An electronic bucket brigade could boost solar cell voltages

Berkeley CA (SPX) Sep 19, 2011

If solar cells could generate higher voltages when sunlight falls on them, they'd produce more electrical power more efficiently. For over half a century scientists have known that ferroelectrics, materials whose atomic structure allows them to have an overall electrical polarization, can develop very high photovoltages under illumination. Until now, no one has figured out exactly how this photovoltaic process occurs.

Now a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley has resolved the high-voltage mystery for one ferroelectric material and determined that the same principle should be at work in all similar materials. The team's results are published in Physical Review Letters.

"We worked with very thin films of bismuth ferrite, or BFO, grown in the laboratory of our colleague Ramamoorthy Ramesh," says Joel Ager of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD), who led the research effort. "These thin films have regions - called domains - where the electrical polarization points in different directions. Ramesh's group is able to make film with exquisite control over this domain structure."

Because BFO has a range of unusual properties, the group led by Ramesh, who is a member of MSD and a professor of materials sciences, engineering, and physics at UC Berkeley, has long studied its characteristics by building custom devices made from the material.

The BFO films studied by Ager and his colleagues have a unique periodic domain pattern extending over distances of hundreds of micrometers (millionths of a meter). The domains form in stripes, each measuring 50 to 300 nanometers (billionths of a meter) across, separated by domain walls a mere two nanometers thick. In each of these stripes the electrical polarization is opposite from that of its neighbors.

Because of the wide extent and highly periodic domain structure of the BFO thin films, the research team avoided the problems faced by groups who had tried to understand photovoltaic effects in other ferroelectrics, whose differences in polarity were thought to surround impurity atoms or to occur in different grains of a polycrystalline material.

By contrast, says Ager, "We knew very precisely the location and the magnitude of the built-in electric fields in BFO." Thus Ager and Jan Seidel of MSD were able to gain "full microscopic understanding" of what went on within each separate domain, and across many domains.

High voltages from an electronic bucket brigade
"When we illuminated the BFO thin films, we got very large voltages, many times the band gap voltage of the material itself," says Ager. "The incoming photons free electrons and create corresponding holes, and a current begins to flow perpendicular to the domain walls - even though there's no junction, as there would be in a solar cell with negatively and positively doped semiconductors."

In an open circuit the current flows at right angles to the domain walls, and to measure it the researchers attached platinum electrical contacts to the BFO film. Says Ager, "The farther apart the contacts, the more domain walls the current had to cross, and the higher the voltage."

It was clear that the domain walls between the regions of opposite electrical polarization were playing a key role in the increasing voltage. These experimental observations turned out to be the clue to constructing a detailed charge-transport model of BFO, a job undertaken by Junqiao Wu of MSD and UC Berkeley, and UCB graduate student Deyi Fu.

The model presented a surprising, and surprisingly simple, picture of how each of the oppositely oriented domains creates excess charge and then passes it along to its neighbor. The opposite charges on each side of the domain wall create an electric field that drives the charge carriers apart. On one side of the wall, electrons accumulate and holes are repelled. On the other side of the wall, holes accumulate and electrons are repelled.

While a solar cell loses efficiency if electrons and holes immediately recombine, that can't happen here because of the strong fields at the domain walls created by the oppositely polarized charges of the domains.

"Still, electrons and holes need each other," says Ager, "so they go in search of one another." Holes and electrons move away from the domain walls in opposite directions, toward the center of the domain where the field is weaker. Because there's an excess of electrons over holes, the extra electrons are pumped from one domain to the next - all in the same direction, as determined by the overall current.

"It's like a bucket brigade, with each bucket of electrons passed from domain to domain," Ager says, who describes the stepwise voltage increases as "a sawtooth potential. As the charge contributions from each domain add up, the voltage increases dramatically."

BFO itself is not a good candidate for a solar cell material - for one thing, it responds only to blue and near ultraviolet light, which eliminates most of the solar spectrum. "So we need something that absorbs more light," says Ager.

The efficiency of BFO's response to light - the ratio of charge carriers per incoming photons - is best near the domain walls. While very high voltages can be produced, the other necessary element of a powerful solar cell, high current, is lacking.

