You know that 20-cent-per-litre price hike you got ambushed with Wednesday morning? Brace yourself for another hike Thursday morning. Maybe even Friday morning.

Zhao Zan, a researcher in the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, has been held in custody for almost a year, accused of leaking state secrets.

Arnold Amber, president of the guild at the CBC, takes on CBC president Robert Rabinovitch's commentary from Tuesday's Globe:

This Washington Post column looks at how journalists and newsrooms, particularly from the New Orleans area, are trying to keep people informed despite the devastation.

The NYT covers the same ground in this story.

Actually, the W-P column also talks briefly about the blogging and podcasting efforts of locked-out CBC staff.

The governor of Louisiana has ordered everyone out of New Orleans because holes created in the levees can't be fixed. Here's a feature I did last night for CTV.ca on the levee system.

This Salon photo essay dates back to Aug. 23 (roughly a full blog-year in the past). It shows some disturbing images of the carnage in Iraq and talks about why Americans are spared views of them by the MSM.

An Iraqi television journalist was killed on the weekend covering a pro-Saddam Hussein rally east of Baghdad.

An excerpt from the AP story carried on Salon.com:

Rafed Mahmoud al-Rubai was shot by unidentified gunmen ... Rubai, a freelance contributor to the Iraqi TV station Al Irakiya, died instantly, Reporters Without Borders said.

"Rafid became a target after he did a great job during the elections" in January, Iraqiya's editor-in-chief Bassem al-Fadly said.

Rubai was the 67th journalist or media assistant to be killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003. In addition, two are still missing, it said. In contrast, a total of 63 journalists were killed in the Vietnam war, which lasted from 1955 to 1975.

The BBC followed up on the notion of journalist safety in Iraq.

Here is some of what it had to say: