Iran protests intensify, prompting state of emergency in Isfahan

CSMONITOR

Iran security forces stepped up clashes with protesters in Isfahan Wednesday, the birthplace of dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose death has energized the opposition.

By Scott Peterson

Istanbul, Turkey

Iran security forces and opposition protesters stepped up clashes on Wednesday in the city of Isfahan, the birthplace of Iran’s top dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Montazeri’s death this past weekend, and the rituals marking his passing, coincide with a new push by regime opponents during a 10-day religious commemoration.

The government has responded by harassing two reformist clerics who could replace Montazeri, as well as stripping the opposition’s top political figure – Mir Hossein Mousavi – of his sole official post.

In Isfahan, pro-regime basiji militiamen used batons, chains, and stones to beat mourners who gathered at the city’s main mosque to remember Montazeri, the spiritual mentor of the Iranian opposition, whose websites reported the clashes.

“While people were reciting the Quran [in the mosque], plainclothed forces attacked them and threw tear gas into the mosque yard and sprayed those inside with pepper spray after they closed the doors,” reported the reformist Parlemannews. “They severely beat the people inside,” then doused the clerical speaker with pepper spray and arrested him.

“Tens of thousands gathered outside for the memorial but were savagely attacked by security forces and the basijis,” witness Farid Salavati told the Associated Press. He said that dozens were injured as riot police and vigilantes clubbed and kicked men and women alike – some in the face – and arrested 50 people who had gathered to mourn the grand ayatollah.

Montazeri – the chosen successor of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, until a falling out in 1989 – had been unrelenting in his criticism of the officially declared reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June, as well as of Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Khamenei is a murderer, his rule is invalid,” protesters shouted on Wednesday, referring to violence since June, in which severe force has been used against Iranians who marched to reverse the official result. They wanted to see the “Green Movement” presidential candidate, Mr. Mousavi, elected. Scores died in June and thousands were arrested; protests have flared repeatedly around the nation since then.

Government announces state of emergency, calls in military for help

In Isfahan, the clashes on Wednesday portend more violence, as protesters and pro-government forces alike prepare for the religious peak of the Shiite calendar, Ashura, which falls on Sunday. By the end of the day on Wednesday, it was reported that the governor had announced a state of emergency and reportedly called in the military for help.

“The regime has no alternative but to try to block the commemorations of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, because it has been state policy to demote him,” says Mehrdad Khonsari of the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies in London. “But given the events of the last six months, this only aggravates the situation [and] becomes a catalyst for more protests and is counter-productive.

“Every demonstration is a dress rehearsal for the next demonstration. Once Ashura is over next week, there will be more demonstrations,” says Mr. Khonsari. “The fact is there is no likelihood that these protests are going to come to an end anytime soon.”

Mousavi stripped of title

Mousavi, a former prime minister who has vowed not to back down in his challenge, was on Tuesday stripped of his one official post – as president of Iran’s Academy of Art since 1999 – after joining mourners for Montazeri’s funeral in the Shiite holy city of Qom on Monday.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was reported to have broken off a domestic trip to take part in the meeting that removed Mousavi. Judicial officials last week made clear they had “evidence” against Mousavi, and might arrest him – an act that analysts say would surely provoke a popular outpouring on the streets.

Pro-regime forces expanded their crackdown to include the two high-ranking reformist ayatollahs who might fill Montazeri’s shoes as spiritual guide to the opposition.

Security forces on Wednesday reportedly surrounded the compound of Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri, the former Friday prayer leader for Isfahan. Originally appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini – the founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution – he resigned in 2002 in protest then at the direction the regime was going.

Taheri has called the June results “illegitimate,” and was the organizer of the Wednesday commemoration in Isfahan. Until he resigned, his sermons were sometimes disrupted by pro-regime vigilantes – the same ones he lambasted in his 2002 resignation letter as “louts and fascists, who are a mixture of ignorance and madness, but whose umbilical cord is connected to the center of power, and who are completely uncontrolled and beyond the law.”

Pro-reform grand ayatollah’s offices also attacked

Those same vigilantes and their more formal basiji militia brethren on Tuesday also attacked the offices of the pro-reform Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei in Qom. They broke windows, insulted and beat up his staff, and put up posters of Khamenei, according to a report on the main reformist party website. Police prevented the staff from defending the premises.

The semi-official Fars News Agency on Tuesday reported that pro-regime theology students staged a protest against “the insult against sanctities” during the Montazeri funeral, and their protest ended up outside Grand Ayatollah Saanei’s offices. They signed a statement for Saanei to be stripped of his religious authority.