Nevertheless, says Ager, "We are sure that this effect will occur in any system with a sawtooth potential, and perhaps in other geometries as well. We are already beginning to investigate new candidates."

Marrying the "bucket brigade" photovoltaic effect in ferroelectrics to the high currents and high efficiencies typical of today's best solar cells could lead to extraordinarily powerful solar cell arrays in the future.

Source: Solar Daily.
Link: http://www.solardaily.com/reports/An_electronic_bucket_brigade_could_boost_solar_cell_voltages_999.html.

Air Force Academy Harnesses Ocean Wave Energy

Air Force Academy, CO (SPX) Sep 19, 2011
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 19, 2011

Air Force Academy aeronautics researchers have finished the largest test of their Ocean Wave Energy Converter to date at the Offshore Technology Research Center in College Station, Texas.

The two weeks of testing proved the fundamental mechanics of the Academy's ocean wave energy converter on the largest scale to date.The Ocean Wave Energy Converter is the brainchild of Dr. Stefan Siegel, a researcher at the Academy's Aeronautics Department.

The project started in 2008 with a National Science Foundation grant to create the world's first free-floating, fully submerged wave energy converter that generates electrical power from deep ocean waves. Siegel and other Aeronautics researchers - Drs. Juergen Seidel and Casey Fagley and retired Col. Rob Fredell - accomplished this and tested it at a 1:300 developmental scale."

We are now at the 1:10 scale, which is the scale that off-shore industry consider when they test their devices, and really the last step before building a full-size ocean-going device," Siegel said. "The main goal is really to demonstrate how much power we can extract with wave energy and convert it to shaft power."

A research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy is designed to increase the converter's technology readiness level, or TRL, from Level 3 to Level 4. TRL is a one-to-nine scale measuring an invention's readiness to enter the market: Level 1 signifies a technology for which basic principles have been observed and reported, while Level 9 designates a mission-ready product that is ready for full-size, large-scale use. Level 4 signifies that a component of a system has been validated in a field environment.

To get the funding to further develop this technology, Siegel and the other researchers incorporated, forming the Atargis Energy Corporation. With the company and funding, the Atargis team got to business in the same manner as many other startups. They built parts of the current wave energy converter in Siegel's garage and tested components in a neighbor's swimming pool.

With the change to a larger scale, difficulties increased exponentially. One person could lift the 1:300 scale wave energy converter without any assistance, but the 1:10 scale model required 10 men to assemble and a 5-ton crane to transport.

"This is expected. Inherent in any new technology, not everything scales up linearly," Siegel said. "Suddenly the effort and design goes up drastically when you build something at a much larger scale. At the 1:10 scale, you are at the level where you need to carefully analyze every single part that's in there: you need to design it for strength, you need make sure we don't have too much twist or flex in your blades when they are in the water.

At this level already, we're seeing some of the full-scale design requirements hit us."Peripheral design issues slowed the testing and put the team's problem-solving skills to the test.

During the generator's first submerged test, the team discovered bubbles coming from one of the gear boxes. After removing the entire assembly from the water, Seidel discovered the gear box was half full of water when he opened it. The team applied additional silicon sealing to eliminate the leak.After the converter went back underwater, the team discovered additional leaks in the pylons, impacting the actuators that control the blades' pitch.

This forced a bit of on-the-fly reengineering: the Academy team huddled, examined the problem, goals and resources and came up with a solution in a matter of minutes. Rolling up their sleeves, they removed some of the electronics from the parts that would be below water level as a short-term fix, with the help of the research center staff.

Leak proofing had been tested on many parts in the design and construction phases prior to this testing, with attention given to balance buoyancy and weight. But in the long-term, the team admits that more attention will be applied to waterproofing turbine and electronics areas.

"This is by no means a deal-breaker. This is the part of testing that you don't normally hear about, but is quite normal in commissioning a new model in a facility like this," said Siegel.

"However, beyond the technical difficulties, we were able to run tests that confirm the wave generation capabilities of our wave energy converter, which is a crucial step in being able to cancel waves. We gathered detailed force and moment data for these runs, which will aid us in controlling a cluster of wave energy converters.

The data also lines up well with our previous results from the small scale tests and simulations, and make these 1:10 tests an important milestone in the development of this technology."

