The sister of a Pakistani man arrested this weekend says he was the only man arrested in the raid and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 911, wasn’t there. Pakistani intelligence officials say Khalid Shaikh Mohammed died in an earlier shootout in Karachi. Another senior al-Qaeda figure, Ramzi Binalshibh, was taken alive during that raid and handed over to the U.S. and is now on a warship somewhere in the Gulf, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s wife and child were handed over FBI. The wife, under intense interrogation, has revealed information that is likely to lead to new arrests. If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has been dead for 6 months, who was arrested this weekend and why was the arrest announced?
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The ongoing debate about whether there could be life on Mars has gotten some positive input. When scientists first discovered there’s ice on the surface, they were elated, because water means life. There could be frozen bacteria under the ice that’s still alive or, even if it’s dead, could give clues to past life on the planet. Then they decided the ice was made of frozen carbon dioxide, which would contain no life. But now they’ve spotted long gullies that could only have been carved by liquid water, so they’re optimistic again.
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Eight years ago a young Muslim woman in Jordan named Dalia was stabbed to death by her father because she’d fallen in love with Michael, a Catholic in the Jordanian army. When Dalia’s father found out about their meetings, he stabbed her 12 times, and waited to make sure she was dead before calling an ambulance. Since it was an “honor killing,” the father wasn’t prosecuted. Articles 340 and 98 of the Jordanian penal code sanction honor killings and excuse the perpetrators.
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A new government plan would look up background information on you and assign you a threat level every time you buy a airplane ticket. A nationwide computer system will check credit reports and bank account activity and compare passenger names with those on government watch lists. “This system threatens to create a permanent blacklisted underclass of Americans who cannot travel freely,” says Katie Corrigan, of the American Civil Liberties Union. Delta Air Lines will try out the system at three undisclosed airports beginning in March, and a nationwide system could be in place by the end of the year.
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