May 18, 2012 – SANAA, Yemen — Government troops killed 11 al-Qaida fighters in southern Yemen on Friday, as the army battled its way into the outskirts of a key town under the militants’ control, military officials said. Al-Qaida-linked fighters have taken over a swath of territory and several towns in the south over the past year, pushing out government forces and establishing their own rule. In recent weeks, the army has launched a concerted effort to uproot the militants from their strongholds — and is closely coordinating with a small contingent of U.S. troops who are helping guide the operations from inside Yemen. On Friday, Yemeni troops moved in on Jaar in Abyan province, killing eight al-Qaida fighters in clashes about 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the town. Recapturing Jaar would better position the military to take back Zinjibar, the provincial capital that has been under al-Qaida control for more than a year. Also in Abyan, a Yemeni warplane struck an al-Qaida checkpoint some 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Zinjibar in an area known as Shoqra, killing three militants and wounding six, officials said. The fighting in the south, particularly around Jaar, has displaced tens of thousands of civilians. Town residents said that hundreds of families from the surrounding area flooded into the city on Friday to escape the clashes. One civilian who fled to Jaar, Al-Muqbala Yasin, said by telephone that the military had bombed his hometown just outside of Jaar. He said that he saw al-Qaida militants burying their dead in what he called “mass graves” there. Yemen’s new president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has vowed to tackle the threat from al-Qaida in the country. -AJC

contribution Jenny M.

May 18, 2012 – ISRAEL - Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening. Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran’s real objective is to build an atomic bomb – something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence. Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were “ready” and the option was “fully available.” The central role Iran plays in Netanyahu’s deliberations is reflected in the huge map of the Middle East hanging by the door of his office. Israel lies on one edge, with Iran taking pride of place in the centre. Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran’s nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult. Diplomats are divided. “I think the Iran thing is a red herring,” said one senior Western envoy. “This is 98 percent about domestic politics.” Others are less convinced. Mofaz himself refuses to speak about military action against Iran, even in the theoretical. A military veteran with almost 40 years’ operational experience, whose office in the Israeli parliament displays a poster of Israeli warplanes flying low over the Auschwitz concentration camp, he scoffs at the idea that his Iranian descent gives him special influence on an Iran attack decision. He derides the idea any serious official in the know would talk to visiting journalists about such a sensitive military subject. But behind the carefully evasive language of top officials, basic facts are clear. Time is running out. Iran’s nuclear program – regarded by Netanyahu as an existential threat to the state of Israel – will soon be buried deep enough underground to render an Israeli attack impossible. The Jewish state’s options are narrowing. “I think they’ve gone into lockdown mode now,” the senior Western diplomat said. “Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens. I think they have made a decision to attack,” said one senior Israeli figure with close ties to the leadership. “It is going to happen. The window of opportunity is before the U.S. presidential election in November. This way they will bounce the Americans into supporting them.” Those close to Netanyahu are more cautious, saying no assumptions should be made about an attack on Iran – an attack with such potentially devastating consequences across the volatile Middle East that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas even went so far as to predict in an interview with Reuters last week that it would be “the end of the world.” –Reuters

contribution by Preppin P.

May 18, 2012 – PAPUA NG – Bagana volcano is one of the most active in Papua New Guinea, but it is remote, and so poorly monitored. Located on the mountainous spine of Bougainville Island, it is both far from any cities or large towns and is hard to reach due to the rough terrain around it. Satellites are the best way for volcanologists to keep an eye on the active peak, which has an elevation of 5,741 feet (1,750 meters). A new lava flow was spotted on Bagana volcano by a NASA satellite on May 16. A large plume was also seen rising about the summit crater. The volcano emits gases (including water vapor and sulfur dioxide) almost continuously, and frequently spits up thick lava flows. Bagana volcano seen in the context of its surroundings. –Our Amazing Planet

May 18, 2012 – OREGON - Wildlife biologists are investigating an outbreak of canine distemper in the local fox population, and health officials are warning dog owners to vaccinate their pets against this often-fatal disease. The virus has been confirmed in the carcasses of two gray foxes found dead in Ashland and one in south Medford over the past month. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, two more dead foxes picked up over the past week in Ashland were sent Wednesday to the Oregon State University Diagnostics Lab for testing. Biologists also have fielded more than a dozen calls in the past two weeks regarding gray foxes displaying strange behavior, such as walking in circles, stumbling and foaming at the mouth. “We’ve suspected distemper, and it’s been confirmed,” says Mark Vargas, the ODFW’s Rogue District wildlife biologist. “Is it a pandemic? No. As of now? An outbreak. “It’s a wildlife issue, but it’s also a public health issue in terms of pets,” Vargas says. The best defense for pet owners is to keep their dogs’ distemper vaccinations updated, Vargas says. Similar outbreaks have swept through the Rogue Valley’s raccoon populations, killing hundreds of raccoons, in the early 1990s and mid-2000s. High concentrations of raccoons in urban areas was one reason for the severity of the outbreaks. Amid a 2005-06 outbreak, the ODFW banned the trapping and releasing of raccoons in the wild, and the outbreak eventually quelled. But Vargas says it was unproven that the releasing ban alone ended the outbreak. Distemper is a highly contagious and generally fatal virus that regularly spikes in urban areas of the Northwest once city populations of raccoons, skunks and other animals surge. Infected animals often have runny noses and eyes, are seen acting listlessly in daylight and often appear disoriented and uninterested in food or water. The south Medford fox was found dead near South Stage Road, Vargas says. The Ashland foxes were scattered around town, from the North Valley View and Emigrant Lake areas to the city’s core, he says. The cause of the outbreaks is unknown, but animals can spread it from nose-to-nose contact or a shared food source, which is not common in the wild and is more associated with people feeding wildlife, Vargas says. “That’s one of the reasons we strongly encourage people not to feed wildlife,” he says. Humans should avoid touching any wild animals, especially those suspected of carrying a disease, Vargas says. –Mail Tribune

contribution Jenny M.

