[Tokyo, December 4. Image via Getty]

Alena Leonova of Russia performs during the short program of the women's competition in the ISU Grand Prix Final figure skating in Tokyo on December 4, 2009. Leonova came third with 61.60 points. AFP PHOTO/Toru YAMANAKA (Photo credit should read TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images)

• New data from Britain shows that the number of violent crimes committed by women has risen 81% in the last decade. Conservative politicians suggest that this is directly linked to a rise in binge drinking, which doesn't fully explain why the article is illustrated with a picture of a woman passed out drunk on a park bench. •  A woman spent her wedding night in a Spanish jail cell after she grabbed a cop by his neck and slapped him. The police officer was attempting to break up a fight that had broken out between members of the bride's family and relatives of the groom. We think this would make a great (read: horrible) rom-com, very Bridezillas meets Romeo and Juliet. • According to a recent study, pregnant lesbians are sick of being treated differently than heterosexual mothers. Researchers found that most lesbian couples have felt frustrated at some point or another with the uncomfortable way that midwives and doctors dealt with them. • Experts have disproved claims that Ida, a fossil recently discovered in Germany, was the missing piece that would link the evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes, and humans. In fact, Ida is the "about as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be." • 

[Moscow, October 13. Image via Getty]

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, not pictured, after talks in Moscow on October 13, 2009. The United States has absolutely no intention of relaxing sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear drive, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after talks in Moscow. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER NEMENOV (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images)

• The marriage application of a gay couple was rejected by Russian courts on the grounds that marriage is between a man and a woman, despite the fact that there is no ban on same-sex marriage in Russian law. They bought tickets to Canada, where they plan to get hitched. • In the 1960s, William R. ("Randy") Lovelace, II and General Donald Flickinger set out to test whether women were suited to space travel. Over the course of their investigation, they found that women had the lung capacity to survive in space. Although most of their data has been lost, a recent paper published in Advances in Physiology rediscovers the story of the Women in Space program. •  Serena Williams has reclaimed her spot at No. 1 after she beat Ekaterina Makarova in the second round of the China Open on Tuesday. "It feels pretty good, I'm really excited," she said. •  If you're in the market for an XBOX 360 autographed by Sarah Palin, there's one selling on eBay for $1.1 million. According to the description, "The infamous Sarah Palin XBOX 360 was autographed at the governors picnic on July 24, 2009, in Wasilla, Alaska, just two days before her resignation as governor of that state. You can own this 60GB, perfect-condition, one-of-a-kind item before her expected run for president of the United States of America in 2012." • According to a UN Children's Fund report five percent of boys and up to 10 percent of girls in rich nations experience penetrative sexual abuse during childhood. Up to three times as many experience some form of sexual abuse. • U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report that the international community needs to invest in women and girls even though the economy is bad. He wrote, "Maintaining national commitments to children and women and enhancing social protection will not only help to ensure a more rapid recovery from the (financial) crisis but will also build a foundation for equitable growth and sustained progress. • Police have admitted that they got a tip about Jaycee Dugard only a year after she was kidnapped, 17 years before she was found. A man reported that he'd seen a girl who looked like Dugard looking at a poster about her abduction at a gas station near Antioch, California and had left in a yellow van. Officers just checked the gas station and didn't find Dugard or the van. • A bill has been introduced in the District of Columbia that would allow gay couples to marry in the capitol. The bill is almost certain to pass, but it may not become a law because Congress gets to review D.C. legislation before it takes effect. • More than 2 million babies and mothers die worldwide each year from childbirth complications, according to a study by the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Doctors say such deaths could be avoided with improvements in basic health care and training for local health care workers to perform emergency Cesarean sections and other lifesaving techniques. • Egypt's most senior cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, is preparing to issue a Fatwa against women wearing the niqab, the full length garment that covers the body from head to toe, in schools. On a recent trip to a girl's high school he asked a girl wearing a niqab to take it off, saying it's a "tradition, it has no connection with Islam." • £700 micro pigs are all the rage among Britain's top celebrities, such as Rupert Grint. "They are highly intelligent and are the fourth most intelligent species after man, monkey and dolphin," says pig breeder Jane Croft. "They really are the perfect pets, I don't know why people haven't thought of them before." • Pilot "Sully" Sullenberger, St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Brendan Ryan, and Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Clay Zavada among the 18 finalists for the "Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year," the American Mustache Institute's highest honor. •

[Moscow, September 24. Image via Getty]

