Francis Pitia is a refugee from Sudan, fleeing the civil war before peace was established there. He spent time in a refugee camp in Uganda.He came to Kitchener, Ontario.Last week, he was swarmed by bunch of white young men, and beaten to the ground. What makes this appalling is that Pitia is disabled since childhood, having one leg non-functional because of polio. He has to use a crutch to walk. Those who beat him took the crutch from him and beat him with it.He had to get stitches to his cut lip, his ribs hurt and his eyes were still blood shot.

This is old news, but I never knew about it when it came out.

A US Soldier who was on duty in Guantanamo Bay was ordered to play the role of an inmate, complete with an orange jumpsuit over his military fatigues. This was for the purpose of training.

The other soliders, who thought he was a real inmate, were supposed to extract him from under a bed.

In the process they brutally assaulted him, causing brain damage that caused him to have seizures.

He could not even utter the safe word because his breathing was constrained.

One can only imagine what real prisoners had to go through.

Hindu extremists have rioted in Mumbai. The reason: a statue of the late wife of a political leader was found vandalized. The party is called Shiv Sena, and is (unsurprisingly) right-wing, and the statue belonged to Bal Thackeray, the party's leader.The riots torched at least one bus and forced several shops to close. The sad part is that a former speaker of the Parliament, Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena party, has declared this act as vandalism against Hindus and Hindusim.

If one compares how the USA reacted to terrorism, and how the UK did, there are very significant differences.The population did not panic. The media did not demonize an entire religion. And despite some mistakes, the government did not make sweeping arrests.The British people took this in stride.There were also effort to diagnose the root causes, and address them, rather than the end symptom being treated as solely a security problem.Some of these initiatives are outlined in this BBC article, including:

The BBC has an article on how a gem in one of King Tut's necklaces is actually made of natural glass that formed from a meteorite that exploded over the Western Desert.Here is an article on Space.com on the crater, called El Kebira ( الكبيرة "The Big" in Arabic), and here is a satellite photo.

If we look back in history, banking and retail outlets had armies of clerks helping you get your job done. Rather doing the job for you.The grocery clerk fetched the items for you, packed them up and ringed in the amount on the cash register.The banking clerk cashed your cheques, gave you the status and balance of your account and handed you the cash.As time went by, technology started making forays in those areas, and we saw Automated Teller Machines and self service at the supermarket.Initially, the motive for doing this was convenience for the customer: the ATM was open after hours, and the supermarket allowed you to pick the vegetables you wanted, not what the clerk handed you out.

Another alleged terror plot involving sensational sounding Red Mercury has come to a fizzle.Three suspects in London have been freed today after the trial. The culprit here is not the security apparatus of governments trying to boost their image and lobby for more budget, nor is it politicians trying to instill a sense of fear in the public.This time it is yellow journalism in the form of News of The World, a tabloid, and its 'investigations reporter" called Mazher Mahmood, known as the "fake sheikh".

On Google Video, there is a documentary called Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land.An interesting aspect of this documentary is that the interviewees include US Jews as well as Israeli academics, defense forces and others.Although it is 1 hour 19 minutes, it is worth watching carefully.

For years, the Egyptian Cuisine section on the Baheyeldin web site has been one of the most visited parts of the site. Visitors were asking for recipes and not just background information and history.

So, today, we launched the Egyptian Cuisine Recipes just as visitors requested, with more than 70 recipes ready for you to try.

Some time ago, I wrote an article about Wikimapia web site, the collaborative mapping of the world overlaying Google's Maps.Today, I got this email from someone in India.