First posted at Demography Matters.

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News of today's terrorist attacks in Paris reached me almost instantaneously here in Toronto, via a short BBC breaking news feature. It's been terribly sad to see different acquaintances on different social networks reveal their connections to different attacked sites: one actually stayed in an apartment ( Read more... )

CBC carried the news that three people convicted of carrying out an honour killing directed towards four female family members have lodged an appeal.

A Montreal couple and their son who were convicted of first-degree murder in the so-called honour killings of four female family members are appealing for a new trial ( Read more... )

The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has just ended, and I, for one, remain impressed by the genius of Osama bin Laden. Using his skills in rhetoric and organization, enlisting less than a two dozen volunteers, providing them with a half-million dollars, and giving them a clear plan, bin Laden managed to change the course of world history. The ( Read more... )

Pinar Tremblay at Al-Monitor points to an ongoing controversy in modern Turkey. Are women are doing so much better than men--or are perceived to be doing so much better, at least--that men feel depressed? It's not unimaginable.

On July 19, Islamist writer Ismail Kilicarslan published a piece titled "Joyful pious girls, unhappy Islamist young men" ( Read more... )

Srdja Pavlović's March Open Democracy essay looks at the continuing internal conflicts in Serbia over the country's orientation.

In an interview for CNN in August 2014, the Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, reiterated that his country "supports and respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and Crimea as a part of Ukraine." He ( Read more... )

• The Big Picture shares photos from post-referendum Greece.
• blogTO looks at a recent live-tweeting of a bad date.
• Centauri Dreams notes the recovery of New Horizons.
• The Dragons' Gaze notes a new estimate for terrestrial exoplanets suggesting that every Sun-like star should at least have one.
• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper suggesting that salt in ( Read more... )

Reuters reports on a community in upstate New York, founded in the 1980s by African-American Muslims and thriving, in the aftermath of a recently-revealed plot to attack it.

Just beyond the gated entrance to the tiny Catskills community of Holy Islamberg, population 200, cows graze and ducks glide on a tranquil pond. Modest houses of wood and ( Read more... )

Of all the potential spokespeople for Muslims in Canada and Québec, Adil Charkaoui is among the worst. Martin Patriquin of MacLean's writes about how a man once suspected of terrorist connections has become a prominent figure.

Hints of [Adil Charkaoui]'s alleged former life as a terrorist have crept into Charkaoui’s present-day narrative. Two of ( Read more... )

• Anthropology.net notes the embarrassing discovery that one of the vertebrae believed to have been part of the skeleton of early hominid Lucy actually belonged to a baboon.
• Antipope Charlie Stross comes up with another worrisome explanation for the Great Filter.
• BlogTO visits the Toronto offices of photo community site 500px.
• Centauri Dreams features a ( Read more... )

CBC's Laura Lynch reports on the strange defenses, legal and otherwise, of former Tunisian graduate student Chiheb Esseghaier on charges of terrorism.

Since the trial began on Feb. 1, virtually all of Esseghaier's words and actions in court - save for a brief, rambling statement at the end, read out by a court-appointed lawyer - have been kept ( Read more... )