Wren

Jimmy (often erroneously credited as Jimmy the Crow) was a raven actor who is reported to have appeared in more than 1,000 films from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The Greek government recently announced the creation of a special police force for Roma communities, a move that has raised alarm among civil society groups and rights advocates. Roma in Greece are not officially recognized as a minority; they are and wish to be known as Greek citizens. Yet, this legal ambiguity leaves them without the protections offered to other recognized minority groups.

The pecan nuts that look like little brown footballs are actually the seed that starts inside the pecan fruit – until the fruit ripens and splits open to release the pecan. They are usually the size of your thumb, and you may need a nutcracker to open them. You can eat them raw or as part of a cooked dish.

The pecan derives its name from the Algonquin “pakani,” which means “a nut too hard to crack by hand.” Rich in fat and easy to transport, pecans traveled with Native Americans throughout what is now the southern United States. They were used for food, medicine and trade as early as 8,000 years ago.

The article cited for the native american history is gated. Here is a free/no sign-in version: https://www.mediafire.com/file/jfxb3lz2z7wz8s1/abrams-nowacki-2008-native-americans-as-active-and-passive-promoters-of-mast-and-fruit-trees-in-the-eastern-usa.pdf/file?dkey=6m7x0kxz45m&r=458

The power went out at about 5.30 that morning. It was knocked out all day; there were power lines and trees down across the roads. The first day of school was scheduled to be the very next day. I was at work. Teachers were getting their classrooms ready to welcome kids.

This was August, the middle of hurricane season. There was a big hurricane passing a couple hundred miles south of Hawaii. There were hurricane-force winds down in town. We had volleyball practice; we had enough daylight to practise in the gym. During practice, at about 3.30pm, I received a call from a parent at the school. She said: “Ryan, there’s a fire in town. We’ve lost our house. We barely got out alive.” Theirs was one of the first houses to go.

Happy World Toilet Day!

No, that's not a joke.

November 19 is World Toilet Day — declared by the U.N. in 2001. The goal is to call attention to the 3.4 billion people who live without "safely managed sanitation" and the more than 300 million people who engage in "open defecation" — doing their business in the great outdoors.

A Senate committee has voted ten to one to pass sweeping amendments to the government’s Bill S-2, ending what’s known as the second generation cut-off and implementing a one-parent rule, that allows anyone with status under the Indian Act to pass their legal identity and rights on to their children.

Slovenia’s government has been accused of turning Roma neighbourhoods into “security zones” after the passing of a law giving police powers to raid and surveil homes in so-called “high-risk” areas.

At midnight on Monday, the country’s parliament backed the “Šutar law”, named after Aleš Šutar, who was killed in an altercation with a 21-year-old Romany man after rushing to a nightclub after a distress call from his son.

The incident outside the LokalPatriot club in Novo Mesto, in south Slovenia, last month led to huge street protests, police being stationed in Roma neighbourhoods and the resignation of two ministers.

This year, SIECUS’ Legislative Mid-Year Report tracked more than 650 bills introduced in statehouses, finding that about 25 percent of them aimed to restrict access to quality sex education. That marks a 35 percent increase from the previous year, a surge empowered by a White House under the influence of Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s controversial blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term. What’s more is that SIECUS’ 2025 State Report Cards, which grade states on their sex education policies, paint a bleak picture. Over a quarter of states get Fs because of their failure to provide significant support for sex education.

If bird flu is airborne, the government’s current biosecurity-based strategy cannot protect farms on its own. A poultry vaccine likely would have stemmed the damage from this outbreak, experts told me. Yet while other countries have curbed infections through vaccination, the U.S. has not authorized those efforts amid political and economic pushback.

The USDA told me it didn’t investigate whether the wind contributed to the outbreak’s spread.

Here’s how I used genetic markers, satellite imagery, property records, trade notices, wind simulations and Google Street View to do the work USDA did not.

The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin stepped up to a lectern that was affixed with a sign reading, “Pro-Women Pro-Babies Pro-Life Rally.”

“One of the reasons that I ran for office was to protect the lives of unborn children,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the cheering crowd gathered in the ornate rotunda of the state Capitol. They were there on a June day in 2019 to watch him sign four anti-abortion bills and to demand that the state’s Democratic governor sign them. (The governor did not.)

Law and Kaur presented their latest research part of York University’s Annual Critical Femininities Conference this summer. During the research, Law ran two different focus groups–one for sex workers and one for students- in which participants mapped their sexual experiences. Instead of focusing on consent, or sexual assault, Law had her research participants, all of whom identified as women, mapped their sexual experiences while trying to measure willingness (or the lack thereof) and reward (or it’s opposite, harm).

Twenty years ago, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed the first “stand your ground” law, calling it a “good, common-sense, anti-crime issue.”

The law’s creators promised it would protect law-abiding citizens from prosecution if they used force in self-defense. Then-Florida state Rep. Dennis Baxley, who cosponsored the bill, claimed – in the wake of George Zimmerman’s controversial acquittal for the killing of Trayvon Martin – that “we’re really safer if we empower people to stop violent acts.”