Gary Monro’s blog

From The Times: A 33 year old Egyptian, Magdi el Nashar, has been arrested in Cairo. He is believed to have had a central role in the manufacture of the London bombs. Nashar completed a biochemistry PhD at Leeds University in February this year. His flat contained traces of a potent and volatile explosive nicknamed Mother of Satan.

From The Telegraph: 18 year old Hasib Hussain, who blew himself up on the No 30 bus, was caught on CCTV a couple of hours before the detonation. The rucksack on his back (see picture) contains the bomb.

From the same newspaper the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, believes the investigation into the London bombs will uncover a “clear al-Qa’eda link”. He also said there was a “very strong possibility” of further terrorist attacks following the blasts last week which left at least 54 dead.

The Scotsman revealed that Pakistani authorities believe one of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, may have been recruited during studies at a school in Pakistan run by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Guardian says right-wing extremists and football hooligans are joining forces to exact revenge on Muslims. Some are also planning marches.

The paper also reports that the fourth bomber is Jamaican. Lyndsey Germail or Jamal. Other papers suggest this man is living with his Muslim girlfriend and they have a child.

I have so little interest in sport generally that I’m not even going to create a sport category for this post - it’ll die of loneliness there - but I am going to post this on the football (soccer) off-side rule change anyway because even I - who only watches football every two years (Euro and World Cups) - can see how much it’s going to change the game.

If you have no idea about the offside rule then take a look here for an explanation with diagrams. If you have no interest in the offside rule then, er, don’t.

Basically, the linesman will not call offside until a player in an offside position actually touches the ball. In other words, half your team can be offside when the ball is played but if none of them touch it then there’s no foul. If the player who does touch the ball is onside at the time then it’s play-on.

That’s going to spread the game out. Expect to see goal hanging. And, for the first few weeks of the season, expect robotic defenders to mount offside traps only to realise as soon as they’ve done it that these things no longer work…

Despite the fact that people like me - and, possibly, people like you - are under the impression that most of what we think the world needs to know it already knows it seems that this isn’t the case at all.

Apparently there’s absolutely loads of stuff out there just waiting for some egg-head to come along and prod and probe it a bit.

Science Magazine is celebrating its 125th birthday by producing a list of the top 125 questions that science needs to answer. It is, in their words, a ’survey of our scientific ignorance, a broad swath of questions that scientists themselves are asking.’

They divided the questions into two groups: the top 25 and then the next 100.

Here is a couple of the top 25 that caught my eye. You can find the top 25 - with brief accompanying articles - here. Once you’ve answered that lot, here are the next 100. Click on ‘more’, below, for my own comments on a couple of the questions raised…

(more…)

British Muslim leader Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi, head of the Muslim College, has said he has been refused entry to the US without explanation, says the BBC.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had information indicating Dr Badawi was “inadmissible”.

Spokeswoman Janet Rapaport said that when problems arose at JFK airport, Dr Badawi voluntarily withdrew his application to enter the country and returned home.

“We cannot disclose the information which led to the application being inadmissible because of privacy rules,” she added.

So I’ve carried out a bit of a Google search to find out what this fanatic has been up to and drew a bit of a blank. Apart from some unfortunate choices in head gear (see picture) he seems fairly innocuous. In fact, if there’s anything slightly notable about him it’s this. He’s decreed Muslims can drink Lucozade. The fiend…

The dispute over the drinks is that many normal products - like soft drinks - contain minute traces of alcohol or pig products. The Muslim ban on consuming these substances makes life tricky for your average Muslim.

“I see no harm in consuming Ribena and Lucozade (popular British juice and energy drinks),” wrote Council chair Zaki Badawi, “which contain traces of ethyl alcohol and animal ingredients that do not bear their original qualities and do not change the taste, colour or smell of the product.” Badawi cited the documented practice of the Prophet Muhammad of soaking raisins and dates in water and drinking the result after three days.

He’s pretty kosher on extremism too. His suggestions for dealing with it will find favour with many of us:

Dr Zaki Badawi, the principal of the Muslim College, said he believed the Home Office should stop giving priority entry to Britain to clerics who speak no English and cannot control extremists taking over their mosques.

Dr Badawi told The Times newspaper militant groups were running after-school classes to teach younger children a radical brand of Islam.

He said the Taleban-style indoctrination, unchecked by mosques, was creating extremists and should be closed down.

Dr Badawi said the Home Office and Muslim communities were reluctant to take action against the hardliners.

I guess the US authorities think they know something the rest of us don’t. Can’t think what it might be though.