United States concerned about violence in Bahrain, Posted by Meosha Eaton

It looks like the threat of violence continues, what's next for Bahrain. At this point we askourselves what's next for the Middle East as a whole. According to recent reports, US officials commented Tuesday on the matter and are strongly urging that restraints are used as first and immediate form of response to recent protest turned threatening protest and unrest. Recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have sparked an electrifying revolution powered by social media and unconditional belief in freedom and equality. A tone quite familiar to our own homeland with domestic turmoils sparked by Civil Rights that was led by greats such as Martin Luthe King, Jr., Marcus Garvey, Frederick Douglas and many more. We ask what is next for the Middle East, we should be asking what is next for the world? With recent reports of the new 2012 budget report, we can all understand the frustration of an unevenly tipped scale, after all, balance is equality and equalit is freedom and in our world freedom is protectd and represented by the perfect practice of Democracy.

Meosha Eaton


As reported byReuters:
WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it was "very concerned" by recent violence in protests in Bahrain and urged all sides to exercise restraint.

"The United States is very concerned by recent violence surrounding protests in Bahrain," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a statement. "We also call on all parties to exercise restraint and refrain from violence."

The spokesman said Washington had received confirmation that two protesters in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, had been killed and urged Bahrain to quickly follow up on its pledge to investigate.

"The United States welcomes the government of Bahrain's statements that it will investigate these deaths, and that it will take legal action against any unjustified use of force by Bahraini security forces," Crowley said.

Shi'ite protesters prepared to camp out in Bahrain's capital on Tuesday evening after a day of protests in which a man was shot dead in clashes with police at a funeral for a demonstrator shot the day before.

Protesters, inspired by popular revolts that toppled rulers in Tunisia and Egypt, said their main demand was the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, who has governed the Gulf Arab state since its independence in 1971.
The demonstrators from Bahrain's Shi'ite majority say the ruling Sunni minority shuts them out of housing, healthcare and government jobs.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Q&A, What's next for Yemen's road to political turmoil? Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reportd by Reuters:


* Protests gather momentum, spontaneity
* Revolts in Tunisia, Egypt galvanise opposition
* Al Qaeda could exploit chaos if Saleh overthrown


By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

Feb 15 (Reuters) - Hundreds of pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed in Sanaa on Tuesday in the latest unrest to hit Yemen, where the fall of autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia has galvanised opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Protesters who had first called for reform now carry posters with the message "Leave, leave" to Saleh, a crafty military man who has ruled the fragile southern Arabian state for 32 years.

Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, has offered concessions, promising to step down in 2013 and asking for talks with the opposition, which has agreed to negotiate.

Here are some questions and answers about the Yemeni crisis:


COULD SALEH BE TOPPLED?
Protests are still fairly small, but have become bigger, wilder and more spontaneous since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow. Change in Yemen, a deeply tribal society awash in guns, could be a bloodier process than in Egypt.

Mubarak's removal and an outbreak of popular unrest in Yemen uncoordinated with the formal opposition coalition are new factors in Yemen's troubles, said Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen.

Saleh, who scrapped a trip to Washington this week, faced "very critical" weeks, the Princeton University scholar added.
There have been few indications so far that Saleh, 68, has lost the loyalty of the armed forces, police or security services which have helped keep him in power for three decades.

But the president, whose impoverished country is running out of oil and water, now has fewer resources to grease the network of patronage and favours used in the past to buy the loyalty of unruly tribes and members of his own military-security elite.
"Saleh will fall if he persists on using repressive tactics," said Philip McCrum of the Economist Intelligence Unit, saying his promise to step down in 2013 had bought him some time, but that Mubarak's ouster had changed the playing field.

"These new protesters are not Houthis (northern rebels), they are not southern secessionists, nor are they Al Qaeda militants. They are ordinary, disaffected Yemenis. If he doesn't treat them with respect, that disaffection will grow rapidly."
Fear of chaos in Yemen, however, is far more real and frightening than in Egypt -- a factor Saleh can play on.
"Saleh may be the architect
 of many of Yemen's problems today, but he is also the person who has kept the country together for these past 30-odd years," McCrum said.
"Also, Saleh still commands a broad swathe of public support and there is a significant section of society who don't want to see him go and may mobilise against his opponents."


