It is with agonizing heart-rending grief that we come to you with the horrible news of the murder of a medical assistant ABDUL QADIR working in the Clinic of Dr. Bin Yameen in the Bazid Khel area of Peshawar, Pakistan.
On Thursday February 11 2021, at around 2 p.m. when the clinic staff was on break for lunch and afternoon prayers, someone rang the clinic doorbell and Abdul Qadir opened the door to answer the bell. He was instantly shot twice and fell at the doorsteps. He was taken to hospital but sadly succumbed to his injuries and died.
Abdul Qadir was a senior member of the clinic staff. He was 65 years old. He was very well respected in the local community and was always very kind and helpful to the patients.
We have been regularly informing the sober minded advocates and defenders of human rights, of the monstrous wave of persecution, torture, harassment, and target killings of Ahmadis because of their faith and belief, going on in Pakistan.
The Government, its judiciary and law & order maintaining agencies are not taking any notice of the atrocities upon the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan and the venomous clergy are at liberty to carry on their acts of butchery against Ahmadis.
You will be shocked to hear that just in recent months this is the eighth killing of an Ahmadi and the fifth one in Peshawar which is in the province under the rule of the Governing Party PTI. There are in addition countless fabricated cases filed in courts against Ahmadis and threats and acts of violence all over Pakistan.
President of the European Council Charles Michel has reaffirmed European Union’s continued support to Bangladesh for a lasting and peaceful solution to the Rohingya crisis.
He said this when Ambassador Mahbub Hassan Saleh, the newly-appointed Head of Mission of Bangladesh to the EU, met him to present his Letters of Credence in Brussels on Thursday.
Ambassador Saleh stressed the need for Myanmar authorities taking credible measures to generate confidence among the forcibly-displaced Rohingyas, temporarily sheltered in Bangladesh, for their safe, dignified and sustainable return to the Rakhine State.
President Michel recalled his previous meetings with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, including the last one held in Madrid in December 2019.
Ambassador Saleh also conveyed the greetings of the president and the prime minister of Bangladesh to the president of the European Council.
The European Council president acknowledged Bangladesh’s preoccupation with climate change, and noted the current presidency of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).
Saleh suggested establishing a dedicated bilateral platform between Bangladesh and the EU for exchanging views and working more closely to address the challenges of climate change.
He also suggested holding a CVF-EU leaders’ meeting, during the lead-up to UNFCCC COP-26 in the UK later this year.
Michel responded positively to these suggestions.
The Bangladesh ambassador also underscored the need for expanding the scope of Bangladesh-European Union partnership.
He also conveyed Bangladesh prime minister’s invitation to the European Council president to visit the country at his earliest convenience.
The meeting took place following the existing health regulations in Belgium.
The ambassador was accompanied by Md Safiul Azam, counsellor (commerce) and Kaniz Fatema, first secretary (political) of the mission.
The 499-kilometer border separating north from south Ireland has become one of the most contentious issues since, not least over trade
Britain and the EU vowed on Thursday to resolve post-Brexit trade frictions over the Northern Ireland border in the wake of the UK’s departure from the bloc. Northern Ireland was barely mentioned in the parliamentary debates prior to the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Yet the nature of the 499-kilometer border separating north from the south has become one of the most contentious issues since, not least over trade and the vulnerability of the peace accord struck in 1998 — the Good Friday Agreement — that largely ended sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that had ensued since the late 1960s.
Since the UK fully left the EU after the post-Brexit transition period ended on January first, significant shortages of fresh produce and other goods has occurred across Northern Ireland, exacerbating post-Brexit tensions.
Senior British Cabinet Minister Michael Gove and European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic held a frank but constructive discussion with the Good Friday Agreement and issues over the supply of goods at the center of those talks, the pair said.
Their statement added that they would spare no effort to implement solutions agreed in December under the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol.
Relations between the UK and the EU have become increasingly fractious, with Ireland keeping a close eye on proceedings.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin has called on both sides to dial down the rhetoric. We just need to calm it, because ultimately we want the United Kingdom aligning well with the European Union. We want harmonious, sensible relationships, he told RTE radio.
A new Scientology Super Bowl ad has run for the ninth year running, and while the graphics and music, pacing and use of light are very similar to the ones of previous years, there is one point that makes it unique. Most of earlier productions were intended as stand-alone, timeless communications. This year’s was clearly tied to the past year’s ordeal. It begins, as described by Kelly Frazier to World Religion News “with stark footage of empty places — streets, a classroom, a stadium — followed by a montage featuring desperate health care workers trying, and possibly failing, to save lives. It shows people isolated, and not coping, alone at home”.
