Universities Install Footbaths to Benefit Muslims, and Not Everyone Is Pleased
The New York Times
August 7, 2007
But as a legal and political matter, that solution has not been quite so simple. When word of the plan got out this spring, it created instant controversy, with bloggers going on about the Islamification of the university, students divided on the use of their building-maintenance fees, and tricky legal questions about whether the plan is a legitimate accommodation of students’ right to practice their religion — or unconstitutional government support for that religion.
All the News That Seemed Unfit to Print
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; C01
Now, with circulation plunging below 90,000, American Media, which owns WWN, has pulled the plug. The Aug. 27 issue will be the last. After that, the Weekly World News will be as dead as Elvis, maybe deader.
As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; A01
As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.
Touring Israel’s Barrier With Its Main Designer
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; A01
Tirza, a Jewish settler who believes Israel has a historic right to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, drew the barrier along a route that effectively annexes 10 percent of the West Bank. In the absence of a peace agreement, the course cements the territorial claims of tens of thousands of Jewish settlers, including Tirza’s.
Google Maps redraw the realm of privacy
Los Angeles Times
August 7, 2007
The Internet company late Monday began incorporating street-level photos from Los Angeles, San Diego and some Orange County cities into its Google Maps program. The additions expanded an online service that thrilled some digital-map buffs and freaked out privacy advocates when it launched in May in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and three other cities.
TimesSelect Content Freed
New York Post
August 7, 2007
After much internal debate, Times executives – including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. – made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.
Daddy Dearest: Rudy Giuliani’s daughter is supporting Barack Obama.
Slate
August 6, 2007
There’s one vote that Rudy Giuliani definitely can’t count on in his 2008 presidential bid: his own daughter’s. According to the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani’s Facebook profile, she’s supporting Barack Obama.
Brutality by the Bay
Why did the Oakland police do so little about Your Black Muslim Bakery’s thuggery?
Slate
August 6, 2007
Here is the situation regarding the enterprise known as Your Black Muslim Bakery, located on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, Calif. Its founder, a man named Yusuf Bey, was arrested in 2002 and charged with forcing an underage girl to have sex.
The Black Sites
A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program.
The New Yorker
August 13, 2007
Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions.
