Saudi cleric resigns over co-ed university spat

Opposition to mixing gender at KAUST drew criticism
DUBAI: A top Saudi cleric resigned from the board of the Council of Senior Clerics Sunday in the wake of controversy over his statements opposing gender mixing at the first co-ed university in the Kingdom.
Sheikh Saad bin Nasser al-Shethri’s resignation from the senior ulema came just days after he appeared on the Qatar-based al-Majd satellite channel and lashed out at the newly-opened King Abdullah Science and Technology University for offering co-education.
Shithri was one of several clerics who objected to the mixed gender university, which is outside the purview of the conservative cleric-dominated education ministry.
Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who has promoted reforms since taking office in 2005, accepted Shithri's resignation.
The senior cleric said religious scholars should vet the curriculum to prevent alien ideologies such as "evolution" and set up a committee to ensure it does not violate sharia, or Islamic law.
"We are looking at some of the sciences that have included some irregular and alien ideologies, like evolution and such other ideologies," the daily al-Watan newspaper quoted Shithri as saying last week in response to a viewer’s question.
He later withdraw his statements and stressed the importance of the university in the progress of education. He also accused journalists of taking his statements out of context.
Al-Majd TV sought to distance itself from the channel, saying it is not responsible for Shithri’s statements. Executive director Ahmed Saqr stressed that the comments reflected the sheikh’s personal opinion.
Media campaign
Shithri’s statements sparked outrage among Saudi liberals and columnists, who have been supportive of the university and liberalizing education and accused both the Shethri and the station of overlooking the significant educational role of the university and of focusing on minor issues that are likely to spread controversy.
“Amidst the Kingdom’s celebrations marking the opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) there were some calls which bore the dust of Tora Bora and belittled this gigantic national accomplishment by raising the issue of co-education,” Khalaf Al-Harbi wrote in the Arabic daily Okaz.
A columnist for the London-based Asharq al-Awsat described the singular focus on co-education as “the chronic state of obsession with virtue creeping in once again.”
"This is a strategy for the conservatives to control the university or at least have a major say in it. This is the old trick for them to have the upper hand to sabotage reform," said Jamal Khashoggi, editor-in-chief of al-Watan.
King Abdullah's University of Science and Technology (KAUST), designed to produce Saudi scientists, is the only educational institution in the kingdom where men and women can mix. It is located near a Red Sea village away from the clutches of religious police.
It has attracted top scientists from around the world with research potential unmatched in many advanced countries and one of the largest endowments in the world.

Aging in muscles likely to be reversed?

NEW YORK: Researchers have discovered a way of boosting the muscle regeneration process in old age back to the levels of the young.
They found that an enzyme that acts as a catalyst to repair and maintenance of muscles is much lower in older people than the young. By increasing its concentration in the elderly, they believe they can restore “youthful vigour” to old muscles.
Scientists hope the breakthrough could lead to new treatments that rejuvenate and strengthen ageing bodies or combat degenerative diseases.
It is well known that as people get older, their ability to restore and rebuild lost muscle is weakened.
Researchers at the University of California, working with colleagues from the Institute of Sports Medicine and Centre of Healthy Ageing at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, compared muscle tissue samples from around 30 healthy men.
Half the volunteers were young 21 to 24-year-olds and half aged between 68 and 74.
At the start of the study, samples of muscle tissue were surgically removed from the participants’ thighs.
The men then had the leg from which the biopsies were taken immobilised in a cast for two weeks so that their muscles atrophied.
After the casts were removed, the men exercised with weights to rebuild their wasted muscles. More tissue samples were removed three days and four weeks after removal of the casts and sent to Prof Conboy’s laboratory.
The scientists found that during the exercise period the muscles of younger volunteers had four times more regenerative stem cells engaged in tissue repair than those of older participants.
Old muscle also showed signs of damaging inflammation and scarring.
Analysis of the samples revealed for the first time a biological pathway involved in muscle repair that relied on an enzyme called mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK).
The enzyme, a type of active protein, stimulated a biological “switch” on muscle stem cells called Notch that triggered growth.
MAPK is known to be important for organ formation during embryonic development in species as wide-ranging as worms, fruit flies and mice.
In old human muscle, MAPK levels were low and prevented tissue repair, the researchers reported in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.
The scientists found they could block muscle regeneration in the young tissue samples by artificially reducing MAPK levels.
But the reverse effect was seen when they grew old muscle cells in a solution that forced MAPK activation. Suddenly, the old muscle regained its ability to regenerate.
Professor Irina Conboy, who led the research, said: “Our study shows that the ability of old human muscle to be maintained and repaired by muscle stem cells can be restored to youthful vigour given the right mix of biochemical signals.
“The fact that this MAPK pathway has been conserved throughout evolution, from worms to flies to humans, shows that it is important,” said Prof Conboy.
“Now we know that it plays a key role in regulation and ageing of human tissue regeneration.”

