| Islamic State revenues hit by lost Iraqi oil fields: report Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:43 PM PDT  The Islamic State group has lost control of "at least three large oil fields" in Iraq, depriving the jihadists of a crucial source of income, a German newspaper report said Thursday. In the face of a large-scale Iraqi counteroffensive, the extremist group now controls just a single oil field in the country, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung said in its Thursday edition, citing the BND federal intelligence services. Ousted from the strategic northern city of Tikrit by Iraqi security forces and militias just over a week ago -- in Baghdad's biggest victory to date after the militants overran large parts of the country last June -- the jihadists now have only "five percent" of the extraction capabilities they had before, according to the BND report seen by Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The group had lost "at least three large oil fields", the daily said, adding that satellite images from last month showed the group had set fire to two of them -- the Himrin and Ajil fields -- in the face of the advancing counteroffensive.
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| Vin Diesel, Chris Tucker Joining Ang Lee's 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:15 PM PDT Steve Martin, Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund are already in various stages of negotiations to join the production. |
| French TV5Monde hit by pro-Islamic State hackers Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:14 PM PDT  French television network TV5Monde on Wednesday evening said it had been hacked by individuals claiming to belong to the Islamic State group who had hijacked its TV channels, websites and Facebook page. Our websites and social media sites are no longer under our control and are all displaying claims of responsibility by Islamic State," the broadcaster's director general Yves Bigot told AFP. The hackers posted documents on TV5Monde's Facebook page purporting to be the identity cards and CVs of relatives of French soldiers involved in anti-IS operations.
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| Canadian planes carry out first strikes in Syria: army Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:02 PM PDT  Canada carried out its first air strikes in Syria on Wednesday the military said, expanding Ottawa's contribution to the US-led coalition against Islamic State, after parliament approved a larger role in the conflict. Canadian strikes had been limited to Iraqi territory, but at the end of March Canadian lawmakers narrowly passed a measure to allow the country's aircraft to target IS targets in Syria.
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| Canada conducts first air strike in Syria Posted: 08 Apr 2015 03:45 PM PDT Canadian armed forces conducted their first air strike in Syria since the government expanded the scope of its military mission against Islamic State last month, Canada's Defense Department said on Wednesday. "This first air strike under the expanded mandate demonstrates our government's firm resolve to tackle the threat of terrorism against Canada and to promote international security and stability," Defense Minister Jason Kenney said in a statement. Two Canadian CF-18s were involved in the air strike against an Islamic State garrison near Ar-Raqqah, Syria, the government said. |
| US agency: Oil company could have prevented ND worker death Posted: 08 Apr 2015 03:30 PM PDT A Houston-based oil company could have prevented a 28-year-old Alabama man's death by properly maintaining the water hauling tank that exploded while he was working in it in North Dakota, federal safety ... |
| In first steps on campaign trail, Rand Paul shadowed by Iran deal Posted: 08 Apr 2015 03:20 PM PDT  By Andy Sullivan MILFORD, N.H. (Reuters) - When Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky travels across the country this week as a newly minted presidential candidate, he will be greeted by $1 million worth of attack ads accusing him of being "wrong and dangerous" on Iran. It is an early sign that the unorthodox Republican - who criticized both Republicans and Democrats in his campaign announcement - may find himself an outlier within his own party when he argues that its limited-government ideals should apply to foreign policy as well as within the United States. Paul's launch on Tuesday of his 2016 presidential campaign in Louisville, his home state's biggest city, came days after a framework agreement struck between Iran and six major powers that aims to curb Iran's nuclear program, while offering sanctions relief to Tehran. The group is headed by Rick Reed, a veteran Republican media strategist who has worked for South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham - a hawk who is considering a presidential bid of his own.
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| Suffering rises as militants take over refugee camp in Syria Posted: 08 Apr 2015 01:35 PM PDT  BEIRUT (AP) — When hundreds of Islamic State militants muscled into the Yarmouk refugee camp last week and planted their black flags amid the charred, blown-out buildings, it was the latest trial for the remaining Palestinians who for two years have endured a suffocating government siege, starvation and disease.
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| Tsarnaev guilty on 30 counts over 2013 Boston bombings Posted: 08 Apr 2015 01:30 PM PDT  Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces the death penalty after a jury unanimously convicted him Wednesday of carrying out the worst attack in the United States since the 9/11 hijackings. He now faces life in prison without parole or even the death penalty when he is sentenced by the same jury at the second phase of the trial, which could start early next week, Judge George O'Toole told the court. Survivors, including the parents of eight-year-old Martin Richard who was killed in the attacks, crammed into the gallery to hear the verdict as a strict security cordon was set up outside in the biting wind and sleet. "We are thankful that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be held accountable for the evil that he brought to so many families," said the family of Sean Collier, a police officer whom the defendant murdered on the run.