People walk past paintings that contain images of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov at the Central House of Artists in Moscow on September 24, 2009 during an annual art fair. AFP PHOTO / DMITRY KOSTYUKOV (Photo credit should read DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images)

[Beslan, Russia; September 1. Image via Getty]

A woman mourns inside the Beslan school gymnasium on September 1, 2009 while commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 2004 terrorist hostage takeover that took the lives of over 330 people, including 186 children. Five years on, Russian authorities have not learnt from the Beslan hostage siege, survivors of one of Russia's worst massacres in recent memory said as they marked its grim anniversary. AFP PHOTO / KAZBEK BASAYEV (Photo credit should read KAZBEK BASAYEV/AFP/Getty Images)

[Cincinnati, August 11. Image via Getty]

CINCINNATI - AUGUST 11: A young fan cheers for Dinara Safina of Russia during her match against Roberta Vinci of Italy on Day 2 of the Western & Southern Financial Group Women's Open on August 11, 2009 at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

[Tskhinvali, South Ossetia; August 9. Image via Getty]

A South Ossetian woman expresses her grief beside the grave of a relative killed in the August 2008 conflict, in Tskhinvali on August 9, 2009. Georgia and Russia traded fierce accusations as competing ceremonies were held to mark the first anniversary of their war that shook the Caucasus region and re-ignited Cold War-era tensions. AFP PHOTO / Dmitry KOSTYUKOV (Photo credit should read DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images)

[St. Petersberg, August 2. Image via WENN]

[Moscow, July 6. Image via AP]

U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama look at a cat at the Gorki residence outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 6, 2009. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Mikhail Klimentyev, Presidential Press Service)

The Matryoshka, or nesting doll, has long been both a major export and recognizable Russian icon, iterations running the gambit from the traditional nest of identical, diminishing sisters to a nested roll-call of Russia's leaders, often ending in a miniscule czar, or Lenin. It's as much a part of the kitsch landscape as the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, and yet, it seems the economic crisis, lax tourism and falling oil prices are posing a threat to the Matryoshka - makers and sellers report that sales are down more than 90%. So dire are the industry's prospects that the Kremlin has stepped in, stating that it would place a 1bn rouble (about $28 million) order for matryoshka and other traditional handicrafts, with an eye to giving them out as gifts. But given that the government is predicting no economic recovery until at least 2010, this may be a mere band-aid.

Despite its storied place in Russian lore, the nesting doll is by no means a traditional peasant craft: it's said to date back only to 1890, and to have been based upon a Japanese souvenir doll portraying Seven Gods of Fortune. A painter named Sergei Maliutin was inspired to create a Russian version, and working with a craftsman, created the first Russian nesting doll for Children's Education Workshop-Salon in Abramtsevo. The name "Matryoshka" is derived from the popular old Russian peasant name "Matryona," and her outift and sarafan mimic traditional festival dress. An industrialist presented the Matryoshka at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition, and the rest is history.

Whatever its antecendents, the nesting doll has become a true showcase of the turner's skill: truly fine Matryoshkas are valued for their thin sides and the number of 'nests,' and the best ones are painted with the precision of a Russian icon. To say that the industry has employed generations of artists is no exaggeration, and the appeal of the doll need not be explained to any child who's felt the familiar squeak of the wood under her hands and waited with baited breath to see just how tiny the dolls will get. And as devastating as the industry's death would be to thousands of artisans and producers, it's equally hard to imagine a world without the "Russian doll" metaphor. In addition to technical terminology -"Matryoshka brain," or the paradigm of Matroska media-container format - the Russian doll metaphor is a cottage industry amongst slapdash journalists and writers everywhere. A neat shorthand for many-layered complexity, the metaphor also manages to invoke the enigma-wrapped-question-mark appeal of the inscrutable east, with none of the earthy stench of the similar "onion" comparison. Will "nesting doll" somehow end up in the morgue of words that are used and not understood, its origins extinct and anachronistic - alongside "brass monkey," "Sam Hill" and "worth its salt?" Say it ain't so! The only upside we can find is the inability to describe any of Mel Gibson's various love interests as "Russian Dolls" - apparently a major challenge for The Media.

Can The Russian Doll Survive The Recession? [Independent]
Russian Bailout Covers Nesting Dolls [USA Today]

Related: History Of Russian Nesting Dolls [Russian Crafts]

• One of Annie Leibovitz's Louis Vuitton ads with astronauts Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell is out. (Gorby was busy that weekend.) [WWD]
• Karl Lagerfeld: "Ballet is an extraordinary art: this torture of the body to make something so graceful. All this hard work, to look effortless."

