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Pak girl who dared Taliban injured in militant attack
Maldivian ex-Prez freed after court appearance
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Pussy Riot prize nomination stirs row in German town
The German town where Martin Luther helped inspire the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago has drawn accusations of honouring blasphemy for nominating Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot for a freedom of speech prize.
A French and an American scientist won the Nobel Prize on Tuesday for finding ways to measure quantum particles without destroying them, which could make it possible to build a new kind of computer far more powerful than any seen before. Serge Haroche of France (L) and American David Wineland found ways to manipulate the very smallest particles of matter and light to observe strange behaviour that previously could only be imagined in equations and thought experiments.
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Pak girl who dared Taliban injured in militant attack
A 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who spoke out against the atrocities of militants in their former stronghold of Swat was in a precarious condition on Tuesday after she was shot in the head during an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Malala Yousufzai, the first recipient of Pakistan's National Peace Award for Youth, was hit by two bullets when militants fired at her inside a school bus at Mingora, the main town of the Swat Valley located 160 km from Islamabad. One bullet hit her in the head. She was taken to a local hospital and then airlifted to a military hospital in Peshawar, where doctors told the media that she was admitted to the intensive care unit. Following a detailed check up by surgeons, official sources said surgery would not be possible immediately due to a swelling on Malala's skull. The bullet that hit Malala on the head travelled downwards and was lodged close to her backbone, sources said. Doctors had opted to wait and watch, and sending her abroad could save her life, the sources added. Doctors earlier said the bullet had penetrated Malala's skull near the eyebrow but missed her brain. Two other girls were hit by bullets in the attack that occurred a short distance from Malala's school at 12.15 pm. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for the attack in phone calls to journalists in the country's northwest. He said Malala was targeted because of her "pro-West" views and for "negative propaganda" against the Taliban. Ihsan said the girl would "not be spared" for her opposition to the Taliban and would be targeted again if she survived. "She was pro-West, she was speaking against the Taliban and she was calling President Obama her idol," Ihsan was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune. "She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas," Ihsan claimed. In March, Ihsan had told the media that Malala and social worker Shad Begum were on the militants' "hit list" for backing a "secular system" in Swat. Witnesses said one of the two middle-aged attackers stopped the school bus and asked other girls to identify Malala before he opened fire. Malala had emerged as an unlikely champion of peace in the former Taliban stronghold of Swat after she wrote about the atrocities of the militants in a blog for BBC Urdu under the pseudonym of Gul Makai.
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Maldivian ex-Prez freed after court appearance
Male, October 9 A day after he was dramatically arrested, the prosecution submitted a total of 19 witnesses against Nasheed, along with material evidence of audio and video clips, letters and other documents. The defence lawyers said that they needed a month to study the material evidences but the judges gave 25 days and fixed the next hearing for November 4. Nasheed, 45, was let off after the court's session. He was arrested in Gaaf Dhaal Atoll Faresmathoda yesterday morning following an arrest warrant to produce him in court to face charges over the arrest of Judge Abdulla Mohamed during his tenure as President. Nasheed had been kept in custody overnight at Dhoonidhoo detention facility. He was forced to resign in February, following weeks of street protests against the arrest of the judge. — PTI
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Pussy Riot prize nomination stirs row in German town Berlin, October 9 Politicians in Lutherstadt Wittenberg have recommended Pussy Riot for the national "Fearless Word" prize in honour of Luther, a monk excommunicated and outlawed after nailing 95 theses to a church door in 1517 and criticising the mighty Catholic Church. Delegates from 16 German towns with links to Luther will decide in November on the winner of the 10,000 euro prize. However, Wittenberg town council's nomination has stirred outrage among many Germans, both Protestants and Catholics, who object to the band's staging of their punk protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin in a revered Orthodox Church. "It would be a disastrous signal if our town's nomination of Pussy Riot were to win the Luther Prize," said Friedrich Schorlemmer, a local Protestant theologian and widely respected civil rights activist in former Communist East Germany. "A Luther town should not honour blasphemy," he told the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily, adding that both the band's name and its lyrics were objectionable. Three members of Pussy Riot were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in August and are in jail after staging a "punk prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Church and asking the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin. In response to the outcry from theologians and politicians to the town's decision, Wittenberg council is looking at options for revoking the nomination, a council spokeswoman said. "The nomination was made as there was a feeling that it was legitimate for the band to be provocative and break a taboo," said the spokeswoman, adding the council had sought a public debate before a vote last month but that had failed to take off. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative ally Ruprecht Polenz, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag lower house, said he opposed the nomination. "(Pussy Riot) accepted they were hurting religious feelings to deliver a political message. That should not be recommended," Polenz said. — Reuters
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Physics Nobel for quantum computing men
Stockholm, October 9 Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland, both 68, found ways to manipulate the very smallest particles of matter and light to observe strange behaviour that previously could only be imagined in equations and thought experiments. Wineland has described his own work as a "parlour trick" that performed the seemingly magical feat of putting an object in two places at once. Other scientists praised the achievements as bringing to life the wildest dreams of science fiction. "The Nobel laureates have opened the door to a new era of experimentation with quantum physics by demonstrating the direct observation of individual quantum particles without destroying them," said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded them the 8 million crown ($1.2 million) Nobel Prize in Physics. "Perhaps the quantum computer will change our everyday lives in this century in the same radical way as the classical computer did in the last century." Haroche said he was walking in the street with his wife when he recognised the Swedish country code on the incoming call to inform him of the award. "I saw the area code 46, then I sat down," he told reporters in Sweden by telephone. "First I called my children, then I called my closest colleagues, without whom I would never have won this prize," he said. "This year's Nobel Prize recognises some of the most incredible experimental tests of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics," said Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics at the University of Surrey in Britain. Quantum physics studies the behaviour of the fundamental building blocks of the universe at a scale smaller than atoms, when tiny particles act in strange ways that can only be described with advanced mathematics. — Reuters
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