In the path of Irene and other news this morning.

I'm not sure if the good folks who chose the hurricane names stopped to think about the meaning of the names they choose to name hurricanes?  The reason I'm wondering is that the name Irene means peace, and I can garantee that the people in the path of Irene will not find peace of any shape!!!

Irene as seen from space looks terrifying according to one astronaut. What's for sure is that from the Carolinas all the way up the East coast to NJ is under hurricane watch. It originally looked like it would go towards Nova Scotia, but now it seems like it might come up the St Lawrence valley after hitting Jersey near New York City.  Montreal often gets massive rainstorms as remnants of hurricanes disperse over land.

Elsewhere in the news I found out my friend from Baltimore had a nasty fall yesterday and is in the hospital with broken bones. As best as  I understood she did a lot of damage to one wrist and may have surgery today to fix the wrist.  Something tells me this means she will not be travelling to Montreal Labour day week-end.  Even if she's still mobile, she might not want to travel with a cast. I guess I'll wait and see. 

Apparently there was a large blast at the UN building in the Nigerian capital. No one has claimed responsibility for this bomb. I guess we'll no more about this as the day progresses.

About 150 Syrians were arrested in Saudi Arabia for demonstrating. I guess they figured since the King told Bashar to stop the killing of his people, that it was ok for them to show support for their fellow Syrians but it seems Saudi Arabia does not want ANY protests on it's soil. Of course, it's too afraid that the Arab Spring will spread to their country. 

Lots of people are arrested, detained, beaten and tortured in Syria every day. Yesterday was no different. Bashar's thugs found one of Syria's better known cartoonist walking home and kinapped him. He was released on the road to the airport in Damascus after they beat him up and broke at least one of his hands. It would appear poor Bashar has very low tolerance for any criticism. Apparently Ali Ferzat had been more bold recently in drawing the Syrian President.

The only good news for me is that my daughter who is in Halifax will be Montreal bound tomorrow :)  On that note I have to pick up stuff before my cleaning lady arrives and get the heck out of here.