Napoleon's secret coded Kremlin letter on sale

Napoleon's secret coded Kremlin letter on sale — The single line of Napoleon's secret code told Paris of his desperate, last order against the Russians: "At three o'clock in the morning, on the 22nd I am going to blow up the Kremlin."

By the time Paris received the letter three days later, the Russian czar's seat of power was in flames and the diminished French army was in retreat. Its elegantly calligraphic ciphers show history's famed general at one of his weakest moments.

 

Associated Press/Christophe Ena - In this photo taken Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012, a letter dictated and signed by Napoleon in secret code that declares his intentions "to blow up the Kremlin" during his ill-fated Russian campaign is displayed for the media in Fontainebleau, outside Paris. The rare letter, written in unusually emotive language, sees Napoleon complain of harsh conditions and the shortcomings of his grand army. The letter goes on auction Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

"My cavalry is in tatters, many horses are dying," dictated Napoleon, the once-feared leader showing the strain of his calamitous Russian invasion, which halved his army.

The rare document — dated Oct. 20, 1812, signed "Nap" in the emperor's hand and written in numeric code — is up for auction Sunday at France's Fontainebleau Auction House.

The Napoleon code, used only for top-secret letters when the French emperor was far from home, aimed to stop enemies from intercepting French army orders. The code was regularly changed to prevent it from being cracked.

Napoleon must have dispatched his strongest horses and riders to carry the news: It only took three days to reach France's interior ministry — 1,540 miles (2,480 kilometers) across Europe.

"This letter is unique. Not only is it all in code, but it's the first time we see this different Napoleon. He went into Moscow in 1812 at the height of his power. He returned profoundly weakened. In Moscow, the Russians had fled days before and burnt down the city. There was no victory for Napoleon, nor were there any provisions for his starving, dying army," says Jean-Christophe Chataignier of the auction house.

The only thing left for the weakened leader was to give the order to burn Russia's government buildings — coded in the letter as "449, 514, 451, 1365..."

It is evidence of what historians call the beginning of the end of Napoleon's glorious empire, which started in Russia and ended at Waterloo three years later.

In June 1812, Napoleon's "Grand Army" — at 600,000 men one of the largest in human history — confidently entered Russia. But they were woefully unprepared for the harsh weather, the strong Russian defense and the Russian scorched-earth tactics, which left nothing behind to sustain the hungry and freezing French troops.

"This letter is an incredible insight, we never see Napoleon emotively speaking in this way before," says Chataignier. "Only in letters to (his wife) Josephine did he ever express anything near to emotion. Moscow knocked him."

In the text — which announces that his commanders are evacuating Moscow — Napoleon laments his army's plight, asking for assistance to replenish his forces and the ravaged cavalry, which saw thousands of horses die.

In September, 200 years after Russia's victory over Napoleon, the Kremlin held huge celebrations aimed at rousing patriotism among modern Russians. The highlight was a re-enactment of the battle of Borodino — one of the most damaging clashes for Napoleon's troops — which saw thousands in Russian and French military uniforms perform before several hundred thousand spectators.

The 1812 victory played an important role in Russia's emergence as a major world power. Until World War I, Napoleon's Russian campaign and the ensuing wars were the largest European military face-off in history.

The letter, which is accompanied by a second decoded sheet, is estimated to fetch up to €15,000 ($19,500). ( Associated Press )

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Still Calling for End to Child Marriages in Yemen

Still Calling for End to Child Marriages in Yemen - Widespread child marriage jeopardizes Yemeni girls’ access to education, harms their health, and keeps them second-class citizens, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The government of Yemen should set 18 as the minimum age for marriage to improve girls’ opportunities and protect their human rights.

The 54-page report, “‘How Come You Allow Little Girls to Get Married?’: Child Marriage in Yemen,” documents the lifelong damage to girls who are forced to marry young. Yemeni girls and women told Human Rights Watch about being forced into child marriages by their families, and then having no control over whether and when to bear children and other important aspects of their lives. They said that marrying early had cut short their education, and some said they had been subjected to marital rape and domestic abuse. There is no legal minimum age for girls to marry in Yemen. Many girls are forced into marriage, and some are as young as 8.

 

Activists are campaigning for the government to limit the marital age at 18 and above.

