Reporters sans frontieres is calling on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai to pardon a young Afghan journalist after that country's Supreme Court upheld a 20-year sentence for blasphemy.

You can help Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh. Please sign this petition.

Soul singer Bettye LaVette on becoming a performer at a young age:

“I don’t know what else I could’ve been. I’m not scholastic and I never wanted to be a student. I always wanted to dress up and hang out with adults. I was born to be in dark places, drinking and smoking and doing all kinds of seedy stuff. This is the perfect business for me.”

From Now Toronto.

Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir is finishing up a biography about Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. How he came to meet him so many times is an interesting yarn in itself.

Heritage Minister James Moore says the federal Conservative government won't be ponying up any new money to help CBC cope with at $65-million revenue drop.

In addition, changes to other media funding programs mean the CBC will have to fight harder for its share of those dollars.

Just think: A website for banker's molls, where they dish on the various recession-related problems emanating from the reduced earning capacity of their men. What a story!

The NYT wrote such a story on Jan. 28.

And it penned the following Editor's Note on Feb. 25:

An article on Jan. 28 about women who commiserated over dating Wall Street bankers caught in the financial crisis described a group they had formed, Dating a Banker Anonymous, as a support group. That is the name of their blog. Its creators originally told The Times that about 30 women had participated, but since publication, they have said that all involved were friends. Laney Crowell, one of the women who started the blog, said in the article that it was “very tongue in cheek;” she has since described it as a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect. Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group.

• It’s the Economy, Girlfriend(January 28, 2009)

Oopsie.

Exxon Mobil has reduced its funding to climate "skeptic" groups such as the Heartland Institute, which is holding a conference on the climate issue.

And to add to that, the conference will hear from some skeptical scientists that many of the skeptics are getting the science very, very wrong.