Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., seen in November last year, is facing accusations of blasphemy.
By NBC News' Fakhar Rehman and F. Brinley Bruton
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A?petition accusing Pakistan's ambassador to the United States of committing blasphemy has been filed with the country's?Supreme Court.
Police were directed on Thursday to investigate allegations against Sherry Rehman, who has already faced death threats from militants after calling for reforms to the country's anti-blasphemy law, according to court documents.
If the police find that there is enough evidence to support the allegations, the court will press charges against Rehman.
According to Pakistan's blasphemy laws, anyone found to have uttered words derogatory to the Prophet Muhammad can be put to death.
And those who are accused are sometimes lynched by mobs even if they are found innocent by the courts.
The allegations against Rehman, which revolve around comments she made on Pakistani television in 2010, are being brought by Muhammad Faheem Ahkter Gill,?a 31-year-old businessman who owns a marble business in the city of Multan.?
Gill was watching the television interview with Rehman with two friends. He said he felt her comments were derogatory to the Prophet Muhammad and, being a Muslim, it was his responsibility to do something about it.
"I had been striving to get a?blasphemy?case?registered?against her since 2010, but in vain. Today the supreme court has ordered (the police) to register a case against her," he said.?
Muhammed Muheisen / AP
Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.
In November, a Pakistani Christian girl, Rimsha Masih,?who was accused of burning pages of Muslim holy texts was cleared of blasphemy.
Rehman, a prominent member of the ruling Pakistan?People's?Party?(PPP),?was appointed as Pakistan?s Ambassador to the United States in November 2011.
Before being named envoy, she led the Pakistan Red Crescent Society and was a ranking member of the National Security Committee in the country's Parliament.
She also the founding chairperson of the Jinnah Institute, a non-partisan public policy think tank "committed to the strengthening of democracy, governance and an independent national security project in Pakistan," according to the website of Pakistan's embassy in the United States.
Reuters contributed to this report.?
Related stories:?
Court clears Pakistani Christian girl accused in blasphemy case Pakistani judge grants bail for Christian girl in blasphemy case Cleric-led protest amplifies political standoff in Pakistan
MELBOURNE, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Li Na's Melbourne Park nemesis Kim Clijsters no longer stalks the Australian Open draw but her absence is no cause for celebration, according to the Chinese sixth seed. If anyone should be popping champagne corks in the non attendance of the retired Belgian, it should be 30-year-old Li, Asia's first grand slam singles champion. Teak-tough Clijsters denied Li her maiden major title in 2011's tense final at Rod Laver Arena, overhauling the Chinese in three sets to win her fourth and final grand slam. ...
NEW DELHI (AP) ? The mother of a 23-year-old student who died after being brutally gang-raped in a moving bus in the Indian capital says all six suspects, including one believed to be a juvenile, deserve to die.
In her first published comments, the mother told The Times of India newspaper that the youngest suspect participated in the most brutal aspects of the rape.
Five men have been charged with the student's rape and murder and face a possible death penalty if convicted. The sixth suspect says he is 17 years old. If that is confirmed, he is likely to be tried in a juvenile court where the maximum sentence is three years in a reform facility.
The names of the victim of the Dec. 16 attack and her family have not been released.
Illegal drugs found taped to the body of a minor caught at the U.S. border. The teen was being used as a ?mule? by the Mexican drug cartels./NBC San Diego 7
NBC7 in San Diego reported that Mexican drug cartels are aggressively recruiting children and teens to smuggle drugs across the border. Federal authorities are alarmed at what appears to be an increase in children as young as 12 being used as drug mules.
Not only are the drug cartels using these children to traffic marijuana, but now increasingly the drug of choice is methamphetamine. Traditionally, drug cartels recruit the kids with tales of easy money and the taunt that as a minor, even if caught, the penalties would be inconsequential. The average mule makes between $75 and $300 for crossing the border with approximately 6 kilograms taped?to their bodies. And, if caught with heavy narcotics, like meth, these minors will end up with felonies on their criminal record, not just a slap on the wrist.
The drug cartels are recruiting children outside schools and malls and reaching teens by using social media. In 2011, records show 190 children (ages 18 and under) were caught smuggling drugs along the?San Diego County-Mexico border.
This border sector includes over 7,000 square miles including 60 linear miles of international boundary with Mexico and 114 coastal border miles along the Pacific Ocean patrolled by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Directly south of San Diego lie the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Tecate, Baja California, which have a combined population of more than four and a half million people.
