The chief state sanitary doctor of Russia Onishchenko on Thursday signed a document on a complete ban on the import of Borjomi mineral water produced in Georgia into the territory of the Russian Federation. It was stated that this step was forced, causing Onishchenko a feeling of deep sadness. I wonder if the number of poisonings will now decrease.

After the story with Lake Baikal, Transneft is clearly not held in high esteem by the people - of course: an evil, selfish company wanted to ruin the great lake, and good Putin corrected everything, it’s a pity he didn’t punish. And now there is a balm for the soul of the Russian people: the punishment is right there - the Basmanny Court of Moscow arrested, at the request of the investigator for especially important cases of the Prosecutor General's Office, the preferred shares of Transneft.

Answer: no one. Except for one person, and you know him - V.V. Putin. And exactly this: the meeting in July in St. Petersburg, where Russia will for the first time chair a meeting of the heads of the leading industrial powers of the world, is needed not by Russian President Vladimir Putin, but by a private person with the same name and surname, who dreams of gaining freedom in 2008 and passionately fights for that this freedom be accompanied by honor, status and prosperity.

It seems that yesterday’s statement by the US Vice President was just the beginning - they have taken Russia seriously. Today it became known that Dick Cheney held a confidential meeting with a leading Russian democrat - the name of the democrat is being kept secret. The Bush administration is collecting a dossier on Russian democracy, apparently in order to finally make sure that it does not exist.

Almost a miracle happened in Omsk - the Karat bureau, specializing in the development of information security tools, won a lawsuit against the FSB. The Omsk department of the FSB stubbornly refused to renew Karat's license to access state secrets. But the point, if you believe the management of Karat, was that the FSB in Omsk has its own “pocket” company that monopolizes all secret activities in the city - a common story with corruption and kickbacks.

Today in Vienna the joint Orthodox-Catholic conference "Giving soul to Europe. Mission and responsibility of the Churches" ends. Catholics supported the Orthodox in seeking to return the concept of human rights to its roots. “Sometimes it is said that the concept of human rights dates back to the French Revolution, but in fact this is not the case,” said Cardinal Paul Poupard, chairman of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Now Ukraine, following Georgia, has decided to seriously think about leaving the CIS. Today, Presidential Advisor Konstantin Timoshenko said that Ukraine is not satisfied with the functioning of the CIS. Yes, Russia is bad at making friends - the commonwealth is more reminiscent of the communication between divorced spouses: with fights, squabbles and wild jealousy of other people's influence.

The negotiation commissions have already adopted documents outlining a common approach to the most important problems. In particular, the Act on Canonical Communion, which defines the status of the ROCOR as a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Disagreements, however, remain.

The beginning of May is the traditional time for all sorts of rallies and processions. Mostly conditionally patriotic. But, as usually happens with us, everyone ends up being lumped together and it turns out to be a kind of evil carnival, when, say, May 9 is nothing more than a reason to brand Zurabov, Jews, gays, Putin and everyone who can be remembered.

Fidel Castro intends to sue Forbes magazine. You might think they wrote some kind of disgusting thing: they found a secret mistress or something worse - not at all, they just called him one of the richest rulers on the planet. And the Cuban leader’s personal fortune was estimated at $900 million. Of course it’s offensive, how can it be that a fiery communist and fighter against the bourgeoisie is called a rich man.

Europe doesn't like being blackmailed, but who will? So they are looking for an alternative to Russian gas; it has become painfully unpleasant to communicate with Gazprom. Yesterday, European Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs supported the project for the construction of the Trans-Caspian pipeline. The implementation of the project will make it possible to supply Kazakh and Turkmen gas to Europe, bypassing Russia.

On May 1, an international scandal occurred in Chechnya with the delegation of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).