Maggie Siggins, author of A Canadian Tragedy: Colin and Jo Ann Thatcher, had this to say about Colin, the just-paroled murderer, on CBC Radio's As It Happens:

He's living in Regina in a half-way house, which is where I live ...

I didn't know that Maggie had recently done time. But I'm delighted she's out and that her and Colin are trying to rejoin society! :)

To the surprise of no one, the great Canada Now experiment will be tossed on the ash heap of Corpse history in February.

Instead, supper-hour newscasts will be local and one hour in length.

Now, in the CBC story I heard on The World At Six, there was mention of myCBC.

In the CBC.ca story, there is some expansion on that concept, along with the mention of "civic journalism":

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The accompanying text:

Edge Designs is an all-women-run company that designs interior office space. They had a recent opportunity to do an office project in NYC. The client allowed the women of this company a free hand in all design aspects.

The client was a company that was also run by all women execs.

The result?

Well, we all know that men never talk and never look at each other, and never laugh much in the restroom. The men's room is a serious and quiet place.

But now, with the addition of one mural on the wall, let's just say the men's restroom is a place of laughter and smiles!

Laughter and smiles? Men's washrooms are a place of business. Serious, serious business that requires a great deal of concentration and attention to the matter at hand (hence the quiet). And nobody will use the one with the camera in front.

(Thanks, Harvey!)

The NYT reports on the interlocking plotlines of a U.S. Supreme Court case on whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

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With the Village Voice's critical credibility in tatters after firing legends like Robert Christgau, Gawker Media's Idolator blog hopes to fill the roll of the music poll Pazz and Job with its own offering: Jackin' Pop.

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The Huffington Post blog is actually going to send reporters out to cover the U.S. Congress and will gear up for the 2008 presidential campaign. Question: Will their reporters wear pyjamas? :)

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Thomas Homer Dixon argues there are limits to how far human inventiveness can take us when a critical resource becomes in short supply. Take oil, for example.

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It would appear that in North Waziristan, an erroneous report can trigger something a bit more serious than an outraged letter to the editor.

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From the BBC:

One of Iran's most senior clergymen has issued a fatwa on an Azeri writer said to have insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

The call on Muslims to murder Rafiq Tagi, who writes for Azerbaijan's Senet newspaper, echoes the Iranian fatwa against Indian writer Salman Rushdie.

It was issued by the conservative Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fazel Lankarani.

The writings of Rafiq Tagi sparked recent demonstrations outside the Azerbaijani embassy in the Iranian capital, Teheran.

The Iranian media is reporting that Grand Ayatollah Lankarani's followers inside the republic of Azerbaijan wrote to him asking for advice about what they called "the apostate writer".

They accuse the Azeri writer of portraying Christianity as superior to Islam and Europe as superior to the Middle East.

They allege that he has ridiculed all the sanctities of Islam and done it knowingly, fully aware of the consequences of his action.

Three British Airways aircraft that fly the London-Moscow route are being tested for radiation traces. Of the two in London, traces of radiation have been detected.

Is this how the polonium that killed Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko got into Britain?

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Diane McWhorter has a provocative commentary in Slate about what it was U.S. voters were trying to say about Dubya: Do they dislike his policies or just the fact he was bad at implementing them? (h/t to Herr Speicher)

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Here's a feature I did for CTV.ca.

Political scientists Dominic Tierney and Dominic Johnson argue that two supposed American failures -- the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and the Somalia mission of 1992-93 -- were actually successes.

It's just no one thought of them that way.

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Whoever contaminated ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 knew what they were doing and had to be connected to get the substance in the first place.

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Many European Union countries knew the CIA was using their territory to either transfer prisoners or hold them in black prisons and either did nothing or helped, a European Parliament report has found.

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Matt Lauer of NBC said his network would start referring to what's happening in Iraq as a civil war. Revolutionary, eh? Except the NYT and Washington Post have been doing so for months without fanfare.

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The Guardian's blurb: "With a readership of up to 10 million a month, Slate has marked itself out as one of the most influential magazines on the internet. No wonder the editor believes the future's digital."

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From the BBC:

The rise in humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide has accelerated sharply, according to a new analysis.

The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year.

It says the acceleration comes mainly from a rise in charcoal consumption and a lack of new energy efficiency gains.

From the NYT:

WANTED Digital media genius to guide a nimble — or at least we like to think we are — media giant through transformation from analog to digital in all its gory glory.

JOB DESCRIPTION To take all the stuff we produce for other formats, like TV or print or film, and figure out how to shovel it onto the Internet in a way that makes money.

