'According to Russian media reports, Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, was visiting the Ussuriisky Nature Reserve in the far east of Russia to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild.

'Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran toward a nearby camera crew, the country's main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.

'"Vladimir Putin not only managed to see the giant predator up close but also saved our television crew too," a presenter on Rossiya television said at the start of the main evening news.' [MSNBC]

Vladmir Putin is Time magazine’s Person of The Year.

Russia is a creepy place, Whoopi Goldberg is an idiot, and our acceptance speech for winning the award two years in a row will have to go unused.

What else is there to say? This self-made story is a blatant attempt to boost Time's newsstand sales and web hits, and it works every time. You can read more about their selection process here.

• This classic SNL digital short prompted one of our college friends to say "[Natalie Portman] is the only Jewish girl I'd convert for."

• Gary Kasparov blames Vladamir Putin for forcing him out of Russia's presidential election, continues his one-man crusade to get gunned down by members of the KGB.

• Gawker is looking for a reporter with "an ability to write five short items a day." Easiest job ever?

• "I Hucked Up" is officially the second-best Post headline of the day. Although we would have preferred "Huck Accuses Mormons, Romney Of Deal With The Devil."

• GQ tries to cash in on the progressive artistic phenomenon known as "Flashy-Light Vagina."

• Baseball: Not exactly America's pastime anymore.

• That face transplant chick from France is looking hot. Well, compared with having no face.

We always had Hillary Clinton pegged as a real nutcracker. Apparently, we were right.

Meanwhile, we're actually far more excited about the upcoming products from the other democratic candidates!

Among our personal favorites are the John Edwards toupee ("It's like having a $400 haircut every day!") the John McCain piggy-bank ("The first piggy-bank that only accepts certified checks") and the Barack Obama abs-roller ("It's what separates the Vladamir Putins from the Nicolas Sarkozys.")

Shopping, anyone?

Following a semi-disastrous group lunch at Borough Food & Drink [Ed: Jeffrey Chodorow's kitschy new enterprise, and home to the worst roasted duck salad in all the land] your enterprising young Jossip editors were sitting at our desks, wishing we'd ordered the harder-to-ruin BLT sandwich while simultaneously trying to block out the crazy ramblings of our all-too-audible officemates and marveling about how today is the slowest, least eventful news day in the world.

And then, as luck would have it, we received the following email missive from the indefatigable Intern Wendy.

"I LOOOVE FoxNews.com," she writes, in what we can only interpret as unbridled sincerity. "This is on their front page right now," she adds, referring to a topless photo of Russian prez Vladamir Putin (semi-appropriately captioned, "Ravishing Russian: Vladimir Putin poses stripped to the waist, fishing rod in hand.")

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