Category Archives: News

Academia’s caste system exposed

Quartz: Getting a job in academia is notoriously difficult. But the odds are especially bad for aspiring professors who didn’t earn their PhDs from a select few universities, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances.

Researchers at Harvard and the University of Colorado, Boulder looked at full-time faculty in history and business departments in US colleges, and at computer science faculty in the US and Canada, between 2011 and 2013, co-author Aaron Clauset tells Quartz. They examined where the professors had earned their PhDs, and created a ranking system of the most prestigious schools in each subject, based on how successful their graduates were in finding jobs. They analyzed 16,316 assistant, associate and full professors across 242 schools.

Overall they found a fourth of the institutions accounted for about three fourths of tenure-track faculty. For example, 18 universities produce half of US and Canadian computer science professors, 16 universities produce half of US business professors, and eight universities account for half of US history professors. They chose these three fields to get a range, from humanities to scientific fields, and demonstrate that exclusive institutions dominated across the board, Clauset says. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Argentina’s president formally charged over alleged terrorist attack cover-up

The Guardian reports: Formal charges were brought against Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, on Friday, in connection with her alleged role in covering up the country’s worst terrorist attack.

The charges against Fernández, brought by prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita, are the latest developments in the political earthquake set off by the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Pollicita acted on the 289-page criminal complaint against the president that Nisman made public on 14 January, four days before he was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in his Buenos Aires apartment.

Nisman had been scheduled to present his findings to Congress the next day, accusing Fernández of secretly conspiring with Iran in trying to derail a criminal investigation into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people.

Nisman had alleged that Fernández entered into “an alliance with terrorists” starting in 2011 to exonerate five Iranian suspects from responsibility in the Amia Jewish community centre bombing. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran’s Supreme Leader sends new letter to Obama amid nuclear talks

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran’s paramount political figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has responded to overtures from President Barack Obama seeking better relations by sending secret communications of his own to the White House.

The Iranian cleric wrote to Mr. Obama in recent weeks in response to an October presidential letter that raised the possibility of U.S.-Iranian cooperation in fighting Islamic State if a nuclear deal is secured, according to an Iranian diplomat. The supreme leader’s response was “respectful” but noncommittal, the diplomat said.

A senior White House official declined to confirm the existence of that letter. But it comes as the first details emerge about another letter Mr. Khamenei sent to the president early in his first term. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

FBI opens inquiry into Chapel Hill shootings; Obama calls killings ‘brutal and outrageous’

In a conversation recorded by the storytelling project StoryCorps just last summer, Yusor Abu-Salha, a victim from the recent Chapel Hill shooting, described her experience of being an American.

The Washington Post reports: The FBI is opening an inquiry into the shootings of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill, N.C., a move that followed multiple calls this week for authorities to investigate the violence as a hate crime.

On Friday, President Obama issued a statement on “the brutal and outrageous murders,” saying that the FBI would look to see if federal laws were broken during the shooting.

“No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship,” Obama said.

Police are investigating the shootings of three people — newlyweds Deah Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 — on Tuesday afternoon at a housing complex near the University of North Carolina.

As the shooting has attracted global attention, Obama has been criticized for not speaking out about it sooner.

“If you stay silent when faced with an incident like this, and don’t make a statement, the world will stay silent towards you,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to Mexico on Thursday, according to Reuters.

The Embassy of Jordan in Washington said Friday that Alia Bouran, the country’s ambassador to the United States, went to North Carolina on Friday. Jordan’s foreign ministry issued a statement a day earlier saying that the sisters killed in Chapel Hill also had Jordanian citizenship.

While in North Carolina, Bouran met with the families of the victims and expressed the sympathies of Jordanian King Abdullah II. The embassy said Friday that it was “closely following the ongoing investigation” in North Carolina.

The FBI probe announced on Thursday stops short of being a full investigation, as had been reported in multiple media outlets since the inquiry was announced. Rather, it is a review that could ultimately become an investigation down the line. It was opened by the FBI, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle district of North Carolina. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Syrian townspeople insist U.S. airstrike killed civilians

McClatchy reports: Mohammad Na’us was one of the most respected men in al Bab. He was the undertaker who washed the bodies of the dead prior to burial, a pious Quranic scholar who issued the sundown call to prayer in the Syrian town near the Turkish border, and for the past year, a seller of bread in his neighborhood.

