Clipmarks | arifsali's clips

Destruction of Iraq's past

Wed, 21 May 2008 03:10:11 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Director of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum says the US presence in Iraq is destroying the country's keys to its past.

"The destruction of Iraq's past has the potential of being one of the longest-lasting legacies of the US presence in Iraq," Geoff Emberling said.

An exhibit on the pillaging of Iraq's heritage titled "Catastrophe!" is currently running at the Chicago museum, along with seminars from Iraqi experts and delivered to US troops deploying in the region, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Qais Hussein Rashid, director of research and antiquities excavations for Iraq's Board of Antiquities and Heritage, also says that "the looting of ancient sites is an old problem, of course, but this phenomenon has accelerated since the invasion of Iraq and the general insecurity that has left so many sites with no protection."

"We feel we are losing many of the keys to our past and the many pieces that together make up our heritage," the Iraqi official added.

Tags: iraq, united states

Baha'is worried about Iranian community

Wed, 21 May 2008 03:06:44 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.jpost.com

The head of the Baha'i International Community, based in Haifa, said Tuesday that last week's arrest of seven Baha'i leaders was the latest in an ongoing wave of persecution in Iran that has been escalating since the beginning of 2008.

"The latest incident is a ripple on the top of a wave," said Albert Lincoln, secretary-general of the Baha'i International Community. "It is just the tip of the iceberg."

Lincoln said that over the past few months, there have been numerous incidents of arson, threats, kidnappings and beatings directed at the Baha'i community of 300,000 in Iran.

"People's houses and shops are being burned or bulldozed down, they are being kidnapped and beaten. Baha'i cemeteries are being plowed up, and members of the Baha'i community who have worked for the state of Iran for decades and are now retired are being asked to pay back the pensions they have received," he said.

Tags: iran, minorities

A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:53:06 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.

And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”

The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.

Tags: blogging, yemen, united states

Iranian Clerics Tell the President to Leave the Theology to Them

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:51:08 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

TEHRAN — In his almost three years as president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been harshly criticized in the West. But he is increasingly drawing fire from Shiite clerics here, who accuse him of using religion to distract attention from his government’s failure to deliver on promises of prosperity and political freedoms.

In a news conference last week, the president lashed out at those who were “insulting and mocking” him about a Shiite belief that he said was based on Islamic teachings.

“Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks are common beliefs in Shiite Islam, but they were never brought up in politics and for political purposes by a noncleric,” said Farid Moddaressi, a religion reporter in Tehran. “Mr. Ahmadinejad’s views come from a religion which is defined by its clerics, but they believe that he is not a religious authority to make such remarks.”

Tags: iran, religion, politics

Museum unveils timely natural disaster exhibit

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:47:58 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Display echoes in wake of Myanmar, China tragedies

Clip Source: www.chicagotribune.com

Workers a couple of weeks ago were busily putting up the Field Museum's new temporary exhibit, "Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters," when a killer cyclone hit the coast of Myanmar, and a few days later a major earthquake devastated central China.

Still, the four types of disasters covered in the exhibit—earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes and tornadoes—occur so often that it likely will be equally timely when it travels to at least five other museums around the country through 2012.

"These events have been happening for hundreds of millions of years," said Tom Skwerski, the Field's project manager for the exhibit, which opens Friday. "They are normal to our planet, but they are disasters for humans that get in the way of them."

In the section devoted to earthquakes, for example, a telling interactive display shows there are at least 100,000 earthquakes a year and lets viewers see where they occurred in the last 24 hours, or month or century.

Tags: museum, nature, disasters, humans

Agency says 120,00 kids have month to live

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:35:05 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Famine fears for seven million Ethiopian children

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

EGU VILLAGE, Ethiopia (CNN) -- A year of drought and soaring food prices has threatened the lives of tens of thousands of Ethiopian children.

"We have nothing to feed our children," said Egu's village elder. "We are losing our children day by day."

Ethiopia's Health Ministry, along with UNICEF, monitors the health of thousands of children here, but the number of areas they have been able to regularly visit has been cut in half this year.

The small rains that normally allow Ethiopian farmers to plant a second crop each year did not come this year, adding to an already critical food shortage.

