Medine Memi may have been the victim of an “honor killing.” An “honor killing” takes place after one family member commits an act that serves to dishonor the rest of the family. Members of the family then kill the one who committed the act, as defense of honor is seen as a justifiable reason for murder. Memi’s father and grandfather have been arrested, but not yet charged.

Memi’s neighbor noticed she’d been missing for a month before calling the police. Officers then visited Memi’s house, and found her body “in a hole, newly covered with concrete, next to the hen-house,” the BBC reports. She was found dead with her hands tied behind her back and minor bruises on her body.

Memi lived in Kahta, Turkey, a heavily conservative and religious south-east town. The BBC reports that while many “honor killings” are carried out by muslims in Turkey, the practice has more to do with the regional customs of this mainly Kurdish town than with religion. Apparently, if a female child is seen even speaking to a boy, there is “strong peer pressure from the community on the male members of the family to restore their honor.”

The United Nations Population Fund estimates the number of worldwide “honor killings” at 5,000 per year. Both men and women are targeted, though women are much more often victims. According to the Turkish prime minister’s office, there were 16 honor killings in Adiyaman, the province where Memi lived, between 2003 and 2007.

The NFL announced yesterday that, if the Phillies make the World Series, two November 1 football games will be moved to the NFL Network: the Giants/Eagles game and the hotly anticipated Vikings/Packers.

A&E green-lighted a pilot for a drama called “The Quickening” about a female Los Angeles police detective who’s bipolar.

Matthew Perry recently signed on to star in, co-write and executive produce a new untitled comedy about a guy that turns 40 and begins to question his small town life managing a sports arena.

Finally, Richard Harris and Alan Ruck (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) were added to ABC’s “Cougar Town,” Entertainment Weekly reported.

By the way, on this day in 1943, RCA sold off one of the two NBC radio networks. Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the NBC Blue network. He renamed it the American Broadcasting Company — ABC.

Many however have quite the negative view of AlJazeera, especially the Arabic network. They’ve been accused of giving a “voice to terrorists” and have, in the past, aired some seriously anti-Semitic programming.

But AlJazeera English is the station that’s on its way to Canada, not AlJazeera Arabic. AJE was established just three years ago and even though it is, like Aljazeera Arabic, owned by the Qatari government, it operates independently from its big sister station.

I watch AlJazeera English regularly on Livestation. It’s a quality all-day news channel that reports on issues much like CNN does, but from a differing, more localized and internal perspective.

CNN’s coverage of American politics is hard to match. It’s comprehensive and seen from all angles. It’s quality. Why? Well it operates from the area on which it reports, the U.S. Atlanta, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and New York City. Everything is covered. Here.

So, naturally, a news channel operating out of the Middle East would give the world a more authentic idea of what is going on there than, say, CNN, whose headquarters are a long way from the Mid-East.

You wouldn’t rely on the BBC for American political news, so why are we forced to watch CNN to learn about the Middle East? After all, CNN’s global sister stations aren’t available to us here in the U.S. and Canada.

The current vast news landscape is made up largely of Middle Eastern issues. AlJazeera’s main headquarters are right smack-dab in the middle of the Middle East: Doha, Qatar, just off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. They also have broadcast stations in Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington D.C. They air at least one 30-minute news show from each base everyday.

In addition to the four headquarters, AJE has 69 bureaus set up all over the world, many of which are in the southern hemisphere. They also employ 1,200 staff of more than 45 ethnicities.

That doesn’t sound too oppressive to me. These stats make them the most diverse news network in the world.

If you watch the channel you’ll know their anchors, reporters and weathermen come in all colors. As a person of color, that’s a nice thing to see on TV. Finally.

Many of their staff is also women.

I admit I’ve never watched AlJazeera Arabic, aside from all the terrorist videos that have become infamous in the West. I’ve heard the negative criticism and the allegations of anti-Americanism toward the AJA. I’ve also seen some of the proof.

But that doesn’t mean AJE isn’t a quality, unbiased organization. It operates independently from AJA and caters, purposefully, toward a Western audience.

You only have to watch programs like “Witness” and “People & Power” to understand the quality of AlJazeera English. Seriously, download LiveStation and watch those programs. They are phenomenal examples of how AJE brings attention to important issues that get either get lost in Western mainstream media filters or go undetected on news radar.

