Terry Sanderson on Facebook from the Sunday Times, a story by Andrew Gilligan and Sian Griffiths:

The ringleaders of the “Trojan Horse” plot to impose conservative Islamic values on state schools in Birmingham are back in teaching, despite being banned from the classroom, an investigation by The Sunday Times has established.

Tahir Alam and Razwan Faraz are running informal classes — Faraz in a different city and under a false name.

…

An official report found Alam and Faraz were at the centre of “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action” to introduce an “intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos” into schools in the city, with girls and boys separated, “un-Islamic subjects” such as evolution reduced or removed, and secular head teachers

Abigail Rockwell, granddaughter of the illustrator Norman Rockwell, points out the presence and positioning of a painting by the latter in the meeting between Obama and Donnie from Queens.

It’s the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty.

A painting by Norman Rockwell was moved in the Oval Office for the first meeting between President Obama and Mr. Trump so it would hang over Mr. Trump’s shoulder. In the painting the torch of the Statue of Liberty is being repaired by five men, one of whom is an African-American. All of them are precariously roped to her flame.

Who moved the painting and why? It is clearly too small for that space; a larger landscape painting had hung there

It’s alarmingly warm in the Arctic this year. I suppose Donald Trump and his friends think that’s nice, the polar bears and caribou can get in some sunbathing, but everyone else realizes it could mean disaster a lot sooner than expected.

The Arctic is experiencing extraordinarily hot sea surface and air temperatures, which are stopping ice forming and could lead to record lows of sea ice at the north pole next year, according to scientists.

Danish and US researchers monitoring satellites and Arctic weather stations are surprised and alarmed by air temperatures peaking at what they say is an unheard-of 20C higher than normal for the time of year. In addition, sea temperatures averaging nearly 4C higher than usual

It’s the age of hate speech.

More than 50,000 abusive and offensive tweets were sent celebrating Labour MP Jo Cox’s murder and lauding her killer, Thomas Mair, as a “hero” or “patriot” in the month following her death, prompting calls for the government to do more to tackle hate speech online.

According to researchers on the social media site, the tweets were sent from at least 25,000 individuals and have been interpreted by hate crime campaigners as a sign of an emboldened extreme rightwing support base.

And that was before the election of Trump and his elevation of Stephen Bannon and Breitbart.

Academics examined more than 53,000 tweets sent over the month after the MP’s murder and found that

The National Network of Abortion Funds has joined the hot new trend to refuse ever to mention the set of people formerly known as “women.” This seems perverse in an organization whose issue is abortion.

From their About page:

MISSION

THE NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS BUILDS POWER WITH MEMBERS TO REMOVE FINANCIAL AND LOGISTICAL BARRIERS TO ABORTION ACCESS BY CENTERING PEOPLE WHO HAVE ABORTIONS AND ORGANIZING AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF RACIAL, ECONOMIC, AND REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE.

VISION
WE ENVISION A WORLD WHERE EVERY REPRODUCTIVE DECISION, INCLUDING ABORTION, TAKES PLACE IN THRIVING COMMUNITIES THAT ARE SAFE, PEACEFUL, AND AFFORDABLE. WE ENVISION A WORLD WHERE ALL PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER AND RESOURCES TO CARE FOR AND AFFIRM THEIR BODIES, IDENTITIES, AND

From Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan on Facebook:

Two men, Riffat Aziz and Hameed Kamran, have recently been arrested by the Rawalakot Police in Poonch district of Azad Kashmir, and accused of spreading religious antipathy and disrupting social order by questioning Islam on social media.

Ali Camus has more:

Two men, Riffat Aziz and Hameed Kamran, have recently been arrested by the Rawalakot Police in Poonch district of Azad Kashmir, and accused of spreading religious antipathy and disrupting social order by questioning Islam on social media.

Kamran has been accused of commenting controversial stuff on social media on religion [source]. Riffat Aziz has been accused of distributing pamphlets to mosques filled with questions towards Muslims [

The IHEU posted on Facebook:

Mohamed Cheikh Ould M’kheitir is awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on whether he should be putting to death for writing a single online article – about how religion is used to justify slavery in his home country, Mauritania. The death sentence has already been upheld by the appeals court on the basis that he was an “apostate”. We are one of the few organizations campaigning on this case (we’re quoted several times in the article at the link). We’re trying to get other organizations involved and to put civil society pressure on the government. Please if you can, support our work here.

The International Business Times has the story:

Mauritania’s authorities face

The rate of hospitalization for malnutrition has tripled in the UK over the past decade, the Guardian reports.

Official figures reveal that people with malnutrition accounted for 184,528 hospital bed days last year, a huge rise on 65,048 in 2006-07. The sharp increase is adding to the pressures on hospitals, which are already struggling with record levels of overcrowding.

Critics have said the upward trend is a result of rising poverty, deep cutbacks in recent years to meals on wheels services for the elderly, and inadequate social care support, especially for older people.

Also known as Tory governments.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, unearthed the figures in a response to a recent parliamentary question submitted to the health

More on the Russian meddling, from a couple of days before the election.

A range of activities speaks to a Russian connection: the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign officials, hacks surrounding voter rolls and possibly election machines, Putin’s overt praise for Trump, and the curious Kremlin connections of Trump campaign operatives Paul Manafort and Carter Page.

But most observers are missing the point. Russia is helping Trump’s campaign, yes, but it is not doing so solely or even necessarily with the goal of placing him in the Oval Office. Rather, these efforts seek to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective

From

… Read the rest

The AP reports:

An outdoor sculpture by Swedish artist Lars Vilks has partly burned down in a fire that police are investigating as a possible arson.

Vilks is best known for a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad that enraged many Muslims in 2007 and sparked death threats from extremists.

Correction: a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad that some Muslims used as a pretext to get in a rage and make death threats.

Authorities said Thursday that a fire destroyed parts of another of his works called “Nimis,” a seaside sculpture he made of driftwood in a nature reserve in southern Sweden.

Emergency services spokesman Mattias Johansson told Swedish broadcaster SVT that about one-fifth of the artwork had burned down.

Fake news also played a role in electing Trump. (Wikileaks – Russian hacks – Comey – fake news. It’s almost as if there’s a pattern here.)

Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right.

“The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction,” Coler says.

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He