Violence on the rise in Sanaa

As security declines in the capital, Al-Qaeda is reasserting its presence in Yemen's rural areas, writes Nasser Arrabyee

The political and security situation in Yemen is still fragile. The capital Sanaa witnessed several incidents this week.

At least five soldiers were killed and 30 others injured on Tuesday, 31 July, at the gate of the Interior Ministry in clashes between security forces and employees from the ministry demanding rights.

The problem started Sunday when the employees, from the police, stormed the ministry building after their superiors refused their demands. The angry employees were convinced to evacuate the building after officials -- including the minister of interior -- promised to respond to their grievances.

On Sunday, 29 July, an Italian diplomat was kidnapped from a street in the capital Sanaa. The kidnapper was later identified by the ministry of interior as Ali Nasser Harikdan, a tribal leader from Abeidah in Mareb, where Al-Qaeda is active. The kidnapper is demanding compensation from the government for putting him in prison.

On Saturday, Al-Qaeda failed to assassinate a tribal leader in Sanaa, but succeeded in killing his son by parcel bomb. A tribal sheikh of Kaifah of Radaa, Al-Baidha province, Majed Al-Dhahab received a call immediately after his son's killing, saying, "We will kill anyone who would stand against Al-Qaeda."

Two armed men reportedly came to Al-Dhahab's street, located in Aser area west of the capital Sanaa, where they found his son, Ali, playing with friends. The two men, believed to be Al-Qaeda operatives, handed Ali a wrapped parcel and told him it was a gift for his father.

A bomb was inside the parcel. Ali took it and entered his house to hand it to his father, but he did not find him. Ali opened the parcel and it exploded, killing him immediately.

"Al-Qaeda killed my son, Al-Qaeda killed my son," Sheikh Majed said after he heard the news. Majed is a cousin of Tarek Al-Dhahab, Al-Qaeda leader in Radaa who was killed in February this year in clashes with tribal leaders who refuse Al-Qaeda and its ideology.

Sheikh Majed Al-Dhahab was one of the prominent tribal leaders who led a campaign against Al-Qaeda in February, forcing them out of Radaa. Sheikh Hazem Al-Dhahab, brother of Tarek, was also killed in the clashes, after he killed his brother Tarek.

About 40 people were killed in the clashes including six brothers and nephews from Tarek Al-Dhahab's family in February.

It's worth mentioning that the Sheikh Majed Al-Dhahab assassination attempt came days after a cell of five members of Al-Qaeda was arrested in Sanaa.

AL-QAEDA RETURNS: Al-Qaeda has returned to the main strongholds in the south of Yemen after local tribesmen stopped fighting them.

The government failed to pay all the tribesmen, known as anti-Al-Qaeda popular committees, to prevent the terrorists from returning to Jaar, and Zinjubar in the southern province of Abyan.

The popular committees played a key role in driving Al-Qaeda out of the two towns last May, in cooperation with government troops.

Thousands of unemployed young people from the local tribes who joined the committees wanted to have regular salaries from the army as rewards for their fighting against Al-Qaeda.

"We should have salaries like the soldiers; we did better than them in the fight against Al-Qaeda," said Yaslem Awadh, one of the prominent leaders of the popular committees in Zinjubar.

The government cannot afford to pay all these people and at the same time cannot work without them. They know how to deal with Al-Qaeda more than government security and the army.

Earlier this week, five people were killed and others injured in clashes between Al-Qaeda operatives and local tribesmen in Batis area on the outskirts of Jaar. Local sources said that more 50 Al-Qaeda fighters returned to Jaar earlier this month and are now based in Batis.

In Zinjubar, Al-Qaeda operatives are seen everyday. "We see them, but we cannot do anything to them," said Mohamed Obadi, a local resident in Zinjubar.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Printed names

Despite opposition the Shura Council is set to announce the new editors-in-chief of state-owned newspapers on Sunday

Today members of the Shura Council's general committee are scheduled to discuss the evaluations handed to them from a 14-member committee regarding the selection of new chief editors of state-owned newspapers, reports Reem Leila. The meeting is headed by Shura Council Speaker Ahmed Fahmi and attended by deputies along with heads of sub-committees. On Sunday, the final names are scheduled to be announced.

Up until the end, several journalists were still opposing the way the Shura has gone about making its selections. Journalists from Al-Ahram Establishment erected a tent in front of Al-Ahram building on Al-Galaa Street. Alaa El-Attar, a member of the Press Syndicate's board of directors, said he had "great faith that the youth of Al-Ahram will be able to press the Shura Council in changing its decision.

"I trust Al-Ahram's youth, just like people before trusted the 25 January youths who were able to change the fate of the whole country," said El-Attar. Any decree by the Shura Council for the time being, according to El-Attar, is illegal. "They have to wait until the court's ruling regarding the continuity of the council" on 5 September.

