Mikhail Lesin’s Strange Death in U.S. Follows a Fall From Russia’s Elite

http://www.nytimes.stfi.re/2016/04/03/us/mikhail-lesins-strange-death-in-us-follows-a-fall-from-russias-elite.html?smid=tw-share&_r=3&sf=gnzyxv

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Putin’s Panama Papers Caper

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/04/putin-s-panama-papers-caper.html

Perhaps most surprising of all the Panama Papers’ Russian revelations is the role that a St. Petersburg cellist and musical director has played in controlling a good chunk of Putin’s personal fortune. Fittingly, the man is also Putin’s best friend and godfather to his first-born daughter, Maria. Sergei Roldugin was previously known to own 3.2 percent of Bank Rossiya’s shares. He has now been outed as raking in $9.2 million a year and keeping $27 million in cash via a hitherto undocumented 12.5 percent stake in Video International, Russia’s largest advertising agency, which at one point controlled 70 percent of the country’s ad market. Video International was founded by Mikhail Lesin, Putin’s former press minister, who turned up dead last November in a Dupont Circle hotel in Washington, D.C., the result of “blunt force injuries of the head” and “the neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities,” as the city medical examiner announced months later.

Wedding singer Sting witnesses that the Russians love their children too

http://www.theguardian.com/music/lostinshowbiz/2016/apr/01/wedding-singer-sting-russians-love-their-children-too

All in all, this is my favourite “off-diary” Sting gig since he took a million to perform for a family literally accused of boiling its enemies. That was back in 2010, when he got in a little metaphorical hot water himself for pitching up in Uzbekistan to collect a large cheque from the daughter of presidential tyrant Islam Karimov, whose horrors are deplored almost hourly by the UN, Amnesty and those generally against things such as the slaughter of innocents, the 80% draining of an entire sea, and boasting the world’s second-highest rate of human slavery.

THE LITVINENKO INQUIRY VERDICT COULD REIGNITE THE COLD WAR

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/alexander-litvinenko-inquiry-verdict-could-reignite-the-cold-war

The murder of Alexander Litvinenko damaged already strained Anglo-Russian relations. In our December 2015 issue, before a High Court ruling on the 2006 killing found that Vladimir Putin "probably" approved his killing, GQ examined the roles of Vladimir Putin, MI6 and the mafia in an act of nuclear terrorism with consequences that reach far beyond the streets of London

My Italian TV Hell

http://hicsuntleones.blogspot.co.uk/2004/12/my-italian-tv-hell.html

Exit, pursued by a bear

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/exit-pursued-by-a-bear-how-do-you-approach-shakespeares-famous-stage-direction

Background Music for the Oldest Profession

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/2001/2/article/background-music-for-the-oldest-profession/254947.html

57 Amazing facts about Russia

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/russia/11668414/Amazing-facts-about-Russia.html