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Dublin, Republic of Ireland (CNN) -- In hindsight, Aicha el-Wafi can see that the warning signs about her son Zacarias Moussaoui were present as he was growing up in southern France.

"If I had known he would end up with this group of wrongdoers, I would have attracted his attention ... but I did not see it coming," said el-Wafi. Her son remains the only man convicted in the U.S. over the 9/11 plot. "I think that when a child comes home, shrugs his shoulders and does not listen to the parents ... and says ... you are not good Muslims, there is a danger."

El-Wafi, who was born in Morocco, believes Moussaoui was victimized because of the color of his skin. "He loved a girl he was forbidden from seeing... well the Islamists and the extremists found a grievance in the heart of my son. My son was born in France, my son loves France ... but he was not accepted. He was rejected by French society.

"My son suffered a lot from daily racism," she said. In the city of Narbonne he was called a "dirty Arab and dirty negro" and told to go home. "These are words that kill a child when he is 16, 18, 19 years of age."

El-Wafi now berates herself for failing to realize that her son had become involved with radical Islamists until it was too late. But by then he had been arrested and charged in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The media dubbed him the "20th hijacker." Moussaoui was convicted of criminal conspiracy and, after making several anti-Western outbursts, jailed for life. El-Wafi accepts that her son, whom she loves "more than before," was involved with extremists, but says she believes he had nothing to do with 9/11.

Now el-Wafi is drawing on her experience by visiting schools to educate young people and parents about radicalization, and issues such as arranged marriages. In an emotional interview she described how her life was haunted by the fate of her son and images of the attacks.

El-Wafi, who spoke to CNN at a recent conference in Dublin organized by Google to tackle extremism and promote reconciliation, urged parents to be alert. "They must keep their eyes and ears open, because I was a bit naïve. I loved my children.

"Everything was fine at home after their father left: we were not living in poverty. I was working; we lived well."

She now works as an activist with French feminist group Ni Putes Ni Soumise (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) that works with Muslim families. "I visit schools, I talk to young girls with regards to arranged marriages at 14 or 15 years of age. I see the parents and tell them you must talk about your problems you have at home, you must talk about it.

"When their parents do not have a worthwhile career, education, or qualifications, the children look upon their parents as having less than nothing."

Early life

El-Wafi was 14 when she married Omar Moussaoui in Morocco. Five years later they moved to the southern French city of Narbonne where Zacarias was born in 1968. Omar regularly battered his wife until she left him in 1972, according to Jan Vogelsang, a clinical social worker who gave evidence during Moussaoui's trial. CNN could not independently verify the claim made in court and the father has not responded to the allegation.

Zacarias studied business in Montpellier before moving to London in 1993 where he took a master's degree at London's South Bank University. While living in London, Moussaoui attended the same Brixton mosque as shoe bomber Richard Reid.

Istanbul (CNN) -- Turkey ordered the expulsion of Israel's ambassador and other senior diplomats stationed there on Friday, a dramatic slap against its one-time close ally over its failure to apologize for a deadly raid last year on a Gaza-bound ship in a flotilla loaded with humanitarian aid.

Low-level officials are allowed to stay, but others must leave by Wednesday, a Turkish official said. Turkey has been incensed with Israel after its commandos clashed with Turks on one of the flotilla ships, the Mavi Marmara, and killed nine people.

This comes on the same day that U.N. released a report about the May 2010 raid. The document criticized Israel's actions in the incident, even as it describes the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza as a "legitimate security measure." Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received a copy of the report on Friday, a U.N. spokesman said.

Eduardo del Buey, deputy spokesman for Ban, said the secretary-general regretted that the report did not bridge the gap between Turkey and Israel. Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, echoed that sentiment.

"We hope they will continue to look for opportunities to improve their long-standing relationship, and we will encourage both to work towards that end," she said. Israel expressed its sorrow at the loss of life, but said it "will not apologize for its soldiers taking action to defend their lives. As any other state, Israel has the right to defend its civilians and soldiers."

Israel's blockade of Gaza is designed to prevent weapons from being smuggled to the territory, which is controlled by the anti-Israeli group Hamas. Gaza-based militants have been firing rockets into southern Israel and Israel has responded with military might.

But Turkey has been strongly opposed to the Jewish state's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory of Gaza because, an official said, Palestinians have suffered from the action and other Israeli policies in the densely-populated region.

"It is about time for the Israeli government to face the consequences of its illegitimate actions since it sees itself above international law and ignores human conscience and must pay a price," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Friday. "This price will be, above all, the loss of Turkey's friendship."

Turkey has been Israel's closest and steadiest Muslim ally since the Jewish state was founded. The relationship has had political, economic and military components, and both countries have been stalwart Western allies during the Cold War and over the subsequent decades.

In fact, trade has grown from 2008 to 2010, according to Turkey's economy ministry's website.

Turkey's imports from Israel totaled $842 million from January to July in 2010 and $1.1 billion during the same period in 2011. Turkey's January to July exports to Israel was $1.1 billion in 2010 and $1.3 billion in 2011.