But on Dec. 28, the bakery’s delivery was late and he missed the prayers at sundown. Religious police arrested Na’us, a father of five in his 50s, and ordered him to spend one night in prison.

It was his last.

At 7:20 p.m., a U.S. airstrike leveled al Bab’s al Saraya government center. Townspeople say dozens of people, including Na’us, died in the strike. U.S. officials, while acknowledging the strike, deny that any civilians died.

“That night you could hear the screams and wailing of women in the town when they heard al Saraya was bombed,” said Abu Hussein, who lived near the government center and passed it daily on his way to pray at the local mosque. “They knew their sons and relatives were in the building.”

The speaker, a 55-year-old man interviewed in Antakya, Turkey, asked to be identified by a pseudonym that means “Hussein’s father,” fearing retribution by the Islamic State should he return to al Bab.

McClatchy first reported on Jan. 11 that at least 50 civilians in the prison had died in the U.S. airstrike. Three days after that report, the U.S. Central Command said a review of the airstrike had determined that allegations of civilian casualties “are not credible.”

McClatchy, however, has found more substantiation for its initial report from refugees who fled al Bab and now inhabit towns in southern Turkey. With the help of relatives, neighbors and friends, McClatchy has assembled a list of the full names of 10 civilians who reportedly died in the airstrike and the family names of another 14. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Embassy staffs leave as Yemen rebels take power

Reuters reports: The US, Britain and France have closed their embassies in Yemen over security concerns in the Arab world’s poorest country, where Shia rebels finalised their power-grab last week.

Rebels seized more than 30 US embassy vehicles in the capital, Sana’a, after the ambassador and diplomats left the country.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the central city of Taiz on Wednesday and hundreds more Sana’a in the largest protests yet against the Houthi movement, which overran Sana’a in September and formally took power last week.

The US stopped work at its embassy and withdrew its diplomatic staff on Tuesday.

“Recent unilateral actions disrupted the political transition process in Yemen, creating the risk that renewed violence would threaten Yemenis and the diplomatic community in Sanaa,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

France and Britain followed suit on Wednesday, while employees of the German embassy said its mission was also getting rid of sensitive documents and would soon close. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, business as usual at the Chinese embassy, Xinhua reports.

PRI reports: On February 6, the Houthis formalized their accession to power with a televised statement by their leader.

“Since the Houthis made this unilateral statement,” Craig observes, “those foreign embassies had little other way to show their dissatisfaction with the Houthis other than packing up and leaving, really, at this point.” Efforts to complete a transition to democracy that began in 2011, led by the United Nations Envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, had failed to bring Yemen’s disparate political factions together to plot a future for the nation. When the Houthis short-circuited the transitional process by seizing power, Craig says, western diplomats had little recourse. “They didn’t have a Plan B, there wasn’t ‘What shall we do if it doesn’t work out?’ – ‘What are our other options if this fails?’ and so when it did collapse they were left empty-handed really.”

Facebooktwittermail

‘CyberCaliphate’ hacks Newsweek Twitter account, threatens Obama

Reuters: Newsweek magazine’s Twitter account was the victim of hackers on Tuesday who posted a threat to U.S. President Barack Obama and his family and the words “CyberCaliphate” and “Je suis IS,” a reference to Islamic State and the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The group, which also took responsibility for hacking Pentagon social media accounts last month, tweeted “#CyberCaliphate Bloody Valentine’s Day #MichelleObama! We’re watching you, you girls and your husband!”

It also posted a message intended for the United States in retaliation for its actions in the Muslim world.

Facebooktwittermail

Hearing for accused 9/11 plotters weighs alleged government meddling

Reuters: A U.S. military court on Wednesday tried to assess whether government agents interfered with the trial of five men charged with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by spying on defenses attorneys and their clients.

The judge halted the pre-trial hearing at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison on Monday after one of the defendants said his interpreter had worked at a secret CIA prison.

