Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric has suggested that women who do not wear headscarves are to blame for sexual assaults, comparing them to uncovered pieces of meat. Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, the mufti of Sydney’s biggest mosque, said in a sermon that sexual assaults might not happen if women wore a hijab and stayed at home. ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the back yard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem,’ Hilaly said during a Ramadan sermon, according to a newspaper translation. Keysar Trad, Hilaly’s spokesman, said the Egyptian-born cleric had been lecturing about 500 followers on the sin of adultery. ‘He’s talking about those people who prey on others, whether men or women, who seek to engage in sexual conduct outside of marriage, and do so through alluring types of attire,’ he said. The meat comments, Trad said, referred to prostitutes. Strained relations Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commission […]
Talking for four hours a day could make you infertile, scientists warn. Mobile phones may be causing widespread damage to sperm production in men with potentially devastating consequences for global fertility rates, a study suggests. Microwaves emitted by the phones reduce the number, mobility and quality of sperm by almost half in the heaviest users, to the point where some men may become infertile, scientists say. Almost a billion people around the world are using mobile phones and the number is growing fast. Even a small effect on fertility caused by their use could result in millions of men being rendered childless. Concern has grown about the effects of mobile phones for a decade, but very little hard evidence of the dangers has been presented. Scientists from the Reproductive Research Centre at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio, tested the sperm of 364 men who were being investigated for infertility with their partners. They found that men who were the heaviest users of mobile phones – more than four hours a day – had the lowest sperm counts at 50 million per millilitre and the least healthy sperm, judged by its mobility and the proportion […]
In an unusual foray into electoral politics, 75 science professors at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have signed a letter endorsing a candidate for the Ohio Board of Education. The professors’ favored candidate is Tom Sawyer, a former congressman and onetime mayor of Akron. They hope Mr. Sawyer, a Democrat, will oust Deborah Owens Fink, a leading advocate of curriculum standards that encourage students to challenge the theory of evolution. Elsewhere in Ohio, scientists have also been campaigning for candidates who support the teaching of evolution and have recruited at least one biologist from out of state to help. Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve who organized the circulation of the letter, said almost 90 percent of the science faculty on campus this semester had signed it. The signers are anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, physicists and psychologists. The letter says Dr. Owens Fink has ‘attempted to cast controversy on biological evolution in favor of an ill-defined notion called Intelligent Design that courts have ruled is religion, not science.’ In an interview, Dr. Krauss said, ‘This is not some group of fringe scientists or however they are being portrayed by the creationist […]
STAMFORD, CT. – After four months of tabulating data from all 50 states, the results are in. Thanks to the efforts of 2.2 million volunteers across America, more than 37 million plastic bottles and more than 2.5 million scrap tires were diverted from the waste stream during Keep America Beautiful’s Great American CleanupTM, the nation’s largest community improvement program which takes place annually from March 1 through May 31. These highlights were among the official results announced today by Great American Cleanup Managing Director Gail Cunningham, and were emblematic of the scale of this national grassroots effort to clean up, green up, fix up and revitalize neighborhoods from coast to coast. ‘Through the Great American Cleanup, Keep America Beautiful’s mission to improve communities is put in to action,’ said G. Raymond Empson, president of Keep America Beautiful. ‘We know that our participating organizations are bringing a sense of ownership and pride to their respective communities, making them safer, cleaner and more economically viable.’ Across America, volunteers removed more than 228 million pounds of litter and debris. The volunteers, registering more than 7.5 million volunteer hours, collected 10 percent more litter and debris than the all-time record of […]
BERLIN — Germany will on Wednesday adopt the most radical restructuring of its military since 1945, turning the Bundeswehr into an international intervention force, according to an internal cabinet strategy paper obtained by the Financial Times. The paper, which will be endorsed at a special cabinet meeting in the defence ministry, is the product of a review – the first of its kind since 1994 – begun by Angela Merkel, chancellor, after she won office last November. It will see Germany’s military officially abandon its primary postwar task of defending the country’s borders in favour of a more robust role for German troops on international missions. The military’s most sensitive international deployment since the second world war came this month when the German navy took control of patrolling Lebanese waters to stop weapons smugglers. The military has taken part in other international missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, for example, but has largely avoided direct involvement in war zones. The 133-page strategy paper argues that the capacity of the Bundeswehr must be expanded to allow for the deployment of a total of 14,000 troops to five international missions simultaneously. This will be achieved by drawing troops previously […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
