Philippine troops battle Muslim insurgents laying siege to a city – A discovery in Kenya might lead to a rare period of prosperity in that part of Africa – And separatists in Spain demonstrate an amazing level of support for their cause.

As many as 39 people were killed when a suicide bomber set off a car bomb outside a Shi’a mosque in a largely Sunni area of Baghdad, Iraq.  Police say more than 50 people were also wounded. 

Philippine troops have surrounded Muslim rebels of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) who have moved into Zamboanga city in Mindanao.  The rebels are now holed up in a number of communities and it is feared they are holding as many as 200 hostages.  Thousands of residents have fled the city; others have sought shelter in churches and schools, while 13,000 are holed up in the city’s sports stadium, serviced by only four portable toilets.

There’s new hope for a particularly arid region of Northern Kenya with the discovery of five huge, previously unknown underground aquifers.  The UN says that of Kenya’s population of 41 million people, 17 million lack access to safe water, and 28 million do not have adequate sanitation.  The discoveries can go a long way towards providing generations of Kenyans with water security not just in the region, but for the entire nation.

Okay, forget Bats: Camels are once again the most likely intermediary in the transmission of the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) to humans.  Camels were suspected in early August, and then bats, and now the theory is camels catch it from bats, and transfer it to people.  The first of the 114 people known to have caught the MERS virus had contact with the ships of the desert; they in turn passed the infection onto family members and others.  MERS causes pneumonia and renal failure, and has been deadly in half the people who caught it; that’s why science is racing to contain it before it turns into an epidemic, like SARS did in 2002-03.

Scientists have tested a vaccine that appears to be effective against the primate equivalent of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), raising hopes of duplicating the success in humans.  Research published in the journal Nature has shown that vaccinated monkeys can clear Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) infection from their bodies.  Before this experimental vaccine, monkeys died within two years of being infected.

It seems the notion of Catalan independence from Spain has a lot of supporters.  Hundreds of thousands of people joined hands to form a 400 kilometer human chain across the region.  Catalonia already has a high level of autonomy from Madrid.  But the poor economy in the rest of the country compared to the prosperity and development in Catalonia is pushing the nationalists in Barcelona.  Pleas for a referendum have fallen on deaf ears in Madrid.

The White House is racing to smooth over ties with Brazil, after revelations of the US National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, lawmakers and citizens, and the country’s biggest oil company.  Those reports from reporter Glenn Greenwald were based on the information from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s cache of intel documents.  President Barack Obama's national security advisor Susan Rice (his closest associate in the administration) told Brazil’s foreign minister that the media reports of leaked information “have distorted our activities”.  The Brazilian Foreign Minister left the meeting without commenting.