Regarding world conflict

IU South Bend

Elonka Dunin, executive producer and general manager of the online community at Simutronics Corp., St. Louis, Mo., will deliver a talk, "Steganography and the War on Terrorism" at 2 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 15) in Room 223 of the Student Activities Center at IU South Bend.

Saturday’s talk will be a beginner-oriented explanation of steganography—the encoding of messages. She will discuss news reporting of stenanography, how it's used and whether or not Al Qaeda might or might not have been using steganography to send hidden messages. Dunin contacted the FBI after Sept.11, 2001, to offer her expertise. Her first talk after volunteering her services was given to agents from the FBI, Customs Service, Assistant U.S. Attorney's office, Postal Inspectors, and Secret Service. Part of this talk will be included in Saturday’s presentation.

Dunin has traveled the world, visited every continent and speaks several languages. Her interest in cryptography has been life-long, serving her in the United States Air Force where she worked on such aircraft as the SR-71 and U-2, and later when she cracked the PhreakNIC Code, a challenge posed by JonnyX of the hacker group se2600. The code went unbroken for a year before Dunin finally solved it in 2000.

Simutronics Corp. is the producer of such multiplayer computer games as GemStone III and CyberStrike.

For additional information, contact Michael Scheessele, assistant professor of computer science at IUSB at 574-237-4815.

IU East

Salih J. Altoma, professor emeritus of Near Eastern languages and cultures at IU Bloomington will speak on "U.S.-Iraq Relations: The 1991 Gulf War and the Current Crisis" on Monday (Feb. 17) at Vivian Auditorium on the IU East campus in Richmond. He will give his presentation at 11 a.m. and again at 12:15 p.m.

Born in Iraq, Altoma has been associated with IU since 1964. He is a scholar in the areas of comparative and Arabic literature, was the director of Middle Eastern studies and the chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures on the Bloomington campus.

Altoma has had several of his writings dealing with Arab-American literary relations and modern Arabic literature published. In 2000, he edited the volume of the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, which was dedicated to Arabic-Western literary relations.

For additional information, contact Tim Williams, director of multicultural affairs at IU East, at 765-973-8320.

IU Bloomington

The Department of Religious Studies at IU Bloomington will host a panel discussion Monday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. at Jordan Hall A100. The topic will be "Can War Be Holy? Jewish, Christian and Muslim Interpretations."

The panel will examine what lies beneath metaphors of holy war that are resurgent in worldwide discourse and the complex interpretive histories of holy war motifs in the three Abrahamic religious traditions.

Panelists will be Rabbi Mira Wasserman of Temple Beth Shalom in Bloomington, the Rev. Donald Jones, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Bloomington, and Michael Thomas, an active participant in local Muslim communities and forums to promote inter-religious understanding.

IUPUI

David McBride, a professor of African-American history at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Integrating the City of Medicine: Blacks in Philadelphia Health Care: 1910-1965 and From TB to AIDS: Epidemics Among Urban Blacks Since 1900 will speak Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 11:30 a.m. in the new basement presentation area at the University College, IUPUI.

His topic will be "Bio-terrorism and Urban Communities: Past, Present and Future Challenges."

For additional information about the presentation, call 317-274-0098.