• "Swans, they are the meanest animals in the world, you know. I had problems with them as a child. They hate children. I was caught by one, so I know. The idea of swans is lovely, and they have a beautiful shape, but they seem more romantic than they in fact are. I don't think really they die like this. They just drop dead, hmm? But who wants to see that?"[Guardian]
• Christian Lacroix has vowed to keep his 22-year-old label alive even as it has declared bankruptcy, but its July couture presentation is in doubt. [WWD]
• Miranda Kerr is nude on the cover of the June Rolling Stone — in Australia. Because she cares about the environment. [News.com.au]
• Whichever "fellow student" told the Daily Mail "The end of year exams are a big deal at Cambridge University and we've all spent weeks revising. I don't know how she has managed to fit any revision into her busy social life," is certainly no "friend" to model/student Lily Cole. But then, if Lily Cole didn't want tabloid attention, she might not walk around London with her boyfriend wearing a gold ring on the ring finger of her left hand. [Daily Mail]
• Everybody you might care slightly about is getting a new fragrance this year. Kate Moss is naming hers "Vintage." [WWD]
• Kind of like the departed Mr. Blackwell — or Republican trickster Roger Stone — but only for hats, Luton, England milliner Philip Wright releases an annual list of the best celebrity hat-wearers. This year, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy topped it, for her "neat, chic, pill box hat" which "was a supreme example of classic simplicity at its best - a stylish understatement which captured the attention of the world's media." She beat the Queen. [Times of London]
• I've always thought that custom-made clothing, at the right price point, could and should be a bigger part of the apparel market than it is. Because all of us have issues with the fit of standardized sizes — who doesn't have a wardrobe half full of shirts that are tight in the shoulders but loose at the waist, pants with the wrong crotch depth, and skirts that don't move quite right when you walk. But all I want to know about this Ryan Taylor, aka "Taylor the Tailor", of Los Angeles, who supposedly takes his clients' measurements and turns out custom-fitted clothing in a couple days at prices "competitive with brand name department stores" is: where does he manufacture? (A question which, funnily enough, CNN seems to have no interest in.) Because everything I know about fashion leads me to suspect that level of service is only possible if you're e-mailing those customer measurements to a guy in Malaysia. Or Hong Kong. [CNN]
• A lone man pulled off an $8.5 million jewelry heist at Chopard in the Place Vendôme in Paris. [CBS]
• A study in the U.K. found that while women make up 52% of the fashion industry's workforce, they are paid 15% less than their male counterparts, and have only 37% of the top jobs. In New York, anecdotally, I've heard from many a design assistant toiling in the trenches of a major brand that, even though here as there the industry is largely female, things like on-site daycare are nonexistent. [Independent]
• Gilt Groupe, the members-only sample sale site, sponsored Zac Posen's resort show, which is happening tonight. Interesting. [WWD]
• Shares in the national mall chain Wet Seal fell 17% in Friday's trading, following the announcement of poor first quarterly results. Same-store sales fell by 7.3%, and even though it beat analysts' expectations by turning a $5 million profit during the quarter, news that the company does not expect to meet profit forecasts in the next quarter was enough to set the stock price sliding. [The Street]
• Lord & Taylor is closing one of its 47 stores nationwide. The Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia, will no longer boast a Lord & Taylor as an anchor tenant after July 12. Both Landmark Mall and its parent company, General Growth Properties, have filed for bankruptcy protection. [WSJ]
• The U.S. division of Dutch brand Oilily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed its Madison Avenue store. This follows the bankruptcy of its parent company in Hollard nearly two months ago. [Crain's]
• A statement from Wells Fargo, the principal creditor of the bankrupt Hartmarx company, which owns the menswear brands Hickey Freeman and Hart Schaffner Marx, has put Hartmarx's potential deal with private equity firm Emerisque in doubt. Emerisque's bid of $119 million for the business had been accepted by Hartmarx last week, but Wells Fargo, which is owed $114 million, said that with only $70 million of the bid being cash it "fails to provide adequate value to Hartmarx lenders." Wells Fargo also objects to the bid on the grounds that the offer "does not even ensure that Emerisque will continue running Hartmarx's business operations after the acquisition," something which Emerisque had pledged to do. The bankruptcy court is scheduled to hear objections to the bid today. [Chicago Tribune]
• Mango might do most of its business in Spain, but that won't prevent it from opening a store this September in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq and the country's third-largest city. [Times of London]
• Benetton's seven stores in Georgia closed in protest and Georgian politicians voiced thunderous objections to the chain's decision to open an outpost in Sukhumi, the capital of the disputed Black Sea region of Abkhazia. Tbilisi regards Abkhazia as a breakaway province; the EU and NATO concur; Russia recognizes its independence; 1.5 million Russian tourists visit Sukhumi every year. No doubt lured as much by the thought of all those rubles as by the international goodwill it advertises, Benetton has nonetheless been forced to abandon its plans to open the store. [WSJ]

