When Sheila Russell decided to move back to her ancestral home in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, she wanted to start a new life. A seventh-generation Russell, whose family had settled the land in 1796, the last year of George Washington’s presidency, she left her corporate job at a catalog company to do what she loved best: farming.

There was only one problem: shale gas. As luck would have it, the Russell farm happened to sit on top of the Marcellus shale, a large underground formation rich in natural gas. In 2010, just as Ms. Russell was embarking on her new career in organic farming, Chesapeake Energy drilled two shale-gas wells across the road, less a thousand feet from the farm.

Although not worried at first and even hopeful that future royalties from the gas may help her expand her business, Ms. Russell soon found herself in a nightmare, when she discovered that one of the wells on her property had been leaking methane gas into the ground, due to a faulty casing, for over a year.

Today, Sheila Russell has stopped drinking the water from her private well and even refuses to water her produce with it, preferring instead a nearby spring-fed pond. Water tests have shown elevated levels of methane and metals, still within state norms, but she does not want to take any chances.

"It's a concern for me, it's a concern for my customers," she says. "We all thought [the gas] was a lot of money coming and that it was safe. And it’s neither safe, nor a money-maker. Do I stay on this seventh-generation farm and keep it going? I don’t know."

Sheila Russell's case is hardly an exception. Bradford County, a bucolic region in northern Pennsylvania full of woodlands, rolling hills, and pastures dotted by red barns and hay bales, with a population of just 63,000 people, has been undergoing a massive industrial transformation for the past few years, as both American and international companies have joined the rush for gas.

This is not the first natural-resource boom in Bradford County. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal mining and logging were big economic drivers -- until the coal ran out and the hills were hills were stripped bare -- but the shale gas may prove to be the biggest industry yet.

About 2,000 shale-gas wells have been drilled and permitted in the county so far, making it the most heavily drilled region in Pennsylvania and the Marcellus as a whole. And while the economic benefits for companies, larger leaseholders, and some local businesses have been significant, the gas rush threatens to undermine the venerable farming and dairy operations in the area, while creating a host of environmental and social problems.

The changes are hard to ignore. From a sleepy Pennsylvania town on the banks of the Susquehanna River, Towanda, the county's seat, has metamorphosed into a real boomtown, with industry trucks and large pickups jamming the single main street. Crime has gone up by about 40 percent, while rents and food prices have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, new restaurants and hotels have sprung up along the river valley to service the rig and pipeline workers, many of them coming here from as far as Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.

Since 2008, when drilling for shale gas began in the county, revenues from sales tax have jumped up 61 percent, while unemployment has hovered at around six percent, lower than the national average. So far, local landowners have received $160 million in leases, which have boosted spending, as well as the county's tax base.

"The shale gas industry has had a very positive economic impact on the region" says Anthony Ventello, the executive director of Progress Authority, the local chamber of commerce, pointing out that the gas industry continues to bring in new investments. A new 800 MW gas-fired power plant, worth between 600 and 800 million dollars, has been already planned, while other, smaller gas-related projects are soon to follow.

"We're looking to create a value-added economy and not just ship natural gas out of here like a third-world country," he says.

 

Yet, behind the upbeat statistics, a darker side lurks. Blowouts, toxic spills, water contamination, and gas migration have accompanied development.

Chesapeake Energy, the company with the most substantial presence, was fined $900,000 -- the largest environmental fine in the state’s history -- for allowing gas migration to contaminate the water of 16 families in the county in 2010. Later, a blowout of one of the company’s wells caused large amounts of "produced water" -- liquid waste associated with shale gas extraction -- to spill into Towanda creek. In Bradford County, according to the Department of Environmental Protection, overall there have been more than 600 violations so far.

Most often, accidents occur due to faulty casing and cementing, with gas and a variety of dangerous metals migrating into the water table. The industry calculates that six percent of all new wells have some kind of casing or cementing problem, but in reality that percentage could be much higher.

Carol French, a long-time dairy farmer, experienced the adverse consequences of shale-gas drilling first hand, when her well water turned white and murky in 2011. Soon, her whole family started having skin rashes, while her 24-year old daughter fell extremely ill with intestinal, liver and spleen problems (she quickly improved when she moved away from the farm). Meanwhile, the family's cattle began suffering from skin rashes and breeding issues.

