There will surely be some great April Fools' news items this week. These, however, are some that we wish were jokes.

In this week's Odder News, the Moscow Zoo tries a new marketing tactic; a consumer protection agency gives its condom recommendations; and high winds call for desperate measures.

Russian priests in Sverdlovsk Oblast are upset that they could start seeing local license plates numbered 666, a number often associated with Satan.

A Russian comedian made a joke and then decided he needed to flee the country to avoid arrest.

This popular holiday tradition has believers plunging into ice-cold water… voluntarily!

The Siberian village of Okunevo is a "place of power." For literally hundreds of years, people have visited here, convinced that the lake has healing power, among other things.

Known as “Russia’s Tibet,” the Altai region is vast, unpeopled, and brimming with energy centers.

Presidents eating ice cream, kids reporting toy theft to police… summer is almost over, thank Allah. 

Lakes vanish, free food appears, and a priest speaks to the dead.

Sleepy Pskov has everything a historic Russian town ever needed: a winding river, a kremlin, and whitewashed churches – all of which have finally received global recognition from UNESCO.

The exceptional life story of the father of the first Romanov tsar, the reluctant Patriarch, Filaret.

Today, now that the huge dome of St. Isaac’s towers over the center of the city, not far from the granite embankment, the sumptuous Senate and Synod Building, and the iconic Bronze Horseman statue, it is hard to imagine that in its first incarnation this church was much smaller and located on the Admiralty Meadow.