8 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan

KABUL: Eight U.S. service members were killed in coordinated attacks on two outposts in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan, military officials said Sunday.

The attacks in Nuristan province, which took place Saturday, also killed two Afghan soldiers, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for U.S. forces, Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, confirmed that all the Western fatalities were Americans. The deaths marked the largest single losses of American lives in months in a single engagement.

Many remote outposts like the ones that were hit in this assault by what NATO described as "tribal militia" are due to be shut down under a new strategy put forth by U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of all Western troops in Afghanistan.

India raring to buy 50 more fighters from Russia

MOSCOW: India wants to buy another 50 Sukhoi-30MKI multi-role fighters, an Indian daily reported.
According to the daily, the 50 air-superiority fighters will come on top of the 230 already contracted from Russia in three deals worth a total of $8.5 billion.
The paper quoted Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Marshal P V Naik as saying his force was indeed "interested" in acquiring more Sukhois, which will be "the mainstay of India's fighter fleet for the foreseeable future, to further enhance its combat potential."
He stressed, however, that the acquisition was not "country or adversary-specific."
India previously said it was satisfied with the performance of Russian Su-30MKI fighters.
The IAF originally ordered 50 Su-30MKI aircraft from Russia in 1996-98 and an additional 40 planes in 2007. Hindustani Aeronautics (HAL) was also contracted to build 140 aircraft in India between 2003 and 2017 under a licensed production agreement.

Dutch camel farm gains credibility

The Bedouin of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula have long been convinced that the milk of camels can cure almost any internal disease, driving bacteria from the body.
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Europe: The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations reports that doctors in parts of Russia and Kazakhstan often prescribe it to convalescing patients.
In India, camel milk is used therapeutically against jaundice, tuberculosis, asthma, anaemia and piles.
And there is some evidence of a much-reduced incidence of diabetes in parts of the country where it is regularly drunk.
European health food?
In the Netherlands, proving the veracity of such claims to a sceptical European audience has become a family concern.
When 26-year-old Frank Smits became Europe's first commercial camel farmer, his father, Marcel, a neurologist at Gelderse Vallei Hospital in Ede, decided to help the cause by recruiting his medical colleagues to look into some of the alleged health benefits of his son's product.
Three years down the line, Dr Smits has attracted enough interest and credibility for his research to win funding from the local health authority and nearby Wageningen University.
"I think this milk does have some potential to become a new health food in Europe, but I prefer health food when it's proven scientifically," he said. "And that's what we are trying to do.
"For example, we did a study with diabetic patients, involving giving them half a litre of either cow or camel milk here in the hospital, starting early in the morning and monitoring their blood sugar level every 30 minutes for three hours."
The patients were not told whether they had drunk milk from a cow or a camel, said Dr Smits, adding that the the full results from the tests would be available at the beginning of next year.
"In the meantime, we are starting a bigger study, lasting three months, with up to 200 diabetic patients and we would not be commissioning such a study if the results of the first research had not been encouraging," said Dr Smits.
"We have also found evidence that diabetics feel better when they are regularly drinking camel milk, that their quality of life seems to improve.
"I don't know if this is only the influence on the diabetes or if it is also other aspects of camel milk which improve well-being. And that is also one of the things we are looking into."
Importing problems
Frank Smits set up the farm in 2006, on land near his student halls of residence in Cromvoirt, with three camels imported from the Canary Islands.
He now has 40 animals, not enough of which are yet old enough to produce milk to give him the quantities he needs to move into profit.
"I read about the health-giving properties of camel milk," he said. "And I thought 'why are there no camel farmers here in Europe?'"
It was a difficult process becoming the first one, though. The initial problem was that the camel was not officially classified by the European Union as a production animal.
Mr Smits had to have special permission from the government, proving his ability to treat the animals well and humanely.
Then he was told it was forbidden to import camels from outside Europe.
Then there was the problem of milking.
Problematic temperaments
Frank Smits claims to have invented the world's first effective camel milking machine.
It looks similar to a cow milking machine, but the vacuum function is different, the pulsation is different and the devices which attach to the camel's teats are different sizes.
At the same time, Smits had to ensure there was a market for his product. He began handing out samples of his milk outside local mosques, appealing chiefly to Moroccan and Somalian immigrants whose families back home were accustomed to it as a staple.
"Of course there was no demand for camel milk at the start because nobody knew you could buy it here," he said.
"But word did slowly spread and he now supplies to more than 50 shops in Holland and exports to Germany and to the UK."
Eventually, his hope is that camel milk will catch on widely among native Europeans.
There is one serious obstacle to mass production, however, which is the problematic temperament of your average camel.
This not only requires the presence of its calf to give milk but, according to Frank Smits, also has to be in the right mood away from the company of strangers.