International force mulled to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

January 15, 2015

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — As Islamic militants from Boko Haram step up attacks in Nigeria that have led to the slaughter of more civilians, there is increasing talk that international military action, possibly including a multinational force, may be needed to help crush the insurgency in Africa's most populous country.

The debate has taken on new urgency since Jan. 3, when Boko Haram extremists swept into the northeastern town of Baga in Borno state, overran a military base and, according to witnesses, killed hundreds of civilians in the days that followed. It was one of the most brazen assaults since militants kidnapped nearly 300 girls last year, setting off an international outcry.

Amnesty International has released satellite images showing widespread destruction — with about 3,700 structures damaged or destroyed — but the horrifying picture of the attack is incomplete because aid workers, journalists and others cannot reach the Boko Haram-controlled area. Extremists, who encountered resistance from civilian militias in Baga, systematically slaughtered civilians in what analysts believe was retaliation for their defiance.

Boko Haram's message, according to analyst Matthew Henman, was: "If you organize these militias against us, this is the response that you will receive." President Goodluck Jonathan, who is running for re-election next month, visited Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, on Thursday in his first trip to the northeast since a state of emergency was imposed in May 2014.

His office said in a statement that he met with troops involved in fighting the extremists as part of his "surprise visit." He also visited hundreds of civilians who were staying in a camp in Maiduguri after fleeing Baga.

Nigeria's neighbors are already being shaken by Boko Haram's territorial expansion. Niger, Chad and Cameroon have seen flows of refugees into their countries. In the case of Cameroon, there even have been some cross-border attacks.

Boko Haram is believed to funnel fighters and equipment across borders; previously, a multinational garrison in Baga was tasked with thwarting frontier smuggling and, increasingly, the activities of Islamic insurgents.

"It's a double win" for Boko Haram, which now has greater border mobility and has stripped its military opponents of an important outpost, said Henman, manager of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London. He said the Nigerian extremists are likely aware of the gains in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State group, and may "see similar potential for themselves."

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond discussed a special initiative to deal with Boko Haram, but he did not elaborate. Speaking in Sofia, Bulgaria, Kerry said Boko Haram is "without question one of the most evil and threatening terrorist entities on the planet," and that the killing in northeastern Nigeria is a "crime against humanity" and must be addressed.

The United States and other countries offered training and other assistance to the Nigerian military after Boko Haram seized 276 girls from a boarding school in April, but most of them remain missing.

The deployment of a multinational force to fight Boko Haram does not appear imminent and would take considerable political will, in addition to needing a green light from a Nigerian government that has appeared leery at times of perceived foreign meddling. However, a United Nations official said Wednesday there will be a meeting Jan. 20 in Niger's capital, Niamey, to explore the idea of a regional force to confront Nigeria's militants.

Neighboring governments are reportedly talking about sending about 3,000 troops to the West African nation, with a mandate to recover territory from Boko Haram, the U.N. official said on condition of anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to disclose private discussions. The operation would be supported by the African Union and potentially "blessed" by the U.N. Security Council, the official said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Regional leaders pledged to cooperate against Boko Haram at an October meeting in Niger. There are precedents for military intervention in African conflicts. In 2013, France sent troops to battle Islamic insurgents in Mali after the government there asked for help. African Union troops have retaken territory from al-Shabab fighters in Somalia in past years.

Nigeria's conflict has been seen in some circles as a local problem, keeping it relatively low on the international agenda. Its military has struggled with corruption, low morale, equipment shortages and allegations of human rights violations. Jonathan has played down the fight with Boko Haram in his campaign for re-election.

Any nations that send forces to Nigeria would do so after deciding it is in their self-interest, said Jens David Ohlin, a professor at Cornell Law School in the United States. Nigeria, he said, faces the "classic conundrum" of a nation that needs help but worries intervention will threaten its sovereignty.

"In a situation like this, there has to be some kind of international response," Ohlin said. "That's the only way to stop it."

Associated Press writers Haruna Umar in Maiduguri, Nigeria; Matthew Lee in Sofia, Bulgaria; and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Chad to send troops to Cameroon against Boko Haram

16 January 2015 Friday

Chad will send a large number of troops to neighboring Cameroon to help it fight increasing incursions from Boko Haram militants attacking from Nigeria, the Central African nation's president said on Thursday.

The announcement by President Paul Biya did not specify how many troops Chad will send, but comes a day after the Chadian government said it will actively help Cameroon fight Boko Haram militants.

Chad President Idriss Deby Itno "has decided to send a large contingent of Chadian armed forces to help the Cameroonian Armed Forces facing...repeated attacks from the Boko Haram terrorist sect," Biya said in the statement on the presidency's website.

Biya has called for international military help to fight the militant group that has seized swathes of northern Nigeria and is threatening neighbors who share borders with the northeastern zones occupied by the group.

Boko Haram has stepped up attacks in the region as Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, prepares for a crucial Feb. 14 presidential election.

The group has also carried out a number of attacks and raids across the border in northern Cameroon, prompting the government to deploy thousands of troops including special forces.