"It's an open crisis, and there are more people than we expected, than the government expected, who need additional food," said Bjorn Ljungqvist, head of UNICEF

There is a crucial shortfall in the supply of therapeutic foods used to treat children with severe acute malnutrition, the UNICEF official said.

Tags: food, ethiopia, health, kids, drought

Just wanted to go do it in the woods!

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:32:38 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: What's a big deal?

Clip Source: breakingnews.nypost.com

Naked pilot, flight attendant arrested in woods

An airline pilot was found hiding behind a shed wearing only flip-flops and a wristwatch as a nighttime romp in the woods with a flight attendant ended with both under arrest, police said.

Jeffrey Paul Bradford, 24, and Adrianna Grace Connor, 24, both employees of Pinnacle Airlines Inc., were at a diner on the outskirts of Harrisburg on Sunday night before they apparently decided to walk into the woods, police said.

"They told the officer they wanted to go do it in the woods, essentially," said Lower Swatara Township police Sgt. Richard Brandt. "That's the best answer they had."

The two somehow became separated, and people who live in the neighborhood summoned police around 9:30 p.m., saying they had seen a naked man and an intoxicated woman.

A helicopter with heat-seeking equipment was called in, and Bradford was discovered hiding behind a shed shortly before midnight.

Tags: news, sex

Scientists find first dinosaur tracks on Arabian Peninsula

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:26:40 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Footprints of sauropod herd, ornithopod preserved in Yemen

ATHENS, Ohio (May 21, 2008) – Scientists have discovered the first dinosaur tracks on the Arabian Peninsula. In this week’s issue of the journal PLoS ONE, they report evidence of a large ornithopod dinosaur, as well as a herd of 11 sauropods walking along a Mesozoic coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen.

“No dinosaur trackways had been found in this area previously. It’s really a blank spot on the map,” said Anne Schulp of the Maastricht Museum of Natural History in The Netherlands. He conducted the study with Ohio University paleontologist Nancy Stevens and Mohammed Al-Wosabi of Sana’a University in Yemen.

The finding also is an excellent example of dinosaur herding behavior, the researchers report. The site preserved footprints of 11 small and large sauropods — long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods — traveling together at the same speed.

Tags: science, dinosaurs, yemen

At Friday prayers, imams to slam terror

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:32:59 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

LUCKNOW: The fight against terror is now going to get a Quranic stamp and clerics are going to raise their voice at Friday prayers.

The Movement Against Terrorism (MAT), a new front of moderate clerics, will exhort imams at mosques across north India to use the Friday prayer to speak out against the murderous Islamic groups.

It also attempts to answer the oft-heard criticism that Muslim clerics, even the more moderate ones, aren’t seen as doing enough to condemn terrorism.

"Quran does not endorse terrorism in any way. And so we must make it a point to propagate this during speeches everywhere, including Friday afternoon prayers," said Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangi Maheli, the Naib Imam of Eidgah Aishbagh and a member of the executive committee of All-India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Rasheed said the recently launched campaign is already getting under the skin of terror groups.

Tags: religion, india, muslims

"People Are Pedaling Faster to Stay in the Same Place"

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:27:11 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.ipsnews.net

HALIFAX, Canada, May 20 (IPS) - In early May, Statistics Canada, the government's official number crunchers, released what was billed as a landmark report titled "Income Inequality and Redistribution in Canada: 1976 to 2004". The report was based on census data from the 1980s to 2005 and it analysed take-home pay and standards of living for families and individuals.

Upon the report's release, the fiscally conservative Globe and Mail newspaper began a feature article by noting "the incomes of most residents" show "perhaps the greatest stagnancy in the developed world" with "the nation's poorest falling further and further behind."

Armine Yalnizyan, a well-known economist, says the data shouldn't come as a major surprise. She authored a groundbreaking report in 1998 on income inequality in Canada, entitled "The Growing Gap". In 2002, Yalnizyan became first recipient of the Atkinson Foundation Award for Economic Justice and received the Morley Gunderson Prize in 2003.

Tags: canada, statistics, economy

Project Digitizes Works From the Golden Age of Timbuktu

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:15:37 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

From Timbuktu to here, to reverse the expression, the written words of the legendary African oasis are being delivered by electronic caravan. A lode of books and manuscripts, some only recently rescued from decay, is being digitized for the Internet and distributed to scholars worldwide.

