Oil is spiking. And it’s not just Syria to blame.

By Neil Irwin
The civil war in Syria is coming at a cost to Americans, even in the absence of cruise missiles or other overt interventionism. Here it is in a chart. This is the one-month forward contract for a barrel of crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In other words, the price of oil, more or less. It’s down a bit Friday after a steep rise since the spring.


The pattern is quite clear. The price of oil is up 24 percent since April 17, from $87 a barrel to around $108. It has hovered near 18-month highs in the past few days.
The strange thing about this is Syria itself produces only a trivial amount of oil. Syria’s output has indeed plummeted as its conflict has become severe. As our colleague Steve Mufson noted the other day, its oil output is down to 50,000 barrels a day, from 350,000 barrels a day in March. But that is small potatoes against 90 million barrel-a-day world of oil output.

There are some other factors in play beyond the Syria conflict, including attacks on a key pipeline in Iraq that has reduced that country’s exports by 290,000 barrels a day, and protests at oil production facilities in Libya that slashed output there, along with disruptions on key pipelines in Nigeria.

Even then, the runup in oil prices goes beyond anything that current fundamentals could justify. Witness the swings in the past few days: Oil prices spiked earlier in the week when Western airstrikes seemed a certainty, and faded Friday after a British parliamentary vote rejected the possibility, making the outlook less certain. Clearly, oil traders aren’t just responding to this or that supply disruption, but making bets on the long-shot probabilities of an all-out conflagration that spreads to bigger oil producers elsewhere in the Middle East.

Beyond the human cost of the conflict, the question now is how much the U.S. consumer can take, in a time of federal spending cuts, a faltering in some key international markets — and now, if higher crude oil prices are sustained, higher prices at the pump.

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Sierra Leone says man charged in US with brokering uranium deal had fake passport

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Sierra Leone says a man who has been charged in the U.S. with brokering a uranium deal intended for Iran is in fact not a citizen of the West African country and was traveling on a fake passport.

Sierra Leone’s information ministry announced late Wednesday that the passport Patrick Campbell was arrested with had been issued in 2004 “through very dubious means.”

Officials say Campbell is not a Sierra Leonean citizen but “an apparent common criminal using a false name.”

They said their investigation revealed he first boarded for the journey in Nigeria, not in Sierra Leone.

The 33-year-old man was arrested last week in New York and is accused of traveling to the U.S. with a sample of uranium hidden in the soles of his shoes in his luggage.

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Court charges 2 Nigerians with providing support for acts of terrorism by Iran militant cell

ABUJA, Nigeria — A Nigerian Federal court charged two Nigerians with providing support for acts of terrorism by an Iranian militant cell.

Abdullahi Mustapha Berende, Saheed Oluremi Adewumi and a third suspect were arrested in February when Nigeria’s secret police broke up a group backed by “Iranian handlers” who wanted to gather intelligence about locations frequented by Israelis and Americans. The State Security Service at the time said it had arrested the three before they could launch attacks, and identified Berende as the leader of a local Shiite sect in Ilorin. It said another suspect remained at large.

The court on Wednesday charged Berende with traveling to Iran between September 2011 and December 2012 and providing “terrorist training together with others now at large on the use of firearms, explosives and other related weapons,” among the six counts. It said he had agreed to recruit people, including Adewumi, for an Iranian terrorist group. The charge sheet also said Berende knew about terrorist training in Iran and spying in Lagos and “failed to disclose such information to the law enforcement officials.” The court charged that he also received some $30,000 in cash to fund the group’s planned operations.

Adewumi was charged on Wednesday with conspiring to commit terrorist acts and providing technological support, including cameras.

In February, the secret police said that the group also conducted surveillance on USAID, the U.S. Peace Corps and other targets. The details of whom they spied on were not in the court papers.

Justice Ahmed Mohammed adjourned the proceeding to Sept. 17 after the men pleaded not guilty to the six counts.

Nigeria, home to more than 160 million people, is largely divided into a Christian south and a Muslim north. Nigeria’s Muslims are predominantly Sunni, though there is a Shiite community in the country. Iran has backed Shiite groups in Nigeria in the past.

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Nigeria navy kills 6 pirates, injures 1 in campaign against piracy off its coast

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s navy killed six pirates and injured one other in its latest attack to try to stop the outlaws from expanding their territory in the Gulf of Guinea, a navy official said Weay.