After the fixes, the converter went back underwater for more testing. The team went deeper than originally planned and, with some realignments, found success. They removed unwanted harmonics and prove the fundamental theory correct on the largest scale to date.

Siegel's team is not the first to try to conquer the engineering difficulties of harnessing energy from ocean waves. To date, survivability and efficiency have prevented other approaches to wave energy technology from being successful.

"Nothing has survived in the open ocean for more than six months at a time, and other design concepts out there right now are not efficient," he said.

The team has addressed the converter's survivability through several adaptations, the most important of which comes from designing the converter to be part of a free-floating submerged platform.

This places the converter away from the surface hazards created by major storms on the ocean's surface, which have killed other organizations' attempts to demonstrate competing wave energy technologies.

Efficiency boils down to how much electricity can be harnessed by each platform and how that translates to the price the consumer has to pay in their electric bill. Through feedback flow control, Siegel's converter constantly adjusts the two blades to their optimal angles, maximizing the amount of energy possible to turn the blades and generate electricity.

In previous tests at the Air Force Academy, the research team harnessed 99 percent of the power of a simulated ocean wave with the ocean wave converter and transfer that wave's force into electrical energy, effectively canceling out the wave in the process. Essentially, there's a wave going in, but no wave going out.

This is a significant step forward from the nearest comparable power source, wind turbines. Current wind turbine technology can only harness 59 percent of the power potential within its area of effect.

The center has one of the world's largest wave tank facilities, which will allow the test of a larger wave energy converter and eventually permit testing of three wave energy converters simultaneously.

After the tests, members of Atargis went to England for a wave energy conference. After the conference, the team returned to Colorado to analyze the data they obtained, determine the long-term fixes for the waterproofing issues and prepare for the next test. The Atargis team is scheduled to return to the Offshore Technology Research Center in early 2012 to test the use of multiple wave energy converters working at once.

Source: Energy-Daily.
Link: http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Air_Force_Academy_Harnesses_Ocean_Wave_Energy_999.html.

Gunmen kidnap Iranians just outside Syrian capital

August 05, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Gunmen snatched 47 Iranian pilgrims just outside Damascus on Saturday in a brazen attack that revealed the growing instability at the center of President Bashar Assad's power.

The abduction came as Syrian troops moved to crush one of the last rebel-dominated neighborhoods in the capital, shelling the area heavily. No group immediately claimed responsibility, although Iranian state media blamed the rebels fighting the Assad regime.

The pilgrims were on a bus taking them from the suburb of Sayeda Zeinab, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Damascus, to the airport to return home when they were kidnapped, according to the Iranian state news agency, IRNA.

Mainly Shiite Iran is a close ally of the beleaguered Syrian government, which is dominated by the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiism. Syria has long welcomed Iranian pilgrims visiting the ornate gold-domed shrine of Sayeda Zeinab, the Prophet Muhammad's granddaughter; up to 700,000 pilgrims used to come every year, IRNA said, although the number has fallen precipitously since the 17-month uprising that has killed an estimated 19,000.

Late Saturday, Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency announced that Syrian forces had freed the hostages, but cited no source. There was no confirmation from the Syrians. Still, the kidnapping underscores the inability of the regime, which is fighting rebels in all the major cities of the country, to even control the immediate environs of the capital city.

Just a few miles from the site of the kidnapping, regime forces encircled the southern Damascus neighborhood of Tadamon, a bastion of rebel support. Heavy explosions shook the capital Saturday, and plumes of smoke rose from the neighborhood that was attacked by regime forces the night before.

"We heard heavy bombing since dawn," a witness in Damascus told The Associated Press, asking that his name not be used out of fear for his personal safety. "Helicopters are in the sky." By nightfall the state media reported the whole capital to be in government hands, but such announcements have in the past proved premature.

The kidnapping was the largest such abduction of Iranian pilgrims, although it was not the first. In January, gunman kidnapped 11 Iranian pilgrims driving from the Turkish border to Damascus. At least two were later freed with Turkish mediation. Seven Iranian engineers building a power plant in central Syria were kidnapped in December and the Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility, accusing them of aiding Assad's regime. At least four have been released.

