TODAY: Dissident Yelena Bonner has died; Navalny stars at Seliger alternative; Russia maintains homophobic stance; journalist censored after political comments.   Following assertive St Petersburg speech, Medvedev says will not run against Putin.  Russia criticizes Libya mission; Medvedev backs Obama for next year’s election.  Soccer star tazered by cops

Yelena Bonner, the Russian rights activist and widow of the Nobel peace prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has died of heart failure at the age of 88.  The news has been met with international condolences.  RFE/RL looks back at the life of a fearless activist.  Meanwhile the New York Times has a piece on how a group of Russian college students have begun a campaign to raise awareness of the work of her late husband Andrei Sakharov, a figurehead for democrats and dissidents.  Shaun Walker from the Independent reports on the opposition’s alternative to the Kremlin-sponsored Seliger summer camp, held in the soon-to-be-razed Khimki forest and attended by the likes of Alexei Navalny.  The virtue of the alternative is that it is made ‘by citizens for citizens’, says one camp organizer.  The U.N’s most senior human rights body has made a declaration that there should be no discrimination or violence against people based on their sexual orientation, a vote approved by the majority of Western countries, but opposed by Russia.   One man who is no stranger to discrimination in its most virulent brand is Russia’s leading gay rights campaigner Nikolai Alekseyev, who is interviewed here.  The journalist who famously compared St. Petersburg’s governor to Adolf Hitler has been edited out of a family show he co-hosted on Rossia One television.