New Zealand’s Green Party will hold thirteen seats after Saturday’s election. Among their new Members of Parliament is expatriate Californian Julie Anne Genter. (more…)

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From the thoroughly enjoyable Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler:

“However, the only parts of the extensive territories claimed for France which received significant settlement by French-speaking colonists were the St Lawrence river area, known as la Nouvelle-France (New France), and the islands of modern Nova Scotia, then known as l’Acadie (originally la Cadie, derived from some Indian name). Here the original French policy had been to hope that ‘our sons will marry your daughters and we will become one people’. Unfortunately, this did not happen in a way that suited the French, since the early tendency was for arriving male settlers to go native, and bring up their children in their sauvage mothers’ languages. (more…)