1. "Show dog disappearance creates urban legend": When a problem comes along, you must whippet.

["In the nine months since escaping her travel cage at Kennedy Airport, Vivi the wayward whippet has joined the Central Park coyote, high-rise tiger, Harlem Meer caiman and Molly the fugitive feline in New York's ever-growing pantheon of urban animal legends. She was reported dozens of times, roaming cemeteries with other dogs, or hanging around stores in the borough of Queens, in some cases miles from the tarmac where she disappeared while awaiting a flight home to California on February 15. A day earlier, she had won an Award of Merit at the annual Westminster Kennel Club show."]

["I was steadily annoyed by the over-stylish, absurdly clean and unwrinkled clothes of the two leads (they looked like Ralph Lauren catalog models) and by the sexist stereotyping of their betrayed and increasingly unattractive wives. Heath Ledger deserved his Oscar nomination, but (contrary to Annie Proulx's assertion) it wasn't really a major Oscar-winning performance. Ledger impressed me at first with his muted, strangled delivery, but he showed little development over time in his character and relied too often on a series of phlegmatic, shop-worn mannerisms borrowed from James Dean and Montgomery Clift."]

["A leading Kazakh writer has nominated actor Sacha Baron Cohen for a national award for popularizing Kazakhstan. Novelist Sapabek Asip-uly called on the Kazakh Club of Art Patrons to give Cohen its annual award, according to a letter published by the Vremya newspaper Thursday."]

["Emerging with a shock of white fur, a cat stunned cargo workers in England as it jumped out of a goods container after a 17-day sea voyage from Israel to Britain, a journey of more than 2,000 miles, an animal charity said Friday."]
______________________________________________________
"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.