Saanei told the Monitor in late 2003 that vigilantes were “criminals … and wild wolves,” and decried the regime’s tyranny, violence and prisons for rendering Iran unfit to be “presented as an Islamic example.”

Clerics distancing themselves from government to retain legitimacy

Opposition websites reported that Montazeri’s family have called off the traditional third and seventh mourning nights to prevent further disturbances, after vigilantes and basijis attacked the offices of Montazeri and his son following the funeral on Monday.

“Montazeri was the spiritual leader of the Green Movement … but the situation is really beyond the need for having a spiritual person back this movement,” says Khonsari. “You don’t need a cleric to legitimize it. But the clerics are legitimizing their own positions by distancing themselves from the ruling establishment, to indicate they are in tune with general aspirations.”

Yahoo is spying on you

WND

Allegedly acting as proxy for law enforcement, intel agencies

By Michael Carl

Yahoo.com is allegedly spying on its customers and acting as a proxy for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

According to Wired.com, Yahoo also charges the agencies for the information. That means U.S. citizens’ tax dollars are being used by federal agencies to pay for information gathered in Yahoo’s spying.

A Yahoo customer who asked not to be identified became suspicious of Yahoo’s operations when the image below appeared on his screen while downloading his e-mail.

John Young, who runs the website Cryptome.org, believes the Internet giant is gathering data from customer e-mails for possible disclosure to U. S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Young says Yahoo has a standard operating procedure for e-mail data mining spelled out in the Yahoo Law Enforcement Compliance Manual. Young has posted a copy of Yahoo’s manual on his Cryptome.com website.

Yahoo and its Washington, D.C.-based legal counsel, Steptoe and Johnson, have not responded to WND requests for comment.

The manual says Yahoo records the IP address of any computer involved in a Yahoo e-mail exchange.

“Every message sent by a Yahoo! mail user contains the originating IP address in the header,” the Yahoo manual says. “That is, Yahoo! records the IP address of the computer that was used to send the email, and Yahoo! inserts that IP address in the header of the message. Accordingly, if law enforcement is seeking to determine the IP address from which a Yahoo! e-mail was sent, Yahoo! will have no additional information other than what is visible in the message itself.”

The manual continues.

“The relevant line from the header will generally look like this: Received: from [65.207.97.120] by web41705.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 05 Sep 2003 07:30:05 PDT

“In this example, the IP address in brackets corresponds to the computer from which the message was sent,” the manual states.

Section V of the Yahoo compliance guide says:

“Yahoo! generally will accept service of court orders, search warrants, and criminal grand jury or administrative subpoenas for the production of documents by fax from government entities.”

Then there’s this paragraph a few lines later in the same section:

“Yahoo! will ask law enforcement to certify that the prior or delayed notice provisions have been satisfied if contents are sought with legal process other than a Search Warrant.”
“…with legal process other than a Search Warrant.”

An intelligence analyst and private terrorism investigator who asked not to be named, believes this phrase is key in Yahoo’s willingness to turn over e-mail contents to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Young stands by his actions and what he has written about Yahoo’s surveillance. He believes the public material may be a diversion for deeper surveillance.

“What remains unclear is what are other arrangements between Yahoo and law enforcement and intelligence agencies that are not covered by publicly available material. It is more than probable that the publicly available material diverts attention from these other shenanigans,” Young observes.

He adds that other Internet providers are also involved in surveillance.

“Yahoo is not alone in these customer transgressions, the deceptive practices are widespread among telecommunications and IP providers,” Young asserts.

A story on Mathaba.net states, “Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and Internet service providers,” or ISPs, are involved in federally sanction data collection.

Young also believes media haven’t done a good job reporting the abuses.

“There’s an abysmal neglect of what the ISPs, OS (operating system) producers, network operators, data farmers and search engines are up to with customer data displayed on the computer screen.”

Yahoo’s legal counsel, Steptoe and Johnson, has contacted Young, acknowledging the compliance guide’s existence and how it facilitates Yahoo’s participation in intelligence and law enforcement investigations.

The letter posted on Cryptome.org reads.

The letter concludes with a threat of legal action.

The series of letters is posted on the Cryptome.org website.

Iranian-Backed Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

CSMONITOR

Iraqi militants who are Iranian government slaves are intercepting sensitive video feeds from US predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf software, and the same technique leaves feeds from most military aircraft vulnerable to snooping, according to published reports.

