Russia has won its 2018 World Cup bid with nine votes in the first round and thirteen in the second.  The win will ‘swell chests already full of national pride over winning the right to have the 2014 Winter Olympics‘, and reinforce Putin’s image, says this AP report.  FIFA President Sep Blatter said he was ‘happy‘ about the news because ‘never has the World Cup been in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Arabic world have been waiting for a long time‘, but some UK sources (to whom the news is a disaster) says that the winning bids are ‘high risk‘, and allege that Blatter had previously called the infrastructure challenges posed by the two countries as a ‘doomsday scenario‘.  The European Parliament wants its relations with Russia to have an integral human rights element.  A December 1 protest was held in Tolyatti’s Severny district over officials ignoring requests for pedestrian crosswalks and street lights.  Why is the Voronezh prosecutor’s office gathering the personal information of those who attend its local Islamic center?  Strategy 31 protesters are rejecting (on grounds of custom) the Moscow mayor’s proposal that they reschedule their December protest in order to avoid inconveniencing ‘people coming home from stores‘.