"I got to see my farm lose 90 percent of its property value," she says. “I’m losing my milk market and probably I won’t be able to sell my cows. The gas industry had negatively impacted our health, our water, our business, our society."

Mrs. French has made the conscious decision to keep her dairy operation going, despite the fact that there are about 340 shale-gas wells within a ten-mile radius of her farm. Many of her neighbors, on the other hand, have simply opted to take the money from their gas leases and sell their dairy herds. Out of about 12 dairy farmers in the immediate vicinity, only three have kept their farms running, according to Mrs. French's estimates. Even the local milk hauler has gone on to work as a truck driver for the shale-gas industry.

Another serious impact has been the fragmentation of farmland by the wells pads, compressor stations, and the thousands of miles of pipelines already crisscrossing the hills or currently under construction.

Certainly, there are other factors contributing to the decline of dairy farms in Bradford County, beyond the gas industry. Low milk prices and expensive feed have kept the business on the edge of survival for years and many have seen the windfall from gas leases and royalties as the perfect exit.

The choice was clear for Howard Keir, a neighbor of Carol French. After leasing the mineral rights of his property to Chesapeake Energy, he immediately sold off his dairy herd. He believes shale-gas extraction is generally safe and today has three wells on his property, out of which he soon expects to receive royalties.

"With the price of milk going mostly down, farmers were going out of business anyway, so you can’t blame it all on the industry," he says.

Anthony Ventello, of the chamber of commerce, agrees. "Don’t get me wrong, but farming is doomed, no matter what you do. It has to do with milk prices mostly. Yes, things will change, but I don’t see that as a danger."

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some farmers use the proceeds from gas exploration to upgrade their operations, but the general trend has been in the opposite direction.

A 2012 study by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences draws a direct correlation between the decline of cow numbers and dairy production in areas with higher drilling activity. Between 2007 and 2010, in counties with 150 or more gas wells cow numbers have decreased by 18.7 percent on average, compared to only 1.2 percent decrease in counties with no Marcellus wells. In Bradford County the decline has been 18.8 percent for that time period.

Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics and a co-author of the study, sees a danger for the entire dairy industry in the region if the decline continues.

"If the number of farms and agricultural activity fall too low, these essential supporting businesses [like feed stores, large animal veterinarians, machinery dealers, and agricultural processors] will leave or quit, making it difficult for remaining farmers to access needed inputs and markets and thus remain in business," he writes.

If such domino effect takes place and farming and dairy production in Bradford County collapse along with the entire supply chain, even the large financial inflow from the shale gas industry might not be able to make up for the difference.

A law that came into effect last year in Pennsylvania, Act 13, tries to mitigate some of the negative effects of shale gas drilling by providing an impact fee. In 2012, Bradford County received $8.2 million with another $6.8 million projected for 2013.

"It's a chunk of change that Bradford County never had before," says Mark Smith, one of the county commissioners. "Is it enough? I don't think we know that answer yet."

Without a doubt shale gas has made a serious contribution to the economy of Bradford County and Pennsylvania as a whole, yet risking a sustainable industry like farming for an unsustainable one like fossil-fuel extraction may prove too expensive in the end.

Already a bust is on the horizon: drilling in the county has seen a substantial decline, from 408 shale-gas wells drilled in 2011 to 149 well through November of 2012, due to low gas prices. The construction of thousands of miles of pipeline continues in preparation for the new boom when prices pick up, but it is far from certain whether farming in the area could recover so easily.

"The story is always different at the kitchen table where they come to sign you on than it is out in the field," says Bruce Kennedy, a long-time farmer whose family roots in Pennsylvania go back 200 years. In 2011, three accidents related to shale gas extraction happened on his property, including a large diesel spill.

"My grandfather always taught me to leave a place better than you found it. I don’t mind people going after the gas, but it doesn't entitle them to abuse the place. You have to be a good steward of the land."

 

Reporting for this article was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Calkins Media. Dimiter Kenarov is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. To learn more about the impacts of fracking, visit Link TV's ISSUE: Fracking page.

There was a saying in Youngstown that the day you didn't have to sweep soot off your porch was the day that spelled trouble. That was more than thirty-five years ago, when the city, nestled in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, was one of the great steel manufacturers in the United States – "the Ruhr Valley of America" – with dozens of foundries, their smokestacks belching black plumes into a black sky.

