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Published May 14th, 2012 – 12:56 GMT

At least 23 Syrian soldiers were killed Monday in heavy fighting with as the Europeans imposed a new set of sanctions against the regime of Bashar al Assad.

These heavy battles have occurred at Rastane, in the province of Homs, a city beyond the control of the regime for months. Dozens more were injured and three tanks destroyed in the crossfire, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

On Sunday evening, the army launched a sudden assault on Rastane amid intensive shelling, with “up to four rocket attacks per minute.” A child was killed by a rocket that hit his house and dozens of other civilians were injured.

Elsewhere in the country, in Deir Ezzor, a teenager was shot dead by government forces who also arrested 15 people, according to SOHR. There are reports about an assault on the Qaboun neighborhood in Damascus.

While Syria is sinking into chaos, with some 45 dead Sunday, the sectarian strife between Sunni and Alawite felt in neighboring Lebanon.

Since Saturday night, four Lebanese were killed in the violence in Tripoli, the main northern city of this country.

The exchange of fire, including rocket launching, prevented Monday the Lebanese army to deploy in neighborhoods suffering from these disorders in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, the foreign ministers of the EU agreed Monday to their 15th set of sanctions against Damascus. They froze the assets of two companies and three individuals seen as sources of financing the regime.

Now, 126 people and 41 companies are affected by the EU sanctions. 

Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.

In 2000 clan elders and other senior figures appointed Abdulkassim Salat Hassan president at a conference in Djibouti. A transitional government was set up, with the aim of reconciling warring militias.

Somalia's parliament met in neighbouring Djibouti in late January and swore in 149 new members from the main opposition movement, the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia.

The parliament also extended the mandate of the transitional federal government for another two years, and installed moderate Islamist Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad as the new president.

However, the government's military position weakened further, and in May 2009 Islamist insurgents launched an attack on Mogadishu, prompting President Ahmad to appeal for help from abroad.

Al-Shabab appears to have consolidated its position as the most powerful insurgent group by driving its main rival, Hizbul Islam, out of the southern port city of Kismayo in October 2009. They made what they called a tactical retreat from Mogadishu in August 2011.

The long-standing absence of authority in the country has led to Somali pirates becoming a major threat to international shipping in the area, and has prompted Nato to take the lead in an anti-piracy operation.

In 2011, the plight of the Somali people was exacerbated by the worst drought in six decades, which left millions of people on the verge of starvation and caused tens of thousands to flee to Kenya and Ethiopia in search of food.

After the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, the north-west part of Somalia unilaterally declared itself the independent Republic of Somaliland. The territory, whose independence is not recognised by international bodies, has enjoyed relative stability.

Story By: by Jon Hamilton

Explore key components of the natural gas production process — and the questions scientists are asking.

View Interactive

‘This Place Was Absolutely Beautiful’

To understand why people in Dish feel the way they do, it helps to look at a satellite image of the tiny town about 35 miles north of Fort Worth.

From above, you see an odd patchwork: ranch-style homes and green pastures interspersed with industrial lots filled with gas wells, compressors, storage tanks and metering stations.

A visit to Dish fills in the details.

In most parts of town, it’s hard to miss the sulfurous odor of escaping gas or the rumble of compressor engines big enough to power a locomotive.

Mayor Sciscoe has agreed to give me a tour of Dish and explain why he thinks natural gas production is bad for residents’ health. He’s an imposing guy who meets me dressed in black cowboy boots, a black sport jacket and aviator sunglasses.

Sciscoe has been in charge of Dish since last year, when the previous mayor and his family actually did leave town to get away from the drilling.

Gas wells weren’t always a part of the landscape, Sciscoe says. There weren’t any when he arrived in 1987.

“This place was absolutely beautiful,” he says. “It was serene. It was very quiet, very clean. I raised five children here,” including two who became Marines.

But in 2005, two things happened to the town, which was named Clark at the time.

First, Clark became Dish as part of a deal to get free satellite TV service from the Dish network.

Second, energy companies arrived and began drilling lots of gas wells. The wells were made possible by a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which released natural gas trapped in the hard shale a mile underground.

‘A Who’s Who Toxic Chemical Mix’

To explain how profound that change has been, Sciscoe brings me to the biggest thing in Dish. It’s a swath of gas wells and heavy equipment that stretches for a quarter-mile at the town’s southern border. Sciscoe says emissions from this site are a big problem.

“It’s just a who’s who toxic chemical mix,” he says. “Pretty much all of those items that you get from petroleum products are spewing into the air in this area.”

The town spent $15,000 on an air quality study several years ago. It found elevated levels of several chemicals including benzene. But since then, energy companies have made some changes, and an air monitoring station installed by the state has shown that pollution levels are generally within government limits.

