Passport has mentioned in several dog-related posts that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a fear of dogs, reportedly due to a childhood biting incident. But this week, Merkel appears to have finally found a dog that doesn't induce cynophobia:

Above, Merkel and Bavaria's state premier, Horst Seehofer, admire a dog-shaped bag nominated for a toy award as she tours the 2009 International Toy Fair on Feb. 4 in Nuremberg. Merkel would be totally styling with this doggie bag.

Photo: TIMM SCHAMBERGER/AFP/Getty Images

A young girl gazes out of her class window at the school in the village of Gulucan on Nov. 17, 2008 in Hanyuan county, Sichuan province, China. More than 60 farmers' families live in six isolated locations, perched high above a spectacular canyon in the area. Some farmers' children have to walk three hours to their school along the edge of a crumbling, narrow mountain path with a sheer, 5,000-foot drop on one side. (Photo by Guang Niu/Getty Images)

The BBC is reporting that the following photograph of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, released earlier this week, may be a fake:

From the above distance, everything looks fine. It's just Dear Leader, the paragon of health, inspecting the troops as normal. But zoom in, the BBC found, and a few inconsistencies raise red flags:

Maybe North Korea has stolen CNN's hologram technology?

On a serious note, the inconsistencies in the photograph raise the question of whether Kim is in fact incapacitated, or even dead. The latest speculation is that Chang Sun-Taek, Kim's brother-in-law, is running the show. But nobody really knows for sure.

So, should we be worried about a destabilizing succession battle in this paranoid, impoverished, nuclear-armed regime? Stuart Reid of Foreign Affairs, in a new piece for ForeignPolicy.com, says the answer is, surprisingly, no. Check it out.

UPDATE: It appears the top photo is not the exact same one as that examined by the BBC. Thanks to readers for alerting me to this, and sorry for the mistake. Also, South Korea's intelligence community believes the Kim photo is real.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Former British Telecom employee John Tasker stands in an old canteen in a secret air raid tunnel on Oct. 17, 2008 in London. The once-secret tunnels were built 100 feet under central London in 1940 as fully equipped air raid shelters and could accommodate 8,000 people. They have since been used by MI6 and the Public Records Office to hold 400 tons of secret documents. Current owner British Telecom (BT) once housed the London trunk exchange of the secure trans-Atlantic hotline between the presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union. BT is now seeking a buyer for the tunnels.

Read more about the tunnels here.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

An overview of Ground Zero on Oct. 2 in New York City. The owners of the World Trade Center site have announced that the World Trade Center memorial can be opened on Sept. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack. It was also revealed in a 70-page report on Ground Zero's tortured rebuilding process that the rail hub will cost $3.2 billion, $700 million more than planned, and will not open until at least 2014.

The Freedom Tower won't be finished until the end of 2013.

On a day when financial markets again reeled, this image seems especially timely:

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Abraham Lincoln presenter Jim Rubin of Prosperity, West Virginia, addresses the unveiling ceremony for the new 2009 Bicentennial One-Cent coin redesign at the Lincoln Memorial September 22, 2008 in Washington, DC. The coin redesign will highlight four phases of the 16th president's life: birth in Kentucky, formative years in Indiana, professional life in Illinois and finally Washington.

"Balloon Dog" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. artist Jeff Koons opened a controversial show in Paris this week at the Hercules salon in the Château de Versailles. From a gargantuan balloon dog to his famous porcelain statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Koons "redecorated" Louis XIV's former hunting lodge inside and out. He even filled Marie Antoinette's room with vacuum cleaners. Of course, as NPR reports, some in France were not amused:

Koons' sculpted rabbits and dogs "don't belong at the palace of Versailles, they belong at Disneyland," said journalist and radio host Anne Brassie.

Arnaud-Aaron Upinsky, the president of a writers' union, agreed. "This exhibit is sacrilegious and insulting to the symbols of the Republic and its art," he said, wearing a velvet-and-gold-colored crown at the protest.

Here are some more unbelievable shots from the show:

"Lobster" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

"Hanging Heart" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

"Ushering In Banality" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

Junko Kimura/Getty Images

People walk past a half-body statue in Shibuya, Tokyo's main shopping area, on August 22. Online Game Company NHN Japan has set up a series of these statues to promote the mobile game site hange.jp. When people touch the statue's arm with their mobile phone, the application site will automatically open and a lucky winner will be rewarded 10,000 U.S. Dollars.

Iraqis are painting the security walls in Sadr City:

Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images

Guang Niu/Getty Images

Chinese policemen try to save a boy from being crushed by the crowd near a ticket booth at the Olympic Green on July 25 in Beijing, China. Starting today, the remaining 820,000 Olympic tickets, of which 250,000 are for competitions held in the capital city, became available for purchase by individuals at the Olympic venues.

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Army soldiers carry shotguns as they walk along a corridor separating what they deem to be the most extreme and dangerous detainees held inside the Camp Bucca detention center located near the Kuwait-Iraq border on May 19, 2008.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Scrap metal is piled up at a metal recycling facility on July 17 in Chicago, Illinois. With scrap metal prices near historic highs, many communities are experiencing an increase in thefts of metal including cemetery ornaments, plumbing pipe, gutters, and even manhole covers.

Passport has the day off tomorrow for the July 4th holiday here in the United States, so here's an early Friday photo to contemplate. Enjoy your weekend!

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

WASHINGTON - JULY 02: Eight-year-old Peter Wajda of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, poses for photographs on top of 10,512 sneakers tied by their laces and laid heel-to-toe in the courtyard at National Geographic Society headquarters July 2, 2008 in Washington, DC. Assembled by National Geographic Kids magazine, the string of shoes was certified Wednesday by Guinness World Records as the longest chain of shoes, measuring 8,700 feet or nearly 1.65 miles. Wajda, a third-grader at Moorestown Friends School, organized a shoe drive and collected 509 of the shoes used to set the record. The shoes will be shipped to Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program and recycled into basketball courts and other play surfaces.