Then the soot gradually disappeared, but so did the jobs, as automation and cheap imports drove the industry away. The steel mills shut down, one by one, like the organs of a dying patient. By the end, more than 50,000 people lost their employment and the city's population shrank by nearly 65 percent, to just over 60,000.

Today, brownfields and empty factories litter the landscape and ghostly, boarded-up houses haunt the neighborhoods. Tattered American flags flutter from skeletal poles. Junkies roam the streets listlessly. If the Rust Belt had a buckle, it would be right here. 

But the world is changing, and so is Youngstown. The shale gas boom in the Marcellus formation of neighboring Pennsylvania has lifted up hopes in the city– while raising fears of new industrial-scale pollution.

A slick 650-million dollar plant with 350 employees, V&M Star, making steel tubes for the gas industry, opened last October to great fanfare, where once stood the Brier Hill Works of Youngstown Sheet & Tube. A few smaller steel shops have also made a comeback, while restaurants and motels are getting busier, according to interview with owners.

"The shale gas could be a game changer, but I think in truth it's a very strong diversifier of our regional economy," says Eric Planey, vice president of the International Business Attraction, Youngstown’s chamber of commerce. "It's almost like a steroid for the economy."

Drilling for shale gas, too, has recently made its entrance into the Mahoning Valley, as the local Utica Shale has proven rich in profitable "wet gas," saturated with natural gas liquids like propane, butane and ethane. So far, there are just a few shale gas wells in the county area – overall, 196 have been drilled in Ohio and 477 have been permitted – but many more are in the planning stages. Like smokestacks turned upside down, the boreholes seem to promise a new industrial revival for Youngstown.

In truth, for the past several years the city has been attempting to reinvent itself as a high-tech hub for software startups, but success has so far been limited. General Motors remains the largest employer in the area and blue-collar jobs are the most popular.

"Shale gas could really turn our economy around and produce jobs in the future," Charles Sammarone, the mayor of Youngstown, says.

The city council recently approved an ordinance to allow the lease of the mineral rights of 180 acres of city-owned land. The potential revenue, the mayor hopes, could fund the demolition of abandoned houses and buildings, and give Youngstown a facelift. A 2010 survey by the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative showed that there are 3,246 vacant structures within the city limits, or about 44.8 structures per 1,000 residents, a figure 20 times the national average.

At the same time, unemployment has been kept relatively low at 7.9 percent, the national average, but only because so many people have been leaving the area.

"We want to clean up our neighborhoods, so we can keep people from moving out," Sammarone says.

Patching and cleaning up Youngstown with shale gas, though, may prove its own ironic pitfall. Shale gas harvesting requires an invasive technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, whereby millions of gallons of frack fluid – a mixture of water, sand and chemicals, some of them toxic – are injected in the ground under high pressure to crack the impermeable rock and release the trapped hydrocarbons.

Much of that mixture then comes back as "produced water" or "brine," laced underground with high concentrations of salts, a variety of heavy metals, and naturally occurring radioactivity, making it very difficult for treatment or disposal.

"All oil and gas production brings certain risks of contamination to ground and surface water, [but] through appropriate oversight, training, maintenance, and enforcement of regulations, spills can be greatly minimized," says Jeffrey Dick, director of Youngstown’s Natural Gas and Water Research Institute.

However, cases of groundwater contamination and gas migration into aquifers due to faulty casings, as well as blowouts and spills have been quite common and well documented in Pennsylvania, right across the state border. Between January 2008 and August 2011, Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recorded 2,988 violations related to shale gas extraction, 1,144 of which involved environmental threats or substantial environmental damage.

Chesapeake Energy, the second largest producer of natural gas in the United States, was fined last year $900,000, the biggest environmental fine in Pennsylvania's history, for allowing gas to contaminate private water wells in Bradford County. In 2009, another company, Cabot Oil & Gas received a fine of over $500,000 for similar violations in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Industry statics indicate that six percent of cement casings in new wells fail and leak gas and liquid contaminants in the environment, while that percentage climbs precipitously to 50 after the first 30 years of exploitation.

