From time.com (10th most popular story):

Canada's Parliament is Dissolved

It conjured up an image of the House of Commons being lowered into a giant vat of acid. :)

From AFP via globeandmail.com:

Kidnappers of three journalists, including one Canadian, are demanding a $2.5-million (U.S.) ransom, a traditional Somali chief in contact with the abductors said yesterday.

"The kidnappers demanded $2.5-million and we are trying to secure their release," said Dahir Farah, who has been participating in negotiations to free the three journalists abducted in Somalia last month.

Another person claiming to be an intermediary for the kidnappers spoke of the same ransom demand. He also allowed two people claiming to be the foreign journalists to speak briefly.

"I'm Amanda, the Canadian journalist. Our health situation is very well for the time being," Amanda Lindhout, 26, a freelance foreign correspondent from Red Deer, Alta., purportedly said.

From CP via CTV.ca:

Canada's broadcast networks have denied Green party Leader Elizabeth May a chance to debate the other party leaders on television.

This story by the NYT's Dexter Filkins tells you what an uphill battle the West faces in Pakistan -- which, unfortunately for us, the the central front in the so-called war on terror.

Here's a quick look I took at the 416 ridings.

The bottom line? It's hard to imagine the Tories gaining ground there unless the Liberals collapse. The NDP might be in a battle to hold two of their 2006 wins in Trinity-Spadina and Parkdale-High Park.

I'll be writing alot about the Toronto election in the coming days. If you have anything newsworthy to pass along, shoot me an email at bdoskoch-at-ctv-dot-ca.

Do you work in the U.S. national news media? Do you dislike being bashed? Too bad. Get used to it. Fortunately, most journos are already conditioned.

From the Globe and Mail:

The struggling stock of CanWest Global Communications Corp. [CGS-T] is poised to suffer another blow - deletion from Canada's benchmark stock index.

With index provider Standard & Poor's due to announce its quarterly revisions to the S&P/TSX composite index in the next week or so, CanWest's market capitalization as of the end of August appears below the criterion for continued inclusion in the index, according to UBS Securities Canada Inc. strategist Garry Cooper. If his calculations hold true, CanWest would disappear from the closely watched index as of the end of trading on Sept. 19.

Exclusion from the key index would be another dose of bad news for the stock, which has slumped 63 per cent so far this year, as the company struggles with a weakening outlook for advertising sales and its onerous $3.7-billion debt load. That's because many fund managers, particularly outside of Canada, are barred by the terms of their funds from holding stocks that aren't members of major stock indexes such as the S&P/TSX composite.

I'm walking home. A school bus is packed with young people. A group of young women at the back wave at me and yell out, "We love you!"

This triggers a puzzled response on my face. However, while I can only speculate as to their motivations (I'm guessing a religious group), they seemed to be acting in good faith.

I smiled, flashed a peace sign back, and continued on my way.

Addendum

To give the headline some context, read this.

The premise seemed amusing. Jean-Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels, playing the role of a troubled, washed-up action star -- namely himself.

But alas, for me, the whole film didn't hold up.

From the Globe and Mail:

Before the New York Sun delivered its first newspaper in the spring of 2002, the naysayers were already circling, ready to proffer an epitaph.

The city was already congested with numerous daily papers, they warned. The timing was awful, given a looming recession.

Worst of all, they charged, the fledgling broadsheet was puny – despite the support of Conrad Black, who envisaged the Sun as the New York publishing foothold he always craved, the paper planned to launch with just $15-million (U.S.) in backing.

The predictions of the Sun's demise may have been a few years premature, but that doesn't mean they were wrong.

On Thursday, the conservative-minded newspaper acknowledged it was finally in danger of succumbing to these long odds – and to the increasingly harsh logic of the newspaper industry, which has been buffeted both by new media competitors, readership declines and a brutal slide in classified advertising.

The Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson draws the following links between the Obama/Wright controversy and coverage of Sarah Palin's various personal and professional pecadilloes:

The media frenzy surrounding Ms. Palin has been extreme, though no more than that which accompanied the imbroglio over Mr. Obama's association with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

It is the product of a disturbing shift in how the media cover presidential elections. The proliferation of bloggers, Web-based journals and online videos drives the agenda. They broke the Wright affair, the controversy over Mr. Obama's "bitter voters" remarks, and churned the rumours over the pregnancy of Ms. Palin's unwed teenage daughter.

