From the BBC:

Muntadar al-Zaidi, 29, was expected to appear in court on Wednesday charged with assaulting a foreign leader, and faced a maximum sentence of 15 years.

But after an appeal, a higher court is now deciding whether he should face the lesser charge of insulting a leader. ...

Lawyers for Mr Zaidi said their appeal was based on the fact that he had simply been expressing his opposition to the US presence in Iraq and that Mr Bush had never been in serious danger.

"Have you ever heard of anyone being killed by a shoe?" lawyer Dhiaa al-Saadi told Reuters.

"In Europe, they throw eggs and rotten tomatoes to insult. In Iraq, throwing a shoe is a symbol of disrespect."

The Globe and Mail gave big play today to a story on Fort McMurray and how oilsands expansion has been put on hold.

I offer some background (I lived there in 1987-1988).

NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues the only way to send the price signals needed to begin retooling the U.S. economy into a lower-carbon model is through the tax system. He would like to see Barack Obama boost the U.S. federal gasoline tax.

From Star public editor Kathy English's column of Dec. 27:

... Errors are no joke at the Star. We've taken serious steps this year to gain greater understanding of how and why such errors occur, with the launch in April of an online database to track corrections and determine reasons for errors. The Star published 425 corrections in 2008, down somewhat from 497 in 2007. In 2006, we published 512 corrections.

From the Guardian:

Online video technology firm Blinkx has developed an integrated advertising system it hopes will help generate revenues from the growing amount of video on the web.

From the NYT:

Midway through her reporting on how Americans were handling economic pressure, NPR senior correspondent Ketzel Levine found out that she had been laid off.

A food expert notes that per-capita food production is dropping off even as the human population continues its march towards nine billion souls by 2050. To cope, the global food production system needs to be radically rethought for the 21st century.

From the NYT:

Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.

Could the nattering nabobs of negativism in the U.S. news media be making the economis situation there worse?

From the BBC:

Former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was beaten by medieval prince Alexander Nevsky in a poll held by a TV station to find the greatest Russian.

Stalin came third, despite being responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviets in labour camps and purges.

My year-end feature for CTV.ca is now available: Absurd moments in world politics.

I'm told it's very funny. Enjoy!

From the Washington Post:

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes -- followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

Richard Black suggests that with climate change not sucking up quite as much air time, there was a chance for some other important environmental issues to move up in prominence.

From Ivor Tossell's Globe and Mail column:

In 2004, the rise of blogs and their newfound political power gripped the public attention. In 2005, Wikipedia and the virtues of crowdsourcing announced themselves to the general public. In 2006, YouTube mushroomed into an online-video juggernaut, and ushered in a new age of user-generated cat videos. In 2007, Facebook went from college diversion to mainstream phenomenon.

And now, it's the end of 2008, and here she comes, the latest Miss Internet Hoopla. Today, everybody is facing the imperative of signing up to Twitter, the service that has just sashayed away with the crown.

From the Globe and Mail (Dec. 24):

Torontonians are totally tethered to Twitter. Canada's largest city is the Twitter capital of the Great White North and home to one of the largest collections of Twitter users in the world, according to a new report from market tracking firm HubSpot Inc. Toronto places eighth on a list of the Top 30 locations on Twitter, based on the supplied biographical information of Twitter users - including what they list as a place of residence - while Canada ranks No. 13. London tops the list, followed by the United States generally, then San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

This stub of an article noted that Twitter's user base expanded by 600 per cent during 2008.

A round-up of what I saw and really liked in 2008, and what I still hope to see at some point because I think I will like it.

There wasn't the same nutty deluge of "celebrity" news in 2008 as in 2007. Salon's Sarah Hepola explores what she deems the end of the tabloid era.

From Salon.com:

Scott Tobias of the Onion's A-V Club started a series in 2008 he calls The New Cult Canon.

It's a good roundup of fims I have either seen or should at least consider seeing, and so I collect his efforts to date.

Would he have gone with the anti-gay, anti-Semitic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran?

Britain's Channel 4 did, and the sparks are flying.

From the BBC:

Vietnam has tightened restrictions on internet blogs, banning bloggers from raising subjects the government deems inappropriate.

Blogs should follow Vietnamese law, and be written in "clean and wholesome" language, according to a government document seen by local media.

Internet service providers will be held accountable for the content of blogs they host.

More than 20 million Vietnamese use the internet - a quarter of the population.

Saw a pointer via Clay Shirky on Twitter to this:

The ministry planned to contact Yahoo and Google to seek their cooperation in "creating the best and healthiest environment for bloggers" the newspaper Thanh Nien Daily reported earlier this month.

Hmmm. Which way will Google and Yahoo go on this one? Call me crazy, but I think they'll put profits ahead of principle.

I'm writing this at 9:25 p.m. ET (just got home from work), so maybe a miracle will happen in the next few hours.

But as it stands now, 27-year-old Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout of Sylvan Lake, Alta. won't be home for Christmas. She's being held captive in Somalia.

Lindhout, Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan and their Somali helpers were grabbed by their captors on Aug. 23. See this Sept. 25 Maclean's item, Kidnapped in Somalia, for a story about what happened.

The blog Free Amanda Lindhout monitors ongoing developments. It hasn't been updated since Dec. 10. Reporters sans frontieres, one of the premiere organizations speaking up for journalists in trouble, has been silent about Lindhout for months.

Maybe no news is good news.

Amanda, as a fellow Canadian journalist, all I can say I hope this ordeal is ended as soon as possible so you and your colleagues can get home to your families and practicing journalism again.

I know it's trite to say it, but Merry Christmas, and I hope you somehow know you are not forgotten.

The same sentiment applies to all journalists who find themselves in similar straits at this time.

"It's a sad thing, but I think you have to have been a prisoner of some kind, your freedom has to have been taken from you completely, for you to completely understand its importance and value and beauty." - BBC journalist Alan Johnston

Torontoist's date with the dustbin of history has been pushed back as editor David Topping with forego his salary to keep the blog alive -- an admittedly temporary solution.

Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin described Munater al-Zaidi's gesture towards U.S. President George W. Bush on Dec. 14 as "symbolic and non-violent."

From the BBC:

An Iraqi journalist who flung shoes at US President George W Bush will go on trial on 31 December, his brother and a judge have said.

Muntadar al-Zaidi is accused of "aggression against a foreign head of state" over the 14 December incident.

The 28-year-old, hailed as a hero by some in the Arab world, could face a jail term if convicted.

His brother says he has been abused in detention and plans to file a legal suit over his injuries.

So. In about a week, we'll find out whether the Iraqi justice system sees al-Zaidi's actions as simply a man exercising his freedom of expression or as something more sinister.

I wonder if Dubya will be called as a witness, and if so, for whom? If he testified the accused was just acting like a free Iraqi, wouldn't that go to the issue of intent? Or is my thinking a little too anglo?

From the BBC:

Many newspapers in Nepal have appeared with a blank space instead of an editorial to protest against attacks by Maoist activists.

From the BBC:

The New York Times has said a letter purporting to be from the mayor of Paris that attacked Caroline Kennedy's bid for a Senate seat was a fake.

The letter, which was signed with the name of Bertrand Delanoe and printed in Monday's paper, called Ms Kennedy's bid "not very democratic" and "appalling".

The New York Times said it had failed to check whether the letter, which was sent by e-mail, was authentic.

It said it had expressed its regrets to Mr Delanoe's office in Paris.

Here's the letter with the NYT's mea culpa appended.

A tiny New Jersey weekly newspaper avoids the Internet like the plague, but has also avoided many of the financial problems plaguing larger newspapers. But is there much to learn from its model?