Al-Assad: Rebel Are Terrorists, Voters Love Me

Opposition rebels are foreign terrorists and most Syrians citizens wholeheartedly support their president, as evidenced by last week’s parliamentary elections. This is how Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad articulated his view of his country on Rossiya-24, Russia’s state news channel, in his first interview since December. “There are foreign mercenaries, some of them still alive,” he said. “They are being detained and we are preparing to show them to the world.” Al-Assad also cautioned against foreign involvement in Syria, warning neighboring nations that have served as transit points for weapons being smuggled into the country that “if you sow chaos in Syria you may be infected by it yourself.” Rebels and anti-regime activists say Syrian forces have mined many of the smuggling routes where weapons flow into Syria, mainly from Turkey and Lebanon. The full results of the elections, derided as manipulated by outsider observers, have yet to be publicized, and they have been overshadowed by a renewal of clashes in the centre and north of the country.

New Palestinian Cabinet Is Sworn In

More than a year after the last cabinet resigned, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has a new government. It is still headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad but removes direct control of the PA’s shaky finances from him. The new 25-member cabinet, whose writ extends to most of the West Bank, has 11 new faces, including Finance Minister Nabil Kassis. Fayyad, an economist by training, had been credited with cleaning up and regularizing the PA budget. The previous cabinet stepped down in expectation of a unity government with the rival Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, but the negotiations stalled and Hamas reacted angrily to the news of the PA’s unilateral election. “This strengthens the division," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said. PA President Mahmoud Abbas said he is leaving the door open to a unity agreement.  "But I can't wait forever. A number of ministers have resigned from the current government, and now the administrative situation is paralyzed,” Abbas said.

Iran Not Producing Weapons-Grade Uranium, For Now

Iran is installing more centrifuges in an underground plant, but so far it is not believed to be using them to expand higher-grade uranium enrichment of the type used to make atom bombs, Western diplomats told the media on Wednesday. “It is still going strong. I hear it is unchanged,” one diplomat associated with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, told the Reuters news agency. “But with installation work going on, at some point there will be an increase.” Production of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, which Iran started two years ago, seems to have remained steady in recent months after a major escalation in production started at the end of 2011. Coaxing Tehran into stopping the enhanced enrichment is a priority for world powers, which meet with Iran next week for talks they hope will rein its nuclear ambitions.

For Arabic Speakers, Your Own Talmud

A Jordanian research centre has published the first Arabic translation of the Babylonian Talmud, a multi-volume work that contains Jewish religious law, traditions and legends and after the Bible is the most importance text for Judaism. “This is the first Arabic translation of the Babylonian Talmud, which represents the most important religious teaching in Judaism,” Mohammad Najem, spokesman of the Amman-based Middle East Studies Centre, told Agence France Presse. “It is a literal translation that seeks to help scholars and researchers studying Islam and comparative religious issues understand the Talmud.” Najem said 95 translators and researchers had worked on producing the 20-volume Arabic version of Talmud, which is written mainly in Aramaic, producing 7,100 pages over six years. “It is important to understand how Jews view Islam as well as their own religion,” he added. Most universities in Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, “have obtained copies of the translation,” Najem said. The Israeli daily Ha’aretz said Israel’s National Library had obtained a copy as well.