These revelations, invariably accompanied by accusations, commentary and false rumours, are picked up by the cable news networks, and then repeated in newspapers "now that it's out there."

The overall calibre of commentary declines, for which all of us in this craft are responsible.

Watching Soul Power -- which documents a remarkable event, the music festival held before the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight boxing championship match in Zaire -- is like standing under the screen and taking an energy and joy shower.

Sad news broke out of Afghanistan today: Three more Canadian soldiers died.

What makes this different is that the deaths didn't occur as a result of a roadside bombing. Instead, the Taliban attacked the soldiers' LAV-III armoured personnel carrier directly.

From CTV.ca:

The Green Party of Canada will go to court if necessary to persuade Canada's broadcast consortium to include leader Elizabeth May in the televised leaders' debates for the federal election due to be called on Sunday.

The Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt had this observation at his TIFF blog (post headline - Did you get sTIFFed?) about the difficulties of getting tickets:

TIFF is a massive machine that needs ever-increasing amounts of cash to keep going. But is it in danger of killing the goose that lays its golden eggs? One buyer for the Canadian marketplace told me: "Last year, I realized it's easier to see films at Cannes than it is here." Sure, buyers can get into industry screenings, but the real value of TIFF is that it's always been a people's festival. If you're a buyer or potential distributor, you want to see how a film plays with an audience of real people: that's why you come to Toronto, and that's why producers bring their films here. But if real people are having trouble getting into screenings, will the movies keep coming?

He had a follow-up post: Who do you love? (the ticket fiasco edition)

I didn't do too badly. I got eight out of 10 first-choice movies (I was in Box 66), but none of my second-choice ones. I had two tickets left, and went zero for nine today in trying to use those up (the schedule board said those films were still in play; "it's hard to keep it up to date," explained a clerk). I guess I'll have to rush.

So if you're a more casual TIFF goer hoping to see a glamour film's screening at this point without going the rush route? Good luck to you -- and the festival hasn't even started yet.

Individual ticket prices are $20.50 (yikes!!). A regular film at most downtown T.0.theatres costs about $12. Many of those glamour films will be in theatres within a matter of weeks. Do the math.

PS

TIFF produced one of the most boring festival t-shirts in memory this year. It wants $27.54 for one.

At the request of the Tyee, B.C. j-prof Crawford Killian has developed a list of blogs to watch for with respects to election commentary both here and in the United States.

What, no mention of Daily Kos? Or firedoglake? Or Instapundit?

In Canada, Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor deserves a mention by name as a conduit for the PMO. :)

Liberal Jason Cherniak -- who, as everyone knows, is "as influential as the mainstream media" -- is an enthusiastic Dion booster. Calgary Grit, who blogs from the other centre of the universe, is another Liberal name worth checking out.

Robert McClelland has been a hardnosed, partisan supporter of the NDP.

Killian had a problem finding "green boogers." Here's one -- the inimitable JimBobby.

Scott Tribe blogs from a "progressive" perspective and is usually worth a read. POGGE is a collective progressive blog.

Revolutionary Moderation had one of my favourite features from the 2005-06 campaign -- The Gaffe-O-Meter! He's geared up to go this fall!

On the MSM side, I like Paul Wells. I liked Andrew Coyne's blog more when he was a National Post columnist (his personal blog hasn't been updated since May).

Ace Toronto Star reporter Linda Diebel does political blogging ("The Decoder") for the paper's website. But she only posts once per day (if that) and her blog is hard to find if you don't have it bookmarked.

Globeandmail.com makes it somewhat easier to find blog postings than TheStar.com. But here's a bizarre defect. In the right-hand column, there's a section called Insights with 'commentary' and 'latest blog posts' tabs. At the bottom is a link called See all commentary, which takes you to the 'opinions' page. However, you won't find one globeandmail.com blog link there.

