TODAY: Committee to Protect Journalists praises impetus of Investigative Committee; upset over Karpov FIFE defeat; Kremlin considering Kozhin for Moscow.  Russia-friendly party poised to give strong performance in Latvian elections; war of words over Kuril escalates; Viktor Bout extradition to be decided by Thai PM

A board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Kati Marton, has told reporters following a meeting with the Investigative Committee, which will reexamine the murders of 19 journalists, that ‘the atmosphere was different this time’, and that CPJ members were ‘impressed by the seriousness’ of the Committee’s head Alexander Bastrykin.  In an exercise in what he suggests might be called ‘counterfactual futurism’, Robert Coalson considers the chasm between opinion polls and political structures in Russia.  The Other Russia reprints an interview with Garry Kasparov from StandPoint magazine, in which he discuses the Presidency, both that of FIFE and the Russian federation.  The former of those battles being lost to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, says chess grand master Daniel King, is a catastrophe for the game.