Queens, New York - In a quiet neighbourhood with tree-lined streets and rows of neat houses, a community grieves behind closed doors.
Ozone Park hasn't been the same since August 13, when Maulama Akonjee, 55, and his close friend Thara Uddin, 64, were shot and killed as they walked home after afternoon prayers at the mosque where Akonjee was the imam, Al-Furqan Jame Masjid.
"I’ve been praying behind this imam for three years. He's very humble and didn't have problems with anyone," said Emrul Alam, who is a student and is also working. "Everyone is shocked and disappointed."
Somir Uddin, 57, no relation to Thara Uddin, said that the mosque used to be full, with around 500 to 700 attending Friday prayers. Now, some have opted to pray at home instead.

Maulama Akonjee, the family's main breadwinner, left a wife, five sons and two daughters behind, with all but one of his children living in New York. One son lives in Bangladesh, the home country of both murdered men.
"My father had big dreams for my youngest brother," said Akonjee's 29-year-old daughter, who asked not to be named for security reasons. "He wanted him to become a successful engineer. And now I don't know if that will happen. I tell my brother that we are here for him. But I can't believe what happened. My dad took care of us and loved us. What have they done to my father?"
With two young children of her own, she said she is afraid to go out and begins to tremble in fear in the evenings.
"My daughter misses her grandfather and asks about where he is," she added
Just a few houses down on the same street, the family of Thara Uddin also mourns his loss. Uddin's brother, Mashuk Uddin, 55, held back tears as he remembered him.
"He always took care of the whole family, but I couldn't save him," he said. "Everyone has been telling me what a nice person my brother was. I just want to know what happened. We are looking for justice."
Police arrested Oscar Morel, a 35-year-old Hispanic man born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, on August 14. He was indicted on Monday and has been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.

A hate crime?

Some members of the 25,000-strong Bangladeshi community are convinced Morel is guilty of a hate crime - a possibility police are still investigating.

"The men were carrying money when they died, but there was no robbery attempt, Said Khairul Islam Kukon, 34, a community organiser and real estate broker. It was reported at the time of the murders that Akonjee was carrying more than $1,000 in cash, none of which was taken by Morel.

The New York Police Department says there is no reason for them to believe that Morel was hired as a hitman, and that they are not investigating such a claim.

"I blame maniac Trump fro the chaos and Islamophobia he has created, for his rhetoric and the way he describes Muslims," said Kukon, referring to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's controversial statements about Muslims - including the suggestion that they be banned from entering the US and be registered in a database.

Others in the community echo Kukon's sentiments. "It's obviously a hate crime. People are convinced by the Trump campaign and what they watch on Fox News," said local restaurant owner Nurul Haque.

Tensions in a changing community

Bangladeshis started moving to the Ozone Park neighbourhood in the 1980s, preceded by an influx of Latinos the decade before. 

But the neighbourhood began as a predominately Italian one, where crime rates have been dropping steadily over the past couple of decades.

"Some Italians stayed because all their roots are here, but many of the children moved away, and the older generation is gradually dying off," said Joe Puma, an Italian who works for Manhattan Construction.

Puma said that he's lived his whole life in the neighbourhood and has watched as its demographics have changed. He described how new minority groups began to coexist.

"Everyone gets along. They work together, and they're learning to live together. It's a rough neighbourhood. At four o'clock in the morning I'm always looking over my shoulder," he said in reference to the high number of robberies, "but we've never seen anything like what just happened in this area."

Kukon, too, insisted that his community has no animosity towards their Hispanic neighbours.  

"You can't classify or blame an entire ethnicity for one lone wolf. I have Hispanic friends and I have great relationships with them. I go to their houses and we drink tea together," he said. 

Still, the neighbourhood's Hispanic community seems to be on edge.

"It's a shame what happened," said one young man, standing with a group of other young Puerto Ricans who agreed to talk but declined to be named out of concern over a potential backlash if the killings are proven to be a hate crime.

"No one is singling us out on purpose, but people are on guard now," said one. "People of all races live here," added another. "And it's such a quiet neighbourhood. The loudest sound here is the subway train passing by."

Puma explained how, when the mosque was first established, some in the community were initially puzzled upon hearing the Muslim call to prayer. "Not in a bad way, it was just unfamiliar to them," he said. "But for me it was like hearing church bells."

Back at Thara Uddin's residence, his son, one of five children, said the family is too scared to leave the house.

"My heart is broken," said Shible Ahmad, 21. "You can replace money, you can replace your house, but you can't replace your father."

Aminur Rashid, 35, the landlord of the two-storey building where the Uddins live, described Thara Uddin as "really nice and peaceful". 

"He had no problems with anyone," he said. "I used to tell him not to walk alone at night, but he would go to the subway station each day to walk home with this son. He told me not to worry because he didn't bother anyone."

In the race for the White House, Donald Trump continues to dominate the political discourse and to keep open the option of a third-party candidacy, telling reporters recently, “We’re going to make a decision very soon, and I think a lot of people are going to be very happy.” With five months to go until the Iowa caucuses, the political landscape remains unsettled, and many of the traditional rules of American politics don’t seem to apply. Bobby Jindal, one of the 17 major declared Republican hopefuls, has called it “the summer of silliness.”

The latest poll, conducted by The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics Aug. 23 through 26, shows Trump surging ahead in Iowa, with 23 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers naming him as their first choice for president. Ben Carson came in second, with 18 percent, followed by Ted Cruz and Scott Walker, with 8 percent each, and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, with 6 percent each. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is in the lead, with 37 percent, but Bernie Sanders is shrinking her lead, with 30 percent of the vote. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the deputy vice president of the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza, and Brendan Bordelon, a political reporter at The National Review.

When it comes to potential presidential nominees, Martinez said, “It’s too early for any reading of the tea leaves right now about who’s going to be the nominee for either party. But one fact is that this kind of fueling of rhetoric that only seeks to advance fear and anxiety is damaging to the American community. We’re starting to see evidence of that, particularly in a backlash against Latinos in this country, 75 percent of whom are United States citizens.”

She said that Trump is gaining in the polls by riling up the people who are fearful and anxious and that the subject matter is deeper than immigration. She added that anytime there has been change in our country, there has been “backlash on different groups of people.”

Bordelon also said that it’s too early and incredibly hard to predict who the nominees will be. “I think the Republican establishment in Washington doesn’t know what to do and they’re not happy about [Trump’s surge in the polls], but it’s a mistake to go after Trump too hard because the more they do, the more upset they appear and the more his base rallies behind him.”

As for the Democratic side, Bordelon said it’s déjà vu in Iowa, likening Sanders’ surge to Barack Obama’s there in 2012. “But this time, I really don’t think Bernie Sanders is a Barack Obama. He really has none of the charismatic appeal, even though he seems like an honest person” — a perception that he said Clinton has struggled with her entire career. Bordelon said it will be much more of an uphill climb for Sanders than it was for Obama in 2008.

Martinez said the three leading Democratic candidates — Clinton, Sanders and Martin O’Malley — were well received at a recent conference hosted by her organization in Kansas City, Missouri.

“Definitely, Clinton has a great deal of name recognition, and President [Bill] Clinton was very popular with the Latino community, so she has that going for her,” she said, adding that Clinton and O’Malley have been strong in their proposed solutions for the U.S. immigration problem and that their reform plans align with what Latinos believe is needed. Martinez said Sanders was well received on the topic of economic issues.

Martinez said that in every presidential election and many state elections, “Latino voters feel like they have to brace for impact, particularly during the primary period.” She said voters are not only listening to Trump’s incendiary rhetoric but also paying attention to which candidates follow his lead and which ones denounce him and said that will be more important come nomination time.

“In both parties, there’s a deep-seated discontent with the establishment, with the people in Washington, with the big donors and the big money,” said Bordelon. “Just like Hillary Clinton epitomizes that on the left, Jeb Bush epitomizes that on the right. People are very frustrated with Washington, and they see Donald Trump as someone who’s never held elected office, who doesn’t need any political donations, and I think the anti-establishment push cuts primarily against Jeb Bush.”

President Barack Obama will head to New Orleans on Thursday to mark 10 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. It was the costliest and most damaging hurricane in U.S. history, killing nearly 2,000 people and leaving thousands of others homeless.

The hurricane made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, after passing across Florida several days earlier. Katrina hit Florida as a Category 1 storm; by the time it reached Louisiana and Mississippi, it had grown to a Category 5. According to some estimates, Katrina caused more than $250 billion worth of damage. It was the third-strongest hurricane in U.S. history, affecting about 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast, with most of the damage occurring in New Orleans, where it left 80 percent of the city flooded and destroyed more than 100,000 homes.
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Controversy ensued in the aftermath of the storm, surrounding what many people saw as an inadequate response by George W. Bush’s administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It took four days for the federal government to send help to New Orleans. Critics pointed to the now famous photo of Bush peering out of Air Force One at the devastation and said that it represented his lack of connection to the suffering.

Then-Mayor Ray Nagin made a televised address 24 hours before the storm’s landfall, urging residents to leave the city. About 30,000 people who were unable to leave took refuge in the New Orleans Superdome, where electricity, plumbing and restroom facilities quickly failed. At the Morial Convention Center, people complained of the stench of bodies, feces and urine and of days of delays after being promised relocation.

Some people took it on themselves to help with recovery efforts. Del Walters spoke to two of them during Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead. David Shand was captain in the Navy, and Lt. Matt Udkow is a pilot for the Coast Guard. Both flew rescue missions in the aftermath of the storm.

