Word: britishisms
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...loud protests in Germany in the run-up to the nation's general elections have raised fears that GM's European plants outside Germany, such as those in Antwerp and several Vauxhall facilities in the U.K., could become easier targets for closure. British unions are urging Prime Minister Gordon Brown to prepare an aid package for Vauxhall to give the U.K. a voice at the table, but so far London has proffered no numbers...
Chicago wasn't the first target of the Indiana atheists. Earlier this year, the five or so members of the Secular Alliance of Indiana University, in Bloomington, closely followed the well-publicized atheist efforts in Britain (which, thanks to the fervor of the British press, received global coverage). "Why don't we try something like that?" one student asked at a meeting. They bounced around ideas and came up with a campaign to raise money to place ads on buses in the handful of Indiana cities with populations over 50,000. But that was turned down by the public transportation...
English is a voracious melting pot of a language. It's basically what the Anglo-Saxons brought over from the mainland to the British Isles. Then that was overlaid with Latin, because the British Isles were conquered by the Romans and converted to Christianity. Then the French conquered the island in 1066, so French was the official language in England for 300 years. With the Renaissance came a big influx of more Latin words. You had the Scientific Revolution, so you had a big influx of Greek words. Then with colonialism, the language started taking words from everywhere...
...tooth-and-claw campaign for the poetry professorship might also be described as Darwinian. The front runner, West Indian poet and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, withdrew his candidacy four days before the poll after the resurrection of 1982 allegations that he sexually harassed a Harvard student. Appearing in the British media, those charges found their way to Oxford academics in anonymous letters. Walcott's withdrawal left two hopefuls, Padel and the Indian poet Arvind Mehrotra, to compete for the support of Oxford's senior staff and graduates, all of whom are eligible to vote for the professorship. There had been...
...London Taxpayers to Parliament: We Are Not Amused Dozens of British lawmakers are facing scrutiny over leaked expense-report claims ranging from home mortgages to moat (yes, moat) maintenance. While most claims are within legal limits, their dizzying scale has sparked an outcry. Among the offenders...