For the past nine years, Mohammad Shahid Hanif has spent most of his time reading and re-reading the Koran and other Islamic literature. A tall and burly man with a white knitted prayer cap, ankle-length white thobe and long shaggy black beard graying along his jawline, Hanif was the imam of a small mosque of the Deobandi sect in Karachi until 2001. That’s when the Sunni extremist was convicted of having a hand in the murder of several Shi’ites, encouraging terrorism in his fiery Friday sermons, and railing against then-President Pervez Musharraf’s close alliance with the U.S after 9/11. He denies a role in the murders, but acknowledges that he spoke out forcefully in favor of the outlawed pro-Taliban Sunni extremist group, Sipah-e-Sahaba, and its philosophies.

The 36-year-old madrassa alum has 26 years of his sentence to go, but rather than being reformed and breaking with his militant Jihadi ideology, he is deepening it. “Thanks be to God, I am a Mujahid [holy warrior], not the type that kills people but the type that teaches people about the Koran and divine judgments,” he says in fluent Arabic. “When I leave this place, I will continue to do this.” (See pictures of the world’s most humane prison.)

“This place” is the Karachi Central Jail, an elegant, 111-year-old, fortress-like sandstone building that is home to some of Pakistan’s most notorious prisoners. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s killer is here, along with the extremists who attacked the U.S consulate in Karachi. The jail, the largest of the 22 in the crime-infested, religiously conservative Sindh province, has a capacity of 1,800 but is home to 3,800 men, including more than 150 extremists like Hanif. (See pictures of Karachi and its ambitions.)

The extremists are kept separate from other prisoners, and are confined to their quarters most of the time. Unlike other prisoners who are permitted to benefit from the literacy, computer, fine arts, music and Koranic lessons on offer at the jail, the extremists are left to themselves, and their Islamic texts. “To save the other prisoners from the terrorists, we keep them in,” the jail’s superintendent Nusrat Hussain Mangat says, explaining why they have been sequestered. “They have enough conviction in what they think is the truth that they can influence others who can be easily molded.”

For the past few years, Pakistan’s counter-terror efforts have centered on military offensives in the northwest tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. Little has been done to proactively tackle militancy in urban settings like Lahore and Karachi (beyond running gun-battles with militants after they have staged attacks) and less still to eradicate the extremist ideology that fuels the violence. There is no Pakistani equivalent of the ambitious Saudi government program to rehabilitate militants by persuading them to disavow violent Islamist ideologies. The Kingdom’s program, which is run by clerics, psychologists and social scientists, has had mixed success over the past few years, but it recognizes that force alone is not enough to turn someone with terrorist sympathies. Mangat, the Karachi jail’s superintendent and a 23-year career law enforcement officer, also knows this, but says it’s “just too risky” to let the extremists mingle with the other prisoners. In the general population, Qazem Miraname, a white-haired Shi’ite whose trial for drug trafficking has lasted seven years and counting, shares the superintendent’s view. “I fear Allah, not them, but I’m happy that they’re isolated,” he says.

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AUGUSTA, Maine – A cover illustration from an old “Saturday Evening Post” shows a shopkeeper and woman standing on each side of a butcher-shop scale that holds a chicken. His finger pushes down on one end to add a bit of weight, while she pokes a finger up on the other side.

“It’s still true today,” says Dan Newcombe, whose job is to make sure all the weights and measures in Maine are true. At least $24 billion in annual sales in Maine alone are weighed or measured in some way. Weighing devices that are even slightly off can have an impact of millions of dollars, either for or against the consumer, in Maine.

The stakes are greater in larger states, and nationally they could add up to a staggering $7 trillion.

Earlier this year, more than a dozen states uncovered a pattern of fish packers adding the weight of glaze ice to the labeled weight of fish, meaning consumers ended up paying several dollars more per pound of fish.

There’s no proof such scams are related to the recession but authorities say unscrupulous businesses are more likely to cheat when states cut back on enforcement.

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A long-persecuted minority Muslim sect suffered its worst assault ever on Friday, when armed militants attacked two mosques in the heart of Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city and cultural capital. More than 80 members of the city’s Ahmedi community were killed and scores injured, according to a top police official, in a dramatic four-hour siege in which militants deployed a bomb, grenades and heavy gunfire.

The brazen attacks show the enduring ability of militant groups to strike deep inside the country, killing some of the most vulnerable sections of the population. They also demonstrate the growing strength of militancy in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest and wealthiest region, where terrorist groups aligned with al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been reviving their sectarian agenda, increasingly attacking minority groups while authorities do little to stop them. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)

The siege took place as members of the Ahmedi community were gathered for Friday prayers at mosques in the Garhi Shahu and Model Town neighborhoods, several kilometers apart in Lahore. Within minutes of each other, gunmen entered the mosques, hurling grenades at the worshippers. Once inside, the attackers took hostages and, in the case of the Garhi Shahu assault, held off police efforts to end the siege for several hours. The Punjab police now claim they have established control and arrested suspects.

In a text message sent to several journalists, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks. “This is a final warning to the [Ahmedi community] to leave Pakistan or prepare for death at the hands of the Prophet Muhammad’s devotees,” said the chilling message. It was signed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the official name of the Pakistani Taliban, and the “Punjab wing” of al-Qaeda, a hitherto unknown group.

Over the past two years, Lahore has been rocked by several similarly coordinated attacks targeting security installations. The scenes on Friday, with gunmen firing out of minarets at defenseless worshippers, also brought back grim memories of the December 2009 Taliban attack on a mosque used by military officers in Rawalpindi. However, this most recent attack was the first on such a scale against the Ahmedi community, which has been subject to state excommunication since the 1970s and has suffered previous attacks from hardline Sunni extremists. (See pictures of Pakistan’s vulnerable North-West Frontier Province.)

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