To access the feeds, the militants have been using SkyGrabber, a publicly available program that pulls movies and music off satellites and sells for $26.

The US military is at the beginning of the era in which the cyber security of its weapon systems will be increasingly important, and under constant threat.

That’s one of the lessons that might be drawn from revelations that Iraqi insurgents have intercepted video feeds transmitted by US drone aircraft, using software and hardware available to virtually any technically-adept teenager in the world.

Today, general military cyber war is in its infancy, noted General C. Robert Kehler, commander of US Air Force Space Command, in an address on the subject in September.

It is about where military air power was at the beginning of the last century, said Gen. Kehler – the biplane level of development.

“So we know that this will evolve,” said Kehler, referring to the offensive and defensive sides of confrontation with bits and bytes.

By itself, the breach of the drone video stream does not appear to have been particularly threatening. Insurgents merely tapped into an unencrypted data transmission that provided them with pictures of what the drone was looking at. It was not information detailed enough to provide the insurgents with tactical intelligence. It was not something that would have allowed them to take control of the aircraft, any more than intercepting a police call on a radio scanner allows the listener to drive a police car.

The transmission was open because the Pentagon in essence has not yet bothered to encrypt it.

“This is a vulnerability that they’ve known about for decades,” says John Pike, a security analyst and president of GlobalSecurity.org.

In some ways, another type of cyber attack that occurred this week might be more threatening to US national security. The Twitter outage caused by a group calling itself the “Iranian Cyber Army” may, or may not, have been directed by the Iranian government.

But whoever was behind it, is just the sort of denial of service blow that could wreak havoc with military systems, or government services, or sectors of the economy, if properly carried out.

“Dealing with a deliberate denial of service attack designed to disrupt the on-line economy – I don’t think we’re set to deal with that,” says Pike.

This is as much a concern for the Pentagon as is the operational cyber security of weapons. It is a technique adversary nations have already used against each other, said Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy Air Force chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance earlier this year.

“This denial of service strategy was recently applied by North Korea, and Russia used it in the cyber isolation of Georgia,” said Gen. Deptula in an address to the Air Force Association.

Meanwhile, one of the lessons of the stolen drone video feed is that different systems have different vulnerabilities, and all need to be addressed to secure US military operations, according to US officials.

“Every airman is a defender. That’s the mindset you have to have,” said Gen. Kehler in his address to AFA. “When you log onto your computer, when you pick up your handheld device, when you get on your cell phone, et cetera, you are entering a combat zone and you need to behave accordingly.”

Taipei smugglers facilitate Iran nukes

G2 BULLETIN

Key pieces of equipment purchased from Europe, shipped to Tehran

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.

LONDON – British MI6 intelligence agency investigators have discovered Iran has set up a new smuggling network in Taiwan to obtain specialized equipment used for the production of nuclear weapons, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Insiders report Iran has established companies to buy the equipment on the world markets and then smuggle it into Tehran.

The purchases have involved pressure transducers, which are used to produce weapons-grade uranium, and Secret Intelligence Service officers have established that nuclear scientists from Tehran have held meetings in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, to buy the units.

The equipment is stored by the companies in a high-security area on the island.

The companies are fronted by local Chinese businessmen, and MI6 officers believe some of them have worked in China‘s own nuclear industry before moving to Taiwan. The intelligence officers have also traced bank accounts held by the businessmen to banks in the Cayman Islands.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

“It suggests that they are almost certainly well paid for the work on behalf of Iran,” said a senior intelligence source in London.

Iran has been trying to acquire the equipment for more than a year. But Russia and European companies refused to sell Tehran the transducers.

Now China has joined in refusing to sell such specialized technology after Beijing supported a censure motion passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last month following the revelation that Tehran was building a second uranium enrichment facility at Qom.

At the end of this month, the U.N. will be asked to impose a new round of sanctions against Iran unless it agrees to abandon its nuclear program.

A report passed on by MI6 to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week revealed Iran had already acquired 100 transducers from Taiwan.

For the complete report and full immediate access to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, subscribe now.

Clinton Cautions Latin American States About Iranian Influence

VOA

U.S. secretary of state urges Latin American countries to ‘think twice’ about establishing links with Iran, which she said is the world’s leading promoter and exporter of terrorism.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday urged Latin American countries to “think twice” about establishing links with Iran, which she said is the world’s leading promoter and exporter of terrorism. Clinton also expressed concern about democratically-elected leaders in Latin America who later move to undermine democratic institutions.