But ties between the nations have deteriorated during the administration of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- long critical of Israel's policies in Gaza.

Davutoglu said military agreements have been suspended. But a senior Turkish official said that existing contracts must be honored "no matter what" and "we haven't touched upon intelligence sharing."

Israel and Turkey have long had a close military relationship, but there have been no joint exercises for more than a year and a half amid tensions between both sides.

The two countries have been negotiating for months in an attempt to improve their faltering relationship, but those efforts have failed. The release of the report was delayed while those negotiations continued.

"We've waited and waited," the senior Turkish official told CNN. "There was almost an agreement that Netanyahu agreed upon... They're just wasting our time." He was referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"This makes it official. Before it was de facto, there was nothing going on, but definitely there was contact," said the official, who asked not to be named because of diplomatic protocol.

One analyst said, "Turkey has been warning Israel for months that it would do this and Israel chose to ignore it."

Hugh Pope, senior Turkey analyst with the International Crisis Group, argued that Turkey made a concession earlier this year, by preventing the Mavi Marmara from leading a second proposed blockade-busting flotilla to Gaza.

Pope said Turkey's stance on Israel could be risky in its relationship with the United States. But the country -- while critical of Israel and friendly with Iran, Israel's arch-enemy -- has been firmly in the Western camp lately.

Editor's Note: CNN Executive Producer Ram Ramgopal was born in India and worked as a journalist with newspapers in Mumbai before moving to his Atlanta-based job with CNN. He has also worked as a New Delhi-based correspondent for CNN.

(CNN) -- India's anti-corruption movement may be basking in the warm afterglow of success after getting the undivided attention of the country -- and its parliamentarians -- on the question of an independent watchdog body to deal with dishonest politicians and government employees.

But many observers are saying it is just one victory, albeit a significant one, in the battle against pervasive corruption in India. The war, they point out, is still a long way from being won.

The Indian Parliament passed a resolution last week supporting many of the protestors' demands. In turn, Anna Hazare, the 74-year-old leader of the movement, called off his 13-day hunger strike after the resolution acknowledged his central demands, including the creation of the post of the ombudsman known as the Jan Lokpal.

The Jan Lokpal bill is not a done deal, but there's no going back on the idea, said Coomi Kapoor, a contributing editor with the national Indian Express newspaper and longtime political observer in New Delhi.

A so-called standing committee of parliamentarians will now weigh the proposals to bring the judiciary as well as high-ranking officials, including the prime minister, under the ambit of anti-corruption laws.

Kapoor said some of the proposals could yet be watered down, especially one that would create a large and unwieldy bureaucracy to enforce the proposed act. But she added that the anti-corruption movement had been a "game changer in Indian politics."

"It showed people's strength," Kapoor said, "and it also succeeded in painting politicians as a symptom of the problem."

Corruption intrudes at life's worst moments

More than two decades on, Mumbai's G-South Ward Office is hard to forget: The crumbling facade, the labyrinthine warren of city departments, the tiny offices jammed with bookshelves overloaded with dusty files. Venturing into that building was not for the faint of the heart, but residents of the ward had little option when it came to matters of life and death.

The death of my father brought me to the office in May 1989. He had died of a heart attack near his car on a public street. He was just 51, and it was a deep shock for my family, even though we were well aware of his heart condition.

My father had been visiting friends in Bombay, as it was then known, and without a death certificate from the G-South Ward Office (which happened to be the ward where the friends' house was located), we could not claim his life insurance policy, or execute his will.

Still reeling from the personal loss, I went to the ward office day after day, each visit proving unsuccessful, without being told why I couldn't get the certificate. There were mostly shoulder shrugs from the clerks and downright hostility from the officer whose all-important signature I needed.

Some friends suggested I should grease the system, but I could not in good conscience pay a bribe for something I believed was my right: service from a government agency. If anything, I thought a grieving son would have gotten a sympathetic ear from the official bureaucracy.

(CNN) -- Riot police clashed Friday in suburbs across Bahrain's capital of Manama with thousands of demonstrators enraged at the government's denial of responsibility in the death of a 14-year-old boy, a human rights advocate in the Arab nation said.

Nabeel Rajab, president of Bahrain's Center for Human Rights, told CNN that people took to the streets Thursday night and remained into early Friday. There, they voiced anger to several government messages, including a press release that was issued earlier Thursday from Bahrain's interior ministry that -- citing a coroner's report -- denied the boy was killed by a tear-gas canister or rubber bullet, as activists have claimed.

Riot police tossed tear gas canisters and shot rubber bullets in hopes of breaking up the protest, according to Rajab, who said he witnessed the clashes in one Manama suburb and also spoke to multiple eyewitnesses.

Journalist Mazen Mahdi added that he witnessed a similar crackdown in Sanabis, another suburb of the capital, and saw security forces sealing off the area.

In response, protesters set up make-shift barricades and threw stones at riot police in an attempt them to stop from going further into residential parts of the suburbs.

Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) -- More than 2 million anti-government protesters gathered on Friday in Changes Squares across Yemen calling on revolutionary forces to take decisive action against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime and at any costs.