• A court in Germany has fined a man for beheading Hitler. Minutes after the Madame Tussauds museum opened, the 42-year-old man ran in and grabbed the head off a wax Adolf statue, claiming that it is inappropriate to include an image of the Nazi leader so close to the Holocaust memorial. • Spain has announced plans to make the emergency contraceptive pill available over the counter. There is also a movement in Spain to loosen the strict abortion laws, which only allow abortions in cases of rape, or when the mothers health is seriously at risk. • A small team of students at the College of Textiles in New Jersey are currently working on an update for the standard hospital gown. • Researchers have found that mothers who experience a traumatic experience prior to becoming pregnant may still pass certain behaviors (stemming from the trauma) onto her offspring.  •  A recent study indicates that women across America are forgoing their annual recommended mammograms. • Good news: a new study shows that there are now more women in corporate boardrooms than ever before. •  Horrible news: An Argentinian man has been charged with incest and the rape of his daughter. Armando Lucero allegedly had seven children with his daughter, who he began abusing at age eight. Naturally, Lucero's case has been compared to that of Josef Fritzl. • In the African country of Mauritania, rape is defined as "domestic violence," regardless of whether the rapist was a stranger or an acquaintance. Furthermore, rape is not generally prosecuted as a crime, and under current laws, the only illegal part of rape is the sex-without-marriage thing. • Scientists have found that smoking may enhance the activity of a gene that aids in breaking down body fat. • A 15-year-old Australian girl named Jessica Watson hopes to become the youngest sailor to make it all the way around the world. Her solo trip will begin next week, right after her 16th birthday.  •  A new survey found that 3 out of 4 domestic violence shelters have reported an increase in women seeking aid in the past few months. Sue Else, president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, believes that this may be due, at least in part, to the recession. • This London sexual health clinic is a far cry from the local Planned Parenthood I visit. Pap smears in style. • A California woman has been accused of making over $8.5 million in an online prostitution ring. The website claimed to offer dates with porn stars and fashion models. • French kissing (or "tongue kissing," as we called it in grade school) increases the risk of contracting oral HPV, study says. • 

• Rihanna was the big show-stopper at the Met Ball: Celebs cheered when she took the stage to perform. And! At an after-party, guess who RiRi was in deep convo with?

None other than Ms. Anna Wintour. Will someone be gracing the pages of Vogue very soon? [Gatecrasher]