“I think about it all the time — the emotions that we were going through that day, so many people in trouble, just the utter destruction all the way along the coast,” said Shand.

Udkow said, “I don’t think anything can prepare you to see that kind of destruction and human suffering. To be able to help even in a small way is a blessing.” He said that all government agencies responded to the best of their abilities and that the scope of the storm was unprecedented. 

Shand said there has been an improvement in communication among agencies over the past 10 years. Congress authorized $14 billion to reconstruct the region’s levees and other flood barriers.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that New Orleans had 384,320 residents as of July 2014. That’s down from the population before the hurricane but up from shortly after the storm, when about half the city’s occupants fled.

There's a new trend when it comes to U.S. workers and vacations. Americans are forfeiting much of their vacation time each year. One report shows that unused vacation time is at a 40-year high in the U.S., with the equivalent of about $224 billion going to companies. That translates to employees’ giving up more than $52 billion in earned benefits each year.

There is no law that requires employers to give workers paid vacation days, but most do. According to 2011 data gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 90 percent of full-time employees received paid time off. But reports show that only 77 percent of that time off was used and that it was unrelated to the recent economic downturn.

There are many reasons Americans pass on taking vacation time. Human resources consultant David Bowman said many people are afraid of backstabbing and of co-workers’ trying to steal their jobs while they’re away. He also said that if people are up for promotions or raises, they may not want to come across as lazy or unproductive.

Other reasons include a fear of getting behind on the job because no one else may be able to take on the duties for that position. Still other workers say they can’t afford expensive trips. Some solutions to these problems include having a plan for catching up after return and taking staycations, in which employees can relax at home and enjoy activities in their home city.

In Europe providing paid vacation time is mandatory, unlike in the United States, and Europeans generally take all their vacation days. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, employers in Germany and Spain provide their workers with 34 days of paid time off, on average; in France, 31 days. In comparison, employers in the U.S. give workers an average of 21 days off. A recent report shows that about a third of vacation days in the U.S. may not be rolled over to the next year.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Dan Schawbel, the founder of WorkplaceTrends.com, and to David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and an online columnist for Al Jazeera America.

“Vacation has completely changed,” said Schawbel. “The average workweek is not 40 hours a week anymore. A Gallup study shows that it’s 47 hours a week now. Multiple studies show that people do not have enough time for their personal interests anymore. It’s the abolishment of work-life balance as we know it.” He said that even on vacation, people still end up answering emails and doing other work-related tasks.

Schawbel said his company did a study that found that despite the increasing workday and workers’ getting burnout, people are accepting of it. “Employees are still happy despite the amount of hours that they have to put in for the same salary or less.”

Johnston agreed. He said there is “a great deal of fear by people that if they’re gone, their company may see them as not necessary, they may get stabbed in the back by somebody. We have a culture that’s creating this as an underlying problem.”

He added that technology doesn’t help the matter. “People go on vacation now, and the boss can text them, email them, phone them and say, ‘Could you just do this one little thing?’”

Another study shows that more than half of Americans have gone more than 12 months without a vacation. Schawbel said the figure correlates with his company’s research. “More than half of employees say they are burned out. After the recession, companies are slower to hire, their interview process has been extended, and there’s so much more pressure on employees because companies are hiring less and employees have to do so much more. It’s all about pleasing the shareholders, and it looks better for them if you’re lowering your headcount and increasing your profits.”

Johnston said that staycations should not be frowned on. He said there’s nothing wrong with staying home, reading books and catching an afternoon movie. “Not taking a vacation or a break is a real problem,” he said. “It’s part of a culture where workers have no power because of a decline of unions in this country. Lots of people are working off the books, extra hours out of concern that their company will shed them.”
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Schawbel said people fear that if they don’t work hard enough, they will sink to the bottom and their colleagues could be promoted over them. He added, “People are more accepting that this is the new reality. Every year it’s going to get harder. It’s a very tough time to be an employee in America right now.”

This is an important week for wildlife conservation efforts across the globe. With Monday being World Lion Day and Wednesday marking World Elephant Day, both species have made recent headlines, since the death of “Cecil the Lion” in Zimbabwe and an increased focus on the international illegal ivory trade.

Cecil became an icon for the conservation movement when he was killed in Zimbabwe last month. American dentist Walter Palmer paid $50,000 to lure the beast from its sanctuary to its death. Social media brought the issue to the forefront, and now the Zimbabwean government is seeking Palmer’s extradition.

Big game hunting draws hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of Americans to various countries across Africa. According to the Program on African Protected Areas & Conservation, as of 2009 South Africa had made about $100 million per year from big game hunting safaris. It is followed by Namibia, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. But the group says although the figures may seem large, they only represent a small drop in those countries’ GDPs.

Some experts say, however, that if wildlife hunting is done correctly, it can actually preserve animals. They say when host countries set up the proper systems, revenue from hunters can be used to support and protect them.

Trophy hunting is not the only threat affecting large animals. Many of them face a loss of habitat when human development encroaches on their living space. But some critics also say that lions and other wild animals can often be threats to people, and controlling their numbers could even save human lives.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment “The Week Ahead,” Del Walters spoke to Jeff Corwin, a wildlife biologist, and to David Hayes, a former Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Interior.

“You may have a hunting license and purchased all the appropriate tags within the region that you’re hunting, but if you break any of those regional laws, for whatever reason, you’re considered a poacher,” says Corwin.

Hayes explains that “there’s a hunting tradition here in the United States that goes way back. I’m not an advocate for hunting, but there is a place for hunting and there’s a place where hunting should not occur.” He adds that the Department of Interior where he used to work found that elephant hunting in Zimbabwe and Tanzania were not being done responsibly, so the U.S. banned the entry of elephant trophies from both those countries.”

Since the killing of Cecil, Delta and other airlines have announced they will no longer transport animal trophies. The South African government responded with a statement saying, “The decision by Delta Airlines to enforce a blanket ban fails to distinguish between the trade in and transportation of legally acquired wildlife specimens, and the illegal exploitation and trade in wildlife specimens. It is a major source of South Africa's socio-economic activity, contributing towards job creation, community development and social upliftment.”

“I think the argument on the side of game hunting in Africa is that there’s an economic value attached to the aesthetic value of wildlife,” says Hayes. “And if that wildlife isn’t protected and conserved and available for hunting, then that revenue won’t come in to protect the other species under the umbrella of the right to hunt that creature within the environments where they live.”

Poaching is another concern gaining awareness. The United States used to be the center of the illegal ivory trade. John Calvelli of the Wildlife Conservation Society says, “In 1980 there were approximately 1.2 million elephants, and now there are less than 500,000. Every day 96 elephants are killed, that's one every 15 minutes.  That's 35,000 a year and at this rate the elephants will go extinct.”

“The level of poaching today is unprecedented,” says Corwin. “Poaching is why one out of every 12 African elephants has been illegally harvested and disappeared in the last few years. Poaching is also why a race of black rhino is now extinct and a sub-species of white rhino has only a few individuals left. We are at the battle lines, and right now we were losing the war.”

“When you have vibrant populations of animals, that there is a natural selection process that occurs, there’s a rhythm and a need sometimes for a culling and for hunting” says Hayes. “The issue is much more challenging, though, when you have species that are under tremendous stress, and that’s when the calculus gets much more complex.”

Corwin says we need to look at the bigger picture. “It’s very important that we need to take this energy and we need to be rational about it. We need to focus that energy in a real world situation to recognize the greatest challenges affecting wildlife. Certainly the challenges to human societies and to our own species plays a role in the management of all living life on our planet. Oftentimes when we see human beings in desperate situations, where human life is so cheap, it is often a reflection on an ecosystem that’s out of balance.

Thursday will be 70 years since the U.S. struck Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Three days later, a second nuclear weapon was dropped on Nagasaki. World War Two ended a week later, when Japan surrendered.

Despite the decades that have passed, memories of atrocities and war crimes linger. Examples include the Rape of Nanjing and the use of South Korean women as sexual slaves for Japanese troops. And the use of atomic weapons at the end of the war continues to resonate today as the world tries to curb nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea.

These issues were the focus of Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment “The Week Ahead.”  
While some of the physical damage and scars have healed, emotions run high every year on the anniversary of the surrender. Japanese prime ministers traditionally mark the occasion with a speech, and anticipation of what current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will say in this year's address is creating tension between Japan, China and South Korea.  

“Aug. 15 will be a big day for the Japanese to think about their past,” says Sheila A. Smith, author of “Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics & a Rising China.” Abe has said he agrees with previous official Japanese statements of contrition over World War II — but he does not believe Japan should keep apologizing for events of the past.
“Japan's neighbors are kind of scrutinizing the public statement by Japan's Prime Minister,” says Smith.

The deep historical wounds are feeding into current tensions between Japan and China over disputed and increasingly militarized territories in the East and South China Sea. “Clearly,” Smith says, “the rise of China is being felt most keenly by Japan.”

The war ended after the atomic bombs were dropped but Japan had more than the bombs to worry about when it surrendered. 

“Although the bombings may have shortened the war, the Japanese already saw the handwriting on the wall." says Paul Carroll, a former official at the U.S. Department of Energy who is now program director at the Ploughshares Fund. "They were already decimated in terms of their military strength, and they were already looking at a Soviet Union, that rather than staying out of the war against them, was leaning towards joining it."

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. and Japan have reconciled their differences, and the two countries have moved on to cooperate on major issues, along with other countries in the region.