Sunni Muslim militants often attacked Iranian pilgrims visiting holy sites in neighboring Iraq during the years of unrest there. There have been reports of an influx of such militants into Syria since the uprising began. Targeting the pilgrims maybe seen as attacking allies of the regime.

A Syrian-based Sunni militant group posted on jihadi web forums that it had kidnapped and executed a prominent Syrian television broadcaster, who had been reported missing since July 19. The al-Nusra Front announced that Mohammed Saeed, presenter for the Syrian "Talk of the Town" program, had been captured and put on trial before being executed.

"Perhaps this operation and others will serve as an example to all who support this tyrannical regime," said the statement, which included a photo of Saeed, apparently while in the militants' custody.

The new violence in Damascus reflected the regime's difficulty in keeping rebels down even at the center of its rule. Two weeks ago, the government crushed the rebels' biggest yet campaign in the capital city that included incursions by fighters into downtown neighborhoods and an audacious bomb attack that killed four members of Assad's inner circle.

The main battle, however, has now moved to Syria's largest city of Aleppo, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) north of Damascus where rebels seized several neighborhoods two weeks ago and have proved difficult to dislodge.

On Saturday, hundreds of rebels attacked the strategic television broadcast building and were only driven off after a three-hour battle in which the government resorted to jet fighters and helicopter gunships.

Clashes were also reported around the medieval citadel, a symbol of the city that dominates its ancient center, suggesting the rebels are trying to expand their hold. Aleppo is Syria's commercial hub and it's close to the Turkish border where the rebels have their rear bases. If the opposition were to gain control, it would be a major blow to the regime and a possible opposition base of operations.

More heavily armed government troops, however, have been steadily shelling the rebel-controlled parts of the city, particularly Salaheddine neighborhood, suggesting Aleppo will not fall to the rebels anytime soon.

On Saturday, China said the West should be blamed for obstructing diplomatic and political efforts to restore order and peace in Syria. Wang Kejian, a deputy director of north African and west Asian affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a news conference that Western countries had hindered and sabotaged the political process by advocating regime change.

Wang reiterated China's stance that the solution to the Syria crisis should be a political one and that it is opposed to any military intervention. Turkey also reported the defection of another Syrian general, along with five colonels who came over the border with a group of refugees. The general would be the 29th to defect since the start of the uprising. Despite the defections, however, the Syrian army has largely remained intact.

Associated Press writers Elizabeth Kennedy in Beirut, Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.

Misrepresenting the Syrian Revolution

2 Aug 2012

Unlike other recent uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Leila Nachawati argues, the Syrian revolution has attracted no real allies. This circumstance is partially attributable to the narrative being presented by self-interested external powers. They have more to gain by portraying Syria’s violence as a fragmented quarrel among local interests instead of it being a mass rebellion against a repressive regime.

By Leila Nachawati for ISN Security Watch

If one wishes to frame the current conflict in Syria in black and white terms, then it is a conflict between those who are comfortable with the status quo and those who are not. People from different religions -- Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, Alawi, Druze, Ismaili -- and ethnic groups -- Palestinians, Iraqis, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians -- may be found on either side of the divide. And although the Alawi community (to which the ruling Assad family belongs) has long dominated the government and key military positions, people from each group have benefited from a system of institutionalized corruption and injustice. The uprising that started in March 2011 challenges that system as a whole, regardless of the religious elements. If one wishes to reduce the conflict down to its essence, one should focus on this aspect rather than any religious or ethnic overlays.

Despite the violence the regime has displayed -- and its attempt to exploit sectarian, ethnic and religious elements to present itself as necessary to maintain cohesion -- the goal of the Syrian revolution remains the same: to overthrow the regime and make way for a country where justice, freedom and dignity are respected. However, now that the country has entered a stage where the days of the Assad regime may be numbered, we are witnessing an international tendency to assess the situation with analysis that disregards the political and sociological aspects and instead focuses on religious and sectarian elements. What should be noted is that these analyses are directly dependent on each country´s geostrategic interests.

