European Union foreign policy chief Xavier Solana is urging Pakistan to not talk with al Qaeda -- a move being pondered by the country's new government.

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From the BBC:

Israel has sentenced a soldier to 19 days in jail for uploading a photograph taken on his military base to the social networking website, Facebook.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the nature of the image, but said the soldier was serving with an elite intelligence unit.

Local media say it is the first such conviction for an Israeli soldier.

The case follows widespread reports about the potential security risk of soldiers posting photos on the web.

From CTV.ca:

Police in Montreal showed up at various newsrooms in the city, armed with warrants for the seizure of video footage of Monday night's riot.

News organizations, including CTV Montreal, will challenge the seizure in court. The CTV station handed over its riot footage, but placed the two DVDs in a sealed envelope. It has asked the envelope remain sealed until a judge rules on the matter. The station also filed a letter of protest.

Disclosure: I work for CTV.ca News

The police visited a total of 10 newsrooms.

The CAJ, moral paragon that it is, reared up on its hind legs and bleated about this issue.

The new owners of TQS, a Quebec television network, wants to get out of the news business. The move, if okayed by the CRTC, would throw 270 people out of work.

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I was in Big Fat Burrito recently in Kensington Market where I ordered the ever-delish pulled-pork one (another fave is the breakfast burrito).

But the little bottles of chipotle sauce, which is pretty much essential for a maximal burrito experience, weren't on the counter.

They now want you to ask for chipotle sauce or related condiments in advance, although they did give me some in a little plastic cup this time.

And the reason for that? People kept walking off with the sauces.

They can afford a burrito, but they have to steal the chipotle sauce?

Wow.

William Shakespeare was born 444 years ago today.

From AP via CTV.ca:

In a move combining user-created online encyclopedias with the printed page, Germany's Bertelsmann AG will publish what could be the first in a series of annual yearbooks whose content is derived from the many hundreds of thousands of user-created entries on Wikipedia.

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From the NYT:

At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its ...   more »

This is a tougher question to answer than it seems.

A BBC story put a loaf's price at 65 million Zimbabwean dollars.

The official exchange rate is about 29,774 Zimbabwean dollars to the Loonie, according to Yahoo! Finance's currency calculator.

That would make a loaf of bread worth ... $2,183.

A decent loaf of multigrain at the Kensington Market bakery here is $2.89.

The National Post wrote this on April 16 in an article entitled It's not just inflation, it's hyperinflation!

As if the appearance of newly-minted $50,000,000 bank notes worth all of about US$1.20, or the equivalent of three loaves of bread ...

That would make the price of a loaf of bread to be about 40 cents (the loonie was pretty close to par today), and would mean a real exchange rate of 41,666,666.67 Zimbabwean dollars to the Loonie.

From the BBC:

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US.

He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network.

Correspondents say the comments underline al-Qaeda's increasing public hostility towards Iran. ...

The purpose of this lie is clear - [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history," he said.

"Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it."

Once upon a time, branding is all that mattered for those advertising online. Now, as the U.S. economy tightens, advertisers want clicks converted into actual business.

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Don Cherry just made no apologies about being pro-Boston Bruins in his commentary on that team's NHL playoff series with the Montreal Canadiens.

But can an aspiring world-class newspaper find happiness operating in a part of the world where freedom to oppress and suppress is much more entrenched than freedom of the press?

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From CBC.ca:

An Afghan television station has pulled an Indian soap opera from the airwaves on the orders of the government.

Kumkum had already raised the ire of conservative clerics in the country, who had called it "un-Islamic."

"Under pressure from the Ministry of Information and Culture, we had to stop running one of our famous shows, an Indian drama," Abdul Qadir Mirzai, chief news editor for leading private station, Ariana, said Sunday. ...

Kumkum is the first victim of a government edict which had given stations until Tuesday to stop airing several programs it had deemed inappropriate because they undermined Afghan culture.

The Conservative Party tried to pre-empt tomorrow's release of the search warrant used by the RCMP this past week on behalf of Elections Canada by holding some cozy chats with select news outlets.

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Er, not for His Blackness, aka Inmate No. 18330-424, but for Canadian Press photographer David Chidley. From CBC.ca:

A photo of former Canadian media baron Conrad Black giving the finger to reporters during his trial in Chicago has taken top prize for spot news at the second annual National Pictures of the Year awards competition.

The awards are a creation of the News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC) and winners were judged from more than 2,200 entries.

Conrad Black gives the finger to a member of the media as he arrives at the courthouse for his fraud trial in Chicago in July 2007. (Dave Chidley/Canadian Press)

The winners were announced at a gala in Vancouver on Saturday night.

The Conrad Black photo was taken by David Chidley of the Canadian Press during the businessman's trial, in which Black was convicted of obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of his former newspaper company, Hollinger International Inc.

Black is currently serving a 6½-year sentence at a jail in central Florida.

 

No one stage-manages propaganda like the Pentagon. This NYT story looks at the very thin veneer of objectivity that covers some military experts often seen appearing on U.S. TV news.