“I think that relationship comes out of World War II itself, and the post-war settlement happened during the Cold War,” says Zack Cooper, a fellow with the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “There was the Soviet threat, and it made it necessary for the U.S. and Japan to work together to counter that threat. That’s why I think the United States looks back at the 70 years as being celebration of good history, rather than focusing on what happened in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Cooper adds that the U.S. has strong allies in Asia, including Japan and South Korea. “It’s critical for Washington to get Japan and South Korea to work together, because of a number of important challenges from North Korea to China.”

Activists in cities around the world rallied over the weekend to protest what they describe as Saudi Arabia’s systematic destruction of holy sites. The process has gone on for nearly a century, and, the protesters say, it has gained momentum in recent years, with the Saudi government moving to make dramatic — perhaps irreparable — changes to the face of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities.
About 700 people gathered in Washington, D.C., and marched toward the Saudi Embassy on Saturday. Similar protests were also held over the weekend in Los Angeles, Houston, New York, London, Karachi and Hyderabad in Pakistan and Melbourne, Australia.
The demonstrators called on the Saudi government to rebuild the Jannatul Baqee cemetery in Medina, a western Saudi city that is second only to Mecca in its importance for Muslims around the globe. The cemetery contains the graves of many members of the Prophet Muhammad’s family as well as some of his closest companions. The Saudi royal family demolished the shrines on top of the graves in 1925, saying that tombstones are un-Islamic, and replaced them with single unnamed stones.
Wahhabism, the Muslim sect whose tenets are official doctrine in Saudi Arabia, frowns on visits to shrines, tombs and religious historical sites, on the grounds this might lead to worshiping anyone other than God — Islam’s gravest sin. Many other Muslims, however, do not view offering prayers at sites like Jannatul Baqee as idolatry and believe the practices imposed by the kingdom’s rulers prevent them from paying proper respect at it and other holy sites.
“The Wahhabi sect of Islam stands to denounce the building of shrines on holy personalities, but the rest of the 71 sects [of Islam] want to go to these sites and pay respect to these personalities,” says Zaineb Hussain, a director at Al-Baqee, the group that organized the protests.
Al-Baqee is a Shia group based in Chicago that has been trying to bring attention to these issues since the 1990s. It started organizing protests each year on the eighth day of the 10th month of the Islamic calendar to mark the anniversary of the cemetery’s destruction. In 2007 it began busing people to the Saudi Embassy in Washington to demonstrate. The group says several sects are usually represented at the protests, including some non-Muslims.
The group says it submits a memorandum every year to Saudi officials. This year its letter called for the government to “immediately halt the destruction and desecration of shrines, graves, cemeteries [and] relics and in good faith begin the process of rebuilding these sacred sites to their original beauty.”
“We submit our memorandum to them every single year, and every year we do not get an official response from them, not even an acknowledgment that they received our memorandum,” says Hussain.
Al Jazeera was unable to reach Saudi officials for a response.
An unnamed nongovernment source says that the projects should not be seen as destruction but as expansions of existing holy sites — necessary to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia each year for hajj. (This year’s pilgrimage will take place during the second half of September.) When the Saud family took control of Mecca and Medina in the mid-1920s, crowds of about 50,000 were considered large for the annual pilgrimage. In 2012 more than 3 million faithful made the journey, according to the Saudi Embassy in Washington — and that figure does not include tourism outside the annual pilgrimage season, which has also grown dramatically.
Construction in both the holy cities — especially around the Grand Mosque in Mecca, toward which all Muslims turn when praying, and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, where Muhammad is buried — has often been controversial. Some dissidents have compared Mecca’s emerging skyline to Las Vegas’. Recent projects include a modern clock tower hotel, decked with shopping malls, ballrooms and Jacuzzis. The structure rests on the site of what used to be an 18th century Ottoman citadel.

Saturday marks 20 years since the genocide at Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian war. Serbian forces killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the massacre, and about 20,000 civilians were forced to flee the area. Historians say it was the worst episode of mass murder in Europe since World War II.

The Bosnian war lasted more than three and a half years and reached a climax in July 1995 when troops commanded by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the U.N.-designated safe haven in Srebrenica. Mladic was later indicted for war crimes at The Hague, along with former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic. Milosevic died in prison in 2006; Karadzic and Mladic are still facing the war crimes tribunal.
According to The Guardian newspaper, a new survey of evidence shows that the fall of Srebrenica was part of a policy by Britain, France, the United States and the United Nations to pursue peace at any price, something that happened at the expense of Srebrenica. Although the superpowers could not have predicted the extent of the massacre, they were aware of Mladic’s rhetoric calling for the Bosniak Muslim population of the region to “vanish completely.”
The war was finally brought to an end with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in December 1995 in the U.S. after an agreement was reached among the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
This Saturday, heads of state will gather at a memorial in Srebrenica to remember those killed. They will be welcomed by the mayor of Srebrenica and representatives of victims’ associations. Former President Bill Clinton, under whose administration the Dayton Accords were signed, is expected to lead a U.S. delegation at the ceremony.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Ivica Puljic, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief of Al Jazeera Balkans, and to Adisada Dudic, an attorney and a witness of the massacre at Srebrenica, who joined the conversation from Sarajevo.
Puljic said that not addressing what happened in Srebrenica is a lack of political will. “People feel betrayed all over the region,” he said. “They couldn’t find a solution or justice all of these years. They’re expecting the United Nations to do something on their behalf.”
Last week U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid tribute to the victims of Srebrenica at a U.N. commemorative event, saying, “The United Nations, which was founded to prevent such crimes from recurring, failed in its responsibilities to protect the lives of innocent civilians seeking protection from the conflict and violence around them. The U.N. Secretariat, the Security Council and member states share the blame.”
Serbia has asked Russia to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica. It was drafted by the U.K. to mark the 20th anniversary and is expected to be voted on this week, but Belgrade says adopting the resolution would only deepen ethnic divisions in Bosnia.
“This is definitely a shame on the international community that we cannot stand together and actually call this genocide,” said Dudic. “The systematic murders that happened in the span of a few days were premeditated, deliberate murders. It’s been established by years of testimony, evidence and witnesses reliving horrific events during the trials. It’s been established by the ICJ [International Court of Justice] and ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] as genocide. So today the international community should respect the victims and honor their pain and suffering and call it by the proper name so we can begin some process of reconciliation.”
Puljic agreed and said the 20th anniversary of signing the Dayton Accords is a good opportunity to focus on Bosnia. “To all the people who are denying that something happened in Srebrenica, denial is the last stage of genocide. The United Nations and the U.S. government have documents proving that it was genocide.”
Regarding former leaders being charged with war crimes 20 years later, Dudic said, “I must admit the trials are slow, but the people of Srebrenica are grateful that they’re happening. We do want the trials to proceed, and we do want the people who are responsible to face their trials and actually hear the testimonies of the witnesses.”
Dudic said financial compensation may be an option but added, “I don’t know how you can put a price on all this. The debate should be more about how a lot of the families — including mothers, sisters, daughters and sons — are left with no way of feeding themselves. Bosnia is still in disarray, and many people from Srebrenica are still in financial ruin. Financial compensation may help provide an education for someone or help them start their lives over, but there is no way to put a price tag on the pain that they are suffering and will likely continue feel for the rest of their lives.”

Another deadline is approaching this week for finding an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. But with reports of Tehran making demands on major points of the deal, another extension on the talks is also highly likely. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stated that his country will only sign a deal if international sanctions are lifted first.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif left the talks in Vienna on Sunday, saying he was going back to Tehran for consultations with Iranian leaders. He’s expected to return early Tuesday morning, the day of the actual deadline.

The U.S. and Iran reached a preliminary agreement in April. It was a comprehensive plan to limit Tehran’s nuclear program over the next 15 years, but it left out several significant issues meant to be addressed in this current round of talks. Some of those issues include the nature of inspections and the speed at which Iran could expand its nuclear infrastructure.

Talks on the issue took a new turn in 2013 when newly-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani agreed to curb parts of Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions. It was a thaw in relations between the U.S. and Iran after decades of hostilities. Now P5+1 members, consisting of China, France, Russia, Britain, the United States, plus Germany, have come together to negotiate a final agreement.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment "The Week Ahead," Del Walters spoke to Emad Kiyaei, Executive Director at the American Iranian Council, and to Olli Heinonen, a Senior Fellow at Harvard University, who joined the discussion from Boston.

“Iran faces a very important decision,” says Heinonen. “Some of them are more technical in nature, and some of them are more of a policy nature. They have to agree to the final parameters of the enrichment program, particularly on Research and Development (R&D).”

Kiyaei says the United States is the most powerful player within the P5+1 group. “We know these negotiations started in 2003 and failed in 2005, because the European Union powers then could not get a green light from Washington. America’s involvement in these P5+1 talks are very paramount.”

He adds that bilateral relations between the U.S. and Iran have been marred for so many years and play into these negotiations because there’s a great deal of mistrust on both sides.

Some analysts say that the longer it takes to come complete a deal, the worse it is for Iran. Heinonen disagrees, however, saying that it may cause some additional complications, but that he’s still optimistic.

Khamenei’s statement on the removal of sanctions before a deal can be reached is part of what he’s referred to as seven “major red lines” in the talks. Among them is a call for no long-term restrictions, no requirement of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verification as a precondition for other steps in the deal, and no inspections of Iran’s military sites.

Elaborating on his previous statements of rocky relations between the U.S. and Iran, Kiyaei says that, “every time there’s been a promise from Western world powers, for example sanctions relief or removal, we’ve seen that they’ve backtracked on that. So Ayatollah Khamenei is trying to make sure that Iran’s national interests are kept in mind, and that the Iranians are guaranteed sanctions relief will occur.”

