In this week’s address, President Barack Obama underscored the importance of ensuring equal pay for equal work and highlighted the steps his Administration has taken to expand opportunity and narrow the pay gap that exists between men and women. Just this week – on Equal Pay Day – the President took action to increase transparency and make it easier to recognize pay discrimination. Women make up half of America’s workforce, and are increasingly the primary-breadwinners in American families. Ensuring that women are paid fairly is a commonsense step to grow our economy. That is why the President again called on Republicans in Congress to support the Paycheck Fairness Act and stop blocking progress that would benefit women – because when women succeed, America succeeds.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
April 12, 2014

Hi, everybody. Earlier this week was Equal Pay Day. It marks the extra time the average woman has to work into a new year to earn what a man earned the year before. You see, the average woman who works full-time in America earns less than a man – even when she’s in the same profession and has the same education.

That’s wrong. In 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.

This is an economic issue that affects all of us. Women make up about half our workforce. And more and more, they’re our families’ main breadwinners. So it’s good for everyone when women are paid fairly. That’s why, this week, I took action to prohibit more businesses from punishing workers who discuss their salaries – because more pay transparency makes it easier to spot pay discrimination. And I hope more business leaders will take up this cause.

But equal pay is just one part of an economic agenda for women.

Most lower-wage workers in America are women. So I’ve taken executive action to require federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees at least ten dollars and ten cents an hour. I ordered a review of our nation’s overtime rules, to give more workers the chance to earn the overtime pay they deserve. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, tens of millions of women are now guaranteed free preventive care like mammograms and contraceptive care, and the days when you could be charged more just for being a woman are over for good. Across the country, we’re bringing Americans together to help us make sure that a woman can have a baby without sacrificing her job, or take a day off to care for a sick child or parent without hitting hardship. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a “Mad Men” episode, and give every woman the opportunity she deserves.

Here’s the problem, though. On issues that would benefit millions of women, Republicans in Congress have blocked progress at every turn. Just this week, Senate Republicans blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, commonsense legislation that would help more women win equal pay for equal work. House Republicans won’t vote to raise the minimum wage or extend unemployment insurance for women out of work through no fault of their own. The budget they passed this week would force deep cuts to investments that overwhelmingly benefit women and children – like Medicaid, food stamps, and college grants. And of course, they’re trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the fiftieth or so time, which would take away vital benefits and protections from millions of women.

I’m going to keep fighting to make sure that doesn’t happen. Because we do better when our economy grows for everybody, not just a few. And when women succeed, America succeeds. Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Thousands of people have gathered in Donetsk,in eastern Ukraine,calling for the federalization of the country.The demonstrators also started forming militias to help anti-Maidan protesters in Slavyansk, who seized several government buildings in the city.

Activists in Slavyansk, a city in eastern Ukraine located in the north of the Donetsk region with a population of 120,000, seized the police headquarters and the city council building Saturday. Police said Anti-Maidan protesters also seized the local office of Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU.

They hoisted a Russian flag on top of the police HQ, Slavyansk Mayor Nelly Shtepa said.

“As I negotiated with the activists today, they explained that they represent the Donetsk regional people’s militia. They said that they oppose Kiev authorities and today they are negotiating with them” she said.

Shtepa added that the people of the city support the activists’ calls for a referendum on the region’s federalization, and are urging the police to side with the people.

If the authorities in Kiev will “try to suppress the uprising, many civilians will die, this cannot be allowed,” Shtepa said.

There are reports that the activists in Slavyansk have taken up weapons. However, one of the members of the Donbas people’s militia told media that no one was hurt during the storm of the police HQ, adding that the government building will be under their control until a referendum is held.

Ukraine’s coup-imposed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook page that the raid on police HQ was carried out by masked men with guns. He promised that the government’s answer to the raid would be “very harsh.” Avakov added that a Special Forces unit has been deployed to the scene.

Anti-Maidan protesters stopped two buses full of security forces which were heading from Donetsk to Slavyansk, Rossiya 24 TV channel reported. After negotiations, the security forces turned back to their Donetsk HQ.

“I can’t say there was a conflict between the police and activists, the latter just accompanied the Special Unit forces back to their HQ,” said a Rossiya 24 correspondent, who was at the scene.

Amid the protests calling for Ukraine’s federalization, acting president Aleksandr Turchinov sacked the head of the SBU security service for the Donetsk region, Valery Ivanov, on Saturday, according to a decree published on the presidential website.

The regional police chief of Donetsk, Konstantin Pozhidayev, said Saturday he was quitting his post after the protesters urged him to step down.

Unrest has gripped eastern Ukraine after the EuroMaidan protests in Kiev, which resulted in a coup on February 22. People in Donetsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and other cities are calling for a referendum to decide on the status of the Donbass regions.

The Donetsk region has been witnessing mass protests. On Saturday the residents of the towns Krasnuy Liman, Krasnoarmeisk and Drujkovka took to the streets demanding a Crimea-type referendum and seizing government buildings. The local security forces refuse to take back the buildings as commanded by the Kiev authorities.

Even as violence in the Central African Republic escalates, there are local communities showing that peace is still possible, with grassroots peace initiatives challenging and rejecting violence.

By Nyeko Caesar Poblicks

I was in Lakounga, a southern suburb in Bangui, the Central African Republic, which was engulfed in five days of blind violence last December that has left at least 1,000 people killed. Communities who have lived in peaceful co-existence for generations, look at each other with mistrust and many fall victim to sectarian tit-for-tat attacks.

Despite the presence of French troops and the International Support Mission in Central Africa (MISCA) deployed on the ground, some mosques have been burnt down, shops and houses owned by Muslims are looted by angry crowds who regard them as Seleka collaborators, and non-Muslims are often targeted by Seleka militiamen who brand them as ‘anti-balaka’ and seek revenge. Hundreds of thousands flee their homes and become displaced.

While international media portrays the current conflict as a conflict between Muslims and Christians, the reality is more complex than that.

Seleka is a coalition of armed groups that took over power in March 2013.  They are often in conflict with, and fight, ‘anti-balaka’ (‘machete-proof’) groups, which have their origins as community self-defence groups.

Whilst Seleka members may be predominantly Muslim, they are not all Muslim, and certainly not all Muslims support Seleka.  Likewise, the anti-balaka groups are diverse, including Christians, animists,  Muslim groups and some ex-Seleka.  Indeed, it is peoples’ experience of life in CAR, their political and social inclusion or exclusion, and their experience of the conflict that is a primary driver of their affiliation. If anything, many people, including prominent Muslim and Christian leaders are attempting to distance themselves from the conflict and seek a peaceful resolution.

However, many anti-balaka groups tend to regard all Muslims as belonging to Seleka, and Seleka often regard all Christians as members of anti-balaka groups, which explains why the conflict has been taking on the appearance of a religious war.

Anti-balaka seem to lack a central and clear chain of command, which makes it very difficult to deal with them in the event of negotiating a solution for peace. Christian leaders have consistently been advocating for a peaceful solution to the crisis, for understanding with the Muslims and for reconciliation, just the opposite of what the anti-balaka stand for.

In Lakounga, considered the first settlement in Bangui’s history, Christian and Muslim leaders have been meeting quietly for the past few days since the crisis erupted and they have a firm resolution: “We have always lived together and don’t want violence in our streets”.

To prove their determination, on 10 December in the midst of the violence, one of the parish’s Catholic priests and the quarter’s chief confronted a group of youths who had come from the nearby “quartier Bruxelles” with the intention of attacking some shops owned by Muslims. As they talked to them, a handful of neighbours from nearby houses joined in the discussion. In the end, the youths reconsidered their plan and left Lakouanga quietly.

During the following days, as violence continued unabated in many of Bangui’s neighbourhoods, the local leaders of Lakounga including the priests and the imams, planned a series of activities in favour of peace. A local NGO put up posters on street corners showing the picture of Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga talking with one of the imams. The message cannot be more explicit: “Christians and Muslims, the same blood, the same life, the same country”.

On 19 and 20 December there were troubling reports that the anti-balaka had been attacking some of Bangui’s northern neighbourhoods, targeting ordinary Muslims. Against all odds, the daring gangs tried to progress further south towards the centre of Bangui. Gunshots rang out in the proximity of a church where a meeting attended by local Christians and Muslims was being held. The media presentation was coordinated by Conciliation Resources and the Danish Refugee Council to share knowledge on how leaders in Uganda were working to rebuild trust between divided communities.

The Muslim participants were gripped by fear. The Christians tried to reassure them: “Don’t worry, you are staying with us and we are here to protect you”. Somebody made an urgent call to the French embassy informing them of the situation and asking for protection. After a tense half an hour, the guns fell silent and the workshop continued. At midday the meeting ended with the Muslim and Christian participants sharing sodas and snacks before departing.

“We are determined to live together in peace”, was once again the main message during the Mass of Epiphany on Sunday 5 January 2014 presided at the Parish of the Uganda Martyrs in Lakouanga by Archbishop Nzapalainga. Among the invited guests, the three imams from the quarter’s mosque were present. At the end of the service, they met with the Archbishop, the parish priest and some of the leaders of the parish council to discuss the situation along with Conciliation Resources, an international peacebuilding NGO, that is working with the religious leaders to reach out to communities by establishing a framework of dialogue and strengthening their capacity for peace work.