The pirates engaged the navy in a gun battle late Sunday off the coast of Calabar in Nigerian and Cameroonian waters, said Delta state navy spokesman Lt. Delightsome Yohana. Nigeria’s navy fired back, killing the six pirates, he said. The other attacker is getting treatment for injuries while in custody, he said.

The operation is the latest in a string of victories for the Nigerian navy that has amped up its presence offshore and bolstered it with support from its air forces. In the last two weeks the navy has killed 18 pirates in battles and arrested five, Yohana said.

“We’ve been building our efforts for a long time. We are putting all our time, effort and resources to ensure the pirates are captured,” Yohana said.

Two days after an Aug. 15 hijacking in Nigerian waters, a joint team of ships and aircraft convinced the pirates to disembark from the tanker. During that time, however, the navy said that a gunfight ensued and 12 of the 16 pirates were killed. The other four are in custody, Yohana said.

In July, the agency that monitors piracy said that well-armed pirates are widening their area of operations and using new strategies in West Africa’s oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. It said that while piracy is down in the rest of the world, the Gulf of Guinea has overtaken Somalia as the world’s new hotspot, according to figures for the first six months of the year from the London-based International Maritime Bureau.

There are calls for a coalition of naval forces to patrol the strategic area, but naval forces from other countries in the Gulf of Guinea have said they don’t have the same capacity as Nigeria to fight piracy.

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Detainees disappearing amid military crackdown to fight Islamic uprising in north Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — In an area of Nigeria where an Islamic insurgency has caught fire, security forces are carrying out night raids in residential neighborhoods and have arrested many people. No one knows where the detainees have wound up, whether they’re in good health or even if they’re still alive.

Distraught relatives, human rights organizations and journalists have asked the army, the police, intelligence services and government officials where the arrested people are, to no avail. No one even knows, or is saying, how many people have been detained.Human rights monitors are deeply troubled that scores or possibly hundreds of detainees have gone missing in a country where security forces have a reputation for human rights abuses.

The Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria has received “hundreds and hundreds, up to 3,000” calls from people across northern Nigeria complaining that loved ones have disappeared after being arrested by the military or police in the past three years, said Shehu Sani, an activist with the organization.

Habiba Saadu’s two sons and her daughter were taken on Aug. 3 by soldiers who went from house to house in a night raid in Maiduguri, accusing them of participating in the uprising by Boko Haram, an armed Islamic group that has been waging a bloody war in Africa’s most populous nation for four years.

“Up to now, I have never seen my children!” Saadu said.

Visits to police stations, the army barracks, the intelligence services and local politicians gave no clue to the whereabouts of her children, Kundiri Muhammed, a 32-year-old kola nut trader, and Ka’adam Muhammed, a 29-year-old fuel seller and a daughter whom Saadu declined to name who is a high school student.

Boko Haram — which means “Western education is forbidden” — is blamed for the deaths of more than 1,700 people since 2010. The sect has attacked Christian and Muslim clerics, government health workers and security forces, school teachers and students in its quest to overturn democracy and install strict Sharia law across this nation of more than 160 million people that has a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency on May 14 in the northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, giving a Joint Task Force of soldiers, police, intelligence and customs and immigration officials the right to detain people and move them from place to place, as well as the right to search without warrants.

But even under the state of emergency, Nigeria’s constitution dictates that anyone detained must have access to lawyers and family and must be brought before a magistrate within 48 hours, said lawyer Justine Ijeomah, executive director of the Human Rights, Social Development and Environmental Foundation.

“Any other detention is incommunicado and is against the law,” Ijeomah said. Even so, such disappearances are common, he said.

Asked about people disappearing, Joint Task Force spokesman Lt. Col. Sagir Musa told The Associated Press only that “if they are arrested, then they are being held.”Ads
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Suspected Islamic sect attacks on young vigilantes kills at least 20 in north Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Two attacks by suspected members of a Nigerian Islamic sect have killed at least 20 members of a vigilante group out to fight the sect, residents and an official said Tuesday.

Insurgents crept up on six members of the group known as the Civilian Joint Task Force who were sleeping in a northeastern village. The suspected insurgents then shot them Monday night, a military official said. Four gunmen carried out that attack, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak to the press.“The attack took place in the border town of Damasak, 187 kilometers (116 miles) away from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and birthplace of the Boko Haram ideology,” he said. “The report we got from Damasak confirmed that the six members of the vigilante group were also jewelry vendors who took time off to attend the weekly Damasak Market to sell their wares,” he said, adding that the sect members then trailed them to where they were sleeping.

