Amnesty condemns Israel’s threats against BDS activists

A European coalition is campaigning to protect the right to speak out in support of Palestinian rights. Ryan Rodrick BeilerActiveStills

Ali Abunimah-12 April 2016

Amnesty International is urging the Israeli government to end its threats and attacks against Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders, including leaders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Meanwhile, European civil society groups are launching a new campaign to defend freedom of speech from efforts to curtail it by Israel and European leaders allied with it.

Omar Barghouti (Intal/Flickr)

“An escalation of acts of intimidation by the government and attacks and threats by settlers and other non-state actors have created an increasingly dangerous environment” for human rights defenders in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Amnesty said on Tuesday.

The group expressed particular concern for the “safety and liberty of Palestinian human rights defender Omar Barghouti, and other boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists, following calls alluding to threats, including of physical harm and deprivation of basic rights, made by Israeli ministers.”

The threats were made at the “Stop the Boycott” conference held in Jerusalem on 28 March and attended by Israeli leaders as well as by EU and US diplomats.

“An especially alarming statement came from Israeli Minister of Transport, Intelligence and Atomic Energy Yisrael Katz who called on Israel to engage in ‘targeted civil eliminations’ of BDS leaders with the help of Israeli intelligence,” Amnesty stated.

It noted that the term Katz employed “alludes to ‘targeted assassinations’ which is used to describe Israel’s policy of targeting members of Palestinian armed groups.”

Amnesty also condemned statements by Israel’s public security minister Gilad Erdan that activists including Barghouti should “pay the price” for their work, although Erdan denied he was calling for physical harm.

Similarly, interior minister Aryeh Deri threatened to revoke Barghouti’s residency permit.

“Slightly safer”                 Read More

Jordanian security services close Brotherhood's headquarters 

Closure is latest development as state pressures organisation to participate in upcoming parliamentary elections, say experts 

Closure of Muslim Brotherhood's Amman offices is the latest development in a strained relationship between Jordan's government and the state (AFP) 

Dania Akkad-Wednesday 13 April 2016

Jordanian security services shut the headquarters of the country's Muslim Brotherhood in Amman and also a second office in nearby Jarash on Wednesday.

The move is the latest tussle between the government and Jordan's biggest opposition group with tensions running high in the run-up to next year's parliamentary elections.

A security source told AFP that the Amman governor ordered the closure of the offices, which are located next to the country's parliament building,

because the group had not obtained legal authorisation for its activities.

Abdelkader al-Khatib, a lawyer for the Brotherhood, said security services searched the headquarters before sealing off the keyhole of the office's entrance with red wax.

"This is clearly a political decision in line with what is happening in the region," Khatib told the agency. 

The closures "has the sole purpose" of influencing legislative elections expected to be held early next year, he added.

Authorities said they also closed the office in the Jarash governorate, north of the capital, again with wax, because the organisation did not have the right permit, Sky News Arabia reported.

Last year, the group in Jordan split into two branches after authorities said that the organisation needed to "correct" its legal status, in spite of a 1946 cabinet decision licencing it as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

In response, about 50 Brotherhood members set up a "charitable society" - the Muslim Brotherhood Society (MBS) - which was quickly approved by authorities and declared as the "official" group.

MBS has since grown to about 300 members, although the original group still has the majority of the organisation's followers and commands support from as much as 30 percent of the population, sources told MEE. 

Last month, the governor of Aqaba extended a closure of the original Brotherhood group's office in the port city after a dispute between the MBS and the original group over ownership, Al-Monitor reported.

Then in late March, authorities banned the original group from holding internal elections, which have been held for the past 70 years, again saying it did not have the correct licence. 

Khaled al-Kalaldeh, Jordan's minister of political development, told Al-Monitor earlier this month that the government was not planning to ban the original group, but had halted the elections because it is not a legal entity and the MBS had filed a complaint saying that the group was using its name.

"The government is dealing with this issue with restraint, knowing the weight of the groups and its party on the popular political scene," Kalaldeh was quoted as saying. 

Boycott or not?

While the closures appear to reflect a combative dynamic between the Brotherhood and the state, experts say the developments are more a reflection of an internal struggle within the Jordanian Brotherhood. 

