TODAY: Kim Jong-Il arrives in Russia; Mayor of Sergiev Posad shot dead; Matviyenko wins both municipal elections; Rogozhin’s nationalist group registered; Putin’s push for disability rights; police to take lie-detector tests; medical drug addicts; lost satellite found, forest fires extinguished.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has arrived in Russia, on his personal armoured train, for a gas pipeline and nuclear energy-focused tour that will include a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev.  Bloomberg forecasts ‘massive economic cooperation with North and South Korea’.  Yevgeny Dushko, the Mayor of Sergiev Posad, a town near Moscow, has been shot dead in what looks like a contract killing.  Conflicting reports have been released about the turnout of the Petrovsky and Krasnenkaya Rechka municipal elections in which Valentina Matviyenko ran for deputy; the Petrovsky turnout is being reported at 18.8 – 36.5%, and Krasnenkaya Rechka as 10.6 – 30%.  The election commission said that the figures show ‘a regular turnout’; the Moscow Times calls the figures ‘astonishingly high for a by-election’, noting the authorities’ use of free ice-cream, medicals, and acrobatic demonstrations to draw voters.  Matviyenko won both of these, in preparation for her delegation to the Federation Council, where she is already expected to receive the role of Speaker.  Dmitry Rogozin has registered a new nationalist group called Rodina, which is expected to join Vladimir Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front.  As organizations for the disabled joined his Front on Friday, the Prime Minister made a public show of support, signing a U.N. Convention on disability rights.