QUALIFICATIONS The ideal candidate might also have ideas for ways to make a few dollars online that don’t directly stem from our so-called traditional media businesses. (You know — like that whole user-generated thing that the kids are doing. P.S., loved the video clips about how Mentos and Diet Coke mixed together create a chemical reaction — maybe we can turn it into a prime-time special or a theme park ride financed by these brands?)

COMPENSATION Pretty sweet for as long as you last.

RETIREMENT BENEFITS Well, don’t plan on it.

THE want ad above is a goof, of course, but it roughly sums up the state of play among big media companies’ digital operations.

<sad irony>Kudos to those entrepreneurially-minded Iraq insurgents! From oil smuggling to profitable crime to corrupt Islamic charities, the insurgents are paying their own way, a classified U.S. government report finds. They may even be profitable enough to suppor other insurgencies!</sad irony>

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The Washington Post is reporting on a classified U.S. Marine Corps report on how badly the fight is going in Sunni Muslim-dominated Anbar province, where al Qaeda in Iraq continues to grow in popularity. Essentially, the Marines say the insurgency there cannot be defeated.

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UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says Iraq is almost in a state of civil war.

Here's a Nov. 26 NYT analysis on when a country has reached a state of civil war (hint: Many experts say Iraq has crossed that threshold).

If you haven't already seen it, go to The Daily Show's website later this afternoon and watch the clip of White House Press Secretary Tony Snow trying to explain why the situation in Iraq shouldn't be considered a civil war.

The U.S. Project for Excellence in Journalism has given a thumbs-up to midterm election coverage by U.S. network and cable news websites.

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Bloomberg News via the NYT:

Google, the world’s most-used Internet search engine, reached a settlement with Belgian photographers and journalists yesterday in a copyright dispute over how Google’s news service links to newspaper content.

The agreement was made with the Belgian copyright groups Sofam, representing about 3,700 photographers, and Scam, on behalf of journalists. In September, Google lost a copyright suit initially filed by Copiepresse, a group representing French- and German-language newspapers in Belgium. That case is being reheard, but the company has removed links to 17 papers from its Google News page.

Copyright disputes with Google compelled Microsoft to remove Web site links to Belgian newspapers last month and highlighted the global issue of whether traditional copyright protections apply to Internet search services.

“We reached an agreement with Sofam and Scam that will help us make extensive use of their content,” Jessica Powell, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a phone interview yesterday. She declined to give details of the agreement or say whether it involved paying the groups for the content, and declined to say whether Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., was considering similar accords with the newspapers.

Ahh, the good old days in Iraq. An IED here, a sniper there. This NYT story says some groups of Sunni Muslim insurgents are behaving more like soldiers than rag-tag, hit-and-run guerrilla fighters.

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U.S. cities are in a battle to attract young, educated workers before they turn old (read 35) and settle down. With boomers retiring, this has serious economic implications for cities.

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From the Guardian:

The radioactive spy

Sushi, mystery meetings and a lethal dose of polonium

Obituary: Alexander Litvinenko

Editorial: A still mysterious death

The Independent:

Who killed Litvinenko?

Deathbed accusations, furious denials and key questions surrounding spy's death

Angry last words of a dying man

Radioactive metal that killed Litvinenko

'Cobra' meets over fears of assassination squad

Boris Berezovsky, the first oligarch

Times Online:

Poisoned spy was the victim of state terror

Third man at meeting rebuts blame

Editorial: A British citizen

Comment: The one way to fight Putin's menace

The Telegraph:

Spy poisoned by radiation

From CBC.ca:

The judge who acquitted a New Brunswick blogger of obstructing justice says Charles LeBlanc was merely "plying his trade" at a protest last summer and shouldn't have been arrested.

In his 20-page written decision, Judge William McCarroll noted that LeBlanc was not among the mob of demonstrators during the Saint John protest, but was in a public space taking pictures of the protesters for his website when he was arrested. 

He said LeBlanc is well-known for his blog, well enough that police officers admitted to consulting it to gather intelligence about the conference.

"Mr. LeBlanc was never advised by the police that he would be arrested if he did certain things. He was simply plying his trade, photographing the demonstration for inclusion in his blog when he was arrested," he wrote.

I tried to give my mom a call this evening.

I looked up Edmonton's weather conditions on a website. The current temperature is -19 C, and is expected to drop to -22 tonight.

That will be the daytime high in Edmonton next Tuesday and Wednesday, with overnight lows of -33 and -35 expected.

