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What is everyone's Christmas/New Year's Traditions

It seems evident that there is a problem, until last couple years it was unknown or at least unreported. There is an apparent disdain within Islam for women. This disdain is not only seen in the way they treat women as property to be bought and sold, or even the sex slave passages in the Quran.The biggest indication of this comes from the fact that Islamic men are prone to rap. This is seen in almost every place that the Islamic asylum seeker goes. Further, it should be pointed out that this holds true for every point of origin.Whether he...

The record-setting violence Chicago saw in 2016 extended into the New Year -- with 28 people shot in the city on the first day of January alone, according to data from the Chicago Police Department. The first shooting of 2017 happened at 1:05 a.m. Sunday, when two men were taken to the hospital after one man was shot in the chest and the other in the back in a drive-by, according to the Chicago Police Department. Three men were killed in the shootings. Of those shot, five victims were women and three of the victims were minors. [Snip] Chicago saw...

Now that the dust has settled on the elections, the time has come (or so some of the punditry in the media assure us) to set aside political acrimony and unite under the new leadership of President-elect Donald Trump and the new House and Senate. Although it’s far from clear what President Trump will choose to prioritize, now that he will face the realities of entrenched political interests in Washington instead of his fired-up political base on the hustings, it seems at least possible that he will show much more sympathy for certain constitutionalist and Americanist causes — such as...

1. Be honest. Know yourself. What is your strongest virtue? What is your worst vice? Therefore, tailor your resolution so it strengthens your good side and fights your bad one. A one-size fits all resolution is useless. 2. Be specific. Don't use generalities. They don't work. For example, if you need to be more humble, just saying "I am going to be more humble," is useless. You need to zero in on one situation where you need to practice humility and resolve to improve in that one situation. 3. Be simple. Don't make it complicated. Focus on something you...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted a video about Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková, which has been growing more prominent in the sky since Dec. 15. On New Year's Eve, the comet will be visible through a telescope or binoculars near the crescent moon, sporting a blueish-green head and thin, fan-shaped tail, NASA researchers said.

While you're getting started on your New Year's resolutions, we're knocking one off of our own bucket list: We’ll be kicking off 2017 with our friends at the Modern Language Association (MLA) at their annual convention in Philadelphia. Several thousand English professors will be in the City of Brotherly Love to attend about 800 panels featuring a couple thousand of their peers on topics near to the heart of most academics: Not only do they give a new twist to old favorites of theirs but they also preview the studies and core curricula of college students everywhere. Thus, you can...

The White House announced that Vice President Joe Biden would spend the weekend vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It's his second vacation there in three months. His White House schedule reads: DAILY GUIDANCE FOR THE VICE PRESIDENT Friday, March 7 – Sunday, March 9 The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden will visit the U.S. Virgin Islands. There are no public events scheduled. And as Geoff Earle of the New York Post reported on December 27, the vice president spent New Year's on the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Some historical leaders famously wrote resolutions to help them achieve lofty goals. Even if they didn't keep them perfectly, they probably came closer than if they had set their sights low. In that spirit, I humbly offer these model resolutions for real reform of our troubled state as we begin 2010. For government officials — Resolved, to read our constitutions and my oath of office and pursue no action that is not in strict fidelity to those documents; to pursue no policy that benefits my constituents at the expense of anyone else's; to maintain a voting record that matches my...

Just think of the parade of years you have known or will know, as they used to fly off the screen in those old black-and-white movies of the 1940s. Look for Loretta Young and Robert Montgomery to appear on the front page any day. Think of New Year's Day 1914, before what was then known as the Great War engulfed us, and what we were once allowed to call Western Civilization changed forever. Think of New Year's Day 1939, in England. All was still teddibly English and proper: Peace in Our Time had been declared in September 1938. All was...

I spent some time on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sander's websites, waiting for the ball to drop. I was inspired. With as much reach-across-the aisle moderation and coalition-building attitude as possible, I compiled a few 2016 political resolutions. The issues are basically copy and pasted from H-Rod and Bernie's sites. The fleshed-out details are mine. Paint me a kumbaya-crooning hopeful idealist if you must, but these are truly and honestly the things that I'm hoping will occur: Gun Violence Prevention There is too much gun violence and there are too many murders. Merely banning guns or restricting the purchasing of...

Given the times we are in and the abilities that we have, I am curious if others do as I do and record certain End-of-Year data for comparison from yer to year. Some of the obvious ones are personal like weight and miles run/cycled. Others are more business-like, say car odometer for business miles use, Electric Meter reading for year usage. Watching the change in net worth can be good or depressing but attention needs to be paid!

Authorities in Paris have scaled back the city's New Year's Eve celebrations over heightened terror fears after Brussels cancelled its festivities. The usual fireworks display in the French capital has been scrapped and replaced by a five-minute video performance at the Arc de Triomphe just before midnight...

The annual New Year's Eve festivities and fireworks in the heart of Brussels have been cancelled for security reasons, the mayor announced on Wednesday, as the Belgian capital remains on high alert over a possible terror threat.

Do you want this next year to be happier than the last? A first century letter written in prison by the Apostle Paul to the Philippian Christians has much advice on how to know true joy, and much of it was confirmed in May, 2015 by a major study released by the Mayo Clinic. The study said that happier people are healthier people. That's why the Mayo Clinic studied the issue of happiness in the first place. After its release, CBSNewYork reported on this study: "After decades of studying and working with tens of thousands of patients, researchers at the Mayo...

OF COURSE 2015 was a miserable year; all years are miserable. It was a year of rampage killings and police brutality, of natural disasters and government corruption. There were ghastly terror attacks and devastating civil wars, floods of refugees and acts of unspeakable cruelty. Airliners were blown out of the sky. Priceless antiquities were destroyed. Politics seethed with incivility. Too many innocents died young, too many officials lied, too many victims suffered.You don't have to look far for proof that this has been an annus horribilis, and that things are getting worse. You never do. The conviction of decline routinely...

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The traditional New Year's Eve celebrations on the Champs-Elysees will be the first large assembly to be sanctioned in Paris since France's state of emergency started in November. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people gather on Paris's Champs-Elysees to celebrate the "Reveillon," as the French call December 31. But after a year that started with the Charlie Hebdo attacks and ended with the November 13 shooting and bomb attacks that killed 130 people, it was unclear whether New Year celebrations in Paris would go ahead as usual. France has been under a state of emergency since November 13, and...

JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesian police have foiled a major terror plot with the arrest of several men allegedly linked to a planned suicide bombing in Jakarta during New Year celebrations, according to documents seen on Sunday. During raids in several cities across Java island on Friday and Saturday, police arrested five members of an alleged extremist network and seized chemicals, laboratory equipment and a flag inspired by the Islamic State group. Among those arrested was Asep Urip, a 31-year-old teacher at an Islamic boarding school in Central Java, and his 35-year-old pupil Zaenal, whom police allege was being "groomed" to...

The Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the main armed groups fighting US forces in the war-torn country, has threatened to carry out attacks inside the United States, according to a statement posted on a website on Monday. This year "will bring woes on America. The mujahedeen (holy warriors) have prepared big surprises for your sons outside America and a big surprise for you inside America," said the statement whose authenticity could not be confirmed. The statement appeared to mark a disturbing shift in strategy by the shadowy Sunni Muslim group which has claimed a number of attacks and...