| CIA Head: Obama Can ‘Ask Me to Go’ Posted: 11 Mar 2014 03:50 PM PDT  Under a sudden avalanche of criticism, CIA director John Brennan said President Obama can 'ask me to go.' Will he?
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| Biden's role on Ukraine underscores risks for his political future Posted: 11 Mar 2014 02:56 PM PDT  By Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the bloodiest day of anti-government protests in Ukraine was drawing to a close last month, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called President Viktor Yanukovich for the second time in three days and delivered a blunt message. Pull back your security forces now and accept a European-brokered settlement or you will be held accountable, Biden warned the pro-Russian leader. "It WILL catch up with you." Initially defiant, Yanukovich sounded subdued by the end of the hour-long call, according to a senior U.S. official knowledgeable of the conversation. ...
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| UN: 5.5 million Syrian children affected by war Posted: 11 Mar 2014 02:49 PM PDT  BEIRUT (AP) — The number of Syrian children affected by the civil war in their homeland has doubled in the past year to at least 5.5 million — more than half the country's children — with devastating effects on the health, education and psychological well-being of an entire generation, the United Nations children's agency said Tuesday.
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| The New Crimean Diplomatic Fight Is Over the 2014 World Cup Posted: 11 Mar 2014 02:22 PM PDT  As real diplomats negotiate the terms of the Crimean conflict, a new fight started recently somewhere American and Russian representatives don't normally engage — on the soccer pitch, or in the back offices that regulate the soccer pitch, at least. Over the last few days, officials for the U.S. and Russian men's national teams each submitted letters to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) requesting the other team be barred from the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil over human rights abuses. Two American senators asked FIFA to ban Russia over Russian troops invading Crimea. In response, Russia sent a similar letter to FIFA requesting the U.S. be banned for, well, a much longer resume of invasions.
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| Jihadists 'execute' at least 22 in Syria: NGO Posted: 11 Mar 2014 12:53 PM PDT  Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant "executed" at least 22 people, including 12 rebels, in the north of the country Tuesday, a monitoring group said. "ISIL members executed at least 22 persons with firearms or knives, after taking control of Shuyukh outside the town of Jarabulus" in Aleppo province, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. ISIL seized Jarabulus, near the northern border with Turkey, from the rebels last month. At least 3,300 persons have been killed in that fighting, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on activists and other sources inside Syria.
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| As Syria war enters fourth year, regime eyes victory Posted: 11 Mar 2014 12:29 PM PDT  As Syria's conflict enters its fourth year, ravaging the country and creating a massive humanitarian crisis, President Bashar al-Assad's regime is on the offensive to regain territory from a divided opposition. Diplomatic efforts by Russia and the United States are all but on hold with the two powers now divided over the crisis in Ukraine, while the fighting continues on the ground in Syria. "Without Western intervention, the war will continue for many years more and such an intervention is very unlikely while (US President Barack) Obama is in the White House," said Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist at the University of Edinburgh. For now, neither side seems to have the means to win decisively a conflict that has cost more than 140,000 lives and displaced nearly half Syria's population, many of them now refugees.
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| From war to Paralympics, US vets compete on ice Posted: 11 Mar 2014 12:04 PM PDT  SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Surging across the ice as chants of "Ro-ssi-ya! Ro-ssi-ya!" from raucous Russian fans filled the venue, Joshua Sweeney felt the rush of adrenaline he used to experience as a soldier.
