Yasser Arafat's remains exhumed in murder inquiry

Swiss, French and Russian experts were given samples to establish whether his death in Paris in 2004 at the age of 75 was the result of poisoning before the tomb was resealed.

France began a murder inquiry in August after Swiss experts found radioactive polonium-210 on his personal effects.

Arafat's medical records say he had a stroke resulting from a blood disorder.

His widow, Suha, objected to a post-mortem at the time of his death, but asked the Palestinian Authority to permit the exhumation "to reveal the truth".

Sealed tomb

Arafat's body lies in a stone-clad mausoleum inside the Muqataa presidential compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The mausoleum was sealed off earlier this month.

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Palestinian officials told Agence France Presse that only a Palestinian doctor had been allowed to directly touch the remains and remove the samples, but the process was conducted in front of the Swiss, Russian and French scientists, who will carry out tests for polonium-210 and possibly other lethal substances in their respective countries.

It is believed that the investigation could take several months.

Before the exhumation, the head of the Palestinian committee investigating Arafat's death, Tawfik al-Tirawi, said no journalists would be allowed to observe the exhumation.

"Because [of the] sanctity of the symbol and the sanctity of this event, [the exhumation] should not be permitted to be in front of the media," the former Palestinian intelligence chief said.

A reburial ceremony with full military honours had been planned, but this ultimately was not deemed necessary as the body was not removed from the grave during the collection of the samples.

Many Palestinians continue to believe Arafat was poisoned by Israel, which saw him as an obstacle to peace and had put him under house arrest.

There has also been speculation that Arafat was suffering from HIV or cancer at the time of his death.

Israel has strongly denied any involvement in Arafat's death.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the BBC: "All the medical files are in the hands of the family or the Palestinian Authority. For some reason they have not released them to this day. Our position has not changed over the years, but the question is why did they wait eight years?"

Egypt crisis: Mass rally held against Mohammed Mursi

 

Tens of thousands of people have held protests in Cairo against Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi, who last week granted himself sweeping new powers.

Flag-waving demonstrators chanted slogans accusing the president and the Muslim Brotherhood of betraying last year's revolution.

On Monday Mr Mursi sought to defuse the crisis by saying the decree granting him new powers was limited in scope.

However, his opponents want him to withdraw the measure completely.

Ahead of Tuesday's rally, opposition activists clashed with police protecting the nearby US embassy. A protester, who was in his fifties, died of a heart attack after inhaling tear gas.

Activists later converged on Tahrir Square - the main focus of the revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak - for one of the largest demonstrations to date against Mr Mursi.

Many lawyers joined the protest

"The people want to bring down the regime," marchers chanted, echoing slogans used in last year's protests.

"We don't want a dictatorship again. The Mubarak regime was a dictatorship. We had a revolution to have justice and freedom," protester Ahmed Husseini was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

Journalists, lawyers and opposition figures - including Nobel Peace prize laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, joined Tuesday's rally,

"The main demand is to withdraw the constitutional declaration," said Amr Moussa, a former Arab League chief who has joined the opposition.

Protests were also held in Alexandria and other cities.

France to back Palestinian bid for UN status

France has confirmed it intends to vote for Palestinian non-member status at the United Nations later this week.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France had long backed Palestinian ambitions for statehood and would vote yes "out of a concern for coherency".

The Palestinians are asking the UN General Assembly to upgrade their status frompermanent observer to a "non-member observer state".

Israel and the US oppose the move, due to be voted on later this week.

They are concerned that the Palestinians are trying to seek full statehood via the UN, rather than through negotiation as set out in the 1993 Oslo peace accords under which the Palestinian Authority was established.

Washington has warned that it could hinder rather than help future dialogue

Breaking International Law

Is Israel or Hamas Breaking International Law in Gaza?

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The latest conflict in Gaza has raised numerous questions about international law. Did Israel violate it? Did Hamas? Does it matter? There are standard ways to approach these questions. At the same time, parsing the relevant law will not give you much understanding of the conflict, or what is at stake. The underlying moral and policy considerations outstrip international law, which is a clumsy tool even in the best of times.

Israel says that it attacked Gaza in self-defense. Hamas had fired numerous missiles onto Israeli territory, and, although by the end of the conflict only four civilians had died, Israel possesses the right to defend its people under international law. Hamas’ response, or at least the response of its defenders, is, as best I can tell, that Israel’s occupation of Gaza is illegal—especially its blockade. Defenders of Hamas say that Palestinians in Gaza have the right to throw off the yoke of oppression, with violence if necessary. Moreover, even if Israel may attack in self-defense, its attack, which has resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred civilians, has been disproportionate to the provocation.

Israel replies that it does not formally occupy Gaza under international law because Gaza does not belong to another country, and is not itself a state that can be occupied. The blockade and other security measures are justified by the continuing threat posed by Hamas—the blockade prevents Gaza from obtaining additional rockets and other means for waging war. Israel also argues that it has not targeted civilians, and that civilian casualties have not been excessive in light of Hamas’ original rocket launches.

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Who is right? International law does not consist of moral precepts that you or I might like. It consists of rules that states have agreed to, typically for self-interested reasons. A major theme of international law is that states have rights and privileges, while non-state entities like Gaza or Hamas do not. So while Israel can cite a right to self-defense, Hamas cannot. Many states (probably most) regard Hamas’ missile attacks as terrorism, and terrorism as an international crime. But a large group of states—mainly Islamic and Arab—deny that the use of violence by populations that seek liberation from a foreign oppressor violates international law. Remember that many countries owe their independence to anti-colonial insurgencies that used violence against civilians. Various attempts to conclude treaties criminalizing international terrorism have foundered over this dispute about the rights of “national liberation movements.”