"It's tempting for people who don't follow Jordan closely to see this and immediately see parallels with the treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere," said David Patel, a junior research fellow at Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies. "But the Jordanian government is not going to go to war with the Muslim Brotherhood like Egypt's government have."

Instead, he believes that the state is trying to take advantage of that struggle to keep the only organised political force in the country under control and to stop them from boycotting elections, which would harm the polls' legitimacy. 

For decades, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has had a good relationship with the monarchy and has operated legally and openly, Patel said.

More recently, however, the group has started to fissure around whether or not it should participate in elections. 

Before each election, the government changes electoral rules which, for example, alter the number of seats allotted to districts and how many votes districts have.

"The Muslim Brotherhood looks at the rules and decides whether they are going to boycott or not depending on the changes," he said. "This is a game repeated over and over."

Whenever the group boycotts elections, as it has done in the past two polls, groups split off from the main organisation.

Last month, when the government banned the orginal group's internal elections, Nabil Kofahi, a former Jordanian Brotherhood leader, told MEE he thought it was likely that an unofficial deal would be struck between the government and the group, allowing the original organisation to hold its elections if it participates in parliamentary polls.

If the main organisation boycotts elections a third time next year, Patel said, it would be a disaster for the government. 

"[The government] wants them to be part of the political system. It’s telling them – prove you are part of the Jordanian system by participating – but it’s doing it through bureaucracy. It’s not doing it through guns. Sending some police officers to put wax on the door is not like the mukabarat [the secret police] rounding people up."

Russian attack jets' close call with US warship riskiest encounter in years

White House says incident is ‘inconsistent with the professional norms of militaries operating in proximity to each other in international waters’

Footage shot on board the vessel shows the Russian Su-24 planes making repeated passes. 

Julian Borger in New York-Wednesday 13 April 2016

A Russian jet came within 30ft of a US destroyer conducting exercises in the Baltic Sea in what the US navy described as a “simulated attack” – one of the closest and riskiest encounters between the two countries’ armed forces in recent years.

The US navy released photos and videos showing Russian SU-24 fighter jets flying low over the sea and the “buzzing” the USS Donald Cook – a destroyer of the Arleigh Burke class – which carries guided missiles and which had just made a call at the Polish port of Gdynia.

According to the US European Command (Eucom) in Stuttgart, there were a number of such close encounters on Monday and Tuesday, involving both Russian fighter jets and helicopters, while the Donald Cook was in international waters in the Baltic Sea, off the Polish coast of Poland. Those waters are also close to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Lieutenant Colonel David Westover, a Eucom spokesman, said that in the closest pass, on Monday, a Russian SU-24 came within 30ft (9 metres) of the Donald Cook, at an altitude of 100ft, as the US navy was practising helicopter landings on the ship’s deck, and an allied helicopter was on the deck refuelling. The drills were stopped because of the danger presented by the Russian overflights, he said. Other reports said that helicopter involved in the aborted exercise had been Polish.

The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the behaviour was “entirely inconsistent with the professional norms of militaries operating in proximity to each other in international waters and international airspace”.

There was no direct response from Moscow, but the pro-government Sputnik news service described the flypast as a “minor incident” which had got the Pentagon “up in arms”.

The incident appears to be the closest so far of a series of military encounters between Russian and US forces since tensions intensified dramatically with Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its subsequent covert military intervention on the side of separatists in eastern Ukraine. Military experts have warned that such risky behaviour could easily lead to a miscalculation by a pilot or sailor leading to an accident and repercussions that spiral out of control.

The European Leadership Network (ELN), a defence thinktank, issued a report in March calling for Moscow and Washington to reach an agreement setting rules for military encounters to lessen the risk of uncontrolled escalation.

Responding to the latest incident, the ELN director, Ian Kearns, said: “These incidents are happening too often. They are dangerous and irresponsible. Any one of them could escalate into something more dangerous still.”

He said the Nato Russia Council, a cooperative body set up after the cold war but which has recently fallen into abeyance, should make management of such incidents a priority at its next session on 20 April.

