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FBI Probed Texas Gunman ‘Over Jihadist Sympathies’

FBI Probed Texas Gunman ‘Over Jihadist Sympathies’

By Jared Christopher, AFP

Garland, Texas — One of the men shot dead by police when he and an accomplice attempted to storm an event hosted by an anti-Muslim group in Texas was investigated by the FBI over alleged plans to wage holy war, court documents show.

Investigators were delving into the backgrounds of the two suspected Islamist gunmen — they were roommates, The Los Angeles Times reported — who opened fire with assault rifles outside Sunday’s controversial exhibit of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

A quick-acting Texas policeman shot the two suspects before they were able to enter the venue in Garland, a suburb of Dallas.

There was no confirmed claim of responsibility for the failed attack, but several US media identified the shooters as 31-year-old Elton Simpson and 34-year-old Nadir Soofi.

The pair shared an apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, the LA Times said, and CNN broadcast footage of FBI agents raiding the alleged address.

And in court records seen by AFP, Simpson was sentenced to three years’ probation in 2011 after FBI agents presented a court with taped conversations between him and an informant discussing travelling to Somalia to join “their brothers” waging holy war.

The prosecution was unable to prove that Simpson had committed a terror-related offense, but did establish he had lied to investigators when he denied having discussed going to Somalia.

Private terror watchdog SITE said that at least one Twitter account linked to a known militant of the Islamic State jihadist group has claimed the attackers as sympathizers. But Simpson’s father said his son had simply “made a bad choice.”

The White House said that President Barack Obama had been briefed on the investigation, which Texas police said was ongoing.

“There is no form of expression that justifies an act of violence,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that investigators were looking into the “assailants’ ties to organized terrorist activity.”

The American Freedom Defense Initiative, a group listed by civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group, had organized the event, which drew about 200 people.

At the event, attended by Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders and AFDI co-founder Pamela Geller, supporters held an exhibition of entries to a competition to draw caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Many Muslims find drawings of the prophet to be disrespectful or outright blasphemous, and such cartoons have been cited by Islamists as motivation in several previous attacks.

AFDI had offered a $10,000 prize for the winner of the contest, which was billed as a “free speech” event.

Police said two men wearing body armor and toting assault rifles drove up to the conference, jumped out and opened fire on an unarmed security guard.

Garland police spokesman Joe Harn told reporters the guard was shot in the ankle and that a traffic police officer in the vicinity responded, taking down the two better-armed assailants.

Commentators were quick to draw parallels to a January mass shooting at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris that killed 12 people and wounded 11 more.

“There is absolutely no comparison,” Jean-Baptiste Thoret, the magazine’s film critic who only avoided the attack because he had been late for work — told Charlie Rose on PBS, according to an advance transcript Monday.

“You have a, as you said, a sort of anti-Islamic movement (in Texas)…the problem of Charlie Hebdo is absolutely not the same,” added Thoret, flanked by Gerard Biard, chief editor of the magazine.

Biard added: “We don’t organize contests. We just do our work. We comment on the news. When Mohammed jumps out of the news, we draw Mohammed.

“But if he didn’t, we didn’t. We don’t…We fight racism. And we have nothing to do with these people.”

On Twitter, jihadist Abu Hussain Al-Britani, who SITE identified as British IS fighter Junaid Hussain, described the gunmen as “two of our brothers.”

But Simpson’s father Dunston told ABC News that his son, who he said worked in a dentist’s office, simply “made a bad choice.”

“We are Americans and we believe in America,” Dunston Simpson said. “What my son did reflects very badly on my family.”

Wilders told AFP in an email that he was concerned he may have been targeted because he, like one of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed in January, is on a hit list circulated by Al-Qaeda supporters.

“I am shocked. I just spoke for half an hour about the cartoons, Islam and freedom of speech and I had just left the premises,” he said.

“This is an attack on the liberties of all of us.”

The Dutch politician said he would return to the Netherlands but plans to come back to the United States next week for another speaking engagement.

Geller called the shooting a “war on free speech.”

“What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?” she wrote on her website. “The war is here.”

Photo: Geert Wilders via AFP

Putting Names, Faces To Malaysian Airlines Victims

Putting Names, Faces To Malaysian Airlines Victims

By Michael Muskal and Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times

Around the world Friday, friends and loved ones gathered to mourn the passengers and crew who lost their lives on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, including a student from Indiana, a prominent AIDS researcher, teachers, tourists, and those just going home.

