50 years ago, brave people marched across a bridge to demand equal rights for Black people in the USA. This weekend we honor their action gratefully. See President Obama speak in Selma, Alabama.
New York City mayor Bill De Blasio annouces that, as promised, New York public schools will now have 2 Muslim holidays added to their calendar, starting next school year.
This great lady will be visiting our school on Monday March 9th 2015.
This brave mother lost her son when Mohamed Merah killed him a few years ago. Instead of collapsing she took action and becale an activist against radicalisation.
Now she visits middle schools and high schools in France to talk to young people about integration, brotherhood, religion, family, and the need to integrate to play a part in society.
Here is a video explaining her story and showing her action:
This young girl, her husband and her sister were killed recently by a neighbor. The inquest is not over so we don’t know yet if this was a hate crime against Muslims or a neighborhood killing. Either way, their deaths are a sad blow to the community of Chappel Hill they belonged to.
Yusor Abu-Salha had spoken in an interview of what being an American women felt like for her. Here are extracts of this interview:
Fox TV had said there were “no go zones” in France and England where police and non-Muslmis could not enter. That was untrue and has been retracted after Europeans, shocked at seeing their peaceful neighborhood in Paris included in those allegations, reacted.
(CNN) — Arnold Abbott handed out four plates of food to homeless people in a South Florida park. Then police stopped the 90-year-old from serving up another bite.
“An officer said, ‘Drop that plate right now — like I had a weapon,'” Abbott said.
Abbott and two pastors in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were charged for feeding the homeless in public on Sunday, under a new ordinance banning public food sharing.
Now they face possible jail time and a $500 fine.
“Just because of media attention we don’t stop enforcing the law. We enforce the laws here in Fort Lauderdale,” Mayor Jack Seiler said.
He defended the law in an interview with the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
“I’m not satisfied with having a cycle of homeless in the city of Fort Lauderdale,” Seiler said. “Providing them with a meal and keeping them in that cycle on the street is not productive.”
“These are the poorest of the poor. They have nothing. They don’t have a roof over their head,” Abbott said. “Who can turn them away?”
It’s a battle Abbott has fought before. In 1999 he sued the city for banning him from feeding homeless people on the beach — and won.
He said the threat of charges won’t stop him from doing it again.
“I’m not afraid of jail. I’m not looking to go, but if I have to, I will,” he said.
On Wednesday, Abbott said he’ll be at Fort Lauderdale Beach, ready to serve another meal.
“We either die or win. No fighter is leaving,” Esmat al-Sheikh, leader of the Kobani Defence Authority, told Reuters. “The world is watching, just watching and leaving these monsters to kill everyone, even children…but we will fight to the end with what weapons we have.”
Some people have more motivation than others. Those people include women. A very large percentage of the YPG fighters are women. (YPG: the Kurdish People’s Protection Units)
I asked her about YPG’s women’s wing, the YPJ (Women’s Protection Units), and the women fighters coming from Turkey. She said Kurdish women were as equally involved in defense affairs as in social services. “We have set up training camps for women in all three cantons. Women are active in all fronts,” she said. “Of the first 20 martyrs we had when IS attacked Kobani, 10 were women. Last year, of our 700 YPG martyrs, 200 were women…”
I reminded Nimet of the legends we hear of IS militants fearing to encounter women fighters. She replied, “This is not a myth but reality. I personally met IS fighters face-to-face. They believe they won’t go to paradise if they are killed by women. That is why they flee when they see women fighters.”
SAUSALITO , California. — Two northbound deer briefly stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge Friday night as they made a run for the hills of Marin County, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The deer, reported at 5:24 p.m., appear to have entered the bridge from the south.
The two deer brought traffic to a halt in three lanes of traffic.
Drivers appeared to have slowed behind the animals, leaving the lanes clear in front of them.
“They pretty much created their own traffic break,” police officer Barclay said, noting that northbound traffic tends to be backed up and slower around 5:30 p.m. anyway.
“That could be what saved the deer from getting hurt,” he added. “If it was lighter traffic the cars would have been moving faster.”
Commuters and railway staff teamed up to free a man by rocking a train carriage to free his leg after he became trapped between the platform and a carriage on Wednesday morning.
The man was boarding a rush hour train at Stirling station, 9km northwest of Perth, Western Australia, at 8.50am when he slipped and one leg became wedged in the gap.
Quick-thinking passengers and staff saved the man’s leg, as it was being squeezed by the 90-tonne of train, by collectively rocking the carriage.
‘He stood in the doorway and as he was sort of taking up his position there, one leg slipped outside the door, slipped outside the gap, and he was stuck,’ Transperth spokesman David Hynes told the ABC.
‘We alerted the driver, made sure the train didn’t move.
Did you know that, at one point in their lives, these celebrities used to be homeless?
Jim Carrey – Ben Franklin – David Letterman – Col. Harland Sanders – Sylvester Stallone – Kelly Clarkson – Tyler Perry – Daniel Craig – Halle Berry – Jim Kramer – Shania Twain – Hilary Swank – William Shatner – Jennifer Lopez – Sam Worthington – Sean Parker – Jewel – Djimon Hounsou – Dr. Phil McGraw – Drew Carey – Carmen Electra – Cary Grant – Kurt Cobain – Suze Orman – Heather Mills