• 105 tons of pot seized in Baja California Monday (wow) source

• cave The type of structure that Osama bin Laden has been rumored to be hiding in since around 2002 or so.
• house The type of structure that a senior NATO official says bin Laden is hiding in right now. source

• » Our question: If Osama has been hiding out in a house, does he have cable, or at least an Xbox 360? If not, he’s really living primitively.

• Lebanon is rapidly becoming a new satellite of Iran. It’s a tragedy for Lebanon.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu • Suggesting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon had the effect of radicalizing the country. What makes him say something like that? Well, here’s a sample of what Ahmadinejad said: “The whole world knows that the Zionists are going to disappear … The occupying Zionists today have no choice but to accept reality and go back to their countries of origin.” Ohhhh. Yeah. We see how Benny boy could deduct that from the Iranian leader’s visit. source

• You may not know Saleed Malekpour, but you should read up. This web developer created a program that people used to upload pictures, and put his name on it. Someone (not him) used it for an adult Web site, and because his name was in the credits, he was arrested on the descriptive charge of “internet offenses.” While born in Iran, he was a Canadian citizen and had only returned to Iran to visit his terminally ill father. Malekpour has been in jail for two years now on reportedly trumped-up charges, some of which are punishable by death. And he’s been tortured, too. Harrowing. source

• 400,000 Iraq War docs on Monday source

• 21+ number of miners killed in a explosion in a Chinese coal mine
• 16+ number of miners reported stuck – 239 others managed to escape source

• » China = dangerous for miners: The country has one of the most dangerous mining industries around – 2,600 people died last year alone in mining accidents. Yikes.

• $20 million cost, but goddamn, that was some good TV

• » So, who pays the bill? Well, you would assume the mining company that owned the mine, San Esteban Primera, but they’re nearly broke. So state-owned company Codelco has owned the effort, paying $15 million of the total cost, with private firms paying the rest. Expect lawsuits and criminal charges.

And here are the big winners:

• 3.4 million number of viewers CNN got in the first hour of the rescue
• 7 million number of viewers Fox News got in the final hour of the mining escapade

• 4M pageviews per minute on news sites at the peak of the mining incident
• $7,000 worth of sunglasses given away to the miners by Oakley
• $41Mthe amount of free advertising Oakley got in the process source

• KNOW HOW WE KNOW THIS IS A HUGE STORY? Because CNN put their headlines IN ALL CAPS. SCREAMING. CONGRATS!