“Yemen’s political crisis has left issues such as child marriage at the bottom of the political priority list,” said Nadya Khalife, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch. “But now is the time to move on this issue, setting the minimum age for marriage at 18, to ensure that girls and women who played a major role in Yemen’s protest movement will also contribute to shaping Yemen’s future.”

Over the past months, demonstrators called for a range of reforms, including measures to guarantee equality between women and men. Banning child marriage – a major cause of discrimination and abuse against girls and women – should be a priority for reform, Human Rights Watch said.

Yemeni government and United Nations data show that approximately 14 percent of girls in Yemen are married before age 15, and 52 percent are married before age 18. In some rural areas, girls as young as 8 are married. Girls are sometimes forced to marry much older men. Boys are seldom forced into child marriages.

The report is based on field research in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, between August and September 2010, including interviews with more than 30 girls and women who were married as children, members of nongovernmental organizations, and staff members at the Health and Education Ministries.

Magda T., whose name has been changed for her protection, told Human Rights Watch: “Ireached sixth grade, and left school to get married. Now, when I see my daughter, I say to myself, ‘Who’s going to teach her?’ Because I can’t. I understood [the value of education] when I got older.”

A 16-year-old girl told Human Rights Watch: “My father insisted that I get married. I wanted to go to college, to become a lawyer, but there’s no chance now because I’m going to have a baby.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed girls who said they were forced to marry young and several who had been removed from school as soon as they reached puberty. A Yemeni study found that many parents remove girls in rural areas from school at age 9 to help in the house, raise their younger siblings, and sometimes to get married. Almost all of the girls and women interviewed said that once they were married, they were unable to continue or complete their education, and many had children soon after marriage.

Research conducted by children’s rights organizations and others such as Save the Children has found that girls with limited education and power in their marriages have little chance of controlling the number and spacing of their children. This increases their risk of reproductive health problems.

Girls and women interviewed also said that they were often exposed to gender-based violence, including domestic abuse and sexual violence. Some girls and women told Human Rights Watch that their husbands, in-laws, and other members of the husband’s household verbally or physically assaulted them. Married girls and women in Yemen often live with their husband’s extended family.

Tawakkol Karman, the Yemeni activist who will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10, 2011, along with two Liberian women leaders for their work to advance women’s rights, has criticized the Yemeni government’s failure to ban child marriage. In an opinion piece published in 2010, Karman wrote, “There is a vast space in our Islamic Law heritage for reaching consensus on adopting the age of 18 as a minimum age for marriage.”

Yemen’s future government has a genuine opportunity to show its commitment to gender equality and to protecting the rights of all its citizens by addressing the issue, Human Rights Watch said. The government should take steps legislatively to set the minimum age for marriage at 18 and promote public awareness of the harm child marriage causes. The Yemeni government and its international donors should also boost girls’ and women’s access to education, reproductive health information and services, and protection from domestic violence.

“International donors invest millions of dollars on education and health reform in Yemen,” Khalife said. “Without a ban on child marriage, none of the international aid will prevent girls from being forced to leave school and from the health risks of child marriage.”

The Yemeni government actually has regressed in addressing the issue, Human Rights Watch said. In 1999 Yemen’s parliament, citing religious grounds, abolished the legal minimum age for marriage for girls and boys, which was then 15. In 2009, a majority in parliament voted to set 17 as the minimum age. However, a group of lawmakers, contending that reinstating a minimum age would be contrary to Sharia (Islamic law), used a parliamentary procedure to stall the draft law indefinitely.

Many othercountries in the Middle East and North Africa recognize Sharia as a source of law, but nearly all have set a minimum age for marriage for both boys and girls; many setting the marriage age at 18 or higher, conforming to international standards and treaties that define a child as anyone under 18. United Nations treaty monitoring bodies that oversee implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) have recommended a minimum age of 18 for marriage.

Yemen is party to a number of international treaties and conventions that explicitly prohibit child marriage and commit states parties to take measures to eliminate the practice. These include the CRC, CEDAW, the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriage, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

“Girls should not be forced to be wives and mothers,” Khalife said. “As Yemen undergoes political change, leaders should seize the opportunity to correct an injustice that does enormous harm and set the country on a new course of social justice, including equality for women and girls.” ( albawaba.com )

READ MORE - Still Calling for End to Child Marriages in Yemen

Child marriage a scourge for millions of girls

Child marriage a scourge for millions of girls - Child marriage, which steals the innocence of millions of girls worldwide and often condemns them to lives of poverty, ignorance and poor health, is one of the biggest obstacles to development, rights groups say.

