Vox Sentences: Has ISIS come to Yemen?

1. Over 100 dead in Yemen

A burned car seen outside of Al-Hashoush Mosque after the bombing in Sana, Yemen on March 20, 2015. (Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

• A pair of mosque bombings in Sana, the capital of Yemen, killed more than 100 people Friday.

  [NYT / Mohammed Ali Kalfood and Kareem Fahim]

• The mosques were "used mainly by supporters of the Zaidi Shia-led Houthi rebel movement" according to the BBC; the Houthis currently control Sana and are the de facto rulers of much of Yemen.

  [BBC]

• Sana Province, an ISIS affiliate in Yemen, has claimed responsibility.

  [BuzzFeed / Francis Whittaker]

• But Bruce Riedel, a counterterrorism expert and veteran White House and CIA official, said that "ISIS's claim is not credible" and that it's likelier al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate, carried out the bombings.

  [Time / Noah Rayman]

• AQAP has denied responsibility in the attacks and condemned them as "unlawful."

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Both AQAP and ISIS affiliates have carried out attacks on Houthis, whom the Sunni terrorist groups regard as heretics, in the past.

  [NYT / Mohammed Ali Kalfood and Kareem Fahim]

• Local terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and Africa, like Sana Province, have been claiming allegiance to ISIS; it's unclear how much involvement, if any, ISIS leadership in Syria and Iraq had in the bombings, in the shooting carried out in Tunisia earlier this week, or other similar attacks abroad.

  [Quartz / Steve LeVine]

• The official government the Houthis are fighting, having lost Sana, is currently based in the southern city of Aden; the conflict is in danger of becoming a proxy war as Iran backs its fellow Shia Houthis and Saudi Arabia intervenes on the side of the official Sunni government.

  [Washington Post / Ali al-Mujaed and Hugh Naylor]

2. Obama has no fracks left to give

A truck used to carry sand for fracking is washed in a truck stop on February 4, 2015 in Odessa, Texas. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

• The Obama administration has unveiled new rules about fracking operations on federal lands.

  [NYT / Coral Davenport]

• The land to which the rules apply only accounts for 11 percent of gas drilling and 5 percent of oil drilling in the US, but the rules could set a model for states to follow in regulating fracking on state and private land.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Predictably, 27 Republican senators have already introduced legislation reversing the rules.

  [Politico / Elana Schor]

• Critics have focused on serveral pollution risks from fracking: that natural gas or fracking chemicals could leak into drinking water; that the wastewater left over from the process could contaminate rivers and other natural water sources; or that some of the methane that flows up from the well could leak into the air, contributing to global warming.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• The regulations require companies to publicly disclose chemicals used in the fracking process and set higher standards for building wells and disposing of wastewater.

  [Bureau of Land Management]

• The Natural Resources Defense Council thinks the rules don't go far enough; senior policy analyst Amy Mall says, "These rules put the interests of big oil and gas above people’s health, and America’s natural heritage."

  [Natural Resources Defense Council]

3. Swiss miss

Secretary of State John Kerry walks back to his hotel with US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Chief of Staff Jon Finer after a lunch following a negotiating session with Iran's Foreign Minister over Iran's nuclear program in Lausanne March 20, 2015. (Brian Snyder/AFP/Getty Images)

• Nuclear talks with Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland, were called off early this week so the Iranian delegation could attend the funeral of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani's mother.

  [AP / George Jahn and Bradley Klapper]

• Negotiations are expected to resume next week, probably on Wednesday.

  [WSJ / Lauren Norman and Jay Solomon]

• In the meantime, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to London to confer with his British, French, and German counterparts.

  [Reuters / Emily Stephenson]

• While Kerry expressed optimism about a deal, Iranian foreign minister Javaz Zarif stated that "one or two critical issues" still need to be worked out.

  [NYT / Michael Gordon]

• The deadline for an initial agreement is March 31.

  [LA Times / Paul Richter]

4. Misc.

• We know that injecting a large amount of naloxone can reverse the effects of a heroin overdose; now it appears that small doses can block heroin's high and help addicts get clean.

  [Mosaic / Sujata Gupta]

• Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) has sold a grand total of 13 audio-books. As in a baker's dozen. There are no zeroes at the end of it.

  [WSJ / Jennifer Maloney]

• Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna helped invent a new technique for editing human DNA so powerful that she now wants to institute a worldwide moratorium on its use before someone gets hurt.

  [NYT / Nicholas Wade]

• Matthew Rognlie is one of the smartest people I've ever met, and his critique of Thomas Piketty is worth taking seriously.

  [Washington Post / Jim Tankersley]

• Selling your breast milk is our generation's selling your plasma.

  [NYT / Andrew Pollack]

5. Verbatim

• "Poor people don't really face an affordable housing problem, they face an 'affordable everything' problem. They are, in other words, poor."

  [Matthew Yglesias]

• "It's hard to find good numbers on how much force it takes to tear off a person's arm."

  [What If? / Randall Munroe]

• "I sometimes think of [composer John] Adams’s best work as pretending to serve up corny and slightly obvious Americana, but in fact offering a mysterious, Eastern, and even Buddhist alternative history of the United States."

  [Marginal Revolution / Tyler Cowen]

• "Now I’m amputating one of her fake toes in order to make it fit into her shoes."

  [Steven Hoover to Vice / Rose Eveleth]

Correction: Last Friday's Sentences attributed a quote in this article to John Miguelez; it was actually by Steven Hoover.

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