Islamofascist bits.

ADEN, Yemen - Young women from the local community, here, will have better educational opportunities and increased ability to take part in their society thanks to a $256,000 expansion and renovation of the Darshaad Girl's School by the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa.

The project will add much needed facilities for the school, which currently enrolls 1100 students attending ninth through 12th grade. A new third floor is being added to the current structure to allow for more classrooms - allowing class sizes to be cut in half. Additionally, new science labs are being added on the second and third floors. ...

"Of course my school is very specific and different than the other schools in this district," said Hamida [Ali Mohammed, principal of the Darshaad Girl's School]. "But it is necessary for the girls here to be educated so that the other half of the population can be activated. It is becoming a symbol that families in Yemen are now able to depend on their daughters."

Seems the locals are getting a tad wound up in Egypt.

CAIRO (AFP) - At least three people have been killed and around 60 injured in violent clashes between Muslims and police in Alexandria amid mounting tensions in the Egyptian Mediterranean city over a Christian video considered anti-Islamic.

One of the victims, Mohammad Zakariya, died late on Friday of his injuries in hospital, the interior ministry said Saturday.

Two others died shortly after midnight after the police opened fire on the Muslims who were demonstrating against the DVD by the Saint Girgis Church.

After police broke up an earlier demonstration on Friday that had gathered about 5,000 people, demonstrators grouped again outside the building again in the evening after breaking their Ramadan fast.

The violence intensified and spread after the first wounded protestor died, witnesses said.

Twenty policemen and sixty protestors were wounded, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP.

One police car and six other vehicles were burned in the clashes.

Fifty-three protestors had been arrested, the ministry said.

The Muslim protestors had earlier attacked the church and injured a passer-by, as they vented anger over the DVD release of a play produced by Saint Girgis two years ago they consider to be anti-Muslim.

The protests came three days after a man lightly wounded a nun with a knife at the entrance to the same church, and a man who came to her aid was stabbed in the back.

The play, performed by amateur actors, tells the story of a young Christian who converts to Islam and is exhorted by a sheikh to kill priests and destroy churches, according to the independent Al-Dustur paper.

Performances of the play had to be abandoned after it sparked a public outcry.

Church authorities have distanced themselves from the new recordings of the play.

** Dont take much to upset the muslims really does it?

The Simpsons made their debut on an Arab satellite TV network, MBC, earlier this month, but the show has been re-branded Al Shamsoon. Along with the new name, America's most beloved cartoon family has also picked up a few interesting new habits. ...

Homer Simpson, now Omar Shamsoon, looks like the same beer-bellied bum, but on Arab TV he's given up alcohol and bacon (which are both against Islam), and no longer hangs out at "seedy bars with bums and lowlifes." In Arabia, Omar swigs fizzy soda, and his hot dogs are barbecued Egyptian beef. The doughnuts he famously salivates over have become traditional Arab cookies called kahk.

Mischievous Bart is now called Badr, and Moe's Bar has been written out entirely. Others exorcised from the show include Jewish character Krusty [Krustofsky] the Clown and Reverend Lovejoy - apparently to keep them from "corrupting" audiences.

Moral high among US troops - bet you wont see this report on the BBC.

"A lot of people don't want to be here, but they're here because it's their job," said Staff Sgt. Anthony Rayner, of Atlanta, as he slowly ate shrimp in a mess hall on a support base on the edge of Baqouba, a town of central Iraq plagued by insurgent attacks. ...

Rayner said the conflict that had been abstract for some in his supply unit changed when they suffered casualties while traveling down dangerous roads.

"Then it's personal, and they want to go out there," said Rayner, referring to area towns where insurgents still lurk.

The U.S. military said Saturday that three U.S. Marines and an Army soldier were killed in three different areas of Iraq earlier this week, raising to at least 1,996 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

"When you get attacked everyday then it's tough to maintain morale," said 1st Lt. Doug Serota of Birmingham, Ala., as his unit spoke to residents about plans to rebuild an irrigation system in a calm Shiite village north of Baqouba. "I've always said it's not necessarily fun being here, but there are many, many things that are rewarding." ...

"This is what I do for a living," said Sgt. Maj. William Doherty of Boston, just minutes after being awarded a Bronze Star for his response to an insurgent attack where shrapnel from a grenade tore through his thigh.

The military's efforts were slowly stabilizing Iraq, he said. "This place is a lot better for these people to live in," he said of Baqouba, where he was injured this spring. Doherty said most soldiers from his unit, in the 1st Battalion, 10th Field Artillery Regiment, had re-enlisted and that morale remained "very high."

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