?The drug cartels? shift to using kids and teens as a high reward, low risk method of trafficking drugs across our nation?s border is something hard for most Americans to imagine, unless you know how violent, ruthless, and amoral the cartels are,? said U.S. Border Security Council National Spokesman Steve LeBlanc. ?Our country?s border security is under fire as never?before with some of our nation?s?most precious resources ? our children ? caught in the crosshairs.?
U.S. Border Security Council is a national grassroots advocacy group, which the IRS has determined to be tax-exempt under the provisions of Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. You can reach organization by mail at P.O. Box 96197, Washington, DC 20090 or by email at info@usbordersecurity.info
How stars look young when they're not: The secret of aging wellPublic release date: 21-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Barbara K. Kennedy science@psu.edu 814-863-4682 Penn State
The aging of star clusters is linked more with their lifestyle than with how old they actually are, according to a new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope study coauthored by Steinn Sigurdsson, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. "Our observations of star clusters have shown us that, although they all formed over ten billion years ago, some of them are still young at heart," Sigurdsson said. "We now can see how fast the clusters are racing toward their final collapse. It is as if each cluster has its own internal clock, some of which are ticking slower than others." Sigurdsson is a Penn State theorist working in collaboration with the European Research Council's Cosmic-Lab project. The study is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by their mutual gravity. The roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way contain many of our galaxy's oldest stars. These 12-to-13 billion-year-old relics of the early universe are nearly as old as the Big Bang. "Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago, we wondered whether some clusters might be aging faster or slower than others," said Francesco Ferraro of the University of Bologna in Italy, the leader of the team that made the discovery. "By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of their aging."
Star clusters form in a short period of time, so all the stars within them tend to have roughly the same age. Because bright, high-mass stars burn up their fuel quite quickly, and globular clusters are very old, the clusters should contain only low-mass stars within them. But Sigurdsson and his colleagues discovered that, in certain circumstances, stars can be given a new burst of life. "Stars can receive extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them if one star pulls matter off a neighbor, if two neighboring stars merge together, or if two stars collide," Sigurdsson said.
These reinvigorated stars have a large mass and high brightness. They are called blue stragglers because they are blue in color and their evolution lags behind that of their neighbors. Blue stragglers are the only stars that combine high mass and high brightness within clusters.
Heavier stars sink like sediment toward the center of a cluster as the cluster ages. The high-mass blue stragglers are strongly affected by this process, and their brightness makes them relatively easy for astronomers to observe. To better understand cluster aging, the team mapped the location of blue-straggler stars in 21 globular clusters, as seen in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, and the Subaru Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Hubble provided high-resolution imagery of the crowded centers of 20 of the clusters, while images from ground-based telescopes gave a wider view of their less-busy outer regions.
Analyzing the observational data, the team found that a few clusters appeared young, with blue-straggler stars distributed throughout, while a larger group appeared old, with the blue stragglers clumped in the center. A third group was in the process of aging, with the stars closest to the core migrating inwards first, then stars ever further out progressively sinking towards the center.
"Since these clusters all formed at roughly the same time, this study reveals big differences in the speed of evolution from cluster to cluster," said Barbara Lanzoni at the University of Bologna, a co-author of the study. "In the case of fast-aging clusters, we think that the sedimentation process can be complete within a few hundred million years, while for the slowest it would take several times the current age of the universe."
As a cluster's heaviest stars sink into the center, it eventually experiences a phenomenon called core collapse, where the center of the cluster bunches together extremely densely. The processes leading toward core collapse are rather well understood, and revolve around the number, density and speed of movement of the stars. However, the rate at which they happen was not known until now. "This study provides the first evidence, based totally on data from observations, of how quickly different globular clusters age," Sigurdsson said.
###
Funding to Penn State for this research is provided by the Space Science Telescope Institute.
[ Barbara K. Kennedy ]
IMAGES
High-resolution images associated with this research are online at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2012-news/Sigurdsson-12-2012
CONTACTS
Steinn Sigurdsson at Penn State University: (+1) 814-863-6038, steinn@astro.psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy (Penn State PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu
Francesco Ferraro at the University of Bologna: (+39) 051-209-5774, francesco.ferraro3@unibo.it
Barbara Lanzoni at the University of Bologna: (+39) 051-209-5792, barbara.lanzoni3@unibo.it
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
How stars look young when they're not: The secret of aging wellPublic release date: 21-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Barbara K. Kennedy science@psu.edu 814-863-4682 Penn State
The aging of star clusters is linked more with their lifestyle than with how old they actually are, according to a new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope study coauthored by Steinn Sigurdsson, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. "Our observations of star clusters have shown us that, although they all formed over ten billion years ago, some of them are still young at heart," Sigurdsson said. "We now can see how fast the clusters are racing toward their final collapse. It is as if each cluster has its own internal clock, some of which are ticking slower than others." Sigurdsson is a Penn State theorist working in collaboration with the European Research Council's Cosmic-Lab project. The study is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by their mutual gravity. The roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way contain many of our galaxy's oldest stars. These 12-to-13 billion-year-old relics of the early universe are nearly as old as the Big Bang. "Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago, we wondered whether some clusters might be aging faster or slower than others," said Francesco Ferraro of the University of Bologna in Italy, the leader of the team that made the discovery. "By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of their aging."
