November 23 marks an important milestone in the Union's Project SPOTLIGHT history. Our researchers have been working on the first study in the programme since early April of this year, and the planning and design of the project began over six months before that. Now, finally, the first report is ready, and you can read it here on our website. A brief article about the report also appears on the News Page as the lead story this week.

This is an important report, because the subject judge of the study is not just an ordinary family court judge, he is the Associate Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Quebec in Canada, a man with an extraordinary amount of power in that province. We expect the study results to provoke some serious ripples at the Ministry of Justice, and would hope the Minister will take the appropriate actions quickly.

Thanks go out to the entire research team: John T. for helping co-author the report; John P1 and John B. for helping read the seemingly endless list of court decisions; Dr. Jane K. and John CG for vetting the statistical work; and John A. and John K. for their help in consolidating the legal aspects discussed in the introduction.

--John F.

Oct. 20:

John X. Smith, a new member of the Union from 'somewhere between 'Tierra de la turista and Le grand nord,' as he likes to put it, joins the NEWS PAGE staff this week as helper, gadfly, and associate editor. (We wanted someone to fill that rather charming American job-title, the 'gofur', as well...but asking anonymous electrons to fetch a fresh cup of tea is an exercise in futility, alas.)

He tells me that if I survive his apprenticeship, he will crack through my 'constipated British reserve' or die trying. I told him that while I look forward to the trying part, there's no point in his doing anything rash since I have an administrator-level log-on to the website, and he doesn't.

So if you notice any 'constipated British reserve' in the items appearing over his byline, it should be safe to assume that it's just me, taking back some of the grammatical liberties with which John X. attempted to abscond....

Welcome to the Union, John X. (And do please get rid of that paisley tie, if you would be so kind.)


---John T.

While John T. is welcoming his new assistant, I would also like to welcome John NN Smith, a new member from 'The West Coast' (he won't say which one).

John NN is a web developer, and has been helping me get through the tricky bits on our re-design of the website for the last several weeks. I take full blame, however, for any glitches and bugs which remain to be ironed out; all the page creation and design is still my responsibility. John NN's real task is beyond me, and that is to develop the back-end code and applications for the active pages still to come.

Among other things, he is working on creating our very own discussion board, one which will respond to our members' needs and be user friendly in a way the old 'blog' never was. He is also working on our long-awaited World Action Page, which will be a secure, password-protected page to which Institutional Affiliates can upload information to be shared and discussed only amongst themselves at the administrative level. Finally, he will be creating a secure data base to which member requests can be referred automatically, so that there will no longer be the delay inherent in manual processing of membership applications. Once that is up and running, new members should get confirmation of their status within a few minutes.

Welcome, John NN. As far as I'm concerned, you can wear whatever you please (no matter what John T. dictates in his department).

---John F.