http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351964,00.html
Defense Secretary Gates Says Air Force Must Step Up Efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan
Monday, April 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday the Air Force is not doing enough to help in the Iraq and Afghanistan war effort, complaining that some military leaders are “stuck in old ways of doing business.”
Gates said in a speech at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., that getting the military services, largely the Air Force, to send more unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to Iraq and Afghanistan has been “like pulling teeth.”
Addressing officer students at the Air Force’s Air University, the Pentagon chief praised the Air Force for its overall contributions but made a point of urging it to do more and to undertake new and creative ways of thinking about helping the war effort instead of focusing mainly on future threats.
While Gates’ comments were directed mainly at the Air Force, his concern about faster fielding of unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft included a broader appeal to the entire military. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps have been expanding their fleets of drone aircraft.
“In my view we can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt,” he said. “My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield.”
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352011,00.html
Report: Muslim Leaders Want Mecca to Be Center of World Time Zones
Monday, April 21, 2008
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) could be replaced by “Mecca Time,” if a group of Muslim leaders get their way.
At the conference, “Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice,” Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.
One geologist at the Qatar conference said Mecca’s longitude is perfectly aligned with magnetic north and should therefore replace the English city, which has been measuring time zones since 1884, the BBC reports.
Attendees of the conference also reviewed the “Mecca Watch,” an invention by a French Muslim which reportedly rotates counter-clockwise and displays Mecca’s direction from any point in the world, the BBC said.
The conference is part of a trend called “Ijaz al-Koran” or “miraculous nature of the holy text,” which tries to find precedents for modern science from passages in the Koran, the BBC reports.
But its critics say Ijaz al-Koran confuses spiritual truth — which depends on constant faith — with empirical truth, which depends on ever-changing science, the BBC said.