In Lakounga there are no internally displaced people, no one has been killed or injured and no property has ever been attacked. There exists a quiet community movement for peace between Muslims and Christians. “For us, our security is not in having weapons, but in having a good relationship and unity among the neighbours”, said one of the residents.

Women’s groups – both Muslim and Christian – met the Archbishop and Conciliation Resources at the Archbishop’s residence to identify leaders of the anti-balaka and talk to them quietly before any public meetings. They shared the examples of Lakouanga across Bangui and have begun exploring ways of extending these initiatives into the countryside. The leaders of both communities are still planning some more activities in favour of peace.

Nyeko Caesar Poblicks is Projects Manager for Conciliation Resources’ East and Central Africa Programme.

This article was originally published by Insight on Conflict and is available by clicking here.

Does history repeat itself? If we are to ask this question, the overwhelming response we’ll get is that it does. However, it may not be always true. Take for example the case of Bangladesh that had its national election four months ago in which the Awami League (AL) alliance, which has been running the country in the preceding five years, easily won without the participation from the major BNP-Jama’at alliance. The election was anything but fair in which dozens of seats were won without any opposition candidate contesting those seats – something that almost never happens, especially in Bangladesh where there is neither shortage of political parties nor of independent candidates.

As noted by William Milam, the former U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, in a recent article in the Express Tribune (March 11, 2014), many believed that somehow, somebody or something — the army, the international community, the West, a leader on a white horse — would appear and stop the ‘defective’ election that was in the offing. But none of those outcomes occurred.

As the dust settled from the melee of the election time violence and the opposition BNP-led alliance has come to terms that the current government cannot be toppled by mindless violence that victimizes ordinary people, and normalcy has become the order of the day inside Bangladesh, it is important to ponder about the direction Bangladesh is heading politically?

Some political pundits believe that the current affairs are a dress rehearsal of the ‘hated’ BAKSAL days – the introduction of the one-party system months before the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina) was toppled bloodily in August 15 of 1975 by some disgruntled army officers whose murderous activities enjoyed the blessings from the CIA.

I disagree with such an assertion of those political pundits and believe that no matter how flawed the illiberal democracy is inside Bangladesh, it will self-correct itself and that the country will not revisit her BAKSAL days. That happy end, however, may not come anytime soon, but I am optimistic that it will come one day; that timing would depend on how serious Bangladeshis are to bring about the desired change. If the two major parties (AL and BNP) are beyond repair (self-scrutiny and corrective actions), are the people ready for a new party – something like India’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – offering fresh ideas and new leaders that shun crime and corruption?

My reasons behind the dissenting view on why Bangladesh will not revisit her BAKSAL days owe to the changing socio-political-economic landscape of our time – both local and international that is at variance with the norms of 1975. What was possible, popular and suitable back then in 1975 is neither true nor valid today. Everyone within the current leadership of the ruling alliance finds the BAKSAL-hoopla as mere propaganda nonsense and considers it a smokescreen to cover-up the failure of the opposition alliance.

But supposing that the worst is inevitable and that Bangladesh will revisit its past and embrace its BAKSAL past, who are to blame? Can the BNP evade responsibility from letting such an event happen?
As many Bangladeshis would tell, the BNP is equally responsible for the ‘farcical election’ (as it continues to refer to the last election) because of its many errors of strategy and judgment. Had it contested and won just five dozen seats in a ‘rigged’ election even if the AL-alliance had a two-thirds majority winning at least 200 seats, the ruling alliance’s illiberal ambitions would be on the check. The BNP-alliance could have used the floor of the parliament to debate and dissent. But now, they are portrayed as an opportunist party that cared more about themselves and not the people of the country.

It goes without saying that democracy is a farce without a healthy opposition. For an illiberal democracy to transition into liberal democracy it must allow opposing views to be heard and debated. Such a transition cannot happen when there are no takers – neither on the winning side nor on the losing or opposing side. As a result of this impasse, the ultimate losers are the people of Bangladesh whose genuine desires to live in a just society continue to be dashed by disingenuous politicians.

Not everything is, however, lost in Bangladesh’s so-called two-party (or alliance) formula. The current set up is still capable of making things better if it has the sincerity and will to execute reforms (starting with its own structure). The AL alliance government is accused of practicing widespread human rights violations, marginalizing the main opposition by continuing to arrest its leaders, denying space for any political opponent to protest peacefully, and using the War Crimes Tribunal as politically motivated trials to lame and tame its opposition.

For its part, the administration of Sheikh Hasina can correct such widely held perceptions and resist any temptation and political itch that only invigorates the notion that it is resurrecting BAKSAL. It can also afford not to appear as cementing Indian hegemony over Bangladesh with what are arguably one-sided concessions and guarantees given to India, and must, instead, change the negative perception it suffers by fighting for legitimate demands of her people on an equal footing on a plethora of issues from the equitable share of water in international rivers to stopping the almost daily shooting of Bangladeshis by the trigger-happy BSF along the no-man’s land separating the two countries.

The opposition BNP-alliance is widely perceived as an opportunist, if not an immoral, alliance that is against the spirit of the liberation war and only hungry for power and personal gains. The lavish lifestyles of its leaders – home and abroad – have only given credence to such perceptions. On its part, the alliance can choose to correct such negative perceptions by excluding murderous politicians and criminal Mafia Dons who have been found guilty in the courts of the law. It can also resist any temptation to turn its clock back to the pre-election days of violence. Bangladeshis don’t have stomach for such crimes. The recent win in the local and upazila elections by its candidates shows that the opposition alliance remains a formidable opposition enjoying deep-rooted support within the populace. It can bank on such supports to regroup it and formulate short term tactics and long term strategies that show that it is serious about improving socio-political- economic condition of Bangladeshis.

The choice is theirs (i.e., the ruling and opposition alliances) to make – moving forward or going backward. If they are genuinely sincere about Bangladesh they can work towards creating the true intellectual and moral foundations of the state through inclusive political rights, freedom and economic equality. And if they don’t learn lessons from history by altering their failed ways, they will end up in the dustbin of history. History is unforgiving on those who refuse to learn from it.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan, fresh from a resounding victory in municipal elections has chosen the soccer pitch to make good on his promise to “enter the lair” of his Islamist rival, self-exiled preacher Fethullalh Gulen, and ensure that what he calls an “alliance of evil” is brought to account for alleged treason and creating a state within a state.

In a symbolic gesture, Mr. Erdogan called on Turkish soccer legend Hakan Sukur to resign from parliament after his nameplate was removed from an Istanbul’s Sancaktepe Hakan Sukur Stadium. Mr. Sukur represented Istanbul on behalf of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) until he resigned in protest again the government’s handling of a major corruption scandal.

Back in 2011, Mr. Erdogan, a former soccer player, recruited Mr. Sukur to boost his election campaign to become prime minister for a third term. The former player had support the prime minister’s effort a year earlier to change Turkey’s constitution that had been drafted in the 1980s during a period of military rule. “Turkey has experienced a tremendous development and I wanted to be a part of this progress and transformation, too. I love my country and I am part of a party that has gained large support,” Mr. Sukur said at the time.

Three years later, responding to the renaming of the stadium, Mr. Sukur quipped on Twitter: “”It is better to have your name in people’s heart than having a picture on a wall.”

AKP won last month’s municipal elections despite a massive corruption scandal that was sparked in December when prosecutors believed to be close to Mr. Gulen launched an investigation into alleged graft by ministers and prominent businessmen. Police at the time detained sons of three ministers and the head of a state-owned bank.

Mr. Erdogan has accused Mr. Gulen, who heads one of the world’s largest Islamist movements, of leaking a string of audio tapes allegedly implicating senior government officials, including Mr Erdogan, in the scandal as well as of a high level security meeting on Syria. The prime minister charged that the graft inquiry was part of a parallel state seeking to topple the government. Mr. Gulen is believed to have had a strong following in the judiciary and the police force

In response to the leaking of the tapes, Mr. Erdogan sought to block Twitter and You Tube but was rebuffed by the courts who lifted the ban on Twitter unconditionally and ordered You Tube to be unblocked once it deleted the Syria-related video because it damaged national security.

The move against Mr. Sukur, viewed as the best soccer player of his generation if not in Turkish football history, seemed petty against the prime minister’s earlier moves again Mr. Gulen, which included shifting scores of judicial personnel and thousands of police officers into new jobs in a bid to control the corruption investigation.

In addition to the renaming of the stadium, police in the south-eastern city of Adana arrested eight police officers believed to be close to Mr. Gulen’s Hizmet or Service movement on charges of illegal wiretapping.

Mr. Gulen heads a global education, banking and media empire that allied itself with Mr. Erdogan’s AKP in a successful bid to submit Turkey’s powerful military to civilian control. The mounting power struggle first became apparent in 2011 in a political and legal battle between Messrs Erdogan and Gulen over how to handle the eruption of the worst match fixing scandal in Turkish history. The match fixing inquiry was initiated by the same prosecutor who launched the graft investigation.

Messrs Erdogan and Gulen fought a proxy battle over legal penalties for match fixing when the soccer scandal erupted. Mr. Erdogan won that battle by pushing through parliament a bill that significantly reduced the penalties and arm twisting the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) to get Fenerbahce SK, the political crown jewel in Turkish soccer, off the hook and prevent clubs guilty of match fixing from being relegated. At stake in the battle over Fenerbahce was control of the club with its millions of supporters.