Clinton’s remarks at a State Department public policy forum on Latin America were some of the strongest by an Obama administration official to date about increasing Iranian activity in the region.

Iran has been establishing close political, trade and other relationships with several left-leaning Latin American governments, underlined by recent visits by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia.

In a question and answer session with participants in the event, Clinton said the United States has “no problem” with non-Western Hemisphere countries like China having legitimate business and investment activities in Latin America.

But she said U.S. officials are concerned about what she said was Iran’s “interest in promoting itself” in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia and said allowing Iranian influence to take root is, in her words, “a very bad idea for the countries involved.”

“We hope that there will be a recognition that this is the major supporter, promoter and exporter of terrorism in the world today,” she said.

“The Revolutionary Guard of Iran is increasing its control over the country because of the elections, which were a stark example of the abuse of human rights in action, is deeply involved in the economy as well as the security issues of Iran. And I think that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them. And we hope that they will think twice and we’re going to support them if they do.”

There have been similar expressions of concern from Pentagon officials including Defense Secretary Robert Gates who in Senate testimony earlier this year said he was concerned about Iranian “meddling” in Latin America.

U.S. officials have accused Iran of supporting activities in Latin America of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and Tehran is accused of involvement in 1990′s bomb attacks on a Jewish center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.

In the policy forum, Clinton also reiterated U.S. “worry” about countries in Latin America where leaders who, after being democratically elected, move to undermine constitutional rule, citing in particular Venezuela and Nicaragua.

“We need to make it absolutely an article of faith that any leader elected must not just further his own position, and his power base, but respect the right of the people who elected him and build up the democracy so that democratic development and economic development can go hand in had,” she said.

Clinton said she hoped to see, “in the not-too-distant future,” a democratic Cuba, which she said would be extraordinarily positive for the Hemisphere.

Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill Draws Evangelical Opposition

CHRISTIANPOST

A Ugandan legislator who proposed the highly contested Anti-Homosexuality Bill insists the measure is being misconstrued.

“There has been a distortion in the media that we are providing death for gays. That is not true,” ruling party MP David Bahati said on BBC. “When a homosexual defiles a kid of less than 18 years old, we are providing a penalty for this.”

The bill, which is currently being debated by a parliamentary committee, has drawn global attention from gay rights advocates and religious leaders alike, many of whom are condemning the legislation for promoting hatred and handing down severe penalties against homosexuals and their family, friends, and even pastors. Punishments range from a fine and a three-year imprisonment to life imprisonment and the death penalty.

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda and can be punished with life imprisonment. But the anti-homosexuality legislation was designed to “fill the gaps” in the provisions of existing laws and “strengthen the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family.”

Bahati told BBC that homosexuality is neither a human right nor is it in-born.

“It is a behavior learned and it can be unlearned,” he said on BBC.

Some religious leaders in Uganda are backing the legislation, but many more within and outside the country are gravely concerned.

“Regardless of the diverse theological views of our religious traditions regarding the morality of homosexuality, in our churches, communities and families, we seek to embrace our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as God’s children worthy of respect and love,” said a group of U.S. Catholic, evangelical and mainline Protestant leaders, in a statement Monday.

Most recently, on Thursday, evangelical Pastor Rick Warren released a video to Ugandan pastors detailing his opposition to the bill and correcting media reports that state otherwise.

As a pastor, he said it is not his role to interfere with the politics of other nations, he said it is his role to speak out on moral issues.

Warren called the Anti-Homosexuality bill “unjust, extreme and un-Christian” toward homosexuals.

“ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God,” said Warren, who works with pastors in Uganda on the “Purpose Driven” campaign and P.E.A.C.E. Plan.

Passing the bill would have “a chilling effect” on the HIV/AIDS ministry of churches in Uganda, the southern California pastor added. With the proposed legislation threatening to penalize those who provide counseling to someone struggling with their sexuality and work with people infected with HIV/AIDS and who do not report the homosexual within 24 hours of knowledge, fewer people who are HIV positive will seek care from the churches out of fear of being reported.

“You and I know that the churches of Uganda are the truly caring communities where people receive hope and help, not condemnation,” the megachurch pastor said in his video message.

While affirming that marriage is intended to be between one man and one woman and that all sex outside of marriage is not what God intends, Warren also stressed, “Jesus also taught us that the greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. Since God created all, and Jesus suffered and died for all, then we are to treat all with respect.

