Sidelights.

Instead of using "Jr.", Jon Blake Cusack of Holland, Michigan opted to give the name Jon Blake Cusack 2.0 to his son. * "I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic, and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis." Brazilian judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva describing the American plan to photograph and fingerprint various nationals, including Brazilians, who enter the U.S. * Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, surveyed residents of nine European countries--Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and Spain--to determine their attitudes toward Jews. 35 percent felt that Jews "should stop playing the victim because of the Holocaust and persecution of 50 years ago," and 16 percent believed the world would be better off if Israel did not exist. ... An Israeli government study found that 47 percent of all anti-Semitic incidents in Western Europe occur in France, where they nearly doubled last year, from 77 to 141.

Chemical giant Degussa was contracted to apply an anti-graffiti sealant to the future Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. It was discovered that one of its former subsidiaries, Degsch, supplied some of the Zyklon-B cyanide tablets used in Nazi gas chambers during the Third Reich. A new company is being sought to apply the sealant. * A European Commission report cast doubt on the E.U.'s goal of becoming "the most competitive, knowledge-based economy in the World by 2010." According to the report, "the Union cannot catch up on the United States as our per capita GDP is 72 percent of our American partner's." * Saudi Arabia has banned the importation of female dolls and teddy bears.

* At a Spokane, Washington rally, Howard Dean encouraged America to switch to the metric system. "I'm a doctor. I was trained and we do our calculations in meters. We don't use feet and inches and cubic inches ...