The battle as well as the escalation of the power struggle culminating in the graft investigation has raised doubts about whether Mr. Gulen, a frail, ailing 73-year old, who lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania, is in full control of his movement.

Those doubts have risen given that Mr. Gulen’s movement turned the power struggle into open warfare with the graft investigation without an apparent clear endgame. The movement appeared unprepared for whatever the outcome would be, a fall of the Erdogan government, which it has not prompted, or government retaliation that would seek to seriously weaken it.

Mr. Gulen appeared to implicitly acknowledge that he may not be in control in two phone calls to Fenerbahce chairman Aziz Yildirim in 2011 prior to soccer boss’s conviction on match fixing charges. People familiar with the phone calls quote Mr. Gulen as telling Mr. Yildirim: “There is nothing bad in my heart against you. I am not involved in this. There might be people who did wrong against you but I am not aware of this if it was my people.”

In an inscription in a book Mr. Gulen sent to Mr. Yildirim in between the two phone calls, the preacher wrote: “To Aziz Bey whom I never had a chance to meet but admire for his activism, righteousness and perseverance. My prayers are with you that your difficult days may pass.”

The renaming of the Istanbul stadium to punish Mr. Sukur is likely to be but a mild first push in Mr. Erdogan’s retaliation. So are allegations by Gulen-owned Turkish media such as Cihan news agency and Zaman newspaper – both affiliated to Gulen that they suffered cyber-attacks during last month’s elections.

Fenerbahce is certain to figure in Mr. Erdogan’s campaign. The club emerged in the run-up to the municipal elections as a bastion of opposition against Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.

The club appeared to highlight its position in a tweet that said that Mr. Yildirim had written in his personal notebook an oath of allegiance to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the visionary who carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire: “I promise you, Fenerbahce will be the last light on earth fighting against the darkest powers that want us to forget your revolution”.

Pakistan’s draft counterterrorism law threatens basic rights and freedoms in violation of Pakistan’s international legal obligations. The Protection of Pakistan Ordinance, 2013, which was approved by President Mamnoon Hussain on October 20, 2013 and the National Assembly on April 7, 2014, requires Senate approval by April 20 or it will expire.

“Pakistan’s anti-terror laws shouldn’t be used to undermine fundamental rights,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Protection of Pakistan Ordinance as drafted runs roughshod over rights provided under international law as well as Pakistan’s constitution.”

The proposed law violates fundamental rights to freedom of speech, privacy and peaceful assembly, and due process protections embodied in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Pakistan ratified in 2010. In its current form, the law could be used to suppress peaceful political opposition and criticism of government policy, Human Rights Watch said.

Pakistan’s Senate should refuse to approve the repressive law and return it to the National Assembly with needed revisions, Human Rights Watch said.

The preamble to the ordinance describes the law as necessary “for protection against waging of war against Pakistan and the prevention of acts threatening [its] security” so as to expedite the investigation and prosecution of terrorism cases.

The draft counterterrorism law contains vague and overly broad definitions that could be used to prosecute peaceful political protesters and those who criticize government policies, Human Rights Watch said. Among the ordinance’s most worrying provisions are:

• The vague definition of terrorist acts, which could be used to prosecute a very wide range of conduct—far beyond the limits of what can reasonably be considered terrorist activity. Besides “killing, kidnapping, extortion,” the law classifies highly ambiguous acts including “Internet offenses” and “disrupting mass transport systems,” as prosecutable crimes without providing specific definitions for such offenses. These terms are so ambiguous that a nonviolent political protest that disrupts traffic might be labeled “threatening the security of Pakistan.” As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism has recommended, the legal definition of terrorism should be limited to acts “committed against members of the general population, or segments of it, with the intention of causing death or serious bodily injury, or the taking of hostages,” rather than property crimes.
• The expansion of powers of arrest without warrant from the police to members of the armed forces or “civil armed forces acting in aid of civil authority.” The ordinance empowers those forces to “enter and search without warrant any premises to make any arrest or to take possession of any property … used or likely to be used in the commission of any scheduled offence.” Providing such powers without warrant violates the rights against arbitrary arrest under article 9, and to privacy and the security of the home under article 17 of the ICCPR.
• Shifting the “burden of proof” from government prosecutors to criminal suspects. The ordinance states that those arrested under the law “shall be presumed to be engaged in waging war or insurrection against Pakistan unless he establishes his non-involvement in the offence.” This violates the fundamental principle of presumption of innocence embedded in article 14 of the ICCPR, which ensures “the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”
• Providing effective immunity for abuses committed by security forces and judicial officials acting under the law, protecting them from any liability “for acts done in good faith during the performance of their duties.” This blanket immunity violates article 2(3) of the ICCPR, which requires that governments ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms are violated “shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
• Empowering the government to determine the place of custody, inquiry, investigation and trial. This could permit detentions and prosecutions being conducted outside the established judicial system in violation of basic protections against arbitrary detention under article 9 of the ICCPR and the right to “a fair and public hearing” under article 14.

Terrorism is a very real concern in Pakistan. Sunni militant groups such as Lashkar-e Jhangvi, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, have conducted numerous attacks targeting civilians. Although ostensibly banned, Lashkar-e Jhangvi operates with virtual impunity across Pakistan, as law enforcement officials either turn a blind eye or appear helpless to prevent attacks.

In 2013, more than 400 members of the Shia Muslim population were killed in targeted attacks that took place across Pakistan. On April 9, 2014, a truck bomb detonated at an outdoor market on the outskirts of the national capital, Islamabad, which killed at least 22 people. A self-described separatist group calling itself the United Baloch Army claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Denying Pakistanis their universal rights and freedoms isn’t a smart or effective tool for battling terrorism,” Adams said. “The government should step back and fully revise the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance with input from civil society and international experts to instead craft a law that addresses serious crimes while protecting rights.”

By Robert Coalson

(RFE/RL) — The new government emerging in Kyiv is facing an old problem: What to do about those who worked for and supported the former government, which is now considered criminally corrupt and thoroughly infiltrated by Russian agents?

Ukraine’s parliament on April 8 adopted a controversial law on lustration for judges and three other similar bills are under consideration. Lustration is the practice of a new government vetting officials from a previous government for possible crimes against the people or the country. It is derived from the term for an ancient Roman purification ceremony.

The Ukrainian measures would bar individuals who fail to pass a lustration commission review from holding public office for up to 20 years.

Such lustration was a key demand of the mass Euromaidan protests that swept President Viktor Yanukovych from power. But the process is fraught with danger, especially for countries like Ukraine that are deeply divided and lack a clear consensus backing the new authorities.

The international nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch has issued a statement urging acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov not to sign the bill that has already been passed and calling on legislators to rethink the ones under consideration.

“All three drafts are overly broad and vague and may set the stage for unlawful mass arbitrary political exclusion,” the statement says.

Exclusionary Or Inclusionary?

Lustration is a perilous undertaking. U.S. political science professor Eric Brahm has called it “a very blunt instrument of transitional justice.”

Roman David is a professor of sociology at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and an expert on lustration and transitional justice. He is currently in Kyiv advising the government on its lustration process.

David says transitional-justice processes differ from country to country and time to time, but can be roughly divided into exclusive and inclusive processes. Exclusionary processes — those that bar individuals from public life if they are found to have committed crimes — have worked fairly well in countries like Estonia and Poland, where the great mass of society favored the new government.

On the other hand, an inclusive approach — which would include a grace period for officials to come forward about their past actions followed by possible perjury charges or other sanctions against those who lie or conceal information — does less to solidify support for the new government and takes more time. An inclusive approach helps cope with the moral dilemma of lustration — that people are being punished retroactively in many cases for doing things that were perfectly legal and even obligatory at the time.

Such processes, David says, often have greater international legitimacy and, over the long term, often expose more wrongdoing in more detail than exclusionary ones. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is widely regarded as the gold standard for this type of system.

Ukraine’s Choice

Ukraine, so far, seems inclined to an exclusionary process that has the advantage of solidifying support among those who already support the authorities — but the dangerous disadvantage of alienating other important groups.

Such a lustration process can send a message to some segments of society that they don’t belong to the new country. “And the experience of Croatia is one of those bad experiences — [as is] Serbia [and] Iraq. In all those countries, these messages of exclusion led to, effectively, civil conflict,” David says.

David warns that the parallel with Iraq’s disastrous de-Ba’athification process should be taken seriously as Kyiv embarks on a lustration process that is basically targeted at a political party, the Party of Regions.

If a particular social group feels alienated, David says, “the dismissal of a particular person may trigger much broader social issues.”

Another problem with exclusionary lustration is that it can cripple a state, leaving it bereft of qualified financial, legal, security, or other experts. Exclusionary lustration in Libya after Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster has resulted in dangerous security lapses that make the country virtually a failed state.

“They push [away] those who would be willing to work with the new democracy, who would be willing to collaborate, this kind of whole army of people who have a servant mentality and who would be able to effectively collaborate with any regime whether it is from heaven or hell,” David says.

A Political Choice

Essentially the decision of which way to go in lustration is a political one. The authorities in Ukraine may be more driven by a need to satisfy the demands of their Maidan supporters than by a desire to create a less divisive, but more long-term approach.

In any lustration process, there is a clear danger of it being coopted for nakedly political ends.

