Progress against the muzzies!

https://apnews.com/d8d51c4ec024461d810ddad73f5e99cb/India-bans-instant-divorce-by-Muslim-men

India bans instant divorce by Muslim men

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s government on Wednesday approved an ordinance to implement a top court ruling striking down the Muslim practice that allows men to instantly divorce.

The government decision came after it failed to get approval from Parliament a year after the court ruled that the practice of allowing men to divorce by simply uttering the Arabic word for divorce — “talaq” — three times violated the constitutional rights of Muslim women.

Most of the 170 million Muslims in India are Sunnis governed by the Muslim Personal Law for family matters and disputes. The laws include allowing the practice, known as “triple talaq,” whereby men can divorce by simply saying the word three times — and not necessarily consecutively, but at any time, and by any medium, including telephone, text message or social media post.

The government will have another six months to get Parliament’s approval for the ordinance to become law. But in the meantime, those who violate it can be prosecuted under the ordinance.

Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that nearly 22 countries, including neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh, have banned the practice and appealed to the opposition to approve the Muslim Women Protection of Rights on Marriage Bill.

“The issue of triple talaq has continued unabated,” Prasad told a news conference, adding that the government had recorded 201 such divorces since the Supreme Court struck down the law last year.

“In a secular country like India,” Prasad said, “gender justice was given the complete go-by.”

India’s Muslim Law Board had told the court that while they considered the practice wrong, they opposed any court intervention and asked that the matter be left to the community. But several progressive Muslim activists decried the law board’s position.

After the Supreme Court verdict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced a bill criminalizing the practice and it was approved in December by the lower house of Parliament, where his party commands a majority. But it couldn’t get the approval of the upper house, where the opposition controls a majority of seats.

The main opposition Congress party is opposing a three-year prison sentence for offenders and wants a parliamentary committee to discuss the issue to reach a consensus. It favors a lesser sentence.

On Wednesday, Congress party spokesman Randeep Surjewala said the government should provide a provision for Muslim women to receive some of their husband’s property following divorce.

In India, triple talaq has continued with the protection of laws that allow Muslim, Christian and Hindu communities to follow religious laws in matters like marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption.

Muslims make up just 13 percent of India’s population of 1.3 billion, which is 81 percent Hindu, the latest census data shows.

The government’s move Wednesday comes months ahead of general elections next year. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has been criticized for polarizing Indian voters along religious lines.

Mob attacks of Muslims by Hindus have been on the rise in India since the Bharatiya Janata Party took power in 2014.

___

Associated Press writer Emily Schmall in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico reopened Mon 9/17.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/remote-solar-observatory-remains-closed-after-mysterious-evacuation

Update: Remote solar observatory reopens after mysterious evacuation

The Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope, the centerpiece of Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico, was closed on 6 September.

By Adam Mann Sep. 17, 2018 , 3:55 PM

*Update, 17 September, 3:55 p.m.: The Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico reopened today. In a statement, the operator of the site, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), said it has been cooperating with an ongoing law enforcement investigation of criminal activity that occurred on the site. The organization said it evacuated the site because of a concern that a suspect posed a threat to the safety of staff and residents. AURA has not said what the suspected criminal activity is and said it was reluctant to share news during the shutdown because it did not want to alert the suspect and impede the investigation. The original story, published on 14 September, is below.

Nobody is quite sure what’s going on at the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico, which was quickly and mysteriously evacuated on 6 September amid reports of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe, and has remained closed. The manager of the mountaintop site, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), today released a statement saying the observatory “will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern.”

In the wake of the shutdown, Otero County Sheriff Benny House told the Alamogordo Daily News: “The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say.” Facility employees are similarly in the dark. “We have absolutely no idea what is going on,” says Alisdair Davey, a data center scientist at the National Solar Observatory (NSO). “As in truly nothing, which in itself is just weird.” Messages left with the FBI field office in Albuquerque were not returned.

AURA manages the site for NSO, a National Science Foundation-funded group. New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces leads the consortium, including NSO and other universities, that operates the observatory’s Dunn Solar Telescope, which conducts routine observations of the sun used by scientists around the world.