(Over-)Simplifying a complex reality

Religious and sectarian readings fall short of capturing the reality of a complex and diverse Syrian society where co-existence has persisted for decades, despite attempts to turn groups of population against one another. A Syrian journalist (name known to the author) told the ISN that sectarian clashes will happen "and it should not surprise anyone, given Assad's support in the past for radical groups - in Lebanon and Iraq – and the way he has promoted sectarianism as a way to keep people divided and frightened."

She also noted that some small, destructive cells "can have a disproportionately big impact, but this does not mean that the revolution has become sectarian as such. In fact the revolutionary camp is careful - in every address, statement and declaration - to make reference to there being room for every Syrian group in the future Syria."

According to Syrian blogger Yassin Swehat, a very complex reality is being increasingly simplified and therefore dramatically diverging from the narrative of activists on the ground. In an interview with the ISN, Swehat argued that this demonstrates the inability of many in the international community to see Syrians “as anything more than tribes and religious communities who follow irrational impulses and are deprived of all historic, economic and socio-political context.­­”

Geostrategic interests at stake

Every geostrategic power has something to gain from the depiction of Syrian society as divided and fragmented. Unlike other uprisings in the region, the Syrian revolution has, it could be argued, no real allies. Russia and China, for example, have been quite consistent in their support for the Syrian regime. By supporting Assad - who claims to be fighting Islamist terrorist gangs and a Western conspiracy against the country - Russia and China have nevertheless displayed their own power ambitions. Through military aid (and by replicating the narrative propagated by pro-Assad sources) they seek to present themselves as an alternative to the influence of the United States and its allies.

Iran continues to support the Assad regime for similar reasons. By portraying the Syrian uprising as Western-, Israeli- and Saudi-backed,’ Iran’s narrative aims to promote Shia hegemony across the region. At a press conference on 28 July, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Akbar Salehi announced that "whoever thinks there will be a regime change in Syria is being very naïve." And when asked about whether Iran would resort to the mutual self-defense pact formed with Syria to protect the Assad regime, an explicit denial was noticeably absent.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, needs a narrative to counter Iran’s. Riyadh supports the Free Syrian Army by portraying it as part of a religious struggle between the Sunni faith and the allegedly anti-religious Assad regime. At the same time, the Saudi regime is fearful of the Syrian revolution being framed as a liberation movement – a sentiment that could spread to Saudi Arabia, where the legitimacy of the ruling monarchy is increasingly being questioned. The most profitable scenario, therefore seems to be a military struggle in which neither the regime nor the Free Syrian Army succeed -- a struggle that would wear Syrians out and weaken the country as a whole.

Counter-intuitive as it may seem Israel may once have had a good ally in Syria. Instead, deterioration of central authority in Syria could re-activate conflict over the Golan Heights and make attacks on Israeli-held territory more likely. A long struggle and a weakening of Syria would therefore also be the most positive scenario for Israel. Viewing the Assad regime as ‘a lesser evil’ is seemingly apparent in the US’ public stance, which shifted from being openly critical to more lenient following a meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak in February 2012.

The US’ and European Union´s most recent statements regarding Syria reveal the disconnection between international interests and the true needs and demands of Syrians. Both powers seem eager to support retired Brigadier Manaf Tlass as the politician to lead a post-Assad Syria. A pillar of the Syrian establishment, Tlass is the son of former Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass. A fact worth noting is that the elder Tlass was in office during the 1982 Hama massacre, an event which reportedly left more than 10, 000 dead. The younger Tlass is a member of Bashar al-Assad's inner circle and closely associated with the abuses of the Assad regime. Indeed his defection and announcement that he intends to preserve state institutions was received with scorn by activists.

The most complete revolution

Despite the loss of human life, the hundreds of thousands displaced or forced to flee and the devastation being wreaked on the country, prolonging the armed confrontation seems to be the most positive scenario from the viewpoint of certain geostrategic powers. Delegitimizing the revolution and diluting its proclamations of freedom and justice in favor of religious and ethnic framings are not useful for Syrians but suit outside powers.

Despite attempts to hijack it, the Syrian revolution continues. Defections increase as the Syrian army becomes increasingly desperate and violent, killing more than a hundred civilians a day. Thousands continue to demonstrate all over the country, especially on Fridays: these days continue to be given a different name every week to honor the cities, the victims and the values of the revolution. Syrians continue to question the regime as a whole as an oppressive system, beyond any religious components.

