Exclusive: Three mission members say calls to recant UN report disregard the rights of Palestinian and Israeli victims.

Three members of the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza war of 2008-09 have turned on the fourth member and chair of the group, Richard Goldstone, accusing him in all but name of misrepresenting facts in order to cast doubt on the credibility of their joint report. In a statement to the Guardian, the three experts in international law are strongly critical of Goldstone's dramatic change of heart expressed in a Washington Post commentary earlier this month. Goldstone wrote that he regretted aspects of the report that bears his name, especially the suggestion that Israel had potentially committed war crimes by targeting civilian Palestinians in the three-week conflict. The three members – the Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani; Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics; and former Irish peace-keeper Desmond Travers – have until this moment kept their silence over Goldstone's bombshell remarks. But their response now is devastating. Though they do not mention Goldstone by name, they shoot down several of the main contentions in his article and imply that he has bowed to intense political pressure.

President Barack Obama outlined plans Wednesday for slashing $4 trillion from the federal budget deficit over the next 12 years, the bulk of it by cutting domestic social spending, particularly in the area of health care. His speech at George Washington University in the US capital demonstrates the consensus in the American ruling elite for a frontal assault on social programs upon which tens of millions of working people, children and retirees depend. Obama largely accepted the deficit reduction framework set by the Republican right. But he proposed a different mix of spending cuts, as well as calling for tax increases on the wealthy, something that the leaders of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have ruled out in advance.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) misled clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that investigated the causes of the financial crisis said. Senator Carl Levin, releasing the findings of a two-year inquiry yesterday, said he wants the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether Goldman Sachs violated the law by misleading clients who bought the complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations without knowing the firm would benefit if they fell in value.

The Michigan Democrat also said federal prosecutors should review whether to bring perjury charges against Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and other current and former employees who testified in Congress last year. Levin said they denied under oath that Goldman Sachs took a financial position against the mortgage market solely for its own profit, statements the senator said were untrue.

HuffPo: SENATE PANEL GOES AFTER GOLDMAN

So much for Liberté, égalité, fraternité. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative government has just exposed the ugly face of official intolerance by enforcing a pathetic but draconian law that prohibits women from wearing full-face veils in public. Those who defy the law risk arrest, public humiliation, a $200 fine and being frogmarched into re-education classes. Whatever one thinks of such garb as the niqab or burqa, this sets a dark precedent for intolerance toward Europe’s estimated 44 million Muslims. Already, women have been detained under the new law, outside Sarkozy’s Elysée Palace and Notre Dame Cathedral. Ironically, women are free to sunbathe topless at Cannes, but may no longer cover their faces there.

President Alexander Lukashenko did not say what caused the explosion at the Oktyabrskaya subway station, but suggested outside forces could be behind it.

‘I do not rule out that this gift [sic] could have been brought from outside,’ Lukashenko said. [Daily Mail, 11th April 2011]

Two suspects in Belarus have confessed to carrying out a bomb attack which killed 12 people in Minsk, says President Alexander Lukashenko. "We already know who committed this terrorist act and how," he said. "The only thing is we don't yet know why, but that will also be known soon." The arrests on Tuesday were "without noise, shots or hassle", he said.

Edmonton Journal: Official blast version in doubt
Ynet News: UN council condemns 'apparent terrorist attack' in Minsk

Kavkaz Center: Moscow hints at Lukashenko's involvement in metro bombings. - One of the Kremlin's propagandists, who is considered an expert on Belarus, Pavel Sheremet, made an open accusation of Lukashenko's involvement in organization of the bombings in the Minsk metro. He said in a live on Kommersant FM that the explosion in the Minsk metro is likely organized by Lukashenko, "because it is very beneficial to him".

MinnPost.com: Belarus seeks two in terror attack that baffles security experts

MEXICO CITY (AFP) - At least 11 more bodies have been found in unmarked graves in north Mexico, taking the total to 127 corpses uncovered near the US border, with officials earlier accusing the Zetas drug gang of most of the killings. The latest finds in Sinaloa state on the Pacific coast came only hours after authorities said Tuesday 116 bodies had been uncovered in mass graves in Tamaulipas state in the northeast. An official with Sinaloa prosecutor's office told AFP that the five graves on a Sinaloa ranch contained 11 bodies, two of them women. The Mexican government accused the Zetas gang of the Tamaulipas killings, but by late Tuesday officials had not named suspects for the Sinaloa graves.

Stephen Lendman: Border and Community Vigilantism

Israeli occupation forces disperse protests against
the Annexation Wall in Bil'ein village (West Bank).

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (31 March – 06 April 2011)

Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF killed 3 members of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and wounded a Palestinian pedestrian in the central Gaza Strip in an extra-judicial execution. IOF also killed a Palestinian civilian in the northern Gaza Strip. IOF wounded a Palestinian civilian in the West Bank in a peaceful demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities.

