Two Paris suburbs have suffered traffic chaos over a feud between their two mayors.
According to a BBC News article, the conservative mayor of Levallois-Perret decided to make the busy route D909 one-way to reduce the amount of commuter traffic through his district. He took this step without consulting with the other communities through which the D909 passed.
The Socialist mayor of neighbouring Clichy-la-Garenne said this increased congestion in his area. 
With the contradictory road-signs in place, the unsurprising result was gridlock, prompting the deployment of municipal and national police to direct traffic away from the area.
Personally I'm glad to see that the French can be just as disagreeable with each other as they can be with foreigners.
In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defense and one of the chief engineers of the Iraqi War, "If you can't solve a problem, enlarge it." This strategy worked equally well in the Parisian suburbs as it did in Iraq.
A Nigerian man who says he cannot get a girlfriend because of his bad stutter has announced plans to marry his pillow, claims an article from Ananova.
Okeke Ikechukwu, a 26 year old laborer from Lagos, says that his stammer made it difficult for him to speak to girls. 
Mr Ikechukwu also said that, unlike a woman, the pillow would cost him little or nothing to maintain for the rest of its life. "I think it will make the ideal mate for me," he said.
This story brings up some interesting questions. First, what is the legal age of consent for a pillow in Nigeria? Mr Ikechukwu claims to have been "sleeping" with said pillow for the past 10 years. The age of the pillow is not stated, but he may well have been corrupting the morals of a minor pillow. One the other hand, this relationship began when Mr Ikechukwu was only 16, meaning that the pillow may have corrupted his morals.
Other questions which come to mind are, how is the gender of a pillow determined? Could Mr Ikechukwu have been sleeping all these years with a male pillow? Could this be a same-sex marriage? If however, the pillow is female, do the couple plan on having any children?
Also interesting would be to know whether the wedding will be a church or a civil ceremony? Has Mr Ikechukwu taken the pillow home to Lagos yet to meet his parents? And has Mr Ikechukwu yet traveled to the factory where the pillow was made to gain consent for his wedding?
All in all, although I've never met Mr Ikechukwu, I'd venture to guess that his problem with girls laughing at him are caused by a little more than just his stuttering.
Four children have been sent home this week from Gainesville Schools for being in violation of the school district's dress code. All of the children involved had been wearing shirts with an anti-Muslim statement, according to an article in the Gainesville Sun.
One of the children involved, a 15 year old girl from Gainesville High School, said the decision to wear the shirt had been hers, and not her parents. She said the "devil" statement was aimed at Islam's beliefs and not its followers. She said, "The people are fine. The people are people. They can be saved like anyone else."
It's interesting what this girl had hoped that the believers of Islam could be saved from. Could they be saved from the hatred that her church was trying to spread? A more important question would be whether children who are members of the Dove Outreach Center could be saved from the narrow-minded teachings of their own church.
Although the child was trying to protect her parents in saying the decision was her own, her father showed that he was by no means above ignorant statements of his own, saying that society has grown "so tolerant of being tolerant" that free speech is eroding. In selectively protecting those parts of the Constitution that benefited him at the moment, this student's father apparently forgot that America not only has freedom of speech, but freedom of religion as well.
It's my opinion that all organized religions are oppressive. While Islam may have had its share of violence and hypocrisy, Christianity is far from innocent itself. In fact, messages of hatred such as those of the Dove Outreach Center and the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, may place Christianity on the top of the hypocritical list.
Fortunately, the general population of Gainesville does not agree with the Dove Outreach Center's message of hatred, and according to an examiner.com article, they came out in droves to protest the sign.
People of all faiths and backgrounds came out with their own signs such as, "Who Would Jesus Hate?" "Love Thy Neighbor," and "God is Great. Love not Hate." The protesters have pledged to stay there until the sign comes down.
Pastor Eve MacMaster, of the Emmanuel Mennonite Church, said of the crowd of protesters, "I am blessed by these good people. They're great. Secularist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian whatever. This confirms my belief that this is a pretty good place to live."
An article from last year has reappeared on the BBC News page this week, describing the dismissal of an American lawsuit against God. The article refers to a lawsuit brought against God by a Nebraska Senator by the name of Ernie Chambers.
The lawsuit, originally filed on September 14, 2007, is described in an article from KETV News in Omaha. It states that Senator Chambers filed the lawsuit to prove a point about frivolous lawsuits, saying that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody -- even God. According to KETV, "the lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is omnipresent."
The lawsuit went on to say that God had caused "calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction."
The lawsuit asked the court to enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats described in the lawsuit.
In my opinion, it's kind of sad that a Senator can waste time (and possibly tax dollars) in filing a lawsuit which he knew would produce no tangible results, save for getting his name in the newspapers. The court, in its defense of accepting the suit, claims that it had no choice, as the Constitution requires that all cases be accepted. However, a few days later, the court showed that it was by no means above acts of stupidity of its own.
According to Action 3 News of Omaha, God, or someone claiming to be God, responded to the lawsuit three days after its filing, saying that as he wasn't served by a deputy, the case should be thrown out.
"A one-page document showed up rather mysteriously at the Douglas County Courthouse yesterday. Everyone there knows about it...no one knows where it came from...and nobody knows what to make of it. At the bottom, the so-called defendant printed his name--God."
This in itself wouldn't be bad, for it shows that someone in the courthouse has a sense of humor. What's frightening here is that some people apparently took it seriously and alerted the media. Action 3 News's article states that Gordon Rieber in the Clerk of the District Court's office told a reporter, "It was on the counter in legal filing yesterday. No one saw it come in. She (an employee) turned her back and there it was. It could have been a miraculous situation."
Defense attorney James Martin Davis volunteered to be a witness. Referring to a heart attack he survived the previous year, he said, "He (God) hasn't called me yet! I knew there was a special reason I was saved. I didn't know it might be to represent God Almighty!" The article made no mention of how Davis could attest on God's behalf that God caused no fear through his numerous killings.
The lawsuit was finally dismissed in February 2008 after sitting on the books for five months. According to the aforementioned BBC News article, A US judge threw the case out, ruling that because God has no address, legal papers cannot be served. Chambers had been considering appealing on the grounds that the court had acknowledged the existence of God and a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God's omniscience. Said Chambers, "Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."
So this brings up the question of what evidence did the court use to acknowledge the existence of God? The fact that his existence cannot be disproved should not be sufficient, just as an inability to disprove guilt does not necessarily prove it. Another question that arises is whether or not it is Nebraska policy to dismiss all cases in which the defendant has no address. Should this be the case, it would open the door for the homeless to go on sprees of raping, pillaging, or whatever suited their fancy.