Star clusters form in a short period of time, so all the stars within them tend to have roughly the same age. Because bright, high-mass stars burn up their fuel quite quickly, and globular clusters are very old, the clusters should contain only low-mass stars within them. But Sigurdsson and his colleagues discovered that, in certain circumstances, stars can be given a new burst of life. "Stars can receive extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them if one star pulls matter off a neighbor, if two neighboring stars merge together, or if two stars collide," Sigurdsson said.
These reinvigorated stars have a large mass and high brightness. They are called blue stragglers because they are blue in color and their evolution lags behind that of their neighbors. Blue stragglers are the only stars that combine high mass and high brightness within clusters.
Heavier stars sink like sediment toward the center of a cluster as the cluster ages. The high-mass blue stragglers are strongly affected by this process, and their brightness makes them relatively easy for astronomers to observe. To better understand cluster aging, the team mapped the location of blue-straggler stars in 21 globular clusters, as seen in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, and the Subaru Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Hubble provided high-resolution imagery of the crowded centers of 20 of the clusters, while images from ground-based telescopes gave a wider view of their less-busy outer regions.
Analyzing the observational data, the team found that a few clusters appeared young, with blue-straggler stars distributed throughout, while a larger group appeared old, with the blue stragglers clumped in the center. A third group was in the process of aging, with the stars closest to the core migrating inwards first, then stars ever further out progressively sinking towards the center.
"Since these clusters all formed at roughly the same time, this study reveals big differences in the speed of evolution from cluster to cluster," said Barbara Lanzoni at the University of Bologna, a co-author of the study. "In the case of fast-aging clusters, we think that the sedimentation process can be complete within a few hundred million years, while for the slowest it would take several times the current age of the universe."
As a cluster's heaviest stars sink into the center, it eventually experiences a phenomenon called core collapse, where the center of the cluster bunches together extremely densely. The processes leading toward core collapse are rather well understood, and revolve around the number, density and speed of movement of the stars. However, the rate at which they happen was not known until now. "This study provides the first evidence, based totally on data from observations, of how quickly different globular clusters age," Sigurdsson said.
###
Funding to Penn State for this research is provided by the Space Science Telescope Institute.
[ Barbara K. Kennedy ]
IMAGES
High-resolution images associated with this research are online at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2012-news/Sigurdsson-12-2012
CONTACTS
Steinn Sigurdsson at Penn State University: (+1) 814-863-6038, steinn@astro.psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy (Penn State PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu
Francesco Ferraro at the University of Bologna: (+39) 051-209-5774, francesco.ferraro3@unibo.it
Barbara Lanzoni at the University of Bologna: (+39) 051-209-5792, barbara.lanzoni3@unibo.it
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Sending my thanks to Saleema Nawaz at Metaphysical Conceit for tagging me in this very fun meme for writers, ?The Next Big Thing? about a work-in-progress.
Saleema?s post about her forthcoming novel?Bone and Bread?is so enormously intriguing that I very much wish her novel was out already so I could buy it for myself and for all the readers in my life ? and not just the women ? for Christmas. Though I admit to immediately thinking ?My mom, my sister, my sister-in-law, and Myriam all have to read this novel.? I?m sure of it and I haven?t even read it yet. So Saleema clearly gives very good meme.
Bone and Bread, I learned, is?about sisters; that sibling relationship I?m often approaching and then rapidly retreating from in much of my work over the years. For the purpose of this meme I?ll be discussing my first script that features two sisters as a dual protagonist, whereas I usually banish one sister to the margins to inform and inflect the protagonist.
And yes, because I?m a screenwriter and not a novelist, I?m adapting this meme for my medium.
1. What is the working title of your screenplay?
11 Things I Learned About Tokyo by Watching J-Doramas. Which is a nightmare of a working title because it?s too long to sell, as it is too long to even speak casually in conversation, or even to type at the top of my development notes. With my colleagues it?s come to be known as The Tokyo Script or sometimes simply J-Dorama.