The deaths were confirmed by Civilian-JTF official Abubakar Malum, who said the men ranged in age from 20 to 36 years old.

An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies were packed up in a pick-up truck on Tuesday at one of JTF’s headquarters in Maiduguri.

The attack came less than two days after suspected Boko Haram members killed 14 young vigilantes in neighboring Bama, just 87 kilometers (54 miles) from Maiduguri, the military official said.

The attackers stormed the town disguised in military uniforms and “they used knives instead of guns to prevent the military from hearing the gunshots,” and decapitated the young men, he said.

Local grocer Masta’a Ajimi, who claimed to have escaped from Bama on Monday morning after spending the night in the bushes, said “we thought they were real soldiers but later noticed they were Boko Haram. They were armed and they were many, I had to escape through the bush after seeing how they were forcefully slitting people’s necks.” This new strategy was also used in an attack last week in Dumba village in Borno state.

Bama’s local council chairman, Baba Shehu Gulumba, earlier told journalists that insurgents “disguised as soldiers lured the youths into a trap.” He said nine others were wounded.

“They were on guard duty when the sect members dressed in military camouflage came and told them that they were needed at a meeting nearby,” he said. “When they had been lured away from their duty posts they were then attacked and killed.”

The Civilian-JTF group has taken over in the search for the insurgents in the troubled city of Maiduguri, and most Boko Haram members have since relocated to the surrounding bushes though they continue to kill locals. The vigilante force has arisen in northeast Nigeria as a backlash against Boko Haram, and the group claims credit for thousands of arrests in Maiduguri, where Boko Haram started.

Many residents welcome the vigilantes and credit them for some relative peace in Maiduguri. Others find their existence troubling and worry that they may perpetrate human rights abuses.

Bama, a once boisterous commercial hub and border settlement, has suffered major attacks in the past few months. Suspected Islamic extremists killed at least 47 worshippers at a mosque in Bama about two weeks ago. The town is surrounded by Sambisa forest which is where Boko Haram members are believed to be hiding.

Since 2010, more than 1,700 people have been killed in attacks by the group known as Boko Haram, which means “Western education is forbidden,” and which wants to impose Islamic Shariah law in all of Nigeria,

The U.S. on Monday condemned the killings in Dumba and on the mosque.

“The United States stands with the people of Nigeria to reject the indiscriminate attacks on worshippers of all faiths,” it said in a statement by Deputy Spokeswoman Marie Harf. “We also deplore the extra-judicial executions of suspected Boko Haram members by any group, including vigilante mobs.”

“We support the government of Nigeria as it seeks to safeguard civilians and hold accountable all those responsible for violence through a process that protects civilians and respects the rule of law,” it said.

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Young teen stows away in wheel well of aircraft for short flight in Nigeria, arrested

LAGOS, Nigeria — A young teenager dashed across a runway at a Nigerian airport, hid in the wheel well of a jet and survived a 35-minute domestic flight, the airline and aviation authorities said Sunday.

Passengers and crew had alerted the pilots that a boy was seen running to the plane as it was taxiing to take off Saturday from southern Benin City, Arik Airline spokesman Ola Adebanji said. The pilots alerted the country’s aviation agency, he said.

The incident highlighted the growing concerns about airport security in Nigeria, which is fighting an Islamic uprising mainly contained in the northeast of the country, where there is a state of emergency.

“We are worried by the incessant security lapses at our airports,” Arik Airline managing director Chris Ndulue said.

The West African country also has a history of major aviation disasters and security challenges.

Despite the possible presence of the boy, the pilots opted to continue with their takeoff, Federal Aviation Agency of Nigeria spokesman Yakubu Dati said.

“Immediately upon the departure of the aircraft, FAAN’s security did another sweep of the area and found nothing unusual,” Dati said.

When the plane arrived in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, a boy aged 13 or 14 jumped to the ground from the wheel and was detained by Arik personnel, Adebanji said. He said the teenager probably survived because the flight was short and the plane probably didn’t rise above 25,000 feet (7,620 meters).

Most stowaways don’t survive. The body of a suspected stowaway fell from an Air France plane over Niger, also in West Africa, in July and was discovered lifeless in a western suburb of the capital, Niamey, officials said. The plane was coming from Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, and was scheduled to continue to Paris.

