Excerpts from an article describing an attack by armed gunmen at a church in eastern Pakistan:

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Unidentified masked gunmen on motorcycles have opened fire indiscriminately on worshippers in a church in eastern Pakistan, killing at least 16 people.

Police say dozens more are seriously injured.

The attack took place during a service attended by over 100 people at a Roman Catholic church in the town of Bahawalpur, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the city of Multan, in Punjab Province.

No one has so far said they carried out the attack, but officials said members of a banned Islamic group were under suspicion.

One witness said six men on three motorcycles rode up to Saint Dominic's Church and pulled out AK-47 assault rifles, shooting two police guards before entering the packed church.

"They were carrying bags and when they came they took out guns," the witness told Reuters news agency.

Survivors say the gunmen locked the church doors and sprayed fire at the Protestant congregation using the building at the time.

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Source:

• BBC

Odyssey Orbit of Mars, Future Mars Adventures

Excerpt from articles describing the recent arrival of the Odyssey probe in orbit around Mars, followed by links to a video and a web site regarding a future Mars exploration:

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A space craft has entered the orbit of Mars, where it will search for signs of water on the Red Planet.

(click for large size image)

... The probe is carrying a gamma ray spectrometer, which includes a high-energy neutron detector, as well as a thermal-emission imaging system and a Martian radiation environment experiment.

It will use these instruments to carry out a chemical and mineralogical survey of the planet.

It will also look for hidden reservoirs of water and assess radiation risks to future human missions.

... When Mars Odyssey turns its three scientific instruments towards the planet, it will join another Nasa satellite, the Global Surveyor, which is already at work.

Global Surveyor has mapped Mars since 1997, taking more than 78,000 images of the planet.

Among them are high-resolution pictures that suggest water may have coursed across the surface of Mars in the recent geological past, raising the tantalising possibility that the planet harbours life.

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Source:

• BBC (1 of 2)
• BBC (2 of 2)

Click the following link to access a video opening with satisfaction regarding the successful orbit of Odyssey around Mars, followed by details on the future landing of Beagle 2 (an exploration probe to search for signs of life on Mars) ...

(click for Odyssey segue to
Beagle 2 video)

Click the following link to access the official Beagle 2 technology web site, which includes links to comprehensive information regarding the British Beagle 2 program ...

(click for Beagle 2 technology web site)

Non-PC Wallpaper

Click the following graphic to access a web site with a large library of images of females in assorted artistic displays (800x600 and 1024x768) ...

"The non-PC wallpaper for
all discerning PC users"

Anthrax the Result of U.S. Terrorists?

Excerpts from article describing suspicions that right-wing terrorists in the U.S. are at the root of the anthrax infections:

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Neo-Nazi extremists within the US are behind the deadly wave of anthrax attacks against America, according to latest briefings from the security services and Justice Department.

Experts on 'survivalist' groups and extreme-right 'Aryan' militants have been drafted into the investigation as the focus shifts away from possible links with the 11 September terrorists or even possible state backers such as Iraq.

'We've been zeroing in on a number of hate groups, especially one on the West Coast,' a source at the Justice Department told The Observer yesterday. 'We've certainly not discounted the possibility that they may be involved.'

The anthrax crisis, which grew last week, had by Friday night spread to mailrooms at CIA headquarters, the Supreme Court and a hospital, and yesterday three traces were found in an office building serving the US Capitol.

'There are a number of strong leads, and some people we know well that we are looking at,' the Justice Department said.

'These are groups organised into militia and "survivalist" movements - which pull out of society and take to the hills to make war on the government, and who will support anyone else making war on the government.'

Investigators are examining threatening letters sent to media organisations - some dated before the 11 September attacks - which did not contain anthrax but contained similar messages and handwriting style as those which later did.

... Now the anthrax investigation is zooming in on possible connections between these neo-Nazis and Arab extremists, united by their mutual anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Such alliances have been common among neo-Nazis in Europe, but have played a lesser role in the US.

