Sheik Muhammad is a rare voice of intellectual honesty in the Muslim clerical world. One of the less-noted pitfalls of merging mosque and state is that interpreting the Quran often has more to do with politics than genuine scholarship. This is especially true in countries like Egypt, which keep a firm grip on the official version of religion in an attempt to marginalize those who want to replace the secular state with an Islamic one....
Over the past two decades, other countries–particularly Japan and Germany–have developed curricula emphasizing advanced math and science in order to give their students the skills necessary to compete in an increasingly technological global economy. During the same period, American schools have swung from one extreme to another, from the open classrooms of the ’70s to the back-to-basics movement of the 1980s. Says the University of Wisconsin’s Thomas Romberg, an expert in worldwide math education, “We’re acting as if America is still an agricultural society, and that all the mothers are home with their children....
The royal welcome–and unconventional sweeteners–were all part of Brown’s campaign to transform Oakland, the gritty, “other” city by the bay, into a technology center. With commercial real-estate prices 25 percent lower than in San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley–and with relatively affordable housing stock–Oakland has made itself an increasingly attractive location for start-ups. More than 300 companies, ranging from unknown biotech outfits to webvan.com, the struggling Internet grocery service, have come to Oakland since Brown, California ex-governor and two-time presidential candidate, became mayor in 1998....
It’s not hard to see why. For years, Arab-Americans have been virtually invisible in presidential campaigns. In 1984 Walter Mondale returned campaign contributions from Arab-American leaders to avoid alienating Jewish voters. In 1996 Bob Dole canceled a meeting with Arab-American activists for similar reasons. But in this year’s tight race, Arab-Americans are reveling in newfound power. Their votes could prove decisive in key states like Michigan, Ohio and New Jersey, where many of the country’s 1....
Lately, Samsung has been in trouble due to recent unfavorable events. Burning of Samsung Note 7 in an airplane, exploding of a washing machine etc. But the one that affected the brand’s image most was Samsung’s negligence. People don’t trust the brand anymore. Many flight companies have banned Samsung Note 7 on airplanes due to the explosion fiasco. See Also: 7 Freaky iPhone Gadgets That Will Blow Your Mind!...
Is this some kind of a dumb joke? Not to Charles Southwood, the 53-year-old head of Death Tobacco. He says the product is more than just a smokable pet rock-he hopes it will persuade smokers to stop. “In most polite society,” he says, “people would no more smoke than chew tobacco, but most advertisements present the opposite view”-Of people enjoying themselves. Still, Southwood is obviously not hoping to put himself out of business....
NEWSWEEK: What made you want to blow yourself and other people up six years ago? I was motivated by all the suffering that was going on around me, and at the time it seemed the right thing to do. Palestinians were getting killed inside their own homes, farmers were unable to work on their own lands, innocent children were being oppressed. All of this created an atmosphere of violence....
With the help of Julian Mitchell’s script, Altman makes you see the brothers as two sides of one organism, struggling to get by and straining to give rise to a new kind of painting. As Vincent, Tim Roth takes you into the painter’s isolation; by the film’s end, we can see in his eyes that Vincent has no company but his own fervor. Paul Rhys shows that what burns in Vincent burns in Theo, too, wrecking his attempts to be a family man and a suave esthete....
Released last month, A Plague Tale: Requiem is a direct sequel to Asobo Studio’s 2019 survival horror game A Plague Tale: Innocence. Much like its predecessor, it’s a stealth-heavy single-player adventure which was met with both critical acclaim and fan adoration. Earlier this year, Asobo Studio partnered with French media conglomerate Mediawan on a TV adaptation of A Plague Tale: Innocence starring Millie Bobby Brown, best known as Eleven from Stranger Things....
When I first heard that the war had begun, I thought of President Bush. In a movie, people run around during a crisis, picking up telephones and yelling instructions. In a real crisis, the top people are very much alone. Many officials head for the foxholes, occasionally throwing out memoranda designed to absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Usually there are only two or three people willing to make tough decisions....