Dish also got state health officials to come and check residents’ blood and urine for toxins. The officials say they found no cause for concern, though Sciscoe disagrees.

It’s pretty clear people in Dish have been hurt, he says.

“There’s not a lot of residents right around this facility. But within a quarter of a mile, half a mile of this facility, there’s been six people die of cancer here,” he says. “And so do I think this is a concern? Yes I do.”

So why don’t scientists see it that way?

Health Effects: What Would It Take To Know For Sure?

To find out, I make a visit to Brian Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

I ask him what it would take to figure out whether there really is a link between gas operations around Dish and those people with cancer.

“You can’t,” he says. “You can’t study that right now because it takes about 20 years, let’s say, for solid tumors to develop after exposure to a chemical. So if the drilling has happened in the last five years, I cannot answer the cancer question right now.”

Even if more time had passed, Schwartz says, he would still need to link each type of cancer with a chemical known to cause that cancer.

Leukemia, for example, might be caused by exposure to benzene. But breast cancer isn’t.

Another problem is that most so-called cancer clusters are random events, Schwartz says. They’re not caused by anything in the environment.

“If I take a shotgun and I blast it against that wall, there will be a random pattern of holes in the wall, right?” he says. “And I could draw a circle around three or four or five that look to be a bit more densely packed than all the other ones.”

But it would still be a cluster caused purely by chance.

Of course, cancer is just one of the concerns in Dish. Residents are also worried about immune diseases, reproductive problems and a wide range of symptoms.

The town’s previous mayor, Calvin Tillman, became alarmed when his two boys started getting nosebleeds. They seemed to occur when the odors of gas were strongest and air quality monitoring showed higher levels of chemicals, Tillman says.

Then one night his younger son had a really bad nosebleed.

“Our house literally looked like a murder scene,” Tillman says. “There was blood down the wall and in the hallway. And I got up the next morning to go to work, and my wife said, ‘That is it.’ And at that moment we decided we’ve got to move out of here.”

Tillman and his family moved off the shale, to a town called Aubrey, Texas. Tillman knows that’s just one family’s story. But he says he documented others several years earlier when he had Dish residents take a health survey asking whether they had experienced symptoms such as itchy eyes, a bloody nose or a scratchy throat.

“It came back that about half of the people that were polled had a symptom that could be related to one of the chemicals that we found in our air study,” Tillman says.

Better Studies Are Needed

But the mere presence of a chemical isn’t enough to show it caused a symptom, scientists say. You have to show that a person was exposed to a high enough concentration for a long enough period to cause itchy eyes or a scratchy throat.

And the Dish survey didn’t do that, says Tom La Point, a toxicologist at the University of North Texas in Denton, about 15 miles east of Dish, and a member of a task force looking at the impact of gas drilling.

La Point says test results can be confusing because modern equipment is able to detect chemicals at levels far, far below those known to produce symptoms.

“I’ve had people get quite upset saying we can measure benzene,” he says. “Well, yes we can measure benzene. But the concentrations are below the effect level. And that really means something. It really does.”

Even if tests in Dish had shown enough of certain pollutants to cause health effects, there would still be another scientific hurdle, La Point says. Researchers would need to know whether the pollutant was coming from local gas operations or some other source — like vehicle tailpipes.

And that’s hard to figure out in a place like Dish, which is in Denton County and gets a lot of air pollution from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, La Point says.

“Ironically,” La Point says, “even though we’re not by any means the largest county in the metroplex, we have the worst air quality because the general winds bring it up from Dallas and Fort Worth,” where the pollution from cars mixes with the pollution from gas operations.

Scientists are quick to caution that the problems with evidence from Dish do not show that gas drilling is safe for people who live near it. What the caveats show is that there is a pressing need for rigorous scientific studies, Schwartz says.

“When these areas are developed, thousands to tens of thousands of wells are drilled and fracked. So the magnitude is huge,” he says. “And frankly, the development is way out ahead of public health evaluations of any kind to date.”

That’s not fair to the people in Dish or any other place in the country where drilling and fracking have got people worried, he says.

From there they would be treated to guitar riffs, driving percussion and other rhythm instruments that left them dancing to the beat.

Brown, who died Wednesday at 75, was the “Godfather of Go-Go,” a genre blending funk, jazz and soul and other musical forms.

“Go-Go,” 40 years after its founding, remains especially popular in its hometown of Washington, D.C.

“The groove and vibe he created was unparalleled,” said manager Tom Goldfogle. “All of his performances were a journey with the audience.”

Brown engaged in a call-and-response dialogue with fans, ensuring their interaction with each set.

