| Syrian army ousts rebels from border stronghold Posted: 16 Mar 2014 02:18 PM PDT  BEIRUT (AP) — With rebels fleeing into neighboring Lebanon, Syrian government troops and Hezbollah fighters captured a strategic town near the frontier Sunday, ousting opposition fighters from their last stronghold in the vital border area.
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| Spain deports Madrid train bombing convict to Morocco Posted: 16 Mar 2014 12:32 PM PDT  Spain on Sunday deported a Moroccan man after he completed a 10-year jail sentence for obtaining the explosives used in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, the government said. Spain's National Court in 2007 sentenced Rafa Zouhier, 34, to 10 years behind bars for collaborating with the Islamist cell that carried out the country's deadliest-ever terrorist attack. Spanish police escorted him to Tangiers in northern Morocco immediately after his release in the early hours of Sunday from the Puerto de Santamaria prison in Cadiz in southwestern Spain, an interior ministry spokesman said. Officers flanked Zouhier, who wore a black hooded sweatshirt and had his hands handcuffed behind his back, as they led him from a white police van into a small plane that took him to Morocco, a video released by the ministry showed.
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| Syrians mark uprising anniversary with arts festival Posted: 16 Mar 2014 11:55 AM PDT  Anti-regime activists in the Syrian town of Kafranbel on Sunday marked the third anniversary of the uprising with an arts festival that included open-air cinema screenings and exhibitions. The festival, which started Saturday on the third anniversary of the beginning of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, was launched under the slogan "the revolution that faced the military dictatorship is now also facing religious extremism." Kafranbel was attacked by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a hardline jihadist group at war with both the regime and rival rebels, earlier this year.
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| Syria: Government forces seize key rebel town Posted: 16 Mar 2014 10:26 AM PDT DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters seized a key rebel supply town on the Lebanese border on Sunday, driving them from the area and scoring a major blow against them in the three-year-old-conflict. |
| US delivers missiles, ammunition to Iraq Posted: 16 Mar 2014 10:22 AM PDT  The United States delivered nearly 100 Hellfire missiles, M4 rifles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition to Iraq this month, the US embassy in Baghdad said Sunday. The delivery is part of US efforts to help Iraq combat Sunni militant groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, amid ongoing instability in Sunni Arab areas, particularly western Anbar province where militants have held an entire city for more than two months. "Earlier this month, the United States delivered nearly 100 Hellfire missiles together with hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and M4 rifles," the embassy said in a statement.
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| Saudi bans books at fair in wide-ranging crackdown Posted: 16 Mar 2014 09:50 AM PDT  Saudi authorities have banned hundreds of books, including works by renowned Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish, as part of a crackdown on publications deemed threatening to the conservative kingdom. Saudi Arabia clamped down on dissent following the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, from which it has been largely spared, and has adopted an increasingly confrontational stance towards the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups it has long viewed as a threat to its security.
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| US delivers Hellfire missiles, ammunition to Iraq Posted: 16 Mar 2014 09:02 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — The United States delivered 100 Hellfire missiles, along with assault rifles and ammunition to Iraq as part of its anti-terrorism assistance to the country, the U.S. embassy to Iraq said on Sunday.
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| The Chance to Crush Al Qaeda Posted: 16 Mar 2014 07:20 AM PDT  In 2001 the U.S. almost killed Osama bin Laden, but a series of bad decisions from the White House and Pentagon allowed al Qaeda's leaders to escape and continue fighting.
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| Slovakia to hold a presidential runoff election Posted: 16 Mar 2014 02:15 AM PDT  BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Two candidates will compete in a runoff ballot to become Slovakia's next president, election results indicated Sunday.
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| Militants attack Iraq anti-Qaeda leader, kill four Posted: 15 Mar 2014 05:22 PM PDT  Samarra (Iraq) (AFP) - Heavily-armed militants attacked the home of an anti-Qaeda militiaman north of Baghdad Sunday, killing and decapitating his wife and two sons and killing another person in a brutal pre-dawn assault. The militia leader, Abu Salim, was not in the house at the time of the attack, which involved more than a dozen vehicles and fighters armed with heavy machine guns and other weapons and also left two of his young sons wounded. Fighters attacked the militia leader's house in Jilam, a suburb of the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra, at around midnight on Saturday, and killed Abu Salim's wife, two sons and another woman, a police colonel and another officer said. Abu Salim is the leader in Jilam of the Sahwa, or Awakening, a collection of mostly-Sunni tribal militias that from late-2006 onwards sided with US forces against their co-religionists in Al-Qaeda, helping turn the tide of Iraq's insurgency.
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