The Soyuz spaceship, decorated with a picture of Yury Gagarin’s face, blasted off from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome this morning.  A police official has been fired for allegedly punching Natalya Seybil, a female journalist, in the face after she rejected his attempts to strike up a conversation. ‘Officers took up the matter only after the precinct began receiving calls from the media and film crews started arriving at the scene.‘  A communications officer with the police department has issued an apology.  A former deputy prosecutor in the Komi republic is fearing for his life after whistleblowing what he called the false arrest of two people charged with arson back in 2009.  Is United Russia lawmaker Konstantin Zatulin being demoted because he publicly criticized Medvedev?  Russia says it wants ‘legal guarantees‘ that the U.S. isn’t intending to use its planned European missile shield against it, demanding that Russia’s strategic forces be ‘off-limits for the system‘.