In the news:

Battle to form over IMF leadership

With Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, behind bars in New York on allegations of attempted rape, the matter of his succession could well spark a nationalistic showdown between two of the world’s great collective powers.

On the one hand is the emerging world, itself the traditional subject of IMF-mandated restructuring, arguing the time has finally come to crack the European monopoly on IMF leadership.

On the other is Europe, from which every IMF head has originated, claiming that a steady hand familiar with the vagaries of the eurozone is needed to steer through still-volatile sovereign debt crisis.

Given the IMF’s role in European bailouts, the stakes could hardly be higher. That’s a sharp contrast to the fund’s standing just a few years ago, when it was largely considered irrelevant, Ms. Momani said.

The leading European candidate is French Finance Minister Christine Legarde. “I think the French will make an argument that they’re entitled to this seat,” Ms. Momani said. “But to some extent I think this has been a blow to the French reputation.”

From developing economies, the names most often put forward include Kemal Dervis, a former Turkish finance minister, and Mexico’s chief central banker Agustin Carstens.

Let the games begin - this one should be interesting.

Syrian-Israeli flare-up expected

The expectation of trouble to come was strengthened by the information reaching Washington that Syrian military intelligence and Ahmed Jibril's PFL-General Command had organized the forcible crossing of the Israeli border on the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, Sunday, May 15, of thousands of Palestinians streaming out of the camps in which they are held near Damascus.

The operation was also synchronized with the Lebanese Hizballah.

According to this information, Syria and the PFL-GC are planning another mass incursion in the same format for June 5, the 44th anniversary of the 1967 War, when Syria lost part of the Golan after attacking Israel.

In advance of the event, the Israeli Defense Forces and Lebanese army have reinforced the units guarding their borders and are on a high state of preparedness.
The IDF's engineering corps has embarked on a crash operation for building a proper defense system with physical obstacles along the 220-kilometer Israeli-Syrian border in place of the fragile fence that crowds of Palestinians trampled on May 15.

'Die Welt': Iran building rocket bases in Venezula

The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Friday edition.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is Teheran’s most important South American ally.

Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in February. Amir al-Hadschisadeh, the head of the Guard’s Air Force, participated in the visit, according to the report. Die Welt cited information from “Western security insiders.”

The Iranian military involvement in the project extends to bunker, barracks and watch tower construction. Twenty-meter deep rocket silos are planned. The cost of the Venezuelan military project is being paid for with Iranian oil revenue. The Iranians paid in cash for the preliminary phase of the project and, the total cost is expected to amount to “dozens of millions” of dollars, Die Welt wrote.

King Abdullah of Jordan Lauds Fatah-Hamas Reconciliation

King Abdullah of Jordan, preceding Binyamin Netanyahu to Washington, meets today with U.S. President Barack Obama after having met yesterday at the State Department, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Jordanian monarch was obviously focused on disputing two major Israeli arguments, namely, that the "Arab Spring" demonstrates that Israel is not the main issue and that the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah has effectively derailed any putative peace process.

King Abdullah remarked that the "core issue still is that of the Israelis and Palestinians." He warned that if unresolved, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will escalate regional tension and negatively affect the future of the region's peoples.

The Jordanian ruler called upon the international community to exert more efforts to relaunch direct talks between the Palestinians and Israelis leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living in peace and harmony alongside Israel, and emphasized the US role.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: King Abdullah is a figure worth watching closely in these last days.

Mississippi Floods Lash Louisiana and Mississippi

Mississippi and Louisiana are now fighting the floods that have topped the previous record of 1937. In parts of the Mississippi it is reminiscent of a disaster movie with volunteers including prison inmates monitoring the flood walls for cracks and leaks that could present a major problem if they get wider.

The authorities are being effectively asked to decide who will be spared and who will be stricken. To avoid extensive flood damage to New Orleans and to the state capital of Baton Rouge, the Army Corps of Engineers is opening up levees, thus diverting the raging waters from the more populous cities but inundating some of the smaller towns at a rate of 150,000 cubic feet per second. The residents of these communities will be forced to evacuate and then rebuild from scratch when they return to what remains of their communities.