Yahoo! News: Iraq

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• Lawyer: Vet reaches $4.5M settlement with Oakland
• US Iraq vet gets $4.5 million for Occupy injuries
• Do Democrats Get Clobbered in Midterms? Well, Yes — With Big Caveats
• Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Zakka Iwas dead at 80
• Russia sanctions 101: five questions you were too embarrassed to ask
• Gunmen ram explosives-laden tanker into Iraq police HQ, killing 15
• Michigan's Peters plows different Democratic path
• Iraq war vet hurt in California Occupy protest to get $4.5 million
• Democrats see openings in congressional departures
• Britain to import Russian gas under 2012 deal as tensions mount
• Syria army advances bolstered by Hezbollah, rebel divisions
• Vets Ordered to Risk Lives Overseas, Can't Get Health Care Back Home
• Happy Nowruz? Iran finds fault with Obama's new year greeting.
• Jailed Kurdish militant leader calls for legal steps in peace talks
• Lebanese border towns become fuse for sectarian conflict
• Dozens killed across Iraq as militants seize village
• How NASA Can Save Us Billions of Gallons of Water
• Gunmen ram explosives-laden tanker into Iraq police HQ
• Wave of attacks across Iraq kills 28 people
• Wave of attacks across Iraq kills 25 people
• Gunmen attack police HQ in Iraq, kill 8 policemen
• Claims that British soldiers unlawfully killed Iraqis withdrawn
• French parents alone against Syria jihad recruiters
• Why Obama Scares Me
• High unemployment still haunting military veterans

Lawyer: Vet reaches $4.5M settlement with Oakland Posted: 21 Mar 2014 04:47 PM PDT An Iraq War veteran whose skull was fractured during an Occupy Oakland protest when he was hit by a beanbag round fired by police has reached a $4.5 million agreement to settle a federal lawsuit with the ...

US Iraq vet gets $4.5 million for Occupy injuries Posted: 21 Mar 2014 04:38 PM PDT An Iraq war veteran critically injured in 2011 Occupy protests in California has won $4.5 million in a legal settlement with local authorities, his lawyers said Friday. Scott Olsen, who served two tours in Iraq, suffered brain damage when riot police used tear gas to disperse protestors in Oakland on October 25. He gave an outdoor press conference not far from where he was injured, saying he had not expected to be disabled due to police action at home, having survived war-torn Iraq. "I guess I thought that I wasn't in Iraq anymore, you know, I'd be more or less safe," he said, cited by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Do Democrats Get Clobbered in Midterms? Well, Yes — With Big Caveats Posted: 21 Mar 2014 03:13 PM PDT At a fundraising event in Miami on Thursday night, President Obama told the audience that they needed to get Democrats to the polls in November because "in midterms we get clobbered." And recently, that's true — under certain conditions. The Washington Post's Katie Zezima doesn't agree with that assessment. "[T]he president seems to forget the drubbings that Democrats have given Republicans in midterms past over the last 30 years," she writes, pointing to the midterms in 1982 and 1986, when the Democrats retook the Senate. Democrats have fared slightly worse than Republicans in midterm elections over the past century.

Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Zakka Iwas dead at 80 Posted: 21 Mar 2014 02:28 PM PDT DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church Ignatius Zakka Iwas, the leader of one of world's oldest Christian sects, has died. He was 80.

Russia sanctions 101: five questions you were too embarrassed to ask Posted: 21 Mar 2014 01:29 PM PDT Yes, President Obama has announced several rounds of economic sanctions on Moscow, acting with European allies. But "economic sanctions" is a phrase that covers lots of possible geopolitical punishments.

Gunmen ram explosives-laden tanker into Iraq police HQ, killing 15 Posted: 21 Mar 2014 11:55 AM PDT By Ghazwan Hassan TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Scores of gunmen took over a federal police headquarters in northern Iraq on Friday before ramming a tanker laden with explosives into the building, killing at least 15 people, a government official said. The battalion commander and four high-ranking officers were among the dead, trapped under debris when the force of the blast brought the building down on them in the village of Injana, the official said. The mayor of the nearby town of Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, said security forces later regained control over the village. Islamist militants occupied Sulaiman Pek last month and raised the black flag of the Sunni Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a group inspired by al Qaeda, over it.

Michigan's Peters plows different Democratic path Posted: 21 Mar 2014 11:33 AM PDT PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — Mark Ammel and a co-worker were cleaning their sandwich shop around closing time when they looked up to see something they had never witnessed in the decade they've been in business.