“The Great Commandment has been the centerpiece of my life and ministry for over 35 years.”

According to Bloomberg, a refined version of the bill is expected to be presented to Parliament in two weeks. Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, minister of Uganda for Ethics and Integrity, told Bloomberg that the draft bill will drop the death penalty and life imprisonment for gays.

Before the changes, which have not yet been made, the measure stated that persons who commit the offense of “aggravated homosexuality” – where the offense is committed against those below the age of 18 and where the offender is living with HIV – shall be liable on conviction to suffer death and to imprisonment for life. Another provision nullifies international treaties, protocols, and declarations that are “contradictory to the spirit and provisions enshrined in this act.”

Obama’s target: Ousting baby Jesus

WND

White House guest: President planned to break tradition with ‘non-religious Christmas‘

Traditional White House crèche

The Obama administration sought to ban baby Jesus from the executive mansion as part of its plans for a “non-religious Christmas,” according to a participant at a White House luncheon.

In its Dec. 4 issue, the New York Times published an article highlighting accomplishments of Desirée Rogers, the new White House social secretary.

Rogers, a woman who markets what she refers to as the “Obama brand,” is responsible for every event that takes place in the White House.

“Her job is to carry out the vision of the president and first lady, and to make their social events reflect their sensibilities,” the Times reported.

As part of that mission, a participant at a White House luncheon for former social secretaries said Rogers announced that the Obamas were planning a “non-religious Christmas.”

The Times called the announcement “hardly a surprising idea for an administration making a special effort to reach out to other faiths.”

The luncheon conversation purportedly shifted to whether the Obamas planned to display the traditional 18th century White House crèche. Since 1967, past administrations had featured the nativity scene as a centerpiece of the East Room. It was donated to the White House more than four decades ago and made in Naples, Italy, of terra cotta and carved wood.

The participant said Rogers announced the president “did not intend to put the manger scene on display – a remark that drew an audible gasp from the tight-knit social secretary sisterhood,” the Times reported.

“What do we want the personality and the tone of the experience to be?” Rogers asked in an interview this year, explaining the Obamas’ philosophy.

“We want it to be inclusive, diverse, representative of all Americans, celebratory, authentic,” Rogers said. “So you sit and you say, O.K., how can we make this event,” she paused, “Obama-tized.”

However, the newspaper notes that “tradition won out,” as the crèche is now in its usual East Room location.

Rogers helped plan an Easter Egg Roll at the White House earlier this year, allocating tickets to at least 100 families with homosexual parents as part of the administration’s plan for increased diversity.

However, as the Jerusalem Post reported, the Obama White House slashed the guest list for the annual White House Hanukkah party in half this year, from 800 to 400. Officials claimed it was due to cost concerns.

Eric Metaxes, former editor of the Record at Yale University, reacted to the news about the crèche in his Fox News commentary this week.

“If President Obama wanted to fuel the fears of every serious Christian in America and actually prove that he is every bad thing they’ve ever heard about him on every crazy Web site, the idea of symbolically taking Jesus out of the White House at Christmas would be just the ticket!” he wrote.

“Let’s face it: ‘Brand Obama’ dodged a bullet by not going forward with this terrible idea, but only barely dodged it. After all, the facts of the story are right there in the New York Times for all to see.”

World’s tallest building, Burj Dubai Tower, opens as a golden era closes

CSMonitor

Dubai Tower opens next month. But will this crowning jewel also be the city’s high watermark?

Burj Dubai, or Dubai Tower, will be the world's tallest building.

By Chris Gaylord

Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest tower, is a spire of superlatives.

The 160-story skyscraper will open on January 4, the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum’s rule in Dubai.

Under the Sheikh, Dubai has seen a boom in record breakers, impressive firsts, and baffling spectacles. For example, the city is or will be home to the world’s first refrigerated beach, a twirling tower, the world’s largest arch-supported bridge, and artificial islands in the shape of the world map.

And Burj Dubai boasts more surprising bullet points than simply being the world’s tallest tower:

• At 2,700 feet tall, the skyscraper can be seen from 10 miles away.

• The building will sport the fastest elevators in the world, traveling at 10 meters per second (22 miles per hour). They will also be double-decker elevators, with each deck supporting up to 21 people.

• To keep out the desert heat, 10,000 tons of coolant with flow through the tower every hour.

• 230,000 cubic meters of concrete form the building’s core, enough to pave 1,180 miles of sidewalk.

