A pregnant mother gave birth moments after starting to prepare her Christmas dinner and was back home in time to serve it up.
Paula Thomas, 29, was preparing a feast for her family in England on Christmas Day when she began to go into labor, The Sun reported.
She continued to baste the turkey in the oven until the contractions were just three minutes apart. Her husband Damian, 32, took her to hospital and daughter Lexi was born one hour later.
She was back home in St Austell, Cornwall, a little more than an hour after giving birth eating dinner and toasting the new arrival.
Paula Thomas, who is already the mother of twins Caitlin and Gabby, both 6, and Reece, 3, said: "No one could believe I'd come out so quickly. I really wanted my Christmas dinner I was starving. I had prepared most of the dinner before I went into labor so everything was in the oven."
#1
My mother, who deliberately had four children in four years (plus one week) once told me that by child #3 they pop out like watermelon seeds. The day my sister was born was a very busy one at the hospital maternity ward, and the mothers-in-labour were lined up in the hallway, awaiting birthing rooms. While my mother waited for my father to join her there, a harried young intern came up with a request that she fill out the required paperwork. "Of course," she replied. "Here, you hold my new baby, and I'll fill out the forms."
I assume a nurse stopped by long enough to catch the baby and cut the cord, but Mama prefers to leave the story at that point.
A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday's snowstorm.
"Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions," said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah.
It didn't take long for the six friends to pack up a bullhorn and posters they'd planned to use for their "scream-in," an outlet for their frustration about the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks earlier this month to curb the pollution blamed for climate change.
Still, they chatted with a few passers-by during the commuter-hour protest near the Gateway, and explained that, blizzard aside, climate change is expected to bring chaos to the global climate, said Major.
She called Wednesday evening's effort a success and possibly the first in a series. As for the snow, it's not entirely new; a protest she attended last year in Washington, D.C., suffered a similar fate.
"There is always the irony element," Major said.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/01/2010 09:46 ||
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Six jobless bums with a bullhorn qualifies as a protest? Seriously, WTF?
#2
" As for the snow, it's not entirely new; a protest she attended last year in Washington, D.C., suffered a similar fate."
Any normal person would get the hint....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/01/2010 10:33 Comments ||
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an international studies student at the University of Utah.
"you want fries with that?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/01/2010 10:38 Comments ||
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Gore Effect.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/01/2010 12:14 Comments ||
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Six jobless bums with a bullhorn qualifies as a protest? Seriously, WTF?
It depends, Raj. If they are protesting something doubleplusungood like gerbil worming, yes, especially if they trash the joint. If you have six thousand polite, conservative type people protesting bloated government spending, no.
#6
Frank, believe it or not, it is possible for somebody to major in International Relations and be intelligent, competent, and useful. Second Daughter is presently getting some low paying but useful administrative skills under her belt working at a real job, and is developing a plan for international business in West Africa. I have every reason to expect that she will succeed, and be a blessing to the people she works with.
However, it appears that the characters described here have not sullied their hands with real world work. Your prediction may well fit their case.
Who said, "Anybody who is not a socialist at 18 has no heart; and anybody who is still a socialist at 40 has no mind?"
I have no doubt this twit thinks business and capitalism is "icky", and profits are obscene.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/01/2010 12:33 Comments ||
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"Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head." - François Guizot, mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman.
The overseas offices of Zimbabwe's opposition [Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)] face a "huge" corruption problem, with £57,000 missing from the British branch alone, according to a senior official of the cash-strapped party. In February the MDC joined an inclusive government with Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF, and is dependent on the activism and support of up to 4 million Zimbabweans who have left the country in the past 10 years. The MDC's treasurer-general, Roy Bennett, said yesterday that the British branch second only to the South African office of the party in importance had been suspended in the wake of what Mr Bennett describes as a problem the party faced "everywhere".
Mr Bennett, 52, said that although a formal instruction had yet to be given, all other overseas branches would be disbanded. The UK and Ireland provincial executive has been suspended pending an investigation into what the MDC Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, described as "shocking" financial irregularities in a November letter announcing the action. But UK-based MDC officials yesterday played down the claims, insisting that any financial irregularities under its supervision were not the result of corruption. The MDC has about 800 active members in the UK. According to UK-based officials, about 70 per cent of funds raised from members are sent back to Zimbabwe, with the rest used to cover administrative costs. But the MDC in Harare says that the British branch failed to submit adequate financial reports.
The former opposition party is trying to convince highly educated Zimbabweans abroad to return home. According to Zimbabwe's finance ministry, the diaspora sent home £100m in remittances to relatives in 2009 about the same amount as the European Union gave in aid. But repeated calls by the Prime Minister, the MDC's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, for the return of teachers, nurses, doctors and business people have met with reluctance, amid scepticism over the progress of the inclusive government. Earlier this year, Mr Tsvangirai was booed when he addressed hundreds of Zimbabweans at Southwark Cathedral in London.
The MDC was established 10 years ago. In March 2008, it won a slim majority in the parliamentary election, but Mr Mugabe, who has held power since 1980, disputed the outcome of the presidential poll. Zanu PF launched a campaign of violence, and Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of the June 2008 presidential run-off. Mr Tsvangirai became Prime Minister under an agreement brokered by South Africa that has yet to be fully implemented. Nevertheless, the economy has improved and supermarkets this Christmas were well stocked with goods. Soon after the MDC entered government, Tendai Biti halted inflation by abolishing the Zimbabwe dollar, previously printed at will to fuel Mr Mugabe's patronage system. Now the South African rand and US dollar are used.