According to El-Attar, any decision regarding appointing new editors-in-chief must also be postponed until the passage of a constitution. "We need to figure out what will the constitution do about journalism and the status of the state-owned organisations. Until then, the question of whether the rise of Islamists in the political arena will affect freedom of expression will always be hanging," said El-Attar.

The Shura Council and parliament are both dominated by Islamists who were voted in during nationwide polls late last year that were widely considered free and fair.

El-Attar said Al-Ahram journalists were exerting their utmost effort to pressure the Shura Council into preparing a new law stipulating that state-owned organisations should be affiliated to an independent national council which does not have any political preferences. "Members of such a council are not to be dismissed from their posts as in the case of judges, the prosecutor-general, and the grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar. This is the only way to guarantee the independence of the press," El-Attar said.

Many journalists oppose the Islamist-dominated Shura Council and the criteria the council has adopted to select editors-in-chief of publications. They also object to the formation of a preliminary committee which makes the selections. The committee is composed of 14 members -- six from the Shura Council, four veteran journalists and four mass communication university professors.

On 24 July veteran writer Salah Montaser resigned from the Shura Council committee tasked with the selection process, accusing the Shura of granting Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidates preferential treatment. Montaser said he resigned because he felt the committee "is biased and leaning towards choosing Muslim Brotherhood candidates".

Fathi Shehab, head of the Shura committee, responded to Montaser's resignation by saying "it reflected a personal and subjective attitude?ê? Montaser was all the time trying to influence committee members and imposing his own point of view?ê? Such actions will not prevent us from proceeding with our cautious work in selecting editors-in-chief of state-owned newspapers," said Shehab.

In the same context, Shura member Magdi El-Maasarawi, who is also a member of the 14-member committee, resigned from the committee, saying it was not applying the criteria set forth by the Shura Council. "This reveals there is the intention to appoint certain people who are not qualified. I beseeched the speaker to reconsider the criteria as they are not being properly or honestly applied," El-Maasarawi added.

The Shura Council also received a memorandum signed by 1,000 journalists and employees of state-owned newspapers objecting to the committee formed by the Shura Council to select newspaper editors. According to reports, a 10-member delegation went to the Shura Council to submit the memorandum, but Fahmi's secretary refused to take it. The delegation was forced to leave the petition with reporters who cover the council. Signatures included reporters from the newspapers Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, Rose El-Youssef and Al-Gomhouriya, as well as October magazine.

"Reporters were demanding the Shura Council immediately stop the work of this superficial committee," El-Attar said. "It has become evident from the resignations of Montaser and El-Maasarawi that this committee is fake and there is a set list for the names who will be the future editors-in-chief."

At the same time, Hisham Younis, a member of the board of directors of the Press Syndicate, said the council's attempts to interfere in the affairs of press institutions "raises suspicions regarding its desperate attempt to Islamise state-owned organisations. They are playing the same role as the dismantled National Democratic Party. There is no doubt about that," said Younis. "Journalists will be forced to write what the Islamists like. If they did not, they will definitely be penalised," added Younis.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Please, God, give us books to read

Somehow
I was a teacher;
somehow
I considered that natural.
For this reason I began to bow
to words I did not say;
and to communicate my respects to my children.
I tried to make them understand that it was absolutely necessary
for someone to read,
to review with his parents--
while he hurls his shoe under the bed--
how exhausting and beautiful respect is:
that they have no future without words.
You yourself, Dad,
are bowed over the newspaper
as if a cloud is passing over you;
and when I call out to you,
I see your temple
stamped with melancholy,
as if it was raining specifically for your sake.
Read, Dad,
and call my mother too to read.
Let the cloud pass over all of us.
Please, God,
give us books to read:
books that smell of glue,
their pages like knives;
books
that cough out dust in our faces
so that we realise our life is a cemetery;
books
whose covers bear a dedication from the respected author
to the retired bureau director;
books
cleanshaven in preparation for being slapped
and others that howl
in the margins
at people who, like us, loved
and, like us, became teachers;
books in the form of Aloha shirts
at the Reading Festival;
books on whose giant trunks we can urinate
to unburden ourselves as we go on walking.

***

Aw, aw?ê?
because we too are books, God,
flailing blind in our bed of love--
aw, aw--
because we are squeezed in on Your bookshelf
looking on Your miracles:
angels on the wall,
losing gamblers tearing up their bonds;
the despair of hands that strike
and hands that sleep, hurt, on the same pages.
Aw, aw?ê?
Then someone screams: What goes on there?

***

The desks of the bosses arranged in the form of the Complete Works,
snakes and bears,
crosses and wall magazines,
disgust and rotting bread,
the sound of a distant latch:
Why did You unfasten it, God?

***

Lost with ideas on wheels,
lost at home
and on the streets,
unseen to You or ourselves,
alone before our bosses
who are also alone,
alone with the sound of a distant latch:
Why did You unfasten it, God?