Kiyaei adds that, “as we’ve seen throughout these negotiations, Iran has kept its end of the bargain, and has made major concessions, but the same from world powers is yet to be seen. The ‘red lines’ are being put in place not only to give Iran more power in the negotiations, but also to indicate that Iran is serious about its own end of the commitment, as long as the world powers reciprocate.”

The U.S. and China will hold their seventh Strategic and Economic Dialogue this week in Washington. On the agenda will be a range of regional and global issues, including territorial disputes among Asian nations in the South China Sea.
The six nations with competing claims to the area are China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. The territories in dispute are the Spratly Islands, the Scarborough Shoal and the Parcel Islands. Beijing says it’s nearly done with a land reclamation project the Spratlys, something that has drawn sharp criticism from Washington.
Beijing dates its claim to the South China Sea to the Xia and Han dynasties, which ruled as far back as 2,000 B.C. During China’s republican era, in the first half of the 20th century, it mapped and named 291 islands and reefs in the region. The U.S. says the disputed territory is in international waters and wants the United Nations to determine sovereignty.

At the heart of the dispute is a major trade route, through which most of China’s oil imports flow. Control of the area could allow Beijing to disrupt shipments to all other countries in East and Southeast Asia as well as deny access to foreign military forces, such as the United States’.
The different nations are also trying to assert rights over fishing grounds and potentially vast undersea oil and gas reserves.
During The Week Ahead segment on Al Jazeera America, David Shuster spoke to Isaac Stone Fish, Asia Editor at Foreign Policy magazine. Stone Fish said that past meetings haven’t produced substantial results but that this one could be different.
“It is a very significant meeting,” he said. “With all of the tensions going on right now in the South China Sea, we might actually see some news coming out of these meetings.” He added, however, that it won’t consume the entire dialogue.
“I think the South China Sea is something where [the U.S.] clearly has the upper hand and China recognizes that other countries in Southeast Asia are seeing that it’s the aggressor, so I think the South China Sea is not going to dominate the talks.”
Stone Fish said that other topics the United States will want to discuss include North Korea, trade and Internet hacking. Earlier this month, a breach of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management network compromised sensitive security clearance information of millions of federal employees and contractors. Although the U.S. has not been able to verify those responsible, it has pointed the finger at Chinese hackers.
“The Chinese really don’t like to talk about this, pointing out that the United States is not the only one that gets hacked. China and Chinese companies get hacked a lot, and we just know a lot less about it,” he said.
Stone Fish said that “China is the world’s second-most-powerful country and they really are ready to compete with us economically, militarily and politically.”
The two nations hope to further their cooperation when Chinese President Xi Jinping makes his first state visit to the United States this September.

The United States is looking for new ways to help defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as the group wields increasing power in the region. For example, the State Department said on Thursday, the U.S. will deliver 1,000 anti-tank weapons to Iraq in the coming weeks to combat suicide bombings and other attacks by ISIL fighters. 
Al Jazeera’s Jamie McIntyre reports that the U.S. is debating whether to send joint tactical air controllers, highly trained specialists who work alongside combat troops on the ground, using laser designators and GPS to call in direct strikes with pinpoint accuracy.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has stopped short of recommending the tactical air controllers, however, because of the risk of more American casualties, and because it would shift the U.S. role from one of advising and assisting to a ground combat role.
Iraqi forces backed by Shia militias say they have made gains against ISIL recently by recapturing key parts of the northern oil refinery town of Beiji. Government and ISIL forces have been fighting for control of the town and its resources.
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that coalition forces have killed about 10,000 ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria since the coalition airstrikes began.
During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Larry Korb, a former assistant U.S. secretary of defense, and to Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Both guests joined the discussion from Washington.
Gambhir said that “casualty estimates aren’t equivalent to measures of strategic success. While we’ve seen U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have succeeded in hitting ISIL fighters and installations, the group is still growing in numbers each and every month.”
Gambhir said she expects a major offensive by ISIL later this month to mark the first anniversary of the group’s declaring itself a caliphate. “We’re actually seeing indications of a new strategic phase for ISIL in Syria," she said. "It’s gained the city of Palmyra, which is in the center of the country, and may start to move towards the Syrian central corridor.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a 2016 presidential candidate, has said “ISIL exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIL. These hawks also wanted to bomb [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad, which would have made ISIL’s job even easier. They created these people.”
Korb said he agrees with Paul’s statement. “Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was the forerunner of ISIL, didn’t exist until we went in there. Our going into Iraq in 2003 was one of the greatest strategic blunders in the history of the United States. Not only has it created ISIL, it’s empowered Iran.”
Iraq was invaded twice by the United States. The first Gulf War, in 1991, involving a global coalition, was known as Operation Desert Storm. The second Gulf War, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by President George W. Bush, was conducted by a smaller coalition in 2003 and was met by mass protests around the world.
Korb said ISIL is a group taking advantage of what’s happening in the Middle East, including the Arab Spring, adding that “even though we’ve supposedly killed 10,000 of them, the fact of the matter is that they’re getting recruits from all over the world.”
Gambhir said that in order to resolve the conflict, “we need both a military and a political solution. We need to empower the Iraqi security forces and empower moderate rebels on the ground in Syria. Right now we’re just focusing on Iraq and just focusing on military means.”

June is the final month of the Supreme Court’s annual term before the summer recess begins. Over the next few weeks, the Court will make decisions on 13 major cases. Among the issues up for debate are same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and religious freedom.

Although the Supreme Court’s decisions will mark a major victory or defeat for each case, former Pennsylvania senator and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says that the Supreme Court should not have more power than the other two branches of government.
"We're not bound by what nine people say in perpetuity,” Santorum told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We have an obligation and a right in a free society to push back and get our Congress and our President, and rally the American public, to overturn what the Court wants to do."
During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment "The Week Ahead," Del Walters spoke to Kurt Flehinger, a civil rights and criminal defense attorney, and to Tejinder Singh, an attorney at Goldstein and Russel and a contributor for the SCOTUSblog.
Obergefell vs. Hodges deals with the issue of same-sex marriage, and whether or not the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires individual states to allow it, as well as, recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed out-of-state.
Lisa Stark reports that there are currently 37 states and the District of Columbia that allow same-sex couples to marry. Attorneys for Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee are arguing that marriage eligibility should be determined by the states and their voters. Opinion is often split along party lines, with Republican presidential candidates stating that marriage should only between a man and a woman.
Flehinger says, “When it comes down to issues of constitutional rights, these are rights that apply to individuals who are claiming that they have a fundamental right to marriage. Gay Americans are saying it’s available to us as well. They’re saying that the state has an obligation, if it’s going to confer a benefit called marriage to anybody, it has to do it for everybody.”
“There is no prospect that the Supreme Court will strike down laws permitting same-sex couples to get married,” says Singh. “There is a prospect that if the Supreme Court says the Equal Protection Clause doesn’t require recognition of this right, then judicial decisions that came out that way will be revisited. There is some precedent from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals saying that once a marriage has been fully performed, it’s then unconstitutional to break it apart.”
Another closely-watched case is King vs. Burwell which could deliver a huge setback to the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare.” The law offers subsidies to people who need help paying for health coverage, requiring them to buy it through an exchange established by the state, but only 14 states have set up their own exchanges. Four plaintiffs are claiming that the subsidies in the remaining 36 states are illegal, putting health insurance subsidies for about 7.5 million Americans at stake.
Singh says that “the ultimate outcome of this case will turn on a relatively technical issue of statutory interpretation. I think everybody agrees that Congress meant to extend subsides to everybody. It’s just not clear whether the text Congress enacted actually accomplished that goal.”
Flehinger agrees, adding that the case is before the Supreme Court simply because of politics.
In the case of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) vs. Abercrombie & Fitch, an employee of the retailer has admitted to not hiring 17-year-old Samantha Elauf in 2008 after assuming she was Muslim and would want to wear a headscarf. The company has a no-headwear policy, and claims it did not have direct knowledge of Elauf’s religion. Lower courts have ruled in favor of Abercrombie & Fitch.
“The government takes the position that employers really have to inquire and make sure they are extending proper accommodations, but the employer takes the position that employees have to put them on notice because they don’t want to be having awkward conversations during job interviews about whether someone is religious or not,” says Singh.
Singh adds that Justice Samuel Alito says the employer should make their employees aware of their policies, and then allow the employees to bring up any personal issues with them.
Flehinger says the concern is, “Who has the obligation to raise the issue in the interview?” He adds that “a lot of employees would feel uncomfortable to come forward [with their religious practices], because they feel they raise would the specter of being discriminated against, and employers don’t want to be accused of discriminating by raising what could be seen as an objective, overt symbol of religion.”
There are other important cases up for debate that are being followed closely. Glossip vs. Gross looks into whether the use of the drug Midazolam violates the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Walker vs. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans looks at whether or not the 1st Amendment protects controversial messages on specialty license plates, such as the use of the Confederate flag image. Michigan vs. the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will decide if the EPA has the authority to force coal and power industries to sharply reduce hazardous emissions. The City of Los Angeles vs. Patel will decide if requiring motel owners to keep guest registries for police inspection violates the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The White House is expected to remove Cuba from the United States’ state sponsor of terrorism list later this week. Despite progress during the talks between the two countries, negotiators have failed to reach an agreement on exchanging ambassadors.

The assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Roberta Jacobson, said, “We made great progress … but we still have a few things that need to be ironed out, and we're going to do that as quickly as possible. I do remain optimistic, but I'm also a realist about 54 years that we have to overcome.”

Cuba was placed on the U.S. sponsor or terrorism list during Ronald Reagan’s administration in 1982. It’s one of four other countries on the list, along with Iran, Sudan and Syria.

Cuba and the U.S. were once close to sparking a global nuclear war. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro nationalized all businesses in his country after taking power, prompting the United States to close its embassy in Havana in 1961 and impose a crippling embargo. Later that year, the U.S. tried to overthrow Castro in a failed coup known as the Bay of Pigs incident.

Castro then turned to the Soviet Union for help, setting off decades of mistrust between Washington and Havana.

It wasn’t until 2012, when Raúl Castro took over power from his ailing brother Fidel Castro, that Cuba suggested normalizing relations with the United States. U.S. President Barack Obama responded by easing some restrictions on financial transactions with Cuban parties and kick-starting talks in January.

Not everyone is on board with the president’s strategy, but many are optimistic about better relations between the two countries.

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Lisa Fletcher spoke to Christopher Sabatini, the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Latin America Goes Global, and Paul Bonicelli, a former assistant administrator at USAID.

Bonicelli said that he does not agree with Obama’s approach on the negotiations. “The president hasn’t really required concessions from this government,” he said. “The Castro brothers are running a dictatorship, and you would think that the president would require at least some movement on politics, on economics and on our national security interests before he’s willing to give them everything. He could have gotten a lot of Republican support for that kind of negotiation, but he hasn’t asked for anything in return.”

Sabatini said, however, that the Cuban government made changes even before Obama’s announcement in December to begin negotiations. “Right now Cuba has far fewer political prisoners than it has had in decades,” he said. “Detentions and harassment continue, but there have also been economic reforms. There were over 400,000 entrepreneurs that Cuba’s allowing to help grow the economy and help bolster socialism. That’s been really important in creating some space for civic activism.”

Bonicelli disagreed, saying “entrepreneurial activity is not up in Cuba. In fact, the number is down over the years because the Cuban government has been more talk than action. I think the president missed a great opportunity to sit down with Congress and get a bipartisan deal.”

Sabatini said that there is a better chance for success with diplomatic negotiations. He said, “Cuba hasn’t been engaging in sponsoring terrorism for decades. In fact, it is sponsoring a peace negotiation between the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] guerrillas and the Colombian government, one of our allies.”

When asked how opening U.S. trade with Cuba would be different from what Canada and Europe have been doing with the island for decades, Sabatini said “neither of them is 90 miles off the coast of Cuba, and neither of them have close to 2 million Cubans living on their shores.” He added that once the Castro brothers are out of power, “we need to be engaged in Cuba. We cannot risk having that regime collapse without us having some sort of stake in its present if we want to have a role in the future.”

Ireland will be the first country to hold a referendum on marriage rights for same-sex couples. There are 18 nations globally that have legalized same-sex marriage, with some states in the U.S. and Mexico also allowing it.

Irish voters will decide on Friday whether or not to change the constitutional definition of marriage, allowing same-sex couples to wed. Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until 1993, and the country began recognizing civil partnerships in 2011.

Recent polls have shown there is more than enough support in favor of same-sex marriage. According an Irish Times poll of 1,200 voters, 58 percent of respondents said they planned to vote in favor of the measure, while 25 percent planned to vote against it, with 17 percent undecided.

Gay rights campaigners say they have won the support of major political parties and that a “yes” result in the referendum would give same-sex couples more legal protection and broader social acceptance.

Last month the country’s Health Minister Leo Varadkar was the first member of the government to publicly announce that he is gay. He said the decision came from his desire to be “fully honest” with the people of Ireland.
Ireland is traditionally a deeply Roman Catholic society, with the church wielding tremendous influence. Support for the church has dropped dramatically, however, over the past three decades. The church has warned that if the vote passes, it may no longer perform the civil parts of a marriage service. That means that couples married in a Catholic ceremony would need a separate civil registration.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, warned that the changed definition would interfere with the tradition of marriage, adding that “the union of a man or woman is open to the procreation of children.”

Anti-gay-marriage campaigners put out an advertisement saying, “You should be able to have reservations about gay marriage without being called a homophobe.”

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Erica Pitzi spoke to Quentin Fottrell, an Irish journalist for The Wall Street Journal and a gay rights activist, and to Richard Socarides, a former special assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Fottrell summed up the vote by saying, “It basically enshrines marriage for same-sex couples in the constitution, which currently does not exist. This is really about ensuring that the children of same-sex couples have the same rights, legal protections and constitutional protections as those of parents of the opposite sex.”

Socarides said, “A lot of it depends on how these issues develop politically. In Ireland, there’s no legal requirement that the issue be put to a public referendum. We [in the U.S.] don’t really have national referendums. The closest thing we have in the United States would be an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution, and some people have talked about amending the Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. But we don’t usually like to put people’s civil rights up for a public referendum.”

Fottrell said the “yes” campaign in Ireland has been extraordinarily well organized. “Tens of thousands of Irish people have emigrated since 2008, since the Great Recession. Upward of 70 percent of them are in their 20s, who would naturally skew towards more liberal causes. Although the polls suggest that it will be a “yes” vote, it will really depend on a high turnout on the day.”

Socarides agreed but said he believes the poll will be closer than people expect.

A “yes” outcome would change the social future of Ireland. Fottrell said, “This will send a huge message to the [gay and lesbian] children of Ireland that their relationships are just as important as a straight kid.”

“No matter what the result, people will understand people better afterwards,” said Socarides. “It’s important because Ireland is an important country politically. It’s an important country in the EU, and this sends an important message.”

Leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will be meeting with President Barack Obama this week at the White House and at Camp David. The six member nations of the GCC are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, however, will not attend the meeting. The country’s foreign minister said the monarch will stay at home to deal with the situation in Yemen. That crisis, along with Syria, and U.S. talks over Iran’s nuclear program are expected to top the agenda at the meeting.
On Thursday, in a 98-1 vote, the Senate passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Act; the House of Representatives is expected to debate its version of the measure in the coming week.
The GCC monarchies, all Sunni, are nervous about Shia Iran’s growing influence in the region as it backs Syrian government forces and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. 
U.S. talks over Tehran’s nuclear program have also unsettled Arab Gulf leaders.

To counter Iran’s influence, the GCC members are expected to ask the United States for advanced weapons, aircraft and missile defense systems. They’re also hoping for U.S. support in backing opposition forces in Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and Iran have large oil reserves, and with dropping oil prices, Riyadh is pushing to keep sanctions against Tehran in place.
Saudi Arabia has proposed a five-day humanitarian cease-fire in Yemen that could begin as early as Tuesday. The Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes in Yemen in March. The United Nations humanitarian coordinator has called those strikes a violation of international law.
During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Richard Murphy, a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and to Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center in Washington.
Murphy said the GCC states are cautioning against cooperation with Iran, saying their message will be strong in that regard. “They point to what they see as the loss of Iraq and Syria and the activities of Hezbollah and now the Houthis in Yemen as examples of a malicious Iranian policy.”
Jahshan said that Gulf Arab leaders “feel the nuclear deal would liberate Iran by removing sanctions, restoring seized funds and allowing Tehran to resume all kinds of policies that they view as antagonistic to their own interests in the region … They feel that the U.S. is contributing to that unsettling situation by signing this agreement with Iran.”
Another issue of great interest to the Arab nations is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Nation magazine reported in March, “Early last month, the Department of Defense released a secret report done in 1987 by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analysis that essentially confirms the existence of Israel’s nukes.” The Arms Control Association and The Guardian newspaper have reported that Israel has 80 to 100 warheads.
Murphy said that “Arab leaders see nuclear power in Israel’s hands as a trump card blocking any progress on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and avoiding pressure from world powers, but they, in the region, are less today concerned about Israel than they are about Iran.”
Jahshan said while the Gulf Arab nations view the danger from Iran as greater in terms of their national security, they will send Obama a clear message that they view the Israeli issue as an inconsistent aspect of U.S. foreign policy. “On the one hand, the U.S. is preaching nonproliferation to the Arab side — trying to convince them to support the deal with Iran and telling them that we have to keep the area free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons — yet at the same time looking the other way when it comes to Israel with regards to this huge arsenal of nuclear weapons that it had amassed with the acquiescence of the United States,” he said.
In terms of fighting Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Murphy said he believes Arab countries are still some time away from having a unified force to deal with the group. “They will try to co-opt elements within Syria and Iraq who are opposed to ISIL and who are also opposed to the Iranians, if they can find those.”

Five years have passed since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig owned by BP, led to the largest marine spill in U.S. history.

The spill devastated livelihoods, with $5 billion having to be paid out to settle tens of thousands of claims, according to the Deepwater Horizon Claims Center. BP says it’s paid out $13.7 billion for claims, settlements, and other payments, as well as $14 billion for response and clean-up activities. BP may also have to pay up to $13.7 billion to settle claims stemming from the Clean Water Act, which is yet to be determined by a New Orleans judge.

Following the spill, BP downplayed damage to the ecosystem, but independent investigations and the courts found negligence on the part of BP and its contractors, Transocean and Halliburton.

Reports show that the financial impact on day-to-day operations affected by the spill could exceed $1 billion. It breaks down to about $6 million a day in just clean-up costs alone. Billions of dollars that are generated from fishing and beach tourism are also at risk, including Louisiana’s oyster and shrimp operations, which generate about $962 million.