For Syrian activist Sara Ajlyakin, "this is the most radical and complete revolution because it is against the regime in its entirety. Syrians are fighting alone against its figures, its extensions, its capital. Cosmetic change is not possible. If the revolution succeeds the regime will fall entirely" she told the ISN.

Source: International Relations and Security Network (ISN).
Link: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Security-Watch/Articles/Detail/?id=150955.

Syrians in Jordan fear hunt from Assad agents

August 04, 2012

IRBID, Jordan (AP) — Sultan, a 42-year-old Syrian anti-regime activist, knew he was being hunted, even in this northern Jordanian city where he had taken refuge. The attack came on a crowded street: Two men grabbed him and dragged him into a waiting car, shouting, "It's him!"

In the chaos, Sultan says, he recognized the car's driver: a Syrian intelligence officer from the Damascus prison where for three months this year Sultan was jailed and tortured for participating in protests against President Bashar Assad.

"We can finish him in seconds," one of the men shouted, Sultan told The Associated Press, speaking on condition that his full name not be used to avoid further reprisals. In the car, they stabbed him with a knife, slashing his neck and head. But the car got stuck in traffic. When Sultan screamed and pounded on the windows, passers-by and police intervened and rescued him, arresting the four Syrian men in the car.

The attack, in early July, was the latest in a string of similar incidents in recent months that have raised fears among Syrian refugees that Assad's regime is extending its crackdown across the border into neighboring Jordan. Refugees and Jordanian officials believe Syrian regime agents are operating in the kingdom on a campaign to hunt down opponent and intimidate those who have fled.

That has Jordanian officials worried over a potentially more extensive campaign of assassinations or bombings — targeting Jordanians as well as Syrians — as Damascus lashes out against its neighbor in moves that could drag this U.S.-allied kingdom into Syria's civil war. Jordan already faces its more powerful neighbor's growing anger because it is hosting more than 140,000 refugees who fled the 17-month-old conflict, as well as members of the rebel Free Syrian Army fighting Assad's military.

Jordanian political analyst Labib Kamhawi said the kingdom is deeply concerned over Syrian "sleeper cells." "There could be killings, or explosions, or assassinations of Syrians and Jordanian personalities," he said. "There could also be serious border confrontations or incursions."

There has already been one attempted bombing of a Jordanian. Security officials say they arrested a man in June trying to plant a bomb under the car of Jordanian businessman Nidal Bashabsheh, who has been active in helping Syrian refugees. Bashabsheh was visiting an apartment complex in northern Jordan where he is housing refugees when the man was seen putting the bomb under his car, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the press.

There is precedent for more. In 1982, when Syria's regime waged a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria massed troops on Jordan's border, accusing the kingdom of supporting the Islamists. No attack took place, but there was a wave of assassinations of Syrian Brotherhood activists who took refuge in Jordan. In 1970, the Syrian military carried out a short invasion of northern Jordan to protect Palestinians during a Jordanian crackdown on Palestinian factions.

"Assad is seething with anger at Jordan. It's now like a jigsaw puzzle with all scenarios possible," said Adnan Hamdan, 50, a cleric who worked in Syria's Religious Affairs Ministry until he defected to Jordan last Februrary.

Hamdan, now in Irbid, said he has received dozens of emails, text messages, and telephone calls from people with Syrian accents, warning "me that I will be killed because I have been outspoken in the media, exposing Assad's atrocities against the people."

Traditionally, Jordan's relations with Syria have been strained because of the kingdom's strong alliance with the United States and cordial ties with Syria's arch Israeli enemy under a 1994 peace treaty.

Syria's crisis has only worsened ties. Last year, Jordan's King Abdullah II suggested Assad must step down over the bloody crackdown. Last week, Jordan inaugurated its first refugee camp for the Syrians, an embarrassment for Damascus.

Recent shootings by Syrian troops on refugees at the border have raised Jordanian worries of an incursion, prompting Amman to deploy more troops near the frontier and put air defenses on alert. King Abdullah inspected the frontier and visited with his troops late Wednesday.

