In March 2005, kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was on her way to Baghdad airport after her captors freed her. At a U.S. checkpoint, soldiers opened fire, wounding her and killing Italian secret service agent Nicola Capilari.

Italy charged Mario Lozano in absentia after the Bush administration refused to turn him over. An Italian court has dropped the charges, saying it had no jurisdiction. Sgrena plans to appeal that decision.

From the Tyee:

Journalism faces a crisis around the world and unless it's fixed, society is in big trouble, American scholar and media activist Robert McChesney says.

"The market's not going to solve the problem.... The technology's not going to rescue us."

Great journalism requires resources, institutional support, well-paid journalists and competition, McChesney told an audience at the Simon Fraser University downtown campus Saturday.

Creating institutions that can produce great journalism is going to take "enlightened, engaged, creative policy-making," he said.

"Short of that, we'll never be a free society."

Two ostensibly human life forms were on the College St. TTC streetcar this afternoon.

One of them has a lizard sitting motionless on his left knee.

He extolls the virtues of the lizard as a pet to the other guy, who has close-cropped hair, a chain around his neck and is wearing basketball shorts -- in short, kind of thuggish-looking. His eyes did not radiate intelligence.

The other guy grunted out one question about the approximately 25- to 30-centimetre-long lizard: "Does it suck dick?"

Bear in mind that the other guy delivered this question without a hint of humour or irony. In fact, he had me thinking that if the answer was 'yes,' TOG might consider getting a lizard for himself. Unfortunately for him, the pet owner answered in the negative.

"No, she's a virgin," he replied. "She's a lady of high morals. She would never do anything like that."

"That thing stinks," observed the other guy.

"That would be me," said the owner. His hair condition suggested it had been some time since its last shampooing.

The other guy quickly excused himself and got off at Spadina.

He walked out of a CBS 60 Minutes interview on Sunday after host Leslie Stahl asked him about his wife Cecilia.

It's useful to know the interview was conducted before their divorce became public on Oct. 18.

The recently departed press secretary from the Bush White House spoke at the American Magazine Conference. Here are some observations recorded by Jim Bercovici of Portolio.com's Mixed Media blog: (h/t to Romenesko)

On the newspaper business: "The newspapers have to realize that they are a niche market and the one thing they can do better than anyone else is analysis. As a guy who spent the majority of his career in print media and loves writing, it scares me that newspapers are in the state they're in."

On the effects of the 24-hour-news cycle on journalism: "There are structural problems right now that make it very difficult to cover the White House the way it should be covered....People are trying to keep up with the electronic media. So what happens is you end up thinking, what can I do quickly and what can I do that people are going to watch? ....If you're doing it in real time, you can get real stupid." ...

On his alma mater, Fox News: "There's perceived bias on the part of Fox because they don't treat conservatives as knuckle-dragging morons....I think the rap on Fox having a bias is an unfair one. My sense is rather than grousing with a winning formula, people ought to learn from them."

Maybe. Heck, maybe even probably (do I hear an 'undoubtedly'?). Their track record on being skeptical of U.S. government claims about adversaries does not inspire optimism, writes Lawrence Martin.

The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson on the Prime Minister Stephen Harper's antipathy towards the news media and its roots in the Conservative mindset.

From the BBC:

A man out hunting in Iowa was shot in the leg after a hunting dog stepped on his gun, authorities said.

The accident happened after James Harris, 37, put his gun on the ground to retrieve a fallen pheasant.

One of a pack of hunting dogs following behind stepped on the trigger, and up to 120 birdshot pellets hit Mr Harris in the left calf at short range.

A local official told a news agency the injury was "not life-threatening, but will give him trouble for a long time".

Alan Foster, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, told the AFP news agency it was not uncommon for hunters to be shot by their dogs.

"I hear about it a couple times a year," somewhere in the country, he said.

Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon had this exchange with a reader over the watchdog role of newspapers during an online chat about the new features in the Saturday paper: