Global Voices Online

There are 15 million Web sites in the Russian segment of the Internet. They account for 6,5 percent of all Web sites available online. An average Russian Web site contains 255 pages, 159 thousand words, and 204 images.  These facts were revealed in the latest research “The Runet Content” by Yandex [RUS].

Fifty one percent of young Russians (ages 16 - 24) consider the Internet a reliable source of information. This makes the Internet the second most trustworthy source  after TV among the youth.  This and other findings are available in a newly published report [RUS] by the Public Opinion Foundation.

Ukraine roundup: flu and politics - at What's Up, Ukraine? and at Jamestown Foundation Blog, here and here; the latest on the tense relationship between the Ukrainian president and PM - at Ukrainiana, as well as two posts - here and here - on one of the 18 presidential candidates, Vasyl Protyvsikh, head of Ivano-Frankivsk Chamber of Commerce and former head of Ivano-Frankivsk Customs, aka Vasyl Humenyuk, whose new last name translates as “against all”; Ukraine Today reports that Natalia Vitrenko of Ukraine's Progressive Socialist Party “has been excluded from the Presidential race for failing to pay the 2.5 million deposit”; Window on Eurasia highlights the views of Ukraine's ambassador to Russia on the Ukrainian-Russian relations.

Profy writes about the IT dimension of president Medvedev's annual address: “The draft speech was initially published online as a lengthy article by the president and he invited all the citizens to voice their opinions out via the Kremlin official website - and people were definitely very willing to participate given more than 18 thousand comments received.” NetEffect writes about “tweeting your way to Gulag”: turns out that in Russia, “the police are avid readers of ‘the Internet' and particularly of Twitter.”

Profy writes about the newly-launched ForbesRussia.ru website and “their obvious lack of interest in anything local and specific to the Russian market, in particular in the field of social media and social networking.”

Dr. Filomena and Profy are musing on what it means to be a blogger.

Russian Blog reports that Yekaterinburg authorities have announced a flu-related quarantine from Nov. 13 to Nov. 20.

The final part (part 4) of Polina Zherebtsova’s 1999 Chechen Diary - at Sundry Translations and Other Tangentialia. (More links: intro, part 1, part 2, part 3, Russian-language original.)

At Th!nk About It, a climate change blogging competition, Adela reports on the construction of a highway in Romania, which will go through a national park, endangering “the only virgin forest on our good old continent”, and also writes about the Recicleta project in Bucharest, and one Romanian man's roof garden; Sinisa Boljanovic writes on what a difference it would make if Serbia switched from 100W light bulbs to “environmental friendly bulbs of 20W”; Eamonn Fitzgerald posts a note on “a free ride Russia gets from environmentalists.”