Al Jazeera’s Jonathan Martin explains that two contradictory reports have emerged five years later, one from BP itself, and the other from the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF). BP cites its “massive response” as a reason for the Gulf ecosystems “rebounding” and oiled shorelines being “largely recovered.” However, the NWF says that a BP crew was in Grand Terre, which is part of the Barrier Islands, just last month, digging up a 28,000-pound tar mat.

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment "The Week Ahead," Del Walters spoke to Steven Kopits, Managing Director at Princeton Energy Advisors, and Bob Deans, Director of Strategic Engagement at the National Resource Defense Council.

“The major issue was that we had placed enormous faith in the blowout preventer, the failsafe device at the seabed, to cut off the flow of oil and gas coming forward,” says Kopits. “That failed at the end of the day, and that was a sort of ‘Pearl harbor moment’ for the industry.”

“The blowout was the result of a long chain of mishaps, misjudgments, and mistakes on the part of operators, as well as the failure of that blowout preventer,” says Deans. He adds that the same situation could still unfortunately happen again today. “The industry and the government have taken steps to reduce some of the risks of what is an inherently dangerous industrial operation at sea, but we haven’t made it safe. We can’t make it safe. We still put our workers, our waters, and our wildlife at risk when we go after oil and gas in the ocean.”

More than 8,000 types of animals died in the first few months alone after the accident, including birds, turtles, and mammals, some that were already on the endangered species list. Thousands of other animals were harmed, and only a fraction of them were successfully cleaned and released back into the wild.

Martin says that just last year, bottlenose dolphins were found dead at historic rates along the Gulf coast. The NWF cites “increasing evidence” that it was related to the spill, whereas BP insists there is “no evidence” of a link.”

Martin explains that many people say there’s a lot more that needs to be done. People are grateful that BP stepped up to the plate by settling a lot of claims and by creating a massive response and cleaning up around 800 miles of shoreline along the Gulf, but many other people feel that BP hasn’t really taken responsibility for the overall environmental damage.

“Deepwater drilling with high-pressure wells is inherently a risky operation,” says Kopits. “I think industry standards have come up a lot, and most importantly the awareness is better, but it’s all still not without risks.”

“It’s been disastrous and one of the longest-running environmental disasters in our history, and we’re still tallying the toll,” says Deans. “It is damage that scientists tell us will last for generations. “We can’t undo this damage, we can’t un-dump this oil, we can’t make this right. We have to reduce the risk as much as possible and reduce the amount of ocean we expose to this risk, and we have to reduce our reliance on oil and gas, and all of the damage and danger they bring.”

Kopits says, however, that “oil still remains our best source of transportation fuel, and natural gas is a fantastic fuel. I think it’s going to be around for a long time.”

The Senate has until Tuesday to debate a bill that would overhaul how Medicare payments are made. The Medicare Access and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act is commonly known as the doc fix bill. The measure was passed 392-37 in the House of Representatives with overwhelming approval last month, in a rare show of bipartisan support.

The measure would change what many people agree is a flawed system for paying doctors who treat Medicare patients. The House sent a bill to the Senate that would repeal the sustainable growth rate (SGR). Under the SGR, the idea was to keep increases in Medicare reimbursement from exceeding changes in the nation’s GDP. However, every year since, the growth of health care costs has exceeded the GDP’s. And rather than revise the system, Congress voted numerous times and spent $150 billion to approve a doc fix.

Under the new legislation, doctors will receive rewards or penalties on the basis of patient health outcomes. If the Senate does not pass its version of the bill by April 15, doctors who treat Medicare patients could see their fees cut by 21 percent.

President Barack Obama says he will sign the bill if it passes the Senate. An estimated 54 million elderly and disabled people across the country rely on Medicare.

Al Jazeera’s Libby Casey said that “this is something that both parties have wanted to fix for a long time. They’ve made temporary fixes 17 times, and what is so unique is that they were able to compromise on something in what’s usually a very divided Congress.”

Democrats agreed that some enrollees would foot some of the bill, and Republicans said that it wouldn’t all have to be paid for and agreed to extend CHIP and funding for community health centers.

Discussing some of the sticking points on the measure, Casey said, “Some conservative Republicans really want to see this directly paid for, while some Democrats are concerned over an anti-abortion provision in the bill that deals with abortions at community health centers.”

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Erica Pitzi spoke to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, an assistant professor at Columbia University, and Susan Dentzer, a senior health policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who joined the conversation from Washington, D.C.

Sayed said, “Medicare is one of the most important and largest issues that we pay for as a national government. We’ve known for quite a long time that folks on both sides of the aisle hate the way that Medicare is paid for right now, as do doctors, as do Medicare beneficiaries. So this is one of those rare issues in our national discourse that actually brings together multiple sides on the same conversation.”

He added that the doc fix bill starts the conversation on how to pay for value rather than for service. One of the big issues in the way we pay for Medicare is that it incentivizes doctors to sometimes do things just because they can get paid for them, not because it’s what’s best for their patients.

“The volume of physician services under Medicare has been growing for many years,” said Dentzer. “Some people worry that because of the way we pay doctors in the traditional program on a piecework basis, it’s like paying cobblers to make shoes based on every pair of shoes they make, regardless of whether people wanted to buy those shoes and if they are any good. The incentive was for doctors to do more and more because they got paid on this piecework basis, and the rates of those expenditures were going way up.”

That’s led some people to say that the current system is responsible for fraud, with doctors ordering more tests than needed just to get Medicare reimbursements. As Sayed explained, “Doctors who are paid in a fee-for-service model, their incentive may be to upsell you, which contributes to an overall increase in Medicare costs.”

Dentzer said the new measure is a good one. “It’s ridiculous to go through this exercise year after year where Congress knows the payment cuts are coming and forestalls them. It’s a distraction that keeps us away from what we really need to do as a country, which is shift the way we pay physicians under Medicare.”

The seventh Summit of the Americas will be held at the end of this week in Panama City.  The event has been held every three years since 1994. It’s a chance for leaders from North, Central and South America to come together and discuss issues affecting the region. Topics expected to be on the agenda include trade, security and migration.
This is the first year that Cuba has been invited to attend the summit. All the Latin American and Caribbean leaders at the last summit, in Colombia in 2012, voted to invite Cuba. The U.S. and Canada have traditionally opposed its presence.
The summit comes just months after Washington and Havana decided in December to normalize relations after half a century of hostilities. Al Jazeera’s David Ariosto said that one of Havana’s major stipulations was that its removal from the United States’ list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba also needs U.S. cash to help boost its economy, he said.
U.S. relations with Brazil have been frosty since Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled a state visit to the United States in 2013 over allegations of U.S. surveillance in Brazil. The United States is Brazil’s second-largest export market, and Brazil could use a boost from the U.S. as it faces a stalling economy.

Another topic expected to be discussed at the summit is China’s role in the region. Beijing has lent Latin American and Caribbean countries nearly $120 billion over the past decade.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton spoke to Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, and Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister of Mexico.  
“I think the summit is a really important opportunity for the United States and Cuba to show that both countries have turned over a new leaf,” said Farnsworth. “I think the question is going to be what concrete actions come out of this particular meeting.”
He added that another question is what the posture will be of the other countries at the summit. “This isn’t just the United States and Cuba meeting. It’s all the countries of the Western Hemisphere. Some of them are going to be quite focused on the fact that they don’t much like the United States, whether or not there’s a rapprochement with Cuba.” Farnsworth said relations between the U.S. and Venezuela could become a pressing issue during the summit.
“There should be a dialogue between not only Venezuela and the United States,” said Castañeda, “but also between Venezuela and the inter-American community regarding its constant, systematic and increasingly brutal violation of human rights.” He added, “Unfortunately, it looks like the Latin Americans will not want to take on Venezuela on this issue, nor will the United States, because it does not seem to want to have a public debate with Venezuela get in the way of the rapprochement with Cuba.”
Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro said he has 10 million signatures from Venezuelans urging the U.S. to remove sanctions on a number of its officials. The U.S. imposed the sanctions last month, citing human rights violations.
Farnsworth said that Mexico, Colombia and Chile don’t have much sympathy for the Venezuelan regime, though they might publicly show support and solidarity. He said their “real interest is developing an economic relationship with the United States, and so their hope would be that Venezuela does not take over the summit.”
Castañeda said, “Obama, unlike many of his predecessors, has done just about everything in terms of so-called respect for Latin American nationalism and old-fashioned anti-imperialism.”
He added that President Hugo Chávez, in an interview before his death, when asked if he thought there was any way to get along with the United States, said, “As long as the United States is an imperialist power and does not have a socialist government, there is no way.” Castañeda said, “That pretty much sums up what most of the Latin Americans … think about relations with the United States.”

