• 90% of all nuclear weapons are owned by the U.S. or Russia
• eight months of ongoing negotiations between the countries
• yes they finally came to a deal to stash away their nuclear weapons source

• Want to panic your country? Simple. Simulate war conditions on a news broadcast and say that the president has been killed. And just watch the ratings roll in! This actually happened in Georgia, when they claimed under the guise of a “simulation” that the Russian army was invading and the president had been killed. Great public service, guys. Part two is here, by the way. source

• Russian student Andrey Ternovskiy has reportedly applied for a visa. Could Chatroulette, that random piece of viral Internet goodness, go legit? Word on the street is that Ternovskiy is currently in a tug-of-war between Silicon Valley and his Russian homeland about where he goes to legitimize the service, which has grown from 500 to 1.5 million daily users in just three months (!!). One interesting fact from this ReadWriteWeb story: Google, Microsoft and Facebook alone have a combined market value, $500 billion, that equals a third of Russia’s annual economic output. Holy crap, kids. source

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• At 6.8, this quake is nearly as strong as the one that turned Haiti into a pile of rubble. Here’s a map. More details on the quake as we get them. This literally just happened.
• Update: The A.P. (grumble) reports that the quake was strong enough to shake buildings in Beijing for a minute, despite its relatively long distance away.

• $1.8 billion in arms goes directly to the Libyans source

• 89 ruble, or $3, minimum price for vodka in Russia source

• This is one more step toward isolation. And since this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials have long sought.
• Tula, Russia, construction engineer Aleksei Larin, 31 • Regarding his dislike of the idea of Cyrillic domain names, an idea that carries more currency with leadership (who have long-disliked the hold English has had on the Web) than it does with people. Others support the idea due to the city-centric nature of Russian internet use, but others – mainly companies – just don’t see the point. source

• 5 have been held in the nightclub disaster that killed 109+ source

• clubbin’ In Russia, 100+ were killed in a late-night explosion at a nightclub. Fireworks are being blamed for the blast in the city of Perm.
• karaoke In Jakarta, Indonesia, 20+ were killed after a fire in a crowded karaoke club. The people were trapped in a tiny room.