DEQA HUSSEN is the mother of Abdirizak Warsame, one of ten Minnesota Somalis indicted in the trial of young men allegedly recruited by Islamic State (IS), and one of six who have already pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide material support to IS. A mother of eight, she has urged members of the Somali community to stop denying the danger that IS poses to their children and to work with the FBI. This has made her enemies within the Somali community and led to tensions with her own children.
On May 25th Mr Warsame testified against his former friends, Guled Omar, Abdirahman Daud and Mohamed Farah, who didn’t agree to a plea deal and are on trial for attempting to join IS and commit murder abroad. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison. (The six who pleaded guilty face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison; the tenth of the indicted Somalis is presumed to be in Syria.) Mr Warsame was about to resume his testimony when his sister, Sahra Warsame, was handcuffed and led away after a noisy row with her mother. Ms Warsame once dated Mr Daud and wanted to show solidarity by sitting with the defendants’ families...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1RIXNjv
LONG before people started dumping large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, the planet was producing—and managing—such emissions rather well all on its own. Volcanic eruptions release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, putting even the dirtiest smokestacks in the shade. According to new research, another terrifying natural phenomenon plays a role in storing carbon.
Geologists have long known that CO2 from big volcanic eruptions has in the past triggered a greenhouse effect which raised temperatures, drove evaporation, increased rainfall and then dropped rain that is rich in carbonic acid onto surface rocks, resulting in much of the carbon from the droplets getting locked away as layers of carbonate in the ground. They suspected that earthquakes made things worse, by causing landslides that destroy large amounts of trees and vegetation. The carbon stored in dead plant tissues would then escape into the atmosphere through oxidation.
Not so, reckons a report in Geology by Zhangdong Jin of the Institute of Earth Environment in China and Robert Hilton of Durham University in England. The pair suspected something else...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1U7VQ1P
TIME is running out for PC users who have delayed taking advantage of Microsoft’s free offer to upgrade their computers from Windows 7 or 8.1 to the latest all-singing-and-dancing version of the Redmond company's operating system. Doughty souls who have stuck with Windows 8 will first have to upgrade to Windows 8.1 before being able to participate in the deal. However, come July 29th, anyone wishing to upgrade to Windows 10 will have to pay upwards of $119 for the privilege. To avoid the expense, registered users of Windows 7 or 8.1 (Windows XP or Vista do not qualify) should download a free copy of Windows 10 from microsoftstore.com before the cut-off date. Alternatively, they can finally respond to the pop-up message that has been nagging recalcitrant users to do so for the better part of a year.
The question is, should they? As this column has argued before, upgrading any PC or tablet running Windows 8.1 to the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system is a no-brainer. Windows 10 is everything (and more) its ill-conceived predecessor should have been in the first place.
But that is not necessarily true for Windows 7. Over the...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1OYJIP3
THAT there is debate among conservative thinkers about whether the Republican nominee might in fact be a fascist is quite a thing. Andrew Sullivan thinks that to apply the label to Donald Trump might be an insult to fascism. Robert Kagan thinks Mr Trump is a precursor to a 1930s revival in politics. The problem with the comparison is that it comes with an accusation of impending genocide that overshadows whatever enlightenment might come from making it. Mr Trump is not a fascist, if by that you mean a successor to Mussolini or...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1WV46IC
HOURS after a Russian airliner—Metrojet flight 9268—crashed in the Sinai Peninsula last October, killing 224 people, the Egyptian affiliate of Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility. Less than a week later, Britain said it suspected that a bomb was the cause. American officials concurred, fingering IS. Two weeks after that, Russia concluded that a “terror act” brought down the plane. Case closed, it seemed.
But Egypt dismissed each suggestion as premature. In December its investigators issued a preliminary report stating that there was no evidence of terrorist activity or a security failure. They still have not produced a final report (publicly, at least). Only in February did Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, obliquely admit that the crash was an act of terrorism.
Now Egypt is investigating another crash, that of EgyptAir flight 804, which went down in the Mediterranean Sea on May 19th, killing 66 people. Ayman al-Moqadem, the head of Egypt’s investigation team, who also led the Metrojet inquiry, says a preliminary report will be ready in a month. Few think it will shed much light on the crash, especially if the cause...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1sWXSfv