1. You can't spend too much time with your children.

I have a friend who is now an MP who is a father of five and he said to me when I became a father that the speed with which your children's lives flash in front of you is terrifying. You should spend as much time with them as possible. It's enormous fun and so stimulating.

This morning I went in to my children's school for a carol service. It was the most important thing I could make time for.

2. Always make time every day to read a book that has nothing to do with your work.

So, on Sunday January 3rd, we loaded close to 250 vehicles onto a Turkish Cargo ship and it set sail for the Egyptian port of El Arish. The following day, the Syrian Government chartered a plane to fly over 500 people to el Arish. It was going to take 4 flights to complete the job.

The 1st flight got away on time, and when they reached El Arish, the Egyptians had moved the goalposts again. They were insisting that the 155 people who had just arrived go straight to the port and drive all the vehicles up to Rafah and then leave. They were stamped with entry and exit visas at the same time, which is illegal. Needless to say, a stand off ensued and 9 hours later, the Egyptians relented and agreed to everyone been present to go to Rafah.

Just upgraded to the release candidate. and so far things are good.

Scrolling is a little faster, which is throwing me slightly - maybe it is too fast for me?

The layout etc is the same and one behavioural change by default is to open new tabs next to the tab from within which the link was clicked instead of at the end.

Clicking links on the bookmarks bar will still open the tab at the end, but links inside the page will open next to the current tab. This feature may take me some time to get used to as the grouping of tabs has no visual indications unlike in Internet Explorer 8 and I also have to fight my muscle memory.

Ireland To Gaza

Well folks, the great news to report to you all is that the “Viva Palestina” Humanitarian Aid Convoy safely reached Gaza and delivered all their aid. On January 6th, 517 humanitarians from 20 countries, in close to 200 vehicles, crossed through the Rafah Border into Gaza. The scenes greeting us as we made our way to Gaza city were unbelievable. Over 100,000 lined the roads and streets as we took 3 hours to drive 20 kilometres. They had waited patiently on us for us for weeks, and their outpouring of excitement and gratitude was the most humbling experience in my life. They are the real heroes, not us.

MQI UK's Response to the March in Wootton Bassett
Dated: 05 January 2010
LONDON. Minhaj-ul-Quran International UK (MQI UK) has expressed deep concern over the announcement by an extremist group to hold a march at Wooton Basset. MQI UK's spokesperson Shahid Mursaleen said that this group is known to consist of members who are known extremists and trouble makers including their leader Anjem Choudary.

"We strongly condemns the announcement by an extremist group to go ahead with the planned march at Wootton Bassett. Minhaj-ul-Quran pays tribute to the dead British soldiers, " he said.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey.

Picture taken by Trinidad-News.com and made available through flickr under the Creative commons attribution 2.0 Generic licence.

Former Archbishop George Carey wants to limit immigration in order to protect this country’s Christian heritage and restrain the far right. Yet it is his jaundiced view of the state of this country that gives comfort and succour to the bigots and racists.

Rather than looking honestly at issues of integration, extremism and community cohesion, he repeats misconceptions about immigrants and yearns for an unattainable, simpler, imagined past. It is his prescription of curbs on immigration, curbs on the rights of immigrants, curbs on the expression of immigrant culture, and, crucially, limits on population size that will help not hinder the nightmare future of a Britain ruled by dogmatic extremists.

Picture taken on 16 September 2005 by Matthew Emirzian. and made available to Wkipedia under the GNU Free Document licence 1.2 or later.

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This film is one of 21 such short films on the topic of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the series titled 'Durood'.

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