WHO COULD TAKE OVER?
Ruling Yemen would be a daunting challenge for anyone. Saleh himself has likened the task to "dancing on snakes' heads".
He has no obvious successor, although many Yemenis believe he had hoped to lever his eldest son Ahmed, head of the Republican Guard and the special forces, into the post.

Saleh has disowned that idea. "No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock," he said on Feb. 2 alluding to proposals by his party on term limits that might have kept him in office.

Yemen is emerging from a civil war with northern rebels and is fighting a violent secessionist movement in the south. Much of the rugged countryside in both areas already defies central government control, which has always been fitful.
If Saleh fell, another military man might make a grab for power, but further conflict and fragmentation would be likely.

The loosely allied opposition parties are in poor shape to take over. They are now reacting to protests, not leading them.

"The opposition is very confused at the moment, there's no leader that's emerged. There's a variety of different leaders in the opposition that are trying to get a handle on this, but no one really knows what direction to turn," Johnsen said.


WHAT IS FUELLING UNREST?
Saleh has repressed his opponents on occasion, but he prefers to co-opt them and to manipulate powerful constituencies to support him, while maintaining a semblance of democracy.

What really drives popular rage is the widespread corruption fostered on his watch, enriching a privileged elite even as Yemen's 23 million people sink deeper into poverty and despair.

About 40 percent live on less than $2 a day and a third suffer chronic hunger. In Saada, a northern war zone, 45 percent of children are acutely malnourished, UNICEF says.

Unemployment is about 35 percent, said Yemeni political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, citing government estimates.

The cash-strapped government is almost powerless to meet the needs of its fast-expanding population and might swiftly lose control if it cannot pay wages to public servants and soldiers.

A tumble in the Yemeni rial forced the central bank to inject some $850 million, around 15 percent of its reserves, into the market to support the currency in 2010.
Yemen also finds it hard to absorb foreign aid. Only a tenth of the $4.7 billion pledged by donors in 2006 has been disbursed due mainly to administrative hurdles, officials say.

Yemen's water crisis, among the world's worst, is aggravated by irrigation for qat, a mild narcotic leaf beloved by Yemenis.

Thus Saleh has scant room for economic concessions.
"People are upset. They want Saleh to leave. He's been in power for 33 years and has destroyed the country," said Abdullah al-Faiqh, a political science professor at Sanaa University.


WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF INSTABILITY?
Apart from the dire impact on a population already short of jobs, education, food and security, turmoil in Yemen alarms neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Their main worry is that Osama bin Laden's Yemen-based network, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), would acquire a safer haven for attacks beyond Yemen's borders.

"Popular-driven regime change in Yemen is the U.S. and Saudi nightmare scenario," said McCrum. "The idea of the country falling into political limbo, where AQAP is free to operate, will give U.S. and Saudi officials cold sweats."

Washington aims to spend $75 million to double the size of a special Yemeni counter-terrorism unit, a U.S. official said on Monday. The funding, yet to win Congress's approval, was part of a wider effort to pile pressure on AQAP, the official said.
Washington seems to be signalling support for Saleh, though it has sometimes questioned his commitment to fighting AQAP.

"But Yemen could possibly present Washington with a very tricky moral conundrum," McCrum said.

"It has clearly stated that it is on the side of those seeking liberty but if it chooses to continue supporting Saleh in the face of growing popular opposition, then the U.S. could risk losing what little political capital it has left in the Middle East."

Police beat Sudanese at short-lived protest - witnesses, Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reported by Reuters:

* Protests over food prices, liberties, inspired by Egypt
* Police quick to crack down on small demonstrations
(Edits)

KHARTOUM, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Police beat and teargassed students protesting in Sudan's Sennar state, the latest in a series of short-lived demonstrations partly inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, witnesses said.

Around 200 students, protesting against price rises and calling for change, tried to rally outside Sennar university on Thursday afternoon, before officers moved in with batons and then surrounded the compound, witnesses told Reuters.

Sudan has used armed riot police to disperse a series of demonstrations by young Sudanese across the north of the country in recent weeks.