A girl under the age of 18 is married every three seconds – that’s 10 million each year – often without her consent and sometimes to a much older man, according to the children’s charity Plan UK. Most of those marriages take place in Africa, the Middle East or South Asia.

“This is one of the biggest development issues of our time and we’re committed to raising the voices of millions of girls married against their will,” Plan UK head Marie Staunton said in her introduction to “Breaking Vows”, a recent global report on child marriage.

 

A girl under the age of 18 is married every three seconds – that’s 10 million each year – often without her consent and sometimes to a much older man.

From horrific childbirth injuries to the secret sale of “drought brides,” the consequences of child marriage are explored in a multimedia documentary by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation (http://childmarriage.trust.org).

“Young children have babies – your life is ruined, your education is ruined,” said Kanta Devi, who was 16 when she married in Badakakahera village in India’s Rajasthan state.

“You become upset with everything in your life,” she told TrustLaw.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child considers marriage before the age of 18 a human rights violation.

But according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), there are more than 50 million child brides worldwide, a number that is expected to grow to 100 million over the next decade.

Rights activists say six of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 are directly affected by the prevalence of child marriage – the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achievement of universal primary education; promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; reduction in child mortality; improvement in maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

The ripple effect is devastating, experts say.

Girls forced into early marriage rarely continue their education, denying them any hope of independence, the ability to earn a livelihood or of making an economic contribution to their households.

The practice also reinforces the concept of girls as worthless burdens on their families to be jettisoned as soon as possible.

Girls who complete secondary school are six times less likely to become child brides than contemporaries with less or no education, according to the ICRW, a Washington-based think tank.

But distance from schools and a lack of school fees often preclude education for the poorest girls, who are twice as likely to marry young as those from wealthier homes.

In Niger, Chad and Mali, more than 70 percent of girls are married before the age of 18, according to ICRW analysis of demographic and health data last year.

Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Nepal have child marriage rates over 50 percent, the data showed.

Ethiopia, Malawi, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Eritrea, Uganda, India, Nicaragua, Zambia and Tanzania are all above 40 percent.

The reasons child marriages occur vary with the country and are rarely simple.

“Very often people are sort of quick to demonize, in some ways, the family members and the people who make the decisions about the marriage of girls,” Jeffrey Edmeades, a social demographer with ICRW, told TrustLaw.

“But we’re finding, for the most part, that people are making these decisions because they feel it’s best for their daughters. Parents love their children and they do want the best for them. They’re just not sure what the best is.”

Mr. Edmeades, who has been working with aid agency CARE on a project to tackle child marriage in Ethiopia, gave the example of children in that country being betrothed before birth to cement strategic alliances between families.

In other cases, girls are married off early to ensure that their virginity, and thus their economic value as brides, is intact and the honor of the family is protected.

Meanwhile, debts and natural disasters, such as tsunamis and drought, can lead to girls being sold off as brides as families scramble for survival.

Girls under 15, their bodies still developing and their pelvises narrow, are five times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than women over 20, the US Agency for International Development estimates.

The vast majority of those deaths are in the developing world, where a lack of pre- and post-natal care and advanced procedures such as Caesarean sections makes pregnancy and childbirth far more risky than in rich countries. In Africa, for example, 60 percent of women and girls give birth without a skilled medical professional present, according to the UN World Population Fund.

Worldwide, 70,000 girls aged 15-19 die each year during pregnancy or childbirth, UNICEF says. The UN World Population Fund considers pregnancy the leading cause of death in that age group, citing complications of childbirth and unsafe abortions as major factors.

Children of child brides are also at risk. Babies born to mothers younger than 18 are more likely to be underweight or stillborn, Plan UK says.

Girls forced into early marriage are also at an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS because they are unlikely to be able to negotiate safe sex with their husbands.

“Child marriage is a silent health emergency in the sense that it’s often overlooked as a root cause of maternal mortality and morbidity (illness),” the ICRW’s Edmeades said.

While it is a subject still little known and rarely discussed in much of the Western world, the issue of child marriage is drawing greater attention from international aid and humanitarian organizations, as well as governments.

