TODAY: US ambassador to Russia suggests his phone may be wiretapped; further police arrests for abuse of power; anti-gay law for Novosibirsk submitted to Duma; no journalists elected to new Ekho Moskvy board.  Shuvalov’s offshore business dealings revealed by laywer? Speculation mounts over Moscow governor replacement; Yaroslavl mayoral runoff approaches; Interior Minister praises moral integrity of Soviet-era cartoons; an example of shocking ignorance.

‘I respect press right to go anywhere & ask any question. But do they have a right to read my email and listen to my phone?‘  US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, lambastes state-run NTV for hounding him, via Twitter.  ‘When I asked these ‘reporters’ how they knew my schedule, I got no answer.’  A US State Department spokesman has downplayed the ambassador’s reaction, arguing that McFaul was simply ‘raising a rhetorical question.’  Four more police officers in Siberia’s Kemerovo Oblast have been arrested and charged with abuse of power and violent conduct, for their alleged involvement in the torture of a suspect with a gas mask, which resulted in the detainee’s death.  A controversial bill that would introduce fines of up to 1 million rubles for the alleged ‘spreading of homosexual propaganda’ has been submitted to the State Duma.  The legislation was submitted by lawmakers from the central Novosibirsk region who have decried what they view as the normalization of homosexuality by the media.  The author of the St. Petersburg law on the same issue, Vitaly Milonov, has defended it, as an Orthodox believer, in an interview with the Moscow Times.