Clark Hoyt, the NYT's public editor, says a policy introduced four years ago seems to have succeeded in raising the editorial standards of who is granted anonymous source status, but problems still remain.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton thought he was talking to a civilian when he mouthed off about the author of an unflattering Vanity Fair article about him. Wrongo! The diatribe showed up on the Huffington Post.

PS: The reporter was a Barack Obama contributor. Welcome to the new normal.

From AP via CTV.ca:

A group of European scuba divers swept away in strong currents scrambled onto a remote Indonesian island only to face another threat: a Komodo dragon.

From the BBC:

Gunmen in the southern Somali city of Kismayo have killed a local journalist.

Nasteh Dahir, who worked for both the BBC and Associated Press news agency, was shot in the chest and stomach outside his home.

The National Union of Somali Journalists said it was a "targeted assassination" and that the 26-year-old had received death threats.

Somalia, mired in chaos and violence since 1991, is among the world's most dangerous countries for journalists.

From the BBC:

Abdul Samad Rohani

An Afghan journalist working for the BBC in the country's southern Helmand province has been found shot dead.

Abdul Samad Rohani had been abducted on Saturday and his body was found on Sunday afternoon in Lashkar Gah.

The BBC paid tribute to Rohani, saying his "courage and dedication have been a key part of the BBC's reporting from Afghanistan in recent years".

Rohani worked with the BBC Kabul bureau and was the Pashto service reporter for the BBC World Service in Helmand.

The province has seen some of the worst recent violence of the Taleban-led insurgency.

I was just walking along Queen St. West, across from the southeast corner of Trinity Bellwoods park.

It's an unsettled early evening here in T.O., and the wind was gusting down from the thunderclouds.

A swarm of dancing, swirling tree seeds rode those turbulent air currents.

The seeds proved the theory of relativity. High up, the seeds looked carefree as they pirouetted. The wind then drove them down and towards me en masse. They whizzed by like tiny, purposeful speed demons, making me feel like a pylon in their wind-driven race.

How is the winner of this race determined? I guess some lucky seed finds a bare patch of moist soil, germinates, takes root, survives to adulthood -- and then releases its own seeds on a blustery day to provide a cinematic moment in the life of some passerby in 2088 or so. :)

I'm unlikely to be there to enjoy that one, but I appreciated the dreamy interlude today. :)