ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 514
April 12, 2016
Al Qaeda Affiliate Claims Responsibility for Killing Bangladeshi Student
Photo credit: AP
By Syed Zain Al-Mahmood
An al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility for the killing of a secular activist in the capital Dhaka, fueling concerns international militant networks are gaining a foothold in the Muslim-majority South Asian country.
Nazimuddin Samad, a Bangladeshi law student who expressed secular views online, was attacked by unidentified assailants not far from his campus in southern Dhaka on Wednesday night and was left bleeding on the street, police said. Mr. Samad died after he was taken to a local hospital, according to police and doctors.
Al Qaeda In the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, claimed responsibility for the killing of Mr. Samad through a statement posted online Friday night, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a website that monitors Jihadist messages.
The statement said operatives of Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh—a banned al Qaeda-linked group—had carried out the attack on Mr. Samad in retaliation for “blasphemy against our beloved Prophet.”
“We don’t attack people for being atheist in their personal lives,” the statement said. “We only target those who deride Islam and the Prophet.”
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Syed Nurul Islam said officers were investigating “all possible motives” for Mr. Samad’s killing.
Bangladesh has experienced a wave of religiously motivated violence in recent months, including attacks against foreigners, ethnic minorities and secular bloggers and activists, most of which were claimed by Islamist militant groups linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Last year, Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh, also known as Ansar Bangla and Ansarullah Bangla Team, claimed responsibility for the killing of at least four secular bloggers and a publisher in the country. An Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer were also killed in attacks claimed by Islamic State.
Ansar Bangla started its operations in Bangladesh about 2012 as the Bangladesh arm of al Qaeda during a period of confrontation between secularists and Islamists in the country, although many members have switched allegiance to Islamic State since then, according to documents and video clips seen by The Wall Street Journal. The Bangladesh government banned Ansar Bangla last year under antiterrorism legislation.
Some security analysts believe extremist groups could be benefiting from political chaos in Bangladesh, caused by bitter confrontation between the ruling Awami League party and opposition political groups led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
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Air France Faces Backlash Over Veil Policy on Route to Iran
Photo credit: Getty Images
By Liam Stack
Air France moved to defuse a clash with part of its work force after the airline demanded that female employees wear veils on a new service to Iran, leading a union to accuse the company of “an attack on women.”
The company circulated a memo on March 18 that outlined the dress standards, including a requirement that women “wear a head scarf and a wide and long garment to conceal their forms” on their arrival in the country, according to the National Union of Flights Attendants.
The union responded with outrage, calling the instructions “an attack on freedom of conscience” and demanding that Air France allow female employees to refuse to work on the route to Tehran, which is scheduled to start on April 17.
On Monday, the company relented, saying the assignment would be voluntary.
The firestorm over Air France’s memo highlighted long-running anxieties in France over the role of Islam in public life, concerns that have grown more acute in the wake of Islamic State terror attacks in Paris and in Brussels. Some accused the company of disrespecting women’s rights, while others said it was surrendering to radical Islam.
But the airline pushed back, characterizing its memo simply as a reminder that the Iranian legal system strictly regulates how women can dress in public.
“The law of Iran imposes the wearing of a veil covering the hair in public places to all women on its territory,” the airline said in a statement to Le Monde, the French newspaper. “This obligation, which therefore does not apply during the flight, is respected by all international airlines serving the Republic of Iran.”
The airline told Le Monde that it has previously instructed female employees to wear conservative clothes, including veils, while in Saudi Arabia on its service. Female employees working on its earlier service to Iran, which ended in 2008, also followed Iranian laws on women’s attire while in the country.
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Bangladeshi al Qaeda wing declares war on atheists
Photo credit: AP
By Ivan Watson
Bangladeshi officials are investigating a claim of responsibility by al Qaeda’s wing in South Asia for the machete murder of a secular blogger in Dhaka.
“We are seriously looking into it,” said Anisul Huq, Bangladesh’s minister for law.
“Unless we are totally sure that this claim … is authentic, I don’t think we will be commenting on it.”
According to the jihadist monitoring group SITE, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claims that the movement’s Bangladesh branch “carried out an operation to slaughter” Nazimuddin Samad in the nation’s capital.
Bangladesh police say the 26-year-old writer and graduate student was ambushed by attackers Wednesday night. The attackers slashed Samad with machetes and shot him before escaping the scene on a motorcycle.
Police tell CNN they have yet to make any arrests in the wake of the murder.
