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When the racers in this year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race crossed the finish line last week, the press reported that six dogs had died on the bitter, involuntary trek from Iditarod to Nome. Now we have received a whistleblower report alleging that two more dogs may have died because of the 2009 race.

Here's what we're told: Lou Packer, a 55-year-old musher, struggled to finish the race, and even after two of his dogs died, he continued to push his team until he eventually scratched. It now appears that two more of his dogs may have perished after he was removed from the trail. The whistleblower claims that Packer may have denied his dogs food and left them out in the open throughout the night during a bitterly cold storm, while other mushers took their dogs to the tree line to protect them from the wind. If true, that would have been a death sentence.

Now that the death toll may have reached eight, we have renewed our request to Col. Audie Holloway, Director of the Alaska State Troopers, to launch a vigorous criminal investigation into all the deaths related to this year's Iditarod. Alaskan cruelty-to-animals laws specifically prohibit people from knowingly inflicting "prolonged suffering on an animal." The conditions under which the Iditarod is run are no secret. Anyone with half a brain and one ounce of compassion knows that no dog chooses to struggle to survive for days and nights in the freezing cold while being pushed to or beyond his or her physical limits. Or are Iditarod racers exempt from anti-cruelty laws—or the laws of human decency?

Posted by Liz Graffeo

Well, Rudy Giuliani’s office hung up on us when we offered the once presidential hopeful an ambassadorship last week, but Omar Osama Bin Laden (the estranged son of the more notorious OBL) and his wife are talking to us. We sent a letter yesterday urging the bin Ladens to cancel plans to organize a “grueling” endurance horse race across the Sahara Desert as “a way to promote peace.” That’s a 3,000-mile horse race across North Africa, scheduled to begin in March. We didn’t think that sounded like a barrel of laughs for the horses. As PETA’s president puts it, "If this were a rally in which cars were in danger of overheating and breaking down, I'd be all for it. But horses are flesh and blood. Such a grueling race will mean fatalities, not peace. Animals have not declared war on us - they should be truly left in peace."

The bin Ladens got back right away and some important assurances have already been given. More on this later. You can read our letter to bin Laden here.

Last night, PETA's Lisa Lange made an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor to talk about the "racy" alternative to Pamplona's hideous Running of the Bulls. The story brought tons of new people to the Running of the Nudes website last night to see what all the fuss was about, just in time to see all the amazing new pictures that’ve been put up there.

You can click the image above to check out the updated site, and if you let me know what you think of the new pics, or of the Running of the Nudes concept in general, I'll pick one commenter to win one of the highly coveted Running of the Nudes novelty pens, starring a naked (depending on which way up you hold the pen) Annamarie Lytle.

Just as an FYI, while all comments are welcome, if you leave a rant about Running of the Nudes being a shameful display of skin that's corrupting our nation's youth, I will assume that means you don't want a nudie pen.

P.S. I just got word from those laugh-a-minute party animals up in our Legal Department that if you want to be entered to win the pen it means you’re down with our terms and conditions.

The Running of the Nudes took place today in Pamplona, and, well, wow. This is the sixth year that PETA Europe has been organizing this fun alternative to Pamplona’s archaic bull run, and the thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I’ll be posting more news and pictures from the event as they come in, but here are the first shots from today’s naked “Human Race.”