Check out the promotional video for the UriLift, the answer to the problem of rampant public urination by hard-drinking men. (h/t to Herr Speicher)

A New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh says the CIA has found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. The White House is dismissive of the report. Sound familiar?

Here's the full New Yorker article.

Here's the BBC news story based on it.

From the Fortune blurb: Everything you buy online says a little bit about you. And if all those bits get put into one big trove of data about you and your tastes? Marketer's heaven. Fortune's Jeffrey O'Brien reports. (h/t to Herr Speicher)

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News Corp. announced Monday that it was cancelling a Fox television special on O.J. Simpson called If I Did It, a "hypothetical" look at what Simpson would have done if he actually had murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994.

I eagerly await the answer to the following question: Will we look back on this in five years and say this event marks when the overflowing swamp of tabloid infotainment masquerading as news started receding?

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From globeandmail.com:

A blogger whose postings have been critical of the government was arrested less than a week after rights watchdog Amnesty International criticized Egypt for detaining the writer of another personal Web log.

Rami Siyam was at least the fifth blogger Egypt has detained this year. He has been running his blog since May, 2005, and his postings have included criticism of alleged police torture.

A police officer said he was detained for questioning and transferred to the Delta Nile city of Belbeis for further interrogation.

“Police want to know if he is involved in criminal activities,” the officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He did not say whether Mr. Siyam's detention Sunday had any connection to items critical of the government which he posted on his blog.

From globeandmail.com:

The Internet ranks behind only television as the leading source for science news and information, but most users won't trust what they read online blindly, a new study finds.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a report Monday that 20 per cent of Americans obtain most of their science information from the Internet, compared with 41 per cent who cited television. Newspapers and magazines were each credited by 14 per cent, and radio by 4 per cent.

The gap disappears among users of high-speed Internet connections at home, with 34 per cent saying they turn to the Internet most of the time, and 33 per cent citing television.

About 80 per cent of those who get science information online try to check its accuracy elsewhere — another online source, offline resources or the original study — and many of them use more than one alternative.

Here's the Pew report link.

From the NYT:

A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.

In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads.

But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.

In that way, local news — one of the pillars of the newspaper business — would become part of a large information network that would increase usefulness for readers and value to advertisers.

The hot blog on TV news in the U.S. belongs to a 21-year-old college student in Maryland.

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While much attention has been paid to the launch of Al-Jazeera International, France is about to  launch a global, English-language TV news network -- France 24.

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Byron Calame, the NYT's public editor, looks at how the NYT's burgeoning online operation can be improved to ensure the quality of online journalism meets the newspaper's standards.

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Imagine, you're better off financially than 99 per cent of the U.S. population. But you look up the ladder and you see things getting even better for your betters, the super-rich, and you simultaneously feel your chance of ever joining them to be slipping away.

How depressing, how ... tragic that must be for people caught in that situation.

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While the Venezuelan press remains relatively free under President Hugo Chavez, journalists there face a climate of increasing violence and intimidation, with death being the tragic result for some.

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The liberal college town, once best known as the home of Mork and Mindy, is now the home as the birthplace of the first carbon tax in the United States.

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This NYT story looks at the case of a New York state corrections officer who got punted from a gym -- under police escort -- for grunting while lifting weights.

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This NYT analysis looks at how the strategic ground is supposedly shifting in Iraq and why U.S. generals are arguing against the withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country.

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LAT legal affairs reporter Henry Weinstein talks to Democracy Now! about the cutbacks and executive firings and takeover rumours swirling around his paper.

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Some key Afghanistan stories from the past few days, including the reluctance of some NATO countries to put their troops in harm's way, and a prediction of an even-more violent 2007.

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Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair tells Al-Jazeera International's David Frost why the Iraq War has turned into a disaster.

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Why do I think Liam Lacey's review of Casino Royale, the latest instalment in the 007 sage, is the most perceptive?

Well, it plays to my biases, and my biases are that the action films Ong Bak and Banlieue 13 (District 13) are two very influential and very under-appreciated films in the genre.

And if people are packing theatres and leaving wowed because of the phenomenal chase sequence in Africa that occurs early in Casino Royale, the filmgoers should thank those two earlier films for giving the production team of the big-budget effort some ideas to work with.

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Judith Miller, the former NYT reporter who "left the paper" a year ago in the wake of her Plamegate and Iraq WMD debacles, has decried government secrecy and the willingness of bloggers to accept assertions as fact without considering evidence to the contrary.

Make your own joke here. (h/t to Jim Elve).