Eucom’s account of the Monday incident said the “Donald Cook was conducting deck landing drills with an allied military helicopter when two Russian SU-24 jets made numerous, close-range and low altitude passes at approximately 3pm local time. One of the passes, which occurred while the allied helicopter was refuelling on the deck of Donald Cook, was deemed unsafe by the ship’s commanding officer. As a safety precaution, flight operations were suspended until the SU-24s departed the area.”

On Tuesday, according to Eucom, a Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter flew seven low altitude rings around the US warship, followed 40 minutes later by two SU-24s which “made numerous close-range and low altitude passes, 11 in total”.

“The Russian aircraft flew in a simulated attack profile and failed to respond to repeated safety advisories in both English and Russian,” the Eucom statement said. “We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight manoeuvres. These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident
that could cause serious injury or death.”

U.N. chief was 'inept' on peacekeeper sex abuse - key U.S. senator

U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R) participates in the Washington Ideas Forum in Washington, September 30, 2015.-REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST

BY LOUIS CHARBONNEAU-Thu Apr 14, 2016

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Wednesday accused United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of ineptitude for failing to halt sexual exploitation and abuse by blue-helmeted peacekeepers.

The criticism from Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, comes as candidates to replace Ban when he leaves the post after two 10-year terms have been holding town hall meetings with diplomats from U.N. member states this week.

Ending U.N. peacekeeper abuse has been a major topic of discussion during the meetings at U.N. headquarters in light of a slew of rape allegations levelled against international peacekeepers in Central African Republic.

Corker asked a committee hearing on ending sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers why some recommendations included in a 2005 report on the problem to the U.N. General Assembly were only now being implemented.

"What is wrong with the secretary-general of the U.N.?" Corker told the hearing, which was broadcast live. "This report ... the one that you refer to, is 10 years old."

"How do we put up with such inept leadership at the United Nations?" he added.

Ambassador Isobel Coleman, who oversees U.N. management and reform issues at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said countries that contribute troops to the United Nations were often unwilling to hold troops who commit abuses accountable.

"I don't think it's ineptitude," Coleman said. "I think it is a reluctance to take on the opposition of troop contributing countries that don't want to deal with this issue in the transparent way that it must be dealt with."

She added that the United States was monitoring follow-up actions in troop-contributing countries to ensure people accused of sexual abuse are prosecuted.

Republicans are traditionally more critical of the United Nations than Democrats. The United States contributes 27 percent of the United Nations' $8.3 billion peacekeeping budget.

The United Nations did not have an immediate response to Corker's criticism, but it has pledged to crack down on allegations of abuse to avoid a repeat of past mistakes.

The United Nations has started to "name and shame" countries whose troops are accused of sexual abuse. The previous head of the U.N. mission in Central African Republic, Babacar Gaye, resigned last August and some 800 Congolese peacekeepers were repatriated earlier this year over alleged sex crimes.

In December, an independent review panel accused the United Nations and its agencies of grossly mishandling allegations of child sexual abuse by international peacekeepers in Central African Republic in 2013 and 2014.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Alistair Bell)

US government, Soros funded Panama Papers to attack Putin – WikiLeaks

 6 Apr, 2016

Washington is behind the recently released offshore revelations known as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks has claimed, saying that the attack was “produced” to target Russia and President Putin.

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#PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros.

5:05 PM - 5 Apr 2016

On Wednesday, the international whistleblowing organization said on Twitter that the Panama Papers data leak was produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), "which targets Russia and [the] former USSR." The "Putin attack" was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American hedge fund billionaire George Soros, WikiLeaks added, saying that the US government's funding of such an attack is a serious blow to its integrity.

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The US OCCRP can do good work, but for the US govt to directly fund the #PanamaPapers attack on Putin seriously undermines its integrity.

In a later tweet, WikiLeaks said that that the idea that the whole Panama Papers ordeal was aimed against Russia would be “nonsense,” but still blamed the US for titling media coverage in a way that would put Moscow in the line of fire.

