| Attacks raise tensions on eve of Iraq polls Posted: 29 Apr 2014 02:35 PM PDT  Attacks killed 24 people in Iraq Tuesday, the latest in a wave of deadly violence that has cast a pall over the country's first general election since US troops withdrew. The bloodshed, a day after 64 people died in a nationwide spate of blasts, raises questions over whether security forces can protect upwards of 20 million people eligible to vote on Wednesday. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, under fire over the worst protracted surge in violence in years and a laundry list of voter grievances, is bidding for a third term in the first national election since 2010. The Shiite premier has trumpeted a battle against jihadists he claims are entering Iraq from war-torn neighbour Syria, with support from Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
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| Secularist underdogs fight to be heard in Iraq election Posted: 29 Apr 2014 01:48 PM PDT By Isra' al Rubei'i and Ned Parker BAGHDAD (Reuters) - "I am Iraqi, so do I exist?" is the question posed on the Civil Democratic Alliance's Facebook page. The coalition of 10 liberal and secular parties aims to be an alternative to the communal politics defining Wednesday's national vote, aimed at people who feel so marginalized by Iraq's politics that they are hardly counted. In an electoral race filled with old faces and vitriolic hatred, the underdog list hints at a way forward that has appeal for those wishing to move beyond the sectarian fears coloring Iraqi politics. The country is at war, with the Iraqi military and militias battling Sunni extremists in areas surrounding Baghdad. |
| Jihadists execute seven in Syria, two by crucifixion Posted: 29 Apr 2014 01:24 PM PDT  The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced it had executed seven prisoners in its bastion in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, two of them by crucifixion. ISIL, which has been disavowed even by Al-Qaeda, said it held the seven responsible for a grenade attack on one of its fighters earlier this month in the Euphrates Valley city of Raqa, which it rules with an iron fist. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights posted a photograph of the two prisoners being crucified at the roundabout with passer-by walking past apparently unfazed. ISIL's exactions caused a backlash against them from rival rebel groups, including Al-Qaeda's official Syria affiliate Al-Nusra Front, who joined forces against its fighters from the start of the year.
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| Saudi ends 'largest' manuevers in its history Posted: 29 Apr 2014 12:58 PM PDT  Saudi Arabia ended military exercises Tuesday along the borders of Iraq and Kuwait, as well as other regions, in what the media described as the largest in the kingdom's history. "We are preparing our armed forces to protect" the nation, daily Al-Eqtisadiah website quoted general staff chief Lieutenant General Hussein al-Qabeel as saying. The armed forces "do not aim to attack anyone as this is not our wise government's policy," Qabeel added. It "aims at increasing the level of training and testing the capability of our armed forces in deterring any attack from any of these sides," the daily quoted Qabeel as saying.
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| Frustrated Iraqi Kurds hope vote will bring new PM Posted: 29 Apr 2014 12:54 PM PDT  Arbil (Iraq) (AFP) - Iraqi Kurds frustrated with the federal government dream of independence for their autonomous region, but for now they want widely disliked Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki out of office. Maliki's "policies against the Kurds were not good", said Mohsen, 38, after dusting off sunglasses for sale in front of his shop in the Kurdish regional capital Arbil. Maliki, a Shiite Arab vying for a third term in Wednesday's parliamentary polls, has repeatedly clashed with the three-province Kurdistan region's leadership in disputes over territory, resources and power-sharing, making him a prime target for Kurdish ire. Massud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, has frequently spoken out against Maliki, accusing him of monopolising power.
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| Iraq's al-Maliki facing discontent in election Posted: 29 Apr 2014 11:54 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — If Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wins a third four-year term in parliamentary elections Wednesday, he is likely to rely on a narrow sectarian Shiite base, only fueling divisions as Iraq slides deeper into bloody Shiite-Sunni hatreds.
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| Shadowy commander is face of insurgency in Ukraine Posted: 29 Apr 2014 11:48 AM PDT  SLOVYANSK, Ukraine (AP) — When shadowy commander Igor Strelkov appeared before the cameras recently in green combat fatigues and a clipped mustache, he did more than reveal the face of the insurgency rocking eastern Ukraine. He strengthened the case that Russia is behind the turmoil.
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| Bombs at markets, police kill 24 people in Iraq Posted: 29 Apr 2014 11:39 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — Back-to-back bombs ripped through an outdoor market northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, the deadliest in separate attacks that officials said killed 24 people on the eve of the first nationwide elections since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. forces.
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| British terror convict emailed as 'sacrifice72' Posted: 29 Apr 2014 11:35 AM PDT  A British convict who plotted to blow a US passenger plane out of the sky was so determined to die for Al-Qaeda that he used the email address sacrifice72@yahoo.com, he admitted Tuesday. Saajid Badat, 35, told the New York trial of British hate preacher Abu Hamza that he used the Yahoo account while researching Jewish targets in South Africa. The word sacrifice was a nod to his determination to die in the cause of violent jihad and 72 a reference to the number of virgins that Al-Qaeda preached a "martyr" is entitled to deflower in heaven. Under cross-examination from Abu Hamza's lawyer Jeremy Schneider, he said he spent two days preparing a "detailed" report for Al-Qaeda bosses on the targets.
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| Bombs kill at least 17 people at Iraq market Posted: 29 Apr 2014 10:01 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — Back-to-back bombs ripped through an outdoor market northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 17 people, officials said, on the eve of the first nationwide elections since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. forces.
