Russpundit

Ronald Reagan died today.
RIP.

Another case of terrorism. Now in Samara:

A powerful blast killed 9 and injured at least 38 at an outdoor market in the South Russia city of Samara, a source in the Emergency Ministry told MosNews. According to results of a preliminary investigation, a bomb made of about 1 kilogram of plastic explosives went off at the market.

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that the blast took place at about noon in the central Russian city. The outdoor marketplace is located near a railway platform and is a common trading place for Vietnamese vendors.

50 reasons why Russia still matters.

2. Silvio
Berlusconi doesn't want to be the shortest guy at G-8 meetings. Why else would he refer to the Russian president as "mio caro amico Vladimiro," put Putin's wife and daughters up for the month of August free of charge at his private villa in Sardinia, and let Russian warships dock in Naples for the first time EVER? The Italian prime minister recently traveled to Russia to cut the ribbon on a new washing machine factory. A washing machine factory. We'll let you do the math on this one.

Siberian Light points to the fact that Russia became the world`s largest oil producer and makes an excellent short overview of situation. If you are interesting in the theme, it is worth to read.

Microsoft Monitor has first impressions on technical preview of Windows Media Player 10.

Huh! People in Mosnews.com did a great job, opened at last their MN-Files - online database about Russian politics and news events. Size is still small, but I hope, it is only a beginning.

Russian Senator Lyudmila Narusova, widow of ex-mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoliy Sobchak, prepares a bill that would regulate Internet content.
She proposes to license websites in order to control it.
Sadly, but proposing such ideas she even doesn`t know that existing law about mass media allows to control Internet mass media sites as well as offline media, meanwhile non-licensed sites can be hosted in the USA (for example) and under international domains.
Good comment from Anton Nossik, editor-in-chied of Mosnews.com and Lenta.ru - most popular Russian news site:

Anton Nossik, MosNews editor-in-chief, said in an interview to Echo Moskvy radio that legislation aimed at regulating the Internet would most likely be tailored to the wishes of people planning to use the situation as a money-making opportunity. He said that “in Russia, laws that regulate one or another industry are written to benefit people who want to make money in those industries.”

Let me also be a catblogger - inspired by Glenn Reynolds...

Jeff Jarvis promotes a new site which collects contributions for Iraqis:

Spirit of America is collecting contributions from Americans to buy Iraqi citizens the things they need to help rebuild their country and their future: tools, broadcasting equipment, sewing machines, business loans, blog hosting...

I think we need to get over ourselves in America, because our time is just about over, unless we stop guzzling so much gas and start electing leaders with brains, morals and courage. I feel I have to say I like Jeff, I really do, he's come through for me twice at BloggerCon, and I appreciate that. But his politics are 180 degrees opposite mine, even on tactics. I think the best thing the US can do for the world is get our own house in order and stop trying to fix the world, something we're exceedingly bad at.

Alex Moskalyuk writes an excellent review about diskMeta - free tool for desktop search for PC.
I personally recommend it - it is very useful even with small collection of documents. Just think how it can be useful with my 1Gb 'My Documents' folder...

Sorry for very light blogging - too much work, travels and so on. I will try to update this blog more frequently.

Famous Russian journalist Leonid Parfyonov fired(rus) this night from NTV channel. Everyone links this event with the latest scandal around his weekly show Namedni. More info about this here:

Russian special services conducted a successful security raid on Sunday. They intercepted an interview granted by the widow of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the former Chechen rebel president killed in Qatar earlier this year in a blast believed to have been masterminded by Russian security agents currently on trial in Doha.

The interview was axed from Leonid Pafryonov’s Namedni current affairs weekly show after it had already been aired in parts of the Russian Far East. The FSB, however, managed to prevent the European part of Russia from seeing the dangerous report.

The piece, featuring an interview with Malika Yandarbiyeva, was pulled from television on the orders of deputy director general of the NTV channel, Aleksandr Gerasimov. In a conversation with the Namedni presenter Leonid Parfyonov, Gerasimov admitted he had been ordered to axe the piece by special services.