Aside

CBC: [Ray Tanguay, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada,] said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment. CBC: WASHINGTON – U.S. President George W. Bush has officially nominated David Wilkins, a longtime family friend and top Republican fundraiser, to…

NYT: Two Brooklyn teenagers were arrested early yesterday on charges that they robbed and killed a 15-year-old boy in the Farragut neighborhood when they stole his friend’s iPod, the police said. The victim, Christopher Rose, was walking with three other boys late Saturday afternoon when a large group of teenagers approached them and demanded that they turn over the iPod that one of the boys was carrying, according to the police and witnesses. When the boys refused, one of the…

Metafilter reports on a new Internet community of “Greenlighters”, people who wear green polo shirts with the collars turned up as a signal of sexual interest. Not surprisingly this “community” has a website, which for now is down, but I can verify earlier today that it did have some postings on it. The site, which was registered yesterday, is in the name of [redacted], a University of Michigan student. I can’t help (as some other MeFiers were as well), be…

NYT Magazine: Well, you could say, ”That’s sovereignty for you.” The international community cannot force the Congolese people to choose the good guy, any more than they can bomb the bad guys into submission; those days are over. But the only Congolese official I met who talked about sovereignty was an unrepentant servitor to the Mobutu government. The Congolese I talked to want to be saved from themselves, or at least from their desperate predicament. Even those who accuse Monuc…

Ethan Zuckerman: Aid dollars donÕt eliminate poverty – integration into a global economy does. (South Korea and Ghana had approximately the same per capita income when Ghana gained independence in 1957. South KoreaÕs income per capita has increased roughly fifteen times in constant dollar terms, while GhanaÕs has fallen slightly. You may notice that we buy a great deal more from South Korea than we do from Ghana.) If the goal of Live 8 were to help people see the…

WashPost: The CIA declined comment on Alliance Base, as did a spokesman for the French Embassy in Washington. Most French officials and other intelligence veterans would talk about the partnership only if their names were withheld because the specifics are classified and the politics are sensitive. John E. McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who retired recently after a 32-year career, described the relationship between the CIA and its French counterparts as “one of the best in the world. What…

Macworld Editor-in-Chief Jason Snell is on the MacMania cruise in the Baltic Sea. Earlier today they stopped off in Tallinn, where he met up with Veljo Haamer, of WiFi.ee fame. Jason’s photos here. (My Estonia photos are here.)

CS Monitor: Saturday, 10 cities around the world will host some of pop music’s biggest names as part of the “Live 8” concert series (www.live8live.com). Organizer Bob Geldof hopes large turnouts will pressure the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations, meeting in Scotland next week, to help put “an end to poverty” in Africa. He also hopes the rock shows will boost awareness about Africa’s plight – and how the wealthy world can help. The Monitor decided to find out…

Sumana: I mentioned my corporate Slate vs. indie Salon analogy, where Slate is a woman who’s gone right from her father’s house to her husband’s, but Salon is a strong, independent woman who’s been raised by wolves. Ummm, except that Slate has a graduate education and is upwardly mobile, while Salon is still floundering in the forest. I’m sorry, Jack Shafer, Chris Suellentrop and Christopher Hitchens vs. Eric Boehlert, Farhad Manjoo and Mark Benjamin.

Has anyone else noticed that the Powell BART stop (along with ads on the Powell Cable Car) is now covered in Dove’s new ad campaign, which sports curvaceous women decked out in bras and underwear? I mean, I’m all for women as much as the next guy, but it just seems a bit overkill? I mean, c’mon. It’s a *soap* ad.