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FRESH AIR Media suppression, corruption and the murder of political rivals have marked the regime of Vladimir Putin, who is running for his third term as president in Russia’s election next week. Despite mass demonstrations, he’s expected to win. How Putin rose to power is spelled out in Russian journalist Masha Gessen‘s new book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She says Putin, a KGB operative with little government experience before he was first elected in 1999, was specifically selected by the elite cohort that surrounded former President Boris Yeltsin. Over the years, Putin has […]

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RIGHT WING WATCH: Judge Richard Cebull, Chief U.S. District Judge for Montana, sent a “joke” email from his courthouse chambers, using his official court email account, that compares African Americans to dogs. Judge Cebull, who was nominated by President Bush and has served since 2001, admits he read the email, knew it was racist and intended to pass it along to his “old buddies.” He has apologized “to anybody who is offended by it,” which isn’t really much of an apology. Judge Cebull gave this explanation to John S. Adams of the Great Falls Tribune, who broke the story: “The […]

NAT GEO: A new species of bat whose face bristles with leaf-like protrusions has been discovered in Vietnam, a new study says.When scientists first spotted Griffin’s leaf-nosed bat in Chu Mom Ray National Park in 2008, the animal was almost mistaken for a known species, the great leaf-nosed bat, said Vu Dinh Thong, of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi.Still, Vu Dinh and his team, thinking there was a chance the bat might in fact be new to science, used nets to catch some of the docile animals. “While captured, some similar body-sized bats, i.e. [the] great […]

THE ATLANTIC: He went on to build his own little empire of “Big” blogs: Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and the youngest, Big Peace. It was fitting that Breitbart took on the “Big” brand, though he surely meant it as an attack on the powerful reach of these institutions he so hated. Because Breitbart embodied big: Everything he did was suffused with the bigness of his ideology, his conviction, and his willingness to battle it out with anyone who disagreed. For Breitbart, that combativeness was an asset, and not just because it made his work and his words fly […]

DAILY NEWS: The FBI declined to comment, but investigators appeared to be focusing on money paid to Fattah Jr., son of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Fattah Jr., who has done work for DVHS and Shulick’s law firm, owns 259 Strategies, a consulting firm that DVHS has paid $450,000, the Inquirer reported. DVHS has a school-district contract worth $4.1 million this fiscal year, district spokesman Fernando Gallard said. Last year, the district paid DVHS about $4.5 million, he said. “They are investigating City Council and certainly the Fattah organization and others,” Shulick, who […]

[Illustration by ALEX FINE] PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: Jahan Zeb Malik, “Zeb” to friends, was living in his tiny practice space on Columbus Boulevard, sleeping on a dirty mattress he’d crammed in amongst the maze of gear and the straggle of guitar cords. He had no shower. No fridge. No stove. No closet. His diet at the time mostly consisted of gas station hot dogs. Though sometimes he’d splurge for a gas station hamburger. The year was 2008, and everything had pretty much gone to shit. […] Opening for Nine Inch Nails as early as they did, as green as they were, […]

BUZZFEED: Mitt Romney’s “who let the dogs out” moment from when he marched in the Jacksonville, Florida Martin Luther King day parade already lives on in YouTube infamy. This extended version of the clip shows even more painful Romney moments, including the former governor telling a young baby he is wearing “bling-bling” and a girl she should be a boy scout, to which she replies, “Why a boy scout?” MORE PHAWKER: Why do we get the distinct feeling this is the first time Mitt Romney has been around black people that weren’t taking his Big Mac order or cleaning his […]

REUTERS:  North Korea agreed on Wednesday to stop nuclear tests, uranium enrichment and long-range missile launches, and to allow nuclear inspectors to visit its Yongbyon nuclear complex to verify the moratorium has been enforced. The breakthrough, announced simultaneously by the U.S. State Department and North Korea’s official news agency, paves the way for a resumption of six-party disarmament negotiations with Pyongyang and follows talks between U.S. and North Korean diplomats in Beijing last week. It also appears to mark a significant policy shift by North Korea’s reclusive leadership following the death in December of veteran leader Kim Jong-il – although […]

HAARETZ: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to publicly harden his line against Iran during a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on March 5, according to a senior Israeli official. Israel wants Obama to make further-reaching declarations than the vague assertion that “all options are on the table,” the official said. In particular, Netanyahu wants Obama to state unequivocally that the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain “red lines,” said the official; Israel feels this will increase pressure on Iran by making clear that there exists a real […]

HUFFINGTON POST: The chief executive of the biggest bank in the United States says journalists are ridiculously overpaid. At the company’s annual investor day, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called the percentage of newspaper company revenue paid out to employees “just damned outrageous,” according to Bloomberg News. “Worse than that, you [the media] don’t even make any money!” Dimon then defended his company’s own pay levels, arguing it necessary in the struggle to retain top talent. “We are going to pay competitively,” he said, according to the WSJ. “We need top talent, you cannot run this business on second-rate talent.” […]