As for the claim that Israel has gone too far in its efforts to defend itself, Israel’s critics cite the definition of self-defense used in a diplomatic dispute between the United Kingdom and the United States in 1842. British forces chased Canadian rebels onto U.S. territory, seized an American vessel called the Caroline, which the rebels had used to get supplies, and ran it over Niagara Falls. The United States eventually accepted a British apology, and the two sides agreed that a state may enter foreign territory to counter an imminent threat, but the response must not be excessive or disproportionate to warding off that threat. That’s fine, but it doesn’t tell give us any idea of the outer limits of disproportionality. For example, did the massive U.S. attack on Afghanistan in response to 9/11 go too far? The proportionality standard from the Caroline incident has lasted so long precisely because it doesn’t mean anything.

A second unresolved issue for the Gaza conflict concerns the conduct of war. A set of rules called international humanitarian law, or “jus in bello,” governs how states may use military force. The rules can be found in the Geneva Conventions and other treaties; they also are thought to exist as customary norms that are widely shared. This is an important point because Gaza is not a party to the Geneva Conventions, and so while Israel can argue that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to its own conduct, Hamas can argue that customary law binds Israel.

The two major customary norms in question prohibit states from targeting civilians and killing a disproportionate number of civilians as an unintended consequence of targeting legitimate military targets. (This “disproportionality” rule is different from the Caroline rule, which refers to how much force a state may use in self-defense against legitimate targets, not how much protection must be given to civilians.) Some people have claimed that Israel broke these rules because civilians died. But Israel did not target civilians, and the point at which collateral civilian deaths become disproportionate in relation to the value of a military target is hotly contested. It’s clear that Israel could not target a hospital or school (unless enemy combatants take refuge in them). Nor could it blow up a whole city block in order to kill, say, one or two combatants who are holed up in an apartment. But no one says that Israel has done these things. Does international human rights law prohibit Israel more broadly from dropping bombs on people? Perhaps not: A common view (held by the United States, among others) is that during wartime, the law of armed conflict supersedes the law of human rights.

As you can see, there are plenty of uncertainties and technicalities for all sides to mine. But these legal considerations are mostly beside the point. The real question is whether people living in Gaza are entitled to sovereignty and independence, under current conditions. Israel believes that its security justifies limits on Palestinian autonomy. It does not trust Hamas to stop using violence against Israelis. Hamas, in turn, does not trust Israel, and will not forswear violence until Israel makes concessions to it, and perhaps not even if it does. The normal sources of international law—treaties and custom—do not resolve the underlying dispute.

If one peers through the fog of talk and looks at how states act, one can discern the bottom-line legal positions that count. Few states are willing to sanction or penalize Israel for its treatment of Gaza. That’s because supporting Hamas could translate into legal precedents that do not serve states’ interests. If you think of the Palestinians in Gaza as members of Israel’s population, then support for Hamas means support for the principle that internal populations may rise up, demand independence, and use violent means if their demands are rejected. Does China want Tibetans to cite such a precedent? Do the Turks want that for the Kurds? No, they do not. States have accepted few restrictions in theory, and virtually none in practice, on their ability to deal with insurgencies and related threats by unhappy populations under their control. So whatever moral claims the Palestinians in Gaza might advance, and however much sympathy they gain in other countries, they will not find a real ally in international law.

DC Avanti

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DC, the design house of India’s Motor-head Dalip Chhabria has once again captured the imagination of India’s population by unveiling India’s first Supercar: Avanti. Its christened as India’s first in house supercar and was launched by India’s Super Angry-Young Man, who refuses to grow old: Amitabh Bacchan.

Avanti seems like an Indian word from sanskrit (which seem to have all the cool-sounding words), is actually an Italian word. It means “Moving Forward”. Initially it will go on sale with a mid-mounted, Ford-sourced, 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine producing 261 bhp. A V6 version with 394 bhp will go on sale at a later date. Both engines are linked to a six-speed dual clutch transmission.The Avanti weighs 1560 kg, and features extensive use of aluminium. Its claimed that the base model will hit 62 mph in less than seven seconds. The car will be released somewhere around 2013. The manufacturer wants to build 200 cars a year at first, but plans to churn out up to 2000 cars a year longer term.

Life is unfair for people like me. I'm stupid so the world turns its back on me

Have you ever feel like you're just living your life for other people's satisfaction? I mean everything you do, every step you take is to please other people. Well, I have. This post is not meant to provoke any party but just a saying from a someone ignorant like me. I just want to get this off of my back. I kinda hate it around here nowadays. I did everything that people ask me to do. Literally everything just to build a good impression due to my personal reasons. But I guess it just wasn't enough.

I'm not looking for any trouble. I just want to live my life like a normal teenager. Every teenager has their own desire. I have a lot of things on my list because I know I can't always get what I want. So if one of the item is denied, theres always another item to ask for. But what should a teenager do when theres nothing that they can have? hmmmmm..

What am I doing? Writing. Why am I writing? To stay cool and not doing other stupid things. I'm 20. I can handle myself. I can handle responsibilities. I proved it before. I know and I'm aware of all my actions. I'm not 13 anymore. The last thing I want to hear is people nagging me about everything. 'You can't do that or this or whatever is it you're doing right now', pffffft..

-__-"

Whats the point of having a voice when you can't have the freedom to speak? I can't even say a word. Don't I get to say anything? Doesn't my voice counts as a vote too? no? Thought so. I'm not trying to rebel here. These are just words that I combine to describe how I feel. I hope people will understand me and my situation better from now on (after reading this stupid post).

This is so lame

This packging is so freaking lame

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