Relations between the U.S. and Venezuela have soured once again. This week ties between the two countries will be discussed during a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill.
On Sunday the National Assembly gave Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the power to legislate by decree for the rest of 2015. He requested the expanded powers to counter what he sees as threats from the U.S. government.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week saying the Latin American nation poses an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States. He imposed sanctions on seven Venezuelan military and intelligence officials, accusing them of human rights violations, and extended the sanctions to members of their families. The individuals are barred from doing business with American citizens, traveling to the United States and could have their assets in the U.S. seized.
Foreign ministers of the 12-nation Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) have stood behind Caracas, calling Obama’s executive order a threat to Venezuelan sovereignty, and they’re demanding that Washington revoke the decree. Cuba’s government has added that the sanctions are “arbitrary and aggressive.”
Maduro responded to Obama’s move by telling the U.S. to reduce the size of its embassy, and also putting in place new visa requirements for Americans. He also appointed one of the blacklisted officials to be his minister of interior, shoring up support at home by saying his nation will “never kneel before this arrogant empire.”
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton spoke to Christopher Sabatini, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and to Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, who joined the discussion from Washington, D.C.
Sabatini said it’s unclear why Maduro would need the special powers given to him. “He already had a strong majority in the national assembly,” he said. “He’s trying to drum up expectation and fear to consolidate power.”
Farnsworth said there’s also no immediate threat to the U.S. from Venezuela. “This is standard language that’s required in order to move forward to sanction foreign government officials,” he said. “It’s allowed Maduro and his government to dramatically overreact for their own purposes.” Farnsworth said Maduro is trying to gain support because he faces parliamentary elections later this year and currently has a low approval rating.
Venezuela began a 10-day military drill on Saturday, in which nearly 100,000 armed forces participated. They used shoulder-fired missiles, fighter planes and armored trucks. Sailors performed drills in the Caribbean and soldiers defended the country’s largest oil refinery in a simulated attack.
Venezuela is one of the top five exporters of oil to the United States. Its oil revenues account for about 95 percent of the country’s export earnings. In December, Maduro said Washington was starting an oil war, accusing it of trying to flood the market with shale oil to destroy Russia’s and Venezuela’s economies.
Opposition groups to Maduro’s government continued to protest, even after their top leaders were jailed. They’re upset over a deteriorating economy that has led to massive food shortages.
Farnsworth said that “when President [Hugo] Chávez was president, because he was the founder of the revolution, he had the flexibility to make changes where they needed to be. President Maduro doesn’t have that flexibility because his mandate comes from being the successor of Chávez.”
Maduro and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden shook hands a month ago, expressing interest in better relations during a meeting in Brazil. Since then, Maduro had accused Biden of plotting to overthrow him. He has also accused the U.S. of plans to impose a blockade on his country.
The seventh Summit of the Americas will be held next month in Panama. “This is probably going to be one of the most interesting summits ever,” said Sabatini. “You’ll have Obama and Maduro meeting face to face, and you’ll have some of the courting elements, if you will, of the Cuban regime,” a reference to recent talks and warming of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Farnsworth said, “I think the United States was hoping that this summit would be an opportunity to talk about the change in the Cuba relationship and to restore economic growth across the region. But the overheated rhetoric coming out of Venezuela — as well as the support that the Venezuelans are getting from other countries — has changed that dynamic politically.”

This week marks four years since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The uprising, which had been a part of the larger Arab Spring, spiraled into a civil war that has left more than 200,000 people dead and more than 9 million others displaced.
On Friday the U.N. Security Council approved a U.S.-drafted resolution condemning the use of toxic chemicals in Syria, including chlorine. The council did not assign blame for previous chemical attacks, like the one in Ghouta in 2013 that killed hundreds of people, including children, but it did threaten military action for any future attacks. After multiple chemical attacks, Syria cooperated with U.N. inspectors and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2014 to have its chemical weapon stockpiles shipped out of the country and destroyed.
Over the weekend, Syrian government forces conducted an airstrike that killed a senior commander of Jabhat Al-Nusra (the Nusra Front). Abu Homam al-Shami was said to be the second in command of the group. Reports say that three other senior leaders were killed along with him. Jabhat Al-Nusra is Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and is a bitter rival of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which controls about a third of Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, the European Union is imposing more sanctions on people with ties to the Assad regime. Seven Syrian businessmen have had their assets frozen and are barred from entry into eurozone countries. One of them is accused of acting as a middleman for oil purchases from ISIL. The EU has placed sanctions on 218 people and 69 Syrian entities since 2011.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton spoke to Anna Therese Day, an independent journalist, and to Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Oklahoma University, who joined the discussion from Norman, Oklahoma.
Day said of the conflict, “I couldn’t have ever imagined that the international community would allow it to get to this point.”
Analysts say the effects of the war will continue to haunt people for quite some time. Valerie Amos, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and an emergency relief coordinator, recently said, “The trauma that people have experienced — and what this has done to Syria's children — is probably something that can never be repaired.”
In 2012 fighters calling themselves the Free Syrian Army formed a group to launch counterattacks against government forces. Then in 2013, Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters joined the fight alongside Syrian government troops.
Landis said, “The effort to build the rebel movement into a cohesive and unified front has failed almost entirely."
Initially, the United States funded armed groups to weaken Assad’s regime, many members of which have now joined groups like ISIL. “America has really turned,” said Landis, “almost 180 degrees from being an enemy of Assad, sanctioning and weakening him, to today bombing many of his opponents and in a sense adopting Assad as a strategic ally, even though they will not work with him directly.”
Since last summer, the U.S. and coalition forces have launched nearly 3,000 airstrikes against ISIL fighters in parts of Syria and Iraq. Israel has also launched airstrikes into Syria, often targeting weapon systems that it says may go to Hezbollah.
The U.S. has had frosty relations with the Syrian government, even before the current war. Day said the U.S. should have taken advantage of high level defections from Syrian forces to build an opposition that could be the military force of a future Syria. Landis said that although many Syrians have given up on the West, “they can’t entirely give up, because the West has guns and it has money and the West is very powerful and they need powerful allies.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C., and is scheduled to address a Joint Meeting of Congress on Tuesday. It will be his third time making such a speech. It comes amid growing diplomatic tension between the United States and Israel. Invited by Republican House Speaker John Boehner, the move was intended to rebuke the White House for its nuclear talks with Iran.
This past week, Secretary of State John Kerry criticized what he called Netanyahu’s “judgment” on Iran’s nuclear talks. He said there’s nothing to be lost by trying for a deal with Iran, arguing that, "Israel is safer today with the added time we have given, and the stoppage of the advances in the Iranian nuclear program than they were before we got that agreement, which, by the way, the prime minister opposed. He was wrong, and today he's saying we should extend that interim agreement.”
Top officials, including Vice President Joe Biden won’t be attending the speech. President Barack Obama has decided not to invite Netanyahu to the White House during this trip, saying it would be inappropriate two weeks before the Israeli election, which is scheduled for March 17.
Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice said during a television interview that Netanyahu’s speech will be “destructive” to U.S.-Israeli relations. At least 30 congressional Democrats are also planning not to attend the address. In return, Netanyahu has turned down an offer from senior Democrats to address them privately during his visit. That’s led to bigger questions about whether support for Israel is becoming a partisan issue in the United States.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton spoke to Dov Waxman, a professor of Jewish studies and a co-director of the Middle East Center at Northeastern University, who joined the discussion from Boston, and Ari Ratner, a former State Department official who is now a fellow with the Truman National Security Project, who joined from Washington.  
“I think this has been a process that has been going on for some time,” said Waxman. “The Republican Party in particular has really sought to turn support for Israel into a wedge issue within U.S. domestic politics, in the hope of attracting some American Jewish support and donors as well as appealing to their own Christian evangelical base.”
He said it’s a process that’s been happening already, but that it’s now reached a new height with this speech. Ratner agrees. “I think it’s certainly true that Israel, like much of American politics has become more partisan,” he said. “It’s not only an issue between left and right, but it’s also a generational issue.”
Netanyahu’s speech will come a day after he addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He’s hoping his visit will reach out to multiple groups of people.
“He’s speaking to two audiences,” said Waxman. “He’s certainly speaking to his own domestic audience, just simply by his willingness to go, to defy the president. And by anticipating standing ovations from Congress, he’ll be displaying both his determination to defend Israel’s interests and show that Congress is behind him, that his problem is not with the United States but rather with President Obama himself.”
Also discussed during the segment were recent revelations by Al Jazeera and The Guardian newspaper that top secret Israeli documents revealed a split between what Netanyahu said about Iran at the United Nations in 2012 and what Israel intelligence found at the time.
Waxman said it proves that “there’s not only a difference of interpretation between Netanyahu and people in the Israeli security establishment but that there’s a difference of facts, and it’s something the prime minister should be asked about. More broadly, what this indicates is that has often been somewhat loose with the facts in terms of the immediacy of the danger [of Iran’s nuclear program]. It’s one of the problems that he faces now, coming across as the boy who cried wolf.”
Waxman said that Netanyahu has some legitimate concerns in the deal that’s rumored to be emerging but that his problem has been in not offering an alternative.
Ratner said that Netanyahu has had little impact on the negotiations themselves. “Part of Israel’s role is to play bad cop, and Netanyahu has done that effectively,” he said. “But from a long-term perspective, he’s certainly exacerbated the partisan divide both in Washington and generationally and is seen as a very controversial figure now.”

Greece negotiated a four-month extension of its bailout on Friday, which has helped the country to avoid defaulting on its loans. Once an outline is ready to show how Greece will keep its finances in check, the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund will review the reforms before officially ratifying the extension.

Greece joined the EU in 1981 and replaced its currency, the drachma, with the euro two decades later. The country was at risk of defaulting on its loans after years of unrestrained spending and borrowing. That led to the rest of the eurozone’s having to bail out Greece twice, once in 2010 and again in 2012, with $275 billion.

The assistance, however, came with strict austerity conditions, leading to multiple tax hikes and a nearly 27 percent unemployment rate. That led to anger among the population and to strikes and mass protests in the streets. Last month voters elected Alexis Tsipras from the anti-austerity Syriza party after he promised to renegotiate the country’s loan deal.

