From the Wall of Weird: Reuters has just set up a real news bureau to cover the "Virtual News" from the fictitious country of "Linden" in the online virtual-reality game "Second Life."

Apparently, the deciding factor for the Reuters managers was that, in addition to boasting a "virtual population" of just shy of 1 Million "avatars" (which would rank "Linden" between East Timor (156th @ 1.1 M) and Fiji (157th @ 0.9 M) if compared to real nations), "Linden's" virtual economy generates a real GDP on the order of US$ 64 Million, which would again rank it among small nations. Furthermore, there is now a currency market actively trading "Linden Dollars" for U.S. Dollars, and at least one person has already made in excess of US$ 100,000 in Real Life by trading "Virtual Real Estate" in the online game. The Reuters managers therefore concluded that the "virtual events" in Linden nevertheless constitute "real news," and should be reported on. (One of the main features of the Reuters "Second Life News Center" is a real-time ticker for the Linden Dollar exchange rate, and a Linden-Dollar to U.S.-dollar currency converter; as of this writing, the exchange rate stands at L$ 274.9 == US$ 1.)

This week's top virtual news story? Congress is already trying to figure out how to tax profits and "capital gains" made by players of "Second Life" and other online virtual-reality games...