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Add up all the spellings of Mohammed and you learn it’s now Britain’s no2 baby name. I did this for my News of the World column on Sunday, and The Times has followed it up today. It’ll be no 1 next year, on current trends. This is partly because Muslims tend to go for a narrower selection of names, while the rest of us...
The most important point is that Britain is far more at ease with this than the Netherlands or Germany. The level of cohesion in Britain is striking: we have mass immigration, but no far-right party in mainstream politics. As John O’Sullivan has pointed out, we were the original multi-ethnic state with an empire bound ...
Using scrap fabrics to make pineapple quilts is the program topic for this week's meeting of Little Traverse Bay Quilters Guild.
The guild, now 100-plus members strong, will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at the Petoskey Friendship Center, 1322 Anderson Road in Petoskey. A brief "social hour" will precede the 6:30 p.m. business meeting, followed by a short show-and-tell session where guild members reveal their latest completed quilting proje...
Jackie Compton will provide this month's educational programming. A resident of Kewadin, Compton is a Little Traverse Bay Quilters Guild member with a special interest in pineapple quilts. According to Compton, the pineapple pattern makes good use of the fabric scraps every quilter has in their possession.
Compton will also teach a class on the pineapple pattern titled "From Trash to Treasure" from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on Friday, March 15, at the Charlevoix Public Library. Cost is $15.
To register or for more information, call Lois Furness at (231) 420-1847. Students do not have to be guild members to take the class.
The company stands accused of obstructing the federal probe in the 2010 blast and 12 pipeline safety violations.
Testimony ended Friday in the PG&E federal pipeline safety trial with company producing maps showing hundreds of workers and executives lived near the six major gas pipelines at issue in the case.
The company stands accused of obstructing the federal probe in the 2010 blast and 12 pipeline safety violations. On Friday, defense lawyers presented several detailed maps showing the course of pipelines and blue dots marking the homes of PG&E workers in Daly City, Walnut Creek, Watsonville, Fremont and Sunnyvale at th...
Company lawyers had fought to use the maps as evidence that no one in the company would intentionally compromise safety or jeopardize their colleagues’ lives.
Supervising engineer Calvin Lui testified that one line came near to where his family lived in Fremont. “I lived there 18 years of my life,” Lui told defense attorney Margaret Tough. Another line, he said, was near where his grandmother lived in Daly City.
It was Lui, then straight out of college, who had been tasked in 2010 with justifying the company’s decision not to inspect over-pressurized at-risk pipelines – a key issue in the case.
Federal prosecutor Hallie Hoffman asked him if he mapped the areas where normal people -- not just PG&E employees -- lived around the at-risk pipelines that the company failed to inspect. She also asked whether Lui knew exactly where the managers who opted not to inspect the lines at issue in the case lived around thos...
"No, I don't know where all my co-workers live," he responded.
Hoffman noted there was no map of the community of San Bruno, which was devastated by the blast. She pressed Lui if he knew the location of homes of those who prosecutors allege failed to track records of federally mandated integrity tests of gas pipelines.
"I don't know who all these people are,” he said. “I don’t know where they live."
At that moment, the defense rested its case and prosecutors said they would not call any witnesses in rebuttal.
Earlier, another PG&E witness came under fire from prosecutors. David Harrison, a veteran consulting engineer, testified that he oversaw high pressure water pressure testing of the company’s pipelines.
The company called Harrison to introduce more recently found records of such tests that the company previously had said were missing.
Prosecutor Hartley West showed Harrison an analysis he worked on after the blast that reflected dozens of question marks and missing data fields about the San Bruno Line 132 and Line 109, which runs parallel from Milpitas north to San Francisco.
Harrison said the although the spreadsheet data suggested missing data related to required pressure tests, he would not say that it was in fact missing.
He added that what followed was a three-year long data search to come up with records to vouch for the San Bruno line and other sister lines in the Peninsula.
Closing arguments are set for Tuesday in the case. If convicted, the company could face as much as a half billion dollars in fines.
Heddon temporarily suspended all his social media accounts after allegedly receiving death threats.
British DJ Dax J was recently sentenced to a year in prison by Tunisian authorities after generating massive backlash for playing a track that included a remixed vocal of the Azaan, the Muslim call to prayer.