In the past few months, Syria has been pressing for the extradition of Syrian army and police defectors, but Jordan declined, according to a security official, who declined to be identified, saying he was not allowed to comment on sensitive state security matters.

Recently, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh admitted that Jordan has toughened its entry regulations and screening for Syrians to prevent pro-Assad loyalists from operating among refugees. But the attack on Sultan and others like it suggest regime agents are present.

Sultan, who arrived in Jordan in mid-July and works with the FSA, said that before the attack, neighbors in Irbid told him men were asking for him, claiming to have a message from his hometown of Daraa. Terrified, Sultan refused to leave his house for days.

"All I thought of is to find another place to hide," he told The Associated Press. Finally, "I went out for a breath of fresh air and to see the sun," he said. "I thought I'd try my luck, maybe they gave up looking for me."

That was when the attack came. A Jordanian security official confirmed the July 4 attack on Sultan and said the four men arrested from the car were Syrians. The official would not say more about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

A former Syrian army captain from Daraa who defected and fled to Jordan said he was attacked in the capital, Amman. He arrived in Jordan on May 8 and quickly heard from fellow Syrians that a group of Syrians was asking about him.

Three days later, three Syrian men and a woman approached him on an Amman street and said they had a letter for a Syrian in the neighborhood. They seemed unsure if he was the man they were looking for, since he had grown out his beard and dyed his hair since defecting, said the 34-year-old former captain. When he replied in a Syrian accent, they realized he was their man, he said.

They put two guns to his head, dragged him into a car and drove to an empty lot where they beat him with clubs, he said. "They said the next time, they'd come back to kill me if I don't head back to Syria within a week," he said. "They sped off and left me bleeding from the nose, mouth and head all night."

The captain, his head still creased with the scars, is now in hiding in a city in Jordan's eastern desert. He spoke on condition his name and exact location not be revealed for fear of being tracked down.

In a more mysterious incident, refugees living at the apartment complex run by the Jordanian businessman Bashabsheh reported two attempts to poison the complex's water supply. Three residents and two members of the Free Syrian Army said that on March 17, a pair of Syrians were caught dumping bags of rat poison into the water tanks on the building's roof. Then in June, they said, Syrians gave a resident money to dump pills into the tanks. The resident instead turned the money and the pills over to FSA members in the building, who said the pills were found to be cyanide-based. The FSA members said they believed Syrian intelligence was behind the attempts, but there was no independent confirmation of the incidents.

Jailed Indonesia cleric threatens Myanmar over Rohingya

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

* * * * *

August 4th 2012, Saturday / AFP

Jailed Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir threatened to wage war if Myanmar continues to harm Muslim Rohingyas, in a letter to the country's president Thein Sein seen on a website Friday.

The 74-year-old is widely regarded as a spiritual leader of radical Islam in Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim country -- and is currently serving a 15-year-jail term for funding terror.

"We've heard Muslims screaming in your country because of your acts of evil...you have taken them out from their homes and are killing them," he wrote in the letter dated July 22, which was passed on to followers and published on the website voa-islam.com.

"If you neglect these calls, by Allah our Lord, you have witnessed the fall of proud and conceited countries in the hands of our mujahideen soldiers," he added.

The letter was confirmed as authentic by Son Hadi, the spokesman for Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT), a group founded by Bashir in 2008 and labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.

An outspoken supporter of violent jihad, Bashir was convicted in 2010 of financing a terror cell in Aceh province. Earlier this year, the country's top court overturned a lower court's decision to cut his 15-year term.

"You must know that we are brothers as Muslims. Their pains is our pain, their sorrows are our sorrows, and their blood that you shed is our blood too," Bashir wrote. "By the will of Allah, we can destroy you and your people."

Son Hadi said Friday that the letter was submitted on Monday to the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. The embassy was not reachable for comment.

About 100 Muslim extremists from the Indonesian branch of pro-Caliphate organization Hizb ut-Tahrir protested Friday outside the Myanmar embassy and vow a Jihad to stop the "Muslim cleansing".

"We are ready to die to help our fellow Muslims in Myanmar. A Jihad is the only way to stop this massacre," one of the protesters on loudspeaker told the crowd, who shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

Violence erupted in June in Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, between Buddhists and Rohingya, leaving about 80 people dead from both sides, according to official estimates deemed low by rights groups.