Protests took place in 16 of Yemen's 21 provinces.

Youth protesters in Sanaa chanted, "Escalation is a must for a quick ending of regime," and "Yemen will follow Libya's footsteps."

This comes as defected military general Ali Mohsen released a video statement on Tuesday threatening to use force to ensure that the Yemeni revolution succeeds. "We know that the revolution will need military interference, and we will work to make it happen," said Mohsen.

He also advised Saleh to not "follow the footsteps of Satan" and step down from power.

Saleh is currently in Saudi Arabia where he is being treated for burns sustained in an attack on his palace earlier this year. He has vowed to return to Yemen to finish his term as president.

Other opposition officials are also calling for military action against the Saleh government.

The Yemeni revolution will prevail only if the military is used said Hasan Zaid, the secretary general of the opposition Haq party. "No real revolution can prosper peacefully from history's experience," he said.

Fearing fresh clashes, heavily armed tribesmen loyal to the Ahmar family, chiefs of Yemen's most powerful Hashed tribe, started entering the capital and in large numbers. Eyewitnesses said that at least 200 entered Sana'a over the last 24 hours.

San Francisco (CNN) -- CNN announced Tuesday that it is acquiring Zite, a Canadian tablet software developer.

Zite offers an iPad application that can build a personalized magazine based on someone's interests and social media feeds. The app can determine users' favorite topics from which articles they choose to read and how they rate each one, similar to the way the Pandora Internet radio station customizes music playlists to listeners' tastes.

CNN plans to operate Zite as an independent business, said KC Estenson, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com, on Monday. In addition to financing Zite's ongoing development, CNN intends to promote the software on the news organization's website and television programs, Estenson said.

The Zite app, which is free, will not contain advertisements at first. Zite recently mined app-usage data for a report that showed users' interests by state, information that can be attractive to marketers. The app was downloaded 120,000 times during the week it debuted in March; a spokeswoman declined to provided current user statistics.

Editor's note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book "Stuff Hipsters Hate." When they're not trolling Brooklyn for new material, Ehrlich works as a senior writer at MTV, and Bartz is a news editor at Psychology Today. Got a question about etiquette in the digital world? Contact them at netiquette@cnn.com.

(CNN) -- Last week, we penned a public service announcement demonstrating a few of the ways you can guarantee a nonresponse in an initial online dating message, no matter the quality of your profile or personality.

While we received a fair amount of gratitude (mostly from online daters tired of finding such hapless missives in their inboxes), we also received many a request for tips on what to write in a successful first note. (One humanity-loving reader also took the time to inform us he suspects we are "two former high school cheerleaders who now have an inferiority complex," a flattering if inaccurate assumption that we were once capable of killer herkies and immense pep.)

While it's infinitely more fun to tell you what not to do than it is to give you helpful pointers (hey, the Ten Commandments weren't written in the negative for nothin'), this week we're heeding your call.

Before we proceed with the advice-shilling, though, a big disclaimer looms. Even if you write an excellent first letter, there is no guarantee that the recipient will write you back. If there were a magic formula, some genius would have cracked it by now.

Every online dater has had the experience of reading an impossibly sweet, heart-bursting message and thinking, "Oh, sigh, I wish we could use this site to arrange dates for our friends or make new totally platonic acquaintances, because the sender of this message is clearly a lovely person. Alas. [hits delete]."

This is simply part of the numbers game that is dating (online and in real life), and it's the reason online courtship is not for those with rickety self-esteem and hair-trigger rejection sensitivity. Because most of your messages will go unanswered, doesn't mean there's anything wrong about you. (Certainly you're brimming with foibles, but your intended date doesn't necessarily know that yet.)

(CNN) -- Have you ever looked at your smartphone or laptop -- or even a robot, if you're lucky enough to come in contact with one -- and wondered, "What the heck are you thinking?"

Well, if so, here's your answer.

Cornell's Creative Machines Lab posted a video this week of a computer's inner monologue, and it's making the rounds on the Internet not because the machine is having profound thoughts about world domination or the future of technology -- but because the discussion it has with itself is totally ridiculous.

Researchers used the "Cleverbot" for this test case, which is regarded as one of researchers' best attempts to mimic human conversation patterns with computer intelligence. Cleverbot actually "learns" from the conversations it has as it has them, which is fairly impressive, as this episode of WNYC's "Radiolab" podcast discusses at great length.

(Side note: You can have a text conversation with this piece of computer software at Cleverbot.com, and the results are sometimes frighteningly spot-on and sometimes hilarious).

But turn the computer on itself and things go totally awry. The researchers set up two screens, one with a computer-graphics picture of a woman, and one with a man. They talk to each other, but they're both controlled by the same program. Here's a snippet of the dialogue, which is posted in full on YouTube:

Man: "I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."

Woman: "But you said earlier that you were a robot."

Man: "I did not."

Woman: "I thought you did."

Man: "You were mistaken, which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you."

I guess that last bit is a nod to the fact that these computers come packed with lots of hardware memory.