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Moskovsky Korrespondent's publication has been "suspended for financial reasons" after running a story claiming that outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin is dumping his wife for a gorgeous gymnast 32 years his junior.

Putin denies the story completely.

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From the BBC:

A US report says that terrorists are still operating freely along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan.

It says that there is "no comprehensive plan" to deal with the threat, even though Pakistan has received $10.5bn in military and economic aid from the US.

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From the BBC:

Research has thrown further doubt on the notion that cosmic rays are a major influence on the Earth's climate.

The idea that modern global warming is due to changes in cloudiness caused by solar influences on cosmic rays is popular with "climate sceptics".

But scientists found changes in cosmic ray flux do not affect cloud formation - the second such report in a month.

Separately, other researchers have found that particles from space may affect temperatures at the poles.

Both pieces of research were presented here at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting.

Google sets the global pace for firms deriving revenues from online advertising, and to the relief of everyone, it handily beat first-quarter expectations.

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CTV.ca is the most video-intensive news website in Canada. My employer just launched the latest and greatest version of its online video player. You can launch it from CTV.ca or click here.

Online video useage continues to explode, and the Amnets are hard-pressed to keep up. Episodes they broadcast are making their way onto YouTube and being distributed by BitTorrent within minutes of airing.

As a result, the Amnets aren't grabbing much online market share, which means less m-o-n-e-y.

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From CP via CTV.ca:

Torstar Corp. is cutting 160 jobs and taking a $21-million charge in a restructuring of its newspaper division amid continued weakness in the industry.

The company said Thursday the restructuring involves "a combination of voluntary and involuntary staff reductions'' and will save $12 million annually.

Torstar, owner of the Toronto Star, Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, didn't release details of the staff reductions, and executives were not immediately available for comment.

The company also owns other Ontario dailies, the Metroland complex of community papers and the Harlequin romance-novel enterprise, along with Internet sites like Toronto.com and Workopolis.

The staff cuts are the latest to rock the North American newspaper industry, struggling because of falling circulation and the growth of online news sources.

The Star ratified a new contract with its staff in January, averting a strike. It said at the time that the three-year agreement would help the newspaper transition from a traditional print-focused organization to one that deals with multimedia -- both print and online.

The voluntary reductions total 122.

The entire Internet production staff is gone.

Update

As of 2:22 p.m., the Star only had the CP wire story.

Update 2

In a Friday Toronto Star story, the company clarified what it meant by "Internet production staff":

...10 positions were eliminated in a small unit called Torstar Electronic Publishing, where the work had either become redundant or is being absorbed in the Star newsroom, where the number of digital staff is growing.

In a message to staff this week, publisher Jagoda Pike said the Star is continuing to invest in new talent, including in the digital area, as evidenced by this week's launch of three new web "verticals," called parentcentral.ca, yourhome.ca, and healthzone.ca.

Staff are being hired for those verticals, for the introduction of readers commenting on stories, and for other website improvements including more multimedia and online graphics.

From the BBC:

The US military in Iraq says it has released Associated Press (AP) photographer Bilal Hussein after holding him for two years in detention.

Mr Hussein, an Iraqi, was detained in western Anbar province on suspicion of working with insurgents.

He has always denied any improper links with insurgents and says he was doing his job as a journalist.

The US military's decision comes after an Iraqi judicial panel ordered him to be released under an amnesty law.

There are billions being spent to "help" Afghanistan, but at the same time, some consultants are making $500K per year, staying in the best hotels and eating in the best restos Kabul has to offer -- and still probably making a healthy profit, finds this BBC story.

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The Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan is relatively close to the location in Pakistan where al Qaeda number-two Ayman al-Zawahri came within a few hours of getting his ticket punched. The opponents of the 173rd Airborne Combat Brigade Team are a mixture of local and foreign fighters.

The secret in winning militarily may well be straightforward: Control the high ground.

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From the Globe and Mail:

Some of the world's biggest grain exporters barred their farmers from selling in global markets yesterday, exacerbating the food price crisis for poorer nations that import their food and highlighting the failure of governments to nurture stronger rules for agricultural trade.

Rice and corn prices soared to records on U.S. markets and wheat jumped to its highest in a week after Kazakhstan, the world's fifth-largest wheat exporter, and Indonesia, a major rice producer, became the latest nations to impose export bans. The price increases further inflated global food costs that already had surged 48 per cent since the end of 2006.

The latest moves highlight the difficulty of solving a problem that has its roots in years of trade policy indecision, the push by richer nations to produce more fuel from food crops, growing demand from developing countries such as China, and Wall Street investors who see a money-making opportunity in surging commodity demand.

“Business as usual is no longer an option,” Paris-based UNESCO says in a sweeping report on the world agriculture system that was three years in the making and released yesterday. “There is a recognition that the mounting crisis in food security is of a different complexity and potentially different magnitude than the one of the 1960s.”

One analyst thinks that if we have wacky weather, then prices for "soft commodities" -- stuff we eat, like rice, wheat and corn -- have no where to go but up, up, up.

And with a changing climate, weather becomes less predictable.

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