Full Story>>>

Money in Politics

The Panama Papers have revealed many and have implicated not only politicians. Critics say offshore havens supply global elite, a means of tax evasion. While its defenders say that it helps to provide “the plumbing of a globalised economy that has dragged millions out of poverty.”

by Victor Cherubim

( April 11, 2016, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is the saying: “one rule for the rich, one rule for the poor”. This is nothing new and that is how the world works.

Piecing together news leads from mountains of information data is no doubt an unenviable task. But who said it cannot be done. If there is something for someone, everything is possible. The Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca has by using the simple, but powerful and more subtly precise software produced by Nuix, together with the ingenuity of the Washington based International Consortium of Investigative Journalist (ICIJ) opened “a can of worms” recently. It has caused ripples worldwide.

Scanned documents, many decades old have cross referenced private clients and their records across continents and across documents, to expose how the rich and the famous, the world’s wealthy and the powerful, the “great and the good” as they say, and brought them to heel.

Panama Papers

The Panama Papers have revealed many and have implicated not only politicians. Critics say offshore havens supply global elite, a means of tax evasion. While its defenders say that it helps to provide “the plumbing of a globalised economy that has dragged millions out of poverty.”

Are these two positions contradictory? Are they both true?

Let us imagine for a moment that tax havens have served as shelters to buy anonymity literally “off the shelf”. Whether it is the Cayman Islands Bank accounts, or Liberia as a source of “bearer shares” or British Virgin Island in the Caribbean, or for that matter other jurisdictions least known of all, in the United States of America, in the State of Delaware, or in the State of Nevada, all these so called “jurisdictions” have one thing in common. There is “iron-clad” anonymity. These places ensure that profits would not be easily traced. This enabled funds to grow more quickly as more money could be reinvested each year. The accusation: Who is the fool who invests in one jurisdiction?

But secrecy comes with a price tag. Clients whether they be politicians like the Prime Minister of Iceland, or Vijaya Mallaya, the collapsed Kingfisher magnate, or the Medellin Cartel’s cocaine suitcases of drug money, or even ordinary rich politicians (names not supplied) were able to deposit their hard earned robberies, with no questions asked. Clients need to be only sophisticated investors and be able to put in $100,000, into these funds/accounts, although this minimum requirement was often waived.

For many unscrupulous investors the world over the “idea of roll over” significant quantities of tax free income was not tax evasion. It was the “thing to do”. The Panama Papers opened files of hundreds of wealthy from Briton and all over the world including even Russian, China and America, to shield assets from their estranged wives.

Need I say, when the world for good or bad criminalises nations, these nations are not sitting and waiting for sanctions to go away. Sanctions busting accounts help to spin complex off and on shore web accounts to mask billions of dollars. Further offshore tax havens are mostly controlled using “bearer shares” which do not carry the name of the owner and are similar to Bank Notes in that they belong to the person physically holding or bearing the Certificate literally in their hands. Bearer shares can easily be used to hide ownership and evade tax and were banned only in 2015 in the UK.

So is there anything wrong? The naivety is not on the people bearing “Bearer Notes”. Blame the tax havens, some say. They encourage corruption?

On the other side of the coin

Deterring graft, ending impunity for the corrupt is one thing. Who is now going to patch up, who is going to take control of privacy for ordinary law abiding individuals? There is one thing to tolerate transparency; there is another serious issue about personal privacy for the individual.

Disclosure of Information by Apple  

Information Download has been in the news recently. After the San Bernardino killing spree the Law Enforcement Agencies in the U.S. have demanded that Apple provide assistance in “unlocking” an iPhone. Weeks of agonising public debate have gone on over US authorities compelling Apple to help break into an encrypted iPhone.

Technology comes to rescue privacy

“What’s App” a popular Facebook owned mobile application, with one billion worldwide users, has made an announcement that it has compiled a technological development to protect private communication with full end-to-end encryption. This means that when you send a message, the only person you send that message can access and read it. No one, not cyber criminals, or hackers, nor oppressive regimes, not even the manufacturers, can see inside that message. No one has the keys to unlock data. They say “warrant proof” space which until now was available for criminals has been countered.

