Christie Blatchford expresses disdain for the media feeding frenzy that engulfed Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt over a five-month-old tape recording of a private, candid moment in which Raitt referred to the medical isotopes file as "sexy."

Someone I briefly worked with in Cambodia more than a decade ago was a Monday night guest on The Daily Show.

Gretchen Peters worked for some time in Pakistan as a correspondent for the Associated Press and producer for ABC News, although she's now back in the U.S. ("I think when you've written a book about terrorists and drug traffickers, it's time to get the hell out of Dodge"). She's written a book called Seeds of Terror, which explores the link between the heroin trade and funding of Islamist militants in the region.

You can see the interview here. And here are some screen grabs:

The Peters I knew relished have a tough-reporter-chick persona. In the image at above right, I snapped her right after she said the following:

"I was just walking down by Ground Zero earlier today and I wanna get those motherfuckers."

It would appear she still relishes having a tough-reporter-chick persona. Thing is, she really is a tough reporter chick.

Hey Globe and Mail types, she touted one of your paper's articles -- the one about the deputy counter-narcotics minister who is himself alleged to be involved in the drug trade.

Anyways, good on Peters for producing a book on a critically important topic.

From AP via NYT.com:

North Korea's state news agency says the country's top court has convicted two U.S. journalists and sentenced them to 12 years in labor prison.

The Korean Central News Agency says the Central Court tried American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from June 4 to 8.

It said Monday the trial confirmed an unspecified ''grave crime'' against the nation, and of illegally crossing into North Korea.

The report says the court ''sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor.''

The Globe and Mail had one article on Saturday saying the worst of the recession might be over.

And on Sunday night? An article suggesting the economic rollercoaster is just climbing up before going into another dive.

In voting for the European Parliament, citizens punished left-leaning parties, with conservative -- and in some cases, disturbingly far-right parties -- making gains as voter turnout came in between 43 and 44 per cent.

Toronto author Anna Porter revisited her birth country of Hungary recently to explore the disturbing signs of rising right-wing extremism there, part of a book she is writing on Europe since the rusting of the Iron Curtain.

Saturday, June 6 marks the 65th anniversary of D Day, the storming of the beaches of Normandy to push the Germans out of France.

Was it also a time of looting and sexual assault by some Allied troops as well as stoic heroism?

The BBC looks at the issues raised by new books: D Day, by Anthony Beevor and Liberation, The Bitter Road to Freedom, by William Hitchcock.

Roy Peterson had drawn editorial cartoons for the Vancouver Sun for nearly a half-century. For that, the freelancer got a rather ignonimous sendoff.

I normally don't blog much about salacious Hollywood gossip, but the weird death of actor David Carradine makes me think of this clip from Kill Bill 2:

Bill (Carradine's character): Isn't it supposed to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony?

Hubby-to-be Tommy Plympton (leans in): I guess I just believe in living dangerously

Bill: I know just what you mean

From AP via TheStar.com:

Foreign journalists were barred from Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Wednesday as an Internet clampdown that blocked Twitter expanded to include more blogs on the eve of the 20th anniversary of a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

The Toronto Star's Linda Diebel tells the story of Mexican crime reporter Luis Najera, currently seeking refugee status in Canada.