A missile strike in Pakistan earlier this week is believed to have killed Abu Laith al-Libbi, who is believed responsible for planning some suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan.

From RSF.org:

A demonstration was held today in Kabul in support of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, while the senate issued a statement disagreeing with the statement issued yesterday by the senate president supporting Kambakhsh’s death sentence.

This time of year in Vietnam is Tet, the lunar new year.

Normally a time of celebration, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army used the event in 1968 -- about three years after the Vietnam War really began to ramp up -- to launch simultaneous attacks throughout South Vietnam.

As a military offensive, it failed. As a psychological and political tactic to weaken U.S. support for the Vietnam War, it worked spectacularly well.

The Poynter Institute's Roy Peter Clark uses a survey from Sacred Heart University to start a conversation about the American public's bias against the press.

Friday will mark the sixth anniversary of the savage beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Islamist extremists in Pakistan.

His father Judea Pearl offers these thoughts on journalism in a Wall Street Journal commentary:

Journalist Sayed Yacoub Ibrahimi writes a first-person story about his brother, Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, sentenced to death by a court in northern Afghanistan for blasphemy.

From the BBC:

The upper house of the Afghan parliament has supported a death sentence issued against a journalist for blasphemy in northern Afghanistan.

I went to a Canadian Journalism Foundation event tonight featuring Pamela Wallin talking about the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan report.

Here's a part of the report that raises questions for me:

Paddy Ashdown, by all accounts, did a good job as administrator of Bosnia-Herzogovina from 2002 to 2005.

So why didn't Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai want him to take on a similar task in Afghanistan?

The Poynter Institute's Bobbi Bowman on news that doesn't break, per se, but is the story behind the story that is often more significant in the long term rather than splashy in the sort term.

She was quoting legendary editor Eugene L. Roberts, who once said: "Many important stories don’t break. They seep, trickle and ooze. Let’s be sure we are covering the ooze."

Bowman gives a census story out of Illinois as a way to cover the ooze of how the workforce is changing and the implications for the future.

From AP via CTV.ca:

Nigel Eccles, a news junkie and former online betting site employee, wanted to try pursuing both interests at once.

Thus was born Hubdub -- a new website Eccles and three colleagues in Edinburgh, Scotland, assembled -- where customers will bet for fun, not money, on the outcomes of real news stories. ...

Eccles, who has worked on business strategy at Johnston Press PLC, a major regional newspaper publisher in the U.K., said he saw how exciting sports betting could be when he worked at Flutter, a European online betting exchange that was sold to Betfair, an Internet wagering site.

The problem was, he didn't enjoy following sports.

"I do, however, follow technology and politics," Eccles said in a phone interview. "Sometimes I'll read an article and think, 'Hey, that's totally wrong.'"

And he often wondered how news stories about pending events turned out in the end.

From the Jan. 25 NYT:

The Wall Street Journal will continue to charge readers for access to much of its Web site, Rupert Murdoch said Thursday.

For months, Mr. Murdoch, who took control of the paper in December, has vacillated publicly over whether to maintain its subscription firewall. But officials at his company, News Corporation, say that this time, a decision has actually been made to keep it — for now, at least.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Murdoch said that the pages on WSJ.com “giving the greatest insights, that will still be a subscription service,” according to Reuters.

The U.S. seems to be belatedly recognizing that while they were bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, they neglected areas where the terrorists really were operating.

While media outlets have exploded in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001, 2007 proved to be a difficult year for press freedom there.

From a Jan. 25 Reuters story about Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, sentenced to death on Jan. 22 for blasphemy:

"We're concerned about this sentence that was handed down to a reporter for basically practicing his profession and we wouldn't want to see any actions taken that would limit his or anyone else's freedom of the press or freedom of expression," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

"I understand there's an appeal process that is under way and certainly we're going to be looking at that very carefully, and hopefully there will be a different outcome to this than the one that's presently there," Casey added.

The United Nations on Thursday called on Afghanistan to review the Kambakhsh's case, which has also been taken up by the worldwide media watchdog Reporters without Borders.

RSF had the following in a Jan. 25 news release:

The French foreign ministry has expressed outrage at the verdict. “France stresses that it is completely opposed to the death penalty,” the ministry said. “Freedom of expression must be guaranteed, respecting the principles and values enshrined in the Afghan constitution.”

The president of the European parliament called on the Afghan authorities on 18 January to release Kambakhsh.

Here's a Jan. 24 Beeb story on the case:

The UN mission (in Afghanistan) said the reporter, Perwiz Kambakhsh, did not have legal representation - which was a possible misuse of the judicial process.

It has called for a review of Kambaksh's conviction for distributing an article that criticised Islam.

He was arrested in 2007 after downloading material relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

Warnings

The UN said that the court in the northern province of Balkh handled the case in a closed session on Tuesday and that 23-year-old Kambakhsh had no representation.

This, and warnings to journalists who may support him, "point to possible misuse of the judicial process", the mission said in a statement.

"We urge a proper and complete review of this case as it goes through the appeals process," it said.

Germany has also expressed its dismay. From the Daily Times of Pakistan:

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would raise objections with Kabul to an Afghan court’s sentencing of a young reporter accused of blasphemy to death, in an interview broadcast Sunday.

“You can be sure that I will protest against this type of behaviour to the Afghan government, just as I have in previous cases,” Steinmeier told public radio station Deutschlandfunk.

Here's where you can find DFAIT's news releases. Wake me when you see something about this case.

The Washington Post had this in a Jan. 25 story:

According to Afghan law, defense lawyers may appeal the lower court's decision. Ibrahimi (Kambaksh's older brother, also a journalist), who has consulted with mullahs, said he was told that his brother could have been released after three days if he had apologized.

Said Tayeb Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, confirmed that Kambakhsh has the right to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. "This is just a recommendation by the council of clerics," Jawad said of the sentence, adding that he has taken the matter up with the foreign affairs minister. "It does not have binding power."

(Search engine note: I've also seen his name spelled "Sayad Parwez Kambaksh" and the surname spelled "Kaambakhsh")

Then you might wish to check out my CTV.ca feature that was published today: What are the warning signs of a possible recession?

It's a quick overview of some of the quantitative tea leaves that economists monitor.

I'm crossing Grace Street at College earlier today.

I'm doing so under the aegis of a walk light.

By doing so, I prevent the driver of a red van from making a right-hand turn on to Grace, costing his life valuable seconds.

As I reach the sidewalk, he not only opens his window, but sticks his upper torso out enough to peek around his windshield.

"Asshole!" he screams at me.

I guess if I'd walked on a wait signal, I would have been a "fucking asshole!"

Can you say, "anger management issues?"

Addendum

I'm crossing Queen Street. The walk light comes on.

Before I step off the curb, a silver SUV bearing a stylish young couple makes a hard right.

They slow a bit to make the turn. As they do, I make eye contact, wave with a faux happy face and mouth the words "walk light!"

They glanced sourly away.

I made my point without screaming obscenities (for once), but I wonder how many pedestrians in T.O. get struck in a given year because some knob has to get around a corner three seconds faster than he otherwise would.

Terrorists, tornadoes, avalanches, tsunamis and icy roads are but some of the threats Aussie travellers should consider before going to the Great White North, according to an Australian government website.

From AP via CTV.ca:

U.S. newspapers' online audiences grew about six per cent last year, an industry group reported Thursday, a rare bit of good news for an industry struggling to adapt as readers and advertising dollars continue to migrate online.

A Northern Ireland restaurant critic who shat mightily on Belfast's Goodfellas Restaurant and Pizzeria lost a libel lawsuit in a jury trial. The Irish News wants that verdict overturned.