In Czechoslovakia in the 1990s, some who felt official lustration was not going far enough began “exposing” alleged crimes on their own. Some lustration processes have been used as a way to ban political opponents without a formal trial. In Poland and other postcommunist countries, records have been found to have been falsified in an attempt to pursue political vendettas.

But a successful lustration process can be a major driver in a country’s development. Following World War II, Germany underwent a complex, decades-long program of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung that included major roles for the state, schools, churches, and the arts.

On the contrary, countries such as Russia, Belarus, and others have resisted lustration efforts and, many scholars argue, this has hampered political and social development.

By Emilio Godoy

Latin America is not taking the new global agreement to limit mercury emissions seriously: the hazardous metal is still widely used and smuggled in artisanal gold mining and is released by the fossil fuel industry.

After the European Union banned exports of mercury in 2011 and the United States did so in 2013, trade in the metal shot up in the region.

“Mexico’s exports have tripled in the last few years,” Ibrahima Sow, an environmental specialist in the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) Climate Change and Chemicals Team, told Tierramérica. “And activities like the extraction of gold from recycled electronic goods are on the rise.”

The global treaty on mercury was adopted in October 2013. It includes a ban on new mercury mines, the phase-out of existing mines, control measures for air emissions, and the international regulation of the informal sector for artisanal and small-scale gold mining.

But of the 97 countries around the world that have signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury – including 18 from Latin America and the Caribbean – only one, the United States, has ratified it, and 49 more must do so in order for it to go into effect.

Minamata is the Japanese city that gave its name to the illness caused by severe mercury poisoning. The disease, a neurological syndrome, was first identified there in the 1950s.

It was eventually discovered that it was caused by the release of methylmercury in the industrial wastewater from a chemical plant run by the Chisso Corporation. The local populace suffered from mercury poisoning after eating fish and shellfish containing a build-up of this neurotoxic, carcinogenic chemical.

The contamination occurred between 1932 and 1968. As of 2001, 2,265 victims had been officially recognised; at least 100 of them died as a result of the disease.

In Latin America, mercury is used in artisanal gold mining and hospital equipment. And emissions are produced by the extraction, refining, transport and combustion of hydrocarbons; thermoelectric plants; and steelworks.

It is also smuggled in a number of countries.

“It is hard to quantify the illegal imports,” Colombia’s deputy minister of the environment and sustainable development, Pablo Vieira, told Tierramérica. “Everyone knows that artisanal and small-scale mining uses smuggled mercury, mainly coming in from Peru and Ecuador, although hard data is not available.”

According to Colombia’s authorities, the mercury is smuggled through the jungle in the country’s remote border zones.

Mercury Watch, an international alliance which keeps a global database, estimated Latin America’s mercury emissions at 526 tonnes in 2010, with Colombia in the lead, accounting for 180 tonnes.

In an assessment published in 2013, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated that mercury emissions caused by human activities reached 1,960 tonnes in 2010, with artisanal mining as the main source (727 tonnes), followed by the burning of coal, principally from power generation and industrial use.

Artisanal gold mining is practised in at least a dozen Latin American countries, largely in the Andean region and the Amazon rainforest, but in Central America as well, UNEP reports.

Some 500,000 small-scale gold miners drive the legal or illegal demand for mercury.

Mexico and Peru have mercury deposits, but there is no formal primary mercury mining in the region. The extraction is secondary, because the mercury tends to be mixed with other minerals, or comes from the recycling of mercury already extracted and used for other purposes.

The biggest producers are Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, while the main consumers and legal importers are Peru, Colombia and Panama.

In 2012 Mexico, Argentina and Colombia headed the regional list of exporters of mercury and products containing the metal, according to Mercury Watch.

Mercury is naturally present in certain rocks, and can be found in the air, soil and water as a result of industrial emissions.

Bacteria and other microorganisms convert mercury to methylmercury, which can accumulate in different animal species, especially fish.

Mining industry laws in Bolivia, Costa Rica and Honduras ban the use of mercury.

And last year Colombia passed a law that would phase out mercury in mining over the next five years and in industry over the next 10 years.

Since November 2013, the Peruvian Congress has also been debating a draft law to eliminate mercury in mining and replace it in industrial activities.

According to UNEP, there were a total of 11 chlor-alkali plants operating with mercury technology in seven countries in the region in 2012. But several of the factories plan to adopt mercury-free technologies by 2020.

“The mercury content in products, the replacement of mercury, and the temporary storage and final disposal of mercury waste are significant aspects of mercury management,” Raquel Lejtreger, undersecretary in Uruguay’s ministry of housing, territorial planning and environment, told Tierramérica.

Uruguay imports products that contain mercury. But a mercury cell chlor-alkali plant operating in the South American country plans to convert to mercury-free technology, although financing to do so is needed.

GEF has provided funds to Uruguay and other countries in the region for the negotiation of the global treaty on mercury and for the adoption of alternative, mercury-free technologies. But there is still a long way to go.

This story was originally published Apr. 5 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

By Öznur Keleş

International credit rating agency Moody’s has changed the outlook on Turkey from stable to negative. Moody’s has affirmed the Turkey’s government bond rating at Baa3, which is the current level.

Moody’s has asserted that increasing pressure on Turkey’s external financing situation due to rising political uncertainty and declining global liquidity negatively affects the confidence of both domestic and foreigner investor.

Also, Moody’s explained, “in a context of a slowing near-term outlook for GDP growth, growing uncertainty about medium-term growth trend because the prospects for growth-enhancing structural reforms may be diminished in the more uncertain policy environment that is accompanying the domestic political turbulence.”

Moody’s said that Turkey’s credit rating is not likely to be elevated in the short term. It will not upward as long as external imbalances remain large, and the country remains exposed to external financing and balance of payments pressures.

After the Moody’s evaluation, the U.S. dollar to Turkish Lira rate rose up to 2,12 for a little while, and it again decreased to 2,11.

The Minister of Development Cevdet Yılmaz asserted the change in outlook of Turkey by the Moody’s. Yılmaz stated that the change on the outlook does not mean the change in the Turkey’s rating; yet, the credibility of the credit rating agencies is not very robust. Yılmaz also emphasized that if the credit agencies study healthy, the global crisis would not happened.

According to Yılmaz, the last local election in Turkey was the affirmation of the political stability, thus this should have a positive effect on Turkey’s rating. Yılmaz added that since the market is quite important, the market gives the required answer.

One thing that the FBI does really well is exonerate itself. As I wrote earlier, the bureau’s agents have shot 151 people over the course of the last two decades, killing more than half of them, yet in its own internal reviews, the FBI has exonerated those agents all 151 times — a perfect record of blamelessness that even some of the country’s most gun-happy police departments (even in Albuquerque, NM) can’t claim.

Now another internal review, not by the FBI but by the Office of Intelligence Committee, an obscure unit which supposedly internally “oversees” the work of 17 intelligence agencies including the FBI, has smiled on the FBI’s seemingly lackadaisical investigation of Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, saying that its Boston office agents did an okay job in checking him out after Russian intelligence warned the US back in 2011 that he had linked up with Islamic militants while on a visit to his family in Dagestan.

The New York Times, in a report on the inspector’s findings, quotes an unidentified “senior American official” as saying that the OIC investigation “found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on him back then, and that based on everything that was available at the time, the FBI did all that it could.”

What that “everything” included was interviewing the elder Tsarnaev brother (now dead, killed in a hail of police bullets during a night-time chase following the Boston bombing last April), as well as his parents and friends at school. After that brief flurry of interviews, the bureau allegedly lost interest in Tsarnaev, concluding that he was more of a threat to Russia than to the US—an interesting turn of phrase that should suggest something else might have been afoot.

And indeed, there is something missing from that report that is troubling: namely news that the FBI also reportedly sought to enlist Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant during its 2011-12 investigation of his activities. If attorneys for Tamerlan’s younger brother Dzhokhar are correct, the FBI, after contacting and questioning the older brother, then at least attempted to pressure him to work for them by spying on the local Chechen community in Boston. It stands to reason they may have also been interested in having him work for the US against Russia, given the US’s long record of support for rebels in former Soviet republics like Chechnya and Dagestan who have been seeking to break away from Russia. Tsarnaev would have been vulnerable to such pressure, as he had been attempting to gain US citizenship, and because had certain assets that the FBI (and the CIA) wanted: knowledge of people in Dagestan and also fluency in Chechen and Russian (a Tsarnaev uncle was already reportedly working for the CIA, even for a time living in the home of, and married to the daughter of a ranking CIA official).

The FBI has denied that it ever signed up Tsarnaev, but that kind of denial has to be taken with not a grain but a whole shaker of salt. The whole Boston bombing story is full of bizarre aspects, such as the complete lack of similarity between the exploded backpack as displayed publicly by the FBI and the two backpacks that videos and stills show the Tsarnaev brothers to be carrying at the finish line of the race, and also the haste with with law enforcement sought to kill the seriously injured Dzhokhar when he was trapped and surrounded by heavily armed and armored police in a trailered fiberglass pleasure boat in Watertown, Mass. (A hail of over 100 bullets were fired at him through the boat’s hull, though he by that time posed no risk to the police, and had no chance of escaping.)

The OIC report claims that the FBI might have investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev more thoroughly had Russian intelligence only given them more information, such as word that they had tapped calls between Tamerlan and his mother in which the two allegedly discussed jihadism. Supposedly that “crucial” information was only provided to the bureau by Russia after the Marathon bombing.