In September 2012, a man’s body landed in a street in southwest London. He was eventually identified as Jose Matada, 26, of Mozambique, who an employer said had expressed an interest in moving to Europe for a better life. Police thought at first he was a murder victim, but soon determined his lifeless body had fallen from a plane preparing to land at nearby Heathrow Airport.

Last year, Nigeria gained a coveted U.S. safety status that allows its domestic carriers to fly directly to the U.S.

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Suspected Islamist terrorists slit throats to kill 44 people in northeast Nigerian village

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — An official says suspected Islamist extremists killed at least 44 villagers in continuing attacks in an Islamic uprising in northeast Nigeria.

The official of the National Emergency Management Agency says the attackers hit Dumba village in Borno state before dawn Tuesday and slit their victims’ throats — a new strategy since gunfire attracts security forces.

He said the attackers gouged out the eyes of some victims who survived. The official spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to give information to reporters.

Dumba is near the fishing village of Baga where security forces in March gunned down 187 civilians in retaliation for an attack by extremists.

It is difficult to get information from the area under a state of emergency, with cellphone and Internet service cut.

Borno is one of three northeastern states under a state of emergency declared May 14 to crack down on the Boko Haram terrorist network.

Since 2010, more than 1,700 people have been killed in attacks by Islamic insurgents, according to an Associated Press count.

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Interior minister says Nigeria has deported 22,000 people to neighbors in war on terror

KANO, Nigeria — The interior minister says Nigeria has deported 22,000 illegal migrants to neighboring countries in a crackdown related to an Islamic uprising in the northeast.

Minister Abba Moro accused “criminals among these illegal aliens” of abetting Islamic extremists who want to overturn democracy and install strict Shariah law throughout Africa’s most populous nation of more than 160 million people divided almost equally between Muslims and Christians.

He told a news conference Friday that all 22,000 were sent to neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

He said security and immigration officials have identified 84 illegal border crossings where they intend to back up patrols with electronic surveillance.

The deportations took place since a 3-month-old state of emergency was imposed in three northeastern states covering one-sixth of Nigeria and bordering the deportees’ three countries.

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Nigerian state at center of Islamic uprising plans to train angry youths to halt extremism

(Sunday Alamba/ Associated Press ) - In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013, Muslim youths watch an event in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Using every resource from psychologists to agriculture experts and security forces, the Nigerian state at the heart of an Islamic uprising hopes to reach a reservoir of angry and rootless young men easily recruited by Islamic extremists and transform them into productive members of society. “We are trying to look inward at what is the immediate cause and who are these people” in the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, that has morphed into a terrorist network, Mustapha, said.

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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Using every resource from psychologists to agriculture experts and security forces, the Nigerian state at the heart of an Islamic uprising hopes to reach a reservoir of angry and rootless young men easily recruited by Islamic extremists and transform them into productive members of society.

“We are trying to look inward at what is the immediate cause and who are these people” in the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, that has morphed into a terrorist network, Zanna Mustapha, deputy governor of Borno state, told The Associated Press.

Mustapha heads a high-ranking committee that is seeking to stem the root causes of extremism in Borno, one of three northeastern states under a 3-month-old state of emergency.

One way to prevent further radicalization of the population is by “transforming” the lives of thousands of unemployed, restive young people disenchanted with life, the committee concluded.

“A hungry man is an angry man,” Mustapha said. “The angriness of youth in society has made it easy for whoever wants to recruit them” especially Boko Haram — the extremist group whose name means “Western education is forbidden” and which is blamed for the deaths of more than 1,700 people since 2010, according to a count by AP.

Mustapha said Boko Haram members “are living inside society.”

Ordinary residents of a typically poor neighborhood — a warren of mud brick buildings without running water or electricity — told a reporter that more than half the people living there before the military crackdown that began May 14 were members of Boko Haram.

In some areas of Maiduguri, the birthplace of the extremist movement, up to 60 percent of residents belonged to Boko Haram, said an unemployed 40-year-old carpenter in the Moduganari neighborhood, where the stench of open drains filled with excrement and other filth is pervasive. He refused to give his name because he said he could be killed.

He said the Islamic extremists have split families: In his neighborhood, he said every second family has a son or sons who have joined the extremists. Conversely, he added, the extremists have killed at least one member of virtually every family in the neighborhood.

