A corruption scandal broke out in the health insurance system. The leaders of the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund were detained on suspicion of bribery: director Andrei Taranov and his deputy Dmitry Usenko. According to investigators, budget money was withdrawn through the additional benefit program (DLO) using various financial schemes, ending up in someone's pockets. The piquancy of the situation is that Taranov is the “man” of Minister Zurabov.

The game of “free elections” is over. Today, the State Duma, in its final third reading, adopted a law that abolishes the voter turnout threshold for recognizing elections or referendums as valid. The result is amazing: the “against all” column has been abolished, we vote only according to party lists, only for those who have passed re-registration, and now also turnout... Finally, one “worthy” person from one “correct” list will be able to vote for the whole country.

The Gripol vaccine, which is used to vaccinate children against influenza throughout Russia, gave an unexpected reaction - in the Stavropol region, three schoolchildren aged 8 to 10 years old ended up in intensive care after vaccination. The drug "Gripol" caused an acute allergy in them. It must be said that local doctors have long been saying that the domestic vaccine is not entirely successful; imported analogues are much more effective and safer.

The amendments indicate that the subject must be of a “historical, cultural, informational nature” and not be accompanied by religious rites. Thus, the deputy is trying to resist the decision of the Ministry of Education to cancel the division of the school curriculum into components and leave only the federal one. The fact is that until now, defense education has been taught mainly within the regional component and is now under threat.

You either have a sense of humor or you don’t – and it’s immediately obvious. But whether it’s funny or not is up to anyone to decide. Half the country is watching Petrosyan, another half the country is spitting. And on a global scale, there is now no cooler comedian than “Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiev.” Have you heard of this? Until recently, people in Russia knew nothing about him. But the Kazakhs get terribly worried at the mere mention of this gentleman. His real name is Sacha Baron Cohen.

On Thursday, the government submitted a bill on the participation of foreign capital in strategic companies. Oddly enough, most of the strict restrictions that the FSB, the GPU and the antimonopoly service insisted on are not included in it. The new law does not limit the participation of foreigners in energy generating companies, as the FSB sought. The proposal to increase the threshold for approval of transactions was also rejected.

The application for the creation of a new political project - based on five parties (People's Party, Revival of Russia, Patriots of Russia, Social Justice Party and Social Democratic Party) - did not become a sensation. There had to be something to do with the excess number of political organizations that are crowded into the not very broad center-left electoral platform.

We may be facing another alcohol crisis. This is all connected with the same EGAIS system - it turns out that not all problems were solved in the summer. Nobody really learned how to work with it; as a result, about 5 million bottles of imported wines are now in warehouses, and there is no legal way to “defrost” them.

An absolutely ordinary event happened. The 5-year contract of Mr. Ryazanov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of OJSC Gazprom, President of OJSC Gazprom Neft (formerly Sibneft), has expired. His contract was not renewed, and Valery Golubev, Putin’s former colleague in the KGB, and then an employee of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, chairman of the city committee for tourism and resort development, was appointed in his place.

On Thursday, Yuri Levada, the author of the first course of lectures on sociology in the USSR and the head of the famous Levada scientific seminar, died of a heart attack. The seminar was subsequently dispersed, just as the Institute for Concrete Social Research, which it had created, was later dispersed. In 1988, Levada and his team came to VTsIOM, which he eventually headed, turning it into the country’s main sociological school. But I had to leave there too - already in 2003.

Every year, the international non-governmental organization Transparency International, which determines the corruption index, conducts research in many countries around the world. According to the rules of the study, the complete absence of corruption in the respondent’s perception is equal to 1, the highest level is indicated by the number “5”. In 2006, religious organizations were named the least corrupt in Russia.

According to a Levada Center poll, 60% of Russians are confident that even after the 2008 elections, Putin will retain his political influence. 15% are convinced that his strength will be the same as it is now, even if he actually ceases to be president. We have been convinced for so long that “it’s impossible to live without it” - so we believed it.