new home even if she wrote to the Pope.

Shults said her dilapidated apartment building on Molodyozhnaya Ulitsa has been scheduled for demolition since 1990, but local authorities have refused to relocate her under a federal program. Pictures of her building published in Novaya Gazeta showed decaying walls and crumbling concrete. Shults said Chunakov, who announced completing the town's relocation program on national television in March, has refused to help her even though he once admitted that her complaints had bothered him in his dreams.



She also accused the mayor of threatening her three sons, aged 6 to 9, by asking her, “All right, so you're bananas, but aren't you afraid for your children?” "My only hope is you. There is no one else I can write to," Shults wrote in her appeal to Benedict. She also threatened to burn herself alive in public if the situation does not change, despite the fact that suicide is a cardinal sin for Orthodox believers.

A Vatican spokeswoman in Russia said that the Pope had not received the letter by mail yet but church officials had read it in Novaya Gazeta. The pontiff's intervention may not be necessary. Kamyshin's administration promised on Monday that Shults would soon get new housing. A statement signed by First Deputy Mayor Stanislav Zinchenko says "the district administration has found means to relocate residents to safe housing" by “approximately” Oct. 1.

Gold-wrapped Audi R8 supercar spotted in Moscow

Embellishing your vehicle with gold, diamonds and precious stones is a great way to exhibit your excess wealth on the roads. We have already introduced you to some of the most incredible gold-plated cars and the latest one is an Audi R8 that has been wrapped in gold. It came as no surprise last time when a golden Audi R8 supercar was seen in the oil rich capital of Dubai. The pictured above was spotted in Moscow and the rendition really makes the matte-black R8 with its stealth-like finish look a bit boring. For now, there isn’t any information about the money spent on the gilded makeover or the owner of this gilded beauty.

High tech Russian subs could stop oil leak, skipper says

Yevgenii Chernyaev helms the Mir-2, one of four manned vessels in the world capable of operating at the depths of BP's leaking oil well, and he's confident that his vessel, along with its sister-ship Mir-1, would be able to get the job done. The holdup? No one's asked.

"Our subs are unique," Chernyaev said. "There are two of them and they can submerge and work simultaneously. Also, they are powerful enough to work with any other additional equipment."

The additional equipment is key. Specially fabricated tools to cap the leak, as well as a "team of international specialists" would be needed for the job, which the Mir-2 captain warns all takes time. That means, this late in the game, it'd be another late gamble to kill the flow of the damaged well, which has been spewing into the Gulf for months.

"And we would not refuse to help, even though for us it would be very complicated, especially right now," Chernyaev said. Both he and the Russian government are surprised that no one came to them when it all started, and still haven't.

"There are only four vessels in the world that can go down to 6,000m — the Mirs, French Nautile and Japanese Shinkai. The Mirs are known to be the best, and we have a very experienced team of specialists."

A fleet of deep-sea robots, specialized ships, several wacky plans and even the aid of Kevin Costner have not been able to stop the leak. The last resort is still using freshly-drilled relief wells to stem the flow, though those probably won't be ready until sometime in August.

Love till death and even after was theme for Russian couple’s third wedding

We have the Gothic individuals who savor the dark and gloomy motif and adorn themselves in Black and now we’ve got the listless dead bunch that… well like dressing up as, you guessed it, Zombies. A young couple, Vitalich and Jirka, decided on a theme wedding and they picked one that I’m sure no one else would have. The whole ‘death do us part’ bit took on a new turn with this crowd.



The couple has been married three times. The first was normal, white gown, layered wedding cake, corny cover band the works. But they thought it wasn’t enough so they wanted to do it all over again in a new way so they got divorced got married again with a Goth theme, divorced after and their third time around was with a Zombie motif with clothes and make up done well enough to give Hollywood a run for it’s money. Ridiculous!