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Autopsy Boston Bombing Suspect's Brain, Scientists Say Scientists are calling for an autopsy of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects to see if he had brain damage. Though brain damage probably didn't play a role in the bombings, it may have contributed to other personality changes, researchers say. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, may have suffered from a type of brain damage caused by repeated impacts called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, researchers say. Scientists believe CTE can cause emotional instability and impulse control. Tsarneev was a boxer for most of his life, and family members and peers described dramatic personality...

Bombing suspect reportedly a fan of al-Qaida magazine and Alex Jones website Videos on the Internet and an online jihadist magazine may have played a part in the Boston Marathon bombings suspects’ self-radicalization, according to reports. New accounts say the brothers learned how to build a bomb from the online magazine, Inspire, which gave instructions on how to make them with a pressure cooker. Pressure cooker bombs, authorities say, were used in the attacks at the Boston Marathon. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect, reportedly told investigators there was no foreign influence on him and his brother. But apparently the brothers...

Why topless protesters will hound Islamic leaders (CNN) -- For the past five years now, we here at the international women's movement Femen have been waging an active campaign of resistance to the patriarchy in various corners of the world. We have been bringing the world the simple idea of women's liberation by means of sexual emancipation as expressed in highly visible acts of political protest. We believe that the enslavement of women began with the enslavement of their sexuality, so we therefore consider it legitimate to use their liberated sexuality as a symbol of women's worldwide liberation. We divide...

The Shariah police were conducting a raid on the main roads of Lhokseumawe on Friday, to monitor the administration’s bylaw that prohibits female passengers from straddling motorcycles. “The aim of the raid ... is to uphold and inform people the regulation on straddling motorcycle issued by the mayor,” Irsyadi, the acting chief of the Lhokseumawe Shariah police... We also warned people who were not dressed up in an Islamic way. ... Lhokseumawe mayor Suadi Yahya explained that the bylaw was expected to discourage women from wearing pants in public. He said that the bylaw was needed because he had seen...

Scientist claims to invent 'time machine' to see into the future with 98 per cent accuracy • He says his device can detail any individual’s life between five and eight years in advance after taking readings from the user's touch An Iranian scientist claims he has invented a time machine that allows you to predict the future with 98 per cent accuracy. Ali Razeghi says his device can produce a print-out detailing any individual’s life between five and eight years in advance after taking readings from the user's touch. He claims the Iranian government, whose nuclear programme has caused concern...

Egyptian doctors 'ordered to operate on protesters without anaesthetic' Exclusive: Leaked presidential report recommends an investigation into the highest echelons of the army leadership Senior Egyptian army doctors were ordered to operate without anaesthetic on wounded protesters at a military hospital in Cairo during protests against military rule, according to an investigation commissioned by president Mohamed Morsi. The report into military and police malpractice since 2011 also alleges that doctors, soldiers and medics assaulted protesters inside the hospital. The findings, which relate to the army's behaviour during the Abbassiya clashes in May 2012, are the latest leak to the Guardian...

Saudi Arabia has authorised regional governors to approve executions by firing squad as an alternative to public beheading, the customary method of capital punishment in the kingdom, the Arab News reported on Monday . The English-language daily gave no explanation. But another newspaper, Al Youm, reporting the measure on Sunday, said the reason for the change was a shortage of swordsmen. ... "A shortage in sworsdmen and their unavailability in a number of areas" meant the executioners had to travel long distances sometimes to get to the place of executions, making them sometimes late, the newspaper reported the circular as...

Air Force Chaplain Awarded Bronze Star for PowerPoint Teaching Proper Sensitivity for the Koran An Air Force chaplain has been awarded a Bronze Star for his service in crafting an especially good PowerPoint about how to treat Islamic religious materials with sensitivity, according to Ohio’s Dayton Daily News. After U.S. troops in Afghanistan accidentally burned copies of the Koran, sparking riots that took over 30 lives, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Trainer came to the rescue: After the accidental burning last year of Qurans by U.S. troops in Afghanistan sparked deadly rioting, an Air National Guard chaplain from Springfield stepped in and...

Ahmadinejad: Chavez Will Return With Jesus and 12th Imam A day after his death, Hugo Chavez is already being touted as a martyr and a messiah by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who equated the now deceased Venezuelan leader to Jesus and Shiite Islam’s 12th imam Wednesday, saying, “I have no doubt that he will return, along with the righteous Jesus and the perfect human.” Ahmadinejad also reiterated claims made by Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro that Chavez died of a “suspect illness” but didn’t go as far as Maduro had in equating Chavez’s death to that of late Palestinian Liberation...

Tehran Battles Plague of 'Mutant' Giant Rats with Army Snipers Tehran, the capital of Iran, is battling an invasion of "genetically mutated" giant rats. Iran has sent in sniper teams to clear Tehran's streets from the massive rodents weighting up to five kilos plaguing 26 district of the Iranian capital, the city's environmental agency said. "They seem to have had a genetic mutation, probably as a result of radiations and the chemical used on them," Ismail Kahram, Teheran city council environment adviser and university professor Ismail Kahram told Qudsonline.ir. "They are now bigger and look different. These are changes that...