President Barack Obama on Friday identified the first, and so far only, known American citizen aboard as Quinn Lucas Schansman, who had Dutch and American citizenship.

A Facebook profile appearing to belong to Schansman indicates that he was living in Amsterdam as of April, and attending the International Business School at Hogeschool van Amsterdam. A photo posted by a woman who appears to be his girlfriend included numerous condolences from friends.

The Boeing 777 was carrying 298 people when it went down Thursday in eastern Ukraine, sending shock waves around the world from Malaysia to the Netherlands. The dead were from at least 10 countries with the majority, 189, Dutch.

Another passenger with American connections, Karlijn Keijzer, 25, of Amsterdam, was a doctoral student in chemistry at Indiana University and an avid rower who once competed on the women’s varsity rowing team, the school said. She had also earned her master’s degree at Indiana.

Keijzer was a member of Indiana’s varsity 8 crew during its 2011 season. “The Indiana rowing family is deeply saddened by the news of Karlijn’s sudden passing,” said rowing Coach Steve Peterson. “She came to us for one year as a graduate student and truly wanted to pursue rowing. That year was the first year we really started to make a mark … and she was a huge reason for it.”

At a televised news conference Friday, a Malaysia Airlines official gave the latest breakdown of those who died. In addition to the 189 Dutch, which includes Schansman, there were 29 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine from Britain, four each from Germany and Belgium, three from the Philippines, and one each from Canada and New Zealand. The nationalities of several passengers have yet to be verified and officials warned that other passengers may turn out to have dual citizenship.

The disaster over Ukraine was the second major tragedy this year involving a Malaysia Airlines flight. In March, Flight 370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and its 241 passengers and crew were all lost. No sign of the plane has been found.
For one Australian family, the disasters on opposite sides of the world will be forever linked.

Kaylene Mann’s brother Rod Burrows and sister-in-law Mary Burrows were on board MH370 when it vanished in March. On Friday, Mann told the Associated Press that the family had just found out that her stepdaughter, Maree Rizk, was killed on MH17.

“It’s just brought everyone, everything back,” said Greg Burrows, Mann’s brother. “It’s just … ripped our guts again.”

As many as 100 passengers on Flight 17 were traveling to Melbourne, Australia, for the 20th International AIDS conference starting this weekend. The mood among the AIDS research community was grim Friday. Among those lost was prominent researcher Joep Lange, a former president of the International AIDS Society, and his colleague, Jacqueline van Tongeren, according to the Academic Medical Center hospital in Amsterdam, where the pair worked.

“Joep was a man who knew no barriers,” the hospital said in a statement. “He was a great inspiration for everybody who wanted to do something about the AIDS tragedy in Africa and Asia.”

Organizers said the event, a leading forum for researchers to meet, form ties and discuss their work, would go on.

“In recognition of our colleagues’ dedication to the fight against HIV/AIDS, the conference will go ahead as planned and will include opportunities to reflect and remember those we have lost,” they said in a statement.

A World Health Organization spokesman traveling to the conference was also killed.

Television showed clips from the Amsterdam area of flowers being left outside a shop whose owner and boyfriend were among the missing. Mourners gathered outside the Malaysian embassy in Moscow to leave flowers and express their condolences.

Lousewies van der Laan, a Dutch politician and former member of the Dutch parliament, praised Dutch activist Pim de Kuijer, once her intern and believed to be among the dead. On Twitter, Van der Laan called de Kuijer “a brilliant, inspiring and caring activist fighting for equality and helping AIDS victims around the world.”

A Dutch senator, Willem Witteveen of the Labor Party, also died, the Dutch Senate announced.

Students at the Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic school in Sydney, Australia, gathered Friday for a special prayer meeting after it was confirmed that Sister Philomene Tiernan, a 77-year-old teacher, was killed.

“We’re absolutely devastated. For me, she’s been a great mentor and she’s also a personal friend,” school Principal Hilary Johnston-Croke told reporters, her voice breaking with emotion.

Another Australian school, Toorak College in Melbourne, was also bereaved, according to local media reports. Teacher Frankie Davison and her husband Liam were on the stricken flight, the school announced.

