fashion beach

A "shock, horror!" headline on the website of British tabloid The Sun claims "Third of rapists and killers 'are foreign'". Except they're not. When you actually read the article, this figure is only true in a few police districts. The figure across the UK as a whole is 1 in 7, or less than half the quoted proportion.

Further evidence that The Sun is engaging in racial scaremongering is that in three successive paragraphs it refers to immigrants, foreign nationals, foreign-born suspects, and in a later paragraph to non-English speaking suspects, as if all these groups were synonymous. Furthermore, despite the fact that the majority of recent immigrants to the UK are white EU citizens, they chose to illustrate the piece with a photo of a black convicted murderer.

Apart from the article's obvious racial bias, the ill-defined 1 in 7 (14.3%) figure is even more meaningless unless we know how many foreigners are in Britain at any given time for comparison. A recent estimate suggests that the figure may be around 11.4% - so far from the shock picture of the headline, the reality is that foreigners account for these crimes in only a slightly higher proportion than their total numbers would lead us to expect. Furthermore, it would be helpful to separate rape and murder for comparison in analyzing the figures, since cultural misunderstandings can play a part in some rapes.

The Sun should be ashamed of itself for peddling racist propaganda.

During a recent trip to Europe, I spent nearly a month without following the news. I didn't feel I'd missed much - when I got back, most things were going on exactly as before.

Two stories did filter into my consciousness - the death of Osama bin Laden, and the wedding of Prince William, at which time I was in Britain. I'm no monarchist - far from it - but this did at least demonstrate that a country rapidly descending into Third World status can still put on an excellent show of pomp and pageantry. Now if only they could apply the same impressive level of organisational skill to the chaos of Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport. Considering that this gives many foreign visitors their first impression of the country, isn't it time the whole overcrowded mess was pulled down and rebuilt to the standard of Terminals 4 and 5?

The 1978 movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is generally regarded as a good-natured spoof of the science fiction genre. Now today's BBC news site has a deadly serious headline: Deadly cucumbers claim more lives. We really are living in a science fiction world.

What is this craze that some people seem to have for changing their names in Facebook? You log in and suddenly find you have a whole lot of friends you never heard of. Weird.

I never set out to make this blog an exercise in ATV-bashing, but they do set themselves up for it. They are currently filling the gaps between programmes, when they don't have enough commercials, with little snippets of information under the title "The World at a Glance". Nothing wrong with that, but the one asking "Are You Prepared for St. Patrick's Day" was still being run as late as 22 March. That should give you plenty of time to get ready, because St. Patrick's Day had already passed on 17 March.

Mind you, the Irish have their own ways of measuring things. I still vividly recall many years ago setting out from Rosslare Harbour to Wexford. After a while I passed a signpost saying "Rosslare 2 miles, Wexford 7 miles". A mile further on, the sign said, naturally enough, "Rosslare 3 miles" However, in the other direction, it still said "Wexford 7 miles"!

Ireland is a beautiful country, but expect the unexpected there.

Q. What's the definition of stupidity?
A. Building nuclear power plants all over one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world when you're sitting on a vast reservoir of free geothermal energy that you could use instead.

And a really bad joke:
Q. What do you call a tiny tsunami?
A. A microwave.

Yeah, I know, it's not funny. And incidentally, why is Iran so insistent that it needs to develop nuclear power when it's sitting on the world's fourth largest oil reserves? I think we can guess the answer to that one.

Sexy Hot Arab Women - Marwa

Marwa is an extremely popular Lebanese singer. She’s also very sexy and very big breasted. Don’t let her looks fool you, she is the whole package. She started her musical training at the age of 8 in school where she learned to play the accordion. Later, she found her groove in the art of singing and performing arts. She made a name for herself when she was on a local talk show and was asked about the opinion that she was very sexual. She responded by reminding the host that he was very sexual in a soap opera that he starred in which turned her on. Pretty scandalous for Lebanon.

As with most Lebanese celebs, the pics don’t show a bunch of skin, but this one is quite sexy. Here, you see Marwa a bit defiant with a look on her face that says, “Yeah I’m hot, but you’ll never have this.” You can see her wonderfully large breasts under her business suit jacket. She’s wearing some sort of lacey camisole, which adds a great touch. Also, the way she’s sitting you get a great view of her wonderfully toned legs and a great view of her inner thigh.

Saucy minx!