... The trail leading investigators to groups from the domestic ultra-right - rather than the al-Qaeda terror network - comes as a dramatic twist in the confused crisis.

Last week, parallel evidence appeared to be linking the now rampant anthrax attacks to another trail: leading from Iraq and through the Czech Republic, with al-Qaeda militants as the likely couriers. ...

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Source:

• The Observer

Excerpts from article describing the origins of the world's most wanted mass murderer:

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... [Osama bin Laden's father, Mohamed bin Laden] was a devout man, raised in the strict and conservative Wahhabi strand of Sunni Islam. ... Though at one stage he was rich enough to bail out the royal family when they fell on hard times, the tatty bag he had carried when he left the Yemen remained on display in the palatial family home. He was killed when his helicopter crashed in 1968.

... Born in 1957 - the year 1377 of the Islamic calendar - [Osama bin Laden] was 11 when his father died. He never saw much of him. . '... The father had very dominating personality. He insisted to keep all his children in one premises,' ... 'He had a tough discipline and observed all the children with strict religious and social code. In bin Laden's early teens there was little sign of the fanatic he would become.

The early Seventies were a time of huge cultural change in the Middle East. Oil revenue, the wars with Israel and, above all, increasing contact with the West forced a profound re-examining of old certainties. For most of Mohamed bin Laden's numerous progeny, the answer lay in greater Westernisation and the elder members of the family set off for Victoria College in Alexandria in Egypt, Harvard, London or Miami.

But not bin Laden. Like tens of thousands of other young men in the region at the time, Osama had become increasingly drawn to the cool, clear, uncluttered certainties of extremist Islamist ideology.

... After finishing high school in Jedda in 1974, bin Laden decided against joining his siblings overseas for further education. ... Osama entered the management and economics faculty at King Abdul Aziz University. ... a key element of his university course was civil engineering. Bin Laden himself preferred the Islamic Studies component of the course. Later, he was to combine the two in a radically effective way.

At university he heard tapes recorded by the fiery Palestinian-born Jordanian academic Abdallah Azzam, and these had a powerful impact. Azzam's recorded sermons - much like Osama's videotapes today - brilliantly caught the mood of many disaffected young Muslims.

Jedda itself - and King Abdul Aziz university - was a centre for Islamic dissidents from all over the Muslim world. In its mosques and medressas (Islamic schools) they preached a severe message: only an absolute return to the values of conservative Islam could protect the Muslim world from the dangers and decadence of the West.

One bin Laden brother, Abdelaziz, remembers Osama 'reading and praying all the time' during this period. Osama certainly became deeply involved in religious activities at university, including theological debates and Koranic study.

... In February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic Republic. A shudder of excitement and fear ran through Muslims everywhere. In November - and bin Laden was later to refer to this as a crucial, formative event - Islamic radicals seized the grand mosque at Mecca and held it against Saudi government forces.

... Eventually, after much bloodshed, the rebels were defeated. 'He was inspired by them,' a close friend told The Observer last month. 'He told me these men were true Muslims and had followed a true path.'

Sooner than anyone expected, bin Laden got his chance to follow them. In the last days of the year Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan. .... 'I was enraged and went there at once,' he has told interviewers. He was 23 and had found the cause he had been looking for.

... Within weeks of his first arrival in Pakistan, Osama had been introduced to Abdullah Azzam, the charismatic preacher whose taped sermons had made such an impression at university.

The pair got on well. The energy, administrative talent and contacts of the young Saudi complemented the profound Islamic knowledge and commitment of the older man. Azzam, then 38, was a founder of the Hamas guerrilla group on the occupied West Bank and Gaza and thus had the experience to run a major organisation.

... By 1984, bin Laden and Azzam had rented a house in the Peshawar suburb of University Town and established a logistics base for the thousands of Arab fighters arriving in the city. It was called Beit-al-Ansar (the House of the Faithful). 'Bin Laden ... would receive the Arab volunteers, vet them and then send them on to the various Afghan factions,' said one former associate.