"The gas industry could revitalize the town, but you can't also look the other way. The rivers have been polluted, the land has been polluted by the steel industry, and they left us pretty much in shambles," says Robert Hagan, an Ohio state representative and a Youngstown native, who had worked as a locomotive engineer for decades, ferrying steel products across the region. "You have to think very clearly about what could happen with the shale gas and oil industry... so we don't repeat the same mistakes that we've done in the past."

Although there is no substantial drilling in the area yet, with just over a dozen wells in various stages of development, Youngstown has already felt the shockwaves, literally. With no previous history of major seismicity, the city experienced 12 earthquakes in 2011, the strongest one a 4.0 on the Richter scale.

A preliminary report by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) linked the tremors to a deep injection well, Northstar 1, used for the disposal of brine from Pennsylvania's shale gas industry. Located right across the new V&M Star pipe plant, on the opposite bank of the Mahoning River, the well was a reminder of the other, dirtier end-product of fossil-fuel extraction.

"Everybody is saying how great the new jobs are but they're being willfully ignorant about the whole big picture," says Raymond Beiersdorfer, a professor of geology at Youngstown State University, who used to work in oil exploration. "You can't have a sustainable environment when you're developing shale gas in such a polluting manner. There are problems all through the whole chain of the process."

Northstar 1 was eventually shut down and ODNR implemented stricter rules for waste disposal in all the 192 deep injection wells in Ohio, but a potential for seismic events or serious leaks nonetheless remains, experts say. For that reason, the nearby town of Niles recently banned injection wells on its territory.

"The earthquakes shook people up and made them realize the risks of the gas industry," says John Williams, 55, a Niles native, both of whose grandfathers worked in the steel mills.

At the end of 2011, Williams and a few other local residents organized a grassroots movement against injection wells and fracking, Frackfree Mahoning Valley, which has since grown in popularity, staging a number of rallies and information sessions. And although some Youngstown residents see anti-fracking organizations as an obstacle to economic recovery, the area's long tradition of unionism and populist activism have generally cast environmental protests in a positive light.

But Williams has gone even further. When the company Consol Energy was recently allowed to drill a shale gas well in the protection area of Meander Creek Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to all the residents of Youngstown and adjoining residential areas, he started his own private monitoring initiative, PEEPS (People's Essential Environmental Protection Service).

Almost daily, Williams measures samples with professional water-testing equipment from a nearby creek that empties directly into the reservoir.

So far, he has not noticed any problems, but he keeps his guard up.

"It's a way that people can defend their property, their water and air. Government agencies are not protecting us the way we think they should, but the technology exists so we can protect ourselves," he says.

"Chances are there won't be an accident. But if there is one at Meander Creek Reservoir, it would be a lot more than just jobs that people would have to worry about."

But shale gas from the Utica and the Marcellus is just one side of the today's fossil-fuel boom around the Youngstown area. Although much smaller in scale and overall impact, a number of gas wells are being drilled in a shallower rock formation called Clinton sandstones. And reports of groundwater pollution are already coming in.

Jaime Frederick, 34, of Coitsville, Ohio, just east of Youngstown, has ten gas wells within half a mile of her house. Three years ago, just as she moved in, she started experiencing a number of mysterious liver, kidney and intestinal problems. After five surgeries and the removal of her gallbladder, she tested her water and found that it was polluted with high levels of barium, strontium and toluene – chemicals associated with drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

It was only when she stopped drinking her water that her medical condition improved. Today, Frederick has a massive filtration system in her house, as well as gas detectors on every floor.

"How can they say it’s OK you're getting sick because somebody is getting a job? To me that’s not OK. It's going to make this area a place where people wouldn’t want to live anymore. And it’s already been that for so long. Companies are turning residential land into an industrial warzone," she says.

Yet, despite the dangers of gas drilling, many residents of Youngstown continue to feel this is a good chance for the city to come back to life and maybe revive its old manufacturing glory. The question is how much "soot" the new industry would produce and how much of it residents are willing to bear for better jobs.

"It's a fact of life. It's going to happen. We may cry or complain, but the economic impact is too big to be stopped," says Jack Kravitz, the owner of the oldest deli in Youngstown, whose business has jumped up by 20 percent in the past year.

Both opponents and proponents of shale gas development, however, agree the state has to institute a stricter regulatory regime to ensure environmental safety and people's health. There are also calls for much higher taxes on the industry -- the current proposal of Ohio's governor John Kasich envisions just 1.5 percent tax on annual gross sales in the first year and 4 percent annually after that -- so the whole region could better benefit from its own resources.

