Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz says that besides the Judith Miller controversy, NYT newsies are upset the paper is cutting 45 newsroom jobs.

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There are simply way more men's bylines appearing in prestigious U.S. public affairs mags than women's.

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Victor Navasky, longtime publisher of The Nation, has stepped aside in favour of Katrina vanden Huevel, who will keep her editor's title.

A tidbit: The Bush years have been very good to The Nation!

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"Any suspects in the killing?" I asked the two police officers standing over the corpse.

"About 10,000 termites," one of them laughed.

The poor maple tree, which had led a peaceful life just south of Harbord St., had been ravaged by something. The tree wasn't uprooted by Sunday's crazy winds; it snapped off at the base.

I went and touched it, and the wood was completely rotten.

The cops pointed out that the larvae had bored right to the top of the tree. It was doomed.

Unfortunately, the tree damaged two cars in its death throes. May the insurance companies be kind to their owners.

A fella can dream, can't he?

The FBI is sending out over 30,000 national security letters per year, asking for financial, telephone and Internet records of ordinary Americans. That's a 100-fold increase over historic norms, says a Washington Post story.

Americans who like this practice can thank the Patriot Act.

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In 1961, Daniel Schorr, then with CBS, and his cameraman got morning footage of East German troops laying barbed wire in Berlin on that night's 11 p.m. news. That was considered blazingly fast back then -- paradigm-shifting, even.

Consider how things have changed.

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Cambodians were shocked to learn that their government had privatized Cheung Ek, the most notorious of the "killing fields" of the autogenocidal Khmer Rouge.

This NYT piece suggests they shouldn't have been -- that corruption and greed are driving a firesale of Cambodia's public assets.

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The NYT reports that an important al Qaeda suspect captured in 2002 was identified as a probable liar by the Defence Information Agency when it came to his claims that Iraq had taught al Qaeda operatives how to use biological and chemical weapons.

The report is based on newly declassified documents.

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The violence that broke out more than a week ago in the immigrant-dominated suburbs of Paris has continued there and spread to other cities.

Here's some the latest news and some background from the BBC and other sources.

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Overheard in front of Beba on College St.:

"I've never seen you half passed-out. You usually keep drinking to the point of oblivion. Even after 17 beers ..."

- One 20-something guy talking to his buddy

These grafs from a Guardian story on the Judith Miller situation at the NYT caught my eye:

According to the New York Observer and sources with knowledge of the negotiations, Miller is demanding the right to reply to her critics in an opinion piece and a non-disparagement agreement as condition of her departure. Otherwise she has threatened to return to work. ...

Actually, read the Observer piece too. Ms. Miller has some very high-powered friends.

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U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney spent part of his week trying to convince U.S. Republican senators to back an exemption for the CIA from a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects.

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An NYT piece talks about the eternally-relevant George Carlin, who will be doing his first concert special for HBO in nearly four years.

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There is almost no good news for Dubya in the current ABC News-Washington Post poll.

"On almost every key measure of presidential character and performance, the survey found that Bush has never been less popular with the American people. Currently 39 percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 60 percent disapprove of his performance in office -- the highest level of disapproval ever recorded for Bush in Post-ABC polls," it reported Friday.

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Aaron Brown has "agreed" to leave CNN. Moving into Brown's old timeslot is Anderson Cooper, who gained profile during hurricane Katrina.

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Wang Yi's Microphone, run by a teacher in Sichuan province, has just had its chain yanked by the Chinese authorities.

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Ethiopia and Eritrea (which separated from Ethiopia in 1993) have massed troops along each other's borders, and there are fears it wouldn't take much to trigger a serious conflict.

The two nations have had a ceasefire since 2000, which ended a two-year war.

See the BBC story for details.

On Thursday, the Toronto Star produced its regular front page, but it also had some Grade 9 students come up with what they thought should be the top stories.

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The big par-tee will also be used to promote the relaunch of the magazine, showcasing the emerging vision of editor-publisher Ken Whyte.

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French film director Jean-Claude Brisseau appeared in a Paris courtroom Thursday to defend himself on charges of sexual assault and harassment. Four young actresses claim he made them masturbate as part of auditions conducted between 1996 and 2001.

The director, credited with discovering Vanessa Paradis, "denies the charges of sexual harassment and sexual assault, insisting in newspaper interviews that the 'erotic auditions', held between 1996 and 2001 for his 2002 feature Choses Secrètes, were justified artistically and 'indispensable' to his work."

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Rebekah Wade, 37, the editor of Britain's The Sun tabloid, who recently started a campaign in her newspaper against domestic violence, has been arrested on such a charge.

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The New York Comedy Festival is now on, and some courageous, original, boundary-breaking young comic will take home the second annual Andy Kaufman award.

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This NYT editorial talks about how Coloradans voted down a $3.7 billion tax cut and lifted the U.S.'s toughest state spending and taxing limits.

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Rosa Parks, who helped spark the fight for civil rights for blacks in the United States by triggering the Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott, was buried Wednesday in her adopted city of Detroit.

