Anna Nemtsova interviews Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the brothers suspected of bombing the Boston marathon.

Dalibor Rohac and Marian L. Tupy take on critics of the World Bank's influential Doing Business survey.

Francis Wade profiles the Burmese monks whose nationalist politics are promoting ethnic violence against Rohingya Muslims.

Christian Caryl follows up by looking at the history of violence in Buddhist culture.

Seema Shah accuses U.S. democracy promotion organizations of misrepresenting the recent presidential election in Kenya.

Mohamed Eljarh reports on the resurgence of federalist politics in Libya and the recent car bomb attack on the French embassy in Tripoli.

Juan Nagel examines the case for electoral fraud now being advanced by Venezuelan opposition leader Henriques Capriles.

Mohamed El Dahshan explores the latest scandal involving U.N. peacekeepers in Morocco.

And now for this week's recommended reads:

Al Jazeera interviews Prime Minister Najib Razak about the upcoming elections in Malaysia.

Conor Friedersdorf reports for The Atlantic on the Yemeni man who testified to Congress that drone strikes on his village are making al Qaeda stronger.

Writing in The National Interest, Jordan Michael Smith argues that U.S. efforts to promote democracy in other countries may be having the opposite effect.

Lincoln Mitchell writes for The American Interest that the 2012 Georgian elections reveal the challenges of future democracy promotion efforts.

In its Democracy Index 2012, the Economist Intelligence Unit offers a skeptical take on the global progress of democracy. The Economist asks whether the recent Kosovo-Serbia peace deal signals new hope for the Balkans.

The Transnational Institute releases an important report on Burma's political reform and its consequences for ethnic conflict.

Madawi al-Rasheed writes in Jadaliyya on efforts by Saudi Islamists to reconcile democracy and Islamic rule. 

In recent testimony to Congress, three American non-profit electoral assistance organizations, all of whom worked on Kenya's general election in March -- the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the International Republican Institute (IRI) -- reported that last month's presidential vote was "credible," thereby negating the still-increasing amounts of evidence that the electoral process was fundamentally flawed. Their view was based largely on a recent ruling by Kenya's Supreme Court, which upheld the presidential election result. The three groups also cited the "acceptance" of the Court's decision by presidential runner-up Raila Odinga. 

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April 26 marks 50 years since King Idris as-Senussi of Libya declared the end of federalism.  Libya's prime minister during the time, Mohieddin Fikini, introduced a constitutional amendment passed by the country's three states (Cyrenaica, and Fezzan, and Tripolitania) to unify the country which would now be made up of ten governorates. (Tripolitania was divided into five governorates, Cyrenaica into three governorates and Fezzan into two.)

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When the losing candidates in a presidential election cry foul, it is usually an uphill battle to reverse the results. Equally challenging is the task of changing international perceptions about what really happened during the voting or counting processes.

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I don't know much about the code of conduct of U.N. Peacekeepers, such as those deployed in the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). But I'm going to assume that it's probably OK for peacekeepers to post photos of people that they meet on their Facebook group even if they are politically sensitive.

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A massive car bomb targeted the French embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli this morning. The explosion occurred around 7 AM local time in the residential area of Hay al Andalus. Two French guards were wounded. So was a Libyan girl who lived in a nearby house. She had to be flown to Tunisia for specialized treatment.

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Anna Nemtsova explains why it took a bombing in Boston to wake Russians up to the war in their own backyard.

Hui Mei Liew Kaiser tells why she and thousands of other Malaysians around the world are flying home to take part in the impending election there.

Eric Randolph reports from Burma on efforts to train the country's fledgling democrats in the basics of democracy.

Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez looks at the showdown between president-elect Maduro and opposition leader Capriles following Venezuela's close-run elections last Sunday. He also analyzes the repercussions of the National Electoral Council's subsequent decision to allow a recount.

In Libya, Mohamed Eljarh looks into the current trial of Eastern Europeans accused of assisting the Qaddafi regime. He also ponders the fateful confrontation between constitutional reformers and the Supreme Court.

Mohamed El Dahshan bids farewell to the late leader of Egypt's Jewish community.

And now for this week's recommended reads:

In a scathing new report released today, Human Rights Watch directly accuses the Burmese government of fomenting ethnic cleansing against the Muslim Rohingya minority by failing to intervene in violence against them.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) presses for U.S. leadership in the wake of increasing sectarian violence in Syria.

The Council on Foreign Relations introduces its Global Governance report card, grading international performance on global challenges.

International Crisis Group assesses the shaky state of the justice system in post-Qaddafi Libya. 

Carnegie's Thomas de Waal writes in CNN about the North Caucasus culture of war that shaped the generation to which the Tsarnaev brothers belonged.

Rebecca Murray reports in Al Jazeera on South Yemeni women who favor secession from the North, based on the rights they enjoyed prior to the country's unification in 1990. ing has occurred in Sittwe in Arakan state.

After last Sunday's disputed electoral victory by Chávez heir Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela, it seemed, was a country on the brink. Many commentators assumed that further anarchy was unavoidable, positing mass unrest along the lines of the Arab Spring (in which the demonstrators triumphed) or post-election Iran in 2009 (where they didn't). Both scenarios, it should be noted, assumed an uptick in violence. As assumptions go, this was logical enough. In Venezuela, society is divided almost equally between pro-regime and anti-regime groups, and the confrontation between the irresistible force of passionate opposition and the immovable object of government intransigence seemed likely to result in the violent destruction of one or both.

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