Headlines:

• Salafi Dawah vice president says IMF loan permissible in Islam
• Iran sending troops to bolster Assad's Alawite regime
• Yemen's Food Crisis: 10 Million Starving
• US drone attacks escalate inside Pakistan

Details:

Salafi Dawah vice president says IMF loan permissible in Islam:

The vice president of the Salafi Dawah group, Yasser Borhamy, said Sunday the interest on the loan Egypt is set to receive from the International Monetary Fund does not involve usury, a practice prohibited in Islam. In a fatwa he made that was published on Sawt al-Salaf website, Borhamy said that since the interest on the loan is only 1.1 percent, paid in the form of administrative fees, the loan could be considered a grant. Usurious loans have higher interest rates that reach up to 20 percent, he said. Borhamy said that in modern times, loans given to countres "are handled by huge financial institutions that examine the conditions of the borrowing country, its needs to reform the economy, its ability to pay off the loan and the time frame it needs for that, as well as the degree of corruption there." He added that if one such institution gave the country a loan at an interest rate of 2 percent, then this is not considered usury. Borhamy called for studying the conditions for the loan from an economic perspective and assessing whether it achieves the interests of the country, adding that such actions were the role of the government and the president in the absence of Parliament. Yousry Hammad, spokesperson for the Salafi Nour Party, had previously said the interests on the IMF loan are not prohibited because they are administrative fees, and added that people should not issue uninformed fatwas. However, other Salafis had disagreed in the past. Nour Party supreme committee member Younis Makhyoun had previous said that borrowing from the IMF or any foreign source would be considered "usury." "God will never bless an economy based on usury," said Makhyoun, calling on the government to find other sources of funding.

Iran sending troops to bolster Assad's Alawite regime:

Iran is sending commanders from its elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and hundreds of foot soldiers to Syria, according to current and former members of the corps. The personnel moves come on top of what these people say are Tehran's stepped-up efforts to aid the military of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad with cash and arms. That would indicate that regional capitals are being drawn deeper into Syria's conflict, and undergird a growing perception among Al Assad's opponents that the regime's military is increasingly strained. A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, appeared to offer Iran's first open acknowledgment of its military involvement in Syria. "Today we are involved in fighting every aspect of a war, a military one in Syria and a cultural one as well," General Salar Abnoush, commander of IRGC's Saheb Al Amr unit, told volunteer trainees in a speech Monday. The comments, reported by the Daneshjoo news agency, which is run by regime-aligned students, couldn't be independently verified. Top Iranian officials had previously said the country isn't involved in the conflict. "One of Iran's wings will be broken if [Al] Assad falls. They are now using all their contacts from Iraq to Lebanon to keep him in power," Mohsen Sazegara, a founding IRGC member who now opposes the Iranian regime and lives in exile in the US, said by telephone. Last week, Iran's defence minister publicly signalled a shift. If Syria fails to put down the uprising, Iran would send military help based on a mutual defence agreement between the two countries, two Iranian newspapers quoted Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying. Syria hadn't asked for assistance yet, he added. "Syria is managing this situation very well on its own," he said. "But if the government can't resolve the crisis on its own, then based on their request we will fulfil our mutual defence-security pact." In Tehran, Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar met Monday with several Iranian officials and expressed Syria's gratitude. "The people of Syria will never forget the support of Iran during these difficult times," Haidar said, according to Iranian media.

Yemen's Food Crisis: 10 Million Starving:

The term 'food insecurity' is increasingly being associated with the once self-sufficient but improvised Yemen. In fact over 44 percent of Yemen's population will face a lack of food to eat this year alone and the U.N. says that 5m Yemenis are considered "extremely food insecure". The causes of this crisis range from a lack of political stability caused the 2011 revolution, failure to control and plan on behalf of the Yemeni government and the inability of donors states such as the U.S. to view Yemen beyond the 'terrorism goggles'. As it currently stands there are no two ways about it, Yemen is no longer on the brink of a catastrophic food crisis, but rather is now in the midst of a food catastrophe. Oxfam last September warned that Yemen was at breaking point, today one can freely admit that Yemen has broke. For example in al Hodeidah and Hajjah, one in three children are malnourished, which is double the standard emergency level. While the U.N. estimates that 267, 000 Yemeni children are facing life threatening levels of malnutrition. Yemen's food crisis presents a number of challenges to Yemenis across the political, economical and social spectrum. The previously already poor are on the verge of death, the once slim middle class are finding it hard to pay for life necessities, whilst the rich and often elite, find it much easier to spend their wealth. But it is children who bear the brunt of Yemen's food price escalation, as mothers are reportedly taking their children out of school to beg on the streets.

US drone attacks escalate inside Pakistan:

The US is intensifying its drone attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, as the Pakistani army prepares a major military operation against Islamist militants in North Waziristan. The attack last Friday involved missile strikes from CIA-controlled drones on three separate locations in North Waziristan. According to unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials, 18 "suspected militants" were killed. As in previous attacks, most casualties would undoubtedly have been civilians, including women and children.

Washington has long demanded that the Pakistani army launch a military offensive in North Waziristan, along the lines of its brutal operations in other FATA agencies. In 2009, the military sent 30,000 troops, backed by war planes and heavy artillery, into South Waziristan, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee. The US has accused the Pakistani military of refusing to do the same in North Waziristan in order to protect relations between the Haqqani network and the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency-claims that have not been substantiated. The intensified US drone attacks inside Pakistan are aimed at terrorising the local population and pressing the Pakistani military to go ahead with its offensive. Local residents told News International after last Friday's strike that they feared trying to rescue survivors as drones kept circling. Rescuers and those attending funeral services have been targeted previously for attack on the basis that they are also "suspected militants." An extraordinary article in the New York Times in May revealed that President Obama is personally involved in the decisions to carry out the targeted assassinations of individuals inside Pakistan, as well as other countries. The revelation underscores the criminal character of the Obama administration and its neo-colonial operations in Afghanistan. According to one estimate, there have been 33 drone strikes inside Pakistan this year, down from 117 in 2010 and 64 in 2011. As the Obama administration prepares for the withdrawal of US combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, it will undoubtedly step up its murderous attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to shore up its puppet regime in Kabul.