Sensitive records, possibly even the “Panama Papers” have been improperly accessed or stolen without “private consent”. Whilst this is happening, US Congress is expected to consider legislation which could require technology firms to retain “keys” that could retrieve data in a criminal investigation, with perhaps a Court Order.

Short-changing Money or short-changing privacy, that is the issue at stake. It’s good to have hidden wealth exposed. It’s always been one rule for the rich, and it will continue to be one rule for the poor.

Vote Leave designated as EU referendum out campaign

WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL 2016

The group, backed by senior Tory Eurosceptics Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, beat off a challenge from Grassroots Out (GO), supported by Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

The Electroral Commission's decision could be challenged in the courts by Leave.EU, the group founded by businessman and Ukip backer Arron Banks, which supportied GO's application.

Leave.EU's head of communications, Andy Wigmore, said: "We believe it is a stitch-up. We were always aware that this might happen, it clearly has happened, and we are going to take counsel's advice on this." 

He warned that the date of the referendum could be delayed.

'Come together'

His stance was at odds with Mr Farage, who congratulated Vote Leave, saying: "I have always wanted all on the Leave side to come together and have done my best to try and make this happen. I'll continue to do so in the run up to the referendum to ensure the Leave side wins.

"We in Ukip, as I've said from the start, will work with anyone that wants to leave the EU. We must work together to get our country out of the European Union."

GO campaigner and Tory MP, Peter Bone, said: "We congratulate Vote Leave on securing designation and we thank our supporters for all the hard work they have put into the campaign so far.

"We look forward to working closely and productively with all those who want to see the UK set free to determine its own destiny. We are determined to play our part in creating a united front to secure victory on June 23 for Leave - Independence Day."

Britain Stronger In Europe, backed by David Cameron and chaired by former Marks and Spencer boss Stuart Rose, was the only one applicant bidding to become the lead campaign for Britain to stay in the EU. It has been designated as such by the Electoral Commission.

Competing applicants

Claire Bassett, chief executive of the Electoral Commission said: "Where there are competing applicants for a particular outcome, the law is clear - we must designate the applicant which appears to us to represent those campaigning for that outcome to the greatest extent.

"After careful consideration, the Commission decided that 'Vote Leave Ltd' better demonstrated that it has the structures in place to ensure the views of other campaigners are represented in the delivery of its campaign."

Like Britain Stronger In Europe, Vote Leave will now be able to spend up to £7m in the build-up to the 23 June poll, with other registered out campaigners limited to £700,000. It will also have access to a grant of up to £600,000, free mailshots and guaranteed TV broadcasts.

A spokesman for Vote Leave said: "Our focus has always been the real campaign and the £350m we send to Brussels every week, which we want to spend on our priorities like the NHS. We will continue to work constructively with everyone who wants to campaign for a Leave vote."

Mr Cameron tweeted: "Congratulations to @StrongerIn who have been designated as the Remain campaign in the EU referendum. We're stronger, safer and better off in."

In Brazil’s Coffee Industry, Some Workers Face ‘Conditions Analogous to Slavery’

BY BENJAMIN SOLOWAY-
APRIL 13, 2016

On some of the 15 Brazilian coffee estates featured on the government’s “dirty list,” armed guards supervised workers and threatened them with force if they tried to leave. In other cases, laborers met physical abuse. Some lived in squalid conditions, toiled more than 10 hours each day, and worked under searing sunshine or driving rain without respite.

A report released Wednesday described the state of affairs on these estates, where workers faced “conditions analogous to slavery,” according to the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment.
The report — researched in 2013 and 2014 by Catholic Relief Services’Coffeelands project, in collaboration with journalism collective Repórter Brasil — shed new light on punishing labor issues in the coffee sector, and on Brazil’s progressive efforts to protect farmworkers.

Workers on some of the coffee farms taken to task were “regularly required … to apply toxic agrochemicals” without protective equipment, the report found. Others had to give up their identity documents or work their way out of crippling debt.