Iraq war vet hurt in California Occupy protest to get $4.5 million Posted: 21 Mar 2014 11:16 AM PDT By Laila Kearney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Iraq War veteran critically wounded by police during an Occupy protest in 2011 will receive $4.5 million in a tentative settlement with the City of Oakland, the northern California city where he was hurt, attorneys said on Friday. Scott Olsen was 24 when he suffered head injuries and brain damage after being struck by a lead-filled beanbag during a confrontation with Oakland police in October 2011, at the height of the Occupy movement on the U.S. West Coast. "After serving two tours of duty as a United States Marine in Iraq, Scott Olsen could never have imagined that he would be shot in the head by an Oakland police officer while he was peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights in support of the budding 'Occupy' economic justice movement," Rachel Lederman, Olsen's attorney, said in a statement.

Democrats see openings in congressional departures Posted: 21 Mar 2014 11:08 AM PDT MCLEAN, Va. (AP) — Democrats know they perform poorly in midterm elections. Just ask President Barack Obama.

Britain to import Russian gas under 2012 deal as tensions mount Posted: 21 Mar 2014 11:00 AM PDT By Henning Gloystein and Oleg Vukmanovic LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will begin this year to import gas from Russia under a formal contract for the first time, just as European calls to loosen Moscow's grip on energy supply mount because of the crisis over Ukraine. The country's biggest utility Centrica signed a deal in 2012 with Russian state-controlled Gazprom to import 2.4 billion cubic metres of gas over a period of three years, and the supplies will begin flowing in October. Russia is Europe's biggest supplier of gas, providing around a third of the continent's needs, and some of this has previously reached Britain from continental European storage sites. The exports largely go to central and southeastern Europe rather than to Britain, which still has significant domestic reserves and gets most of its imports from Norwegian pipelines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments from further afield.

Syria army advances bolstered by Hezbollah, rebel divisions Posted: 21 Mar 2014 10:52 AM PDT Beirut (Lebanon) (AFP) - Syria's army has been making advances against the opposition in recent days by exploiting divisions among rebel fighters and by relying on elite fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah, analysts say. On Sunday, the regime seized the rebel bastion of Yabrud, near the Lebanese border, dealing a powerfully symbolic and strategic blow.

Vets Ordered to Risk Lives Overseas, Can't Get Health Care Back Home Posted: 21 Mar 2014 10:46 AM PDT There have been many names for it: Civil War doctors called it "nostalgia," World War I doctors used the term "shell shock," and during World War II they spoke of "battle fatigue." It wasn't until 1980 that the term post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was added to the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which the American Psychiatric Association calls "the standard classification of mental health disorders used by mental health professionals." Today the disorder is all too well known: The Department of Veteran Affairs lists PTSD as one of the three most common post-combat diagnoses, with 20 percent of the 2.5 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan having PTSD.  Undiagnosed or untreated, PTSD can lead to depression, substance abuse, or suicide. This is called the "VA backlog," and it's a classic catch-22 (a phrase coined by a vet to describe military snafus): The VA is telling folks whom we supposedly value as heroes, essentially, "It's too late for you to receive medical benefits because your application to receive medical benefits has been sitting in our office collecting dust for four months.

Happy Nowruz? Iran finds fault with Obama's new year greeting. Posted: 21 Mar 2014 10:26 AM PDT And yet, even when diplomacy is in overdrive, as it is now with Iran and six world powers striving for a comprehensive nuclear deal by July, words can do as much harm as good.  He spoke of the "Islamic Republic of Iran" – implicitly recognizing the revolutionary state estranged from the US since 1979 – and offered the prospect of a new US-Iran relationship "rooted in mutual interest and mutual respect." He enthused about the "talents and genius of the Iranian people" throughout history.

Jailed Kurdish militant leader calls for legal steps in peace talks Posted: 21 Mar 2014 08:59 AM PDT By Seyhmus Cakan DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan called on the Turkish government on Friday to create a legal framework for their peace talks, whose fate is looking increasingly uncertain a year after he called a ceasefire by his fighters. Tens of thousands gathered in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, for the Kurdish new year celebrations of Newroz, where they listened to a statement written by Ocalan in his island jail of Imrali near Istanbul. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, battling a graft scandal swirling around his government, has invested considerable political capital in the peace process. During his 11 years in power his government has broken taboos with some reforms such as authorizing Kurdish language teaching and broadcasting, but Kurdish politicians are demanding greater political reform.

Lebanese border towns become fuse for sectarian conflict Posted: 21 Mar 2014 08:15 AM PDT By Alexander Dziadosz ARSAL, Lebanon (Reuters) - From the Lebanese border town of Arsal, you can see the smoke as Syrian government warplanes bomb rebel positions across the frontier. Arsal is Sunni Muslim and the neighboring town of al-Labwa is Shi'ite. Their fate shows just how dangerous the war in Syria has become for Lebanon as it still recovers from its own civil conflict. Nowadays in its hilly streets, residents and refugees curse Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shi'ite political and military movement whose fighters helped President Bashar al-Assad seize the town of Yabroud across the border this week.