DJ Dax J, whose real name is Dax Heddon, had been touring Tunisia as part of the Orbit Festival and was performing at the El Guitoune nightclub in the city of Nabeul when he played the controversial song.
After a video surfaced online showing people revelling to the track which caused a national outrage, the nightclub was shut down by local authorities, and both the owner and the event organiser were taken into custody. They have since been cleared of the charges levied upon them and released. However, Heddon was charge...
Furthermore, he offered his deepest apologies to anyone who was offended.
Although Tunisia doesn’t have a “blasphemy law” like Pakistan does, the country’s penal code does have provisions for criminalising speech that could “cause harm to the public order or public morals”.
Is the sentence justified? Or is it outrageous? Perhaps a fine should’ve sufficed?
I consider myself to be a huge advocate of freedom of speech and the right of citizens to exercise it responsibly. It is for this reason that I view with suspicion any legislation that seeks to curb this right because it turns societies, dynamic by their very nature, into echo chambers. Uniformity of thought, you see, ...
With that said, it is also important to realise that freedom of speech is never absolute, even in the most liberal societies. There are always going to be lines that cannot be crossed for the purposes of law and order, and should not be crossed for the purposes of taste and decency. But what falls under the purview of ...
Criticism against any ideology, no matter how sacredly it is held, should never fall under this category as that sets a dangerous precedent whereby we elevate ideologies over and above fundamental human rights. However, it stands to reason that disrespecting passive religious symbols that people hold sacred is highly i...
It is, therefore, imperative that in order to create a more inclusive world, we consider each other’s sensitivities and not trample over them just because we have the right to do so. The right to offend, after all, does not necessarily mean that you have a duty to offend.
Has it ever occurred to our religiously sensitive that religion is taken as part of culture and the DJ may have been to trying to give a cultural vibe to the music rather than trying to offend anyone?
So what is next in the “offended list” of the religious conservatives?
Six primary school students drowned after their boat capsized in a flooded river in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, an official report said.
Six primary school students drowned after their boat capsized in a flooded river in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, an official report said on Tuesday.
The accident occurred when water suddenly rushed into the bow of the craft, causing the engine to stall. The boat capsized and the 37 passengers aboard plunged into the water, Xinhua news agency reported.
Five students were reported missing whereas 32 passengers were rescued later, the state news agency said adding, that one student died.
Local government officials rushed to the spot to direct the rescue operations.
The bodies of the five missing were fished out later, the reports said.
Consistent torrential rains and landslides in Southern China have killed at least 148 people, affected 45 million.
Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola are apologizing after receiving some criticism of napkins that had flirtatious messages on them, encouraging passengers to exchange numbers.
ATLANTA — Back in the day, it was common for people to write down their phone numbers on napkins or a scrap piece of paper to give to someone. Now that most, even children, have a smart device at their finger tips, those times have long gone.
But according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola are apologizing after receiving criticism on social media of new napkins that had flirtatious messages on them, encouraging passengers exchange numbers.
The Diet Coke-branded napkins were handed out on Delta fights with different messages.
One reads, "Be a little old school. Write down your number and give it to your plane crush. You never know...".
Another messages says, "Because, you're on a plane full of interesting people and hey... you never know."
Some passengers did not like them.
Both companies have since apologized and the napkins have been taken out of rotation.
Coca-Cola Co. issued a statement saying, "We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended. We worked with our partners at Delta to begin removing the napkins last month and are replacing them with other designs."
Although there was backlash, some people did actually like them.
Funding has been approved for 244 projects nationwide that are focused on helping agricultural producers and rural small businesses reduce energy consumption and costs, and use renewable energy technologies in their operations.
The funding was made available through USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program.
A local business received project funding. Space Studios, LLC, of Midland, received $13,750 for installation of a solar array system.
Is the Sun-Times selling off its heritage at garage sale prices? The other day eBay put up for auction an item from the paper’s archives described as “Original Photo 1913 Thomas Edison Family NICE!!!” Bidding started at $10 and ended four days later at $27.
