News

Mumbai, India: Mohammed Ajmal Amīr Kasāb has been convicted of 86 charges, including murder, for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which killed over 150 people. He has been sentenced to death by hanging; while India technically still has the death penalty, it hasn’t been used since 2004, and there is currently not a single qualified hangman in the country.

Following a year of delays, Sudan’s first elections for 24 years were held this April. President Omar al-Bashir won with a 68% majority, continuing his Presidency, which stretches back to 1989 when he took the reins of Sudan with a bloodless coup. Many felt that the elections were merely a way of propping an illegitimate government, a feeling confirmed when al-Bashir’s two major competitors dropped out of the elections and videos of ballot rigging popped up on YouTube.

On 24th April nine teams from the University of Bath travelled to Rutland Water near
Leicester to compete in the ‘8 Task Challenge’. The event, sponsored by Grant Thornton,
E.on, CIMA, GlaxoSmithKline, Enterprise Rent-a Car, RBS and FSA, pitted teams of four
students from a variety of universities against one another in (yes, you guessed it)
eight challenges. There was lots of prize money up for grabs and nearly all of the teams
were competing in aid of their chosen club or society.

The tasks included a 14 mile cycle ride, a three mile run and a canoeing circuit as well

Though campaigning for the election had been going on unofficially long before the election date was set, April 21st marked the beginning of the campaign on campus, as 8W1.1 hosted a debate between representatives of the major parties standing in Bath. The proceedings began with a short speech by each candidate Tory Fabian Richter’s was notable for not mentioning students once; he asserted that “Don has been fighting the Conservatives for years”, at which the incumbent finished his sentence: “and winning”.

Concerns have been raised over the accountability of Sabbs after the planned ‘Student Forum’ was cancelled. These meetings, which the Sabbs are meant to hold twice a year, provide students a rare opportunity to voice their opinions on the performance of the Union and their elected officers. The cancellation was met with little resistance by students, many of whom are unlikely to have heard of it, as it was not widely publicised.

A wave of homophobia has spread across Africa recently. This new problem has caught the attention of the Western press when the body of a supposedly gay Senegalese was dragged from his grave only a few hours after being buried, in order to be thrown in front of his elderly parents’ home.

The flight ban applied across the UK in wake of the explosion of an Icelandic volcano stranded thousands, including several members of staff. ?????? was stuck in Sudan at a particularly unfortunate time, as the country was having its first multiparty elections in 24 years (see page ? for Chloe Wittet’s report). Postgraduates Peter Dowell and Richard Burke, both from the department of Mechanical Engineering, were in the USA presenting papers to the SAE World Congress in Detroit at the time of the eruption.

Maths student Anthony Masters has mounted a vigorous campaign against the University’s planned renovation of classrooms, which will see all blackboards replaced by whiteboards. He argues that blackboards are preferable as they give greater visibility and some lecturers favour them. Over 200 people have joined his campaign via a well-known social networking site.

A group of students from the University of Bath protested last Wednesday against the Government’s failure to stop the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland using taxpayers’ money to back companies driving what they say is ‘the most environmentally destructive project on earth’ - Canada's tar sands. Tar sands are a thick form of oil, and environmentalists are concerned that its extraction process could cause three to five times as much pollution as normal oil, destroy an area of forest the size of England and Wales, and poison water supplies, leading to cancer among people living nearby.

On Friday April 23rd, RAG’s annual Paris Hitch went ahead with only a minor change to the original plan: the participants were racing to Edinburgh rather than Paris. This was a result of the disruption to normal travel caused by the Icelandic volcano. Although it originally looked as though the event would have to be cancelled altogether, event organizers Vicki Jones and Amy Baker, along with a dedicated team of RAG volunteers, were able to ensure it went ahead almost as planned.