• Dubai Tower will be the highlight of the worlds’ largest indoor shopping center, with space for 1,200 shops nestled among 30,000 apartments.

But Dubai is a very different place this month than it was in 2004 when construction began on the tower. As AFP reports:

Plunging property prices and weak demand had already put a dampener on new schemes even before last week’s shock announcement by state-owned giant Dubai World that it wants to halt debt payments for six months.

“It’s not exactly going to improve investor confidence,” said Matthew Green, associate director at property agency CB Richard Ellis, which has reported a 55 percent year-on-year drop in downtown Dubai commercial rental rates and a 67 percent fall outside the centre.

Millions of Avast users infected

THE BIGGEST BLUNDER IN HISTORY

Avast, one of the leading security software provider based on Prague with 75 million users on Thursay 3/12/2009 released a VPS update 091203-0 which started flagging hundreds of innocent files of high profile products like Adobe, sound card drivers and even other security programs like IObit Security 360 and Malwarebytes as a ‘ Win32:Delf-MZG ‘ Trojan or ‘ Win32:Zbot-MKK’.

However, the company managed to hide this issue from the main stream and at at 5:50 AM GMT , another VPS update 091203-1 was released, fixing the issue.

Hordes of users had their programs deleted and many of them had to format their PCs.

Many millions of users are still unaware that their files and programs were not really infected by a Trojan but by Avast itself.

Users are advised to update their defenitions as quickly as possible and visit http://support.avast.com

We at ‘Early Today’ were also affected

We are reinstalling Windows itself as a result

This is the biggest blunder in the history of security softwares

Another 5 Chinese Megachurch Leaders Sentenced

CHRISTIANPOST

Another five leaders of the Chinese megachurch whose pastor was recently sentenced to prison have been ordered to be re-educated through labor camps, a U.S. human rights group reported.

Just days after a Chinese court sentenced Pastor Wang Xiaoguang of Linfen Fushan Church in Linfen, northern Shanxi province to three years in prison and handed out three- to seven-year jail sentences to four other church leaders, ChinaAid Association learned that five more church leaders were each sentenced to two years in labor camps.

The sentences were reportedly given arbitrarily by the public security bureau without a proper court trial.

“To arbitrarily send five innocent citizens to labor camps is in direct violation against the international human rights covenants and norms the Chinese government has signed and even ratified,” said Bob Fu, president of CAA, in a statement. “This case shows the Chinese government is determined to be on the wrong side of history by clenching its power with suppressing the basic freedom of religion and conscience for Chinese citizens. We call upon the international community to hold these rights abusers accountable.”

Among the five Christian leaders is Yang Caizhen, whose husband Pastor Yang Xuan had received a three-year jail sentence by the court on Nov. 25. Yang Caizhen was reportedly severely beaten during interrogation, a witness told the Texas-based rights group. One of her front teeth is said to have been knocked out during the beating. She is reportedly fasting and praying during her detention and in very fragile condition.

CAA learned about the most recent sentences of Fushan church leaders on Nov 30, but it reportedly took effect from Nov. 11 when all the leaders were already detained.

The rights group said it confirmed the reality of the sentences with individual family members of three of the five church leaders. The other two members’ sentences were confirmed indirectly by Fushan church leaders.

In the latest sentences, the members were charged with “gathering people to disturb the public order” based on when they organized a 1,000 people prayer rally on Sept. 14 – the day after hundreds of people dressed as security force had raided and demolished 17 church buildings and injured more than 30 believers on the church campus.

The 50,000-member Fushan Church was raided on Sept. 13, by reportedly 400 people. Men tore at the building’s foundation with shovels as bulldozers worked to level other buildings on the site. Church members sleeping at the construction site of the new church building were attacked with bricks and other objects, according to CAA. Several members were severely injured and were sent to the emergency room, and some members were unconscious.

The attack is said to be the worst crackdown against a house church in the past decade.

After the attack, Yang Rongli, the wife of the church pastor, was leading a group of church members to Beijing to protest the destruction of the church when she was arrested and detained. Out of the ten church leaders who were given sentences, Yang was given the heaviest sentence of seven years in prison. She is accused of “illegal land occupation” and “assembling a crowd to disrupt public order.”

Yang and her husband, Pastor Wang, have led the Fushan Church for more than 30 years. During a break at their trial, they were said to have encouraged their son to stand firm in his faith in Christ despite thepersecution.

ChinaAid is urging people to contact authorizes in Linfen as well as the Chinese embassy in the United States to urge that the Fushan church prisoners be released.