Released to coincide with the Specialty Coffee Association of America expo in Atlanta, the findings were aimed toward consumers and policymakers, but most of all toward the “specialty” fringe of the coffee industry, which pays close attention to sourcing and supply chains and is uniquely positioned to adopt ethical standards that could pave the way for broader change across less innately exacting agricultural sectors.
“Specialty coffee has for decades built a track record for inclusion and transparency, beginning with the emergence of certified coffees in the U.S. market, which introduced a level of transparency that didn’t exist before,” Michael Sheridan, director of the CRS Coffeelands program, told Foreign Policy. “Transparency alone doesn’t solve farmworker issues or issues of modern slavery, but it’s a necessary precondition for addressing these issues.”

“Coffee has consistently pioneered supply chain relationships and sourcing that have been taken up by other crops,” he added

Brazil is the largest producer and exporter of coffee in the world. Most of the country’s estimated 360,000 coffee farms are small-time growers. Coffee accounts for around 8 million Brazilian jobs. The 15 estates that made it onto the government’s dirty list represent an “artificially low” number, the report found:

“Researchers could not generate a reliable estimate of the scope of slave labor in Brazil’s coffee sector. … Because of  limitations on the country’s inspection capacity.” Of the estates the researches investigated, mid-sized ones were most prone to poor practices, because small ones were mostly run by families, while large ones had incentives to mechanize extensively and adhere to international certification standards.
Mid-sized estates frequently employ seasonal migrant laborers. For this reason, “farmworkers are a very difficult population to reach and to work with,” Sheridan said.

For the past two decades, the Brazilian policymakers have earned a reputation for progressive efforts to define and address modern slavery. According to Brazilian labor law, workers face conditions analogous to slavery if they are subject to forced labor, debilitating workdays (punishing conditions for more than 10 hours a day), degrading working conditions (squalor and safety violations), or debt bondage — standards more stringent than those of many other countries in the region. Some of these conditions were found on each of the estates that made the list. Male Afro-Brazilian migrant workers were found to be the demographic most at risk.

The report found that the slavery-like conditions were not widespread, but flourished in individual cases and likely went underreported — enough so that companies that do coffee business and Brazil should take a close look at their partners’ labor conditions. Nonetheless, the authors urged readers not to “lean away from Brazilian coffee,” so as not to “punish Brazil for truth-telling,” but instead, to become part of the process of improving the situation.

This tempered approach is characteristic of the Coffeeland project’s philosophy. In a March review of a recent report on modern slavery in Brazil’s coffee sector by Danish human rights organization Danwatch, Coffeelandswrote: “The labor conditions described by Danwatch are isolated within Brazil’s coffee sector, and not isolated to Brazil’s coffee sector. Readers of the Danwatch report would not have come away with that understanding, which we believe is critically important to any fair treatment of this issue.”

Although Wednesday’s report focused on coffee in Brazil, it situated the country’s coffee-related labor issues amid the context of broader agriculture and labor problems, in Brazil and elsewhere.

“We are part of a global agricultural economy in which the food we eat comes from far-flung farms all around the world that we can’t see, produced under labor practices we don’t well understand,” the report reads. “Estimates suggest there are as many as 21 million modern slaves in the global economy today, and our food systems — including but certainly not limited to coffee — rely on modern slavery as much as any other sector of that economy.”

Photo credit: NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images

CDC confirms Zika virus causes microcephaly, other birth defects

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Zika virus and its spread across North and South America. (Daron Taylor,Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

By Lena H. Sun-April 13

This post had been updated.

Federal health officials confirmed Wednesday that the Zika virus causes a rare birth defect and other severe fetal abnormalities, marking a turning point in an epidemic that has spread to more than 40 countries and territories in the Americas and elsewhere.

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a careful review of existing research and agreed that the evidence was conclusive, Director Thomas Frieden said. It is the first time a mosquito-borne virus has been linked to congenital brain defects.

"It is now clear, and CDC has concluded, that the virus causes microcephaly," Frieden said. CDC is launching more studies to determine whether children with that rare condition, which is characterized at birth by an abnormally small head, represent the "tip of the iceberg of what we could see in damaging effects on the brain and other developmental problems."

["This virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought”]

The outcome validates the growing research of past months that strongly implicated Zika as the culprit behind a broad set of complications in pregnancy. The pathogen is also increasingly linked to neurological problems in adults. The CDC report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, focused only on reviewing the evidence linking Zika and fetal anomalies.