"People are cautiously optimistic," says Phil Kidd, a community organizer and owner of Youngstown Nation, a popular gift shop in the downtown area. "There's a desire to see this happen, because we desperately need the economic development, but we are also concerned about the environmental aspects of it because once this resource is extracted these companies are gone. If Youngstown, Ohio, can't learn from its past, I don't know what community can."

Reporting for this article was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Calkins Media. Dimiter Kenarov is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. To learn more about the impacts of fracking, visit Link TV's ISSUE: Fracking page.

 

 

Last week, BBC Arabic reported on a conference held in Istanbul on Muslim-Christian relations entitled, "The Arab Awakening and Peace in the New Middle East." During the conference, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented, "What happened nearly 1,300 years ago in Karbala is the same thing happening today in Syria."

Erdogan was referring to the Battle of Karbala, a pivotal event in Islam during which Hussein bin Ali, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, was killed. Hussein and his supporters were traveling to Kufa to confront Syrian Caliph (Khalifa) Yazid I on his legitimacy as a successor to Muhammad, but were grossly outnumbered by the caliph's forces.

By comparing the current conflict in Syria to the Battle of Karbala, Erdogan may have also implied a reference to similarities between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Yazid I. Yazid inherited power from his father Muawiyah I, a detested figure amongst Shiites and some Sunnis for seizing the caliphate from Muhammad's two grandsons, Hassan and Hussein, who Shiites believe are the prophet's true successors.

The Imams of the largest branches of Shia Islam claim to have descended from the prophet Muhammad through Hussein. The Sunni kings of Morocco and Jordan (and previously the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, and Iraq) claim to have descended from the elder of the two, Hassan.

The date of Hussein bin Ali's martyrdom, or the Day of Ashura, is a holy day in Shia Islam. On Ashura, Shiites make a pilgrimage to Hussein's grave in the Iraqi city of Karbala, and the term Husseiniyat refers to the congregation halls in which Shiites mourn him.

In Iraq, Al-Iraqiya reported on Thursday that three Husseiniyat in Kirkuk were attacked using car bombs, claiming multiple lives. This was followed by a wave of bombings over the weekend that killed dozens of people, including a number of Shiites in the southern city of Basra. These are the latest in a series of attacks on Iraqi Shiites this summer. Most have been blamed on the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni umbrella organization affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, Al-Alam reported that a large demonstration was held in the eastern city of al-Qatif to demand the release of Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a Shia scholar. Al-Nimr was originally arrested in July following a sermon in which he criticized the royal al-Saud family and called for rejoicing in Crown Prince Nayef's death.

Shiites make up about 15 percent of Saudi Arabians. They reside primarily in Eastern Province, sharing a sea border and cultural ties with Bahrain. Most of the country, including the royal family, follows a conservative branch of Sunni Islam and considers Shiites to be apostates. As such, Shiites have been historically marginalized in the country, and unlike Iraq and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has never had a sizable Shiite elite. Members of this long-disenfranchised group have been the primary participants in Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring demonstrations.

 

Image: A Shi'ite pilgrim walks to the holy city of Kerbala to mark Arbain in Baghdad's Doura District January 9, 2012. Arbain falls 40 days after the Shi'ite holy day of Ashura. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

Anti-regime protests sweep Khartoum

Dubai TV - A wave of popular rage is sweeping the Sudanese capital following calls to launch protests from local mosques in condemnation of the deteriorating economic conditions and to demand change. Yesterday, fierce confrontations broke out between Sudanese police and al-Khartoum University students. Anti-riot police used batons and fired tear gas and rubber bullets, in a new development described by the Sudanese opposition as 'the first step towards change.'

Kuwait court dissolves parliament, declares polls illegal

Al Jazeera - Al Jazeera correspondent in Kuwait reported that opposition representatives resigned from the former National Assembly that was reinstated today by the Constitutional Court. This comes after the Constitutional Court issued a ruling voiding the parliamentary elections that were conducted earlier this year. According to the court, since the parliamentary elections are invalid, the current assembly must be dissolved, and the former assembly, whose majority supports the government, is to be restored.

