First saw this on CAJ-L courtesy of George Lessard: Newsworld International will shut down as of July 31, displacing about 50 to 60 unionized people at CBC.

Blame new owner Al Gore and his team's wish to rebrand and refocus on a younger audience.

Actually, what the headline on the CBC was Oust Liberals over sponsorship scandal, Canadians say. Must be the conclusion of a statistically valid poll, right? Wrong!

Justice John Gomery has partially lifted the lid covering the wriggling worms in the sponsorship scandal, allowing some of Groupaction president Jean Brault's testimony to be made public.

If you believe long-time "free speech" defender and lawyer Doug Christie, if the damned media didn't report the remarks of people who promoted hate, there would be no hate promotion!

Toronto Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias talks about the growing appetite for blue state voices in the U.S.

An Indian author is being sued by a Hindu man. Why? Because the writer said he was sexually aroused by Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning.

In a colossal case of bad judgment, the Cambodian government wants to privatize Choeung Ek -- Cambodia's killing fields, where enemies of the late 1970s Khmer Rouge regime were eliminated -- to develop its potential as a tourism site.

Can you believe there are people in this world who don't know what phishing is? I know, I know; unbelievable. And that some people confuse trojans, the spyware, with Trojan, the ... oh, never mind.

My friend Harvey was kind enough to forward this one to me. It's by Slate's media critic Jack Schafer and analyzes Fox News from the perspective offered in an Atlantic Monthly article on talk radio....   more »

This story is from the Silicon Valley Watcher. It was published Monday, so the 'tomorrow' in it actually refers to Tuesday.

I can think of no article that is less relevant to my life (nor any lifestyle that is less achievable or, frankly, desirable), but I thought the concept was interesting. So here goes nothing.

I caught a ride from work tonight with a colleague and got dropped on College St., where I took a westbound-streetcar home.

But at Bathurst and College, I noticed a disturbing sight: the KOS sign had been replaced with on reading 'Picadilly,' offering Italian and Middle Eastern fare.

To that I say, WTF?!?!

A Minneapolis call centre manager and Star Trek fan is the man who has broken the ban on the Gomery Inquiry testimony of Montreal ad executive Jean Brault.

The 66-year-old Canadian expat made the announcement to staff at ABC News today.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali arrived in the Netherlands as a refugee from Somalia in 1992. She is now a Dutch Parliamentarian. And since she has also renounced Islam, she also lives under constant threat of assassination.

NYT columnist David Brooks on why conservatives have become the dominant political strain in the U.S., and what the liberals can learn from them.

The NYT's Paul Krugman looks at why there might be a preponderance of liberals on college campuses -- and what some conservatives want to do about it.

The Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal have each won two Pulitzer Prizes in journalism.

Global Language Monitor found 35,000 major news stories about Pope John Paul II's death in the first 24 hours after it happened.

In comparison, that's 10 times the number devoted to the re-election of U.S. President George W. Bush last November.

Matt Conigliaro started a blog called AbstractAppeal about Florida appellate law primarily for his fellow lawyers. But then the Terri Schiavo case exploded in the U.S.

This is a very interesting, if somewhat chilling story, about a former U.S. Army ranger who killed a police officer -- and how Andrew Mickel is using the fact he incorporated himself as his defence to avoid personal responsibility.

If you read this blog regularly, you'll know how incensed I was at  the incompetent story the NYT did in early March linking the Alberta shootings of four RCMP officers to "B.C. Bud."

Well, now the Guardian -- possibly my second-favourite foreign newspaper -- has gone and done a mirror image of that story.

BBC Online chats with Hideo Nakata, director of Ringu and Ringu 2 -- both "adapted" by Hollywood. And while he didn't want to do it, Nakata wound up directing the U.S. version of the Ring ...   more »

Thomas L. Friedman now realizes he missed something while obsessing on Iraq and 9/11 -- the world has changed. Almost any country can now compete globally for knowledge work.

Alessandra Stanley, TV critic for the NYT, finds that the U.S. networks covered Pope John Paul II's death the same way the Vatican announced it -- briskly and efficiently.

The legendary host of one of the vilest TV shows of the 1990s is now doing a three-hour morning politics show on Air America.

This NYT piece looks at how CBS News vet Bob Schieffer is openly campaigning to become Dan Rather's permanent replacement at the anchor desk of the CBS Evening News.

I found these pieces useful in going beyond the "oh, we've lost a great man" wave that's sweeping over everything in the wake of Pope John Paul II's death on Saturday at age 84.

This BBC article talks about how blogging is upsetting the apple cart in authoritarian regimes and the free and democratic West too.

The NYT reports on a proud tradition in the Brit media -- one I wish that would be adopted here: A good April Fool's story.

Come, have a peak and see if what you found interesting on this blog in March was what other visitors found interesting. I'll also list my "wished-they'd-been-read-more" stories.

According to the BBC, the U.S. military's psy-ops specialists want to start a comic book in order to further democracy in the Middle East.

This BBC story looks at the case of Georgiy Gongadze, the crusading Ukrainian investigative journalist who was murdered in 2000, and the continuing  fallout in Ukraine from it.

As I write this, Pope John Paul II is apparently hovering near death; by the time you read it, he may well have already died.

Here's a few things I've found talking about his legacy:

Here's a collection of news coverage on the report of The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, commonly known as the Silberman-Robb report.

The acerbic Bill Maher takes aim at the 'just say no to intercourse' ethos that's sweeping America's teens and asks, Where was Bush when I was in high school?

It's on the theme of TV and interesting lives.

I'm minding my own business, strolling home after doing some afternoon life-maintenance errands.

Two young, presumably Orthodox Jewish men (based on dress and hair), stop me on Markham St., just south of Bloor. "Excuse me: Are you Jewish?" one of them asked.

Overheard on Queen St. W:

"I never fart in public," one street-hardened young man said emphatically to his buds. "Around other people? NEVER. No fuckin' way."

If you read my earlier post, you'll know my imagination was piqued by Frank Miller's Sin City, which goes into wide release today.

All I can say is, believe the hype; it's a visually dazzling film that will shift how movies are made and look. But it isn't without some flaws in the storytelling department.