A major problem Mustapha identified is the practice among poor Muslim families of sending children as young as six to go to Islamic schools where they live with a Muslim cleric where they learn nothing but how to recite the Quran. They grow up with no skills and once they reach their teens are abandoned to fend for themselves on the streets, he said.

“Some have been here for 20 years and don’t remember where they are from or who their family is,” Mustapha said.

Using psychologists, agriculturists, technicians, civil society leaders, security and other forces he hopes “to transform these youths ... to talk to them to change (their) minds.”

Mustapha said they plan to train some 15,000 young people by the end of the year — an ambitious program in Nigeria where much state money is diverted to the pockets of politicians and contractors and many grandiose schemes have come to nothing.

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You are here: Home / News / APC unfolds manifesto, targets 40,000MW

APC unfolds manifesto, targets 40,000MW

AUGUST 22, 2013 BY NIYI ODEBODE AND ADELANI ADEPEGBA, ABUJA 

Interim National Chairman, All Progressive Congress, Chief Bisi Akande

The All Progressives Congress on Wednesday in Abuja  unfolded a seven-point  cardinal programme that would ensure that electricity generation hit 40,000 megawatts within four to eight years of its leadership.

The  party, in a 31-page manifesto, which was presented to Nigerians  listed the   other components of the cardinal programme as war against corruption, food security,   integrated transport network and free education.

Others are devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care.

According to the party, the programme  will transform Nigeria into a progressive state anchored on social democracy.

“Our government shall vigorously pursue the expansion of electricity generation and distribution of up to 40,000 megawatts in four to eight years,”  the APC   said.

Last Tuesday, the Presidential Task Force on Power put the nation’s power generation at 3,311.40MW.

But the APC said it would also   work at making power available from renewable energy sources such as coal, solar and wind.

The party   said, “The country can only succeed when all of us have equal rights, where no one is above the law;  where the culture of impunity is abolished and where there is a level playing field.”

It  stated  that as a change agent, it would “halt the dangerous drift of Nigeria into a failed state; with a conscious plan for a post-oil-economy.”

The party stated that it would restructure the country and devolve powers to the units with the best practices of federalism.

It said that its government would muster the political will to wage a stringent war against corruption. The party warned that without successfully waging war against corruption, Nigeria’s post-oil-economy would be disastrous.

Explaining its agenda on agriculture, the APC noted that Nigeria, which used to be a leading exporter of agricultural produce, had become import  dependent.

It stated, “APC will embark on a massive and progressive re-organisation and revolution of the agricultural industry.”

The  party  also  stated   it would embark on a national infrastructural development programme through a private-public sector partnership.

According to the party, through this, it would construct 4,000 kilometres of “supper highways.”

It said that it would revatilse the railway system through  the modernisation  and rehabilitation of tracks.

The party added that it would build 200 kilometres  of standard railway lines annually an  carry out a thorough review of the  education sector.

It said that it would allocate up to 10 per cent of the country’s annual budget to the education sector.

The party promised to re-introduce technical and vocational education and review the 6-3-3-4 system.

In the health sector, the APC said that it would  work to reduce infant mortality rate by 2019 to three per cent and reduce maternal mortality by more than 70 per cent.

The APC said that it would make free ante-natal care for pregnant women and provide free health care for babies and children up to school going age.

According to the party, the aged and people living with HIV/AIDS would also enjoy free health care.

On industrialisation, the APC said that it would conduct a state by state census of ailing industries.

This, it explained, would enable it to establish an industrial resuscitation fund.

The party added that it would create new development banks that would make affordable credits available for industrial growth.

 On job creation, the APC said that it would maintain “a sound macro-economic policy environment, run an efficient government and preserve the independence of the Central Bank of  Nigeria.”

The party said that it would make  the  economy one of the fastest growing economies by achieving a real GDP growth of 10 per cent annually.

The APC also promised to amend the  1999 Constitution and the Land Use Act “to create freehold/leasehold interest in land matching grants.”

 The Interim National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, had before the unveiling of the manifesto, said that    Nigeria and its citizens were   “in a state of near permanent trauma.”

 He  noted that Nigeria had  for many years  been confronted with multi-dimensional challenges, including socio-economic crises.

 “The result is that the nation and its citizenry continue to exist in a state of near permanent trauma,” he said.