Last time I checked, the seller, “lexibell,” was auctioning off some 1,500 archived pictures, $9.99 being the standard asking price to open the bidding. Few of the pictures, from what I could see, were fetching even that, though I noticed that bidding for a 1949 photo of a Frank Lloyd Wright design for a “butterfly win...
At $9.99 a pop, the photo collection of the Sun-Times isn’t going to put that newspaper, so recently in bankruptcy, on easy street. But what will the paper be once all that history gets thrown off the back of the wagon? Some of the photos lexibell’s putting up for auction presumably were taken by Howard Simmons, a form...
Fortunately, I’m distorting what has actually happened. Lexibell turns out to be John Rogers, a 37-year-old, independently wealthy businessman who lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and claims the world's largest private collection of vintage photos. Rogers says his “personal archives” now come to about 30 million i...
Sun-Times publisher John Barron told me that last December his paper sold its archive of more than a million photos and negatives to Rogers for a “sizable cash payment.” Neither he nor Rogers will be precise, but Rogers said it ran to seven figures. The Sun-Times retains “all the intellectual property, all the copyrigh...
This means Rogers is doing for the Sun-Times something it couldn’t afford to do for itself but dearly wanted to. “If we could have pulled it off,” said Barron, “it would have taken years and years and years and millions of dollars.” So the deal was a “dream come true.” And far from surrendering its photo archive, he sa...
INSTANT UPDATE: John Rogers's cautionary tale of the Rocky Mountain News appears to be not exactly on the money. Jim Kroll, manager of the department of western history, tells me that the library is inheriting 350,000 digital images that are still in the possession of E.W. Scripps, the parent company, on hard drives in...
So, according to Kroll, the Rocky photos will be digitized — though on a slow, piecemeal basis. And they will be accessible to the public — though not easily, and not cheaply. Rogers stands modified, not contradicted.
FURTHER UPDATE: John Rogers says not to worry, Howard Simmons photos will not be auctioned off for $9.99. "He was phenomenal. It would be insulting to him," says Rogers, who tells me his operation is preserving but not auctioning staff-shot photos such as Simmons's.
"The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago. Across the country Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier for people to vote," the president said.
Women who registered to vote before marriage may be turned away because their driver's license has their married name, Obama added. Senior citizens who've voted for decades may not be allowed to vote because they don't have a particular ID. Others may not be able to get a government-issued ID if they don't have a passp...
"And just to be clear, I know where my birth certificate is, but a lot of people don't. I mean it's still up on a website somewhere," the president said in a joke directed at birther conspiracy theories that he is not an American citizen. "You remember that? That was crazy."
Obama said that he supports "reasonable attempts to secure the ballot," but opposes "requiring an ID that millions of Americans don't have." In addition, he said the minuscule amount of voting fraud that takes place doesn't justify efforts to disenfranchise people.
"Let's be clear: The real voter fraud is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus claims about voter fraud," the president said.
In addition to addressing stricter laws, voting rights activists are fighting to dull the potentially adverse effect of the Supreme Court ruling last year overturning a key provision in the Voting Rights Act that required all or parts of states with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval before c...
Attorney General Eric Holder in remarks delivered at the NAN conference Wednesday vowed that protecting voting rights would be a priority for the Obama administration.
Vice President Joe Biden also weighed in on the issue this week.
"I've got to tell you, if someone had said to me 10 years ago I had to make a pitch for protecting voting rights today, I would have said you've got to be kidding,” Biden said in a Democratic National Committee video promoting its Voter Expansion Project. "It's time to stand up and to fight back."
Less than 900,000 Democrats in just four states have cast a ballot. More democracy—it’s a good thing!
Let’s get one thing out of the way. As Bernie Sanders himself put it, his campaign “got decimated” in South Carolina. With the lone exception of voters under 30, Hillary Clinton won every demographic on the way to a lopsided 47-point victory. She actually exceeded Barack Obama’s share of the African-American vote—in th...
To all this, we say—not so fast. Hillary Clinton now has a 92 pledged delegates to 65 for Sanders—out of 2,383 needed to win. (She’s way ahead on superdelegates, but if Sanders wins enough primaries to close the gap, those superdelegates will have to respect that momentum or risk destroying the party.) South Carolina i...
