Moscow downtown -- a car exploded after a bomb detonated under the vehicle, targeting its owner, Sergei Chelyaginov, age 35. Mr. Chelyaginov is a private business owner. Please see the Crime section of RussiaBlog for more news on assassination as a common tool of Russian business.
Russia Today -- the new English language 24 hour channel -- was launched on Saturday. It went off the air on Monday. The Russian government spent $30 million on new digital equipment, and more money on the salaries of young British "professionals" fresh out of college and their Russian peers. The new channel administration blames the failure on a hacker attack; however, there are more likely explanations for what happened.
Russia Today is the first channel in Russia to go 100% digital (without real tapes), and there are just not enough Russian technicians available who have extended experience working with such equipment. The channel is 100% owned and controlled by the Kremlin, and channell executives promised reporting just "as professional as Al Jazeera or BBC". There's a little problem though -- Russian bureaucrats don't really speak English, and therefore, they don't have much control of what is done and said on the channel. Here's the result: a bunch of young kids playing with expensive equipment to create the first in Russian history 24 hour channel ended up losing control of the situation, and literally shutting down their live programming for some period of time. The channel is still off the air, and no one really knows when it will be back.
Grozny, Chechnya -- today the first session of the new Chechen parliament took place. Everything was peaceful, besides the roar of the jets, then helicopters flying overhead, and then Putin himself appearing out of nowhere. Russian news agencies are usually banned from delivering the information about Putin's visit to Chechnya until the moment when the president's plane takes off. However, Reuters doesn't care for these restrictions, and broke the story at 2 pm Moscow time. Putin and Alu Alhanov (president of Chechnya) compared Grozny with Stalingrad, stressed the historic importance of the new Chechen parliament, and one hour later Putin took his leave, and said that he is expected to be in Malaysia. Safe travels to you, Putin-the-adventurer!