 Akande stated that in over 50 years of its independence,Nigeria had suffered seven  coups, which resulted in 28 years of military rule.

 Akande said, “Trapped in a vicious cycle of political crises, social upheavals and economic under-development, Nigeria has become, not only one of the most unstable countries in the world, it is also, regrettably, one of the poorest despite its huge human and material resources.”

 He said  the APC would confront the challenges facing the country. The challenges, according to him, can be  grouped into seven.

They include  national unity and integration;  perennial threats to security, law and order; and   ensuring rapid economic growth with equity people-centered economic management. Others are consolidating Nigeria’s emerging democratic tradition;  human development; and instituting a sustainable management of the environment.

Akande stated, “The philosophy underpinning the coming into being of the APC therefore is the determination to bring the country back from the brink of collapse, despair, and possible disintegration; reposition it decisively on the route to emerging into a modern stable democratic nation, with a productive economy that is based on equity and justice for all citizens.”

He said  the party would harness the abundant energies, enterprise and intellect of all Nigerians to move the country forward.

 The interim chairman said, “We believe that at the core of the paralysing challenges confronting Nigeria today is the failure of governance which is manifested in the continuing inability of the Nigerian state.”

According to him, Nigeria should assume its proper place in world affairs commensurate with its size and status as the leading black nation in the world.

 Akande added, “To the APC therefore, the objective of governance is the single-minded and unrelenting efforts to confront these challenges and the eventual materialisation of a united, peaceful and democratic nation, with a productive and constantly growing economy; which provides significant opportunities for all its citizens.”

 “A large part of the APC’s agenda in particular will centre on the Nigerian youth.”

The Peoples Democratic Party however faulted a claim by Akande that Nigeria was in near trauma.

It said Nigeria’s economy was growing consistently, stressing that the Gross Domestic Product had also been rising at seven per cent for the past three years.

“The Nigerian economy is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In Asia, Europe and even America, the economy is either in recession or growing at one per cent, but our GDP has been growing at seven per cent for the past three years; anybody who does not know this is either not in this country or he is mischievous,” the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Tony Okeke said.

 Courtesy: The Punch

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Several police officers are killed in shootout at police headquarters in Nigeria

KAJURU, Nigeria — Witnesses say unidentified gunmen have attacked a divisional police headquarters in northern Nigeria and killed three officers.

Police Deputy Superintendent Aminu Lawan confirmed the attack early Tuesday, but said only two officers died when police confronted suspected armed robbers and pursued them to the police station.

The witnesses — two constables who escaped the violence — said the attackers in vehicles with sophisticated weapons targeted the police station and outgunned the officers there. The constables said a superintendent and sergeant died at the scene and a female officer on the way to the hospital. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to give information to reporters.

Extremists fighting in an Islamic uprising have attacked police and freed prisoners in northern Nigeria.

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Israel launches nationwide campaign to give polio boosters after rare discovery of disease

JERUSALEM — Israel is launching a nationwide campaign to give a polio booster to all children under 9 after a rare discovery of the virus.

Itamar Grotto, director of Israel’s public health service, said the campaign started Sunday. The move is being taken after a strain of the virus was found in sewage in southern Israel in June. Experts believe the strain originated in neighboring Egypt.

Israel already immunizes its children against the disease. The new campaign gives a second boost of protection.

There have been no clinical cases of the virus, which can lead to paralysis or death. But some child carriers have been identified in Israel.

Polio remains endemic in only three countries worldwide: Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

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Is There a 'Best Time' to Have Kids?

Dr. Peggy Drexler
I interviewed Margaret, an English professor at a mid-sized New York university, who told me she was 40 when she had her first child. She said like many of her female colleagues, she'd made a deliberate decision to wait until she'd secured a tenured position before trying to start a family. It took her four years, and many painful fertility treatments, to get pregnant.

At the same time, she told me, she couldn't have imagined enduring the physical aspect of being, or trying to be, pregnant while also maintaining the arduous publishing requirements often heaped onto younger professors striving for tenure track jobs. "I and my female colleagues felt we had two choices: either get pregnant and hope there's a job for you later on or get the job and then get pregnant," she said. "The second option just seemed so much safer to me. The problem is that the job wasn't secure until I was nearly out of my baby-making window."