It's worth looking at the video of the Rev. Al Sharpton's and former U.S. President Bill Clinton's speeches attached to the CTV.ca story.

If you want to see an amazing bit of preaching, check out the video of Rev. Charles Adams:

Update

Democracy Now! has transcripts of remarks made at the funeral service by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Rev. Bernice King (MLK Jr.'s daughter), Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Rev. Joseph Lowery (co-founder, Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Rev. Al Sharpton and Aretha Franklin, who sang this:

O Lord, I’ll fly away. Lord, I, Lord, I’ll fly away. O Glory, Lord, I’ll – oh, help me now – fly away to a land, to a land on God’s selection shore. Lord Jesus, I’ll, oh, I’ll fly, fly away. O Glory, o Glory, I’ll – come on and sing it with me – fly away. O Glory, Lord, I – she flew away. Oh, when, Lord, when I die, Hallelujah, o Hallelujah, by and by, oh, I’ll fly – there was Moses, and then there was Rosa – she flew away.

The show also has a transcript of remarks from the memorial service in Washington, D.C. on Monday, which featured Oprah Winfrey, Cicely Tyson, Julian Bond and other.

Mo Dowd's weekend NYT piece adapted from her new book Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide, is drawing some fire.

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The CIA operates a global covert internment network  that it uses to interrogate its top al Qaeda suspects, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

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When you have to wave frantically to get a Toronto cabbie's attention when he's passengerless and stopped in traffic not 10 feet from you, you can almost be assured you aren't dealing with one of the city's best and brightest.

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An Arkansas whitetail buck that may have been attacking its own reflected image in a home's window ended up inside the dwelling and had its neck broken by the homeowner's father after a 40-minute struggle that left the walls splattered with blood.

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People who use the Internet aren't giving up more traditional sources of print or broadcast information -- far from it, says a new study.

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There was an amusing picture of Paul Martin at the Oct. 22 press gallery dinner. Rick Mercer invited everyone with Photoshop and and a sarcastic mean streak to have at it.

If you missed them, here's the results.

As experts issue increasingly dire warnings of an avian flu epidemic, President Bush signed an executive order Tuesday authorizing the mass slaughter of "all bald eagles found anywhere within our borders."

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This Globe story talks about the coming rebirth of CBC Radio 3 on the Sirius satellite network.

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Paris's northeastern suburbs continue to fester with unrest as people there blame the deaths of two youths on the police.

But the problems seem to go deeper than that, according to the BBC's reportage:

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Does your pet have separation anxiety issues? Would a soothing voice and some soft '80s rock help it chill out during the 12 or 13 hours you're at work or commuting? Time to discover DogCatRadio.com.

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Starting Nov. 7, Stephen Coll-bair-r-r will be bringing his ace satiric eye for mocking TV punditry to CTV and The Comedy Network, providing the 'two' punch to the 'one' the Daily Show delivers to U.S. network news.

The Colbert Report will air at 12:35 a.m., right after the Daily Show. Both shows run Monday through Thursday.

Here's the CTV bumpf.

I went into an Italian-dominant deli today to make a few small purchases.

On the door of the freezer was a sign saying "perogies for sale."

"Perogies?!" I told the clerk. "How would you feel if the Ukrainian delis started selling frozen ravioli?"

She had no response, which is appropriate, because the store's position is indefensible.

The next thing you know, Japanese stores will be offering chorizo, Latin stores will be selling nori and there will be souvlaki booths at Chinese street festivals (actually, the latter has already happened).

Maureen Dowd is a gifted writer who comes up with some curious opinions. According to Salon, an excerpt from her new book Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide provoked some unflattering reaction from feminist bloggers over the weekend.

That left me feeling vindicated for posts like this.

Anyway, New York magazine has profiled Ms. Dowd.

This IHT story looks at al-Jazeera's efforts to sell its new English-language international service.

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I went to see Good Night and Good Luck last week, and am happy to report that it's a fine film.

To learn a bit more about the times in which it occurred, read this AP story on CTV.ca: 'Good Night' accurate but out of context: Critics.

 

After reading this post, you'll probably think I made it up, but I didn't: NBC is going to make its nightly newscast available on its website starting Nov. 7.

How do they come up with ideas like that?

"Many of our viewers tell me they often miss the broadcast because they're not at home or tending to their busy lives and families," anchor Brian Williams said. "This new service reflects the fact that the pace of our lives has changed."

There will be a three-hour delay between the end of the broadcast and when the online video will be available -- plenty o' time to attend to the demands of those busy lives.

Honestly, it just never occurred to me that in 2005, you could use the web in that way: Putting up video for people to see at their leisure.

This old world just keeps on changing.

Pity the poor cut-rate, cutthroat retailing giant. It's turning to professional pols to try and restore its lustre with consumers -- especially in the face of the upcoming Robert Greenwald documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

The doc will screen in T.O. at the Bloor on Nov. 15 (rsvp here; H/T to Paved).

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The prosperous but semi-authoritarian city-state of Singapore thinks there are bigger problems than low press freedom rankings.

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