This shouldn’t even be news, but, lo, it’s a Russian media spectacle. Naturally, we have to feed the shit-storm, too. Right around the holiday season, small-town girl and Internet aficionado Nastya Ivliyeva, 13, felt a case of the wants coming on. Specifically, Nastya wanted a new guinea pig to serve as companion to her existing rodent. With gift-giving season just around the corner, the girl could think of no person more able to make her wishes come true than Russia’s president. So little Nastya shot Uncle Dmitry an e-mail via his interactive website asking for a new pet. Really, you’d think the Kremlin would have a spam filter by now, considering. Instead, a series of downright Chekhovian developments followed.

Have you noticed your junk folder filling up faster lately? A recent study by the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab reveals what we've long suspected: Russia is the world’s number one spam distributor and the leading innovator in virus technology. While China still made more viruses in 2008, Russia’s were more complex. But there was no contest when it came to spam: Russia produces 22 percent of the world’s junk-mail messages to the United States’ 16 percent. You may wonder how a country with so few computers and a non-Latin alphabet can manage to distribute so much spam. Well, a lot of Russian spam is written in English. In fact, there may be some sitting in your spam inbox right now! Read on to learn the telltale signs.

With all their focus on domestic issues, the U.S. media have been utterly negligent in reporting American job loss abroad. I’m talking, of course, about the recent firing of “sexpat” and Internet personality Deirdre Dare from her job at a Moscow law firm. For those readers who haven’t been keeping up with the London Daily Telegraph’s excellent coverage, we are here to brief you.