He last performed in early March and had been hospitalized for about four weeks.

Brown died of multiple-organ failure from sepsis at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Goldfogle said.

With the Soul Searchers, Brown had a big hit in the 1970s with “Bustin’ Loose.”

The guitarist and singer was a familiar figure on stage with his brim hat and sunglasses, creating “the beat” for dancers.

“Go-Go” referred to a sound continuing from one song to the next.

“Chuck would describe it as nonstop percussive bass music with its roots in Latin, African and funk,” said Goldfogle. “He added his blues and jazz elements.”

While Brown performed worldwide, his most loyal fan base was in Washington.

District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray, in a tweet, paid tribute to the gravel-voiced Brown. “What a loss,” his message concluded.

Brown competed with disco and later had an influence on local hip-hop artists, Goldfogle told CNN.

“They would do hip-hop songs with a ‘Go-Go’ feel,” he said.

In 2010, Brown received his first Grammy nomination, in collaboration with Jill Scott and Marcus Miller, for “Love.” A 2007 album, “We’re About the Business,” included the singles “Block Party” and Chuck Baby.”

Brown, according to his manager, played to several generations.

“His music is loved as much by the grandmother, as the mother, or the daughter,” Goldfogle said.

According to CNN affiliate WJLA, Brown had recently postponed numerous shows due to failing health.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

“His family continues to be grateful for the outpouring of love and support and requests respect for their privacy during this difficult time,” Goldfogle said in a statement.

Survivors include Brown’s wife, Jocelyn, sons Nekos, Wiley and Bill, and daughter Takesa.

CNN’s Jane Caffrey contributed to this report.

Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie, apparently.

Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities, told Bloomberg that the Facebook CEO’s decision to show up for a meeting with potential investors dressed down in his trademark casual outerwear suggests that he’s too immature to run a massive corporation.

“He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him,” Pachter said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “I think that’s a mark of immaturity.

“I think that he has to realize he’s bringing investors in as a new constituency right now, and I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money.”

If nothing else, Pachter’s take (and he still thinks Facebook is a solid investment) reinforces the inevitable culture clash that occurs when a 27-year-old titan of California’s freewheeling startup culture meets the buttoned-down world of Wall Street. It’s not a new phenomenon: Zuckerberg is known for his ever-present T-shirt and sandals, and in Facebook’s early days, he once showed up for a meeting with a venture-capital firm in his pajamas.

Pachter went on to say that Zuckerberg might be a better product manager or designer than CEO.

Needless to say, the tech world got a good laugh out of it all.

The Next Web led with this not-so-subtle headline: “Odd analyst mocks Zuck’s hoodie, ironically sounding stupid in a suit while doing so.”

In the article, Michael Wilhelm notes that if Zuckerberg had shown up in a suit, it could actually have signaled that Facebook was moving away from its winning formula, which could spook employees (and presumably investors) who like the way things run now.

“And finally: ‘he’s going to be him, and he’s going to do what he’s always done,’” Wilhelm writes. “That’s to say that he’s going to build a $100 billion business and change the world? That’s what the hoodie signifies? Well then, I think that he shouldn’t take it off at all costs!”

Tech blogger Om Malik had a more blunt take on Pachter’s remarks.

“This analyst is smoking stuff that is outside the realm of legality,” he wrote. “Now if you were looking for a problem with Zuckerberg’s hoodie, then you should see it for what it really is: a fashion abomination.”

And Box CEO Aaron Levie weighed in on Twitter: “Yahoo CEO: No hoodie; AOL CEO: No hoodie; Facebook CEO: hoodie. Coincidence?”

It’s not like Zuck doesn’t know how to clean up. He donned a coat and tie last year when he and other technology luminaries had dinner with President Obama, and wore a suit a few months later when Obama visited Facebook for a town hall event.

In fact, he bucked the Valley Casual look for an entire year not so long ago. On his Facebook Timeline, Zuckerberg wrote that, in 2009, he wore a tie every day.

“After the start of the recession in 2008, I wanted to signal to everyone at Facebook that this was a serious year for us,” he wrote. “Great companies thrive by investing more heavily while everyone else is cutting back during a recession. But great companies also make sure they’re financially strong and sustainable.

“My tie was the symbol of how serious and important a year this was, and I wore it every day to show this.”

Maybe Zuckerberg, sitting on the verge of a blockbuster stock offering, no longer feels the need to prove himself.

Story By: Talk of the Nation

The Garbage-Men is a band of high school-aged musicians who play instruments made out of recycled cereal boxes, buckets, and other materials they’ve rescued from the trash. Guitarist Jack Berry and drummer Ollie Gray talk about the band and their signature “trashy” sound.