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| Shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles flow abroad from Libya: U.N. Posted: 11 Mar 2014 11:49 AM PDT By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles have been trafficked out of Libya to Chad, Mali, Tunisia, Lebanon and likely Central African Republic, with attempts made to send them to Syrian opposition groups, according to a U.N. report on Tuesday. An independent panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions on Libya, that include an arms embargo imposed at the start of the 2011 uprising that ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi, reported that the weapons, known as MANPADs, that were found in Mali and Tunisia "were clearly part of terrorist groups' arsenals." "Despite efforts by Libya and other countries to account for and secure MANPADs in Libya, Panel sources state that thousands of MANPADs were still available in arsenals controlled by a wide array of non-state actors with tenuous or non-existent links to Libyan national authorities," the experts said in their final report to the U.N. Security Council. |
| Hardline Kenya cleric, the face of homegrown radical Islam Posted: 11 Mar 2014 11:27 AM PDT  Mombasa (Kenya) (AFP) - When Islamist gunmen stormed Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall on a busy Saturday in September, the ensuing carnage also intensified fears that Kenya's homegrown Islamists were on the rise. Although the attackers were from Somalia's Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels, the group's ability to infiltrate and operate in Kenya, as well as find a stream of willing recruits, has focused attention on radical Islamists based down the coast in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. At the heart of the steamy port hub sits the Musa mosque, seen by Kenyan authorities as the epicentre of a new terrorist threat. Its key figure, Abubaker Shariff Ahmed, better known as Makaburi, does little to hide his firebrand leanings.
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| Spain mourns Madrid train bomb victims, 10 years on Posted: 11 Mar 2014 11:10 AM PDT  Dressed in mourning black, Spaniards commemorated Tuesday their country's deadliest peacetime attack, a decade to the day since Al-Qaeda-inspired bombers blew up four packed commuter trains and killed 191 people. Relatives of those killed on the trains, which were carrying rush hour passengers from Madrid's suburbs when they exploded on March 11, 2004, wept quietly as the names and ages of the victims were read out at the city's main Atocha railway station.
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| Spain train bombing stirs painful memories 10 years later Posted: 11 Mar 2014 11:07 AM PDT  Spain marks the 10th anniversary of the Madrid train bombings on Tuesday, but Antonio Gomez plans to stay away from the commemorations. The memories of injured bodies strewn across Madrid's main Atocha station are still too painful for Gomez, who broke his leg when bombs ripped apart the packed commuter train he was in. So he plans to skip a memorial mass at Madrid's Almudena Cathedral for the victims of the deadliest terrorist attack in Spanish history. Gomez, a married 48-year-old bank computer designer with two daughters, was heading into Madrid the morning of March 11, 2004, when a series of bombs exploded within minutes aboard four packed commuter trains heading for Atocha station.
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| Spain recalls Madrid train bombs a decade later Posted: 11 Mar 2014 10:33 AM PDT  MADRID (AP) — Spain's King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy joined families of victims of the Madrid train bombings Tuesday for a 10th anniversary Mass in memory of one of Europe's deadliest terrorist attacks.
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| Kick U.S. out of World Cup, Russian politicians tell FIFA Posted: 11 Mar 2014 10:21 AM PDT  By Dmitriy Rogovitskiy MOSCOW (Reuters) - Two Russian politicians are demanding the United States be kicked out of this year's World Cup and has its membership of world soccer's governing body FIFA terminated. The petition to FIFA was made by Aleksandr Sidyakin and Mikhail Markelov, deputies from the Russian State Duma, which is the country's lower parliament house. Sidyakin said the written demand was a reaction to a letter sent by American Republican senators Mark Kirk and Dan Coates asking FIFA to exclude Russia from the 2014 World Cup.
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| Syrian forces advance to edge of rebel border town Posted: 11 Mar 2014 10:00 AM PDT Syrian soldiers backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants took full control on Tuesday of farmland on the northern edge of Yabroud, the last major rebel stronghold near the Lebanese border north of Damascus, military sources said. The sources, who were in contact with fighters on the ground, said the Syrian army killed dozens of rebel fighters as they took over the Rima Farms district outside the town. "The army is now directly facing Yabroud," one of the sources told Reuters. Capturing Yabroud would help President Bashar al-Assad secure the land route linking his Mediterranean coastal stronghold with the capital Damascus, and choke off a cross-border rebel supply line from Lebanon. |
| Saudi jails anti-regime Tweeter for 10 years Posted: 11 Mar 2014 10:00 AM PDT  A Saudi court has jailed a Tweeter for 10 years after convicting him of insulting the kingdom's political and religious leaders and urging anti-regime protests, official SPA news agency reported. The Riyadh court also sentenced another defendant to eight years in jail after finding him guilty of taking part in protests and publishing anti-regime posts online, SPA said in a report late Monday. The Tweeter was also banned from travel and handed a 100,000 riyal ($27,000) fine, the report said. The defendant, accused of "adopting extremist ideology", had contacted "so-called reformers", urged anti-regime protests, and took part in a demonstration which he filmed and published on social networks, said SPA.
