The abolition of the funded part of the pension, which the government can carry out as part of the pension reform, will “drive the state into a trap.” newspaper writes in its August 1 issue As the Vedomosti , Sberbank President German Gref warned about this in a letter to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev . The document has not been published publicly. The abolition or reduction of the funded component is being discussed in the government as one of the options for pension reform.

The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vladimir Kolokoltsev , promised to drop the criminal case against Andrei Bogomolov, an activist of the pro-Kremlin movement “Pigs against”, suspected of using violence against a police officer, pending reconciliation of the parties. reports this RIA Novosti .

Rosalkogolregulirovanie will check low-alcohol cocktails and energy drinks for vitamin content. The Izvestia newspaper writes about this with reference to a representative of the department. Those drinks that are found to exceed a certain dosage of vitamins will be prohibited from sale. Maximum restrictions on the concentration of these substances are established by the technical regulations "On the safety of alcoholic products", adopted within the framework of the Customs Union.

Popular microblogger and Wheely Moscow marketing director Evgeny Kozlov suspected State Duma deputy Vladimir Burmatov of buying Twitter followers. In nine days, Kozlov notes , the number of Burmatov’s followers doubled, after which it began to slowly decline. Kozlov provides a screenshot of statistics from the microblog @burmatoff on the TwitterCounter service. According to it, from July 12 to July 21, the number of followers of the account increased from 169 thousand to 343 thousand.

In Tajikistan, access to the RIA Novosti website has been blocked since August 1. The Communications Service of Tajikistan sent the corresponding requirement to local Internet providers, reports the Central Asian news agency CA-News. In addition to the website of the Russian news agency, access to the Tajik news agency Asia Plus (news.tj) was again blocked. According to a CA-News source at one of the provider companies, clients have already begun to file complaints about site blocking.

01.08.2012, 17:14:59 version Print | PDA/PDA Hair salon in Kolkata. Photo ©AP Doomsday Blackout Half of India's population is left without electricity Power outages in India, as in many other Asian countries, are not uncommon. However, at the end of July, local residents encountered much larger problems than usual. First, on July 30, about 370 million people were left without electricity.

The microblogging service Twitter has restored the account of The Independent's Los Angeles bureau chief Guy Adams, which was blocked after he published the email address of an NBC representative. In a blog post , Twitter apologized to Adams for the incident. The journalist wrote several dozen messages on his microblog criticizing NBC's decision to show the Olympics in a recording.

The Estonian Environmental Inspectorate has stated that praying mantises can be sold in the country. This is reported by ERR. The comment on this issue was made after the Estonian Tax and Customs Department received a “signal” about the sale of praying mantises via the Internet. The department contacted the inspectorate to find out whether it was legal to sell these insects.

web email service The new Microsoft Outlook.com gained more than a million subscribers in the first six hours after its launch. This is stated in the Outlook microblog . Outlook.com went live on the evening of July 31st. Microsoft sees the new service as a "modernization" of Hotmail, which has been around since 1996 and has 324 million active users. The Outlook.com interface is designed in the Metro style, like other Microsoft products - Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox Live.

Police Major General Sergei Lebedev has been appointed as the new head of the main department of private security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The corresponding decree was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin . The text of the decree on Wednesday, August 1, appeared on the president’s website.

The German press has put forward a new version of the resignation of the head of the German federal police, Matthias Seeger, who was unexpectedly fired by Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich . According to Hannoversche Neue Presse, one of the reasons for the resignation was the scandal with the photograph of German police officers, in which they are depicted with a flag with a skull and weapons at the residence of the German Ambassador in Kabul.

A serial killer of pensioners is being sought in the Volga and Ural federal districts. agency reported this on August 1 The Interfax . The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Samara Region told journalists that the unknown man was suspected of 16 murders committed since 2011. According to investigators, he enters the apartments of elderly women in Khrushchev apartments, strangles the housewives and takes money and valuables.

The National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Poland (KRRiT) fined the local radio station Eska ROCK 75 thousand zlotys (more than 22 thousand dollars) for offensive statements by its presenters Michal Figurski and Kuba Voevudski about Ukrainian women. UNIAN agency reports this. The incident in the "Poranny WF" program occurred during Euro 2012, the day after the Ukraine-Sweden match.

On Wednesday, August 1, a bill was introduced to the State Duma prohibiting civil servants and security officials from having assets and real estate abroad. reports this ITAR-TASS . The authors of the bill were representatives of all four parliamentary factions: Vyacheslav Lysakov and Valery Trapeznikov ( United Russia ), Andrei Lugovoi (LDPR), Alexander Ageev ( A Just Russia ) and Oleg Denisenko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation ).

The US Army commissioned the creation of an automated system for training rats to detect explosives, RATS. According to an Army press release, the creation of such a system is being developed by Barron Associates in collaboration with scientists from the US Army Research Laboratory and Army engineers from West Point. In the first stage, the researchers will find out whether and how rats can be trained to search for explosives.