United Nations Special Representative for West Africa Mohamed Ibn Chambas on Thursday, urged Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, the four nations in the region immediately threatened by Boko Haram, to set aside their differences and agree on a command structure and strategy for a regional force to defeat the militants.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/153119/chad-to-send-troops-to-cameroon-against-boko-haram.

Israel closes two Islamic charities

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Israel police and the security agency Shin Bet yesterday closed two Muslim charities in Israel under claims of funding Israeli Islamist movements and Hamas, AFP and the Anadolu Agency reported.

The Muslim Women for Al-Aqsa, in East Jerusalem, and Al-Fajr Foundation for Culture and Literature in the Arab city of Nazareth in northern Israel, were all shut down.

According to a statement issued by the Israeli police, the charities were suspected of financing "organizations which identify with Hamas" and encouraging activists to confront visitors to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon outlawed the charities last month claiming they posed a threat on Israeli national security. Shin Bet implemented Ya'alon's order.

"The charities... are suspected of paying activists who go every day to the Temple Mount [Al-Aqsa Mosque]," a police statement said.

The charities said the Israeli police raided their offices and "confiscated computers, documents and bank records from two of the offices and arrested employees for questioning".

In a statement they denied all accusations of money-laundering and financing "terror" activities or "violence" at Al-Aqsa Mosque and denied any links to "terrorist organizations".

Adding that the Muslim Women for Al-Aqsa "organizes study for women inside the mosque and supervises their activities."

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/16305-israel-closes-two-islamic-charities.

Thai workers subject to abuse on Israeli farms

21 January 2015 Wednesday

Thai farm workers in Israel are being subjected to dangerous working conditions that amount to human rights abuse, a leading rights group said Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch reported the Thai workers, who make up the bulk of Israel’s agricultural force, are paid less than the minimum wage, work excessively long hours in dangerous circumstances and are housed in squalid conditions.

“Thai workers in the agricultural sector in Israel are forced to work in dangerous conditions, using pesticides without appropriate equipment,” Phil Robertson, the group’s deputy director for Asia, told The Anadolu Agency.

“Thai authorities should put this issue at the top of the list when they speak to Israel and ask Israel to get to the bottom of these human rights abuses.”

A 48-page report - “A Raw Deal: Abuses of Thai Workers in Israel’s Agricultural Sector” - is based on interviews with 173 Thai workers in ten farming communities.

“All said that they were paid less than the legal minimum wage, forced to work far more hours than the legal limit, exposed to unsafe working conditions and had difficulties if they tried to change employers,” according to the report.

“In all but one of the 10 communities where Human Rights Watch investigated living conditions, Thai workers were housed in makeshift and inadequate accommodation,” the report added.

On one farm, workers were living in cardboard shelters inside farm sheds.

Contacted on Wednesday, an official at the Thai Foreign Ministry said he was unaware of the report.

Around 25,000 Thai workers toil on Israeli farms and the report underlined the unusually high death rate among Thais. According to government figures published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 122 Thai farm workers died between 2008 and 2013.

Of these, 43 were attributed to “sudden nocturnal death syndrome,” a heart condition that affects young Asian men.

In the case of a 37-year-old man who died in his sleep in May 2013, co-workers said they slept in a cramped space in a farm shed and worked up to 17 hours a day, with no rest days. On another farm, a Thai worker said that he felt like “dead meat” at the end of a working day, which typically began at 4:30 a.m. and ended at 7 p.m.

The report recognized that Israeli laws have been improved and are protective of migrant workers’ rights.

Despite this, “Israel is doing far too little to uphold the workers’ rights and protect them from exploitation,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said.
Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/headlines/153495/thai-workers-subject-to-abuse-on-israeli-farms.

SpaceX supply ship arrives at space station with groceries

January 12, 2015

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — A shipment of much-needed groceries and belated Christmas presents finally arrived Monday morning at the International Space Station.

The SpaceX company's supply ship, Dragon, pulled up at the orbiting lab two days after its liftoff from Florida. Station commander Butch Wilmore used a robot arm to grab the capsule and its 5,000 pounds of cargo, as the craft soared more than 260 miles above the Mediterranean.

The space station's six astronauts were getting a little low on supplies. That's because the previous supply ship — owned by another company — was destroyed in an October launch explosion. NASA scrambled to get equipment lost in the blast aboard Dragon, as did school children who rustled up new science projects.

Then Dragon was stalled a month by rocket snags; it should have gotten to the space station well before Christmas. Mission Control joked about missing not only the December shipment date, but Eastern Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7 as well for the three Russian crew member. There are also two Americans and an Italian on board.

"We're excited to have it on board," said U.S. astronaut Wilmore said. "We'll be digging in soon." He's especially eager to get more mustard. The station's condiment cabinet is empty. NASA is paying SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. for shipments. Orbital's rockets are grounded until next year, however, because of its launch accident. SpaceX — the only supplier capable of returning items to Earth — is picking up as much slack as it can. Russian and Japan also plan deliveries this year.

SpaceX is still poring over data from Saturday's attempt to land the rocket on a floating barge, the first test of its kind. After the first stage of the Falcon rocket peeled away as planned following liftoff, it flew back to a giant platform floating off the Florida coast. The guidance fins on the booster ran out of hydraulic fluid, however, right before touchdown, and it landed hard and broke into pieces.

