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A new online magazine purportedly posted by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq has launched an effort to recruit Muslims to rid Iraq of infidels and apostates — its names for Americans and their Iraqi partners.

The colorful, well-designed magazine is named Zurwat al-Sanam, Arabic for ”The Tip of the Camel’s Hump” — a reference among Islamic militants to ”the epitome of belief and virtuous activity.”

The inaugural 43-page issue was posted two days after Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for an attack Monday against police and army recruits that killed 125 people in Hillah, south of Baghdad. The group has also said it was behind car bombings and attacks that killed 14 police officers Wednesday. Zarqawi’s organization has been blamed for many of the bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings in Iraq.

Washington-based counterterrorism specialist Evan Kohlmann said the magazine aims at ”conveying the sense that the organization is professional, capable, and really understands what they’re doing.”

It was designed as ”an attempt to refute the idea that Zarqawi and these people are desperate. . . . It shows that these people have time on their hands and don’t have to worry about mobility,” he said.

Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the designated ”media coordinator” for Zarqawi’s group, posted the magazine on the Internet late Wednesday. Saved as an attachment, it has appeared on at least two extremist Islamic websites that have previously posted Al Qaeda statements and claims of responsibility.

I wonder if they’ll do a swimsuit edition…

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More states are requiring students to learn about managing money, but personal finance remains a fringe topic in schools and a major source of federal concern.

Seven states mandate that students take a course about basic finances to graduate high school, according to 2004 survey results released Thursday by the private National Council on Economic Education. That’s up from 2002, when just four states required such courses.

In the standards they set for schools, most states say they want money matters to be taught — 38 states include the ideas of saving, investing, risk management and other finance themes in their standards or guidelines, an increase from 31 states two years earlier. But the survey found many states don’t enforce the standards, let alone require entire courses.

We don’t want to let women have abortions AND we don’t want to teach kids about birth control. So, too, with the bankruptcy bill: We want to prevent people who face unbearable debt from ever getting a second chance AND we don’t want to even bother teaching kids how to avoid such circumstances in the first place. Typical.

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A national group of Christian lawyers is appealing to church leaders to join them in lobbying against the bankruptcy reform bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

The lawyers say the legislation runs contrary to the forgiveness of debt and charity required by the Bible.

“As Christian attorneys, we strongly believe that it was never God’s intention to create a society where indebtedness was a crime or a badge of dishonor,” Christian members of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys wrote in a letter sent Feb. 26 to hundreds of church leaders across the nation.

The bill, which is receiving Senate debate, would make it harder for most people to receive full debt cancellation under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy laws. More people would have to repay at least part of their debt, based on income.

The lawyers note that in the Old Testament, God did not outlaw borrowing and lending, but provided that loans would become discharged every seven years.

In response, Grassley said Congress could not be bound by biblical mandates because “the Constitution does not provide for a theocracy.”

“I can’t listen to Christian lawyers because I would be imposing the Bible on a diverse population,” Grassley said.

So gay marriage isn’t a problem either, right? Right?

If you don’t think the Web is a powerful, earth-shattering tool, I hope you think differently after reading this.

A snowman holding a can of beer sits on a bench in Vondelpark, in the center of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday March 2, 2005. According to the Dutch Weather Service the Netherlands was hit by the heaviest snowfall in 20 years, causing schools in the north of the country to close and disrupting traffic. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Philippines’ Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit, seen here holding contraception pills, revealed that as many as 30 percent of couples in the Philippines are unaware that having sex can result in babies(AFP/File/Joel Nito)

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As more people lose loved ones to the relentless violence, Iraqis are becoming increasingly angry at insurgents, even staging public demonstrations condemning militants.

While it is impossible to precisely gauge public opinion, it is clear many Iraqis have grown tired of two years of insecurity, and some are directing their wrath at those behind the bombings and attacks.

“I demand that they be put in the zoo along with the other scavengers, because that is where they belong,” said Bassam Yassin, who lost his brother to an insurgent attack in Mosul. He spoke Wednesday after relatives of victims protested outside a police station in that northern city.

Iraq’s majority Shiite Arabs and ethnic Kurds have long criticized the largely Sunni Arab insurgency, portraying the militants as terrorists, loyalists of the Saddam Hussein regime and foreign fighters.

But the insurgents are now also being criticized publicly by prominent Sunnis, including opponents of the U.S. presence.

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Many women are worse off today than they were 10 years ago, women around the world say in a new report that accuses governments of failing to keep their pledge to achieve gender equality.

Governments worldwide have adopted a “piecemeal and incremental” approach to women’s rights that cannot achieve the goals in the landmark platform of action adopted at a 1995 U.N. conference in Beijing, it says.

