But do they have a special Airbus pull-out section, and news about the Leafs?

For the most part, not a bad paper today, it seemed to me -- clearly starting a critical blog has the same kind of effect as vowing to carry an umbrella at all times.

On the other hand, our Senior Mitteleuropa Correspondent [Code Name: Edelweiss] has some truly disturbing observations on the Globe coverage of international news. Or to be accurate the lack of it:

Why does Canadian journalism in general assume that "news" is actually crime reporting, and "foreign news" is bizarre crime reporting from other countries?

I've just done, for comparative purposes, a quick scan of foreign news in today's (or yesterday's) online Globe, NYT and Die Presse (centre-right Austrian daily, serving a market one-quarter the size of Canada). I've not gone into content - a qualitative comparison would be too depressing - but just to see what's covered and what isn't. The Globe's view of the world includes a confused piece about how everyone is being mean to one another in Gaza, the governor of Kandahar, the Ressam sentence and Somali pirates. Its US news consists of lead in toys, a Nixon memo on Vietnam, Polanski pleading clemency and a nifty arrangement of stars in the sky, as well as the Obama transition. In Europe, apparently the only thing that is happening is that Venice is sinking. Asia is all about Mumbai and Thailand (fair enough), and unfortunate Chinese schoolgirls. In Africa they mention Zimbabwe and Somali pirates, though if you click on the Africa sub-heading you actually go through to sports.

The NYT and Die Presse, on the other hand, in addition to the stories that even the Globe couldn't overlook, mention Rwanda and Congo, clashes in the UK parliament, the condemnation of Sudan's Al-Bashir by the UNSC, Kosovo riots, the Politkovskaya trial, Chavez's most recent manoeuvres, an ETA killing yesterday, real analysis of Gaza, Mindanao/Philippines, politics in Poland, Romania, and more. What really sums it all up for me though, is the cluster bomb treaty signed in Oslo - the Globe mentions it in a 2-sentence Reuters piece buried on page 20 of the print edition, while Die Presse devotes to it 10 paragraphs, a backgrounder and links to five related articles and the NYT covers it in 20 paragraphs and two backgrounders. And the Globe has ENTIRELY overlooked this week's NATO Council Meeting, which was shaping up to be the latest event in the new Cold War what with the US suddenly pushing for Georgian and Ukrainian NATO membership - extensively covered by both other papers (and Austria not even a NATO member...).

So there you have it: right-wing Austrians are presumed to take an educated interest in cluster bombs, the Sudanese government, Russian repression of journalists, and the internal politics of NATO, which Austria unlike Canada does not belong to. Canadians... er, not so much.

(Ed. note: Links are of course to today's 'World' section of the three on-line papers, so you can perform the whole depressing operation all over again.)