It seems from my interviews the question of whether there is a "right" time for working women to have children has left some in a bind, especially considering women's most fertile years are often the same ones they spend striving to prove themselves at work or achieve a certain level of professional success. Women I've spoken to cite discrimination at work -- both perceived and real -- as reasons to wait, or to not have children at all, having heard many horror stories from their friends and others. Hillary, a book editor, told me a job offer "evaporated" once her potential employers learned she was pregnant. Nicole, an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who took maternity leave in her mid-30s, returned to work to find that, while she still had a job, all the "good" cases had been given to other colleagues. "Namely," she said, "men or unmarried women."

In their new book, Do Babies Matter: Gender & Family in the Ivory Tower, authors Mary Ann Mason, Nicolas H. Wolfinger, and Marc Goulden look at how marriage and children affect jobs for women in academia, in particular. Their conclusion confirms the fears felt by Margaret. Within academia, the married mothers of young children are 35 percent less likely to get tenure-track jobs compared with married fathers of young children. The same women are 33 percent less likely to get jobs compared with unmarried women who aren't the parents of young children. As a result, less than one half of tenured female professors of all disciplines are married with children.

These sorts of disadvantages affect women in other career fields, too, and as one UK study found that one in four working mothers surveyed reported facing discrimination in the workplace. Another interviewee of mine Bryn, a Chief Marketing Officer for a major digital communications firm, waited until she was 36 to have her first child, and then had three in quick succession. "I liked working too much to consider having kids any sooner, since the two seemed mutually exclusive, mostly because all the evidence pointed to that fact," she said. Those who were being promoted at her company were those employees who could work late, travel spontaneously and for a week at a time, and socialize with clients on a regular basis. "I felt I had too many people nipping at my heels to take any time off, or even to have a less flexible schedule than others," Bryn told me. Now, however, with three children under the age of 5 -- and she took no more than a few days' off for each child's birth -- she is, despite the full-time help she employs, "very tired!"

Which may be why a shift seems to be afoot: A new study from the London School of Economics found that an increasing number of younger women are choosing to have children earlier, with the idea that they'll return to, or even start, their careers later on. In a reader poll conducted by the Telegraph, 15 percent of voters said that the best time to have a baby is early on in your career. The argument: It's easier to leave when you've got fewer responsibilities.

Of course, those women may feel they are making certain sacrifices. Spending your early 20s as a mother necessarily can mean missing out on, well, your 20s. There are also other factors at play, including romantic and financial and physical ones. As with career, there's really no one size fits all approach to parenthood. Sometimes a career is in place, but the particular woman just isn't ready. Or vice versa.

And for some, parenthood may be a decision necessarily left up to nature. Anne, a novelist in Brooklyn I met while visiting an adult education class, had planned to wait until she'd published her first novel to have a baby. And then she accidentally got pregnant at 30. "I wasn't at the place I had imagined I'd be by then," she told me. "I worried I'd lose some momentum I'd been building, and felt endlessly guilty for taking time off." But a year after the baby arrived, and she returned to writing full-time, she found that she was as good, and as productive, at her job as she'd ever been. While, sure, others her age had advanced in the time she was away, Anne felt she hadn't necessarily gone backwards. "I had some catching up to do, but it's not like I had nothing to show for it," she said. "I had a daughter."

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Egypt’s identity crisis

By Shibley Telhami

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is the author of “The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East.”

From millions in Cairo’s Tahrir Square two years ago, revolting against Hosni Mubarak’s repressive rule and chanting “Silmiyya, silmiyya” (peaceful, peaceful), to a bloody Wednesday, with hundreds dead and many more wounded as security forces stormed sit-ins by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. From a mostly peaceful transition to a violent crackdown. From calls for democracy to a state of emergency.

How did Egypt turn so dark?

Much of Egypt’s crisis comes down to a battle over identity. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood overestimated the extent to which Egyptians identify with Islam. And now, with their violent repression of the Brotherhood, the generals who ousted Morsi risk underestimating it.

Over the past decade, I’ve conducted opinion polls in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and have found two consistent trends. First, citizens identify less and less with their countries and identify more and more with Islam and as Arabs. Second, Egyptians see themselves as the most religious people in the world.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which began the post-Mubarak era with justified confidence in its superior political organization, surely must have interpreted such trends as great support for its cause. (This belief was expressed by the group’s former murshed, or guide, as early as 2006 when he said, “Tuz fi Misr,” roughly, “To hell with Egypt.”) But the group drew the wrong lessons from these trends.

