Turkish inaction on Syria frustrating US and coalition allies, fueling tensions with Kurds
Turkish inaction on Syria frustrating US and coalition allies, fueling tensions with Kurds
ISTANBUL (AP) — As U.S. generals and Secretary of State John Kerry warn that a strategic Syrian border town could fall to Islamic State militants, the Turkish military has deployed its tanks on its side of the frontier but only watched the slaughter.
Turkey’s inaction despite its supposed participation in a coalition forged to crush the extremist group is frustrating Washington and its NATO allies, and reviving a rebellion by Turkish Kurds.
Amid fears the Kurdish town of Kobani could fall any day, U.S. and NATO officials are traveling to Turkey on Thursday to press negotiations for more robust Turkish involvement in the coalition.
But Turkey is taking a hard line, insisting that it will only consider involvement in military action as part of a broader strategy for ending the rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S. and its allies want to keep the focus on the Islamic State group, which they say poses a more global threat.
Emphasizing the U.S. position, Kerry said Wednesday that although the Obama administration is “deeply concerned about the people of Kobani,” preventing the town’s fall to Islamic State militants was not a strategic objective for the U.S.
A closer look at living cells: 3 win Nobel in chemistry for making super-zoom microscopes
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three researchers won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for giving microscopes much sharper vision than was thought possible, letting scientists peer into living cells with unprecedented detail to seek the roots of disease.
The chemistry prize was awarded to U.S. researchers Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German scientist Stefan Hell. They found ways to use molecules that glow on demand to overcome what was considered a fundamental limitation for optical microscopes.
Betzig, 54, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia. Hell, 51, is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, and also works at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Moerner, 61, is a professor at Stanford University in California.
Their work, done independently and extending back to the 1980s, led to two techniques that were first demonstrated in 2000 and 2006.
Previously, a calculation published in 1873 was thought to define the limit of how tiny a detail could be revealed by optical microscopes.
On campus in Egypt, a heavy security clampdown
CAIRO (AP) — At Cairo University’s campus, new, black steel walls have gone up. A private security firm has put up surveillance cameras. Guards have bomb-detection devices. Just outside, heavily armed riot police have permanent positions.
Summer vacation ends this weekend, and universities across Egypt are preparing for the return of students with a heavy, pre-emptive security clampdown. The aim is to prevent a resurgence of protests by supporters of Mohammed Morsi, the Islamist president who was removed by the military just over a year ago.
Last school year, universities became the focus of pro-Morsi protests and campuses turned to war zones as police tried to suppress them. But the clampdown now is going beyond supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists and threatens to silence all political activism in the universities.
It reflects what rights activists have warned is happening nationwide under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi: Dissent in general is being snuffed out in the name of fighting Islamists.