In the United States, where child marriage is rare, the US Senate has reintroduced legislation aimed at curbing global child marriage that was unanimously passed in the Senate in 2010 but blocked in the House of Representatives.

The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act would establish a strategy over several years to prevent child marriage in developing countries.

It would also require the State Department to report on child marriage in its annual human rights report and integrate efforts to prevent the practice into current development programs.

The bill will be reintroduced in the House this autumn, according to Betty McCollum, a Democrat representative from Minnesota, who is its lead sponsor there.

It was blocked in the House last December primarily due to Republican concerns that it would help organisations supplying abortions, which “couldn’t have been farther from the truth”, McCollum told TrustLaw.

“It has nothing to do with abortion,” she said. “It has everything to do with saving 12-year-old girls from being sold into slavery or sold to settle a family debt.”

Not only will it make aid dollars more effective, she added, but “it’s a win for the child, it’s a win for the community the child lives in and it’s a win for the international community”.

The Elders, an influential group of global leaders founded in 2007 by former South African President Nelson Mandela, gathered dozens of organizations for a two-day meeting in Ethiopia in June and have launched a campaign called “Girls Not Brides: the Global Partnership to End Child Marriage.” ( albawaba.com )

READ MORE - Child marriage a scourge for millions of girls

5 terrorism suspects extradited from UK to US

5 terrorism suspects extradited from UK to US — An ailing extremist Egyptian-born preacher and four other terrorism suspects arrived in the United States early Saturday under tight security to face trial after losing their lengthy extradition fight in England, authorities said.

The preacher, Abu Hamza al-Masri, was taken to a federal lockup next to the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan to face charges that he conspired with Seattle men to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and that he helped abduct 16 hostages, two of them American tourists, in Yemen in 1998.

 

Associated Press/Max Nash, File - FILE - This Friday, April 30, 2004 file photo shows Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, as he arrives with a masked bodyguard, right, to conduct Friday prayers in the street outside the closed Finsbury Park Mosque in London. A British court is expected to rule on whether extremist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is too ill to be extradited to the United States to face terror charges. London's High Court is set to decide Friday Oct. 5, 2012 whether al-Masri and other terror suspects can be sent to the U.S. to face charges that include helping set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon. (AP Photo/Max Nash, File)

The one-time nightclub bouncer will be housed there along with Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary, who will face trial on charges that they participated in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. They were indicted in a case that also charged Osama bin Laden.

In the 1990s, al-Masri turned London's Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for extremist Islamists, attracting men including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.

Two other defendants — Syed Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad — were scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., on Saturday morning, U.S. Marshal Joseph Faughnan said. It was not immediately clear exactly when al-Masri, al-Fawwaz and Bary will appear in federal court in Manhattan.

Ahmad and Ahsan face charges that they ran websites that sought to raise cash, recruit fighters and seek equipment for terrorists in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Authorities say the websites included Azzam.com, which investigators say was used to recruit members for the al-Qaida network, Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime and Chechen rebels.

Al-Masri is not the first ailing Egyptian-born preacher to be brought to Manhattan for trial. A blind sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 1995 in a plot to assassinate then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and of plotting to blow up New York landmarks, including the United Nations and two tunnels and a bridge linking New Jersey to Manhattan. Abdel-Rahman has numerous health issues, including heart trouble.

In England, lawyers for the 54-year-old al-Masri, who has one eye and hooks in place of hands he claims to have lost fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, said he suffers from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments.

The overnight trip to the United States came after a multi-year extradition fight that ended Friday, when Britain's High Court ruled that the men had no more grounds for appeal and could be sent to the U.S. immediately. The men have been battling extradition for between eight and 14 years.

"I'm absolutely delighted that Abu Hamza is now out of this country," British Prime Minister David Cameron said. "Like the rest of the public I'm sick to the back teeth of people who come here, threaten our country, who stay at vast expense to the taxpayer and we can't get rid of them."

"I'm delighted on this occasion we've managed to send this person off to a country where he will face justice," he added.

Al-Masri has been in a British jail since 2004 on separate charges of inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims.

While al-Masri has been portrayed in the British media as one of the most dangerous men in the country, the case against Ahmad in Connecticut has raised concerns among legal experts and human rights advocates.

The London computer expert is accused of running terrorist-funding websites in a case that was brought in Connecticut because an Internet service provider was allegedly used to host one of the websites. He and Ahsan both face charges including using a website to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country.

