Breakthrough with Russia? | Ethnic Cleansing in Latakia
Intervention Debated | Israel Strikes Damascus?
Alawite Heartland Massacres
As West Hesitates Gulf States ‘Playing with Fire’
No Mood to Surrender | Chemical Rubicon? | Fight on 4 Fronts
Regime Gains Ground | Syria Media Roundup | Live Blog
Jordan in eye of the storm | Hezbollah’s Motives | Is Syria like Iraq?
Student wrongly tied to Boston bombings found dead
Doug Stanglin | USA TODAY »
A body pulled from the water off Indian Point Park in Rhode Island has been identified as the Brown University student mistakenly linked by amateur sleuths on a social media site to the Boston bombings.
Health Department spokeswoman Dara Chadwick said Thursday that the body of Sunil Tripathi was identified through dental records.
It was not immediately clear when Tripathi, who was last seen March 15, died. The cause of death has also not been determined. >continue<
Major cost cut in sea water desalination foreseen
Reuters »
A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater…
Jeffrey Grossman, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has done research on graphene membranes for filtration, said he was not familiar with details of Lockheed’s work. But he said finding a way to produce graphene sheets with nanometer-sized holes could produce a major advancement in desalination efficiency. >continue<
VIDEO: In Burning Rage for Water, Iran Farmers Take On Security Forces
An anonymous video on YouTube shows angry farmers from eastern part of Isfahan in Iran on Wednesday, February 27, 2013 among burning busses in ongoing protests against water shortages. There are credible reports of clashes with security forces, but detailed information is limited and official media is silent. Another video shows that only days earlier, farmers busted open a water pipe carrying water from Zayanderood to Yazd as part of their protest for access to water which is vital to the survival of their crops. Iranglobal reports that the farmers had been protesting for at least one month about their lack of resources, but received no official response to their demands.
New Talks on Iran Nuclear Program Offer Slim Hope | TIME World
By Lara Jakes and Peter Leonard
World powers began a new round of high-level talks with Iranian officials Tuesday, trying to find a way out of a yearslong tussle over Tehran’s nuclear program and its feared ability to make atomic weapons in the future.
Few believe the latest attempt to forge a compromise will yield any major breakthroughs, but negotiators are optimistically casting it as a stepping stone toward reaching a workable solution.
Officials described the latest diplomatic discussions as a way to build confidence with Iran as the country steadfastly maintains its right to enrich uranium in the face of harsh international sanctions.
FULL ARTICLE (AP via TIME World)
Photo: yeowatzup/Flickr
Radio broadcasts in English from the BBC World Service are being jammed in China, the British broadcaster said on Monday, suggesting the Chinese authorities were behind the disruption.
“The BBC strongly condemns this action which is designed to disrupt audiences’ free access to news and information,” the BBC said in a statement.
China, which enforces strict restrictions on its domestic media, has been accused by several prominent foreign media of seeking to stop their news reports reaching Chinese audiences.
“The BBC has received reports that World Service English shortwave frequencies are being jammed in China,” said the London-based public service broadcaster.
A new paper published earlier this week in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal warns that the first cases of “totally drug-resistant” tuberculosis have been found in South Africa and that the disease is “virtually untreatable.” >continue<
related: TB’s Drug Resistant Threat
Reuters »
The M23 rebels have carved out a fiefdom in eastern Congo’s North Kivu province that has dragged Congo’s eastern region back into war and displaced an estimated half a million people…
The Kampala talks aim to bring the rebels and Kinshasa closer on a wide range of economic, political and security issues dividing the two sides, including amnesty for “war and insurgency acts”, the release of political prisoners and reparation of damages due to the war.
The M23 rebels, who launched their offensive after accusing President Joseph Kabila of reneging on the terms of a March 2009 peace agreement, have since broadened their goals to include removal of Kabila and “liberation” of the entire Congo. >continue<
related: A Rebel Group’s Quest | Displacement & Suffering in the DRC
“We don’t like this country any more. We don’t want to be here any more,” said 23-year-old Mohamed Aboud, who on Monday saw his friend, 22-year-old commerce student Osama Sherbini, shot dead by police snipers while he was shopping for his sick father.
Earlier this week, some locals were seen burning Egyptian flags.
“The people in Port Said died in order to satisfy the people in Cairo,” said Saeed Mohamed Ibrahim, a taxi driver carrying a large tricolour of green, yellow and blue, which he had knitted himself the previous day. The flag read in Arabic: “The United Republic of the Canal”. It was not a serious statement of separatist intent, but was indicative of a feeling – common among Port Said demonstrators – that the region had been marginalised by politicians in the capital. >continue<
John Oliver’s piece from last night’s Daily Show looking at how CNN gutted its investigative journalism team all but demanded a “Sorkian” monologue awesomely delivered by The Newsroom’s Jeff Daniels.
Juan Cole | Informed Comment »
Mali, a country of about 16 million (roughly the demographic size of the Netherlands or a little less populous than Florida), is 5 percent animist, 5 percent Christian, and 90 percent Muslim. But most Malians practice a Sufi and liberal-minded form of the religion, which values music and urbane culture. A small radical group based in the country’s vast north has come under Wahhabi influences from Saudi Arabia and wants to impose their fundamentalism on the whole country, attacking Sufi shrines… >continue<
related: French Intervene in Mali | Mali crisis: Who’s who?
Reuters »
With insurgents fighting their way closer to the seat of his power, state media said in a statement that Assad would speak on Sunday morning about the “latest developments in Syria and the region”, without giving details.
It will be the 47-year-old leader’s first speech in months and his first public comments since he dismissed suggestions that he might go into exile to end the civil war, telling Russian television in November that he would “live and die” in Syria.
Insurgents are venturing ever closer into Damascus after bringing a crescent of suburbs under their control… >continue<
Winter of Discontent | Crucible Latakia
Assad’s Alawite Sector | Live Blog Syria
Damascus Battles Rage | Massive UN Aid Appeal
Russia looking beyond Assad | Conflict ‘overtly sectarian’
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update: Military Defections to Turkey | ‘Abandoned’ | Irrepressible
Jadaliyya co-editor Bassam Haddad interviews David Barsamian, touching on dynamics underlying recent events in the Levant
