The Huffington Post has some more details on Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, and on Craig Hicks.

Barakat and Mohammad were newlyweds who helped the homeless and raised funds to help Syrian refugees in Turkey this summer. They met while running the Muslim Student Association at N.C. State before he began pursuing an advanced degree in dentistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mohammad planned to join her husband in dentistry school in the fall.

Abu-Salha was visiting them Tuesday from Raleigh, where she was majoring in design at N.C. State.

She was visiting. If she’d been in Raleigh she’d still be alive.

Imad Ahmad, who lived in the condo where

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The Charlotte [North Carolina] Observer reports that the father of the two women murdered in Chapel Hill says it was a hate crime.

…the women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice in Clayton, said regardless of the precise trigger Tuesday night, Hicks’ underlying animosity toward Barakat and Abu-Salha was based on their religion and culture. Abu-Salha said police told him Hicks shot the three inside their apartment.

“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said Wednesday morning. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his

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Mayim Bialik, the anti-vax tv star, has a Facebook post saying she is not either anti-vax so stop being poopy to her.

i would like to dispel the rumors about my stance on vaccines. i am not anti-vaccine. my children are vaccinated. there has been so much hysteria and anger about this issue and i hope this clears things up as far as my part.

It’s not rumors. I’ve read interviews in which she explains why she’s anti-vax. Tara Smith at Science blogs has more:

So did she really change her mind and her stance?

If so, why? Or is she just jumping on the “I’m not anti-vaccine” bandwagon like Jenny McCarthy and others who claim not to be

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Damn. Twitter is full of photos of the three murdered students and they’re heartbreaking. They looked so happy…

There’s also a Facebook for them set up by their families.

One post -

Yusor dancing with her father at her wedding. Her wedding was a little more than a month ago.

May Allah have mercy on the bride and groom in paradise.

 … Read the rest

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Three students were murdered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina yesterday, two sisters and the husband of one of them. All three were Muslims, but the police are saying the shooting may have been to do with a parking dispute.

A 46-year-old man has been charged with murder in the shooting deaths of three students in an apartment near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

Police said “an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking” may have been a factor in the shootings Tuesday evening.

The suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, turned himself in to police later in the night and is being held in the Durham County Jail without bond. He was cooperating with investigators, police said Wednesday morning.

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Here’s George Galloway being disgusting in 2008, that time he said a gay man was executed in Iran not because he was gay but because he committed “sex crimes” – on the basis of nothing whatever, apparently.

Outspoken London MP George Galloway has said that the boyfriend of Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for sex crimes.

The Respect politician made his claims on Channel Five show The Wright Stuff yesterday morning.

Mr Kazemi is claiming asylum in the UK.

He claims his boyfriend was arrested by police in Iran for being homosexual, forced to reveal the names of men he had relationships with, and executed.

The 19-year-old also said there was a warrant for his arrest as

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What else does Galloway do for the betterment of humanity? He rakes in large sums of cash from Russian and Iranian state tv.

George Galloway has earned £65,000 in just six months as a presenter and guest for dubious state-run broadcasters.

The Bradford MP is the highest earner of any MP, raking in the cash for his polemics against the West on the Kremlin-backed Russia Today and from LBP TV, a channel run out of the offices of Press TV which is now banned by Ofcom. Galloway still presents two shows for the channel, whose head was appointed directly by Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, but on an unpaid basis.

Through his television work, Galloway has doubled his income. He

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In 2008 Galloway succeeded in getting a tiny London podcast shut down by suing.

London’s only Jewish community radio station has been forced to cease broadcasting after losing a High Court libel case brought against it by the Respect MP George Galloway.

Jcom, a non-profit station which broadcast online and to a small area in north-west London, was wound up after it was told to pay the MP damages of £15,000.

Mr Galloway sued the station after one of its presenters played a spoof character based on the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, and implied he was anti-Semitic. It was also ordered to pay Mr Galloway’s court costs, thought to be £5,000. Mr Galloway said that the judgment

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Galloway tweeted that he has sued for libel at least 20 times and that he’s won every time he has sued. (He ignored repeated questions about how many times he has silenced people by threatening to sue.)

