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News

News: June/July 2000

Philosopher beats blasphemy charge • Feuding Aussie thinkers face forced merger • Scientists aim to abolish ageing • End of universe cancelled

Kuwaiti Philosopher Acquitted of Blasphemy

An appeals court in Kuwait acquitted a woman writer in March following her sentence to a suspended two months imprisonment in January for blasphemy and “publishing opinions that ridicule religion”. Alia Shuaib, a philosopher at Kuwait University, published a poetry collection entitled Spiders Bemoan a Wound, containing the line “I dream of passing, even for one moment, through God’s secret map.” Shuaib maintained that the line, which was alleged to be blasphemous, contained no insult to religion. The appeals court also dismissed a suspended two months in jail given to Shuaib’s publisher, Yehya al-Rubaian, who had been convicted of publishing the book without state permission, but raised his fine.

Place Sartre-Beauvoir, Paris

In April, the St-Germain-des-Pres square on Paris’ famous Left Bank was renamed after Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and Feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir.

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