2. Where did the idea for the screenplay come from?
My sister and I had been inseparable all my life, and then we drifted apart for much of my early-to-mid twenties. She had nestled comfortably into a long-term relationship in the suburbs while I pursued graduate studies in the city. On the increasingly rare occasions on which we did speak, she would mention these Japanese drama series she was hooked on. Even though they didn?t initially interest me in the least, I began watching them as way of trying to bridge the gap between my sister and I so we could have something to chat about easily and comfortably.
I finally became smitten with (read: addicted to) these shows, and before too long my sister and I were on a JAL flight to Tokyo, even though neither of us knew anything about the city apart from what we?d learned by watching these Japanese primetime soap operas. I had become so accustomed to hearing the language while reading subtitles that on some level my brain was tricked into the thinking I actually understood Japanese.
3. What genre does your screenplay fall under?
Comedy. There are romantic elements at play, too, but only as subplots.
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
In my case it is a movie so this is something I have to think about on a fairly regular basis.
Charlize Theron as the failed actress.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as the separated law professor.
Hiro Mizushima, very appropriately, as a big J-Dorama star. He also happens to speak beautiful English, which helps.
Mark Ruffalo as the bored and grungy American news correspondent.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your screenplay?
This never gets easier, does it?
Ok here goes (*taking a deep breath*):
Two sisters, a failed actress and a newly separated law professor, flee Montreal to Tokyo where, they?ve learned from TV, their North Americanness, their legginess, and their eccentricity will be praised and embraced; their latent value recognized at last.
*gasping for air*
See what happens when you guys make me write it in one sentence? Geez.
6. Will your script be self-produced or represented by an agency?
All my work is represented by Omada. This is one of my few scripts (at the moment) that I?m trying to bring to a polished draft on spec, and we?ll see where we can find a home for it later. This idea has been brewing for a few years and already there?s been a lot of interest in it. But for now I want to develop it further before anyone else gets involved, apart from my agent and my trusty consultant.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your screenplay?
I haven?t finished. I have a treatment and some scenes, character outlines, notes, etc. I want to go back to Tokyo and do some more research, actually. The writing of this script came to a halt after the earthquake and tsunami a couple of?years?ago, and I?ve been inundated with commissions in the meantime. In recent months I?m carving out time for my spec-writing and this one is finally progressing again. But the trip with my sister to Tokyo was in 2009, I think. So three years, ongoing. I actually write very quickly but it?s common for me to leave a couple of years between spec idea and spec execution. Gotta let it simmer. And gotta write the six-to-eight features I?m getting paid to write. Momma?s got bills to pay.
8. What other films would you compare this story to within your genre?
I think it?s similar in tone and register to?Silver Linings Playbook, and similar in aesthetic and universe to?Stranger Than Fiction (save for the magic realism). It?s difficult to transplant two crisis-ridden North Americans in Tokyo without?immediately?recalling?Lost in Translation but, as much as I love (love, love) that film, this is written in a very different style.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this screenplay?
I did, I guess. And my sister. And the following Japanese dramas:?Hana Yori Dango, Kimi Wa Petto, Zettai Kareshi. And the Korean drama?The First Shop of Coffee Prince.?
I?m really drawn to narratives about people who struggle to distinguish between fiction and reality. I wrote my Masters thesis about it, and it?s a trope that keeps rearing its head in my work. In this case we have one character more than the other who is actually trying to transplant herself in a world she only knows by its fictional representations (and soap operas, at that).
The other character gets at one of my newer preoccupations, the idea of distance as valuable. The husband from whom she?s separated, during their marriage, lived across the street. It seemed the only distance from which she could be loved and accepted ? never up-close. And in response to her separation she flies across the world, and her marriage, from this even greater distance, looks very different. I?ve always said that my ideal husband would live across the street, and I often joke that, as a woman and a partner, I?m good-looking from far, but far from good-looking. I?m really invested in finding the right distance/closeness with the right people, and these preoccupations play out in an interesting way in this story. The ways in which we can?t move away from something without inevitably moving toward something else, and whether we?re simply moving toward the same patterns and behaviours we?re trying to shed, or whether we?re moving to something altogether different.
10. What else about your screenplay might pique the audience?s interest?
Women behaving badly. I think we need to see more of that.
?
Ok there you have it! Thanks, Saleema!
Now it?s time to tag fellow writers-slash-bloggers who haven?t done this yet. So, I?m gonna tag playwright and former classmate Elise at Around the World in 80 Plays, and fellow screenwriter Alex at Complications Ensue. Join in, if you?re feeling it! ?Here are the questions:
1. What is the working title of your book? 2. Where did the idea for the book come from? 3. What genre does your book fall under? 4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? 10. What else about your book might pique the reader?s interest?
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Public release date: 21-Dec-2012
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