TODAY: Politkovskaya suspects to be retried; NATO claims to be no rival to Russia; Medvedev says START negotiations still ongoing; extent of alcohol abuse deaths sends shockwaves; Duma speaker superhero

Russia has announced that the three men who were acquitted of being accomplices in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya will be retried.  Her son Ilya says that the decision to retry will only delay the process of finding the real murderers.  The Guardian reports that Politkovskaya’s children have demanded ‘a genuine investigation’, and say, ‘we are convinced that the murder wasn’t properly investigated’.  Russia is in conflict with the rest of the G8 powers on the elections in Iran.  ‘No one is willing to condemn the election process, because it’s an exercise in democracy’, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said, and isolating Iran serves no purpose, whilst other powers are less lenient.