Man beheaded for torturing his toddler to death

(AFP) – A Saudi man was beheaded Tuesday for torturing and beating his two-year-old boy to death, the interior ministry said.

Maqbul bin Madi al-Sharari hit his son Mohammed “repeatedly with a cane on the back of his head and the rest of his body,” the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

He also punched the toddler in the face repeatedly and “burned him in different parts of his body, torturing him several times, which led to his death,” the ministry said.

Sharari’s execution in the northern Jawf region, brings to 18 the number of death sentences carried out this year in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia beheaded 78 people in 2013, according to an AFP count.

Last year, the UN High Commission for Human Rights denounced a “sharp increase in the use of capital punishment” there since 2011.

According to rights group Amnesty International, the number of executions rose from 27 in 2010, including five foreigners, to 82 in 2011, including 28 foreigners.

In 2012, the number of executions dipped slightly to 79, among them 27 foreigners.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s strict version of Islamic sharia law.

The Lantern of the Photuris Firefly

THE lantern, or light organ, of a particular Photuris firefly is covered with jagged scales that dramatically enhance the brightness of the light that the insect produces. * Jagged scales Consider: Researchers have found that tiny scales on the lantern surface of some fireflies form a corrugated pattern, somewhat like overlapping shingles or tiles. The scales tilt up at one end by just 3 micrometers —less than one twentieth the thickness of a human hair. Yet this tiny tilt lets the lantern shine almost 50 percent more brightly than it would if the scales formed an even surface!

An Overview of Indonesia

Land Straddling the equator between Australia and continental Asia, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago. Most of its more than 17,500 islands feature rugged mountains and dense tropical forests. With more than 100 active volcanoes, it is also the most active volcanic region on earth.

PORTRAITS FROM THE PASTIgnaz Semmelweis

IGNAZ SEMMELWEIS may not be a household name, yet his work has benefited most modern families. Born in Buda (now Budapest), Hungary, he received his medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1844. On taking up his post as assistant to a professor at the First Maternity Clinic of Vienna’s General Hospital in 1846, Semmelweis faced an appalling reality —more than 13 percent of the women giving birth there died from a disease called childbed fever. Various theories as to the cause of this disease had been proposed, yet no one had solved the mystery. All attempts to reduce the mortality rate proved futile. Troubled by the spectacle of numerous mothers suffering a slow, agonizing death, Semmelweis determined to find the cause of the disease and prevent it.

Rielyn Co

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