The MDC is tight-lipped about its funding, which is believed to come largely from members of the business community who do not wish to be identified while Mr Mugabe is in power. European embassies admit only to providing the MDC with trainers and bursaries for courses in subjects such as international relations.
Colorado's minimum wage will drop 3 cents in the new year, marking the first decrease in any state's minimum wage since the federal minimum was adopted in 1938.
Colorado's wage is dropping from $7.28 an hour to the federal minimum of $7.25. That's because Colorado is one of 10 states that tie the minimum wage to inflation. The goal is to protect low-wage workers from having flat wages as the cost of living goes up. But Colorado's provision also allows wage declines. That means the minimum wage is going down because the state's consumer price index fell 0.6 percent last year.
State labor officials say about 48,000 Coloradans earned the minimum wage in 2008. But they won't necessarily take a pay cut. Officials say they expect many employers to keep paying workers at the old rate.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/01/2010 00:00 ||
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"Officials say they expect many employers to keep paying workers at the old rate."
Sure they will - with money off the Magic Money Tree.™
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/01/2010 10:30 Comments ||
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Not to worry, maybe they (the affected workers) can apply for federal funds to offset the difference.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Malaysia's high court ruled Thursday that a Catholic paper had the right to use the word "Allah" after a long-running dispute between the government and the weekly in the Muslim-majority nation.
The ruling overturns the government's controversial threat to cancel The Herald's annual publishing permit. "The applicant has the constitutional right to use the word 'Allah'," Judge Lau Bee Lan told a packed courtroom, declaring the government's ban on the paper's use of the word "illegal, null and void".
"Even though Islam is the federal religion, it does not empower the respondents to prohibit the use of the word," he added.
Either Allah means God, irrespective of the particular religion and therefore usable by all, or Allah is the name of the Muslim god, a very different personage than the God of other monotheistic religions.
The weekly used the word "Allah" as a translation for "God" in its Malay-language section but the government argued "Allah" should be used only by Muslims.
Lau said the home ministry, which licenses all newspapers in the country, had taken into account "irrelevant considerations" when making the paper's publishing permit conditional on it not using the word.
She said it had shown no evidence that the use of the word by Christians was "a threat to national security".
The Herald's editor, Father Lawrence Andrew, said he was pleased with the decision and the paper would use the word 'Allah' in its upcoming Sunday edition.
"This also means that... the Christian faith can now continue to freely use the word 'Allah'... without any interference from the authorities," he added.
Government lawyers have not yet decided whether to appeal the ruling.
The Herald is printed in four languages, with a circulation of 14,000 copies a week in a country with about 850,000 Catholics.
The court case was among a string of religious disputes that have erupted in recent years, straining relations between Muslim Malays and minority ethnic Chinese and Indians who fear the country is being "Islamized".
They fear it because it is so.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/01/2010 00:00 ||
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#2
But don't even think about using the term 'Olympics' in any manner and NOT have the IOC pay a visit to your door for trademark violation.
Folks around here have taken to caling the upcoming feativities ' that sporting event that will happen in BC sometime between 2009 and 2011.'
That also P.O.'s the IOC to no end.
Russia has no knowledge of an alleged Iranian plan to import purified uranium ore from Kazakhstan, the foreign ministry said Thursday. Moscow is verifying information that a state signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) submitted a report on a uranium deal between Iran and Kazakhstan to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, foreign minister spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.
"We have not seen the document yet, nor has the agency provided any official information on the issue," Nesterenko said. He said U.N. Security Council Resolution 1737 bans the shipment of any nuclear materials to Iran, including purified uranium ore.
"We believe that these requirements must be strictly observed by all states," he said.
Iran has denied reports that it intends to import purified uranium ore from Kazakhstan under a covert deal. The country is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze its enrichment program and related activities that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Kazakhstan, among the world's top three producers of uranium, accounting for more than 8,500 tons last year, also denied the reports.
Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.
The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse. Yeah, the way to close that gap is to lower white scores. You betcha.
Paul Gibson, an alternate parent What is an alternate parent?
representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. For white students or attended by white students? This is blatant racism.
He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.
Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. I continue to believe the greatest threat to the national security of the US is the NEA and its fellow travelers.
#1
He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.
With equality comes responsibility. Without responsibility it simply becomes privilege where one receives without accord to merit. Equality of opportunity was what the entire civil rights movement of the middle part of the 20th Century was about. It has been hijacked into the neo-communists/socialist equality of outcome regardless of merit.
#2
"information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous"
Translation: The Lefties at Berzerkley think black and Latino children are too stupid to learn anything useful or difficult.
The Left is full of bigoted bastards.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/01/2010 19:28 Comments ||
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"remember, you all unique, just like everyone else"
Berkeley High's School Governance Council - be interesting to see the ideological diversity there, huh? Ima thinkrn Catholic school if I lived there
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/01/2010 19:38 Comments ||
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Not so much Frank. Ain't many and not much better. You'd be thinking of moving. I've lived in Oakland and as soon as my last is safely in college, I might move back. It is beautiful. But there's only a couple of (and I mean two) places west of the tunnels to send your kids for school. And getting in is a crap shoot.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday's snowstorm.