Arabs, like most people, have many contending collective identities, and the weight of each shifts over time; there is rarely a lasting equilibrium. Over the past decade, the rise in people identifying primarily as Muslim was not all or even mostly due to expanding Islamist aspirations. Instead, it resulted mainly from declining identification with the state, thanks to government failings on domestic and foreign policy. Also, the extraordinarily long tenures of individual leaders — Moammar Gaddafi ruled for 42 years and Mubarak for 30 — made it difficult for people to separate state from unpopular ruler. But a vote against something is not the same as a vote in favor of something else.

Moreover, when Islam itself appears under assault from external forces — as Muslims overwhelmingly perceived it to be in the decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — it becomes especially difficult to separate religious identity from popular defiance. You are what you have to defend. For some Egyptians, claiming Islamic identity is about faith, but for many others it is merely about asserting the right to be Muslim and to accept sharia law in the face of Western assault. Muslims do not want to apologize for who they are, for their faith and for all it entails.

Even attitudes about sharia are easily misunderstood. In my May 2012 poll, two-thirds of respondents said they supported making sharia the basis of Egyptian law. But when I probed more deeply, things became less clear: Of those who supported sharia as the basis of law, only 17 percent said they preferred applying it literally, while 83 percent said they favored applying the spirit of sharia but adapted to modern times. Little surprise that Egyptian commentator Muhammad Hassanein Heikal describes Egypt as a “civil-secular country that loves religion.”

For the overwhelming majority of Arabs, as for any broadly defined group, collective aspirations help determine the relative power of identities. When Pan Arabism seemed a more effective vehicle for the attainment of dignity at home and abroad in the 1950s, for instance, a shift toward an Arab identity became evident. Similarly, when Islam appeared to be the better vehicle, a shift occurred in that direction. The moves from one identity to another, from Arab to Egyptian to Muslim, reflect citizens’ assessment of their chances to reach their goals. And if there was anything clear after Morsi’s first year in office, it was that the public’s aspirations were dashed by the government’s domestic and international failures.

Islamists may have also misunderstood Arab attitudes about democracy. When Egyptians are asked which country they would want their own nation to look like, their top choice has been Turkey, a democratic Islamic nation ruled by an Islamist party. And in 2011 and 2012, Egyptians and other Arabs identified Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the leader they most admired outside their own country.

It is easy to misinterpret such admiration as Arabs seeking only the right mix of Islam and democracy. But the reasons are far more complex, as I found in my polling results. Arabs want a combination of many things that Turkey’s model offered: a country that balances democracy and culture, but also a stable, strong, prosperous nation, and one that makes them feel proud on the world stage. Erdogan, who personally symbolized the mix of Islam and democracy in many Arab minds — at least until the recent upheavals in Turkey — was not selected by Arabs as the favorite leader until he was seen as standing up to Israel on the 2008-09 Gaza war.

Overall, the resonance of political Islam in the Arab world — and in Egypt in particular — has been exaggerated. To win the presidency last year, the Muslim Brotherhood could rely on its political machinery and the disarray of its opponents; it didn’t need to win the hearts of most Egyptians. But as Morsi learned too late, it couldn’t govern without broader public support.

However, if Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood overestimated the Islamists’ appeal, Egypt’s transitional rulers seem ready to dismiss it too easily. Public rejection of the Brotherhood does not translate into an embrace of the generals. Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s popularity could be fleeting: Despite the Egyptian public’s long-held admiration of the military as an institution, especially immediately after the revolution, their opinion of the generals changed within months, with only 18 percent of Egyptians polled saying they had advanced the goals of the revolution by May 2012.

It is too early to measure the impact of the bloodshed on the generals’ public support, but the coalition around them has conflicting aims and values, even if they were united against Morsi — and it is beginning to fracture, most notably with the departure of Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei.

It was easy enough to use public disenchantment with Morsi and the muscle of the military to gain power. But in an era of heightened expectations and free-flowing information, a Mubarak-style regime cannot return. It is now impossible to govern Egypt by repressing the Brotherhood and its supporters, who have become indispensable parts of an empowered citizenry.

The bloody path chosen this past week takes Egypt into the unknown. What we do know is that all Egyptians are prepared to pay a price to have their voices heard. If that can no longer happen peacefully, Egypt must brace itself for the violent radicalization that makes democracy impossible.

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