Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has given his permission to exhume the remains of Yasser Arafat. This was after a Swiss institute reported finding elevated traces of a radioactive substance on the late leader’s belongings. The findings by Switzerland’s Institute of Radiation Physics were inconclusive, but revived speculation that Arafat was poisoned. The Swiss institute has said it would need to examine Arafat’s remains for conclusive findings, though a clear-cut outcome is not assured because of the decay of the substance, polonium-210, over the years.
I think exhuming the remains of Arafat now is totally useless and makes no sense. What are they going to do after what they will find? Will they prosecute anyone or spend millions of dollars trying to figure out the story of who did it? I don’t think it is worth it. So please leave the body to the Creator and let Him, the Almighty, be the judge.
(Alwee Attas, Jeddah)
Sports for Saudi girls
This is regarding the letters in your newspaper titled "Saudi women in the Olympics" (July 4) by Anees Lokhande, and Masood Khan's "Saudi female Olympics" (July 7), in addition to other letters on the same subject. I am of the opinion that their arguments are not consistent with each other. What has culture or religion got to do with sports? I know many will scoff at my argument but I don't mind. Let me point out the following facts: Firstly, our schools and colleges are not familiar with any kind of physical training (PT) nor any kind of indoor or outdoor games; it would be premature for any of us to expect our girls to play a simple game, leave alone participating in the Olympics.
In other words, we expect the poor girls to cross the bridge before reaching it. Our children have many years ahead of them to reach that stage. All this ado about nothing lands us nowhere. Our schools are well-organized and once sports and games are introduced, Islamic outfits with complete Hijab will follow suit and simultaneously. But there must be a start, and there is no such thing as too late.
Energetic games like hockey, tennis and other indoor/outdoor games will keep our girls mentally and physically fit. It will control their weight. As the saying goes "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Life in Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly and for the better.
It would be delightful to see our children going through different sports stage by stage, first playing for their school, then for their province, and then victoriously carrying our green flag proudly representing our nation in international games. And above all, our beloved King Abdullah presenting to them the trophy Insha'Allah. There is nothing called impossible. Our girls are smart, determined and courageous. (Um Anwar, Al-Ahsa)
Focus on Boson
The article "Enough about Higgs, let›s discuss the Boson" (July 11) made a very interesting reading. It encouraged me to read more about the Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose, and I learned that the term 'Boson' on which various theories on atom have been propounded relates directly to Bose-Einstein statistics. In fact, Albert Einstein was very much impressed with the idea presented by Bose under his paper "Plank Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta." Not only he got that paper published in the leading German Science Journal in 1924 but also adopted and extended it to atoms and thereby the term "Boson" was coined. I would add here that apart from physics, that great Indian scientist did conduct very deep studies in chemistry, zoology and other sciences besides devoting a lot of time to promote the Bengali language.
What I wonder is why the Indian government and media wake up only when the Western media or their academics propagate the works or achievements of their own scientists and ignore the others involved in such works? Why did it ignore the works of its scientists and other scholars while determining the high ranking national awards? One of the easiest ways of recognizing them is by giving prominence to their works in the curriculum books taught in the schools at different levels. It will make the students of this generation and the ones to follow aware of the contributions made by such great people in their respective fields. Universities, colleges and research centers could be named after them. More and more students can be encouraged to base their studies on the results achieved by those luminaries. As far as awarding of the Nobel Prize is concerned, we all know, it was all politically influenced during the ages of imperialism and it is still not free from the shackles of racism. The most glaring omission was Mahatma Gandhi, who certainly deserved one. Even the members of the Nobel Committee publicly regretted such an omission.(Safi H. Jannaty, Dammam)
Letters — Arafat’s body