In the Gaza Strip, IOF extra-judicially executed three members of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and wounded a pedestrian in Deir al-Balah town in the central Gaza Strip. An IOF spokesman announced that the Israeli Air Force implemented this operation jointly with the Internal General Security Service of Israel (Shabak) and the Israeli army against three members of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades. IOF claimed that the executed Palestinians were planning to kidnap Israelis from Sinai.

On 05 April 2011, IOF used lethal excessive force to kill a Palestinian who was approximately 80 meters to the west of the border with Israel in the northern Gaza Strip. The reasons why this Palestinian was in that area have not been known. [...]

Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 51 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, during which they arrested 18 Palestinian civilians, including 3 children and Mohammed Maher Badr, 53, PLC Member from the Change and Reform Bloc, who was arrested from his house in Ein Sara neighborhood in the north of Hebron.

Restrictions on Movement: Israel had continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

Eilat is home to thousands of refugees and their lives in the small town are often marred by open hostility. Many Israelis consider Eilat - a faraway town at the southernmost tip of the country - an isolated issue. But it seems that the xenophobic sentiments which have taken root there, with the encouragement of both the local and national governments, are spreading. I have seen several red flags hanging from balconies in south Tel Aviv, an area home to low-income Jewish Israelis, African refugees, and migrant workers. Jewish Israelis here have held protests against the presence of foreigners. The most recent march came in early April, just weeks before the Jewish holiday that celebrates the ancient Hebrew exodus from slavery and persecution in Egypt. Protesters, who screamed at Africans that they should "Go home," held signs that read: "Return [deport] the 200,000 infiltrators and illegals now."

AWIP: RACISM IN ISRAEL GETTING UGLIER BY THE MINUTE

BERLIN—Germany's parliament says its human rights committee is protesting against the conditions in which a U.S. Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks is being detained. A statement from parliament's lower house Wednesday said committee members appealed in a letter to President Barack Obama for him to ensure "humane" conditions for Pfc. Bradley Manning. It says committee chairman Tom Koenigs wrote that his current detention conditions "are unnecessarily hard and have a penalizing character." Manning is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, for all but an hour every day. He is stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed. Amnesty International says the treatment may violate Manning's human rights.

The Guardian: Susan Manning calls on British foreign secretary to check her son's physical and mental health in maximum security custody

The US is bombing yet another country: Libya. Now the US is doing it legally, with Security Council authorization. The main justification is couched in moral terms: "to protect civilians." However, neither can the UN issue indulgences for aggression of one country against another nor is the idea of bombing people in order to save them morally defensible. Hence, both the legal and moral presumptions of the operation "Odyssey Dawn" are indefensible. Let me explain.

Japan's crisis: one month later - Stunning Photos Japan is just in the beginning of the long term recovery effort from the earthquake that struck off northeastern Japan on March 11. The crisis alert level from the damage to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant has now been raised to the highest level of impact, the same as the Chernobyl Russia incident 25 years ago. Searchers continue to look for the dead, displaced Japanese live in shelters, protests continue over use of nuclear power, Japan's economic engine may be disrupted, the massive cleanup of debris is just underway, aftershocks are feared and many continue to mourn those who were lost. The photos collected here are from one month to the day of the quake and beyond.

You Tube: University students film tsunami striking Nakatsugawa City

Andrew Gavin Marshall: Some of the most influential world leaders met at Bretton Woods to discuss the global economy, but what impact can this panel really have in the end? The Centre for Research on Globalization's Andrew Gavin Marshall compares and contrasts this congregation's conversation with the historic Bretton Woods get-together of 1944 and presumes it is a precursor to the upcoming G-20 meeting.

A British tourist was beaten to death by officers in a Dubai police station after being arrested for swearing, it was claimed yesterday. Lee Bradley Brown, 39, was on holiday at a £1,000-a-night hotel in the Arab state when he was thrown into a filthy cell. Police sources say he was ‘badly beaten up’ by a group of police officers, leaving him unconscious on the floor. Inmates told how they watched officers bundle him into a body-bag and drag him out of the building. During Mr Brown’s six days in Bur Dubai police station, guards refused to give him enough food and water and did not let him see a lawyer, it is alleged.

Ivory Coast's new President Alassane Ouattara has said all sides in the country's conflict must face justice. He said he would ask the International Criminal Court to probe massacres in which both his forces and those of his rival Laurent Gbagbo were suspected. Mr Gbagbo was captured on Monday by Mr Ouattara's forces after he refused to accept he lost elections in November. He will now face charges at a "national level and an international level", Mr Ouattara said. At a news conference in the main city of Abidjan, Mr Ouattara said Mr Gbagbo had been moved to a secure location.

Al Jazeera: Ivorian leader says Gbagbo will face charges
Washington Post: Captured strongman to face charges at national and international level
Today's Zaman: Ivory Coast generals pledge loyalty to new Ouattara