But really, are we supposed to believe, in this Patriot Act-era America, and at a time when we’ve learned that the National Security Agency has for years been collecting all phone calls made in the country and has the ability to recover any of them, including not just the meta-data but the actual conversations, that the FBI needed the Russians to tell them they had monitored an international call by Tsarnaev?  And are we supposed to actually believe that the FBI needed harder evidence about Tsarnaev’s possible link to terrorism in order to monitor him?  This is the same FBI, remember, that has been caught putting GPS trackers on the vehicles of peace activists in California, sending informants to monitor environmental protest organizations and animal rights groups, declaring Occupy  groups to be “terrorists,” and setting up vulnerable low-wattage losers to plot bogus terror attacks that the bureau can then step in and “prevent.”

All of this should make us particularly curious about the FBI’s offing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev friend Ibragim Todashev (a “justified” killing according the the bureau’s internal investigation, as always), after an apparently brutal four-and-a-half-hour grilling in his Orlando apartment last May 22.  That shooting, as I reported earlier, happened after one of the two FBI agents on the case had physically removed from the area a potential witness to the killing, Khusen Taramov, riding with him in his car to ensure that he was miles from the scene just half an hour before the deadly shooting was done.

The unarmed Todashev was shot three times in the upper middle of his back, once in the chest, two times in the front of his upper left arm and then once in the top of his head in what bears all the markings of an execution or rub-out His body also exhibited a major bruise on the left side of the head that included a contusion on the cheek at the outside of the left eye socket, which a coroner said was the result of a heavy blow of some kind.

With the younger Tsarnaev facing a capital murder and terrorism trial, why would the FBI have slain the person who best knew the older brother just before the bombing took place, unless it was to silence him? And what would they have been trying to silence him about? Could it have been knowledge that Tamerlan was working for the FBI at the time of the bombing?

One thing is for sure. We cannot rely on the FBI or the Justice Department or some intelligence agency “inspector general” to give us the truth about that or about the killing of Todashev.

By C. Raja Mohan

In its manifesto released this week, the BJP promises to build new world-class ports and modernise the old ones all along the Indian coastline, as part of what it calls “port-led development”. The BJP’s name for the project, “Sagar Mala”, evokes, perhaps unintentionally, China’s “String of Pearls” in the Indian Ocean. Over the last decade, China has embarked on the construction of a number of ports in India’s neighbourhood, starting with Gwadar, in Pakistan, and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. New Delhi worries that some of these ports might turn into forward bases for the People’s Liberation Army.

India’s immediate problem, however, is not the prospect of China acquiring military facilities in the Indian Ocean. Given the long and vulnerable lines of communication from China’s eastern seaboard to the Indian Ocean, China’s bases will be easy pickings in a war.

The real problem for India is the massive maritime gap with China in the civilian domain. Out of the top 10 busiest container ports in the world, China has seven. India’s JNPT is placed at number 30 and is the only one in the list of top 50.

The story is much the same when we compare the tonnage of merchant fleet or the ship-building capacities. If the BJP is serious about generating millions of jobs through manufacturing and trade, it must necessarily focus on a rapid expansion of India’s maritime infrastructure. “Sagar Mala” could be a good first step.

SILK ROUTES

Without strong national maritime capabilities, Delhi will find it hard to either compete or cooperate with Beijing in Asia’s waters. Beijing has trumped the talk of rivalry with India by inviting Delhi to join China in the building of a maritime silk road across the Indo-Pacific. This has put Delhi in a spot of bother. It is in no position to stop China from building up its presence in the Indian Ocean. But Delhi is also reluctant to “endorse” China’s rising maritime profile in what India considers its backwaters. There is only one way out of this corner.

It is to build up India’s own comprehensive maritime power that will let Delhi consolidate its geographic advantages in the Indian Ocean, build partnerships in the Pacific Ocean, compete with China’s infrastructure-building in the littoral where necessary and cooperate with Beijing where possible.

India’s answers must be the same as China pushes for overland connectivity with the subcontinent across the Great Himalayas. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has put building Silk Roads all across inner Asia at the top of his foreign policy agenda. Xi has decided to modernise the Karakoram Highway linking China and Pakistan and build an industrial corridor along the Indus River. China’s rail and road networks in Tibet are inching closer to India’s frontier.

Xi is pressing Delhi to support a corridor connecting southwestern China with eastern India through Myanmar and Bangladesh. Delhi has said neither “yes” nor “no” and is simply stringing it out.

Meanwhile, the Congress and the BJP have not come to terms with the challenge of transborder transport corridors. Unless the next government takes up road and rail connectivity to India’s border regions on a war-footing, Delhi is bound to remain on the defensive with China’s Silk Road strategy.

CYBER CONCERNS

While cyber security and internet governance have emerged as major global concerns, the Congress leadership is oblivious. Cyber issues don’t figure in the party’s manifesto. The BJP is only a little better when it throws out the phrase, “digital and cyber security will be a thrust area”. The political leadership of the next government will have a major problem dealing with cyber issues thanks to the absence of a serious domestic discourse and the growing temptations within and outside government to return to “third worldism”.

While India is looking to the United Nations to manage the cyber challenges, the big boys, America and China, are exploring bilateral solutions that could eventually be imposed on the rest of the world. That is very similar to what happened in the nuclear arena five decades ago. India went to the UN looking for a non-discriminatory nuclear order. What it got instead was a regime negotiated by the US and the Soviet Union that left India out in the cold. The next government’s focus then must be on building domestic cyber capabilities and engaging the big powers, and not on posturing at multilateral forums.

(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and a contributing editor for ’The Indian Express’)

Courtesy : The Indian Express, April 11, 2014

By Waleed Abu al-Khair

Terrorist attacks killed more than 450 Iraqi clerics in recent years
Al-Qaeda ‘war crimes’: executions of civilians and opponents in Syria
Academics praise Saudi king’s calls for inter-sect dialogue

Al-Qaeda’s distorted view of Islam, greed and partisanship are sowing fitna among Muslims in Syria, clerics and scholars told Al-Shorfa.

Fierce battles have erupted in the country since January 2014 between al-Qaeda-linked groups such as the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) and al-Nusra Front (ANF), reportedly killing hundreds.

In the latest development this week, ANF and its allies have been battling jihadist rivals ISIL in an attempt to push them from districts of Albu Kamal, a Syrian town on the Iraqi border, AFP reported Friday (April 11th).

The fighting between the al-Qaeda affiliates has left 86 dead, 60 of whom were fighters from ANF and its allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Recruits who join the ranks of these groups expect to fight against the Syrian regime and often find themselves “provoked to fight against their brothers in arms, ideology and Islam”, said Abdullah al-Muqrin, professor of comparative jurisprudence at Umm al-Qura University in Mecca.

In a separate incident, a picture purporting to show a blood-stained former ANF member, who was expelled from the group and joined ISIL, recently went viral across social networking sites. The blood-stained man sits in front of the heads of men said to be ANF members that he had betrayed and decapitated.

The post on Twitter noted the man was expelled from ANF after testing positive for “pills” and “today he takes pride in cutting off the heads of ANF fighters”.

In response, the man himself tweeted that “after a little while, god willing, [we will talk about] the recent events in the betrayal of Joulani’s ANF in Ebla near Tal-Jijan. Please re-tweet this message.”

“Is this the Islam they [Jihadist groups] want to spread in Syria?” professor al-Muqrin asked.

Since its inception, al-Qaeda has distorted Qur’anic verses and hadiths to serve its interests, al-Muqrin said.

“It proceeded to spill the blood of civilians and the blood of Muslims who oppose its takfiri course,” he said. “This has no relation to Islam, rather the opposite, for the fate of he who sheds the blood of his Muslim brother is hell.”

Many Qur’anic verses prohibit killing, said Al-Azhar University sharia professor Ramez Yahya.

“In short, a Muslim is prohibited from shedding the blood of his brother Muslim,” he told Al-Shorfa. “What al-Qaeda is doing in Syria and Iraq is a departure from religion itself.”

Muslim youth not versed in the fundamentals of religious jurisprudence were caught in a trap and misled by false and prejudiced fatwas, which they implement without conviction, Yahya said, noting that Prophet Mohammed “ordered Muslims to break and disable their weapons so they [Muslims] do not fall into fitna and kill their Muslim brothers”.

“Thus, the factional infighting in Syria is fitna fighting which [Muslims] must not take part in,” he said.

‘We suffered clear oppression at the hands of terrorist organisations’

Whatever instigated the fitna or fighting among extremist opposition groups in Syria has nothing to do with Islam, said Sheikh Maaz Abdul Karim, who was a preacher at al-Omar mosque in Aleppo before he moved to Cairo earlier this year.

Rather it is the product of the on-going conflicts between gangs vying for control of Syria and its financial and economic resources, he added.

“ISIL and ANF were able to recruit many Muslims into their ranks, some of whom are Syrian and some are migrants, or foreign fighters, and were able to embroil them in the fitna, fighting and shedding Muslim blood, which God and his messenger prohibited,” Abdul Karim told Al-Shorfa.

“The going rule among [members of] ISIL, ANF, Ahrar a-Sham and other groups at this time is ‘He who is not with us is against us’,” he added.

Abdul Karim said he left Syria after the infighting among extremist opposition groups began at the turn of the year.

“I sensed the extent of the rancour and hatred between the two sides,” he told Al-Shorfa.

He added that he and many of other Syrian citizens suffered “clear oppression at the hands of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organisations”.