... bin Laden would lead religious debates among the volunteers. Many centred on Sura Yasin - the key passage known as 'the heart' or 'the source' of the Koran, when Muhammad the prophet reveals the message and the task that God has entrusted him with. 'He used to talk a lot about the warriors of Islamic history such as Salauddin [Saladin],' said one associate.

... bin Laden fought hard, often exposing himself to extreme physical danger. ... Bin Laden's fanaticism was shared by his men. 'I took three Afghans and three Arabs and told them to hold a position [during the battle for the eastern city of Jalalabad in 1989].

They fought all day, then when I went to relieve them in the evening the Arabs were crying because they wanted to be martyred. I told them that if they wanted to stay and fight they could. The next day they were killed. Osama said later that he had told them that the trench was their gate to heaven.'

[skip section discussing Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and bin Laden's return to Saudi Arabia at the age of 33] ... on 2 August [1990], Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. Osama bin Laden, then living in his home town of Jedda, had immediately sent a message to the Saudi royal family offering to form an army of 30,000 Afghan veterans to defeat the Iraqi dictator. The men who had defeated the Russians could easily take on Saddam, he said, and he was clearly the man to lead them.

Bin Laden was in for a rude - and profoundly upsetting - shock. The last thing the House of al-Saud wanted was an army of zealous Islamists fighting its war. ... Worse was to come. Instead of the Islamic army he envisaged protecting the cradle of Islam, the defence of Saudi Arabia - and thus of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina - was entrusted to the Americans.

Bin Laden, seething with humiliation and rage, could do nothing but watch as 300,000 US troops arrived in his country and set about building bases, drinking Coke and alcohol and sunbathing.

Bin Laden saw their presence as an infidel invasion. It even appeared to defy directly the dying words of the Prophet Muhammad: 'Let there be no two religions in Arabia.' The 33-year-old started lobbying religious scholars and Muslim activists throughout the Gulf. Playing on his celebrity status, he lectured and preached throughout Saudi Arabia, circulating thousands of audio tapes through mosques.

In late 1990 an escape route appeared. Bin Laden received an offer of refuge from Hassan al-Turabi, the charismatic Islamist scholar in effect running Sudan. Turabi believed that the total defeat of Iraq and the discrediting of 'secular' Arab regimes would lead to an opportunity to set up a 'pure' Islamic government across the Muslim world.

It was a seductive message. And the Saudi regime were thankful for an opportunity to get rid of him. They pushed bin Laden further in the hope that he would leave. Bin Laden cracked. He fled Saudi Arabia for Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

... in Sudan [bin Laden] had been able to start the serious work of building al-Qaeda - a global umbrella group of Muslim extremists dedicated to overturning 'unIslamic' governments throughout the Middle East and further afield. But in terms of military capacity and strategic thinking bin Laden's group was still weak. In Afghanistan, he swiftly found a solution.

... he wrote and circulated a 12-page article, full of Koranic and historical references, promising violent action against the Americans unless they withdrew from Saudi Arabia. In a significant broadening of his view - showing the influence of the Egyptians - he also spoke for the first time of Palestine and Lebanon as well as 'the fierce Judaeo-Christian campaign against the Muslim world' and 'the duty of all Muslims' to resist it.

... in February 1998, he felt strong enough to issue a fatwa in the name of the 'World Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders'. It was signed by bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and the heads of major Islamic movements in Pakistan and Bangladesh and endorsed by dozens of other groups throughout the region.

... The fatwa said that killing Americans and their allies, even civilians, was a Muslim duty.

... At dusk tonight, somewhere in Afghanistan's blasted and baked mountains and deserts, a small group of men will face the setting sun and kneel. As is customary, the most senior and respected among them will take a step forward and lead the group in prayer. Osama bin Laden will give thanks to God.

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Source:

• The Observer