Protests earlier last month focused on food prices and human rights abuses and broadened to include calls for political change after images of massed protests in Cairo, Tunis and other cities were broadcast across the world.

The protests, many around universities, have so far not been supported by wider parts of the population and have failed to gain momentum.

Also on Thursday police arrested dozens of people near the scene of a planned protest in the capital's Khartoum North suburb, said witnesses. The demonstration, which had been publicised on the internet, did not take place.

Police set up road blocks in and around Khartoum to search cars and lorries overnight. A Reuters witness saw officers even checking inside bags of vegetables in one vehicle on the road from Khartoum to the town of Kosti.

As part of a wider crackdown on opposition voices, officers arresting 10 journalists from Sudan's Communist Party newspaper on Wednesday and detained opposition Islamist Hassan al-Turabi and 12 of his party officials last month.

A police spokesman said there was no official comment on the reports on Friday, the start of the weekend in Sudan.

Sudan is facing an economic crisis marked by soaring inflation. It is also vulnerable politically after the south of the country -- the source of most of its oil -- voted overwhelmingly to secede last month.

(Writing by Andrew Heavens; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

World Bank chief urges action on rising food prices, Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reported by Reuters:

* Global solution needed to tackle food price volatility
* Chance for Africa to increase food productivity

By Lesley Wroughton
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The world faces a broader trend of increasing food and commodity prices and more countries should wake up to the need to curb price volatility, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Wednesday.

In a phone interview from Berlin, Zoellick called on G20 global leaders to "put food first" to tackle the surge in prices and increased volatility threatening the poor and driving up inflation in developing countries, mainly in Asia.

"We are going to be facing a broader trend of increasing commodity prices, including food commodity prices," Zoellick told Reuters.

"This can put pressure but also create opportunities," he added, noting that developing nations could boost revenues by increasing food production to meet rising global demand.

He said increased consumer demand, especially for sugar and meat, in fast-growing emerging economies was a major factor pushing prices higher compared with the 2007/2008 crisis.

A mix of high oil and fuel prices, growing use of biofuels, bad weather and soaring futures markets pushed prices to record levels in 2007 and 2008, sparking violent protests in Africa.

Zoellick said the Food Price Index of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, which measures monthly prices changes for a food basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, showed food prices surging to above 2007/08 levels.
Higher food prices are set to push the index on Thursday to a record high in January for a second straight month.

The higher prices, together with political repression and growing inequality between the rich and poor, have fanned protests across the Middle East, including Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria and Jordan.

In the run-up to the 2007/2008 food price crisis, the World Bank estimated that some 870 million people in developing countries were hungry or malnourished. The FAO estimates that number has increased to 900 million.

"We believe that while there are differences from the 2008 period, one core policy issue that is the same is that it looks like it will be a very tough year for the chronically malnourished," Zoellick added.

GLOBAL SOLUTIONS NEEDED
The higher food and energy prices have stoked inflation in Asia, including Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand.

With French President Nicolas Sarkozy making commodity price volatility and reforms of the international monetary system his priorities for France's presidency of the G20 group of leading economies this year, Zoellick said it was important to come up with practical solutions to ensure people have access to nutritious food.
"2008 should have been a wake-up call, but I'm not yet sure all the countries in the world that we need to support this have woken up to it," Zoellick said.

While calling for tougher regulation to head off the risk of food riots or slower economic growth, Sarkozy has also focused on improving physical market data.
Zoellick wants the G20 to recognize a larger role for development banks, such as the World Bank, in changes dealing not only with the immediate needs of poor countries faced with higher food prices, but in improving agricultural productivity.

He said politicians in rich countries did not always recognize the political and economic challenges higher food prices posed to developing countries.

More expensive food can be disastrous to the poor because three-quarters of their income is spent on basic foodstuffs.

Food prices also typically account for about one-third to one-half of a consumer price index in developing countries. In developed countries, food makes up a small portion of the CPI.

Zoellick said the World Bank had reactivated its emergency financing facility for poorer countries dealing with the effects of higher food prices, although the impact on African countries of the latest increase has not been as severe.

He said concerns among African governments would grow if oil prices rose enough above their current levels to affect the cost of food transportation and fertilizers.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)