“I moved around many areas in Syria and got into verbal altercations with ISIL and ANF members when they tried to force me to follow their takfiri path,” he said. “In the end, I preferred to leave Syria as I found myself facing two choices: either they kill me for rejecting al-Qaeda’s views or I toe the line of their views, which goes against what I was raised on and the principles of the sharia I learned.”

If what al-Qaeda is doing in Syria does not stop, it will greatly harm Syria in the future and sow fitna and divisions among Syrians, Abdul Karim said.

“What al-Qaeda did in Syria was create parties from the first day they appeared in the country,” he said. “Consequently, fitna reared its head when the members of each party grew intolerant of others.”

Islam prohibits partisanship because the existence of parties leads to intolerance towards each other, he said.

“How can they say they are establishing an Islamic state having started with false premises which are at their root far-removed from religion?” Abdul Karim asked.

“Al-Qaeda groups have even been keen on stoking the dispute between them in the media and via means of communication and social networking sites, in addition to incitement by speakers, clerics and imams — another violation of the Islamic teachings Prophet Mohammed spoke of,” he said.

‘Fitna is taboo’

Comparative jurisprudence professor al-Muqrin said the term fitna (sedition) has many meanings and interpretations in Islam, “but if the fitna is between Muslims and leads to bloody fighting, it is without question prohibited and taboo’.

Islamic creed says there is no difference between Muslims, or between Arab and non-Arab, or black and white except difference in piety, al-Muqrin said.

“Whoever creates fanaticism for a particular sect, party or national [identity] would be reverting back to the days of Jahiliyya which has no relation to Islam,” he said, adding, “From the early days [of Islam], the messenger forbade partisanship and warned Muslims against falling into its trap because it blinds people. He also warned against hostility towards anyone who leaves a party or group.”

The only way for Muslims to avoid fitna is to strictly adhere to the Qur’an and the sunnah of Prophet Mohammed, and to interpretations of these by trusted interpreters, “and not new [interpreters] who distorted the religion to serve their political and worldly interests”, al-Muqrin said.

“If they are truly convinced there is a difference in opinion, it would be more worthwhile for them to resort to dialogue, as is written in religious texts, until they reach an understanding, and not quickly resort to arms and waste the blood of Muslims in this way,” he said.

By Jamel Arfaoui

Tunisian security forces and salafists clashed again Thursday (April 10th) in Siliana.

Several officers were injured Wednesday when dozens of Ansar al-Sharia members tried to storm the Rouhia police station.

The violence arose a day after security forces raided a local mosque and arrested 40 salafists, including several recent returnees from jihad in Syria.

“We’ve seen days of clashes, during which we breathed a lot of tear gas which the security forces used to disperse the extremist protestors,” local resident Lamjed Rezki told Magharebia.

“We have provided the necessary support to the security forces because we reject the presence of those elements in the town,” Rezki added.

According to security expert Tarek Sliti, “what’s happening in Rouhia was made up by the leaders of those groups to relieve pressures by security and army forces in Jebel Chaambi”.

He confirmed that the bombardment of terrorists holed up in the remote border region had been relentless, and that their extremist allies across Tunisia were clearly confused.

“What we’re seeing in Rouhia, Ben Guerdane, and more recently in Sfax, are attempts to distract the security and army forces,” he added.

Tunisian security forces are racking up a string of wins against Ansar al-Sharia terrorists.

On Sunday, the interior ministry announced that an eight-member Ansar al-Sharia cell had been dismantled in Sfax. Two terrorists were injured after accidentally detonating a home-made bomb. Authorities seized a large amount of explosive devices during the April 6th operation.

“The extremist group that was arrested in Sfax was planning to target vital facilities, such as a shopping mall, military barracks and hospital in the area,” Interior Ministry Spokesman Mohamed Ali Laroui said told Jawhara FM.

A day before the Sfax incident, Gabes counter-terrorist units raided a house. Two students and their professor were arrested in connection with Ansar al-Sharia activity.

“I don’t think that extremists will find any popular sympathy,” analyst Mondher al-Mouelhi told Magharebia. “They’re losing the field they had won after the January 2011 revolution,” he added. “After they turned to violence and were involved in assassinations, they lost all popular support.”

“Media forums had been hosting them almost every day, but when they were designated a terrorist group, they lost such a venue,” al-Mouelhi said.

Last August, Tunisia officially designated Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist organisation tied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

“This will lead to certain consequences on the security, justice and media levels, and also on the international co-operation level,” former Prime Minister Ali Larayedh said at the time.

The group has been linked to the massacre of soldiers in Jebel Chaambi, and the murders of opposition politicians Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.

The group’s leader, Seif Allah ben Hassine (aka Abou Iyadh), has not been seen in months.

First Minister Alex Salmond on Saturday urged Scots to look beyond party politics and break the 307-year union with England when they vote in an independence referendum in September. Closing the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) last conference before the ballot on Sept. 18, Salmond said a vote for independence was not a vote for his party or for him, but a way to put Scotland’s future in its own hands.

His appeal comes after a narrowing in opinion polls that has for the first time in the SNP’s 80-year history made independence look a possibility, with both sides now trying to convince up to 15 percent of voters who remain undecided, according to Reuters.

Salmond promised to form an all-party “Team Scotland” group after a “Yes” vote to negotiate terms of independence by March 24, 2016, such as how to divide oil revenues, the currency, removing nuclear weapons, and European Union membership.

His promise is an appeal to opposition Labour voters, many of whom bitterly oppose the SNP, which dominates Scotland’s devolved parliament. Salmond can count on concern among Labour voters about a continuing Conservative-led government in Britain.

“A ‘Yes’ vote in September is not a vote for me, or for an SNP government in 2016 (at the next Scottish election),” Salmond told 1,200 party faithful after receiving a rock star welcome at the conference in Aberdeen, the oil capital of Scotland.

“It’s a vote for a government in Scotland that the people of Scotland choose, pursuing policies the people of Scotland support.”

Salmond, dwarfed by images of Scotland’s blue-and-white Saltire flag and the conference slogan “Forward”, hammered home the now familiar mantra that Scotland “can, should and must” end its union with England.

Nationalists argue that oil-rich Scotland can afford to go it alone, and should make its own decisions and not have its fate determined by politicians in London.

Opponents to independence argue that the British are strongest together, financially and on the world stage.

Salmond said any government of an independent Scotland would control tax, the economy, social security, employment, immigration, oil and gas revenues, European policy and other areas now under Westminster’s grip.

“That may be the SNP. It may be Labour. It may be a coalition,” said Salmond, 59, who has taken the SNP from opposition to government during his 20 years of leadership.

“I tell you what it won’t be. It won’t be a government led by a party with just a single MP in Scotland,” he said to cheers, referring to the Conservative Party which has been deeply unpopular in Scotland since the Margaret Thatcher era.

Only one of Scotland’s 59 members elected to the British parliament is a Conservative, prompting frequent jokes that there are more giant pandas in Scotland – two at Edinburgh Zoo – than Conservative MPs.

“In an independent Scotland we can give this guarantee: The era of Tory governments unelected by the people of Scotland … will be gone and gone for good,” he said to a standing ovation.

He repeated an invite to Prime Minister David Cameron to an independence debate which the Conservative leader has refused.

Salmond’s appeal for non-nationalist support comes as opinion polls this week showed support for independence nudging up to around 40 percent, up from 30 percent a year ago, and compared to 45 percent opposition.

SNP deputy Nicola Sturgeon said momentum for a ‘Yes’ vote was growing but there was a way to go before September and party delegates agreed to suspend all branch and national council meetings this year to focus on the referendum campaign.

“We have a great deal of confidence that we are on track to win a ‘Yes’ vote in September,” Sturgeon told a news conference on Saturday.

But despite the narrowing in polls, Alistair Darling, head of the pro-union Better Together campaign, said most Scots still would prefer to stay within the United Kingdom, and argued that a split would mean higher costs for business and less security.

Uncertainty over what currency would be used in an independent Scotland has spooked some businesses. Salmond wants to share the pound in a currency union with the rest of the UK, but the main UK parties flatly reject the idea.

“It is artificial to create separate states within our small island,” Darling wrote in an opinion piece on Saturday. “Cutting these connections would be like buying a one-way ticket to a deeply uncertain destination.”

On April 12 the Moroccan Royal Office released the following statement: “King Mohammed VI held on a phone conversation with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, says a release of the Royal office. The talks covered latest developments and the present timetable related to the Moroccan Sahara issue, says the release. On this occasion, HM the King reiterated Morocco’s constant commitment and constructive cooperation to reach a final political settlement to this regional dispute, within Moroccan sovereignty.
HM The King further drew the UN secretary General’s attention to the imperative need to preserve the negotiations parameters as they were defined by the Security Council, safeguard the presence framework and modalities of the UN involvement and avoid biased approaches and risky options, the statement goes on.

Any straying from this track will be fatal for the ongoing process and holds dangers for any UN involvement in the issue. The conversation also covered HM the King’s sustained actions and laudable initiatives for the stability and development of the African continent.”

It is worth noting that the telephone conversation of His Majesty King Mohammed VI with Mr. Ban Ki Moon is part of regular contacts between the Sovereign and the Secretary General of the UN. It does not signify that Morocco is experiencing a panic situation , crisis or danger in relation to developments in the case of the Sahara.

