The Atlas For 9/20/10: Tensions Rising Almost Everywhere

Photo from AfricanNews.com

The tensions are arising in Somalian again, as the government looks set to take on the Islamic forces in the South with the aid of Kenya and Ethiopia (through Germany's money) training them :

The second front against Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam rebels in south and central Somalia will take place before the end of the year.

Foreign-trained Somali forces will try to take over towns including the port of Kismayo which is the "key to handicap all the financial resources of the war they conducted," Sharmarke told reporters.

Now the news is breaking on a suicide bomber striking the Presidential compound in the capital of Mogadishu. The Atlas will certainly keep its eye on that story.

The right leaning government in power in almost half-impoverished Columbia and its rival leftist militants continue to add in their boiling tension.

Conflict is also going down between Japan and China, as the Japanese continue to hold a Chinese trawler captain Zhan Qixiong in detention after his boat was captured by Japan Coast Guard. It's a virtual stand still right now between these two countries that have certainly had a history of course of problems.

In thankfully some rare non-conflict news, the United Nations' secretary general Ban Ki-moon still believes their Millennium Development Goals of cutting poverty and improving health by 2015 can be met. But the likelihood of that happening seems very doubtful.

And back to Africa to close with you guess it, tension. With the union pressure threatening to fully fracture the ANC in South Africa has led to President Jacob Zuma to speak harshly on the party fighting. The World Cup certainly has not done their middle class any good at all.

The Atlas for the day.