IZO

Kseniya Sobchak caused the removal of the pilot from a flight from Moscow to New York on 28 December because his pre-flight announcement indicated he was not sober (KP, in Russian).

218 mph Ferrari Mansory Stalone crashed in Kiev (TopSpeed). Where else, these days?

Reports and links to reports about protests in Vladivostok and elsewhere over the increase in duty on car imports (IZO, earlier). Demonstrators have been arrested but also journalists and people with cameras (drugoi, in Russian).

How to travel on metro for free. Actually, the metro is so cheap compared to London, I feel funny even though I pay.

Little satire about the decision to increase import duties on foreign cars (IZO, earlier), which will of course help domestic manufacturers. 

Many photos of the 14 December rally in Vladivostok to protest against the raising of import tariffs on used cars (IZO, earlier), which will hit the Vladivostok economy very hard (matroskin_cat, in Russian).

President Medvedev's latest video address comes from on board the presidential plane (hectop). Judging by the armchair and windows, it could well be the plane customised for President Putin some years ago (Flight Global).

Dragan Klaic visits Moscow and Walter Benjamin's diary is on his mind (Sign and Sight).

(Lenta.ru, in Russian):

An attendant on the Moscow-Volgograd train helped to return 7,800,000 roubles [$285,000] to a passenger who left the money in a carriage. The inhabitant of Volgograd had prepared the large sum of money to buy a house, but during the train journey he drank three bottles of vodka and forgot about the money when he got out of the carriage ... the attendant informed the train superintendent and the bag was handed to the police on duty. Law enforcement agents managed to establish the identity of the owner of the money and his whereabouts: the luckless passenger was in the Volgograd drug clinic. ... the man only discovered the loss of his money from the police when he was given his bag back. "We imagine he was pleased," says the prosecutor's office in a press release.

Via mrparker, who comments: "After three bottles of vodka people usually end up in the morgue" (mrparker, in Russian).

The Moscow prosecutor's office is calling for railings to be installed on platforms of the metro to stop people falling onto the tracks; 130-150 people die this way every year (moya_moskva, in Russian).

John Varoli has sent a precis of his Russian-related articles in the November Art Newspaper; not all available online; see below the cut. I was interested in this about the Melnikov Garage:

"The relationship is very straightforward,'' said Erica Bolton, GCCC spokesperson. "The Museum of Tolerance will be housed on the 1st floor and GCCC will be on the ground floor. So they will not interfere with each other.''

Aeroflot has stopped all online ticket sales because of hacker attacks (AK&M, in Russian).

End of an era? Moscow police are mounting a campaign to catch drivers whose tinted-glass windscreens transmit less than 75% of available light. Apparently there are cars in Moscow whose windows are so dark they transmit only 2% of available light (Regnum, in Russian).

Apparently the new Aeroexpress train service between Sheremetevo II and Moscow doesn't run at all between 10.10 am and 12.55 pm (drugoi, in Russian). If a cynic had to guess why, he'd say it's because of pressure by the taxi-drivers' mafia ;)

The twelve most dangerous road junctions in Moscow (Regnum, in Russian).

Three nuggets from Kommersant today: Moscow University is not included in the list of the world's 100 top unis (Kommersant, in Russian) (will supercomputer (IZO, earlier) make a difference?); the Moscow police are ditching their Makarov pistols and Kalashnikov machine-guns in favour of Yarygin pistols and PP-2000 or Vityaz automatic weapons (Kommersant, in Russian); a new credit card will be issued with the participation of Mastercard which contains a touch-in, touch-out chip for trips on the Moscow metro (Kommersant, in Russian).

Aeroplane named after Timur Novikov (Moscow Times).

This chap did a little dance at every station of the Moscow metro.

A helicopter taxi service is planned between Moscow airports (Kommersant, in Russian).

The unreliability of aeroplanes led Stalin to avoid them: apparently, between 1933 and his death in 1953 he made only a single trip by plane, to and from the Teheran Conference in 1943 (Kommersant, in Russian).

At 172 metres, the biggest submarine in the world (Barents Observer); I've tagged this under "Transport" ;)

Flying to Moscow last night I found the in-flight food had improved significantly. There were some excellent little slices of fish a la sashimi and a very reasonable chicken dish. Kudos to the new caterer. I prefer Aeroflot to BA on the night flight because Aeroflot turn the lights out. On BA they burn all night, which turns the journey into a dull nightmare of sleeplessness, like something out of J G Ballard.

Non-carbon-neutral activities

Euan Ferguson takes a ride (pdf) on that train. And The New York Times spends 36 hours in Moscow (pdf).

New, improved, more expensive

The updated Trans-Siberian Railway : £6,795.00 one-way.