Some lawyers and lawmakers have expressed concerns about the case against Ahmad because Britain agreed to extradite him even though his alleged crimes were committed in Britain and British courts declined to prosecute him for lack of evidence.

In prison since 2004, Ahmad has been held without charge for the longest period of any British citizen detained since the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a statement read on his behalf outside court in London Friday, Ahmad said his case had exposed flaws in U.S.-U.K. extradition arrangements. "I leave with my head held high, having won the moral victory," he said.

His father, Ashfaq Ahmad, said he would continue to fight for his son.

"It's not just one Babar Ahmad. Tomorrow there will be another Babar Ahmad and another one," he said. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - 5 terrorism suspects extradited from UK to US

Documents Disclose 9/11 Warnings

Documents Disclose 9/11 Warnings - Documents show the U.S. was given more warnings about potential terrorist attacks in the weeks leading up to 9/11, writes Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald in a New York Times op-ed.

The documents predate the presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, which said, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

President George W. Bush was informed by his chief of staff Andrew Card of the attacks on the World Trade Center during a school reading event in Sarasota, Florida. Ten years later, one of the kids who was there in that class, Chantal Guerrero, told Time magazine that to this day she's grateful that Bush -- obviously profoundly upset about something that Card had told him -- maintained his composure and stayed with the students until the book they were reading, The Pet Goat, was finished. "I think the President was trying to keep us from finding out," Guerrero said, "so we all wouldn't freak out." Whether or not the president was trying to keep calm before a group of schoolchildren, in Paul Richards' unforgettable picture, his eyes tell the tale: here, right now, is where so much of what followed on the heels of 9/11 was put in motion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the hunt for Saddam and for bin Laden; the still-unknown ramifications of the sweeping and controversial Patriot Act; even, arguably, today's revolutions in the Middle East -- many of the signal events of the past decade began here, with a whisper in a tense, unprepared president's ear.

“The administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed,” he wrote. “In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.”

The direct warnings to Bush, he writes, date back to the spring of 2001. On May 1, the CIA told the White House that there was “a group presently in the United States” that was planning an attack. On June 22, a daily briefing described the attack as "imminent." Administration officials, however, dismissed the warnings, saying that Osama bin Laden was merely feigning an attack to distract the U.S. from efforts against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

“Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day,” Eichenwald wrote. “In response, the CIA prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.”

Briefings on June 29, July 1, and July 24 carried similar warnings. On July 9, Eichenwald writes, one official suggested staff members of the CIA Counterterrorism Center “put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place.”

“[The Bush administration] got this information and they weren't looking at it in the context of here's this huge threat that's developed,” Eichenwald said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Look at what the Pentagon said, ‘What's the nation state that's backing them? Oh, we think it's Iraq.’ And so, it was a frame of mind that was not unreasonable for them to have because they hadn't been getting the intelligence until very recently about the evolution and change of al-Qaida.”

Eichenwald, however, was criticized by former New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, for writing the piece.

“I think this is incredibly unfortunate,” he said on Morning Joe, adding that, "I think is incredibly unfair and a disservice to history.”

Eichenwald wrote a book, “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars,” describing the intelligence briefings and actions taken by the Bush administration before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ( National Journal )

READ MORE - Documents Disclose 9/11 Warnings

German Jews, Muslims, unite to protest against circumcision ban

German Jews, Muslims unite to protest against circumcision ban - Hundreds of German Jews and Muslims held a joint rally in Berlin on Sunday demanding that their "freedom of religion" be respected, in a rare show of unity to protest against a court order that banned ritual circumcisions.

The June ruling by a court in Cologne has sparked an emotive debate about religious freedom in a country which is sensitive to any accusations of intolerance because of its Nazi past.

Although the ban applied only to the Cologne region, doctors across the country have refused to carry out operations because of what they say is a risk of legal action.

Some 300 Muslim and Jewish protestors and their supporters gathered together at Berlin's Bebelplatz square, known as the site of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremony.

They waved banners reading "Foreskin? No Thank you", or "Finally, Germany is a colonial power again" against a cartoon image of a boy whose foreskin was the colors of the German flag. Some came wrapped in the Israeli flag.

"We were getting sick and tired of all the heated and incompetent gibberish on circumcisions," Lala Suesskind, the former head of Berlin's Jewish community, told Reuters.