This phone conversation aims to draw attention to the potential pitfalls that could be fatal to the process and undermine the efforts of the United Nations in the search for a mutually acceptable political solution to the regional dispute over the Sahara. It is also a call to make clarifications and to reiterate the firm and consistent clear Moroccan position on certain aspects mentioned in the report.

Morocco remains strong and serene in his belief in its legitimate rights in its territory, also known serene because of national efforts and recognized as part of the reform process that started in the southern provinces an swell as in the other regions in the country. The solution that Morocco now proposes—autonomy within Morocco—is not a device to circumvent the UN-sponsored resolution; it is, in my opinion, merely the modern version of the old bay’a principle that bonded the Sahrawis with the rest of the country.

Few countries can match Morocco’s record in seeking a peaceful solution to a problem that should not have existed in the first place. But the Sahara is simply hard to give up. The Sahrawis, like the Amazighs, or Arabs, are part of a mosaic of cultures and traditions that have always been united under the leadership and prestige of the sultan. Morocco has been a multicultural society from its very inception, but it has never surrendered to colonialism, whether it appeared in the form of a gun or wrapped itself in legal language designed to deceive and erase historical realities. For history is, above all, memory, and the memory of Moroccans is stronger than a few lines drawn in the sand by pumped up colonialists.

In the past, many other UN envoys including former US Secretary of State James Baker, deployed efforts in an attempt to find an acceptable solution to this old conflict but in vain. Mediation is an effective and useful way of dealing with intractable conflicts. This is not to suggest that every intractable conflict can be mediated. Many conflicts are just too intense, the parties too entrenched for any mediator to achieve very much. Some intractable conflicts like the Sahara issue, go on and on with little signs of abatement. They cease to become intractable only when there is a major systemic change. How then can we distinguish between conflicts that can be mediated and those that cannot?

Mediators can engage in an intractable conflict only after a thorough and complete analysis of the conflict, issues at stake, context and dynamics, parties’ grievances, etc. Intractable conflicts are complex and multi-layered. A mediation initiative is more likely to be successful if it is predicated on knowledge and understanding rather than on good intentions only. A good analysis and a thorough understanding of all aspects of the conflict are important prerequisites for successful mediation in intractable conflicts.
Mediation must take place at an optimal or ripe moment. Early mediation may be premature and late mediation may face too many obstacles. A ripe moment describes a phase in the life cycle of the conflict where the parties feel exhausted and hurt, or where they may not wish to countenance any further losses and are prepared to commit to a settlement, or at least believe one to be possible. In destructive and escalating conflicts, mediation can have any chance of success only if it can capture a particular moment when the adversaries, for a variety of reasons, appear most amenable to change. Timing of intervention in an intractable conflict is an issue of crucial importance, and one that must be properly assessed by any would be mediator.

Given the nature and complexity of intractable conflicts, successful mediation requires a co-ordinated approach between different aspects of intervention. Mediation here requires leverage and resources to nudge the parties toward a settlement, but also acute psychological understanding of the parties’ feelings and grievances.

The kind of mediation we are talking about here is mediation that is embedded in various disciplinary frameworks, ranging from problem-solving workshops to more traditional diplomatic methods. No one aspect or form of behavior will suffice to turn an intractable conflict around. Diverse and complementary methods, an interdisciplinary focus, and a full range of intervention methods responding to the many concerns and fears of the adversaries, are required to achieve some accommodation between parties in an intractable conflict.

Mediating intractable conflicts require commitment, resources, persistence, and experience. Mediators of high rank or prestige are more likely to possess these attributes and thus are more likely to be successful in intractable conflicts. Such mediators have the capacity to appeal directly to the domestic constituency and build up support for some peace agreement. Influential, high ranking or prestigious mediators have more at stake, can marshal more resources, have better information, and can devote more time to an intractable conflict. Such mediators can work toward achieving some visible signs of progress in the short term, and identify steps that need to be taken to deal with the issues of a longer term peace objectives.

Influential mediators can work better within the constraints of intractable conflicts, and more likely to elicit accommodative responses from the adversaries.

Mediation in intractable conflicts is more likely to be effective if there are no sections in each community committed to the continuation of violence. Such parties are usually described as spoilers. Many political analysts considered the Polisario as spoilers who seem to lose more from a peaceful outcome than from the continuation of tension. All these factors provide some guidance on when mediation might make a contribution to intractable conflicts, and when this will be extremely difficult. Surely other factors are present too, factors such as commitment to mediation and willingness to achieve a suitable outcome, desire to stop a cycle of tension, etc. These may be hard to identify and assess, but their presence or absence will surely affect the process and outcome of any mediation effort.

Mediation offers the possibility of a jointly acceptable outcome without giving in on one’s core values and beliefs. Under some conditions mediation can actually break through an intractable cycle of violence. The availability of suitable mediators may help to transform an intractable conflict and produce a sustained agreement. For this to happen certain conditions have to be present.

In the Sahara conflict, Morocco has made a lot of concessions that has resulted lately in an autonomy proposal. However the Polisario and since the beginning of the conflict has refused to make ant concessions and has always opted for full independence as the only and last proposal. UN Special Envoy Christopher Cross should use all his diplomatic intelligence that he has gained all over his career to press the Polisario to adopt a more flexible position. If ever he is interested to make an exception to this whole process and achieve “some” positive outcome he should encourage the Polisario negotiators to alter their stubborn position.

When the circumstances are indeed propitious, few processes can do more to reduce intractability of a conflict than a well planned mediation. Mr. Ross should should be aware of these conditions and do his best to bring this intractable conflict to an end. Moroccans have done their part and proposed a credible autonomy proposal qualified by the American administration and France as serious and credible. The status quo works in favor of the Polisario leadership at the expense of those Sahrawi families forced to live in inhuman conditions in Tindouf.

Right-wing Israeli political parties have begun a campaign to sue president Abbas for “war crimes” at the International Criminal Court in response to the Palestinian Authority’s recent decision to join international conventions and treaties.

The campaign comes amid a near breakdown in ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO, and seeks to file legal procedures against Abbas accusing him of supporting “terrorism” and aiding to terrorist organizations.

Beginning on Friday, Israeli newspapers and websites have published advertisements calling on Israeli lawyers to join the campaign led by the Israel Law Center to sue Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on charges of supporting terrorist organizations.

One of the prominent leaders of the campaign is chairman of the Jewish Home party Naftali Bennett, who has been a vocal critic of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

An ad in the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth features president Abbas behind bars with a phrase in Arabic reading, “We will terrorize him in The Hague.”

Palestinian officials, however, have downplayed the move, pointing out that Israel cannot pursue legal action at the international court due to its own failure to sign the treaties.

Palestinian minister of justice Ali Muhanna told Ma’an that the Israeli government had “lost balance both politically and legally.”

Their response, he said, reflects the degree of rage in Israel towards the PA for attempting to join international conventions.

Muhanna confirmed that Israel “cannot engage in any legal action at the ICC because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

“Such legal proceedings are submitted through the ICC’s Attorney General or through the UN Security Council.”

“Abbas’ move isn’t a war crime. But the ongoing Israeli settlement construction, confiscation of Palestinian money, killing and detention of children are war crimes,” he added.

The campaign comes amid a growing crisis in peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO.

Palestinian officials applied to join 15 international conventions last week after Israel failed to release a fourth batch of veteran prisoners as previously agreed upon.

The move angered Israeli authorities, who have since called for an end to coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were relaunched in July under the auspices of the US after nearly three years of impasse.

Israel’s government has announced the construction of thousands of settler housing units and its army has killed 60 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the negotiations began.

Yesterday, two enterprising fellows committed a price tag attack on the Temple Mount, where they hung flyers demanding Muslims vacate the premises during the Passover holidays so Jews might do some Passover housecleaning…like rebuilding the Temple and making the traditional animal sacrifices offered during the days of the ancient Temple.  The flyer said:

You [Muslims] are hereby requested to vacate the Temple Mount…pursuant to preparations for the construction of the Holy Temple, renewal of animal sacrifices and the act of the Passover sacrifice.

We thank you for your cooperation,

The Jewish People

Part of the background for this is that a radical settler group publicly announced that it had begun training priests to perform these sacrifices:

On April 10…hundreds of Jews will gather…[to] start learning the Jewish laws of Passover. Rabbis and experts…[from] the Temple Institute in the Old City of Jerusalem, the leading body preparing for the establishment of the third temple, will teach the audience the laws of the Passover sacrifice…[A] ritual slaughterer…will teach the audience about the unique elements of the slaughter of the Passover sacrifice. After the lessons, the real thing will start: the simulation of the Passover sacrifice.

…The ceremony on Thursday will be, in Israel Defense Forces (IDF) lingo, “practice with live fire.” Slaughtering lambs, sprinkling their blood on the altar by priests dressed in kosher priestly garments and roasting the lambs, with their heads, legs and innards. Just as God intended.

This isn’t the first time that the “Association of Temple Organizations” will hold this activity, but this year the practice drill and re-enactment of the Passover sacrifice will be carried out by the students of the school for priests, Nezer Ha-kodesh, which started operating this year. The priest school intends to train the hundreds of priests that would be needed to work at the third temple; many Jews endeavor for its establishment in Israel today.

This bit of pro-settler propaganda made its way into the pages of Al Monitor, whose Israel page seems to be edited by a settler enthusiast.  Note the dead giveaway line in italics which gives away the writers ideological biases.