***

Translation by Youssef Rakha

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Ramadan kitchen

Ramadan is a time for giving and charitable causes, but one organisation is looking at practical ways of extending the Ramadan spirit throughout the year, finds Mai Samih

The holy month of Ramadan is finally here, with its blessings and feasts being shared among both rich and poor. This year, the Nahr Al-Ataa (river of giving) Foundation is trying to ensure that the Ramadan spirit remains even after the month has ended by setting up the matbakh sitt al-beit (kitchen of the house lady) organisation, which aims to teach catering skills.

Located in a modest district of Giza, the organisation has a warm, family atmosphere and provides catering work for women from poorer families to help them support their families.

The idea is to help such women develop their cookery skills and to learn how to succeed in the catering business. The organisation, or "Kitchen" as it is known, offers food at reasonable prices to neighbourhood families, most customers being neighbours, working women and private parties.

Mohamed Abdel-Hamid, manager of the Kitchen, said that the idea had come from the Nahr Al-Ataa Foundation's board of trustees. "We particularly want to help widows whose pensions are not enough to support their families," he said.

"I was invited to an event at the headquarters of the foundation and heard that it was looking for cooks to work at the Kitchen. I offered my services, and within ten days I had become part of the team," recalls Umm Abdallah, 47, who has been working in the Kitchen for seven months.

Umm Abdallah is proud to be part of the project, and for her working for the Kitchen is not only a source of income. It is also an expression of religion, since "Islam teaches us that anyone who gives an orphan a pat on the back will receive their reward from God," she says.

The Kitchen helps to provide food for orphans, and as a result those who help it in their work will receive God's recognition, she added.

According to Abdel-Hamid, the Kitchen has two main departments. There is the distribution section, which gives food to sick people every Monday and Thursday and throughout Ramadan free of charge. And there is the commercial section that sells ready-made food to customers, including to the armed forces in Al-Haram Street and Heliopolis. "We also have six distribution centres in Cairo," Abdel-Hamid said.

In Ramadan, the Kitchen adapts the standard menu for causes like mawaed Al-Rahman, charity tables, and there is double the usual number of employees because of the greater demand.

"We have five women working here, and we have asked for another five to join them so that we can prepare around 200 meals a day in the Al-Haram Street area," Abdel-Hamid said. Meals cost between LE8 and 12, depending on the order.

The parent organisation Nahr Al-Ataa is a non-profit organisation that provides orphans with social care and education, including tutoring and even school uniforms. It also provides medical care for the underprivileged and social assistance for the elderly, sick, and divorced and financial support for the marriages of orphaned girls.

According to Abdel-Hamid, the Kitchen still needs further financial support to help it improve its services. "We have had some problems with our ovens because of long-term use, but we have not yet been able to raise the funds to change them," he explained.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Negative regulators of integrin activity

Advance Online Publication July 20, 2012 doi: 10.1242/?jcs.093641 Integrins are heterodimeric transmembrane adhesion receptors composed of a- and ß-subunits. They are ubiquitously expressed and have key roles in a number of important biological processes, such as development, maintenance of tissue homeostasis and immunological responses. The activity of integrins, which indicates their affinity towards their ligands, is tightly regulated such that signals inside the cell cruicially regulate the switching between active and inactive states. An impaired ability to activate integrins is associated with many human diseases, including bleeding disorders and immune deficiencies, whereas inappropriate integrin activation has been linked to inflammatory disorders and cancer. In recent years, the molecular details of integrin ‘inside-out’ activation have been actively investigated. Binding of cytoplasmic proteins, such as talins and kindlins, to the cytoplasmic tail of ß-integrins is widely accepted as being the crucial step in integrin activation. By contrast, much less is known with regard to the counteracting mechanism involved in switching integrins into an inactive conformation. In this Commentary, we aim to discuss the known mechanisms of integrin inactivation and the molecules involved.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Microtubule assembly during mitosis - from distinct origins to distinct functions?

Advance Online Publication June 26, 2012 doi: 10.1242/?jcs.092429 The mitotic spindle is structurally and functionally defined by its main component, the microtubules (MTs). The MTs making up the spindle have various functions, organization and dynamics: astral MTs emanate from the centrosome and reach the cell cortex, and thus have a major role in spindle positioning; interpolar MTs are the main constituent of the spindle and are key for the establishment of spindle bipolarity, chromosome congression and central spindle assembly; and kinetochore-fibers are MT bundles that connect the kinetochores with the spindle poles and segregate the sister chromatids during anaphase. The duplicated centrosomes were long thought to be the origin of all of these MTs. However, in the last decade, a number of studies have contributed to the identification of non-centrosomal pathways that drive MT assembly in dividing cells. These pathways are now known to be essential for successful spindle assembly and to participate in various processes such as K-fiber formation and central spindle assembly. In this Commentary, we review the recent advances in the field and discuss how different MT assembly pathways might cooperate to successfully form the mitotic spindle.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.