The video is a direct appeal to the rediscover spiritual power of each individual, to recover hope, challenging viewers to strive to “Be More,” which is the title of the ad has now player for for 1.4 million times, ends with the now familiar question—one first posed at the end of their ad in 2018 when the church launched its 24/7 DIRECTV television network: “Curious?” And it has been launched concidentaly with the launching a new section of their official website called: “A LOOK BACK & A LOOK AHEAD”, that presents what they have done right before the pandemic, during it, and what they plan for the near future.
A group of more than 500 scientists have signed a letter calling on the EU to stop treating the burning of biomass as carbon neutral.
They are asking governments around the world, including Europe, to end subsidiaries for burning wood that are harmful to biodiversity and pose a serious threat to the world’s forests.
They claim that for each kilowatt hour of heat or electricity produced by burning trees, “it will likely add two or three times as much carbon to the air as using fossil fuels.” This is because wood is not as energy-dense as fuels like coal or oil meaning more has to be burnt in order to generate the same amount of power.
The letter is addressed to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel as well as US President Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Suga and South Korean President Moon.
It was signed by hundreds of scientists and economists including former chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele. The group worry that this “false solution” is replacing real efforts to reduce carbon emissions in countries around the world.
“Fighting the climate emergency without changing the EU’s biomass rules is like trying to bail out a boat with a hole in the bottom,” says Alex Mason, Senior Policy Officer at WWF European Policy Office.
He adds that it is what you are burning that matters “not how sustainably the forest was managed”.
Why is burning wood a bad idea?
Although technically ‘renewable’, regrowing trees takes years. Natural regeneration of forests has been found to capture carbon faster and for longer than replanting efforts. Simply leaving trees to grow on their own could potentially be the “single largest natural climate solution available to us”.
For years, producers of paper and wood have used their waste to generate electricity which did not lead to extra trees being cut down.
But, the group of scientists say, “in recent years there has been a misguided move to cut down whole trees or divert large portions of stem wood for bioenergy, releasing carbon that would otherwise stay locked up in forests.”
“If the world supplied just an additional 2 per cent of its energy from wood, it would need to double its commercial wood harvests,” reads the letter. They add that there is good evidence that increased use of bioenergy already means more forests are being harvested in Europe.
“The revision of the EU renewables law is a crucial chance; the Commission must listen to scientists and citizens and stop trees being burned in the name of the climate,” says Mason.
ESPOO, Finland, Feb. 12, 2021 — Europe has always been excellent in academic research, but over the past few decades commercializing research projects has been slow compared to international competition. This is starting to change with quantum technologies. As one of the largest efforts in Europe and worldwide, Germany announced € 2 Billion funding into quantum programs in June 2020, from which €120 Million are invested in this current round of research grants.
Today, IQM announced a Quantum project consortium that includes some of Europe’s leading startups (ParityQC, IQM), industry leaders (Infineon Technologies), research centers (Forschungszentrum Jülich), supercomputing centers (Leibniz Supercomputing Centre), and academia (Freie Universität Berlin) has been awarded € 12.4 Million from the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (Announcement in German).
The scope of the project is to accelerate commercialization through an innovative co-design concept. This project focuses on application-specific quantum processors, which have the potential to create a fastlane to quantum advantage. The digital-analog concept used to operate the processors will further lay the foundation for commercially viable quantum computers. This project will run for four years and aims to develop a 54-qubit quantum processor.
The project is intended to support the European FET Flagship project EU OpenSuperQ, announced in 2018 which is aimed at designing, building, and operating a quantum information processing system of up to 100 qubits. Deploying digital-analog quantum computing, this consortium adds a new angle to the OpenSuperQ project and widens its scope. With efforts from Munich, Berlin and Jülich, as well as Parity QC from Austria, the project builds bridges and seamlessly integrates into the European quantum landscape.
IQM Quantum Computers Design
“The grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany is a huge recognition of our unique co-design approach for quantum computers. Last year when we established our office in Munich, this was one of our key objectives. The concept allows us to become a system integrator for full-stack quantum computers by bringing together all the relevant players. As Europe’s leading startup in quantum technologies, this gives us confidence to further invest in Germany and other European countries” said Dr. Jan Goetz, CEO of IQM Quantum Computers.