These are works of law and history, science and medicine, poetry and theology, relics of Timbuktu’s golden age as a crossroads in Mali for trade in gold, salt and slaves along the southern edge of the Sahara. If the name is now a synonym for mysterious remoteness, the literature attests to Timbuktu’s earlier role as a vibrant intellectual center.

In recent years, thousands of these leather-bound books and fragile manuscripts have been recovered from family archives, private libraries and storerooms. The South African government is financing construction of a library in Timbuktu to house more than 30,000 of the books.

Aluka.org

Tags: timbuktu, africa, manuscripts

Art inspired by 2000 year-old child mummy

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:05:37 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.ox.ac.uk

An Egyptian mummy of an infant boy has been loaned by Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum to be displayed in an art exhibition inspired by his death 2000 years ago.

Angela Palmer’s exhibition Unravelled is unique because of the highly unusual techniques that she has developed over the past few years. In July 2006, Angela put the mummy through a CT scanner at the MRI unit of the John Radcliffe Hospital to find out what was under the bandages.

The 2,000 year old mummy from the Ashmolean Museum was carefullly put through a CT scanner

Little was known about the 3ft mummy before the scans. It was excavated by a British archaeologist in 1888 and housed in the Ashmolean Museum. However, after the scanning it was discovered to be a boy aged between four and seven and radiologists are still studying the cause of his death.

Tags: art, mummy, museum

Teen sex study doubts "technical virginity"

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:39:28 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: "However, our research shows that this supposed substitution of oral sex for vaginal sex is largely a myth. There is no good evidence that teens who have not had intercourse engage in oral sex with a series of partners."

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

A survey examining sexual practices of U.S. teens has undercut the notion that many engage in oral sex rather than intercourse to stay "technically" virgins, researchers said on Tuesday.

The findings, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, were based on answers by 2,271 females and males age 15 to 19 in 2002 in response to a government survey.

The researchers found about 55 percent of the teens said they had engaged in oral sex but that this practice was far more common among those who also had engaged in vaginal sex.

Teens said they began vaginal and oral sex at roughly the same time -- by six months after first vaginal intercourse, 82 percent had also engaged in oral sex, according to the study.

"There is a widespread belief that teens engage in nonvaginal forms of sex, especially oral sex, as a way to be sexually active while still claiming that, technically, they are virgins," Laura Lindberg of the Guttmacher Institute in New York, who led the study, said in a statement.

Tags: teens, united states, sex, survey

Diver Finds 385-Year-Old Gold Toothpick

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:13:35 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.cbsnews.com

Search Of Shipwrecked Spanish Galleon Off Florida Coast Yields Luxurious Grooming Tool

Experts found a tiny gold combined toothpick and earwax spoon, believed to be more than 385 years old, during the search for a shipwrecked Spanish galleon off the Florida Keys.

The late 16th or early 17th century grooming tool, which weighs only about an ounce, was located Sunday by Blue Water Ventures diver Chris Rackley as he searched the area about 22 feet below the surface and 40 miles west of Key West. The value could exceed $100,000.

The divers, who are searching the shipwreck trail of the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita that sank in a 1622 hurricane, also recovered ceramic pieces, spikes, ships' fittings, rigging elements and two skeleton keys.

Tags: ship, discovery

Youth burns religious books

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:42:59 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a
neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.

"The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue," he said.

The newspaper Maariv reported Tuesday that hundreds of yeshiva students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched.

"Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were," he said.

Tags: religion

Clipmarks | arifsali's clips

Destruction of Iraq's past

Baha'is worried about Iranian community

A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging

Iranian Clerics Tell the President to Leave the Theology to Them

Museum unveils timely natural disaster exhibit

Agency says 120,00 kids have month to live

Just wanted to go do it in the woods!

Scientists find first dinosaur tracks on Arabian Peninsula

Footprints of sauropod herd, ornithopod preserved in Yemen

At Friday prayers, imams to slam terror

"People Are Pedaling Faster to Stay in the Same Place"

Project Digitizes Works From the Golden Age of Timbuktu

Related

Web Link

Aluka.org

Art inspired by 2000 year-old child mummy

Teen sex study doubts "technical virginity"

Diver Finds 385-Year-Old Gold Toothpick

Search Of Shipwrecked Spanish Galleon Off Florida Coast Yields Luxurious Grooming Tool

Youth burns religious books