• Have people stopped returning Lindsay Lohan's phone calls? Apparently Pharrell Williams had offered to help her revive her music career, she tells Interview: "He's an amazing guy. He's only been really kind to me whenever I've met him. He said, 'I'd love to make a great record with you, but I want to take you out of all the elements that you're used to. Let's go away. Let's go somewhere nice where you can be focused, and let's make an album there.'" Of course, she hasn't heard from him since and says: "Pharrell, please call me back!" [Daily Express]
• It seems that Kiefer Sutherland did indeed intentionally headbutt Proenza Schouler designer Jack McCollough, who allegedly knocked over Brooke Shields; Kiefer was coming to Brooke's rescue or something. Met Ball dramz! [TMZ]
• Brooke Shields' rep is saying "nothing happened to her" and "Jack did nothing inappropriate. It's not clear what caused Kiefer to do what he did." [TMZ]
• A source says Kiefer Sutherland "was really drunk and he got accidentally bumped by McCollough. They started arguing and then he just head-butted him." Hmm. Kiefer's been arrested for DUI twice. [Page Six]
• More on this in Midweek Madness, but Us magazine is confirming that star of Jon & Kate Plus 8 Jon Gosselin, 32, has been having an affair with third grade school teacher Deanna Hummel, 23. [Just Jared]
• Amy Winehouse's dad is kicking "freeloading pals" out of her hotel room in St. Lucia — her two friends Violetta and Thalia were having "all-day boozing sessions" on Amy's dime. A source says: "Amy performs for the first time in ages at the St Lucia Jazz Festival this week. Mitch knows she has to get it right." [The Sun]
• Paula Abdul is saying pain killers are to blame for when she would "get weird." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Madonna is planning a concert in St. Petersburg, Russia, but local authorities are calling it a "natural disaster" and want "guarantees that there will be no blasphemy." Ha! [Page Six]
• Victoria Beckham wears her sunglasses at night. In the rain. [The Sun]
• Excellent news: Mindy Kaling has a new deal with NBC; she'll continue to write for and appear on The Office next season while simultaneously developing a comedy in which she would also star. She says: "This is my first step in a Transformers-style way to take over the whole world." [Variety]
• Holy gray T-shirt! These pictures of Simon Cowell's new £15million mansion which looks over the Hollywood Hills are absolutely stunning. [Daily Mail]
• In a deposition regarding a lawsuit that Paris Hilton didn't do enough to promote 2006 box office bomb Pledge This, Paris says she promoted the flick "any chance I got." Her lawyer says, "She's the single busiest person on the planet." [AP]
• "Robert Pattinson 'baffled' by fans." [Mirror]
• The weight watchers have moved from Jessica and Lindsay to the King of Pop: Michael Jackson has allegedly been warned that he is "too thin" and needs to gain about 20 lbs before his 50 live shows in the UK. [The Sun]
• Details on Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard's wedding! It took place in a cloister of a convent that's a luxury bed and breakfast in Brindisi, Italy; Jake and Reese were there; guests mingled in the garden, which features a pool, wines from the nearby town of Lecce were served. [People]
• Oprah's Twitter stunt of offering everyone in America a free chicken dinner: Newsworthy. [Time]
• Speaking of Ms. Winfrey, you knew this would happen: Susan Boyle will be on Oprah. [Daily Express]
• Yesterday was Chris Brown's birthday; he turned 20 and it was "low-key." [People]
• Mia Farrow is ten days into her hunger strike for Darfur. A few days ago she said: "At this point I don't think about food. I am weaker and I am mostly in bed. I am clear-minded. I sleep less." She also says: "No one voted for President Obama with more excitement and passion than I did, but he's really been lagging and the people of Darfur can't wait." [Guardian]
• Mia Farrow is documenting her fast on YouTube. [Page Six]
• Joel Madden went on a Twitter rant after he and baby Harlow were surrounded by photographers at an airport: "Let me just say shame on any magazine or blog that post pics of us in the miami airport. The photographers were acting like animals. it was the first time i've ever seen my child scared. Not cool for any parent to see. At least in LA they gave us some space. These guys were sticking flashes in her face and bumping in to us and yelling. The most unnecessary force i've ever seen." [Perez]
• Village Voice columnist Michael Musto says Miss California USA once posed with "trannie extraordinaire" Amanda Lepore. He asked Amanda about it, but she says: "I don't remember meeting her. You know how many pictures I take!" Of Carrie Prejean's pageant answer, Ms. Lepore says: "That was stupid. She could never make a career in TV. Gays monopolize everything! She's a dummy! Now she's trying to have churches help her. That doesn't sound promising. But at least she has big tits. She can marry a high roller and have miserable kids that hate her." Musto adds: "All thanks to opposite marriage!" [Village Voice]
• Unfake my heart: A Las Vegas entertainer faces fraud charges for impersonating Toni Braxton. [AP]
• Back in the '90s, Bono wrote a poem about Elvis; it will be broadcast on the UK's Radio 4 on May 13. [The Sun]
• Rachel Weisz will star in an indie political drama, The Whistleblower, which is based on the true story of a female cop from Nebraska who serves as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia and exposes a United Nations cover-up of a sex trafficking scandal. [Variety]
• Will Ferrell is in talks to star in a comedy called Neighborhood Watch, directed by the guy who did Wedding Crashers. [Variety]
• Cameron Diaz plays the mother of a sick child in My Sister's Keeper, and although she appears bald in the film, didn't shave her head: She only needed to be bald for one day of shooting. [LA Times]
• Kate Walsh's divorce continues to be a mess. [TMZ]
• Debbie Matenoppoulos will get $3,595 per month in spousal support from her ex, Jay Faires. She currently lives in the couple's home and is responsible for paying all expenses, including the mortgage. [Radar Online]
• Shimmy shimmy ya: Ol' Dirty Bastard will be memorialized in an upcoming documentary and a series of tribute albums, all produced by his cousin Raison Allah Iceman. [Telegraph]
• Blind item! "Which very taken Oscar winner has been sending lots of flowers to a pretty fashion publicist?" [Gatecrasher]
• "There are many duos we wanted to draw from. Something as eccentric as The Odd Couple to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Withnail and I and Laurel and Hardy. It's the kind of friendship you can only have with someone of the same sex, a person you adore but who infuriates you." — Jude Law on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie's new flick Sherlock Holmes. [USA Today]
• "There's tons of stuff in my name. I mean, if I told you how many Facebook pages have my name on it, you wouldn't believe it. But I am going to join Facebook. I've been doing the MySpace thing a long time and I realize a lot of people are doing Twitter, I just don't want to know what people are doing every single second of their day. I find it a little invasive, but people are into it. To each their own. I don't have the desire to send out messages all day long. That's not me. I'd rather be doing something else." — Zach Braff [Time]

