Six In The Morning Friday February 6

Jordan expands ISIL air strikes to Iraq targets

Jordanian foreign minister says his country's fighter jets are bombing ISIL targets in Syria and in Iraq.

06 Feb 2015 07:11 GMT | War & Conflict, Jordan

Dozens of Jordanian fighter jets have bombed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets, the military said, pledging to keep up the attacks until the armed group is defeated.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told CNN on Friday that the raids now expanded into Iraq. Jordan joined the US-led military alliance against ISIL in September, but up until recently was believed to have only bombed sites in Syria.

Thursday's air strikes came a day after King Abdullah II pledged to avenge the death of captured Jordanian military pilot Moaz al-Kassasbeh, who was burned alive by ISIL members.

EDITORIAL

Friday 6 February 2015

War with Isis: Arab states' involvement can change the nature of the fight against militants

The cry for greater Arab leadership in the fight against Isis has gone up many times. It is repeated so often because it makes intuitive sense. US-led air strikes can “degrade” the insurgent group but they cannot get rid of it. More boots on the ground will be needed if this is to happen – and, after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, few need convincing that those boots should belong to Arab soldiers, not Western ones. 

That leaders of Arab states might grasp the nettle more firmly is also a matter of self-defence. It is the likes of Jordan, Turkey and Egypt – alongside the Gulf nations – who face the most direct threat from Isis’s spreading reach. But most important of all is the symbolic value of predominantly Sunni Muslim nations taking the vanguard. At a stroke, that would undermine the claim of Isis to be resisting Western aggression, and might bring more of Iraq’s Sunni communities under the banner of “Operation Inherent Resolve”. It could even lay the ground for a rerun of the “Sunni awakening” that was critical in driving al-Qaeda out of Iraq in 2006.

First stars 100 million years younger than previously thought 

Latest data shows star formation began about 550 million years after the Big Bang

The first stars twinkled into life some 100 million years later than was previously thought, new research suggests.

Data from the European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope indicates that star formation began about 550 million years after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe.

Before that time, described as the “reionisation” epoch, the cosmos occupied a dark age devoid of visible light.

The Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago was when matter, space and even time exploded into existence.

Previously scientists had thought the first stars began to shine 440 million years after the Big Bang. The new results, still to be confirmed by further measurements, suggest that they are 100 million years younger.

'Uncertain Radiological Threat': US Navy Sailors Search for Justice after Fukushima Mission

By Alexander Osang

In March of 2011, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan rushed to Japan to help after the disastrous tsunami. Since then, many sailors from that ship have fallen ill, possibly as a result of exposure to radiation from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. They will soon have their day in court.

On March 11, 2011, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reaganreceived orders to change course and head for the east coast of Japan, which had just been devastated by a tsunami. The Ronald Reagan had been on its way to South Korea when the order reached it and Captain Thom Burke, who was in charge of the ship along with its crew of 4,500 men and women, duly redirected his vessel. The Americans reached the Japanese coastline on March 12, just north of Sendai and remained in the region for several weeks. The mission was named Tomodachi.

The word tomodachi means "friends." In hindsight, the choice seems like a delicate one.

Three-and-a-half years later, Master Chief Petty Officer Leticia Morales is sitting in a café in a rundown department store north of Seattle and trying to remember the name of the doctor who removed her thyroid gland 10 months ago. Her partner Tiffany is sitting next to her fishing pills out of a large box and pushing them over to Morales.

Greste release means one down, 41,000 to go in Egypt's jails

February 6, 2015 - 2:22PM

Ruth Pollard

Middle East Correspondent

Beirut: The hashtags now overlap each other on Twitter: #FreeBaher is retweeted by #FreeAlaa and #FreeShawkan while just below, a poignant video message from the husband of poet Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, killed last month by Egyptian security forces, is shared again and again.

With over 41,000 political prisoners held in Egyptian jails – most of them swept up in a campaign of mass arrests between July 2013 and May 2014 – families around the country are doing whatever they can to shine a light on the plight of their loved ones.

Their increasingly agonising pleas for freedom, accompanied by photographs of young children growing up without their fathers and quotes from letters penned in the darkness of prison, mark a miserable new normal in Egypt.

Three-nation offensive drives Boko Haram to Cameroon rampage

The Nigerian Islamic militants killed 90 civilians in Cameroon Wednesday after the African Union authorized a 7,500-strong force from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Benin.

By Michael Holtz, Staff writer FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Boko Haram fighters have killed about 90 civilians and wounded 500 in ongoing skirmishes in a Cameroonian border town near Nigeria, the latest sign of the Islamic extremist group’s extended threat across the region.

An estimated 800 Boko Haram militants have waged gruesome attacks, including burning to death civilians, on the town of Fotokol since Wednesday. Cameroon’s information minister, Issa Tchiroma, told The Associated Press that they’ve also burned churches and mosques in addition to looting livestock and food.

Security experts believe the fighters crossed into Cameroon from nearby Gamboru, a Nigerian border town that had been a Boko Haram stronghold since November. Gamboru was retaken earlier this week when Chadian and Nigerian air strikes, supported by Chadian ground troops, drove them out.