An investigation into the beating of journalist Oleg Kashin has been handed to the top department of the Investigative Committee.  The Committee has also ordered new probes into both the 2000 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Igor Domnikov and the 2008 beating of journalist Mikhail Beketov.  Meanwhile Beketov, who suffers from brain damage as a result of the attack, has been convicted of criminal slander.  Moscow police are saying that yesterday’s attack on Zhukovskiye Vesti reporter Anatoly Adamchuk, in which he was punched twice in the head by teenagers, was ‘staged‘.  The Other Russia sees a similar, thinly-veiled position in comments made by Nashi Commissar Irina Pleshcheyeva at a Public Chamber session concerning the Kashin attack.  Brian Whitmore says that the attack puts Vladislav Surkov into the spotlight as the manager of pro-Kremlin youth groups like Nashi.  ‘A corrosive combination of what Mr Medvedev has termed “legal nihilism” and corruption means Russians cannot feel safe that law enforcement authorities will protect them from harm,‘ says the FT.  A Republican in the US House of Representatives has spoken out about the Kashin incident, suggesting that ‘the brutal nature of the regime‘ in Russia and the ‘savage attacks‘ on Kashin and Adamchuck, should give President Barack Obama pause to consider his ‘reset‘ of relations with the country.