(Reuters) - The speaker of Iran's parliament said on Friday that Tehran had successfully enriched 60% uranium.
"I am proud to announce that at 00:40 … Iranian scientists were able to produce 60% enriched uranium," Mohammad Qalibaf said on Twitter.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai will serve 12 months in prison for taking part in an unauthorised assembly during the 2019 mass pro-democracy protests in the Chinese-ruled financial hub.
Hong Kong's District Court Judge Amanda Woodcock gave Lai a 15-month sentence, reduced by three months in mitigation.
Ramadan is a period of fasting and spiritual growth, and is one of the five “pillars of Islam." The others being the declaration of faith, daily prayer, alms-giving, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Able-bodied Muslims are expected to abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from dawn to sunset each day of the month. Many practicing Muslims also perform additional prayers, especially at night, and attempt to recite the entire Qur'an. The prevailing belief among Muslims is that it was in the final 10 nights of Ramadan that the Qur'an was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
The Qur'an states that fasting was prescribed for believers so that they may be conscious of God. By abstaining from things that people tend to take for granted (such as water), it is believed, one may be moved to reflect on the purpose of life and grow closer to the creator and sustainer of all existence. As such, engaging in wrongdoing effectively undermines the fast. Many Muslims also maintain that fasting allows them to get a feeling of poverty, and this may foster feelings of empathy.
All those who are physically limited (for example, because of an illness or old age) are exempt from the obligation to fast; the same is true for anyone who is traveling. Those who are able to do so are expected to make up the missed days at a later time. One could potentially make up all of the missed days in the month immediately following Ramadan, the month of Shawwal. Those unable to fast at all (if they are financially able) are expected to provide meals to the needy as an alternative course of action.
By fasting over an extended period of time, practicing Muslims aim to foster certain attitudes and values that they would be able to cultivate over the course of an entire year. Ramadan is often likened to a spiritual training camp.
Besides experiencing feelings of hunger and thirst, believers often have to deal with fatigue because of late-night prayers and predawn meals. This is especially true during the final 10 nights of the month. In addition to being the period in which the Qur'an was believed to have been first revealed, this is a time when divine rewards are believed to be multiplied. Many Muslims will offer additional prayers during this period.
The end of Ramadan marks the beginning of one of two major Islamic holidays Eid al-Fitr, the “festival of the breaking of the fast." On this day, many Muslims attend a religious service, visit relatives and friends, and exchange gifts.
This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 22, 2017
Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Muslim Studies Program, Michigan State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Built by Amenhotep III and then used by his grandson Tutankhamen, the ruins of the city were an accidental discovery. In September last year, Hawass and his team were searching for a mortuary temple of Tutankhamen.
Instead, hidden under the sands for almost three and a half millennia, they found the Dazzling Aten, believed to be the largest city discovered in Egypt and, importantly, dated to the height of Egyptian civilisation. So far, Hawass' excavations have unearthed rooms filled with tools and objects of daily life such as pottery and jewellery, a large bakery, kitchens and a cemetery.
The city also includes workshops and industrial, administrative and residential areas, as well as, to date, three palaces.
Ancient Egypt has been called the “civilisation without cities". What we know about it comes mostly from tombs and temples, whilst other great civilisations of the Bronze Age, such as Mesopotamia, are famous for their great cities.
The Dazzling Aten is extraordinary not only for its size and level of prosperity but also its excellent state of preservation, leading many to call it the “Pompeii of Ancient Egypt".
The rule of Amenhotep III was one of the wealthiest periods in Egyptian history. This city will be of immeasurable importance to the scholarship of archaeologists and Egyptologists, who for centuries have struggled with understanding the specifics of urban, domestic life in the Pharaonic period.
I teach a university subject on the foundations of urban life, and it always comes as a surprise to my students how little we know about urbanism in ancient Egypt.
The first great cities, and with them the first great civilisations, emerged along the fertile valleys of great rivers in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), the Indus Valley (modern day India and Pakistan) and China at the beginning of the Bronze Age, at least 5,000 years ago.
Just like cities today, they provided public infrastructure and roads, and often access to sanitation, education, health care and welfare. Their residents specialised in particular professions, paid taxes and had to obey laws.
But the Nile did not support the urban lifestyle in the same way as the rivers of other great civilisations. It had a reliable flood pattern and thus the second longest river in the world could be easily tamed, allowing for simple methods of irrigation that did not require complex engineering and large groups of workers to maintain. This meant the population didn't necessarily need to cluster in organised cities.
An etching of the Nile flooding by French artist Jacques Callot (1592 - 1635). National Gallery of Art
Excavations of Early Dynastic (c. 3150-2680 BCE) Egyptian cities such as Nagada and Hierakonpolis have provided us with a plethora of information regarding urban life in the early Bronze Age . But they are separated from the Dazzling Aten by some 1,600 years — as long as separates us from the Huns of Attila attacking ancient Rome.
One city closer in age to the Dazzling Aten we do know a little more about is the short-lived capital of Amenhotep's III son, Akhenaten, known as the “Horizon of the Aten", or Tell el-Amarna. Amarna was functional for only 14 years (1346-1332 BCE) before being abandoned forever. It was first described by a travelling Jesuit monk in 1714 and has been excavated on and off for the last 100 years.
Very few other Egyptian cities from the Early Dynastic Period (3150 BCE) to the Hellenistic period (following Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt in 332 BCE), have been excavated. This means that domestic urban life and urban planning have long been contentious research areas in the study of Pharaonic Egypt.
The scientific community is impatiently waiting for more information to draw comparisons between Akhenaten's city and the newly discovered capital founded by his father.
Amenhotep III, also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent, ruled between 1386 and 1349 BCE and was one of the most prosperous rulers in the Egyptian history.
During his reign as the ninth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, Egypt achieved the height of its international power, climbing to an unprecedented level of economic prosperity and artistic splendour. His vision of greatness was immortalised in his great capital, which is believed to have been later used by at least Tutankhamen and Ay.
In 2008, for the first time in history, the majority of world's inhabitants lived in the cities. Yet, with globalisation, the differences between the “liveability" of modern cities are striking.
As a society we need to understand where cities come from, how have they formed and how they shaped the development of past urban communities to learn lessons for the future. We look forward to research and findings being published from the ancient city of Amenhotep III to enlighten us about the daily lives of ancient Egyptians at their height.
Anna M. Kotarba-Morley, Lecturer, Archaeology, Flinders University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