Delayed poll results keep Egyptians on edge and on the streets

Al-Alam - In Egypt, Secretary-General of the Supreme Presidential Elections Commission Hatem Bagato said the presidential election results will be announced on Saturday or Sunday. Bagato said that looking into the appeals presented by both candidates, Mohamed Morsy and Ahmed Shafiq, requires some time. Protests and sit-ins are continuing in Cairo and other Egyptian cities over the military council's decisions and especially the constitutional declaration that limits the powers of the next president. Protestors expressed fear of fraud in the presidential election results after the Supreme Elections Commission decided to postpone announcing the results.

Iran, P5+1 powers fail to settle another dispute

Dubai TV - The talks between the West and Iran over the latter's nuclear program have failed in Moscow. The two-day talks ended with the two sides agreeing to meet again next month in Istanbul. Both sides confirmed they have started to tackle critical issues, but warned that significant gaps still exist between them. With this, the Russians have failed to achieve political gains on the international front.

Syrian pilot defects after landing in Jordan

BBC Arabic - Jordan granted political asylum to the defected Syrian pilot Hassan Mari, after his MiG-21 fighter jet landed in Mafraq Airport this morning. Syrian TV had announced contact was lost with the warplane during a training mission in Daraa. Activists said this is the first defection of an air force pilot with his plane since the uprising began.

Dire humanitarian conditions loom in southern Yemen

Al-Forat - Widespread disease, destruction, and a lack of food and medicine, is the status of Yemen's southern provinces, after having been afflicted by war and armed conflicts. This state of the security and humanitarian conditions in Yemen's southern provinces are the result of heated battles between the Yemeni army and armed elements of al-Qaeda. It is a humanitarian crisis that threatens the life of over half a million refugees, who were displaced by battles that caused widespread destruction to the southern regions' infrastructure.

 

Image: Al Jazeera

Palestinians honor the dead returned by Israel

Al Jazeera -  The Palestinian Authority received the remains of 91 Palestinian martyrs, including 12 from the Gaza Strip. For years, the remains were nothing but a number in a mass grave inside Israel. Today, they are reclaiming their identities. And on their tombs, a story of life, revolution, and martyrdom will be written. The oldest remains belong to seven martyrs who carried out the Savoy Hotel Operation in Tel Aviv in 1975. The Palestinian Authority hopes to receive another wave of martyrs in a few weeks.

Angry Egyptian portesters torch Shafiq's campaign headquarters

Al Alam - Egyptians took to the streets to express their anger towards presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq, who is participating in the runoff round, and possibly becoming Egypt's first president after the revolution. Once again, the revolutionaries took to the squares in different governorates to protect their revolution, which would be at stake if Shafiq won the elections, given that he was one of the figures of the regime they revolted against.

The enraged protestors reached Shafiq's campaign headquarters in several governorates and set them on fire, throwing his campaigns'advertisement materials outside his headquarters in the Dokki area in Cairo, where some of his supporters gathered.

Syria faces diplomatic backlash over Houla massacre

BBC Arabic - The Geneva-based UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that in its preliminary investigations, at least 20 of the victims in the Houla massacre, which took place last Friday, were killed in artillery shelling. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department told the BBC that the U.S. administration decided to expel the Syrian charge d'affaires in Washington, Zuheir Jabbour. French President Francois Hollande announced the expulsion of the Syrian ambassador in Paris, and Australia also announced that it has requested the charge d'affaires, as well as other diplomats in the Syrian embassy in Canberra, to leave Australia within 72 hours, all in response to the massacre.

UAE revokes citizenship of seven rights activists

Al Alam -  A United Arab Emirates court issued its final decision, withdrawing the citizenship of seven activists. Another Emirati court is looking into the case of blogger Ahmed Abdel Khaleq, who is expected to be exiled to the Comoros Islands. Media and legal reports indicate that in 2009, the Emirates paid 200 million dollars to the Comoros Islands to issue Comorian citizenship to residents of the Emirates who do not have one, or the stateless who are subject to persecution, abuse and are deprived from citizenship rights. It is a chronic problem in the Emirates and several countries of the Persian Gulf.