Greece’s eurozone creditors balked at Tsipras’ changing the terms of its bailout, and the country will still have to deliver on fiscal reforms by this summer to receive further financial assistance.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Richelle Carey spoke to Dan Kelemen, a political science professor at Rutgers University, and to Megan Greene, the chief economist with Manulife Asset Management, who joined the discussion from Boston.

“For the most part, Tsipras and the Greek government had to climb down from a lot of their big promises and their demands, although he’s spinning it as having won a battle,” said Kelemen. “In reality, he had to give up on most of what he wanted.”

Greene mostly agreed, saying that “the Greek government did have to climb down on a lot, but they did as well as they possibly could have.” She said that Greek banks may be able to use European Central Bank funding now to prop up the banking sector.

In terms of unemployment, Kelemen said the government will have to deliver sustained growth for quite some time before there can be a significant dent in the jobless rate. He said Athens will also have to tackle the underlying structural problems with corruption.

Greene said the compromises that Greece had to make actually benefited the European countries that are lending to it. She said, “We haven’t seen any financial or economic contagion, because it’s been kept within Greece.”

“It’s a huge election year this year in Europe,” she added. “There are elections in Spain, Portugal, the U.K. and Finland. There are regional elections in France and Germany. And in almost all of those countries, you have a major anti-establishment party that has gained a lot of support in the past year.”

She said we could see a major anti-establishment movement spreading throughout Europe on the back of Syriza’s victory in Greece.

But Kelemen said it depends on how the situation is spun. He said creditors will push the idea that they have forced Syriza to back down, in an attempt to send a message to other similar parties across Europe.

February is Black History Month, celebrating the lives and contributions of African-Americans in the United States. However, more than half a century after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech, racial discrimination persists across America.
A recent poll conducted by UCLA surveyed students across more than 200 colleges and universities. It found that 25 percent of students believe racism is a thing of the past. That’s not a very large number, but it is up 7 percentage points from 1990.
There’s still a major disparity in the number of African Americans receiving a higher education. According to a report by The Education Trust, only 69 percent of black students graduated from high school in 2012, compared to 86 percent of their white peers.
Still, the country has elected its first black president, and there are many influential African Americans across various industries, including television personalities, athletes, authors, and entertainers.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment “The Week Ahead,” Thomas Drayton spoke to Christopher Emdin, Associate Professor of Science Education at Columbia University; and to Jamilah Lemieux, Senior Editor at Ebony.com.
“The conversations [about race] have always existed, but they are more critical than ever before because of platforms like social media and more avenues for the gathering of young people,” says Emdin.
“The election of President Obama kind of stirred up this notion of post-racialism in America,” says Emdin. “I would argue that the 25 percent who are under the impression that racism no longer exists are still falling under the myth that was created with the presence of a black president.”
Lemieux agrees and believes the president is not being allowed to reach his full potential. “The attempts to keep him from doing anything is a very obvious example of racism.”
When it comes to how blacks perceive themselves, Emdin says, “I think it’s a misperception that self-worth is not prevalent in [black] communities. It’s more a matter of whether or not the communities at large are able to identify the forms of self-worth that black males in particular exhibit.”
Emdin explains that a black student who under-performs in school may be mistaken as not wanting to do well, when in fact it may actually may be a result of the inability of schools to focus on the culture of the student or a disengaging curriculum.
Another, often over-looked, aspect of the African American community is the struggles of women. “Unfortunately, the civil rights and black power movements have centered black male struggle as the definitive black struggle.” Lemieux says that now particularly under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” women and their issues are becoming more visible.
The recent controversies over police incidents in which white officers use deadly force toward black men has set emotion running high. The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner last year led to massive protests across the country, and it’s raised questions about profiling and racial discrimination in police forces.
“I think something was triggered there,” says Lemieux. She says the deaths did not revisit standard ground laws the way they should have.                                          
Some people argue that young black males are not respectful of law enforcement officials. But Emdin disagrees. “The notion that one must subjugate his or her voice and civil rights for the sake of being treated better has been part of the narrative of causing dysfunction within African American communities,” he says. “It’s blaming the person being subjugated for the reason of their subjugation. The same case of ‘maybe if you listened’ is not applied to other populations.”
Back on the topic of schools, Emdin says that “schools in urban areas today are more segregated now than they were post-Brown vs. Board of Education,” the case that declared laws permitting separate public schools for black and white children to be unconstitutional.
He says funding for students should be equal across the board. “The issue is not the young people or whether or not they’re dangerous, but rather how we teach black children in a way that meets their unique needs. Our failure to recognize that leads to the kind of issues that we have today.”

The Senate confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary nominee Ashton Carter is scheduled for Wednesday. He is a former Deputy Secretary of Defense who served in that role from 2011-2013, and he’ll be replacing Chuck Hagel who resigned in November but has remained in office pending Carter’s confirmation.

Carter faces many challenges. His biggest task will be juggling the number of troops around the globe that are dealing with various threats and changing conflicts. That includes moving several thousand troops back to Iraq and training soldiers there, managing 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, and dealing with the threats from ISIL and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He’ll also have to deal with Russian aggression in Ukraine, and challenges posed by North Korea and Iran.

Ashton Carter was trained as a nuclear physicist and is seen by many as a defense intellectual. A long-time Harvard professor, he’s written nearly a dozen books and more than a hundred articles on physics, technology, national security, and management.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment “The Week Ahead,” Thomas Drayton spoke to Mike Lyons, a retired army Major and Al Jazeera America’s National Security Contributor; and to Lawrence Korb, a former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, who joined the conversation from Washington, DC.

“There are so many challenges ahead of him,” says Lyons. In addition to his international responsibilities, Lyons adds that Carter will have internal forces at the Pentagon that he will have to be concerned about, including soldiers facing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and sexual harassment.

Korb say the real question is how much an impact Carter can have given the relatively short amount of time remaining before President Obama leaves office and the administration’s tendency to centralize power in the White House. “In this administration, more and more power has gravitated away from the departments to the White House,” he said.

“They need to draw from [Carter’s] experience back from the late 1990’s in the Clinton White House,” says Lyons.

With President Barack Obama’s submission of his budget request to Congress this week, Carter will also have to deal with the defense budget, which is estimated to be around $534 billion in 2016, and which doesn’t include an additional $51 billion for war funding.

Carter, who’s pushed to restore Pentagon budget cuts in the past, will have to contend with wasteful spending in the military. According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Defense Department spent at least $46 billion between 2001 and 2011 on a dozen weapons systems that never entered production. That includes money spent on things the military says it’s been forced to build by Congress, such as $500 million spent on upgrading Abrams tanks in 2013, something the military says it doesn’t need. As well as the $1.5 trillion spent on the production of the F-35 fighter jet, which has been plagued by technical problems, production delays, and cost overruns.

“[Carter] is partly responsible for this,” says Korb. “He used to run the acquisition process and accelerated the F-35 production before all the development was complete. He certainly knows the issues, but in this short period of time, there’s not much he can do.”

Another challenge for Carter will be dealing with morale within the military. A Military Times Poll taken last year shows that only 15 percent of active duty troops surveyed believe the President is doing a good job, which is much lower than when President Obama first took office in 2009.

Many analysts agree that the sudden departure of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was abrupt and mysterious.

“To me, it defies explanation,” says Korb. “Here you had a senator and combat veteran who was well-liked around the world and never publicly criticized the administration, like Secretary [Robert] Gates did.”

Korb says he does not expect a major shift in policy with Carter at the helm. “If Secretary Hagel, who had worked with President Obama in the Senate and had a certain amount of stature, didn’t get Obama’s ear, it’s hard for me to think that Carter, smart as he is, without that stature, is going to be able to convince the President to change his mind on a lot of things.”

The debate over abortion rights has resurfaced across the United States. The new Republican-controlled Congress tried to pass a bill that would ban any abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but moderates in the party succeeded last week in pulling the legislation. The group was led by GOP women who were concerned they would lose part of their female voter base.
The bill did grant an exception in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, but only if such instances were reported to the police. The Department of Justice estimates that 70 percent of rapes are never reported to authorities. In its stead the House, along party lines, passed legislation that would ban the use of taxpayer money for abortions.
And with last week marking 42 years since the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion nationwide, Pew Research found that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed do not want the decision completely overturned, but about half of them consider abortions to be morally wrong.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment “The Week Ahead,” Richelle Carey spoke to Jill Filipovic, a senior political writer a cosmopolitan.com; and to Anne Hendershott, director of the “Veritas Center” at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
Filipovic says that the attempts by pro-life groups to pass new legislation against abortion don’t lessen the need for abortions, instead they just make it more difficult and more expensive for women to get them. She says it impacts poor women and those living in rural areas the most. She says people should instead promote birth control access and sexual health education.
Hendershott disagrees saying that the pro-life movement is trying to work at the state level in an attempt to make progress incrementally.
“My view is that fundamental rights are fundamental rights,” says Filipovic. “I don’t think they should be up for a vote and things like health care access shouldn’t even be up for a political debate.” She says abortions are stigmatized.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended, and 40 percent of those are terminated by abortion. Looking at a racial breakdown of women who undergo the procedure, 36 percent are white, 30 percent are black, 25 percent are Hispanic, while the remaining 9 percent are women of other races.
Hendershott says, “For me, I don’t understand how we want to live in a country that’s one of seven that allows late-term abortion. China, Vietnam, and North Korea all allow that, and we’re in bad company in that respect.” She believes states should be allowed to make the decision to ban abortions.
Filipovic, however, says “I don’t think a woman’s right to determine the number and spacing of her children should depend on her zip code. Fundamental rights should be universal.”