Today: bird flu; pro-Kremlin youth groups; relations with Iran steadily improving; US missile shield tensions continue; a satellite tracker for Putin’s labrador? Russia’s equivalent of Santa Claus is called Ded Moroz, or Father Frost. Every December, a free three-week course called the Moscow School of Ded Moroz is run at a government-funded youth center. “Ded Moroz is the wizard of New Year’s. His origins predate Christianity, as the pagan god of winter.” Some say he acts as an emblem of Russia’s search for its own identity within existing Western cultural symbols.