Titles:

• UK:Far-Right 'as dangerous as Islam terrorists'
• France bans Muslim full-face veil
• Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters
• 63 percent of people killed in Iraq war were civilians: report
• Yemen opposition wants Saleh out within two weeks
• Former UK foreign secretary David Miliband critical of US-led Afghanistan strategy

News Details:

UK:Far-Right 'as dangerous as Islam terrorists'
Far-Right extremist groups should be treated more seriously by authorities and investigated the same way as Islamic terrorism, a new report says Thursday. The study dispels the myth Right-wing terrorists act alone, saying most are motivated by "dangerous networks". Author Gerry Gable, publisher of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, warns that often the extremists' actions are only discovered by luck. While most jailed for terror or violent acts in recent years were caught before they could act, the report, commissioned by the Labour government, adds: "That will not always be the case." It says authorities, including police and Crown Prosecution Service, have seen far-Right terrorists as "lone wolf" individuals rather than "the inevitable consequence of the activities of several, often small, organisations that espouse a violent racist and fascist ideology". It states: "This has meant they have failed to put in place effective strategies to monitor these extreme-Right groups with a view to early identification of individuals who show signs of a transition from racist abuse and threatening behaviour to terrorism and murder.

France bans Muslim full-face veil
Police in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim population, arrested two protesters wearing niqab veils Monday after a ban on full-face coverings went into effect. The women, part of a demonstration that erupted in front of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, were detained for taking part in an unauthorised protest rather than for wearing their veils. "Today was not about arresting people because of wearing the veil. It was for not having respected the requirement to declare a demonstration," said police spokesman Alexis Marsan. Two women in niqabs, a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf that did not cover her face and a protest organiser were arrested, Marsan said. Separately, businessman and activist Rachid Nekkaz told AFP that he and a female friend wearing the niqab were arrested by police in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Elysee Palace. "We wanted to be fined for wearing the niqab, but the police didn't want to issue a fine," said Nekkaz, who has promised to auction off a two-million-euro property to start a fund to pay off fines for veil-wearers. The draconian new law, the first of its kind to be enforced in Europe, was immediately broken by a young woman from the southern city of Avignon, who has become the media symbol of France's tiny community of niqab wearers.

Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters
Syrian soldiers have been shot by security forces after refusing to fire on protesters, witnesses said, as a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations intensified. Witnesses told al-Jazeera and the BBC that some soldiers had refused to shoot after the army moved into Banias in the wake of intense protests on Friday. Human rights monitors named Mourad Hejjo, a conscript from Madaya village, as one of those shot by security snipers. "His family and town are saying he refused to shoot at his people," said Wassim Tarif, a local human rights monitor.

63 percent of people killed in Iraq war were civilians: report
U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been causing huge civilian casualties with 63 percent of some 109,000 people killed in the Iraq war being civilians, according to a report on the U.S. human rights record released on Sunday. The figures were quoted from a WikiLeaks trove by the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010, which was released by the Information Office of China's State Council in response to the country reports on Human Rights Practices for 2010 issued by the U.S. Department of State. Figures from the WikiLeaks website also revealed up to 285,000 war casualties in Iraq from March 2003 through the end of 2009, according to the report. "The U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and other regions have also brought tremendous casualties to local people," said the report. The report cited the notorious case on a "kill team" formed by five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The team had committed at least three murders, where they randomly targeted and killed Afghan civilians, and dismembered the corpses and hoarded the human bones. In addition, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops had caused 535 Afghan civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. Among them 113 civilians were shot and killed, an increase of 43 percent over 2008, the report quoted McClatchy Newspapers as saying.