The California company's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, was encouraged nonetheless and plans another rocket-landing test next month.

Curiosity finds clues to how water helped shape Mars

Pasadena CA (JPL)
Dec 09, 2014

Observations by NASA's Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years. This interpretation of Curiosity's finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.

"If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "A more radical explanation is that Mars' ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don't know how the atmosphere did that."

Why this layered mountain sits in a crater has been a challenging question for researchers. Mount Sharp stands about 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall, its lower flanks exposing hundreds of rock layers. The rock layers - alternating between lake, river and wind deposits -- bear witness to the repeated filling and evaporation of a Martian lake much larger and longer-lasting than any previously examined close-up.

"We are making headway in solving the mystery of Mount Sharp," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

"Where there's now a mountain, there may have once been a series of lakes."

Curiosity currently is investigating the lowest sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, a section of rock 500 feet (150 meters) high, dubbed the Murray formation. Rivers carried sand and silt to the lake, depositing the sediments at the mouth of the river to form deltas similar to those found at river mouths on Earth. This cycle occurred over and over again.

"The great thing about a lake that occurs repeatedly, over and over, is that each time it comes back it is another experiment to tell you how the environment works," Grotzinger said.

"As Curiosity climbs higher on Mount Sharp, we will have a series of experiments to show patterns in how the atmosphere and the water and the sediments interact. We may see how the chemistry changed in the lakes over time. This is a hypothesis supported by what we have observed so far, providing a framework for testing in the coming year."

After the crater filled to a height of at least a few hundred yards, or meters, and the sediments hardened into rock, the accumulated layers of sediment were sculpted over time into a mountainous shape by wind erosion that carved away the material between the crater perimeter and what is now the edge of the mountain.

On the 5-mile (8-kilometer) journey from Curiosity's 2012 landing site to its current work site at the base of Mount Sharp, the rover uncovered clues about the changing shape of the crater floor during the era of lakes.

"We found sedimentary rocks suggestive of small, ancient deltas stacked on top of one another," said Curiosity science team member Sanjeev Gupta of Imperial College in London. "Curiosity crossed a boundary from an environment dominated by rivers to an environment dominated by lakes."

Despite earlier evidence from several Mars missions that pointed to wet environments on ancient Mars, modeling of the ancient climate has yet to identify the conditions that could have produced long periods warm enough for stable water on the surface.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project uses Curiosity to assess ancient, potentially habitable environments and the significant changes the Martian environment has experienced over millions of years. This project is one element of NASA's ongoing Mars research and preparation for a human mission to the planet in the 2030s.

"Knowledge we're gaining about Mars' environmental evolution by deciphering how Mount Sharp formed will also help guide plans for future missions to seek signs of Martian life," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/NASAs_Curiosity_Rover_Finds_Clues_to_How_Water_Helped_Shape_Martian_Landscape_999.html.

Queen's scientist leads study of 'Super-Earth'

Belfast UK (SPX)
Dec 08, 2014

Research led by an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast could pave the way in the search for life on other planets.

Up to now, only space-based telescopes have been able to detect planets near the size of the Earth that pass in front of stars like the Sun. An astronomer in the Astrophysics Research Center at Queen's University has led an international team to detect a super-Earth, a planet with more mass than Earth but less than Uranus or Neptune, using a telescope on the ground.

Previously, this has only been possible for one other super-Earth circling a star much fainter and cooler than the Sun. This breakthrough opens up new ways to study other worlds.

The planet, called 55 Cancri e, periodically passes in front of a star only 40 light years from the Earth. The star can even be seen with the naked eye on a clear and moonless night. For this detection the team used the 2.5-meter Nordic Optical Telescope, which is an excellent facility for this kind of study. Previous observations of this planet had to rely on telescopes in space.

According to Dr. Ernst de Mooij, the Michael West Fellow at the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen's University Belfast, who was the lead author of the study, the planet 55 Cancri e is far from hospitable for life, at twice the diameter of Earth and temperatures reaching nearly 1700 Celsius.

Their study paves the way for studying many more planets similar in size to Earth with telescopes on the ground. Some of these planets may even have the conditions needed to sustain life.

Dr. de Mooij, from the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen's University Belfast, said: "This is especially important because upcoming space missions such as the NASA TESS mission in 2017 and ESA's PLATO mission in 2024, which should find many small planets around bright stars which are ideally suited for this type of study. "

"Observations like these are paving the way as we strive towards searching for signs of life on alien planets from afar. Remote sensing across tens of light-years is not easy, but it can be done with the right technique and a bit of ingenuity." added study co-author Dr. Ray Jayawardhana of York University, Canada.

Dr. De Mooij has recently moved from the University of Toronto to Queen's to carry out this exciting research. The research team also includes Dr. Mercedes Lopez-Morales of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the USA as well as Drs. Raine Karjalainen and Marie Hrudkova of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma, Spain. Their findings appear in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Nordic Optical Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma jointly by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Queens_scientist_leads_study_of_Super_Earth_999.html.