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| IS frees over 200 Yazidis in Iraq Posted: 08 Apr 2015 01:23 PM PDT  More than 200 most elderly members of Iraq's Yazidi minority were freed by the Islamic State group after eight months in captivity and crossed Wednesday to the safety of Kurdistan. "We have received 227 Yazidis, among them women and children" in the northern province of Kirkuk Wednesday, Major General Westa Rasul of the Kurdish peshmerga forces told AFP. "We negotiated for days with tribal sheikhs in Hawijah and were able to free the kidnapped Yazidis," Rasul said, referring to an IS-controlled town in Kirkuk. A second drive in August targeted areas in the north that were home to many of Iraq's minorities.
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| Oil dives 6 percent from 2015 high as stocks swell, Saudis pump Posted: 08 Apr 2015 12:53 PM PDT  By Robert Gibbons NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices dived 6 percent on Wednesday after closing at their highest this year, as a mammoth rise in U.S. crude stockpiles and news of record Saudi oil production scuttled talk of a sustained recovery. U.S. crude oil inventories surged 10.95 million barrels - three times more than expected - to a modern-day record 482.39 million last week, U.S. government data showed, the biggest one-week increase since 2001. The data added to earlier losses triggered by comments that Saudi oil production rose to 10.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, the highest monthly total on record. The U.S. data were "very bearish," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.
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| Iraq PM says 'next battle' is retaking Anbar Posted: 08 Apr 2015 12:28 PM PDT  Iraq's premier said Wednesday that the country's "next battle" is to retake Anbar province from the Islamic State jihadist group, his most direct statement yet on Baghdad's target after Tikrit. "Our next stand and battle will be here in the land of Anbar to completely liberate it," Haider al-Abadi said from a base in the province west of Baghdad, according to his office. He was visiting Anbar to "check on preparations" for the upcoming military campaign. Abadi announced last week that Iraqi forces retook the city of Tikrit from IS, in Baghdad's biggest victory to date over militants who overran large parts of the country last June.
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| Islamic State group releases over 200 captive Iraqi Yazidis Posted: 08 Apr 2015 12:19 PM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — The Islamic State group released more than 200 Yazidis on Wednesday after holding them for eight months, the latest mass release of captives by the extremists targeted by U.S.-led airstrikes and an Iraqi ground offensive.
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| UAE says sees systematic Iranian meddling in Yemen, region Posted: 08 Apr 2015 11:57 AM PDT By Sami Aboudi ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Iran is sowing discord in Yemen and other regional countries as part of a "revolution export" strategy, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday, and Gulf Arab states are losing hope of building normal ties with Tehran. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nayahan also said a Saudi-led coalition now carrying out air strikes on Iranian-allied Houthi fighters in Yemen seek a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring all to pursue dialogue and imposing a ban on arms purchases by Houthis and other groups "that are out of line". Asked about evidence to back up allegations by Saudi- and U.S.-backed Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that Shi'ite Muslim Iran provided support for Shi'ite Houthi militia fighters opposed to his rule, Sheikh Abdullah told a news conference: "Iran is not carrying out this activity only in Yemen, it is conducting the same activity in Lebanon, in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Pakistan. |
| Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Guilty of the Crimes, Punishment Uncertain Posted: 08 Apr 2015 11:50 AM PDT  After less than the two days of deliberations, a Boston jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts for his role in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon. On Wednesday, Tsarnaev was convicted for a series of crimes including plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the attack that killed three people and wounded 260 others. He was also convicted of a separate attack that took the life of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer. It took the jury foreman nearly 30 minutes to read through all of the charges against Tsarnaev.