Today's daytime high in T.O. was +8. We are expected to stay in positive double digits through to next Thursday, with next Wednesday having a predicted high of +14.

Since I once lived in Regina,  I looked up the temperatures there. Wednesday's overnight low is predicted to be -40.

As one of my buddies who still lives there recently put it, "Yeah, but we're tougher than you latte-sippers."

You would have to be, wouldn't you? :)

Personally, I don't mind living in a place where one can enjoy a late-November espresso outdoors without risking death by hypothermia. :)

From the AP story on CTV.ca:

A gun-wielding cartoonist dressed in camouflage surrendered to police at The Miami Herald's building Friday afternoon, more than two hours after arriving and demanding to see an editor of the newspaper's Spanish-language sister paper, police said.

No injuries were reported.

Police spokesman Delrish Moss said the man, a cartoonist who "says he's been censored by the Herald," was carrying what appeared to be a machine gun. Moss did not identify the suspect by name.

Attorney Joe Garcia said the cartoonist, Jose Varela, called him a couple of times from inside the building. Varela was concerned about a conflict of interest at El Nuevo Herald, Garcia said.

"All that he wants people to know is that he wants the truth to come out," Garcia said. "I think he needs some time to work some things out."

Americans will spend US$5 billion on their pets this Christmas. WTFF?!?!

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Gerald M. Boyd became the highest-ranking African-American ever at the NYT -- and he had to leave in disgrace over the Jayson Blair fiasco.

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A bill that has infuriated Islamists in Pakistan by allowing rape cases to be prosecuted in civil courts has the support of that country's Senate.

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From the BBC:

A Chinese court has rejected an appeal by a Hong Kong reporter who was jailed by mainland China on spying charges.

Ching Cheong, chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times, was jailed in August after being found guilty of spying for Taiwan.

Beijing High Court rejected his appeal in a 30-minute hearing, his brother Ching Hei said.

The case has sparked criticism in Hong Kong, and many human rights groups have called for Ching's release.

According to Chinese media, Ching was found guilty of buying information and passing it to Taiwan's intelligence services over a period of five years from mid-2000 to March 2005.

State news agency Xinhua said Ching had confessed to the charges, a statement both his family and employers reject.

One-time Montreal resident Abdul Jabbar Sabit returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and was appointed attorney-general three months ago. He is kicking ass and taking names on the corruption front there.

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From washingtonpost.com:

The Marine Corps may need to grow to sustain deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan without sacrificing needed training or putting undue stress on the corps, the new Marine commandant said yesterday.

At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Gen. James T. Conway also warned that it could take years to adequately train and equip the Iraqi security forces -- longer, perhaps, "than the timeline that we probably feel ... our country will support."

 
"This is tough work. It doesn't happen overnight," and patience by the American people will be needed, he said. On the plus side, he said, Marines he has talked to in recent days are encouraged by the progress they are seeing among Iraqi forces.

Conway said the current pace of Marine rotations to Iraq -- seven months there and seven to nine months at home -- is limiting other types of training that units can receive and could eventually prompt Marines to leave the service.

"There is stress on the individual Marines that is increasing, and there is stress on the institution to do what we are required to do, pretty much by law, for the nation," Conway said.

The goal, he said, is for units to spend at home twice the amount of time spent on deployment -- for example, seven months deployed and 14 months at home.

From the Beeb:

India and China to double trade

Key China-Pakistan deals expected

The Beeb blurb: Lebanon is the most politically complex and religiously divided country in the Middle East, which is what makes it such a potentially explosive factor in an unstable region.

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From the BBC:

BBC reporter Dilawar Khan Wazir has been released by his captors, a day after being kidnapped in Pakistan.

Mr Khan turned up shaken but unharmed in the BBC office in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday evening.

He had been blindfolded and questioned about his reporting and sources. He did not know who his kidnappers were.

His disappearance prompted the BBC to write to the Pakistan government, which said it could not confirm whether he was in their custody.

Unknown people took me from the taxi, blindfolded me, slapped and kicked me Dilawar Khan Wazir BBC reporter's brother killed

Mr Khan is one of the few local journalists reporting on the Pakistani army's fight with pro-Taleban militants in the troubled Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

A number of journalists have gone missing, and some have been killed, after covering stories considered sensitive by the military or the militants.

The "black hooker" speaks; Twentieth Century Fox fires back at some of the plaintiffs suing it, calling it a "fatuous" attempt to thwart free speech; two Romanian villagers sue for US$30 million and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan encourages everyone to laugh along with Borat.

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