Yemen opposition wants Saleh out within two weeks
Yemen's opposition rejected an offer on Thursday to join Saudi-mediated talks on a transfer of power and set a two-week deadline for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step aside."We have renewed our emphasis on the need for speeding the process of (Saleh) standing down to within two weeks. Therefore we will not go to Riyadh," said Mohammed al-Mutawakkil, a prominent opposition leader. (Reuters)

Former UK foreign secretary David Miliband critical of US-led Afghanistan strategy
The former foreign secretary David Miliband is to make a strong critique of the US-led strategy in Afghanistan, proposing instead handing over substantial responsibility for building a political solution to the UN, headed by a Muslim mediator capable of negotiating with the Taliban as well as partners throughout the region. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Miliband urges a "whole new level of urgency, coherence and effort" in bringing about a political endgame away from a focus on ending military engagement, and including the possibility of appointing a safe third country for all Afghan parties to negotiate from. He writes: "It's high time we stopped behaving as if there was a military solution and developed a political one. For that, politicians need to give a lead. That is the way forward in Afghanistan - working to mend it, not just rushing to end it." Miliband's criticism of the US-led campaign marks a change from the supportive UK-US relationship he maintained as foreign secretary when relationships with US secretary of state Hilary Clinton were famously strong. Miliband acknowledges there are signs of significant shifts in American policy but nevertheless he goes on to write: "Deviations from the otherwise relentless focus on military operations, allied and Afghan, need to be taken to a whole new level of urgency, coherence and effort. Otherwise, our troops will be stuck in the front line of a strategy that has an end date but no clear end game. The 2014 end date set by Nato will prove illusory unless there is an endgame. "And that endgame must be negotiations, involving western powers led by the US, with all factions in the Afghan struggle, and their backers in the region."Miliband warns that two international conferences on the horizon - in Kabul in the summer and Bonn in December - currently have "scant agenda", but their outcome should be the agreement of the kind of political approach he outlines.

In the early hours of Thursday 7th April 2011, hundreds of Israeli troops stormed the village of Awarta near the West Bank city of Nablus and arrested over 100 Palestinian women. The raid was conducted under the premise of searching for those responsible for the killing of a Jewish family last month in the nearby settlement of Itamar.

   Jakarta: To reject The Intelligence Bill, Hizb ut-Tahrir in Indonesia together with Islamic groups held Press Conference in the meeting hall of HTI's Central Office in Jakarta (Thursday 7^th of April). Hizb ut-Tahrir together with other Islamic groups agreed that The Intelligence bill was potential to re-birth repressive regime and endanger dakwah activities.

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Titles:

• Gold hits new record
• French governments launches tirade against Muslims
• Jewish state bombs Sudan
• GCC states condemn Iran's blatant interference in Kuwait's affairs
• No One Rigs an Election Quite Like Kazakhstan
• US critical of Pakistani efforts to defeat the Taliban

News Details:

Gold hits new record
A rush into safe haven assets propelled gold prices to a new record settlement and intra-day high on Wednesday. Gold for June delivery, the most actively traded contract, climbed $6 to settle at $1,458.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The precious metal hit an intra-day high of $1,463.70 an ounce. Analysts are now predicting gold will hit $1,500 in the next few months amid concern about the Middle East, rising inflation, financial stability in Europe and the Federal Reserve's ultra loose monetary policy.

French governments launches tirade against Muslims
The interior minister Claude Guéant attacks Muslims of France. His comments were made on the eve of a debate within his party, the UMP, on Islam and secularism in France. The debate, organised by party leader Jean-François Copé, is itself controversial, with many party figures finding excuses not to attend, including Prime Minister François Fillon. "The question worries our citizens: there are many who think the rules of secularism are being stretched," said Guéant on a trip to Nantes. "In 1905 [the year the separation of church and state was brought into law] there were few Muslims in France, today there are between five to 10 million...This growth of believers and certain types of practices pose problems. It is clear that prayers in the street shock a certain number of people and the leaders of major religions know that this type of practice affects them negatively," he said.