“Our hearts and sympathy goes out to their children Milly and Sam, and family,” the school said in a message online. “We are devastated by the news of this tragedy.”

Relatives were also mourning loved ones in Malaysia. Akmar Mohd Noor said her sister was flying home from Geneva to join her family for Hari Raya, the celebrations to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“She was coming back from Geneva to celebrate with us for the first time in 30 years,” Akmar told reporters.

AFP Photo/Dominique Faget

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Dutch Go Into Mourning For Victims Of Malaysia Jet Downing

Dutch Go Into Mourning For Victims Of Malaysia Jet Downing

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — The Netherlands went into national mourning Friday over the scores of Dutch victims in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which took off from Amsterdam but never reached its destination.

More than half of the 298 people who died were Dutch. The tally reached 173 on Friday, up from the 154 identified earlier.

Flags throughout the Netherlands flew at half staff. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who rushed home from vacation to deal with the crisis, called the crash a deep tragedy for his country and demanded a full investigation.

Other European leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also pressed for a complete investigation into how the jetliner was struck by a missile Thursday over eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border.

The plane was en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where many anguished relatives of passengers gathered and received confirmation of the crash. The airport is one of Europe’s busiest.

“It is an absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident that has taken place, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened and how this happened,” Cameron said. “If, as seems possible, this was brought down, then those responsible must be held to account, and we must lose no time in doing that.”

For the Netherlands, it’s the worst aviation disaster in years involving Dutch citizens. In 1992, an El Al cargo jet slammed into an apartment building near Schiphol, killing 43 people.

AFP Photo / Dominique Faget

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Hungry For A Helping Of Test Tube Meat? Maybe You Should Be

Hungry For A Helping Of Test Tube Meat? Maybe You Should Be

By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times

If the notion of biting into a hamburger made from lab-cultured stem cells doesn’t make your mouth water, perhaps your brain can find it appetizing.

That’s the view of two Dutch professors who argue that meat grown in enormous test tubes, or bioreactors, can provide an ever more prosperous world with a plentiful, environmentally friendly and humane source of protein.

Cultured meat, they say, is the food of the future.

“Rising global demand for meat will result in increased environmental pollution, energy consumption and animal suffering,” the Wageningen University professors wrote Tuesday in the journal Trends in Biotechnology.

“As large parts of the world become more prosperous, the global consumption of meat is expected to rise enormously in the coming decades,” they wrote.

This growing demand for meat necessitates a “protein transition,” according to bioethicist Cor van der Weele and bioprocessing engineer Johannes Tramper. This transition will probably involve substituting some vegetable products for meat, keeping fewer animals on factory farms and possibly eating insects.

The authors envision a day when “every village” maintains a cultured meat facility in which muscle stem cells from pigs, cows, chicken, fish or any other animal are allowed to grow and reproduce in 5,200-gallon processing tanks.

The reproducing cells are suspended in a growth medium that provides them with nutrition, while mechanical paddles agitate the solution.

When the cell population reaches the desired density — perhaps in a month, the authors say — an enzyme and binding protein are added to the solution. At that point, the agitation stops and the tissue cells form small clumps and settle to the bottom of the tank.

Finally, the authors say, the tank is drained of the growing medium and the remaining “meat slurry” is pressed into a mincemeat-type cake and sold.

If the idea sounds far-fetched, consider the 2003 art project in which cultured frog meat was served as the cell-donor frog looked on, van der Weele says.

“A tentative life-cycle analysis estimated that if cultured meat can be grown on a medium of algae, energy use will not be reduced dramatically, but greenhouse-gas emissions, land use and water use will: by more than 90 percent compared to European beef,” the authors wrote.

The system envisioned by the authors would be capable of producing roughly 28 tons of meat a year, assuming there was no waste, and could feed more than 2,500 people in that time, they said.

Of course, there are some very real economic and technological hurdles facing in vitro meat. The cost of the growth medium would directly affect the cost of the meat product, and producers would have to establish robust, continuous stem cell lines.

And then, of course, there’s the issue of whether people want to eat it.

“The cells have to be concentrated to minced-meat density and structured into a texture that is appetizing and with good mouth feel,” the authors wrote.

“Although the potential advantages of cultured meat are clear, they do not guarantee that people will want to eat it,” they wrote.

Photo by roboppy via Flickr.com