When the hearing resumed on Wednesday, defenses attorneys contended the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency had planted Arabic interpreters on the defenses team, bugged conversations between the attorneys and their clients and questioned their support staff.

Facebooktwittermail

Assad says Syria is informed on anti-ISIS air campaign

BBC News: Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad says his government is receiving messages from the US-led coalition battling the jihadist group, Islamic State.

Mr Assad told the BBC that there had been no direct co-operation since air strikes began in Syria in September.

But third parties – among them Iraq – were conveying “information”.

The US National Security Council has denied co-ordinating with the Syrian government.

Facebooktwittermail

Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighters

The Guardian reports: Ruslan Kotsaba posted a video addressed to the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, last week in which he said he would rather go to prison for five years for draft-dodging than fight pro-Russia rebels in the country’s east. Now he faces 15 years in jail after being arrested for treason and obstructing the military.

His case is symptomatic of Kiev’s difficulties in mobilising a war-weary society to continue the fight against the rebels, who appear to have an unlimited supply of weapons and training from Russia. As the country nears bankruptcy and the reform programme demanded by the Maidan revolution last year is sidelined by the war effort, the drive to call up new recruits is floundering.

The conflict has cost more than 5,000 lives since it began last spring and Russia shows no signs of toning down its backing for the separatist movement. Poroshenko is due to meet his Russian, French and German counterparts in Minsk on Wednesday, and the financial and emotional burden of months of conflict could mean Ukraine is forced to accept a deal that effectively gives up control of rebel-held territory. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

We dream about drones, said 13-year-old Yemeni before his death in a CIA strike

The Guardian reports: A 13-year-old boy killed in Yemen last month by a CIA drone strike had told the Guardian just months earlier that he lived in constant fear of the “death machines” in the sky that had already killed his father and brother.

“I see them every day and we are scared of them,” said Mohammed Tuaiman, speaking from al-Zur village in Marib province, where he died two weeks ago.

“A lot of the kids in this area wake up from sleeping because of nightmares from them and some now have mental problems. They turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep.”

Much of Mohammed’s life was spent living in fear of drone strikes. In 2011 an unmanned combat drone killed his father and teenage brother as they were out herding the family’s camels. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Family of ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller confirms U.S. aid worker has been killed

The Guardian: The family of Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old aid worker held hostage by Isis since August 2013, has confirmed in a statement that she has been killed.

“We are heartbroken to share that we’ve received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller, has lost her life,” her parents and brother said on Tuesday.

Supporters of Islamic State had claimed on Friday that she was killed in a Jordanian air strike intended to avenge the burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot.

Carl and Marsha Mueller, her parents, said: “Our hearts are breaking for our only daughter, but we will continue on in peace, dignity, and love for her.”

In a statement released by the White House, Barack Obama sent his “deepest condolences” to the Mueller family, and vowed to bring those responsible for Kayla’s death to justice.

Facebooktwittermail

Privacy experts question Obama’s strategy to tackle cyber threats

The Guardian reports: Cybersecurity and digital privacy experts are questioning the need for Barack Obama’s latest bureaucratic initiative, a new agency spurred by the massive Sony hack that critics fear will expand the government’s role into monitoring online data networks on security grounds.

White House security adviser Lisa Monaco planned to unveil on Tuesday the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, the name of which speaks to its position within a US intelligence community whose ongoing, surreptitious reach over the internet has attracted global skepticism.

The remit of the new center, subordinate to the office of the director of national intelligence and modelled on the National Counterterrorism Center, is said to be the combination of the various intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies’ understanding and analysis of new or emerging malicious cyber-attacks.

Over the past five years, the administration has stood up new entities, such as the National Security Agency’s military twin US Cyber Command, or expanded the remit of others, like the Department of Homeland Security, to safeguard government – and increasingly civilian – networks.

“Given the number of other agencies that have cybersecurity threat integration responsibilities, it’s not clear that a new agency is needed,” said Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

ISIS pulls forces and hardware from Syria’s Aleppo, say rebels

Reuters reports: Islamic State has withdrawn some of its insurgents and equipment from areas northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, rebels and residents say, adding to signs of strain in the Syrian provinces of its self-declared caliphate.

