oh my goodness From the Times of London: new footage reveals Russian special forces using Alexander Litvinenko's photo in target practice (!!!) An excerpt (full story here):

They were the best of the best of Russia’s special forces — and they were shooting at Alexander Litvinenko.

Images of elite Spetsnaz troops using pictures of the murdered former Russian spy for target practice prompted fresh accusations yesterday that the Kremlin was behind his killing.

The pictures were taken at a training camp outside Moscow where 90 troops from the Interior Ministry’s Vityaz (Hero) brigade were competing to earn the coveted maroon beret of the special forces.

Footage from the Vityaz training centre, filmed for publicity purposes, shows young soldiers weaving through an obstacle course before a live-fire exercise, in which they pump rounds from revolvers into a photograph of Litvinenko. His face was quickly riddled with 9mm bullet holes.


Good god. "Filmed for publicity purposes?!!!!!" And here we were thinking that the teapot did it.  ¶ 10:18 AM

  in long-neglected Cuba news... I'm sure everyone has heard by now that Chávez has admitted that Castro is "battling for his life." The rumor mill is surprisingly quiet on the subject, but maybe that's because this has been dragged out for so long and the landscape has changed so much that Miami doesn't know what to rebel against anymore. If we were talking about anyone other than Castro, I would hesitate to evaluate the past six months as stategically motivated, but because it is Castro, I can't really imagine anything else. The guy learned his historical lessons, and he learned them well. And it's becoming increasingly clear that Raúl's interests in Beijing go beyond sheltering his cash loaf and annihilating his brain cells with copious amounts of baijo.  ¶ 10:45 AM

  aaallll doooooone I somehow pulled a 20-something page paper out of my ass last night--it's about something having to do with Africa, don't ask me what--and after finally finishing the take-home week-long hellish stats final, I'm officially All Done With the Semester From Hell. Even if I don't pass stats--a distinct possibility when "fail" equals a B-minus and that final went as badly as it did--it won't be nearly as hard a second time, and I might actually get something out of it. I've made peace with the idea that if I am going to "fail" a class for the first time in my life, I reckon that a graduate seminar in statistics at the Best Damn University in the World is a pretty good place to do it.

Today I have done n-o-t-h-i-n-g except contemplate making some guacamole and read Dan Savage's gay marriage book.  ¶ 10:44 AM