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| German government distances itself from Schroeder after his Putin meeting Posted: 29 Apr 2014 09:05 AM PDT By Erik Kirschbaum and Noah Barkin BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government distanced itself from former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Tuesday amid an outpouring of media criticism after pictures were published showing him embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. The pictures come at a time of high tension between the West and Russia over Ukraine and also underscore German ambivalence about imposing new sanctions on Moscow, despite Chancellor Angela Merkel's criticism of Putin's actions in the crisis. A spokesman for Schroeder confirmed he was in Russia's second city on Monday for a shareholders' meeting of Nord Stream AG, the Russian-German pipeline joint venture he chairs. But spokesman Albrecht Funk would not say why Schroeder met Putin. |
| General Dynamics to cut 170 jobs in SC Posted: 29 Apr 2014 08:01 AM PDT General Dynamics says it will lay off about 170 employees at its plant in Ladson, South Carolina by the end of the year. The company blamed reduced military spending for the decision to cut 75 percent ... |
| Sunnis feel victimised as Iraq goes to polls Posted: 29 Apr 2014 07:31 AM PDT  Since soldiers arrested and beat Abu Noor, his son and nephew at their modest house in Baghdad's Adhamiyah neighbourhood, he and his wife have been too scared to leave home. Like Abu Noor and his wife, many Sunni Arabs complain they are discriminated against by the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is running for a third term in a parliamentary election on Wednesday. Umm Noor, a smiling woman in her forties wearing a headscarf, grew angry as she recounted the incident six months ago, when she heard a noise late one night. Umm Noor -- literally, "Mother of Noor" -- said she rushed out, without even donning her headscarf, and begged the troops to release them.
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| Bombs kill at least 11 people at Iraq market Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:05 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — A pair of back-to-back bombs ripped through an outdoor market northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 19, officials said, the latest spasm of violence to convulse Iraq ahead of parliamentary elections. |
| Obama hits back hard at foreign policy critics Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:01 AM PDT  Barack Obama's frustration is spilling over as he makes the most strident defence of his foreign policy yet, rebuking critics who say his diplomacy is haphazard, weak and blurs US national security red lines. His four-nation trip was meant to cement the most substantive doctrinal element of his foreign policy, the pivot of American power to Asia, which had been a little ragged of late. But Obama's inability to deter President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, the crumbling Middle East peace process and the unstoppable carnage in Syria, opened the president to new charges his foreign policy is a bust. He rarely loses his cool in public, but Obama was at his most waspish in public comments on foreign policy during the trip -- recalling his ill-tempered debates with Republican Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential race.
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| Grimm’s Unhappily Ever After Posted: 29 Apr 2014 02:45 AM PDT  He was true Tea Party at the movement's height and was New York City Democrats' priority No. 1—but the Republican still rode to victory in 2012. Now he faces a 20-count indictment.
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| Iraq: Bombs kills at least 11 people in market Posted: 29 Apr 2014 02:07 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — Officials say a back-to-back bomb attack in an outdoor market northeast of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killed at least 11 people. |
| Iraq: Militant group claims attack that killed 25 Posted: 29 Apr 2014 12:04 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — An al-Qaida spin-off group has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in a Kurdish town northeast of Baghdad that killed at least 25 people the previous day. |
| Kurds fight out internal rivalries in Iraq vote Posted: 28 Apr 2014 10:46 PM PDT By Isabel Coles SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (Reuters) - Celebratory gunfire broke out in Iraq's Kurdish north as the octogenarian was shown on television raising an ink-stained finger after casting his vote thousands of miles away in Germany. The man was Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and his silent appearance at an early ballot for the election due at home on Wednesday was the first footage of him since he suffered a stroke late in 2012 and was flown abroad for medical treatment. In Sulaimaniyah, capital of the province of the same name where his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is headquartered, cars blared their horns and people, some wearing T-shirts printed with Talabani's face, danced on the streets. Wednesday's election marks a new round in an internal power struggle that risks turning violent and skewing the balance of power in Kurdistan between influential neighbors Iran and Turkey. |
| Maliki faces struggle to secure third term as Iraqi PM Posted: 28 Apr 2014 10:42 PM PDT  By Ned Parker and Raheem Salman BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A casual wave to fellow diners in a Baghdad restaurant in 2008 sealed Nouri al-Maliki's reputation as the man who restored a degree of normality to a city that civil war had nearly destroyed. "People in their offices with air conditioners over their heads don't feel their discomfort." The highest levels of violence since Maliki took on the militias in 2008 are undermining his message. A year-long offensive by al-Qaeda inspired Sunni militants is moving ever closer to the capital and Shi'ite militia, often teamed with security forces, are taking revenge on Sunni communities, diminishing the stature of Maliki's Shi'ite-led government. In March alone 180 civilians were killed and 477 were wounded in Baghdad among more than 2,000 killed across Iraq so far this year.
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| At Nixon library, tension over how to portray a disgraced president Posted: 28 Apr 2014 10:28 PM PDT  By Tim Reid YORBA LINDA, California (Reuters) - Nearly 40 years after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace because of the Watergate scandal, the debate over how his legacy should be defined seems as vibrant as ever - at Nixon's presidential library, at least. The Nixon library, which opened in 1990 in Yorba Linda, about 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles, has become the focus of a behind-the-scenes tussle over how the story of the only person to resign from the U.S. presidency should be told. It pits Nixon loyalists who want the library to do more to portray the 37th president as a great leader with a range of domestic and foreign accomplishments, against historians and others who say that the library - as a symbol of U.S. history and education - has a duty to also provide an unvarnished, and unflattering, lesson on Nixon's downfall. A key issue is whether the Nixon Foundation, which is run by former aides to the president and Nixon family members and is raising $25 million to renovate the library, is trying to delay the appointment of a new library director by the National Archives so the renovation can be done without interference from those not loyal to Nixon.
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