“DAQC is an important project for Germany and Europe. It enables us to take a leading role in the area of quantum technologies. It also allows us to bring quantum computing into one of the prime academic supercomputing centres to more effectively work on the important integration of high-performance computing and quantum computing. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration,” said Prof. Dr Martin Schulz, Member of the Board of Directors, Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ).
About IQM Quantum Computers:
IQM is a European leader in superconducting quantum computers, headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Since its inception in 2018, IQM has grown to 80+ employees and has also established a subsidiary in Munich, Germany, to lead the co-design approach. IQM delivers on-premises quantum computers for research laboratories and supercomputing centers and provides complete access to its hardware. For industrial customers, IQM delivers quantum advantage through a unique application-specific co-design approach. IQM has raised € 71 Million from VCs firms and also public grants and is also building Finland’s first quantum computer.
European Commission Press release Brussels, 13 Feb 2021 Robust new trade enforcement rules have entered into force that will further strengthen the EU’s toolbox in defending its interests.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association is demanding the EU install more electric vehicle charging stations in a letter co-signed with Transport & Environment and the European Consumer Organization. This marks the hundredth time (rough estimate) an auto lobbying entity has tried to pressure the government into spending a fortune to drastically alter the European infrastructure to support the planned glut of EVs.
But it might be a fair request. Regulatory actions have effectively forced the industry into a corner and it now seems giddy at the prospect of an electrified world. The only real downside is that the charging infrastructure and power grids aren’t ready. ACEA estimates that the EU will need to build one million public charging points by 2024, with hopes of seeing three million installed before 2030.
BIC GENEVA — Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is among a group of more than 50 high-ranking legal professionals in Canada who have written an open letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Chief Justice, Ebrahim Raisi, expressing deep concern regarding “new and intense violations” of the human rights of Iran’s Bahá’í community.
The letter—whose signatories include former justice ministers and judges of the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as prominent legal academics and practicing lawyers—condemns a recent court ruling to confiscate Bahá’í properties in Ivel, a village in northern Iran.
“We know the Bahá’í Faith to stand for values of peace, justice, and unity,” the letter states, “values which have been under sustained attack by the Iranian authorities for decades. Violations of the human rights of Iran’s Bahá’ís have already been decried by the Canadian government, the United Nations and numerous human rights organizations. Today, as members of the Canadian legal profession who believe in the rule of law, we too stand with the Bahá’ís of Iran and call upon you, as the head of the Iranian judiciary, to address this new abuse inflicted upon the Bahá’ís of Ivel.”
The unprecedented outpouring of support comes after Bahá’í-owned properties have been unjustly confiscated by Iranian authorities in Ivel, displacing dozens of families and leaving them economically impoverished.
Numerous official documents unmistakably reveal religious prejudice as the sole motive behind the confiscations. Some records show, for instance, that Bahá’ís were told that if they converted to Islam, their properties would be returned.
“The 2020 rulings now establish a dangerous constitutional precedent of judicially sanctioned confiscation that nullifies legitimate property interests based only on the owners’ religious affiliation, thus departing not only from international human rights standards but also from the text and intent of the Iranian constitution itself,” the letter to Chief Justice Raisi states.
Religious discrimination against the Bahá’í community, it further states, “can provide solid grounds for prosecution of Iran’s authorities before international criminal courts and other international institutions.”
Despite repeated attempts by the Bahá’ís in Ivel to appeal for their rights, their lawyers were given no opportunity to see court documents to prepare a defense or to present any arguments.
The situation in Ivel, the letter says, is an “alarming new chapter” in the persecution of a Bahá’í community that dates to the mid-1800s and was once a “thriving and peaceful multi-generational community… of farmers and small business owners.” Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Bahá’ís in Ivel have been “forced from their homes, imprisoned, harassed, and their property torched and demolished.” In 2010, homes belonging to 50 Bahá’í families in Ivel were demolished as part of long-running campaign to expel them from the region.
Diane Ala’i, Representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations in Geneva, says, “This letter from prominent legal figures demonstrates that the cruel treatment meted out to the Bahá’ís by the Iranian authorities has not gone unnoticed by the international community. It has, instead, served to galvanize public conscience around the world.”
The history of land confiscation and mass displacement of Bahá’ís in Iran is detailed in a special section of the website of the Canadian Bahá’í community’s Office of Public Affairs.
NCRI-US Welcomes Bipartisan House Resolution Condemning Tehran’s Terrorism and Rights Abuses, Supporting Iran Uprising – Book Publishing Industry Today – EIN Presswire
