The money went to personnel training and equipment, including fences and night-vision goggles. The U.S. thought about offering "permissive action links," or PALS, a system that protects a warhead from detonating without proper codes. That debate ended because of concerns over technology transfer and deep suspicion in Pakistan about Washington's true intentions.

The Sydney Morning Herald today tells a story about how dolphins are scared into a tiny cove in Taiji, Japan, and then killed by drowning them. Nigel Barker, who documented the slaughter, describes a horrific death scene as the dolphins drown.

The bill allows "conscientious objection" by doctors and healthcare workers, but it considers a time limit on such objections to prevent them from simply refusing everybody. The country of 3.5 million people is predominantly Catholic (66 percent), but far fewer (perhaps less than half) attend mass regularly.

Fiji Water, a trendy choice for capricious celebrities, is tackling climate change and perhaps pre-empting a boycott with comprehensive plans to become "carbon negative." That would, theoretically, reduce its environmental footprint, including greenhouse gas emissions, beyond carbon neutral.

[It is nearly impossible to replenish what has already been taken from the environment. Companies claim "credits" or "carbon credits" by tallying the normative harm they caused and, say, by planting trees elsewhere to make up the for the difference.]

The company's announcement in Los Angeles Wednesday coincided with a New York Times article that makes a case for both the bottled water industry and its detractors.

Michael Brune of the Rainforest Action Network tells The Times:

Bottled water is a business that is fundamentally, inherently and inalterably unconscionable. No side deals to protect forests or combat global warming can offset that reality.

Glenn Prickett of Conservation International sums up the reality this way:

Maybe it would be morally preferable to carry a bottle I filled at the tap, but bottled water is a consumer reality. So rather than operate in a moralistic framework, we’ll use the economy as it exists to make a difference.

But the reality is far worse than Mr. Prickett's view of bottled water economics.

Take BlingH20, for example. Their US$40 bottled water comes in "Limited Edition, corked 750ml, frosted glass bottles, exquisitely handcrafted with Swarovski Crystals."

And there's a market for it. A huge one. The MTV Video Music Awards and the Emmys are just two events that featured BlingH20.

The brutally honest company points out that image-conscious Hollywood celebs flaunt their bottled water. BlingH20 targets the "expanding super-luxury consumer market," it says.

Similarly, self-styled "water sommelier" Michael Mascha has made a new career out of elevating the status of water which, like wine, should be paired with many different dishes.

Mr. Mascha says his own Web site, FineWaters, filled a void for fine water connoisseurs and distributors. He turned to water when he his health condition no longer allowed wine.

Niche-market water is not the only target of protests. Coca-Cola, which makes Dasani, and Pepsi Cola, which makes Aquafina, are being hounded for what some see as theft of municipal water. Both brands are nothing more than purified tap water although some contain flavoring.

"Think Outside the Bottle" campaign, by Corporate Accountability International, is aimed squarely at Coke, Pepsi and Nestlé for "privatizing our water." They say 17 million barrels of oil, enough to fuel a million cars for a year, were used to meet Americans' annual demand for bottled water. In the process, 2.5 million tons of Carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere.

The backlash against bottled water is growing. Corporate Accountability has held rallies in Seattle, Baltimore and other cities.

And potentially, warns the Branding Blog, the US$15 billion market could come crashing down. Why?

Younger, healthier, environmentally savvy consumers are the heaviest consumers of the product: the very people most likely to be concerned about the environment and to act accordingly are the ones drinking bottled water in the first place.

According to the Philippine Star, which spells her first name Marianeth, she foreshadowed the suicide in her diary, apparently the only place she talked about her misery. She wanted to continue with her studies and even contemplated asking a national television station for help.

In a country where Buddhist monks draw nearly universal respect, an officer had to slap soldiers in the front row to attack the protesting monks. Still the protestors were no match for military hardware.

The BBC Burmese service and the Norwegian-based Democratic Voice of Burma were instrumental in spreading the news about the government's attacks on monks. After hearing about the news, Ashin Ven Kovida organized several demonstrations.

Organizing protests is hard in Burma (Myanmar) where censorship comes so naturally to the aging military regime. But according to a comment posted on DVB, there may be an open Wi-Fi hot spot near the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon (Yangon). Regardless of the Internet's accessibility, television footage and photos continue to reach the outside world.

DVB's photos show a dead monk, a Japanese journalist who was shot dead, and a dozen others who were injured. The death of Kenji Nagai, the journalist for APF News, was caught on camera:

As powerful as the monks' peaceful protests were, the marches and deaths would have meant very little had they not been printed. To that end, continued engagement, not an embargo, is necessary, argues Richard Bernstein in The New York Times.

But what do you do when diplomacy and closed-door consultations don't work? Wait until the junta falls?

In a touching article, the online newspaper decries the sad state of media freedom in the region, where journalists face legal constraints, physical assaults and even death. But is the Pentagon or the European Command the right vehicle to foster freedom of speech?