(Crappy muslim amusement park- Gaza children celebrated Eid al Adha in an amusement park in Gaza City; but they didn't look happy about it.) Amusement park planned in Pakistan town where bin Laden lived (Reuters) - Pakistan plans to build a $30 million amusement park and outdoor activity centre on the edge of the northwestern town of Abbottabad, where U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, an official said on Monday. The private venture in the foothills of the Himalayas will include a zoo, water sports, a mini-golf course, rock climbing and paragliding, said Jamaluddin Khan, the deputy provincial...

Saudi Arabia's Beheading of a Nanny Followed Strict Procedures Rizana Nafeek, a young nanny from Sri Lanka, was beheaded by sword this week in Saudi Arabia, punishment for allegedly killing a baby in 2007 when she was believed to be just 17. The execution has spurred international outcry, given Nafeek's age at the time of the incident and her limited access to a defense attorney. The beheading has also shined a light on the Arab kingdom's medieval system of punishment, which includes cutting the hands off thieves, executing women accused of adultery, and flogging men accused of being gay. Few...

Aceh Town to Ban Female Passengers from Straddling Motorcycles Banda Aceh. The administration of the Aceh town of Lhokseumawe is set to issue a regulation that will ban female passengers from straddling motor bikes. “We’ve seen that people’s behaviors and morals are getting far from Aceh’s Islamic cultural values. Therefore we will issue a regulation that will ban women from straddling while sitting on the passenger’s seat of motorcycles,” Lhokseumawe mayor Suaidi Yahya told the Jakarta Globe. “We want to save women from things that will cause them to violate Shariah law. We wish to honor women with this ban,...

Muslims Burn About 1,200 cars on New Year’s Eve in France Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that 1,193 vehicles were burned overnight around the country. Clashes between police and offenders in the New Year’s Eve took place in the Muslim majority districts in the city of Strasbourg and Mulhouse. About seven police officers were attacked New Years eve night. Around 1,200 cars were burned by rioting Muslims on the New Year’s Eve in France, where the mass burning cars in the national holidays are kind of tradition among Muslim residents of the disadvantaged suburbs of immigrants. In recent years,...

Mexican Narcoterrorist Region May Abandon Catholicism for Islam It would seem as if Bishop Ruiz’s brand of Liberation Theology has had the same effect on Chiapas as on Europe. Chiapas is poor, but it’s now also appearing to trend Islamic as any region under the influence of the left eventually does. When you kill the local religion and replace it with social justice, foreign religions eventually take its place. In the mid-1990s, a leftist resistance group which calls itself The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made Chiapas its home. Its attempts to fight the Mexican Army repeatedly failed, but...

Pakistan's leading arts college has pushed boundaries before in this conservative nation. But when a series of paintings depicting Muslim clerics in scenes with strong homosexual overtones sparked an uproar and threats of violence by Islamic extremists, it was too much. Officials at the National College of Arts in the eastern city of Lahore shut down its academic journal, which published the paintings, pulled all its issues out of bookstores and dissolved its editorial board. Still, a court is currently considering whether the paintings' artist, the journal's board and the school's head can be charged with blasphemy. The college's decision...

Man in $3.8M food stamp fraud case sentenced A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Al-Idu Al-Gaheem to one year and one day in prison for his role in a scheme that bilked $3.8 million from the federal food stamp program. Al-Gaheem, the former owner of two Dayton View businesses and the imam of Masjid At-Taqwa mosque, was the second of four defendants to be sentenced in the case. All four defendants have pleaded guilty. Al-Gaheem faced as many as four years in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to felony charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy...

Turkey fines 'blasphemous' Simpsons for poking fun at God • God offers coffee to the devil in one of the cartoon's episodes (ANSAmed) - ANKARA - Just about everything that could be said and written about the super-popular cartoon 'The Simpsons' had been, except that it was blasphemous. Now even that ''milestone'' has been reached, thanks to the watchdogs of Turkey's television stations under the Islamic-leaning government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the newspaper Hurriyet, Ankara's Council of Radio and Television (RTUK) has handed down a TRY 52,951 fine (about 23,000 euros) to the private broadcaster CNBC-E...

1,000-Year-Old Muslim Joke Book Found An 11th-century book by a revered Baghdad Muslim scholar turns out to be a tongue-in-cheek guide for party crashers, according to the researcher who translated the book into English. The tome was originally authored by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, a well known scholar of the Prophet Mohammed's teachings. According to Emily Selove of the University of Manchester, who did the translation, he wrote the book to remind readers "that every serious minded person needs to take a break." She continued, "This book, which contains flirtation, profanity, and even a little drunkenness, is a lot of fun and...

Egypt President Morsi grants himself far-reaching powers CAIRO – Egypt's president on Thursday issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight and ordered the retrial of Hosni Mubarak for the killing of protesters in last year's uprising. Mohammed Morsi also decreed immunity for the Islamist-dominated panel drafting a new constitution from any possible court decisions to dissolve it, a threat that had been hanging over the controversial assembly. Liberal and Christian members withdrew from the assembly during the past week to protest what they say is the hijacking of the process by Morsi's allies, who they saw are trying...