OBL’s 5th wife in Pakistani hospital; US and Pakistan spar over custody

This contradicts previous reports that the woman with bin Laden was not his wife, and that she died in the raid. Via the Telegraph: Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, who was shot in the leg during the raid, is being treated at the military hospital in Rawalpindi, according to reports on the Arabic news network Al-Arabiya. It [...]

White House won’t release bin Laden photos after all

A White House announcement contradicts an earlier statement by CIA director Leon Panetta. Insert joke about the compentency of our intelligence agencies here.  Via CBS: In an interview with Steve Kroft for this Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” President Obama says he won’t release post-mortem images of Osama bin Laden taken to prove his death. Video of the comments [...]

Correction: Woman killed in OBL raid was not his wife, OBL did not return fire

Revising the claims of my earlier post, Via Reuters via Vancouver Sun: A woman killed during the U.S. raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan was not his wife and was not used as a human shield by the al-Qaida leader before his death, a U.S. official said on Monday, correcting an earlier description. [...]

Milwaukee Archdiocese (again) accussed of moving funds to put off abuse victim payments

Via Rick Romell of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the committee representing its unsecured creditors agreed Tuesday to postpone arguments over proposed payments to 22 sex-abuse victims who settled with the archdiocese before it filed for bankruptcy protection in January. The archdiocese wants court approval to pay the victims a total [...]

Does Pi deserve a day?

Mathemusician Vihart argues “No”: Link to Bob Palais’s Tau Manifesto here. Events page for Tau Day, June 28, here.

Ratzinger urges repeal of Pakistani blasphemy law

Via the BBC: Pope Benedict XVI has called on Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy laws, which can carry a death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. He said the laws served as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities. The Pope referred to Pakistani governor Salman Taseer, whose assassination last week [...]

A son’s eulogy

Aatish Taseer, son of Salman Taseer, the liberal Pakistani politician who was assassinated for opposing his country’s blasphamy laws, writes on his father: The last time I met or spoke to my father was – it seems hard to believe now – the night three years ago that Benazir Bhutto was killed. We had been estranged for [...]

First full-length reports on Stockholm bombing trickle in; here’s Reuter’s

Via Reuters:  Two blasts rocked the center of Stockholm on Saturday in a possible attack inspired by Sweden’s presence in Afghanistan, killing the bomber and wounding two other people, police and media said. Swedish news agency TT said that 10 minutes before the first blast, when a car exploded near a busy shopping street, it [...]

Is the As-bacterium overhyped? ctd

Carl Zimmer, writing in Slate, considers the evidence: None of the scientists I spoke to ruled out the possibility that such weird bacteria might exist. Indeed, some of them were co-authors of a 2007 report for the National Academies of Sciences on alien life that called for research into, among other things, arsenic-based biology. But [...]

Is the As-bacterium overhyped?

Obnoxious-even-when-he’s-right atheist and University of Minnesota Morris biologist PZ Myers says “yes.”  The Weiner sequence, it appears, has played out again. My own speculation that the bacterium might represent the trunk of a new evolutionary tree does now seem, as I expected, reckless. The piece is long, but non-technical, so bear with us. Here’s the [...]