The group, which has recently lost ground to Kurdish and Syrian government forces elsewhere in Syria, has pulled fighters and hardware from several villages in areas northeast of Aleppo, they said. But it has not fully withdrawn from area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war using a network of sources on the ground, said Islamic State had redeployed forces from Aleppo province to join battles further east with Kurdish forces and mainstream rebel groups.

Islamic State-held areas northeast of Aleppo mark the western edge of a domain that expanded rapidly in Syria and Iraq last year after the jihadists seized the Iraqi city of Mosul. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Don’t let Netanyahu and his Republican allies scuttle a nuclear deal with Iran

Ryan Cooper writes: The prospects for a long-term bargain with Iran are looking better than they have in quite some time. The rise of the Islamic State provided an unexpected boost, since it put Iran on the “same side” as the U.S. The fall in global oil prices hasn’t hurt either, putting pressure on Iran to reach a rapport with the West. So last week, the possible outlines of a deal emerged, and they appear to be acceptable to both moderates in Tehran and the White House.

Predictably, a counter-offensive has been launched by various hawkish factions. Hard-liners in both Iran and the U.S. are trying to scuttle the deal, and so is Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to give an address to a joint session of Congress with that objective.

It is critical that the hawks fail. This is a good opportunity to ease tensions with Iran, an event that is long overdue.

The hard-liner position in both countries is basically identical. “Our nation can never tolerate this!” shouted one Iranian MP recently, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It’s a big mistake to have any relationship with the U.S.,” said another.

If anything, American hawks are even more belligerent than their Iranian counterparts. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Jordan says conducted 56 air raids in three days against ISIS

Reuters reports: Jordan’s air force chief said on Sunday his country’s jet fighters had conducted 56 bombing raids in three days against Islamic State militants in northeast Syria, targeting key bases and arms depots.

Jordan stepped up its bombing of the jihadist group on Thursday in response to the brutal killing by Islamic State of a captured Jordanian pilot, and continued until Saturday.

No new strikes were announced for Sunday.

“We achieved what we aimed for. We destroyed logistics centers, arms depots and targeted hideouts of their fighters,” General Mansour al-Jbour, head of the Jordanian airforce, told a news conference.

Jordan has carried out nearly a fifth of the sorties of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria to date, Jbour said. U.S. aircraft joined the mission to provide intelligence, surveillance, a U.S. official told Reuters earlier on Sunday. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Twitter says government data queries rising

Phys.org: Twitter said Monday it saw a 40 percent jump in government request for user data in late 2014, with sharp rises coming from both Turkey and Russia.

The “transparency report” released by the messaging platform showed the United States remained the largest source of data queries with 1,622 over the last six months of the year, but that notable increases came from Turkey and Russia.

The total number of requests globally was 2,871, up from 2,058 in the first six months of the year.

Turkey — which blocked Twitter and other social media last year for leaking data about government corruption — vaulted to the number two spot with 356 requests, the Twitter report said.

Facebooktwittermail

Shiite militia drives back ISIS, but divides much of Iraq

The New York Times reports: At their victory rally, the Shiite militiamen used poetry, song and swagger to sweeten their celebration of an ugly battle.

More than a hundred fighters from the militia, the Badr Organization, had been killed in the farms and villages of Diyala Province in recent fighting against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State. During the battle, thousands of residents had been forced from their homes — including Sunni families who accused Shiite paramilitary groups like Badr of forced displacement and summary executions.

But the militias had pushed the Islamic State back from key areas in a crucial battle. So on Monday, the Badr Organization convened in a mosque at Camp Ashraf, its base in Diyala, to celebrate its “liberation” of the province — and to serve notice that it was the vanguard force battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Speaking at the rally, to an audience that included giddy fighters barely past their teens, the head of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri, boasted of the towns his men and allied militias had set free. “These were big operations that others must learn lessons from,” he said.

But even as Mr. Ameri was fishing for broad support and recognition, his group stands among the most divisive in Iraq, accused of atrocities against Sunnis and known for its close ties to Iran. The new government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, which has promised to rule inclusively, has been under pressure to distance itself from retaliatory attacks against Sunnis by both Shiite and Kurdish militiamen. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail