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Rebiya Kadeer, an elfin grandmother with gray-tinged pigtails who was released from a Chinese prison in March 2005 and immediately whisked into exile. A former millionaire once praised by Beijing as a model businesswoman, Kadeer now lives near Washington, D.C. She is recognized as the leader of the Uighur exile community and heads the Uyghur American Association and the World Uyghur Congress; both groups receive grants from the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy funded by the U.S. Congress

my family has been a target of Chinese government persecution. Whenever something happens, authorities go after my family. My two sons are in prison. Even my grandchildren have been kicked out of school.

You mentioned your two sons in prison. What were they charged with and what are their prison terms?In 2006 one was sentenced to seven years and the other to nine years, on charges of tax evasion and separatism, respectively.

National Security Council head Uzi Arad says that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has inherited a "scorched earth" policy on the Iranian nuclear threat from the last administration, but he is certain that President Barack Obama is committed to Israel's security. In an exclusive interview in Friday's Haaretz Magazine, Arad says Israel displayed an "abominable" failure to address Tehran's nuclear development between 2003 and 2007, Arad says, and while he suggests a potential naval blockade on the Islamic Republic, he adds, "The more credible and concrete the option, the less likely that it will be needed."

Regarding the Palestinian arena, Arad says, "I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime, but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions."

As the topic of conversation returns to Iran, Arad says, "The defensive might we have must be improved and become tremendously powerful, and create a situation in which no one will dare to realize the ability to harm us. And if they do dare, we will exact a full price, so that they too will not survive."

Major powers in the Group of Eight will give negotiations with Iran a chance until September, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday, upping the stakes in a dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Speaking after talks with fellow G8 leaders, Sarkozy said they would review the situation at a G20 meeting of developed and developing countries in Pittsburgh on September 24 and 25. "If there is no progress by then we will have to take decisions," said Sarkozy, indicating that tougher sanctions might be imposed if Tehran continued to resist negotiations.

A White House deputy national security adviser, Mike Froman, told reporters the G8 discussions had reflected "a collective impatience with Iran," which Western countries believe is trying to build an atomic bomb.

Kissinger: The belief in democracy as a universal remedy regularly reappears in American foreign policy. Its most recent appearance came with the so-called neocons in the Bush administration. Actually, Obama is much closer to a realistic policy on this issue than Bush was.

Kissinger: Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions. It is always easy to divide the world into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the noble people, and the power-oriented people are the ones that cause all the world's trouble. But I believe more suffering has been caused by prophets than by statesmen. For me, a sensible definition of realpolitik is to say there are objective circumstances without which foreign policy cannot be conducted. To try to deal with the fate of nations without looking at the circumstances with which they have to deal is escapism. The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

Kissinger: I see two possibilities. We will either come to an understanding with Iran, or we will clash. As a democratic society we cannot justify the clash to our own people unless we can show that we have made a serious effort to avoid it. By that, I don't mean that we have to make every concession they demand, but we are obligated to put forward ideas the American people can support.The upheaval in Teheran must run its course before these possibilities can be explored.

Lebanese prime minister-designate Saad Hariri said on Wednesday Hezbollah will be part of the next cabinet "whether Israel likes it or not," as his bid to form a government entered its eight week."The national unity government will include the (ruling) March 14 alliance, and I also want to assure the Israeli enemy that Hezbollah will be in this government whether it likes it or not because Lebanon's interests require all parties be involved in this cabinet," Hariri said at an Iftar feast to break the Ramadan fast on Tuesday night.

Earlier this month, Israel warned that the Lebanese government as a whole would be blamed for any attack from its territory if the Shiite militant group were part of the new government."If Hezbollah joins the government it will be clear that the Lebanese government will be held responsible for any attack coming from its territory against Israel," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

A Mexican village whose inhabitants were overwhelmed by an outbreak of respiratory illness starting in February has emerged as a possible source of the swine flu outbreak which has now spread across the world.

The state government of Veracruz in eastern Mexico has confirmed one case of swine flu in the village of La Gloria with the sufferer named locally as a four-year-old boy, Edgar Hernandez Hernandez. The federal government said tonight that he tested positive for the same strain of the virus which has claimed lives in Mexico.

Mexico's national public health authority, the Mexican social security institute, raised concerns that waste from the Granjas Carrol facility may be responsible for the outbreak of illness, according to local media."According to state agents of the Mexican social security institute, the vector of this outbreak are the clouds of flies that come out of the hog barns, and the waste lagoons into which the Mexican-US company spews tons of excrement," reported Mexico City newspaper La Jornada.

The Taleban say they are withdrawing from a Pakistani district where their consolidation of power this week has caused deep concern in the US. A Taleban spokesman said commander Maulana Fazlullah had issued the order for fighters to pull back from Buner, just 100km (62 miles) from Islamabad.

The Taleban have agreed a peace deal bringing Sharia law to some districts in return for ending their insurgency. The peace deal covers six districts of Malakand division, including the troubled Swat region, in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The Taleban have almost full control of Swat and this week had strengthened operations in Buner.

the first government-to-government talks -- lasting only 22 minutes -- between the two Koreas in more than a year.

On Tuesday, the South Korean and North Korean delegations were to discuss business deals tied to the Kaesung Industrial Complex in North Korea, which is run by both nations. The talks broke off after the North Korean delegation refused to discuss the release of a detained South Korean worker, saying he was not on the agenda, according to South Korean officials.

During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for "a hard time."

Over the next 25 days, beginning on March 6, 2003, Mohammed was put through a routine in which he was deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and had his head repeatedly slammed into a plywood wall, according to the report. The interrogation also included days of extensive waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

But whether harsh tactics were decisive in Mohammed's interrogation may never be conclusively known, in large part because the CIA appears not to have tried traditional tactics for much time, if at all. According to the agency's own accounting, Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times during his first four weeks in a CIA secret prison.

The CIA's use of waterboarding to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects was approved by Condoleezza Rice as early as 2002, a senate report reveals.

Ms Rice, as national security adviser at the time, gave consent to the CIA's harsh interrogation programme, the Senate Intelligence Committee found.

The latest details were revealed in a timeline of the CIA's interrogation programme produced by the US Senate Intelligence Committee. It shows Ms Rice and other top Bush administration officials were first briefed about "alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding", in May 2002.

The Obama administration is finalizing plans for a new Pentagon command to coordinate the security of military computer networks and to develop new offensive cyber-weapons, sources said last night.

Planning for the reorganization of Defense Department and intelligence agencies is underway, and a decision is imminent, according to a person familiar with the White House plans.

The new command would affect U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring U.S. "freedom of action" in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Mr. Mituletu, who is planning to return to Romania next month, is one of millions of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa who have flocked to fast-growing places like Spain, Ireland and Britain in the past decade, drawn by low unemployment and liberal immigration policies.

But in a marked sign of how quickly the economies of Western Europe have deteriorated, workers like Mr. Mituletu are now heading home, hoping to find better job prospects, or at least lower costs of living, in their native lands.

While unemployment is also rising in the Czech Republic, “it is much easier to be at home with family and with friends and not to have a job,” she said, “than to be here and not to have a job.”

A deadly outburst of violence appears to be overwhelming Iraq’s police and military forces as American troops hand over greater control of cities across the country to them. On Friday, twin suicide bombings killed at least 60 people outside Baghdad’s most revered Shiite shrine, pushing the death toll in one 24-hour period to nearly 150.

The bombings on Friday ominously echoed attacks like the one at a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed and pushed the country toward civil war.

The latest bombings — there have been at least 18 major attacks so far this month — so far have not prompted retaliatory attacks, but they have strained what remains a fragile society deeply divided between Sunnis and Shiites.

Mrs Clinton said the recent upsurge in violence was a tragic signal that Iraq was in fact on the right path.

On Friday, two female suicide bombers attacked Baghdad's main Shia shrine, killing at least 60 people and injuring 125 others, Iraqi officials said. On Thursday, 84 people were killed in two separate suicide attacks in Baghdad and Baquba.

Many victims were Iranian pilgrims, and the violence was condemned in Tehran. On Saturday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused US troops of involvement in the bombings that had killed Iranian nationals, Reuters news agency reported.

The Obama administration’s effort to return the largest group of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen, their home country, has stalled, creating a major new hurdle for the president’s plan to close the prison camp in Cuba by next January, American and Yemeni officials say.

The Yemeni government has asked Washington to return its detainees and has said that it would need substantial aid to rehabilitate the men. But the Obama administration is increasingly skeptical of Yemen’s ability to provide adequate rehabilitation and security to supervise returned prisoners. In addition, American officials are wary of sending detainees to Yemen because of growing indications of activity by Al Qaeda there.

The Bush administration also failed to reach a deal with President Saleh, but the Obama administration had hoped to get increased cooperation from Yemen, which critics say has a history of coddling Islamic extremists and releasing convicted terrorists. Complicating the task is the fact that security in Yemen has been deteriorating for more than a year, with several terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing outside the American Embassy compound in September that killed 13 people.

The United Nations has called on Israel to end its programme of demolishing homes in east Jerusalem and tackle a mounting housing crisis for Palestinians in the city.

Dozens of Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem are demolished each year because they do not have planning permits. Critics say the demolitions are part of an effort to extend Israeli control as Jewish settlements continue to expand

Although Israel's mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has defended the planning policy as even-handed, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in March described demolitions as "unhelpful". An internal report for EU diplomats, released earlier and obtained by the Guardian, described them as illegal under international law and said they "fuel bitterness and extremism". Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later unilaterally annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community.

The UN's World Health Organization has raised the alert over swine flu to level five - indicating human-to-human transmission in at least two countries. It is a "strong signal that a pandemic is imminent", the WHO says.

In Mexico, at the epicentre of the outbreak, people have been urged to stay at home over the next five days. There are numerous cases elsewhere - the highest number outside Mexico in the US - and Europeans have been told it is certain there will be deaths.

New cases were confirmed in Switzerland, Costa Rica and Peru European health ministers were set to meet for emergency talks to co-ordinate national efforts to contain the spread of the virus Ghana has become the latest country to ban pork imports as a precaution against swine flu, though no cases have been found in the West African country.

Real power has remained solidly in the grasp of Prime Minister Putin and his inner circle, while the president has appeared to be little more than their fresh-faced, sweet-talking puppet.

But lately some of Medvedev's detractors are starting to think they may have underestimated him. The president has begun publicly overturning some of Putin's key policies, rolling back repressive legislation and paying attention to the government's critics rather than trying to silence them.

Medvedev's liberalized approach has had little visible affect on the country's hard-nosed foreign policy. So far, Putin seems firmly in charge there. But inside Russia, many activists say they're floored by the recent thaw, after a decade of being frozen out.

The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said its inspectors left North Korea on Thursday after being ordered out by the reclusive nation.

"IAEA inspectors at the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Yongbyong nuclear facilities, on 15 April, removed all IAEA seals and switched off surveillance cameras," a statement from the agency said.

"This follows the DPRK informing the inspectors, on 14 April, that it had decided to cease all cooperation with the IAEA, requested removal of containment and surveillance equipment, and required the inspectors to leave the DPRK at the earliest possible time."