Global health officials had already assumed the virus was to blame for the problems being seen in various countries. Since January, many have advised women who were pregnant or hoping to become so to avoid travel to Zika-affected areas or to take steps to avoid Zika infection. That medical advice expanded over time to include women's partners, especially as it became clear sexual transmission of the virus was more common than had been known.

The research released Wednesday won't change that advice, officials said. But they are hoping it will help educate the public about the virus and its potential for harm -- particularly in the United States.

"We do know that a lot of people aren't concerned about Zika infection in the United States, and they don't know a lot about it," said Sonia Rasmussen, director of CDC's division of public health information. "It's my hope that we can be more convincing that Zika does cause these severe birth defects in babies and hope that people will focus on prevention more carefully."

The research is likely to help scientists developing a vaccine for Zika, she said.

Researchers said there was no "smoking gun" or single definitive piece of evidence that confirmed the virus as causing microcephaly, calcifications within the fetal brain and vision problems in newborns.
Rather, the findings of recently published studies and a thorough evaluation by CDC researchers using established scientific criteria led them to the conclusion. Frieden likened the process to putting together pieces of a puzzle.

[Trying for a baby? Men with Zika should wait 6 months before having unprotected sex]

The World Health Organization had said in recent weeks that there was scientific consensus about the virus and microcephaly as well as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological condition that can lead to paralysis. Researchers in Brazil, the hardest-hit country, said this week that Zika also may be associated with a second serious condition similar to multiple sclerosis. In a few cases with adults, they found swelling of the brain and spinal cord involving the coating around nerve fibers.

CDC officials said they worked independently of the WHO. The U.S. agency is conducting studies on Guillain-Barré syndrome, and officials said they are also likely to make a conclusive link between that condition and Zika. "I think we're on the same page as the WHO," Rasmussen said.

There are still many outstanding questions about the risk facing pregnant women infected with Zika. A limited number of studies show the risk ranges from about 1 percent chance of having a baby with microcephaly to almost 30 percent of pregnant women having fetal abnormalities. A study in Brazil identified that upper range, with pregnant women having "grave outcomes," Rasmussen said.

Scientists also don't know whether miscarriages and stillbirths are the result of an infection. Nor do they know what stage of pregnancy is risk the greatest, or whether another infection that occurred at the same time might affect the risk of birth defects, she said.

A two-week-old born with microcephaly is examined during a physical therapy session at a hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil. (AP/Felipe Dana)

CDC's assessment of the evidence began last October but included Zika studies that were published as recently as last weekend, Rasmussen said. The detailed clinical information shows the most severe forms of microcephaly, also known as fetal brain disruption sequence. In some instances, the babies' heads are much smaller than what clinicians would normally see in microcephaly cases, she said.

[As mosquito season arrives, is the U.S. ready for Zika?]

Among the evidence the report cited to support the causal relationship between Zika and these serious birth defects included:

• Zika infection during critical periods of early pregnancy, usually the first trimester or early second trimester;

• specific, rare patterns of birth defects in fetuses or infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika infection;

• biological evidence, including the presence of Zika virus in the brain tissue of fetuses and babies with severe microcephaly who had died.

• rare exposure to the virus and a rare birth defect.

The researchers cited the recent case of a Washington, D.C. woman who tested positive for Zika 10 weeks after she likely contracted an infection during a trip to Guatemala  – far beyond what scientists have thought is the case. Damage to the fetus did not show up on early ultrasounds. But after her abortion at 21 weeks, virus was found in the fetal brain and there were significant brain abnormalities.

[Ultrasounds missed her Zika infection--until one showed serious harm to her fetus]

Brazil normally has an average of 163 cases of microcephaly each year. But since October, officials have confirmed at least 944 cases of microcephaly or other neurological problems, according to the WHO.

After a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia, that island also had an increase in microcephaly cases. It normally has no more than two cases a year, but it saw eight cases during a four-month period in 2014. A recently published study using data from the island estimated the risk for the rare birth condition to be 95 cases of microcephaly for each 10,000 pregnant women infected in the first trimester.