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| Attacks around Iraqi capital kill 5 people Posted: 11 Mar 2014 09:56 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — Officials in Iraq say bombings and a shooting around the country's capital, Baghdad have killed at least five people. |
| 7 dead in suicide bombings in Kurdish Syrian city Posted: 11 Mar 2014 09:15 AM PDT  At least seven people were killed on Tuesday in a triple suicide bomb attack at a hotel in the Kurdish Syrian city of Qamishli, an NGO said, updating an earlier toll. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three suicide bombers blew themselves up at the Hadaya hotel in Qamishli, killing seven people including four women. A Kurdish activist from the city told AFP that the hotel was being used by the Kurdish "Asayesh" security forces, but there was no immediate confirmation or information on whether security forces were among the killed. Qamishli is Syria's biggest Kurdish-majority city, and considered by the minority to be the capital of Hasakeh province in the country's northeast.
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| Lebanon's entrepreneurs find opportunity in turmoil Posted: 11 Mar 2014 09:02 AM PDT But entrepreneurs in the security sector are emerging with smart ideas to help residents get on with life. Their apps and products are proving popular not just in Lebanon, but in a broad swath of nations from Iraq to Egypt. "Lebanon has this long history of conflict, and entrepreneurs are using this expertise to export to the region," explains our Beirut correspondent, who recently followed several such businesses. The developer is creating the app in Lebanon, "but his plan to reach a bigger market is somewhere like the United States, where the incidence of gun deaths is actually higher," our correspondent explains. |
| Suicide bombers strike Kurdish town in north Syria Posted: 11 Mar 2014 08:41 AM PDT  DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Three suicide bombers detonated their explosives belts in a local administration building in a Kurdish town in northeastern Syria Tuesday, killing at least five people, the state-run news agency and a Kurdish official said.
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| UN: 2.8 million Syrian children out of school Posted: 11 Mar 2014 08:33 AM PDT  GENEVA (AP) — Nearly half of Syria's school-age children — 2.8 million and counting — cannot get an education because of the devastation and violence from a civil war now entering its fourth year, the U.N. children's agency said Tuesday.
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| Swedish-British journalist gunned down in Kabul Posted: 11 Mar 2014 07:37 AM PDT  Kabul (Afghanistan) (AFP) - A gunman shot dead a Swedish-British journalist at close range in central Kabul on Tuesday in an unexplained daylight murder that shocked foreign residents living in a city on high alert ahead of elections. Taliban militants denied responsibility for the shooting in an upmarket district of the Afghan capital close to a restaurant where the insurgents killed 21 people, including 13 foreigners, in an attack in January. Sweden's ambassador to Afghanistan, Peter Semneby, identified the dead man as Nils Horner, 51, a journalist for Swedish national radio. "He had British nationality in addition to his Swedish nationality.