About 80 per cent of AJE’s stories relate to the Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, about twice as much as the BBC and CNN.

AJE’s reporting of not only Middle Eastern issues but also those issues that affect the forgotten areas of Latin America, Africa and Asia are without a doubt superior to those few pieces produced and released by CNN and the BBC.

The rest of the world needs a voice. AlJazeera English is it. So please come on down to Canada.

BBC America released the trailer for the upcoming third season of “Torchwood” today, entitled “Torchwood: Children of Earth.” The new series will air later this year on BBC America and BBC One in the UK.

The new series, told over five nights, will reunite Captain Jack (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David Lloyd). They are faced with a dangerous threat that puts both the fate of Torchwood and the entire human race in peril.

“Torchwood” is a spin-off of the long-running BBC science fiction classic “Doctor Who.” “Torchwood” is executive produced by Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner and produced by Peter Bennett (Doctor Who).

Stay tuned with Blast as we uncover more information about the upcoming season this weekend at New York Comic-con.

The result is scary: the more you want it the more likely you may be to get prostate cancer.

The study found that those subjects who were most sexually active at younger ages had more of a chance of developing cancer later in life. The researchers concluded that higher levels of sex hormones could lead to both the sex drive and the cancer.

So, it’s probably not the sex causing the cancer, but the hormones might give you both the drive and the disease.

“Hormones appear to play a key role in prostate cancer,” Dr Polyxeni Dimitropoulou, the study leader, told the BBC.

Prostate cancer is one of the leading health concerns among men. It’s the most common cancer in men in the UK, with over 30,000 new cases each year.

Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said during a press conference that Chinese officials have the right to block websites that violate Chinese law. Apparently the Chinese version of the BBC’s website falls in that category, along with Voice of America and Asiaweek, a Hong-Kong based newspaper.

Jinchao said that China “needs to do the required management of Web sites based on the law, just as what other countries are doing,” according to the New York Times.

Recently, Britain and Australia started limiting the distribution of child pornography over the Internet. Also, Germany requires all search engines to refrain from linking to sites linked to Nazi activity. Because, you know, that’s the same as blocking BBC.

As Rebecca MacKinnon, a specialist in Internet issues at Hong Kong University (whose blog is blocked as well), put it, China has defined crime in a very broad sense. They are offering barely any explanation to the public, which they aren’t really obliged to, since China is ruled by a Communist party.

Personally, I see the point of blocking some of these websites for China, which has been known to tighten Internet regulations during times of political stress or economic instability.   

Obviously those in charge don’t agree with what is being reported/blogged, but as a child of democracy, I think inflicting those opinions upon the people is ridiculous.  

But in the end, for them it’s all about politics. What you don’t see, you don’t know. And what you don’t know, in some cases, makes you blindly happy. Blind happiness isn’t true happiness, but for the rulers, it makes for a more oblivious crowd, the ideal public for a Communist party.

Nothing is funnier than watching fat, old British ladies ride around in a motorcycle and sidecar and cook pasta, using an Italian accent.

Take a look across the pond for a fresh take on cooking as Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright join a lobsterman on the sea, cook chicken breasts and meat loaf and game Yorkshire gingerbread.

More than a cooking show, this is a travel program and a cultural journey. It only takes one episode to get hooked, and once you start watching you’ll see different foods, different tastes and different parts of the United Kingdom.

They don’t just show you how they cook, they go out to fish piers, stores and butchers to find the best materials and ingredients. And they don’t cook in some television studio, they cook where ever they find themselves — restaurants, a school and even fresh muscles picked and roasted on the beach.

The series aired in the 1990s and became popular in the states with several bestselling cookbooks, and a parody on “Saturday Night Live” by Brendan Fraser and Darrell Hammond.

Sadly, Jennifer Paterson died in August 1999 while filming the fourth season.

Special Features include a documentary tribute to Paterson, biographies of Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright and a recipe booklet.

Dominic Da Vinci is the controversial coroner in Vancouver, and it’s his job to get to the bottom line of the city’s suspicious deaths. This is a Canadian solution to Law & Order, and it’s incredibly popular, so much so that it’s being made available to a wider American audience on DVD

This is a great series that The New York Times called “unlike anything on television.” Season 2 contains 13 episodes, about 10 hours total on four discs.

If you’re in the mood for something different in the cluttered world of crime drama, try this on for size.