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From the NYT:

CHANCES are that in the last week someone has irritated you by standing too close, talking too loud or making eye contact for too long. They have offended you with the high-pitched shrill emanating from the earphones of their iPod or by spreading their legs unnecessarily wide on a packed subway car.

But what makes you feel hostile toward “close talkers,” as the show “Seinfeld” dubbed people who get within necking distance of you when they speak? Or toward strangers who stand very near to you on line? Or toward people who take the bathroom stall next to yours when every other one is available?

Communications scholars began studying personal space and people’s perception of it decades ago, in a field known as proxemics. But with the population in the United States climbing above 300 million, urban corridors becoming denser and people with wealth searching for new ways to separate themselves from the masses, interest in the issue of personal space — that invisible force field around your body — is intensifying.

IPods playing too loud, eh? Which reminds me of this TTC meltdown.

This NYT article offers some good tips to those who might not know much about website design and who want to make their websites more useful to visitors.

For the Russian plutocrat in a hurry, there's nothing like a faux motorcade with flashing blue lights to make the hoi polloi get out of your way.

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Here's a feature I did for CTV.ca on Rona Ambrose's pronouncements both before she went to the UN climate change conference in Nairobi and her speech there.

Other stuff:

A BBC story on how negotiations are going to the wire.

A Reuters story from the NYT: Rich, poor nations wrangle on global warming

In Malaysia, converting from Islam to Christianity is the ultimate hot-button issue. Many choose to keep their conversion a deep, dark secret.

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From the Beeb: Pakistan rape victim Mukhtar Mai has been in the international spotlight as a result of her campaign to seek justice for herself and other women in Pakistan. She has been writing a blog for the BBC's Urdu website with the assistance of the BBC's Nadeem Saeed. Here is the third in a series of extracts.

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From the BBC:

Pakistan votes to amend rape laws

Women protested outside parliament as the debate was held Pakistan's national assembly has voted to amend the country's strict Sharia laws on rape and adultery. Until now rape cases were dealt with in Sharia courts. Victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime - if not they faced prosecution for adultery. Now civil courts will be able to try rape cases, assuming the upper house and the president ratify the move. The reform has been seen as a test of President Musharraf's stated commitment to a moderate form of Islam. "It is a historic bill because it will give rights to women and help end excesses against them," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told parliament after the vote. Religious parties boycotted the vote, saying the bill encouraged "free sex".

In days gone by, a staple brief in the New York Times used to be the "bus plunge" story, like Haiku, a specialized form of writing with some defining rules. Slate's Jack Shafer on why the art form died.

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From Democracy Now!

Corporate propaganda on the six o'clock news --- A new study by the Center for Media and Democracy says Americans are still being shown public relations videos disguised as news reports on newscasts across the country. The fake reports are called Video News Releases, or VNRs. They're produced by marketing firms hired to promote products or political messages.

If this story sounds familiar, it's because dozens of stations have already been caught in the act. As we reported on Democracy Now! in April, the Center for Media and Democracy identified seventy-seven stations using VNRs in their newscasts. The findings led to an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.

Well, despite the controversy, ten of those stations are still airing VNRs today, for a total of forty-six stations in twenty-two states. Most of the VNRs have aired on stations owned by large media conglomerates, such as News Corp., Tribune, and Disney. They've also been sponsored by some of the country's biggest corporations, including General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, and Allstate Insurance.

In all but six cases, the television stations failed to identify where the VNRs came from. In twelve cases, television stations even edited out disclosures included in the original fake report. And in four cases, the television stations failed to disclose the reporters on the screen were actually publicists.

From the BBC:

Pakistani religious parties have warned of protests if they deem attempts to revise controversial laws, including those on rape, to be "un-Islamic".

Ruling coalition members have told the BBC that parliament will debate the revised legislation on Wednesday.

The bill was tabled but withdrawn this summer in the face of angry protests.

Under current legislation women alleging rape must produce four male witnesses. If they do not they can face prosecution for adultery.

The revised bill which was withdrawn would have allowed alleged rapists to be tried under civil as well as Islamic law.

The religious parties say they will mount a "nationwide campaign" against the Women's Protection Bill if it is not to their liking.

Fire as a suicide tool is growing in Afghanistan. It's been used by women who suffer difficult lives, either through really bad marriages or chronic abuse.

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Entertainment Weekly has the 10 worst Bond girls, the 10 best, a review of the Bonds and a puff piece on the new Bond, Daniel Craig (h/t to John Gushue).

The best and worst Bond girls in those lists will come as no surprise.

Al-Jazeera is trying to duplicate the success it had in the Arab world with its launch of the English-language Al-Jazeera International.

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