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| Mercy Corps: Syrian Conflict Enters Fourth Year, Still No End in Sight Posted: 11 Mar 2014 07:30 AM PDT Neighboring countries – primarily Jordan and Lebanon – are struggling to keep up with the constant influx of Syrian refugees, as populations in some areas swell to two or three times their pre-conflict levels and tensions increase over scarce resources such as jobs, housing, water and basic social services. "After three long years, and a pronounced failure by the international community to end the bloodshed, the crisis is destabilizing the region. Moreover, millions more people could lose their homes and jobs, and an entire generation is being robbed of its future," says Neal Keny-Guyer, chief executive officer of Mercy Corps. "Mercy Corps and other humanitarian organizations are scrambling to meet the overwhelming needs of millions of innocent people caught in the crossfire and reverse the downward spiral." Mercy Corps is providing critical aid to nearly two million people inside Syria and in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Since the crisis began in 2011, the agency has distributed essential items such as blankets, clothing, food and fuel. |
| Al Qaeda hijacks spirit of Syria revolt three years on Posted: 11 Mar 2014 06:54 AM PDT  By Samia Nakhoul KILLIS, ON THE TURKISH-SYRIAN BORDER (Reuters) - Syrian refugees in this border outpost were delighted to hear their home town of Azaz had been liberated - not from Bashar al-Assad's troops but from al Qaeda fighters who subjected them to a regime that included torture and public beheadings. For Syrians who three years ago rose up against 43 years of Assad family rule, living under the hard-line Sunni jihadists who said they had come to save them from the president's atrocities was even worse than Assad himself. While neither Assad nor the rebels have the upper hand, there is a growing sense among his foreign opponents that the battle for Syria has become a twin-track operation, with defeating the jihadists as important as ousting Assad. Many of those who initially succeeded in liberating large parts of northern Syria from government control soon found themselves under the yoke of foreign jihadists.
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| 3 suicide bombers strike at hotel in north Syria Posted: 11 Mar 2014 06:16 AM PDT DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Three suicide bombers detonated their explosives belts in a hotel in a predominantly Kurdish town in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, killing three people, the state-run news agency said. |
| UN: 2.8M Syrian children out of school in region Posted: 11 Mar 2014 04:21 AM PDT GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says 2.8 million Syrian children cannot go to school because of a civil war now entering its fourth year. |
| Spain recalls train bombings on 10th anniversary Posted: 11 Mar 2014 04:16 AM PDT MADRID (AP) — Spain's King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy joined families of victims of the Madrid train bombings for a 10th anniversary Mass on Tuesday in memory of Europe's worst Islamic terror attack. |
| What Would the GOP Do? Posted: 11 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PDT Though Barack Obama is widely regarded as a weak president, is the new world disorder really all his fault? Listening to the more vocal voices of the GOP one might think so. According to Sen. Lindsey Graham, Vladimir Putin's move into Crimea "started with Benghazi." Putin "came to the conclusion after Benghazi, Syria, Egypt" that Barack Obama is "a weak indecisive leader." |
| How America's internet can become the fastest on Earth Posted: 10 Mar 2014 11:07 PM PDT  As I wrote last week, the United States — the country where the internet was invented — now ranks 31st in the world for internet speed, behind such countries as Romania, Estonia, South Korea, and Uruguay. After all, some relatively large countries, like Sweden and Japan, are way ahead of the United States in internet speed. And Russia — the largest country in the world by land mass and a much poorer country than the U.S. — is level with America on internet speed.
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| The dawning of the age of genomic medicine, finally Posted: 10 Mar 2014 06:20 PM PDT  (This March 6 story has been corrected to fix spelling of test to verifi from Verify in paragraph 33) By Julie Steenhuysen LA JOLLA, California (Reuters) - When President Bill Clinton announced in 2000 that Craig Venter and Dr. Francis Collins of the National Human Genome Research Institute had succeeded in mapping the human genome, he solemnly declared that the discovery would "revolutionize" the treatment of virtually all human disease. The expectation was that this single reference map of the 3 billion base pairs of DNA -- the human genetic code -- would quickly unlock the secrets of Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer and other scourges of human health. As it turns out, Clinton's forecast was not unlike President George Bush's "mission accomplished" speech in the early days of the Iraq war, said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Translational Science Institute, which is running a meeting On the Future of Genomic Medicine here March 6-7.
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