Jewish state bombs Sudan
A senior IDF official confirmed that Israel was responsible for the deadly air strike on a car in Port Sudan, Time magazine reported on Wednesday. "It's not our first time there," the official reportedly told Time, referring to a 2009 attack in which the IDF destroyed a convoy near Sudan's border with Egypt. According to the Sudanese, an aircraft approached Sudan from the Red Sea and bombed the rental car about 14 kilometers south of Port Sudan. The two men had reportedly just landed in Sudan an hour earlier. Sudan's Foreign Minister Ali Karti on Wednesday accused Israel of carrying out an attack on Tuesday near Port Sudan that killed two people and said Khartoum reserved the right to react to the aggression. He said Israel undertook the attack to scupper Sudan's chances of being removed from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism. "This is absolutely an Israeli attack," he told reporters.

GCC states condemn Iran's blatant interference in Kuwait's affairs
GCC foreign ministers on Sunday condemned Iran's "blatant" interference in the State of Kuwait's internal affairs, accusing Iran of "planting espionage networks on [Kuwait's] territory" to undermine the country's security and stability and the interests of its citizens. In a statement issued at the conclusion of their extraordinary one-day meeting, the foreign ministers commended Kuwait's security bodies for uncovering the sleeper cell of spies believed to be working covertly on Iran's behalf. The ministers also affirmed their support for all the measures taken by the State of Kuwait to protect its national security.The statement further noted that the senior government officials had expressed concern at what they called "continuous Iranian interference in the domestic affairs of the GCC countries, by conspiring against [those nations'] national security ... and [instigating] sectarian sedition between their [GCC countries'] citizens, independence, principles of good neighborliness, international laws, the Charter of the UN and OIC." The foreign ministers also welcomed the return of calm and stability to the Kingdom of Bahrain, praising the spirit of the Bahraini people who it said had sought the country's higher interests.

No One Rigs an Election Quite Like Kazakhstan
On Sunday, Nursultan Nazarbayev won reelection as president of Kazakhstan, a nation he has ruled since it was a republic of the Soviet Union, with 95.5 percent of the vote against an undistinguished field of three no-name opponents. One challenger, on his Facebook page, listed the incumbent president as a "Person Who Inspires Him"; another said he voted for Nazarbayev. It may sound like a typical post-Soviet sham election, but it's not quite. Most autocrats, post-Soviet and otherwise, just quietly go through the motions of elections, trying to draw as little attention to them as possible. Not Nazarbayev. Three days before the vote, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "Kazakhstan's steady progress toward democracy." He sent an adviser on a tour of Western capitals to promote the election; in Washington, the adviser -- modestly, it turns out -- predicted Nazarbayev would win between 80 and 92 percent of the vote. Foreign election observers found evidence of ballot box stuffing and apparent multiple votes, charges that the government quickly denied. "I believe that it is the most ideal election ever in the history of all the elections," said one presidential adviser, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev.

US critical of Pakistani efforts to defeat the Taliban
Pakistan lacks a robust plan to defeat the Taliban and its security forces struggle to hold areas cleared of the al Qaeda-linked fighters at great cost, says a critical US report which came just three months before US President Barack Obama is scheduled to announce the pace at which American troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan. The semi-annual White House report to Congress is designed to judge progress or otherwise towards key objectives of the war in Afghanistan and operations against al Qaeda in Pakistan. The report notes a deterioration of the situation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the country's northwest alongside the Afghan border between January and March this year. It details an operation in Mohmand Agency and Bajaur Agency that started in January to clear insurgent strongholds - the third time in two years that the Pakistani army has attempted to complete the task. It says the operation had been hampered by terrorist resistance, poor weather, the need to settle internally displaced people and the discovery of several caches of improvised explosive devices. The report acknowledges that "tremendous human sacrifices" were made by Pakistani forces in the region, but concludes "what remains vexing is the lack of any indication of ‘hold' and ‘build' planning or staging efforts to complement ongoing clearing operations". "There remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan, despite the unprecedented and sustained deployment of over 147,000 forces," the Obama administration says in the report.