Rose and Ginny are two of three daughters of a powerful and revered Iowa farmer named Larry Cook (Jason Robards). The third daughter, Caroline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), has become a lawyer in the city. The tragic events in Smiley’s novel, as in ““Lear,’’ are set off when the patriarch quixotically announces his plans to divide his land among his three offspring. But Smiley turns Shakespeare on its head–for the heroines here are those arch-villainesses Goneril and Regan, and the Lear figure is a malevolent patriarch who has inflicted ghastly psychological damage on his children....
But in the days after the crisis ended, questions arose about whether the Taliban was actually part of the solution or part of the problem. Like the five unnamed hijackers, the extremist Islamic movement wants to expel India from Kashmir. Some of the 159 released passengers said that the hijackers acquired additional weapons after the plane landed in Afghanistan. During the standoff the gunmen also dramatically increased their ransom demands, asking for $200 million, among other things....
It has been 31 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayer was unconstitutional. But Knox thought that he’d found some room to maneuver. Last year a federal appeals court ruled that students could lead prayers at a Texas high-school graduation. Therefore he concluded that students at Wingfield High could do the same–every day. When student-government leaders put the idea to the student body in early November, the vote was 490 to 96 in favor....
“Genome” is not a book about the efforts to sequence DNA. Rather, this “whistle-stop tour of some of the more interesting sites along the genome” is a book about the human condition, and the biology that underlies it. Ridley takes the common metaphor of genome-as-book more literally than most, structuring his volume in 23 chapters to mirror the 23 chromosomes in a human cell. But chromosomes are largely unorganized jumbles of often-unrelated genes, interspersed with reams of noncoding “junk” DNA (not unlike the advertising pages one has to wade through to get to the articles in a fashion magazine)....
Sixteen years later, her designs are on the racks at Bergdorf’s and Saks and on the backs of Julia and that other Reese. In the process, this 38-year-old Detroit native is doing something no black woman in America ever has–she’s thriving atop the fashion world. “It’s wonderful to see this chocolate girl doing her thing with the big guys,” says celebrity publicist Marvet Britto, who’ll be under the tent in New York City when Reese unveils her spring collection Sept....
Belknap County Attorney Edward J. Fitzgerald III says he has reasons for offering a plea bargain but refuses to elaborate. Even if he offers LaForest a deal, he adds, a judge could reject it. The issue will be discussed at a pretrial conference later this month. In the meantime Holway, whose jaw was broken during the attack, wants to use the publicity to roll back the stigma surrounding victims of rape....
However, it was the side in favor of AI that came out top, achieving a narrow victory by scoring votes from just over half the audience. According to Fortune, the AI’s arguments were extracted from over 1,100 submissions sent in to IBM the week before the debate, which were categorized as being in favor or opposed to AI, or discarded entirely as being irrelevant to the debate. From these, IBM’s Project Debater searched and condensed the strongest and most diverse arguments to repeat when given a short opening sentence as a prompt....
The New York Daily News, citing unidentified MLB sources, reported that the sides finalized an agreement late Friday. A-Rod will likely make his debut Monday during the ALCS Game 3 pregame show. . MLB PLAYOFFS 2015: Best 50 players | Each team’s worst postseason memory Rodriguez, suspended all last season by MLB for steroids use, will join a Fox studio crew that already includes former MLB player and manager Pete Rose, who remains on baseball’s permanently ineligible list for gambling on baseball....
Is the windfall a “tax rebate”? If that’s what officials and the media call it, expect most of the dough to get stashed in bank accounts or to be used to pay down credit card balances, not for new spending. The latter is what Congress and President Bush hope for, since boosting consumer spending, which makes up two-thirds of the economy, may help avoid an economic downturn. But if the money is labeled a “tax bonus,” then it might indeed be used for a few splurges....