The next two weeks are not going to be easy for Sanders supporters. Remember, Super Tuesday (or the SEC Primary) was devised—and pushed by the Democratic Leadership Council—as a counter to the Democratic Party’s progressive tendency. But after tomorrow, the terrain changes. One reason Super Tuesday functioned as a brea...
Which means we’re in for a long campaign. Bad news for those who still hope for a speedy coronation—and for any candidate reliant on wealthy donors. Good news, though, for the party—and the country. In addition to providing a running contrast with the Republican assault on decency, a prolonged Democratic contest means ...
As we argued a year ago, when a presumptive front-runner “faces serious competition, one of two things happens: that candidate is defeated, or … sharpens his or her message sufficiently to move beyond ‘safe’ politics.” A year ago, Hillary Clinton was still on the fence on the Keystone Pipeline and thought the Trans-Pac...
So let’s see what happens in Illinois, where Clinton will have to choose between loyalty to Rahm Emanuel and allying with #BlackLivesMatter. Let the voters in New Mexico and New Jersey, Oregon and California have their say. Because whether the Republicans opt for Trump, Rubio, or Cruz, the one certainty is that the Dem...
Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries reached a "preliminary agreement" following talks in Vienna to cut oil production, but specifics on the amount to be cut have not yet been decided, Russian news agency TASS reported Thursday. The agency also said that according to sources, oil production ...
The Harper government has promised the Obama administration that it is “inclined to favourably consider” Omar Khadr’s desire to serve his remaining prison time in Canada.
The Harper government has thrown up a new roadblock to returning convicted al-Qaeda terrorist and murderer Omar Khadr to Canada.
The Conservatives, who have delayed a decision on bringing home Mr. Khadr for nine months, now say the U.S. must first hand over raw video footage of psychiatric interviews with the Guantanamo prisoner – one of which was conducted by an expert for the prosecution who testified the Canadian posed grave risks if freed.
The video recordings were sealed by an American military court, meaning they are currently locked away, but the Tories are particularly interested in the conversation between Mr. Khadr and a New York forensic psychiatrist who has testified that he considers the convict a dangerous, Islamic extremist who was "marinated ...
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews wrote U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta July 19 requesting the Khadr interviews with Michael Welner, as well as those conducted by Alan Hopewell, another expert hired to assess his mental state. The videos were recorded in 2010.
In the letter, obtained by The Globe and Mail, Mr. Toews told the Americans he needs unedited and uncensored copies of the footage before he can make a decision on Mr. Khadr's repatriation. The convict has asked to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada instead of in the U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, ...
Mr. Toews said he requires the videos to ensure that Correctional Services Canada – which oversees federal prisons – and the Parole Board of Canada are prepared for Mr. Khadr.
"Once I have received these items I will be in a position to render my decision with respect to Mr. Khadr's transfer application," he wrote.
As part of a plea-bargain deal in October, 2010, Mr. Khadr agreed to plead guilty to multiple charges, including murder and terrorism, in return for an eight-year sentence, only one of which was to be served at the U.S. naval station on a leased base in Cuba. This included confessing to throwing a grenade in Afghanista...
The 25-year-old convict has been eligible to come home since the fall of 2011 but the Conservative government, known for its reluctance to repatriate Canadians imprisoned abroad, has been slow to act.
The Public Safety Minister's office declined to discuss the letter but said the videos are now a pivotal ingredient in their decision.
"Omar Ahmed Khadr is a Canadian citizen that pleaded guilty to the murder of an American army medic," said Julie Carmichael, director of communications for Mr. Toews. "The U.S. no longer wants him and has asked us to take him."
The Harper government, which has already assured the Americans it would be "inclined to favourably consider" Mr. Khadr's request to come home, has gone to great lengths to frame a prospective repatriation as a move made only after coaxing from the United States.
Mr. Toews noted during an interview with a Winnipeg radio show host Friday that he is not obliged to bring Mr. Khadr home.
"Provided all the legal conditions are met ... I could make a decision that could keep him out for a long period of time."
Mr. Khadr's legal team on Friday accused the Harper government of grasping at straws to justify their tardiness.
The convict's lawyers said they will fully support the U.S. court releasing the videos "as soon as possible" to the Canadian government.

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