"So today, we want to clarify a few things through our rabbi ... what circumcision really is and what circumcision means to our religion," she added.

Jewish religious practice requires boys to be circumcised from eight days old, while for Muslims, the age at which it is carried out varies according to family, country and branch of Islam.

Berlin last week became the first of Germany's 16 states to protect the practice, saying that doctors could legally circumcise infant boys for religious reasons.

The national government is working on a new law to legalize the operation across the country in order to overrule the Cologne decision.

"The German government must introduce a law which will result in circumcisions remaining exempt from punishment," said the head of Germany's Turkish community, Kenan Kolat.

"For years, we have had the abortion debate. Abortion too is a physical intervention and there too, laws have been passed which make certain acts exempt from punishment, combined with counseling. Here too, there can be counseling so that people get informed," Kolat said.

The speed with which national lawmakers agreed in July to pass a new law underscored their sensitivity to charges of intolerance and discrimination, especially against Jews because of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War Two.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany risked becoming a "laughing stock" if Jews were not allowed to practise their rituals.

About 120,000 Jews are registered as living in Germany along with around 4 million Muslims, many of whom are from Turkey.

Ruling in the case of a Muslim boy who suffered bleeding after circumcision, the Cologne court said the practice inflicted bodily harm and should not be carried out on young boys, though could be practised on older males with consent. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - German Jews, Muslims, unite to protest against circumcision ban

Vatican orders butler to stand trial, charges second man

Vatican orders butler to stand trial, charges second man - The Vatican on Monday ordered Pope Benedict's former butler to stand trial on charges of aggravated theft for leaking documents alleging widespread corruption and for the first time revealed a second man was accused of being involved in the case.

In a 35-page document on a scandal which has rocked the Holy See since butler Paolo Gabriele was arrested last May, the Vatican said he saw himself as an agent of the Holy Spirit.

The pope's butler has agreed to cooperate with Vatican investigators. Paolo Gabriele is in Vatican custody for allegedly possessing confidential documents about conflicts within the church. (May 29)

Computer expert Claudio Sciarpelletti, a layman, had also been charged on lesser charges of aiding and abetting a crime, the document said.

It alleged Sciarpelletti was a close friend of Gabriele and that investigators had found a sealed envelope in his desk addressed to the butler which contained material published in a book based on the leaks.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, however, downplayed Sciarpelletti's role, saying he had only spent one night in jail at the start of the investigation and had been suspended from his job but not fired. If convicted, he would get "a light sentence," Lombardi said.

According to the document, Gabriele told investigators he had acted because he saw "evil and corruption everywhere in the Church" and wanted to help root it out "because the pope was not sufficiently informed".

In a section that referred to Gabriele's state of mind, he was said to have told investigators that after he started copying documents and leaking them, "I reached the point of no return and could not control myself anymore".

He continued: "I was sure that a shock, perhaps by using the media, could be a healthy thing to bring the Church back on the right track.

"I was always interested in intelligence and in a way I thought that in the Church this role belonged to the Holy Spirit, and in a certain sense I saw myself as its infiltrator."

Lombardi said it was not clear when the trial would be held but it would not be before the end of September. He added that the pope, as the sovereign head of the Vatican City, could intervene at any time to stop the trial or pardon Gabriele.

But he did not think he would do so before the trial.

POPE COULD PARDON BUTLER AFTER TRIAL

"It is up to the pope to decide. If the pope wants to pardon Gabriele, he will probably do it after the trial," Lombardi said.

If found guilty Gabriele, who worked in the pope's private apartments serving him meals and helping him dress, could face up to six years in jail under the laws of the papal state.

Since the Vatican has no prison, he would serve the sentence in an Italian jail unless he is pardoned. The butler was granted house arrest on July 21.

The indictment order also alleged that Gabriele gave copies of documents that he had already leaked to an Italian journalist, to another person identified only as "B," who he considered his "spiritual father".

"B" told investigators that he destroyed the documents because he knew that were linked to "an activity that was not legitimate and not honest".

Spiritual fathers are usually priests but the indictment did not specify this.

The Vatican document also said a cheque made out to the pope for 100,000 euros ($124,000), a gold nugget and a 16th century book were found in Gabriele's house. The butler had said he intended to give them all back.

