The NYT tries to capture the vibe of modern-day Phnom Penh.

Peter Silverman, veteran consumer affairs reporter with CityTV here in Toronto, got assaulted last week by an optician.

Silverman has done repeated stories on how the guy has allegedly been selling counterfeit frames and otherwise ripping off customers.

He went to visit Adam Plimmer of King West Opticians.

See what happens here. Here's CityTV's reaction story from Monday (no vid).

And here is the Toronto Star's take on it.

From the NYT editorial:

How little this administration has learned from its failures is a constant source of amazement. It seems the bigger the failure, the less it learns.

Consider last weekend’s supersecret briefing in Baghdad by a group of American military officials whose names could not be revealed to the voters who are paying for this war with their taxes and their children’s blood. The briefers tried to prove the White House’s case that Iran is shipping deadly weapons, including armor-piercing explosives, to Shiite militias in Iraq.

Unlike Colin Powell’s infamous prewar presentation on Iraq at the United Nations, this briefing had actual weapons to look at. And perhaps in time, the administration will be able to prove conclusively that the weapons came from arms factories in Iran.

But the officials offered no evidence to support their charge that “the highest levels of the Iranian government” had authorized smuggling these weapons into Iraq for use against American forces. Nor could they adequately explain why they had been sitting on this urgent evidence since 2004. The only thing that was not surprising was the refusal of any of the briefers to allow their names to be published. Mr. Powell is probably wondering why he didn’t insist on the same deal.

And here's a news story: Skeptics doubt U.S. evidence on Iran action in Iraq