The report is the work of women’s rights activists in 150 countries. Compiled by the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, an international advocacy group based in New York, it was released Thursday to coincide with a high-level U.N. meeting on implementing the platform.

The message was clear, starting with the title: “Beijing Betrayed.”

“The women of the world don’t need any more words from their governments — they want action, they want resources and they want governments to protect and advance women’s human rights,” the report said.

The women’s report sounded very different from the speeches this week at the U.N. conference, where governments have been touting their records on women’s rights.

“The realities women document often contrast sharply with the officials’ reports,” June Zeitlin, the executive director of Women’s Environment and Development, said.

“What we see are powerful trends — growing poverty, inequality, growing militarization, and fundamentalist opposition to women’s rights,” she said. “These trends are harming millions of women worldwide.”

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The EU software patent directive was scheduled to be adopted next Monday, but a last-minute move by Denmark could now derail the process.

Opponents of the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive are set to launch a last-minute intervention to try and prevent it being adopted by the European Council.

The directive, which many claim will allow the widespread software patenting in Europe, is scheduled to appear on the agenda of a meeting of competition ministers on Monday 7 March.

As an A-item, the directive had once again been expected to be approved without debate, but it emerged late on Friday that Denmark will attempt to have the directive listed as a B-item at a later meeting instead. This means the text of the directive could be renegotiated, according to Florian Mueller, an anti-patent campaigner.

“If it works out like that this will be EU history. It is without precedent that anybody can specify that the EU council at the stage is unable to ratify a decision. But we have to understand that nothing is ever stable. We have to see what happens on Monday,” said Mueller.

Denmark’s representative at the meeting of ministers is compelled to ask for the change because of a vote by the Danish Parliament’s EU committee that came out in favour of seeking to reopen discussions. Denmark’s government is legally bound to adopt any parliamentary decisions regarding the EU.

Denmark’s move could provoke a domino effect, encouraging other countries such as Poland and Spain — who have concerns about the directive — to also push for renegotiation.

“This is like a chain reaction. Everyone has said ‘We don’t to be the only ones who spoil the party’,” said Mueller. “We are now seeing the dominoes collapsing all the way, but it looks like Denmark will be the first one to start the reaction.”

But other reports on Friday claimed that the directive will be adopted at Monday’s meeting.

A Luxemburg official told Reuters that competition ministers were expected to approve the directive as an A-item.

“We have not seen any change of heart on the part of any EU member,” said the official, whose country holds the European Union presidency.

See how fucked up Europe is? A majority of parliaments, including the European Parliament, is against. The European Commission doesn’t have to listen to them, (but hey, it’s a democracy!) and the Ministers are afraid of being seen as the first to cave in to whatever the people actually want. I suggest we scrap the entire system (beginning with the constitution) and start over.

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NASA’s Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit are identical twins – so alike that they even fooled NASA. Researchers have discovered that they sent the robots to Mars with an instrument meant for Opportunity inside Spirit and vice versa.

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Microsoft is aiming to have its first cluster version of Windows ready in time for a supercomputing conference this fall.

Software Architect Marvin Theimer said on Thursday that the company hopes to have a beta, or test version, by this summer, with the final version of Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition ready by the SC2005 supercomputing conference in November.

The company has not announced final pricing for the operating system, but Theimer said the additional computers, or nodes, of a cluster will be priced at a discount.

“When you buy a cluster, the price per node in the cluster is going to be reduced” compared to regular Windows, Theimer said in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum here. “We want to be competitive with something like Red Hat.”

I’ve always associated the word “cluster” with Windows. It’s just that I always had the same word directly following it..

[Quote...]

A U.S. armored vehicle in Iraq fired on a car carrying an Italian hostage who had just been freed Friday, wounding her and killing an Italian intelligence officer, said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
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Berlusconi, an ally of America who has kept troops in Iraq despite public opposition at home, immediately called on the U.S. ambassador in Italy to explain the incident.
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A spokesman for U.S.-led coalition forces in Baghdad confirmed the shooting, which wounded freed journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and said the car had approached a checkpoint “at a high rate of speed.”
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Berlusconi said U.S. troops took Sgrena to a U.S. military hospital, where she had a minor operation on her left shoulder to remove a piece of shrapnel. The two other intelligence agents in the car were also wounded, he said.
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The editor of Sgrena’s newspaper Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, said the secret service agent was killed when he threw himself over the freed hostage to protect her from U.S. fire, according to the Apcom news agency.
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“I believe we must have an explanation for such a serious incident, for which someone must take the responsibility,” he said.

Who said the Americans lacked a sense of irony?