All buildings on the site have been shut down and the staff of approximately 12 have been sent home, says James McAteer, Sunspot director and an NMSU astronomer in Las Cruces. He says shutdown events are not unusual, because remote mountaintop facilities can be closed due to sewage leaks, downed power lines, or snowstorms. But the Apache Point Observatory, located slightly lower down on the same mountain, remains open.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which has a small office on the same site as Sunspot that mostly handles mail deliveries for the observatory, has also been shut down, though spokespeople for the office say the post office being closed is incidental. “Whatever’s occurring there has nothing to do with us,” says Rod Spurgeon, the USPS spokesperson for the New Mexico area. Spurgeon downplayed the idea that the incident could involve any sort of mailed biohazard or bioterror. “I haven’t heard of anything like that going on,” he says. Liz Davis, a public information officer at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which handles law enforcement for the USPS, confirms there is “no criminal activity, which is what Postal Inspection Service would be dealing with.”

The Sunspot observatory on Sacramento Peak overlooks Holloman Air Force Base and an observer could potentially see out to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Test range. That has raised questions about possible espionage. “New Mexico is a center of national-security-related science, and for that reason it has also been a prominent venue for foreign espionage,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “Spies go where the secrets are, and there are plenty of secrets in New Mexico.”

But, Aftergood says, a solar observatory might not be the best place to conduct such activity. “I imagine most or all of its sensors are directed up.” He wonders if someone at the Sunspot observatory somehow inadvertently spotted a classified satellite or transmission, triggering the shutdown.

That might also explain why the facility has remained closed for so long, Aftergood says; it could take time to interview all relevant personnel, get them to sign nondisclosure agreements, and do background investigations to make sure they are not foreign agents.

While the actual nature of the security issue remains unresolved, the tight-lipped nature of the authorities is only driving more interest. “The mystery is more intriguing than what the ultimate explanation is likely to be,” Aftergood says.

Former IPCC chairman ordered to stand trial for sexual harassment

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/former-head-climate-change-panel-stand-trial-harassment

Former head of climate change panel to stand trial for harassment

By Sanjay Kumar Sep. 18, 2018 , 10:40 AM

A court in New Delhi on Friday ordered Rajendra Pachauri, former head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to stand trial on criminal charges alleging that he sexually harassed a former colleague.

The woman filed a police complaint against Pachauri, 78, in February 2015, and he stepped down from IPCC that month. Women’s rights and legal activists have since charged that authorities have been slow to act on that allegation and complaints that Pachauri harassed other women.

Pachauri, who denies the allegations, faces up to 3 years in prison if convicted.

The woman who filed the 2015 complaint alleged that after she began to work at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in 2013, an environmental think tank in New Delhi where Pachauri was director general, he made “constant requests to have a romantic and physical relationship” with her and kissed and grabbed her inappropriately. When she refused his advances, she says, he threatened to retaliate by not giving her work or transferring her. As a result, she quit in November 2015.

She gave police thousands of text messages and emails allegedly involving Pachauri. In March 2016, police filed a 1467-page charge sheet against him. That same month, TERI decided not to renew Pachauri’s employment.

“The case is absolutely concocted, baseless, without any material, and has been filed to defame Dr. Pachauri,” his lawyer, Ashish Dixit, told ScienceInsider.

What’s more, Pachauri filed a pending defamation lawsuit against another woman, who alleged in 2016 that he sexually harassed her a decade earlier while she was working at TERI. That woman also said she resigned because of the harassment.

Posted in: Scientific Community

doi:10.1126/science.aav4629

Sanjay Kumar

Sanjay Kumar is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

>>3088587

Bio - this climate change guru Rajendra Pachauri used to be a railroad engineer. No wonder the climate change effort is so screwed up! Ditto the world's economy due to phony climate change demands and extortion payments to third world countries (e.g., Education was engineering and economics. His IPCC appointment came after his work at the World Bank (hmmpf!) and The Energy and Resources Institute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri

Example of how the extortion payments (that the Maldives Islands were the poster child for) are not being used to save the locals from rising seas but instead are being used for what "what politicians hope will be a “smart” country with a new capital city, high-tech centres, economic free zones and foreign universities to attract the global elite." Disgusting!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/03/maldives-plan-to-embrace-mass-tourism-sparks-criticism-and-outrage