May 18, 2012 – MEXICO – Fresh blasts from Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano spewed fiery rock and caustic ash over residents around the Mexico City suburb of Puebla, already on edge after weeks of ongoing eruption. Ash soared 2.5 miles into the sky during early Saturday’s explosion, forcing a local airport to close. Residents of the nearby village of Santiago Xalitzintla rushed into the town square during the middle of the night as terrifying rumblings and blasts caused buildings to shudder. Last week residents in eastern parts of Mexico City were provided with face masks to protect them against ash raining over the region from Popocatepetl’s blasts. Prevailing winds have so far spared the capital district from significant ash falls. Popocatepetl has become increasingly active during 2012. A major eruption in 2000 forced 50,000 people to evacuate in three states that surround the towering mountain. –Earth Week

May 18, 2012 – SPAIN – Moody’s Investor Service carried out a sweeping downgrade of 16 Spanish banks on Thursday, including Banco Santander, the euro zone’s largest bank, citing a weak economy and the government’s reduced ability to support troubled lenders. Spanish bank bad loans also rose in March to their highest in 18 years, figures from the Bank of Spain showed on Friday, underscoring the problems facing the government as it attempts to clean up the sector and get its economy back on track. The Bank of Spain said bad loans rose to 8.37% of the banks’ outstanding loans, the highest since August 1994 and up from 8.3% in February, which was also revised higher. The data came as Spain was set to name independent auditors to assess how much cash its banks are likely to need to rebuild their balance sheets. Financial sources have said fund manager BlackRock and management consultancy Oliver Wyman would likely be named to conduct a deep audit of the sector, but a government source told Reuters a final decision had not been reached and BlackRock may have a conflict of interest. An announcement on the auditors would come on Friday or Monday, several government sources said. Bankia said this week it would need 4.7 billion euros in capital to comply with the last banking reform, while BFA would only need 91 million. Bankia’s share price slumped as much as 30 percent on Thursday, before the government denied a report that customers had withdrawn more than 1 billion euros from the partly nationalized lender. The Bank of Spain figures, released hours after a mass bank downgrade by credit ratings agency Moody’s, showed losses from loans made in Spain’s housing bubble are still rising. Troubled banks, along with overspending in indebted regions, are the two biggest risks for Spain’s public finances. Investors believe Spain needs to aggressively address these two issues to avoid an Irish-style bailout. Banks expect bad loans to continue to rise this year as the economy contracts and the jobless rate remains painfully high at almost one in four of the workforce, the highest in the EU. –Reuters

May 18, 2012 – MIDDLE EAST - Thousands of Iranians rallied on Friday against plans for union between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, state television showed, and an influential cleric denounced the idea as an “ill-fated plot” that will never be tolerated by Muslims. Tension between Iran and U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states has run high in recent months with Arab leaders accusing Tehran of fomenting Shi’ite Muslim unrest in Bahrain – a charge that Shi’ite Iran and the protesters deny. The dispute worsened when Tehran denounced efforts by six Gulf Arab states at a summit earlier this week to forge closer political and military union, largely to counter Iran’s growing regional power. The talks ended inconclusively. In the run-up to the Riyadh meeting, speculation was rife that an initial union would be announced between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where anti-government protests led by majority Shi’ites have gripped the island state since last year. “This plot is an ill-fated plot that is taking place with the American and Zionist (Israeli) green light but they should know that the people of Bahrain and the region, Muslims around the world and in Iran will never tolerate it,” cleric Kazem Sediqi said in a Friday sermon broadcast live on state radio. Iranian state television aired footage of thousands of people holding rallies around the country and chanting slogans against the ruling royal families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to protest against the proposed Manama-Riyadh union. “Instead of surrendering to its own people, it (the Bahraini government) is surrendering its identity, with total abjectness, to another country,” Sediqi said. Tehran summoned the Bahraini Charge d’affaires on Thursday to complain about a statement from the small Gulf island state – strategically sensitive as the base for the U.S. Fifth Fleet – that accused Iran of violating its sovereignty. Bahrain had already called in Iran’s envoy to Manama after Tehran criticized the Riyadh meeting, where Arab heads of state mulled Saudi Arabia’s call for joint economic, political and defense policies between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. No agreement on further integration emerged, with smaller Gulf Arab states wary of Saudi domination and asking for more details, and talks on the matter are to resume later this year. –Reuters

Bahrain issues warning to Iran: Tension flared between Tehran and its Gulf Arab neighbors ahead of planned demonstrations in Iran against a proposed union between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa accused Iran of stoking tensions with its Arab neighbors and warned the Islamic republic would suffer the “consequences of these interventions.” Iranian state television later reported that the country’s Foreign Ministry had summoned Bahrain’s charge d’affaires to complain about Sheikh Khaled’s statement. The comments follow official Iranian calls for demonstrations against the proposed union on May 18. A summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) discussed the proposal on May 14 but did not reach any decision on the matter. The proposed union was presented as a first step in a larger integration between all six GCC members. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said “the proposed union or annexation of Bahrain to Saudi Arabia” would lead to the “disappearance” of the tiny Gulf Island. –Radio Free Europe

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