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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a regulation on Thursday to stop referring to midget raisins as “midget” after an activist group called the term offensive. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) issued the proposed rule, announcing the U.S. “Standards for Grades of Processed Raisins” would eliminate all five times the word midget is used. Midget has long been used to describe the differences in sizes of California raisins.

In November 2014, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) took a bold and unprecedented step for a Muslim nation by designating 85 radical Islamic organizations as terrorist organizations. The UAE’s designation is the most audacious and significant classification of terrorist organizations worldwide, and is superior to the lists developed by the United States, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United Nations. As to why it is unrivalled, here are a number of reasons: First: The UAE addressed the roots of the problem, in the sense that terrorist ideology paves the way for terrorist acts; hence, the list included organizations...

From the American Meteorological SocietyA risk management framework improves health systems’ resilience to high-impact weatherWASHINGTON — April 29, 2014 – According to a new study by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Policy Program, a risk management framework can improve the resilience of healthcare facilities and services to high-impact weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes. The report is based on a recent AMS Policy Program workshop, A Prescription for the 21st Century: Improving Resilience to High-Impact Weather for Healthcare Facilities and Services, held in Washington, DC in October 2013.The purpose of the study was to explore methods for improving the resilience...

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, has been chosen as this year’s recipient of the American Meteorological Society’s highest award, the Rossby Research Medal.I am appalled at this decision, which was announced January 14. Hansen has not been trained as a meteorologist—his formal education was in astronomy—and his long record of faulty global climate predictions and alarmist public pronouncements has become increasingly hollow and at odds with reality. False PredictionsBy presenting Hansen with its highest award, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) implies it agrees with his faulty global temperature projections and irresponsible alarmist rhetoric. This award is an...

An appellate court has upheld a $156 million judgment against two organizations found to have provided financial support to Hamas and sent the claim against a third back to district court for a new trial. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling Wednesday that eliminated the distinction between supporting the violent and social wings of a terrorist group. "If you give money to an organization that you know to be engaged in terrorism, the fact that you earmark it for the organization's nonterrorist activities does not get you off the liability hook," Judge Richard Posner wrote for the...

A reader sent me a heads-up to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society ($, abstract here) titled "Climate Change Education and the Ecological Footprint".  The authors express concern that non-science students don't sufficiently understand global warming and its causes, and want to initiate a re-education program in schools to get people thinking the "right" way.So, do climate scientists want to focus on better educating kids in details of the carbon cycle?  In the complexities in sorting out causes of warming between natural and man-made effects?  In difficulties with climate modeling?  In the huge role that feedback...

Friday morning brought rain and the kind of dark, oppressive clouds that seem to cling to the skies over Atlanta Motor Speedway. But race day promises sun and meteorological relief, something sorely needed for a racetrack that produces tremendous speeds and tremendous finishes often overshadowed by rows of empty seats. The metropolitan areas of Atlanta and Los Angeles have more in common than the residents of either city would likely care to admit. Both are freeway-strangled municipalities where two-hour commutes aren't unheard of, and drivers can encounter five lanes of stopped Interstate traffic even at 3 in the morning. Both...

WASHINGTON — The Weather Channel is standing by a staff climatologist who is taking some heat after blogging that TV weather forecasters who are skeptical man-made global warming should lose their professional certification. Climate expert Heidi Cullen defended herself last week in The Weather Channel One Degree Climate Change blog after questioning the fitness of meteorologists who disagree with her conclusions. "I've read all your comments saying I want to silence meteorologists who are skeptical of the science of global warming. That is not true," wrote Cullen, host of "The Climate Code with Dr. Heidi Cullen," a weekly global warming...

Iraqi police set up roadblocks around the oil-rich city of Basra yesterday as a month-long state of emergency declared by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went into effect. Basra Governor Mohammed al-Waeli said army troops and police fanned out around Iraq's second-largest city as part of a crackdown on rampant violence that has increased in recent weeks as rival Shiite militias fight each other for power. "The emergency plan was implemented last night. Army and police were deployed in large numbers," al-Waeli said. Al-Waeli said a security committee was set up, and it includes three members of the provincial council and...

The “Association of Muslim Scholars” is the most-quoted voice of Iraq’s Sunni Arab population. Since the “Iraqi insurgency” is almost exclusively composed of Sunni Arabs, fighting to maintain their traditional place as the masters of Iraq, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) generally serves as a mouthpiece and apologist for the insurgency, playing Sinn Fein to the terrorists’ Irish Republican Army, so to speak. The AMS led the Sunni Arab boycott of elections this year, claiming that any election held with infidel occupiers in the country was illegitimate. (It was probably just a coincidence that any fair election was certain...

Prime minister has said that he will look for the needs of the people in putting his government program, and will take his voice from the voices of the Iraqis. He threatened that he will take revenge from terrorists, condemning killings and displacement events.This came in a meeting with the delegate of Congress yesterday in which he showed that his government will work to allow investments and rebuilding projects, and finding job opportunities for Iraqis to improve their living standers. He added that the government will emphasize on the concept of national unity government to apply constitution and make Iraq...

On Wednesday, January 18, I received an e-mail from someone identifying himself as “Ahmed.” He wrote to me that he was a “Muslim activist” and that he wanted me to come on his radio show to discuss my work, or, in his words, “to give [my] side of the story.” In doing a simple web search on his e-mail address, it turned out that this individual was none other than the Director of Communications for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Ahmed Rehab. While I didn’t know his motives in contacting me, I had recalled when...

Report: Russia Took Iraqi Arms Combined Reports A high-ranking U.S. defense official said Russian forces "almost certainly" smuggled a cache of high explosives out of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003, The Washington Times reported Thursday. Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "ridiculous." The Washington Times, basing its report on an interview with John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said Russian special forces had probably helped spirit out the hundreds of tons of high explosives that went missing from the al-Qaqaa base. Two weeks ago, Iraqi...

A London accountant has described how Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma'bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips  between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world. The mystery behind the visits has deepened following recent revelations that Khan is also the owner of a small hotel in the town that he has named after Hendrina, his Dutch-born wife and...