Myanmar security forces opened fire on Rohingya Muslims, committed rape and stood by as rival mobs attacked each other during the recent wave of sectarian violence, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The authorities failed to protect both Muslims and Buddhists and then "unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya", the group said in a report.

Syria opposition plans for post-Assad era

August 03, 2012

PARIS (AP) — The Syrian National Council is deep into organizing an alternative to the regime of President Bashar Assad that could include those already in state institutions or even the ruling Baath Party, a senior member of the opposition group said Friday.

Bassma Kodmani, the SNC's Paris-based spokeswoman, did not exclude a role for Manaf Tlass, the Syrian general who was the first defector within Assad's inner circle but whose motives have raised suspicions.

Assad is fighting to stay atop Syria's hierarchy as he cracks down on an opposition movement — a conflict that has turned into a civil war and which activists say has killed more than 19,000 people since March 2011. The mosaic of religions and groups that make up Syrian society, from Assad's Alawite Muslim sect to the majority Sunnis, compound concerns about infighting and even the disintegration of Syria based on loyalties.

The SNC itself, with members spread across continents, is a fractious lot, and does not include all Syrian opposition activists. But it is considered by nations lending moral and material support to the rebels as the legitimate representative of those opposed to Assad.

"I think the regime has entered the process of collapse," Kodmani said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The vacuum of power at the political level should not happen, and the opposition is currently discussing very seriously and very intensively the shape a transition government should take. The objective here is to produce a Syrian plan, not anybody else's ... that produces a legitimate government."

The "two major pillars" of a transitional authority in a post-Assad era must include both political and military components, Kodmani said, and the roadmap is being prepared "in full coordination with the Free Syrian Army" battling Assad's forces. But "all sectors of society" would have a role, she said.

Civilians who have been mobilizing locally also must be part of a new structure which also would have an all-important legal component so there is "no need for personal revenge." A video which surfaced online this week and appears to show opposition fighters summarily executing Assad loyalists underscores the need to ensure acts of revenge are not part of an already bloody scenario. "I think the legal aspect of it is major," Kodmani said.

Rebel fighters currently hold sections of Syria's largest city and commercial hub, Aleppo, and there is concern a major assault by regime forces is impending. Kodmani said Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other unnamed countries are providing weapons to the Syrian Free Army, whose ranks are being bolstered by defections by soldiers and officers in the Syrian army.

She noted there is "intense debate" within the opposition about the roadmap for a Syria without Assad, but that the process she laid out represented a majority viewpoint and was moving forward. The army and Assad's Baath Party are elements that "need to be part of the transition" — but without leadership roles, she said.

She said the roadmap does not entail a "list of names" and is an urgent "process" due to the quickly evolving situation on the ground. She painted the outlook as favoring the opposition forces, despite Assad's continued grip on power.

Still, the SNC spokeswoman, who has played a key role in the organization since its birth, did not exclude Manaf Tlass from a post-Assad scenario and suggested his role was still being defined. Unlike some opposition figures, Kodmani put a positive face on Tlass, the brigadier general whose defection to France in early July raised hopes, then suspicion, among the Syrian opposition. She said the SNC has had contact with him but refused to elaborate.

Tlass, a childhood friend of Assad and once a commander of the Republican Guard, slipped into obscurity for weeks before appearing on Al-Arabiya TV and again in an interview this week with the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, offering to help those opposed to Assad.

To those who suspect he wants a star role as the tide turns against the Syrian president, Tlass said, "I did not leave Syria to lead a transitional period." He offered to help unite "all the honorable people inside and outside Syria to put together a roadmap to get us out of this crisis."

Those statements have not satisfied all skeptics, but Kodmani appeared to be laying groundwork for an eventual spot for the one-time Assad loyalist. "Manaf Tlass, he has been a decent person. He has behaved in a respectable way, and he definitely should be part of a big plan of transition and organizing the opposition," she said. "Whether he is in a position to play a leading role, I think that is a different story ... He needs to part of the opposition before he can say 'I will lead the opposition.'"

She did not disclose Tlass' whereabouts, saying only that he is traveling. "I think the terms of his participation in the process of transition are being clarified," she said.