The BBC reported one win in December 2004, against the Telegraph.

MP George Galloway has won £150,000 in libel damages from the Daily Telegraph over claims he received money from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

The Glasgow Kelvin MP had denied ever seeking or receiving money from Saddam Hussein’s government, which he said he had long opposed.

The newspaper said it was in the public interest to publish the claims, based on documents found in Baghdad.

It’s a curious thing – I’ve found … Read the rest

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So today George Galloway bullied a journalist for saying something about him that he didn’t like.

George Galloway @georgegalloway
I have begun legal proceedings against Hadley Freeman of the Guardian on her defamatory comments about me. No- one should repeat them.

Now #libelGalloway is happening.… Read the rest

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Americans United for Separation of Church and State give us this helpful graphic showing the Alabama counties that are defying the federal court order to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Roy Moore should be kicked out of office a second time.

The defiant counties are in blue.

… Read the rest

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The Guardian reported last Friday that George Galloway is angry at the BBC.

George Galloway has hit out at the BBC following his appearance on Question Time, saying he was set up and that David Dimbleby privately apologised to him afterwards.

The controversy centred around a question that one audience member asked about a rise in antisemitism in the UK.

But the question also included a reference to the MP for Bradford West bearing some responsibility for this rise, an inclusion he said that had not been agreed beforehand.

So what? He’s an MP – he’s expected to field questions, isn’t he? Isn’t that part of the job?

The anti-war politician said the host David Dimbleby later apologised to him

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The Twitter account @GlobalCivility has a lot of tweets about that terrible “global civility” protest in Downing Street yesterday. I followed Raquel’s example and asked if they’d be protesting things like the flogging of Raif and Boko Haram massacres and mobs killing alleged “blasphemers” in Pakistan. It took them maybe 10 seconds to block me.

Demonstrating.

Global Civility @GlobalCivility · Feb 8
Demonstrating our love

All men in the first; all women in the second. Civility.

There they are. Not petitioning Saudi Arabia to stop torturing a liberal blogger, but petitioning all of us to shut up about their prophet. If they represent their prophet, then he’s a horror.… Read the rest

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Raquel Saraswati posted some photos from that “shut up” protest in London yesterday, along with some (cough) skeptical comments.

Raquel E Saraswati @RaquelEvita 21 hours ago
That awkward moment when these guys in London used freedom of speech to protest against freedom of speech today.

.@GlobalCivility blocked me after I suggested demos against lashing of #RaifBadawi + against gender based violence.

How…civil.

Alex ‏@Alexdurrant7 21 hours ago
@RaquelEvita Wow, very diverse crowd there…

Raquel E Saraswati @RaquelEvita
@Alexdurrant7 some of the men are shouting and some are merely scowling. So diverse!

Ha! That’s a good one.

Raquel E Saraswati @RaquelEvita 2 hours ago
So the London march was also segregated by gender. #hijabdesk

Global civility indeed.… Read the rest

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More from Greg Epstein on the Harvard Humanist of the Year award to Anita Sarkeesian.

Greg Epstein @gregmepstein 23 hours ago
Loved hosting @femfreq, our @HarvardHumanist of 2014 awardee. Humanism requires feminism; feminism=good f/all genders

So sad for the harassers. Streisand effect. If they hadn’t harassed her…

…well we’ll never know now.

Greg Epstein @gregmepstein 23 hours ago
.@femfreq’s message was so reasonable, so dare-I-say moderate, the controversy is sad. It must be said far, wide: humanism requires feminism

Proud of 100+ men who attended today’s event, joined others in 3 standing ovations. Hope it becomes known: @humanisthub, you meet good guys

As opposed to raging misogynist shits. Yes that does make a difference.

Greg Epstein @gregmepstein 23 hours ago

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The ever-useful clarification:

xkcd… Read the rest

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