Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is no bag lady

People

No bag lady

France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is seeking $165,200 in damages from clothing vendor Pardon, based on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion, to stop the company from distributing bags bearing a nude black-and-white image of her. The photo of Bruni-Sarkozy was taken in 1993 when she was a model.

Found

2,000-year-old brain

British archaeologists have unearthed an ancient skull carrying a startling surprise — an unusually well-preserved brain. Scientists said Friday that the mass of gray matter was more than 2,000 years old — the oldest ever discovered in Britain. One expert called it "a real freak of preservation." The skull was severed from its owner sometime before the Roman invasion of Britain and found in a muddy pit during a dig at the University of York in northern England this fall, according to Richard Hall, a director of York Archaeological Trust.

Update

Not so fast

A Russian news agency said patent authorities denied businessman Oleg Teterin's claim Thursday that he had trademarked ;-), a symbol used widely in e-mail, text and instant messages that denotes a smiling wink when looked at sideways.

Critters

No dogs allowed

The British Broadcasting Corp. will not televise Britain's biggest dog show for the first time in more than 40 years after a controversy about canine inbreeding. The broadcaster said Friday it had suspended coverage of the 2009 Crufts show "pending further investigations into the health and well-being of pedigree dogs in the U.K." The Kennel Club, the show's organizer, and the British Broadcasting Corp. have been at odds since September when the broadcaster aired a documentary claiming inbreeding had led to serious health problems in some pedigree dogs. Crufts was founded in 1891 and draws dogs and spectators from around the world.

Passages

Robin Toner, 54, who was the first woman to be the national political correspondent of The New York Times and who had a significant hand in the coverage of five presidential elections, innumerable congressional and gubernatorial campaigns and the great legislative debates of the day, died Friday at her home in Washington; she had colon cancer.

Cardinal Avery Dulles, 90, a convert to Roman Catholicism from a prominent American family who was the only U.S. theologian named a cardinal without first becoming a bishop, died Friday. He was the son of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who served under President Eisenhower, and his uncle was Allen Dulles, who led the CIA in the Eisenhower administration.

Tassos Papadopoulos, 74, the hard-line former president of Cyprus from 2003 to March 2008 who ushered the divided island into the European Union after rallying Greek Cypriots to reject a U.N. peace deal, died Friday of lung cancer.

Today in History

1862: Union forces suffered a major defeat to the Confederates in the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg (Va.).

1918: President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

1928: George Gershwin's musical work "An American in Paris" had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York.

2003: Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.

Today's Birthdays

Actor-comedian Dick Van Dyke, 83. Movie producer Richard Zanuck, 74. Singer Ted Nugent, 60. Actress Wendie Malick, 58. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, 55. Actor Steve Buscemi, 51. Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx, 41. Country singer Taylor Swift, 19.

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