• The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission in Australia is working on creating an official "intersex" gender for people who don't define themselves as "female" or "male." • A new study has found that women who suffer from severe stress six months before they conceive can increase the risk of having a premature baby. • Three egg donor agencies in Illinois are offering the nation's first guarantee for would-be parents that they can receive a discount if their egg donor changes her mind. • A Massachusetts man is appealing a $100 ticket he got while driving in the breakdown lane as he was taking his in-labor wife to the hospital. • Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and Seamus Heaney supported the new Aura Estrad Prize which is given to young female writers who live in America or Mexico and write in Spanish. • A recent study of United States Latinas shows that those with more European ancestry have an increased risk of breast cancer. • Lillian Allen, a 100-year-old African American woman and community activist, is excited for Obama's inauguration, where her grandson who serves in the Secret Service will protect the new President. • A "morbidly obese" dog named Jiffy survived being frozen to the sidewalk overnight in Wisconsin thanks to his layers of chub. Jiffy's owner was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of animal neglect. • Glasvegas's tiny female drummer Caroline McKay was voted the 10th Coolest Person in Rock by NME magazine. • SANS offers cheap, printable patterns for crafty men and women who want to make or alter their own clothes. • A 19-year-old lass from Florida was arrested on misdemeanor assault and battery charges on Sunday when she popped off on a store employee for calling her the c-word. •

[Image via Mantra Films, Inc.]

A vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and the Russian war with Chechnya, Politkovskaya wrote powerfully of Russian kidnappings of Chechen civilians:

Imagine that a group of strangers in uniform bursts into your house and takes away your loved one. And that is it, the end. First there was a man. Now he doesn't exist. He is wiped out of life, like a stick-figure from a school blackboard. You rage, you go mad. You beg for a piece of information. The ones who are supposed to search advise you to forget about it ... The most awful tragedy of current Chechnya is people disappearing without a trace.

She knew that her repeated trips to Chechnya and her criticisms of Putin (an ex-KGB spy whom one former associate accuses of using "Stalinist methods") and Russian-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov put her in danger; in Letter to Anna, she says, "why am I still live? If I speak seriously about this I would understand it as a miracle." It may be a miracle, too, if her real murderers are convicted.

After her death, Putin said that Politkovskaya's influence in Russia was "negligible," and that she was probably killed to make the regime look bad. But the NYRB cites a 2006 poll [site in Russian] in which half of respondents knew of Politkovskaya and over a third were familiar with her work. And several other journalists critical of the Putin administration have been targeted — two have been murdered just since September 2008. Before the trial, a lawyer for the Politkovskaya family found mercury in her car.

Even if the suspects in the trial are convicted, the person who actually ordered Politkovskaya's killing will remain unknown and at large. Russian exiles abroad believe the order came from Russia's Federal Security Service (Politkovskaya called them "Putin's guard dogs"), with the tacit approval of Putin himself. The trial is unlikely to reveal this or any other information, as it will probably be closed to the public. Meanwhile, Politkovskaya's son and her former newspaper are conducting their own investigation into her murder. Let's remember her as a woman, as a journalist, and as someone who tried to save her country from "an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance," a reality not specific to just Russia.

Who Killed Anna Politkovskaya? [New York Review of Books]
Politkovskaya's lawyer finds car filled with deadly mercury [International Herald Tribune]
Anna Politkovskaya murder trial begins in Moscow [Guardian]
Letter to Anna [Official Site]