By Citizen M | Published: December 6, 2010
TODAY: Crash-landing plane kills 2; satellites crash into Pacific; Putin held secret talks with FIFA heads, source alleges; Khimki opposition editor dies of cancer; Medvedev in Poland; corruption website to track suspicious tenders; UK MP denies aide was Russian spy.
An investigation has been launched into the
crash-landing of a passenger plane at Domodedovo Airport; its pilots reported engine failure and made an emergency landing despite full fuel tanks and lack of visibility. Two of its 167 passengers – including
Gadzhimurad Magomedov, the brother of the leader of Dagestan – died in the crash. Grigory Chekalin, a former deputy prosecutor for the Komi republic, has been sent to prison for
fabricating charges against a local police investigator. Russia’s three satellites
crashed into the Pacific yesterday following a failed launch. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for Russia’s World Cup win, according to a former head of the Russian Football Union, who says that Putin held ‘
secret talks‘ with FIFA members. ‘
The world’s media now worry about how [corruption and organized crime] might affect the 2018 football World Cup.‘ Speaking at a United Russia conference, Putin suggested that the party could learn to operate within a
competitive political structure.
The editor of Khimki’s only opposition newspaper (who suffered many violent attacks during his lifetime) has died of cancer,
leaving a question mark hanging over the paper’s fate. President Dmitry Medvedev is in Poland today with the aim of
improving ties. RosPil, a website that aims to
track corruption connected with state tenders, has started ‘
tracking online state tenders for proposals that set unrealistic terms or goals‘, under the watch of activist
Alexei Navalny. Jamison Firestone, a former associate of Sergei Magnitsky, says that the deceased lawyer’s mother was being
followed by journalists from a Kremlin-friendly television network, who could be making a critical documentary about him.
‘
Opinion is sharply divided over whether the church’s role in political discourse is a welcome staging post for traditional values or an alarming dose of conservatism in a country eager to modernise.‘ UK MP Mike Hancock is insisting that Katia Zatuliveter, his parliamentary aide
who will be deported on grounds that ‘
her presence is not conductive to the national interest‘,
is not a Russian agent.
PHOTO: Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a regional conference of his ruling party United Russia in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, December 6, 2010. REUTERS/Alexsey Druginyn/RIA Novosti/Pool