From AP:

Afghanistan's lower house of Parliament passed a resolution Monday seeking to bar television programs from showing dancing and other practices deemed un-Islamic.

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The big event starts at 8 p.m. EDT here, but it's come and gone in Sydney, Australia. Some Globe and Mail stuff:

Will the last one out turn out the lights?

60 things to do during Earth Hour

In training for the big event

Personally, I don't see Earth Hour hurting anything, but for it to be of real value, people should use the hour to think about how they can reduce their carbon energy consumption on an ongoing and permanent basis.

Along with historically high oil prices, the price of staples like rice, wheat and corn have doubled in the past year, causing unrest in places that already suffer stability issues.

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From the NYT:

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner on the United Arab Emirates troops serving in Afghanistan, where they deliver humanitarian aid and occasionally get into it with the Taliban.

Oh, and they take a 'religion first, then development infrastructure' approach.

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You can see Fitna the Movie here (the title means "Ordeal" or "Strife," in Arabic). Here's the BBC story. Here's one from the Washington Post.

Frankly, it's one nasty little propaganda film. And unfortunately, one could make the same type of film about Christianity (see the book The End of Faith to see what I mean; more in this earlier post). In fact, it would be interesting to run Fitna and jihadi propaganda films simultaneously on a split screen. Here's an AP story about how al Qaeda's media arm, al Sahab, is looking for a few good online-savvy media geeks.

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From the Globe and Mail:

Call it the double-double defence: Would dangerous jihadists take a break from their winter training camp to warm up inside a Tim Hortons?

Defence lawyer Michael Moon raises the question in a new motion concerning the so-called Toronto 18 terror trial. Citing previously undisclosed evidence to be presented at trial, he argues that any schemes of the accused have been grossly exaggerated by informants, police and the news media – and even by the group's own ringleaders.

“In fact this hapless F-Troop, who ventured into the deathly cold of winter without a proper tent … was reduced to sleeping in the vehicles at night to prevent freezing to death,” writes Mr. Moon in a new factum. He adds they went “trooping off to the Tim Hortons multiple times a day for coffee and use of the bathroom.”

Here's an absurd, non-sequiturish thought: Maybe the secret to peace in Afghanistan is to agree to a foreign troop withdrawal on the condition that the Taliban agree to play nice with the elected government and not support global jihad.

In exchange, we'll leave behind a network of Tim Hortons shops. As this case shows, even jihadis have to go to the can and both warm and double-double up. :)

Except the evidence so far suggests some of these mildly hypothermic Timbits fiends were serious.

Addendum

I can't believe the lawyer used an F-Troop reference. Talk about dating yourself. :)

As an aside, Mike Myers used to be served by a German waiter in Ottawa who became the template for his "Dieter" character on Saturday Night Live.

Apparently this guy once told Myers: "Larry Storch is a much-maligned genius." :)

If you don't know, Larry Storch was an F-Troop star.

Ahem. I've just dated myself.

From AP:

Too much money meant for Afghanistan aid is wasted, with a vast amount spent on foreign workers' high salaries, security and living arrangements, according to a report from humanitarian groups published Tuesday.

The prospects for peace in Afghanistan are being undermined because Western countries are failing to deliver on aid promises — and because much of the aid money they do send is going to expatriate workers, according to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an alliance of 94 international aid agencies.

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Here's a CTV.ca feature I wrote on whether this country's housing prices are destined to follow the lead of the U.S., where a collapse is underway in some markets.

Globeandmail.com has a major feature online this morning: Talking to the Taliban.