You shouldn’t worry about the possible conflict with Muslims who might have a problem with the destruction of the Haram al-Sharif and its replacement by a Jewish temple.  All that will be done in a totally kosher manner:

Everything is ready, then, except [one] additional, small matter…

The Al-Aqsa Mosque…slightly impedes the architectural plans. “The temple will not be built through private acts and blowing up mosques,” emphasizes Segal. “That’s not the direction. The direction is changing consciousness. The preparations are mental more than anything.” One of the people involved in preparations, who requested anonymity, explains, “If not for the problem of the Dome of the Rock, they would build the temple today, and the temple would be built there. The third temple will be built by the government of Israel, not by private individuals. No one will do what shouldn’t be done, like an underground action to blow up the Dome of the Rock. The people who are committed to establishing the temple are normative and rational people, and just like we established the State of Israel, the day will come when we will build the temple, in an orderly, state-sanctioned manner.”

Don’t you worry your pretty little heads.  This isn’t like the old days when terror cells had to plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock.  No, today we own the government and it will do it for us.  Nice and kosher-like.

Returning to our two fine gentlemen: they were only, to their minds, taking this religious lunacy to the next logical step. If Jewish priests are ready to resume animal sacrifices, it only stands to reason that they should do so on the actual site of the Temple, and that Muslims should just vacate the premises for that purpose.

The police are quite aware of the incendiary nature of the provocation, which is why they’re slapped a double gag on the proceedings. Israeli journalists are not allowed to report the names of the suspects, their crime, or even the fact that there is a gag.

Haaretz’s Chaim Levinson was suitably outraged by the gag and published the police notice on his Facebook page along with a brief summary of the settler frolics that got them into hot water:

Behind this order are two lads who were caught hanging flyers that say that the Arabs must “clear off of Har Habayit due to work for establishing the temple and renewing the sacrificial labors”.

The Jerusalem police arrested the two and sent them to be investigated at the nationalist crime division. The judge released them, but accepted the police request to prohibit publication.

Thankfully, there are Israelis (not Levinson, in case the police are wondering) who are outraged enough to share with me the names and crimes of the suspects.

They are Yair Kehaty from the Ramat Migron settlement and Ohad Van-Loan (Jerusalem)  Both are followers of the Facebook group, Return the Temple to Our Hands.  They were arrested by police and questioned by the division dealing with Jewish terrorism.  The judge, figuring a gag order would sweep this little matter under the rug, released the lads from custody.

He didn’t reckon with troublesome Israelis and an American blogger upsetting the apple cart and demanding accountability and transparency (not that we’ll get much in this case).

The final wrinkle in this case is that this Price Tag attack is an act of vengeance for the defense ministry tearing down five illegal structures in the Yitzhar settlement.  This is where residents greeted IDF personnel and vehicles with a pelting of stones a few days ago.  Yitzhar is the center of settler resistance to the secular Israeli state.  It is the beating heart of the Hilltop Youth.  Even Likud is too moderate for them.

In retaliation for this wanton act of terror (called this by government ministers themselves), the pro-settler defense minister, Bogie Yaalon, wanting to let them know who’s boss, ordered the destruction of the illegal structures.  Not to be outdone, the settler terrorists decided to strike at the crux of the matter, the intersection between Islam and Judaism in Israel, the Temple Mount.  They certainly made their point forcefully.  As for who’s boss, if Yaalon thinks he’s their boss, he’s got another thing coming.  It’s a settler asylum and they run the place.  The politicians are their willing servants.

As for the settlers, they made a good trade.  They lost only five buildings that are probably already rebuilt, but they struck back right at the nexus, the heart of religious contention, where the next holy war could start.  They laid down their marker.

H/t to Dena Shunra and several anonymous Israeli friends of this blog.

This article appeared at Tikun Olam.

The CIA’s enhanced interrogation program was not approved by the US Justice Department and impeded White House investigations, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in the summary of a new report obtained Thursday by the McClatchy news agency.

“The techniques included waterboarding, which produces a sensation of drowning, stress positions, sleep deprivation for up to 11 days at a time, confinement in a cramped box, slaps and slamming detainees into walls. The CIA held detainees in secret ‘black site’ prisons overseas and abducted others who it turned over to foreign governments for interrogation,” McClatchy’s Washington Bureau said.

The report summary also suggests the CIA failed to present investigators with an accurate number of individuals it detained and subjected to the controversial interrogation methods, which were not approved by the Department of Justice or authorized by CIA headquarters. By providing false information, the intelligence agency misled the White House and Congress about the value of data extracted from terrorist suspects.

The report, weighing in at over 6,000 pages, came as a result of a four-year investigation. Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to make the final report public. The documents have now gone to the president for de-classification.

Moscow has repeatedly expressed deep concern over human rights violations in the US. Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human Rights, said last week that by delaying declassification of the US Senate Report, the Obama administration has violated the Convention Against Torture.

Dolgov also noted that leaks in the media indicate the internal investigation by US authorities might have revealed previously undisclosed methods of torture.

A Russian delegation headed by Dolgov recently visited the US military jail at Guantanamo Bay to meet a Russian prisoner and convince Washington to close down the facility. Since it was established in 2002, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has been the target of criticism by human rights activists and many international government officials, who have condemned its controversial interrogation methods and the dubious legality of holding prisoners indefinitely without charging them with crimes.

Force-feeding is one of the most notorious techniques used in Guantanamo. It involves the use of force and physical restraints to immobilize hunger strikers without their consent and compel them to take food, especially by means of a tube inserted into the throat. The UN Human Rights Commission also condemned force-feeding at Guantanamo as both a form of torture and a breach of international law.

Twelve weeks of an investigational oral therapy cured hepatitis C infection in more than 90 percent of patients with liver cirrhosis and was well tolerated by these patients, according to an international study that included researchers from UT Medicine San Antonio and the Texas Liver Institute. Historically, hepatitis C cure rates in patients with cirrhosis (liver scarring) have been lower than 50 percent and the treatment was not safe for many of these patients.

Hepatitis C virus is the No. 1 driver of cirrhosis, liver transplants and liver cancer in the United States, noted Fred Poordad, M.D., lead author on the study, which was released Saturday by The New England Journal of Medicine in conjunction with Dr. Poordad’s presentation of the data at the International Liver Congress in London. UT Medicine is the clinical practice of the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where Dr. Poordad is a professor of medicine. He is vice president of the Texas Liver Institute in San Antonio.

Interferon previously was the only agent to show effectiveness against hepatitis C, but patients often relapsed and the therapy caused multiple side effects. The new regimen is interferon-free and consists of several agents — ABT-450/ritonavir, ombitasvir, dasabuvir and ribavirin. Twelve weeks after the last dose, no hepatitis C virus was detected in the bloodstream of 91.8 percent of patients who took the pills for 12 weeks. Among patients treated for 24 weeks, 95.9 percent were virus-free 12 weeks after the end of therapy.

“These are out-of-the-ballpark response rates, not on the same planet as interferon,” Dr. Poordad said. “The reason this study is so profound is because interferon is not tolerated nor is it safe in many people with cirrhosis. Many of the patients with cirrhosis in this study were not even eligible to be treated with interferon.”

One of those patients was retired San Antonio anesthesiologist Sergio Buentello, M.D. Diagnosed with hepatitis C infection 11 years ago, Dr. Buentello had treatment with side effects and no cure eight years ago. “My viral count came down, but never to zero,” he said.

When Eric Lawitz, M.D., of the Texas Liver Institute told him of the possibility of treatment with the new therapy, Dr. Buentello said he was skeptical. But as for so many others, the therapy worked.

“I feel very lucky to be living in this time, because I was almost resigned to the idea that I could never be cured,” Dr. Buentello said.

The study examined outcomes in 380 patients at 78 sites, including hospitals and centers in Spain, Germany, England, Canada and the U.S. The biopharmaceutical company AbbVie provided support.

Investigators are cataloging patient blood samples for three years after therapy and so far have noticed no long-term, late relapses, Dr. Poordad said.

“Patients with advanced liver disease can now be cured of their hepatitis with a very well-tolerated and short regimen,” he said.

The combination medication regimen is expected to be on the market as early as the end of 2014 or very early 2015.

Microsoft officially abandoned Windows XP this week and urged customers to upgrade, which means no more security updates and patches for the majority of users still running the operating system. According to research carried out over the weekend by security firm Malwarebytes, there are already plenty of scams and dodgy downloads that XP users should be steering clear of, Digital Trends reports.

“XP may be dead and gone in terms of updates, but that doesn’t mean pitfalls and boobytraps have followed suit,” wrote Christopher Boyd, Malware Intelligence Analyst at Malwarebytes, on the company blog. Boyd and his team have discovered a variety of different threats that masquerade as useful security programs, key generators and setup files for XP.

One of the XP-related downloads spotted by the firm was for a driver update suite that users have to pay to register. It scored a 5/51 on Malwarebytes’ internal scoring system, which makes it a low-level threat, but Boyd advises against using unverified third-party applications to plug the holes that Microsoft has left.

While commercial packages can help protect a copy of XP, users are recommended to look for products that are well-established and extensively reviewed by technology press outlets.

Boyd concludes: “Take care with the last minute surge of XP themed downloads and offers — whether on social networks, forums or video sharing sites a lot of what you’re going to see over the coming weeks will probably not do you any favours to install or sign up to.”