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By  Olivia Sterns  for CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS Exhibition celebrates 1,000 years of "forgotten" Muslim heritage From coffee to cranks, items we couldn't live without today are Muslim inventions Modern hospitals and universities both began in 9th century North Africa London, England (CNN)  -- Think of the origins of that staple of modern life, the cup of coffee, and Italy often springs to mind. But in fact, Yemen is where the ubiquitous brew has its true origins. Along with the first university, and even the toothbrush, it is among surprising Muslim inventions that have shaped the world we live in today. The origins of these fundamental ideas and objects -- the basis of everything from the bicycle to musical scales -- are the focus of "1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Muslim heritage. "There's a hole in our knowledge, we leap frog from the Renaissance to the Greeks," professor Salim al-Hassani...

Myanmar democracy icon Suu Kyi released YANGON:  Myanmar’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest Saturday, an official said, as crowds of excited supporters waited outside her home for a glimpse of their idol. The crowd cheered and began to surge fowards as police began removing barricades around her crumbling mansion where she has been locked up by the military junta for most of the past two decades. The authorities went inside to read the order to release her from house arrest, a government official said. “She is released now,” said the official, who did not want to be named. More than 1,000 people were gathered outside in hope of seeing the 65-year-old dissident, known to her supporters simply as “The Lady”. Although she has been sidelined and silenced by the junta, occasionally released briefly only to be put back in confinement, for many in the impoverished nation she still embodies hope of a better future. “I think of her as my mother and also my si...

November 12, 2010 An Eloquent Face of Islam By  MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM DAISY KHAN  had never seen so many Jews in her life. The year was 1974, and Ms. Khan, an awkward, artistic 16-year-old who had just emigrated from India to the suburban Long Island enclave of Jericho, N.Y., was attending her first day of school in America. It was not going well. Her fellow students giggled at the newcomer with the dark skin, exotic accent and unfamiliar religion. Few Muslims, it seemed, had ever attended the mostly Jewish Jericho High School. When a teacher asked her to stand and introduce herself, the questions came fast: Did she ride a camel? Did she ride an elephant? “It was very strange when you are 16 years old and you have to explain your religion to an entire class,” Ms. Khan, now 52, recalled recently in the Upper West Side offices of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, her nonprofit group. “But that’s where my first activism began. I realized that actually I was a spokesp...

October 9, 2010 By  JOHN MARKOFF MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius  with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving. The car is a project of  Google , which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation.   The only accident, engineers said, was ...

How to Drive at 1,000 mph Nov 10th 2010, 15:05 by P.M. GOOD news that  Cosworth , a British engineering company best known as the maker of high-performance motors, is supplying one of its Formula 1 engines to a team hoping to set a 1,000mph (1,609kph) land-speed record in Bloodhound SSC (for super-sonic car). It is heartening that even in these straitened times companies are prepared to support bold attempts to push human and technical abilities to new limits. More than 200 other firms will also be helping out. The Cosworth CA2010 engine would give any car a bit of poke. But alone it is not enough to get the Bloodhound SSC into the record books. Sitting in the centre of the vehicle, the Cosworth engine will run as an auxiliary power unit to operate various systems. This includes delivering hydraulic power to start an EJ200 jet engine from a Typhoon Eurofighter. This will quickly propel the car to more than 200mph, at which point the third engine will be ignited: a novel hybrid roc...

The K-word Nov 3rd 2010, 11:10 by A.R. | SRINAGAR WILL Barack Obama, who arrives in India for his first official tour of the country in the next few days, be forced to utter the K-word? America has a tried-and-tested formula when asked if it will get involved in troubled Kashmir: after some 60 years of conflict, unless both Pakistan and India seek outsiders’ assistance, it will not push itself forward. And since India has no intention of doing so, that means America will stay away. Yet as a presidential candidate Mr Obama promised to seek some sort of diplomatic resolution in Kashmir. He talked of deploying an envoy to encourage peaceful progress there. His envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, has mightily annoyed the Indians in the past by bringing up Kashmir as relevant to the wider region. All this might have been quietly forgotten in Mr Obama's forthcoming trip, except for the dreadful events  of the past five months, in which Indian security forces have ki...

Why is America so rich? Nov 9th 2010, 13:50 by R.A. | LONDON ECONOMIC gloom and doom aside, America remains the world's richest large country. It's generally estimated to have a per capita GDP level around $45,000, while the richest European nations manage only a $40,000 or so per capita GDP (setting aside low population, oil-rich states like Norway). Wealth underlies America's sense of itself as a special country, and it's also cited as evidence that America is better than other economies on a range of variables, from economic freedom to optimism to business savvy to work ethic. But why exactly is America so rich? Karl Smith   ventures   an explanation: I am going to go pretty conventional on this one and say a combination of three big factors The Common Law Massive Immigration The Great Scientific Exodus during WWII You’ll notice that four of the top five countries in the   Human Development Index   have the Common Law and the top, Norway, is a awash in oil. W...