Six bomb attacks in Baghdad kill at least 17 people

Dubai - In the bloodiest attacks on the Iraqi capital in weeks, six bombings rocked Baghdad today, killing at least 17 people and wounding dozens. These attacks broke the weeks of relative calm in Baghdad as the country is witnessing conflict inside the Iraqi government over a political crisis that threatens to fuel sectarian strife again. The bustling residential neighborhood of Shuala in the northwestern part of Baghdad was the most targeted by a wave of bombings that also hit the areas of al-Ghazaliya, al-Ameriya, al-Yarmouk, al-Zafaraniyah and al-Dora. As usual, booby-trapped vehicles and explosive devices claimed the lives of dozens of innocent people, and a state of emergency was declared at the hospitals in the Iraqi capital amid today's new wave of violence targeting civilians.

 

Image: A Palestinian woman shouts as others carry a flag-covered coffin containing the remains of a Palestinian militant following a ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah May 31, 2012. The remains of 91 Palestinian militants whose attacks killed hundreds of Israelis were returned to the West Bank and Gaza on Thursday in a gesture Israel said it hoped could help revive peace efforts. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

Tonight, the BBC’s Arabic language channel reports on the ongoing demonstrations throughout Syria which call for the end of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. In a number of Syrian cities today, confrontations erupted between protestors and security forces leading to a number of deaths and injuries. Reports indicate that over 30,000 people participated in the day dubbed by Syrians as the “Day of Dignity.” The Syrian government tried to avoid the anticipated protests with an initiative that the government said would provide better services to citizens, guarantee better living conditions, and restore their freedom and dignity. Despite these efforts, protestors took to the streets chanting the familiar slogan, “The people want to topple the regime.”

 

In Libya, al-Jazeera reports that new countries have joined the international coalition forces, including the United Arab Emirates. Coalition warplanes continue their air strikes to prevent Gaddafi's brigades from advancing. The UAE has agreed to send 12 warplanes, including six F-16 fighters and six Mirage jets. In the past 24 hours, coalition forces carried out 130 raids. In Misurata, a medical source reported that 109 people were killed and nearly 1,300 others were injured in one week of battles.

 

Dubai TV reports that supporters of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held a protest rally to mark what they referred to as the “Day of Steadfastness and Loyalty.” Saleh called on his supporters to hold solidarity protests around the presidential palace while thousands of anti-regime protestors held massive rallies in Change Square, marking a day dubbed the “Friday of Departure.” This news comes a week after 52 people were reportedly killed when Yemeni security forces opened fire at protestors. In a speech to his supporters, Saleh described protest organizers as “adventurous conspirators and drug traffickers.” He also said that he doesn't want to hold onto power but will only hand it over to “honest and capable hands, not malicious or corrupt ones.”

 

Tonight, ANB interviews the secretary-general of the Progressive Democratic Forum, Dr. Hassan Madan, about the current situation in Bahrain. Dr. Hassan believes that the situation in Bahrain should have been dealt with peacefully by meeting the public’s demands for political and constitutional reform. He said that the intervention by Gulf nation forces has complicated the issue and created an even deeper divide in the country. He states, “We welcome the Gulf to play its role. But this role should be limited to a political one that helps bridge the gap between the opposition and the government, which hasn't been the case so far.”

 

Al-Alam also reports on Bahrain, as massive protests broke out in Daraz, Dayer, Samahij, and Beni Jamra.. Eyewitnesses say that in response, eyewitnesses say Bahraini security forces launched fierce attacks on protestors, firing tear gas and live ammunition. The authorities also closed down all health centers, and threatened to burn down protestors' homes and strip protestors of their Bahraini citizenship if they don't put an end to the protests and sit-ins. Bahraini opposition blocs called on the U.N. and other Islamic countries to intervene to stop the crackdowns and massacres that are being carried out by authorities.

 

 

(Al Jazeera English: 0530 PST, February 8 2011) This report from Al Jazeera English looks to Turkey as a possible model for new governments in the Middle East. Turkey has been praised for its balance of democracy, modernity, secularism and religion.

 

(Al Jazeera English, 0400 PST, February 1, 2011) Recep Erdoğan, the Turkish prime minister, has called on Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president, to listen to the calls for change from Egyptian people. Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught in Istanbul speaks about the Turkish PM's forceful remarks.

 

 

Click here for important background information on the unrest in Egypt.

 

Watch Al Jazeera English's live broadcast stream, online now.