Headlines:

• Spain faces 'total emergency' as fear grips markets
• The US and 18 other nations conduct massive military exercise in Jordan
• Yemen Food Crisis: 300,000 children are starving
• India fears for Afghanistan after NATO pullout
• Pakistan allows US soldiers back on its soil

Spain faces 'total emergency' as fear grips markets:

Spain is facing the gravest danger since the end of the Franco dictatorship as the country is frozen out of global capital markets and slides towards an epic showdown with Europe. "We're in a situation of total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through" said ex-premier Felipe Gonzalez, the country's elder statesman. The warning came as the yields on Spanish 10-year bonds spiked to 6.7pc, pushing the "risk premium" over German Bunds to a post-euro high of 540 basis points. The IBEX index of stocks in Madrid fell 2.6pc, the lowest since the dotcom bust in 2003. Chaos over the €23.5bn rescue of crippled lender Bankia has led to the abrupt resignation of central bank governor Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, who testified to the senate that he had been muzzled to avoid enflaming events as confidence in the country drains away. Markets are on tenterhooks as Spanish yields test levels that forced the European Central Bank to respond last November with its €1 trillion liquidity blitz. "Nobody is short Spanish debt right now because they are expecting European Central Bank (ECB) intervention," said Andrew Roberts, credit chief at UK's RBS. "If it doesn't come -- if we take out 6.8pc -- we're going to see a hyberbolic sell-off," he said.

The US and 18 other nations conduct massive military exercise In Jordan:

More than 19 countries, led by the United States, wrapped up the sprawling Operation Eager Lion military exercise this week in Jordan at a time of heightened tensions in the region. Though the exercise had been long scheduled and was designed to improve military coordination between allies, it drew far more attention than usual given the deepening civil war across the border in Syria. Many press accounts, particularly on cable news channels like CNN, tried to connect the exercises to Syria's war. Among the wilder media speculation were claims Eager Lion was a dry-run for an invasion or cover for training Syrian rebels. Those fanciful accounts are belied by the fact that Eager Lion 2012 was three years in the planning and amounts to an outgrowth of the annual bilateral "Infinite Moonlight" US-Jordan exercise that stretches back to the 1990s. Major General Ken Tovo of the US Special Operations Command, who was in charge of the participating US forces, explained the objective was to "build partnerships and friendships that will allow us to serve successfully together to meet any challenges that our nations ask us to."

Yemen Food Crisis: 300,000 children are starving:

Hundreds of thousands of children are facing life-threatening levels of starvation in Yemen as a food crisis grips the nation. People fleeing fighting in the North and South of this troubled country live in squalid camps with almost no chance of returning home and finding anything left. They are caught in a cycle of poverty and insecurity that is threatening to engulf the displaced people of the poorest country on the Arabian peninsular. More shocking is that their numbers are utterly dwarfed by those facing starvation that have not left their homes and have not been forced into camps. Yemen has a catastrophic food crisis. Nearly half the population, 10 million people, does not have enough to eat. While 300,000 children are facing life threatening levels of malnutrition. The United Nations says Yemen is already in the throes of a disaster. "The levels are truly terrible. Whatever we do thousands upon thousands of children will die this year from malnutrition," Unicef's man in Yemen, Geert Cappelaere, said. "In some areas child malnutrition is at 30%, to put it in context, an emergency is 15%. It is double that already."

India fears for Afghanistan after NATO pullout:

India called for greater coordination with the United States on Afghanistan, voicing fear that Islamic radicals would gain strength once Western forces pull out. NATO leaders in a May 21 summit in Chicago committed to pulling combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 as Western nations grow tired of more than a decade of war and pessimistic on the chances of further progress. India is one of the most vocal supporters of continued engagement and has given Afghanistan more than $2 billion since the US-led invasion in 2001 overthrew the Taliban regime, which sheltered virulently anti-Indian militants. Ahead of high-level annual talks between India and the United States on June 13, Nirupama Rao, New Delhi's ambassador to Washington, said the two nations have been holding talks on building "a stable, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan." "These consultations must be strengthened," Rao said at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. "We understand that after 10 long years of war there is a manifest and genuine desire to seek an end to conflict. But equally, we must ensure that the enormous sacrifices and efforts of the past decade have not been in vain," she said. "Given the history of the last few decades in Afghanistan and the tide of extremism and radicalism that has swept across that country to the great detriment of its men, women and children, one cannot but help be concerned about what the future holds for that country" after the NATO pullout, she said. India's involvement in Afghanistan has enraged neighbouring Pakistan, which helped create the Taliban regime and accuses its historic rival of seeking to encircle it. The United States partnered with Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks. But relations have plummeted, with US concerns about Pakistan's orientation soaring after US forces found and killed Osama bin Laden near the country's main military academy last year. Yashwant Sinha, a lawmaker from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, was blunter about fears on Afghanistan during a separate appearance in Washington at the Brookings Institution. "I have great fears that Pakistan, for its own geopolitical reasons, might want to encourage Taliban to again take over Afghanistan," said Sinha, who served as foreign and finance minister when his right-leaning party was in power from 1998 to 2004.

Pakistan allows US soldiers back on its soil:

The United States has sent a handful of military trainers back into Pakistan in a sign the two nations may be able to achieve some low-level cooperation against militants despite a string of confrontations that have left Washington's relations with Islamabad in crisis. Fewer than 10 US special operations soldiers have been sent to a training site near the border city of Peshawar, where they will instruct trainers from Pakistan's Frontier Corps in counter-insurgency warfare, a US official said. The number of American military instructors in Pakistan dropped to zero after US aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in late November. Nato labelled the border incident an accident but it enraged Pakistanis and sent already tense ties with the United States into a tailspin. "I wouldn't call this a watershed moment (but) it's not insignificant that this is happening," the US official said on condition of anonymity. The picture is less encouraging on cooperation between US and Pakistani intelligence, which several American officials said remained dire as Pakistani officials resist easing restrictions on issuing visas to US intelligence personnel. In retaliation for the border deaths, Pakistan also shut down ground supply routes crucial for keeping US and Nato soldiers equipped in neighbouring Afghanistan, and clamped down on US military personnel operating in Pakistan. "At a strategic level, the relationship is still at a very rough place," the official said. "There's a lot more we want to do to improve it, but (the trainers' return) is an important sign that at least in some areas we're getting a healthy sense of normalcy." Normalcy is relative when it comes to relations between the United States and Pakistan, which are nominally allied against Islamist militants but have been frequently pitted against each other in a string of mutual recriminations.