| Bombings and shootings kill 15 in Iraq Posted: 14 Dec 2013 11:23 AM PST  Attacks in Iraq, including two bombings in a market and a blast targeting people who give food and water to Shiite pilgrims, killed 15 people on Saturday, officials said. Violence has reached a level this year not seen since 2008, when Iraq was just emerging from a period of brutal sectarian killings, raising fears that the country is falling back into all-out conflict. In the deadliest attack, two bombs exploded in a market in Nahrawan, near Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding at least 13, while a bomb in a restaurant in Husseiniyah, also close to the capital, killed two people and wounded six. Other bombings and shootings in Iraq killed four people, among them a local anti-Al-Qaeda militia leader and a policeman, and wounded three police.
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| Syria rebel commander freezes to death Posted: 14 Dec 2013 10:57 AM PST  A rebel commander has frozen to death in the bitter cold brought by a snowstorm that has swept Syria this week, a monitoring group said Saturday. "The body of a rebel commander who was on his way from (the northwestern province of) Idlib to Homs (in central Syria) has been found. He died during the snowstorm," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP there were no signs of gunshots or other wounds and that the body was "frozen."
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| Bombings, shooting kill 12 people in Iraqi capital Posted: 14 Dec 2013 08:28 AM PST BAGHDAD - Attacks, including a bombing of Shiite pilgrims, killed 12 people in the Iraqi capital on Saturday, Iraqi officials said. |
| Syrian Islamist rebels to meet U.S. officials: opposition sources Posted: 14 Dec 2013 06:42 AM PST  By Mariam Karouny and Dasha Afanasieva BEIRUT/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Syrian rebel commanders from the Islamic Front which seized control of bases belonging to Western-backed rebels last week are due to hold talks with U.S. officials in Turkey in coming days, rebel and opposition sources said on Saturday. The expected contacts between Washington and the radical fighters reflect the extent to which the Islamic Front alliance has eclipsed the more moderate Free Syrian Army brigades - which Western and Arab powers tried in vain to build into a force able to topple President Bashar al-Assad. The talks could also decide the future direction of the Islamic Front, which is engaged in a standoff with yet more radical Sunni Muslim fighters from the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). A rebel fighter with the Islamic Front said he expected the talks in Turkey to discuss whether the United States would help arm the front and assign to it responsibility for maintaining order in the rebel-held areas of northern Syria.
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| Afghan president says U.S. indulging in brinkmanship over security deal Posted: 14 Dec 2013 02:49 AM PST  By Sanjeev Miglani NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday shrugged off U.S. talk of a total military withdrawal from Afghanistan if he didn't sign a security agreement as brinkmanship and said he wouldn't back down on his conditions for the deal. Karzai was in New Delhi in a burst of regional diplomacy as his ties with Washington have come under renewed strain over his refusal to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) that will shape U.S. military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 when most international troops will leave. He told reporters that the United States would have to stop the practice of raiding Afghan homes and help restart a peace process with the Taliban as necessary conditions for the security pact. But we also believe that protection of Afghan homes and the launch of a peace process are absolute pre-requisites," he said.
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| Lockheed sees F-16 fighter jet production continuing through 2020 Posted: 13 Dec 2013 09:08 PM PST By Andrea Shalal-Esa FORT WORTH, Texas (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp has enough orders to keep its F-16 fighter jet production line humming through the third quarter of 2017, and hopes to land additional orders that would keep the line running through 2020, company executives say. Around that time, the cost of Lockheed's new F-35 stealth fighter will have dropped so far that potential customers will likely opt for the newer jet, Bill McHenry, Lockheed's head of F-16 business development, told Reuters in a recent interview. "But there's a crossover point out there ... sometime in the 2020 timeframe, where it'll make more sense to procure F-35s than F-16s." Lockheed on Friday marked completion of its 100th F-35 fighter. Lockheed has produced over 4,500 F-16s since the program began in 1975, making the F-16 the best-selling fighter jet in history. |