The documents leaked earlier this year alleged corruption in the Vatican's dealings with Italian companies, including the payment of inflated prices for services. They also spoke of severe rivalries between cardinals and clashes over the running of the Vatican bank. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - Vatican orders butler to stand trial, charges second man

A Muslim scholar concerns over Suu Kyi silence on Rohingya case

A Muslim scholar concerns over Suu Kyi silence on Rohingya case - Myanmar`s Rohingya Muslim minority issue should provide a golden opportunity for Aung San Suu Kyi to prove to the world as a Nobel peace laureate, said an Indonesian Muslim scholar Azyumardi Azra on Thursday. "We certainly regret Suu Kyi`s silence as a Nobel prize recipient towards the incident. This is actually a golden opportunity for her to settle Rohingya`s case. If she remains silent then her credibility as a Nobel Prize laureate is questionable," he said.

As the leader of Myanmar`s opposition party and has won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi has chosen to remain silent on the humanitarian tragedy in Myanmar`s Rakhine region. Azra argued that Suu Kyi might consider Rohingya issue had no political advatage.

"I am concerned that Suu Kyi is more concerned to pragmatic politics. Rohingya people do not have citizenships meaning they have no voting right, so they would not provide a political benefit for her and therefore she has remained silent." he said.

Suu Kyi`s silence on the incident is believed to be related to the opposition leader`s political agenda to run for president. Suu Kyi is afraid of being not elected president if she defends the Rohingya ethnic group. Azra also criticized human rights activists who had also been silent about the Rohingya case.

"I do not know why they have kept silent. Perhaps it is because the problem is too complicated, and I see no access is available to the case. In this case, the Indonesian government can contribute to this humanitarian dispute through diplomatic and multilateral approach, and that needs to be taken," he said.

According to reports on 28 June, 2012, 650 Rohingya people have died in clashes that broke out in the Rakhine region in western Myanmar. More than 1,200 people have also gone missing and 80,000 people have been made homeless. ( republika.co.id )

READ MORE - A Muslim scholar concerns over Suu Kyi silence on Rohingya case

The Afghan corpse-photo scandal: A blessing in disguise?

The Afghan corpse-photo scandal: A blessing in disguise? - The anonymous solider who leaked the gruesome photos says he hopes the outrage will prompt the military to clean house

The Defense Department scored at least a partial victory in its fight to quash newly released photographs of U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses of Afghan insurgents and suicide bombers: The Los Angeles Times only published two of the 18 photos an unidentified soldier had given them — reportedly the "least gruesome" ones. The military argued that the widely condemned trophy shots endangered the large majority of blameless troops. That's remarkably similar to the reason the unidentified solider says he leaked the photos in the first place: He hoped they would force the Army to fix the "breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops," the Times says. So, could these macabre photos actually help the U.S. military in the long run?

U.S. Army soldiers scan for Taliban fighters in Kunar Province, Afghanistan: If the leaking of these gory photos doesn't prompt a military cleanup, there are still 16 more photos waiting to see the light. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

The military might regret not using this as an opportunity for reform:

The Los Angeles Times was right to publish this "mortifying reminder" of what the increasingly baffling Afghanistan War has become, says Amy Davison in The New Yorker. "Our only defense when we find our forces doing things like this is outraged openness." But the Times is sitting on the other 16 photos, and if the military's promised house-cleaning doesn't really change anything, the "moral" response is releasing those graphic images, too.

It might be too late to undo the rot:

It shouldn't have taken two years, and a solider willing to leak the photos, for these crimes to come to light, says Doug Mataconis in Outside the Beltway. The offending troops probably will be punished now, but we're still left with the "disturbing ethos in some parts of the military" that it's fine to cover up, or even commit, this kind of act. "With Iraq over and Afghanistan winding down, I certainly hope that someone in Washington is thinking about what role this new wartime military will play in peacetime."

Don't blame the soldiers, this is war:

"I don't advocate desecrating the bodies of the enemy," but it's a part of war, and always has been, says Larry Johnson in No Quarter. So yes, if the foolish soldiers in these photos are still alive, they "need to be counseled and disciplined within their units," and their leaders need to set better boundaries. But let's cut the "faux outrage" in the media. "If blame is going to be assigned in this matter," let's start at the top — and the top is the commander in chief, Barack Obama. ( theweek.com )

READ MORE - The Afghan corpse-photo scandal: A blessing in disguise?