In its statement, al Qaeda accused Samad of being an “enemy of Allah.” It lists three of Samad’s posts on Facebook going back to 2013 as examples of his insults against Islam.
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This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free.
Photo credit: The Washington Post
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Alexandra Elbakyan is a highbrow pirate in hiding.
The 27-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan is operating a searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers.
Elbakyan has kept herself beyond the reach of a federal judge who late last year issued an injunction against her site, noting that damages could total $150,000 per article — a sum that Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, a journal in her database, could help calculate. But she is not hiding from responsibility.
“There are many ways to argue that copyright infringement is not theft, but even if it is, it is justified in this case,” she said in an instant-message interview via Google. “All content should be copied without restriction. But for education and research, copyright laws are especially damaging.”
Elbakyan is pursuing a master’s degree in the history of science while pursuing the worldwide liberation of knowledge from, as she sees it, the tyranny of for-profit publishers. Her ideology was shaped growing up in a former Soviet republic where access to information and the Internet was difficult.
She has been compared to Robin Hood, although she said: “Sometimes I think it is not a good comparison, since what he was doing was illegal. And sharing books and research articles should not be illegal.”
Many academics, university librarians and longtime advocates for open scholarly research are closely following Elbakyan’s efforts. They think she is finally giving academic publishers their Napster moment, a reference to the illegal music-sharing service that disrupted and permanently altered the industry.
“While we don’t condone fraud and using illegal sources, I will say that I appreciate how she is shining a light on just how out-of-whack the system is of providing easy access to basic information that our universities and scholars need to advance science and research,” said Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC, an organization that advocates for open access to research. “This has been a problem for decades.”
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April 11, 2016
Giant Collision Might Have Formed The Moons Of Mars
Photo credit:
Composite image of Deimos (left) and Phobos (right). NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Phobos and Deimos, the small irregular moons of Mars, have fascinated astronomers for a long time, and it was previously believed they were passing asteroids captured by the Red Planet long ago. However, a new model challenges this idea and suggests that the satellites might actually be fragments of Mars itself.
Three Million Lives A Year Could be Saved For $5 Per Person
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Even cheap interventions could save millions of lives a year. Phloxii/Shutterstock
Close to 6 million children under the age of five died in 2015 of easily preventable or treatable diseases. Three hundred thousand women die from conditions related to pregnancy, most of which are similarly within our power to treat. More than half of these, along with huge numbers of still births, could be eliminated for a cost of less than $5 per person per year, according to a paper in The Lancet.
Should You Tape Over Your Webcam?
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What sorts of anti-spying measures are really necessary? Leonid Eremeychuk/Shutterstock
Hackers working for the forces of both good and evil have developed a pretty terrifying ability to sneak into our computers, phones, tablets and other devices. However, while cyber-geniuses may have the electronic weaponry needed to send firewalls crashing down, there’s one very rudimentary anti-spyware appliance that they still can’t overcome: a piece of tape.
Scientists In China Edit Human Embryos For The Second Time
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Strict rules and regulations are being put in place for the editing of human embryos. Deva Studio/Shutterstock
A research group in China has attempted to genetically edit human embryos to be resistant to HIV. The second group within a year to have announced such research, it shows proof of concept that the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR/Cas 9 can be used to modify human embryos. There are, however, a multitude of scientific and ethical issues to iron out before the widespread editing of human embryos could ever take place.
Reconsidering Body Worlds: Why Do We Still Flock To Exhibits Of Dead Human Beings?
Photo credit:
A morbid curiosity makes it hard not to be fascinated. Yelp Inc., CC BY-NC-ND
When Dr. Gunther von Hagens started using “plastination“ in the 1970s to preserve human bodies, he likely did not anticipate the wild success of the Body Worlds exhibitions that stem from his creation. Body Worlds has since hosted millions of visitors to its exhibits, including six spin-offs. The offshoots include a version on vital organs and another featuring plastinated animal remains.
How Microscopic Algae Are Helping Forensic Teams Catch Criminals
Photo credit:
Algae in water and soils can be a great forensic tool. Couperfield /shutterstock
From deserted fields and dark forests to murky rivers and concrete jungles, environments can leave traces of physical evidence on a criminal. This principle has been well known to crime scene investigators (both real and fictional) since the the late 1800s. However, figuring out what the most reliable pieces of evidence are – and how to best detect and analyse them – can be difficult.
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