Dozens killed across Iraq as militants seize village Posted: 21 Mar 2014 07:42 AM PDT Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - Militants controlled a northern Iraqi village for several hours Friday as attacks nationwide killed 27 people, including at least 10 policemen, amid a surge in bloodshed ahead of parliamentary elections. The latest unrest comes barely a week before campaigning begins for the April 30 election due to take place as Iraq grapples with its worst protracted bloodletting since a brutal 2006-2007 Sunni-Shiite sectarian war in which tens of thousands of people were killed. The unrest has been primarily driven by anger among the minority Sunni Arab community, which alleges discrimination at the hands of the Shiite-led government and security forces, as well as by the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Shootings and bombings on Friday mostly took place in Sunni-majority parts of northern and western Iraq, killing 27 people and wounding more than 50, security and medical officials said.

How NASA Can Save Us Billions of Gallons of Water Posted: 21 Mar 2014 06:38 AM PDT "June is the new July," says Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company in Colorado. Tom Painter, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has an answer: by measuring snow from thousands of feet in the air. This is welcome news in California, where the water content of accumulated snow is at historically low levels. Runoff from the Sierra Nevada mountains provides about a third of the entire state's water, and up to 80 percent in some areas, supplying tens of millions of people and almost 1 million acres of farmland.

Gunmen ram explosives-laden tanker into Iraq police HQ Posted: 21 Mar 2014 06:29 AM PDT Scores of gunmen took over a federal police headquarters in northern Iraq on Friday before driving a tanker laden with explosives into the building, killing many, a government official said. The mayor of the nearby town of Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, said security forces were still fighting the gunmen, who also seized control of another town in the area called Serha. Militants occupied Sulaiman Pek last month and raised the black flag of the Sunni Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over it. Security officials said the tanker bombing might have targeted Brigadier General Raghib Ali in revenge for his role in driving the militants out of Sulaiman Pek.

Wave of attacks across Iraq kills 28 people Posted: 21 Mar 2014 06:08 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — A series of attacks north and west of Baghdad on Friday, including two suicide bombings, killed at least 28 people, mainly members of security forces, and wounded dozens, Iraqi officials said.

Wave of attacks across Iraq kills 25 people Posted: 21 Mar 2014 04:51 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — A series of attacks north and west of Baghdad on Friday, including two suicide bombings, killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens, Iraqi officials said.

Gunmen attack police HQ in Iraq, kill 8 policemen Posted: 21 Mar 2014 03:24 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi officials say gunmen have attacked a police brigade headquarters north of Baghdad, killing the commander and seven policemen and wounding 15.

Claims that British soldiers unlawfully killed Iraqis withdrawn Posted: 21 Mar 2014 01:09 AM PDT There is "insufficient material" to prove that British soldiers unlawfully killed Iraqi civilians following a vicious battle in 2004, lawyers for families of the alleged victims told a British public inquiry. The Al-Sweady Inquiry is investigating claims that British troops committed abuses in the aftermath of a notorious firefight near the town of Majar al-Kabir, southwest Iraq, that came to be known as the "Battle of Danny Boy" after a nearby checkpoint. Troops had been accused of unlawfully killing 20 or more Iraqis at Camp Abu Naji near Majar-al-Kabir in May 2004 after they were taken prisoner following the battle, which was triggered when Iraqi insurgents mounted an ambush. But following a year of evidence from 281 witnesses, at a cost of more than £22 million ($36.3 million, 26.3 million euros), lawyers for the claimants told the London hearing there was no evidence that British soldiers had carried out unlawful killings.

French parents alone against Syria jihad recruiters Posted: 21 Mar 2014 12:11 AM PDT By Nicholas Vinocur and Pauline Mevel TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - When Dominique Bons' timid son stopped smoking overnight and started praying frequently at his home in the southern French city of Toulouse, she alerted the authorities. They did nothing because Nicolas was not suspected of any crime. Like his younger half-brother who died in Syria months earlier, he joined the al Qaeda splinter group, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). They are among a growing number of people, an estimated 2,000 so far, who have left Europeans states to fight alongside Islamist rebels in Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Why Obama Scares Me Posted: 21 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PDT The most febrile of George W. Bush haters liked to claim during his tenure that the former president "scared" them. There is far more reason to be frightened by President Barack Obama, because fecklessness and inconstancy trigger wars. The outstanding example of weakness inviting aggression was the conduct of the democracies toward Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

High unemployment still haunting military veterans Posted: 20 Mar 2014 08:46 PM PDT Unemployment among U.S. military veterans eased last year, government data showed on Thursday, but remained far higher than the national average rate for the civilian population. The unemployment rate among veterans who had joined the military after September 11, 2001, averaged 9.0 percent last year, down from 9.9 percent in 2012, the Labor Department said. That was about 1.6 percentage points above the rate for the civilian population. Joblessness among this group is set to worsen as the war in Afghanistan winds down.

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