• Late last year, Oxford University professor Joshua Silver accused Britain's Home Secretary of a "hate" crime merely because the Secretary had made a speech urging that unemployed Britons be given preference for jobs over people recruited from overseas. Silver denounced this "discrimination" against "foreigners" and made a formal complaint to West Midlands police, which, after evaluation, absolved Secretary Amber Rudd but acknowledged that, under the law, the police were required to record the Secretary's unemployment speech as a "non-crime hate incident." [BBC News, 1-12-2017]
• The British Medical Association issued a formal caution to its staff in January not to use the term "expectant mothers" when referring to pregnancy -- because it might offend transgender people. Instead, the Association's memo (reported by the Daily Telegraph) suggested using "pregnant people." The BMA acknowledged that a "large majority" of such people are, in fact, "mothers," but wrote that there may be "intersex" and "trans men" who also could get pregnant. [Daily Telegraph, 1-29-2017]