Globeandmail.com does have two decent national politics blogs -- Adam Radwanski's and Dan Cook's Blogolitics. But both are on the national homepage. Reporter Siri Agrell has been doing some blogging from the U.S. Democratic and Republican conventions and it seems like she'll be keeping the blog ("Stumped") going throughout the political season.

If you have any suggestions of your own, have your people call my people.

I'm especially interested in learning the identities of the covert contributors to CBC.ca's Political Bytes blog. :)

From AP via TheStar.com:

John McCain's campaign Wednesday angrily called for an end to questions about its review of Sarah Palin's background, deriding a "faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee" for vice-president.

From AP via the NYT:

One journalist was shot and killed and another was left with a fractured skull after a beating in Russia's troubled North Caucasus, and police and co-workers said Wednesday the two men were likely targeted for their work.

The attacks on an Islamic TV reporter and an opposition newspaper editor are the latest violence to renew fears about the safety of journalists in Russia. A third journalist was shot by police on Sunday -- a killing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said represented ''a further deterioration of media freedom in Russia.''

From the NYT's The Caucus blog (video attached):

Hey, what did Larry King ever do to anybody?

Nothing, aides to Senator John McCain said. Still, Mr. McCain will no longer be sitting down with Mr. King on CNN on Tuesday, as punishment for what his aides said was an unfair interview of a McCain campaign spokesman by the network host Campbell Brown on Monday night.

   more »

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail:

Diplomats in Pakistan are investigating a report that two Canadian militants were killed by a possible U.S. missile attack that blew up a house in a remote tribal region of the country.

Canadian Foreign Affairs officials, in conjunction with other agencies, are working with Pakistan to determine the identities of men killed Saturday after villagers said they saw U.S. Predator drones in southern Waziristan.

From the BBC:

The editor of Sudan's Citizen newspaper has told the BBC he will not comply with a government ban.

Nhial Bol said the order to stop publishing his paper was "political", and because the managing editor was from the war-torn Darfur region.

I went to a session at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies today to listen to Arif Lalani, Canada's former ambassador to Afghanistan. He talked about defining success in Afghanistan.

My question was as follows:

How many Taliban are there today? How many were there five years ago? If there are more today, what does that say about the success of reconstruction efforts to date? If there are fewer, why are there still so many security problems there?

From the BBC:

A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 "hockey stick" graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct.

The Toronto Star looks at how the businesses turned upside down by a major fire on Queen Street six months ago are coping, and how much progress is being made towards filling the hole in the block. The quick answer? Not much.

On a very crowded Queen streetcar today, a woman had a simple request for the man standing beside her: "Could you please get your ass out of my face?"

This sophisticate had positioned his upper body behind a vertical pole on the TTC car while leaving his feet in the aisle. This put his butt in a position that would have been ideal had the seated woman wanted to have given the equivalent of a lap dance with her face.

Strangely (or perhaps, to his mind, not strangely), he initially saw no problem with this state of affairs.

"You know what they say: There's the Better Way and there's your way," he said, sporting a moronic grin as he glanced around, looking for signs that others enjoyed his bon mot as much as he did.

However, the general, silent opprobrium vibe directed at him by those witnessing this exchange eventually penetrated his lead-lined cranium, and he retreated to a less offensive position.

From the Calgary Herald:

The hunt for an Alberta journalist, an Australian photographer, their Somalian fixer and driver kidnapped at gunpoint in Somalia has reached a sensitive and "crucial" stage, says a spokesman for Reporters Without Borders.

Seen first at International Observations, but reported in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper:

WANA, Aug 30: Four people, including two Canadians of Arab origin, were killed and two other people injured when a missile reportedly fired from Afghanistan hit a house in the Korzai area of South Waziristan on Saturday.

According to local people, a plane was seen flying over the area shortly before the missile hit the house of one Noor Khan Gangikhel near a scout camp in Wana at around 4.30pm.

The injured, who reportedly belong to Punjab, were taken to a local hospital.

AFP adds: A local intelligence official said the owner of the house had recently rented it out to some “foreigners”.

I wonder what these "Canadians" would have been doing in a hotbed of militancy like South Waziristan. Simple tourism, no doubt.

More background in this Long War Journal post.