Human rights activists barred from ASEAN meeting

Prominent activists from military-ruled Myanmar and Cambodia were barred Saturday from a meeting with Southeast Asian leaders, upstaging the opening of a summit billed as a historic step toward greater human rights in the region.

The two activists were barred from a meeting on human rights in the region, after the leaders of Myanmar and Cambodia threatened to walk out if they attended. The activists had been selected by a regional human rights forum to act as delegates for their respective countries, along with activists from the other eight delegate nations.

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A harder coexistence for Jews and Arabs

Israeli groups that focus on Jewish and Arab coexistence are just beginning to wrestle with the fallout from the Gaza war.

The Hagar bilingual kindergarten was founded as a rare cocoon from ethnic alienation for children and parents in Israel. But even this place of innocence and coexistence isn’t immune to the deeper divisions between Jews and Arabs here that has followed the Gaza war.

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Obama to give more money to Pakistan

Even though Pakistan is constantly demonstrating its duplicitous nature, its Islamist zeal, including its greater interest to battle India as opposed to its own homegrown terrorists — here is the U.S. government, instead of holding the Pakistani government more accountable, offering it more money. But hey — maybe the real underlying and brilliant logic here is that more money will “make them like us”?

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The Palestinian Problem

Israel’s war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.

Let’s first review what we know does not and cannot work:

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India urges ‘pause’ in Sri Lankan fighting

India has called for a “pause” in the fighting between Sri Lankan forces and Tamil rebels to allow the evacuation of thousands of civilians trapped in the nation’s northern war zone.

In a statement issued Saturday, India’s external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, warned that the humanitarian crisis was “building up with every passing day” in Sri Lanka.

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Kurdish ‘grave sites’ to be dug

A Turkish prosecutor has ordered the digging up of several sites where it is believed the bodies of Kurds killed in the 1990s may have been dumped.

Hundreds of people disappeared at the height of the fighting in the mainly Kurdish south-east.

Human rights lawyers say many were last seen with security forces members.

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Rocket fired from Gaza into Ashkelon school

Palestinian in the Gaza Strip fired at least five projectiles at southern Israel on Saturday morning, with a Grad-type rocket hitting an Asheklon school. No one was wounded in the attack, as the school was closed, though a number of residents were treated for shock. Another Grad rocket landed in an open area just outside the city.

In the latest attack, a Kassam rocket struck an open area in the Eshkol region, causing no casualties or damage.

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Somalia’s Islamic Insurgency

Al-Shabaab (aka the Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin, al-Shabab, Shabaab, the Youth, Mujahidin al-Shabaab Movement, Mujahideen Youth Movement, Mujahidin Youth Movement), is an Islamic organization that controls much of southern Somalia, excluding the capital, Mogadishu. It has waged an insurgency against Somalia’s transitional government and its Ethiopian supporters since 2006.

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