A Potpourri of News for Monday

There’s a lot happening today :

…the Syrian prime minister of 2 months has resigned (or been fired according to al-Assad’s news service version) and defected, but whether he’s on his way to Qatar or Jordan is not clear. A reported 30 to 40 al-Assad army general officers have already defected.

…Syrian refugees keep pouring into Turkey and now Jordan, which has an estimated 38,000 in camps on its Syrian border. One camp on the Jordan-Syria border is reporting up to 300 refugees per day, helped along the way by Free Syrian Army escorts so that they don't get killed by al-Assad forces while they try to escape the regime. There are tents for 10,000 people in the camp, but reports from international agencies on site say the situation is very difficult. The Syrians fleeing to Jordan are moving south from Damascus and the capital region, which may be an indication of the intensity of the fighting around Damascus.

…the Mars rover, Curiosity, has landed safely on the Red Planet’s surface, using advanced engineering to combat the thin atmosphere which would have made a normal parachute landing impossible. The first pictures are already being shown on American and European TV. The Jet Propulsion Lab and all the NASA team can be rightly proud of this achievement, proving again that America needs to free herself to devote more resources to science and technology. Instead of cutting NASA budgets, they should be enlarged, with more public-private joint ventures to boost the useable output and reduce taxpayer costs.

…the destruction in China, North Korea and Taiwan caused by the latest cyclones to hit their coasts - at least two, one immediately after the other - remind us again that there are some things that engineering and science have not yet understood sufficiently, and so the death and property destruction and ruined lives continue, this time not from wars but from Nature’s most severe face. At the same time, Hurricane Ernesto is headed to the Honduras - Belize region and perhaps the Yucatan in Mexico. This is the first real hurricane of the 2012 season. Another, Florence by name, had formed off the Azores, but it appears to have fizzled out.

…the Sinai remains unmanageable, or at least unmanaged. Truck attacks along the Egypt-Israel border killed 8 Egyptians and would have killed Israelis in their path if Israeli air reconnaissance had not stopped them, killing 6. The Sinai is a vast area between Egypt and Israel that was controlled by Israel before it was ceded back to Egypt, which has been lax in its control. Now, Egyptian president Morsi says Egypt will step up its patrols and rid the Sinai of the marauders. Even Palestinians are calling for Egypt to do more to stop the terror being sewn in the Sinai.

…and the London Olympic Games continue. Britain is doing exceptionally well, and it again shows what an advantage the home team has. There’s nothing wrong with this, because it makes for more excitement in what could become the playground of a few large countries. I like all sports, and both the winter and summer Olympics, but the summer Games are always a treat because the mix of countries is larger, the winners come from countries such as The Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and Jamaica and Kenya and Ethiopia, as well as the US, Russia and China. The flavor is different and it seems that the athletes enjoy meeting and mixing, because even after favorites lose there are lots of hugs and jersey exchanges. But, this week, we get down to serious basketball, and the US 2012 dream team is the one to beat.