1. BBC NEWS - French crack baby-smuggling ring. Still interesting, but not as much as what I thought I read, which was more along the lines of French crack-baby smuggling ring.
2. MetaFilter talking about broadband access in the US... kind of boring.
3. Sydney Morning Herald article about US troops burning Taliban bodies and then taunting via loudspeaker the village where they think more are hiding out... makes me proud. U-S-A! U-S-A! Not to mention the SMH's suckhole policy on RSS feeds, which doesn't allow you to link their headline. Because generating more traffic for them would be a bad thing how? And if you sign up to their RSS feeds, the only thing you get anyway is the headline, most of which are so crap you wouldn't know what the story was unless you followed the link anyway, which is the whole point of RSS, so I don't have to visit your site for EVERY, BLOODY, STORY. And while I can link to them via RSS, you may have to subscribe to read their stuff. Suckholes. Ok, rant over.
4. The Australian - Terror laws to be introduced here in Australia. One line of this, that just pissed me off (actually read it in print edition over breakfast)

   Under the proposed laws, people could be jailed for up to five years for disclosing details of others who are being held by law enforcement agencies.

   Sweet.
5. The link in the previous post was a slightly amusing/embarrasing list of things done in a day in the life of a blogger. In that list he provided a link to his site meter, which is quite interesting.
   As you can see, he's seen a pretty big spike in visitors, another 3,000 since I looked at it this morning, I think.
6. Volokh.com - writing about the issue of the Chinese dissident who was jailed after Yahoo provided essential details to Chinese authorities that allowed him to be identified. One line I disagree with.

   ...just as there was no way to be an ethical supplier of spy equipment to the USSR or Nazi Germany

   Was it unethical to supply spy equipment to the USSR simply because they were the US's enemies? Would it have been unethical to supply spy equipment to the US government during the McCarthy era? On that note, I can't wait for George Clooney's new film Good Night, and Good Luck about Edward R. Murro, the journalist who publicly opposed McCarthy. Trailers here.
7. Cathy Young - post about the University of Oklahoma student who blew himself up and the rumour mill that took place in the blogosphere as to whether or not he was a terrorist. As an aside, it was while a football game attended by 85,000 people was going on inside. That's right, 85,000 to a college football game.
8. The Age - more about Australian terror laws.
9. I thought it was a joke, but no. It's a soccer fatwa.
10. iLounge - and finally, iLounge brings the video iPod, with a six-page photo gallery.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.