Farman Khan Black Wednesday is what many people have been calling Nov. 25 when Jeddah got its heaviest rains that resulted in flooding and the death of over 120 people. Videos, photos and articles on the flooding and the damage are aplenty online, but one story I believe has not got its due attention. Farman Ali Khan was a 32-year-old Pakistani migrant worker at a grocery store in Jeddah. In his six years in Saudi Arabia, he had only been able to visit his family back home twice. His youngest daughter Jarira, four-years-old, has never seen her daddy alive. This man who had every reason to save himself, as he is his family's sole provider and yet he set out that day to save as many people as he could. Farman Ali Khan saved 14 people from drowning. His neighbor told reporters that Farman gave him his wallet and cell phone for safekeeping. He then tied one end of a rope to a pipe and the other around his waist and stood at the edge of the heart of the flooding looking for people to pull out. Those he couldn't reach swimming and wading, he would reach to them with a wood pole. He kept going back until the water got the better of him and he went under. Farman left behind his wife and three daughters, Zubaida, 7, Madeeha, 6, and Jarira, 4. And now there is a huge campaign on Facebook with over 22,000 members, the majority of whom are Saudi. They are campaigning for a Jeddah street to be named after Farman, that he be rewarded with the King Abdul Aziz Medal and that his family be compensated financially. – saudiwoman.wordpress.com Schumacher All clearances given, the BBC is reporting that Michael Schumacher is officially a driver for the Mercedes-Petronas F1 team. The deal is understood to be a one-year agreement, with Schumacher being paid $9.82 million and having an open door at the end of the year to carry on if it all works out. Mercedes is said to have its eye on Sebastian Vettel when his contract is up in 2012. Theoretically then, if Michael remains Michael behind the wheel, he could drive for the Three-Pointed Star and collect trophies, and perhaps Championships, until then. That's an immense theoretical, however: Prost and Lauda took time off, came back, and won the whole show again; Jacques Villeneuve, well, not so much. – autoblog.com Tech support Whenever I go home to visit my parents, I always assume a handful of new roles — I become the after-dinner dishwasher, the family chauffeur, and appropriately, my parents' personal tech support. As I go home for the holidays this week, I'll likely be asked to help fix the webcam that “used to be there” or make the font size “so I can see it again.” I'll also perform a few regular maintenance tasks that my parents don't even know to ask about, such as running a virus scan, uninstalling unused applications and upgrading their software to the latest versions. I know this phenomenon isn't unique to just my family. If you're unofficial tech support for family this holiday season like I am, one of the things you'll want to consider is checking that your family is using the latest version of their browser. Why? For me, an up-to-date browser makes a huge difference: not only so that my parents can get to what they need when they're on the web, quickly and easily, but also so that I can rest assured that they'll be browsing the web more safely and securely with the latest version of the browser with security updates.