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| Violence in Damascus refugee camp kills 18: Amnesty Posted: 08 Apr 2015 11:47 AM PDT At least 18 civilians have been killed in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus since the Islamic State group attacked it last week, Amnesty International said on Wednesday. The 18 were killed by sniper fire or aerial bombardment in the Yarmouk camp, and included a 12-year-old girl and a humanitarian worker, the rights group said, citing local activists. It warned that thousands more people remained at risk from fighting in the area and from Syrian air force strikes. Islamic State, which controls large areas of northern Syria and Iraq, last week took control of most of the besieged camp, just a few kilometers from President Bashar al-Assad's palace. |
| Nearly half of European jihadists in Syria, Iraq are French: report Posted: 08 Apr 2015 10:58 AM PDT  Nearly half of European jihadists known to have travelled to territory held by the extremist Islamic State group are French, a report by the country's upper house Senate revealed Wednesday. Just over 1,430 French people have made their way to Iraq and Syria, representing 47 percent of jihadists from Europe that are known and accounted for, Senator Jean-Pierre Sueur, who spearheaded a parliamentary probe into jihadist networks, told reporters. According to Sueur, French domestic intelligence services are currently monitoring more than 3,000 people suspected of being involved in one way or another in Syrian networks -- a 24-percent increase since November last year. Some 85 French nationals are thought to have died in IS-held zones while two are being held in Syria, the report said.
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| Yemen's Houthis battle in central Aden, first medical aid arrives Posted: 08 Apr 2015 10:49 AM PDT  By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) - Houthi forces fought street-by-street battles with local militia in the old center of Aden on Wednesday, as the first boatloads of emergency medical aid reached the south Yemeni port city, which relief workers say faces a humanitarian catastrophe. Mosques broadcast appeals for jihad against the Houthis, Iran-allied fighters who have taken over large areas of Yemen. Iran, which denies arming the Houthis, has condemned the Saudi-led offensive. Tehran sent two warships to the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday, saying they would protect Iranian shipping.
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| Yemen ground operation would need Hadi green light: UAE Posted: 08 Apr 2015 10:18 AM PDT  The Emirati foreign minister said Wednesday that any Saudi-led ground operation against rebels in Yemen would need a green light from the country's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. "We cannot limit our options" in Yemen, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan told reporters, questioned on whether the Saudi-led coalition of which the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a member planned to send in ground troops. "Our military operation is to defend the legitimate authority, defend Yemen, and we can not place restrictions" on the action, said Sheikh Abdullah. He criticised the policies of Shiite Iran, whose Arab neighbours in the Gulf accuse of interference in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as well as Yemen.
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| 'American Pie': The Paradox of Boomer Nostalgia, in One Song Posted: 08 Apr 2015 09:46 AM PDT  Shortly after reading the news that Don McLean had sold the original lyrics sheet for "American Pie" at auction for $1.2 million, I found myself on a website I don't visit often: GlennBeck.com. The song chronicled the death of old American ideals, Beck argued—and offered a dark prophecy about the years to come. "Our culture has erased the meaning of anybody who tried to issue a warning," Beck told listeners. Setting aside the culture-warrior rhetoric (who's "they"?), Beck was actually just taking part in a grand American tradition: treating the 800+ words of McLean's 1971 single like a Talmudic scroll.
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| Iraqi forces move against Islamic State in Sunni heartland Anbar Posted: 08 Apr 2015 09:00 AM PDT Iraqi security forces launched a new offensive against Islamic State insurgents in the Sunni Muslim heartland of Anbar on Wednesday, seeking to build on a victory over the jihadist group last week in the city of Tikrit. Fighting began in the western province's desert terrain as Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was touring Anbar, visiting Iraqi army units and pro-government Sunnis, his office said. Abadi was expected to address the nation from Anbar later in the day. "Our next stand and battle will be from Anbar to liberate it entirely," Abadi said in a post on his official Facebook page. |
| Mugabe lambasts West on visit to S.Africa Posted: 08 Apr 2015 08:42 AM PDT  Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday launched a wide-ranging attack on Western colonisation in Africa and recent intervention in the Arab world, as he made his first state visit to South Africa in 21 years. The veteran leader, 91, seized the opportunity of a televised press conference with President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria to lambast the United Nations Security Council, the United States and former colonial power Britain. "We want a political environment in which we are not interfered with by outsiders and we become masters of ourselves in Africa," Mugabe told reporters. "We don't think we are getting a fair deal at the United Nations.
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| Islamic State releases more than 200 captive Yazidis in Iraq Posted: 08 Apr 2015 08:34 AM PDT  More than 200 elderly and infirm Yazidis were freed on Wednesday by Islamic State militants who had been holding them captive since overruning their villages in northwestern Iraq last summer. A Reuters reporter saw the group of 216 people, which included two Christians, handed over to Kurdish forces near the city of Kirkuk.
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| Swiss arrest man suspected of trying to join extremists Posted: 08 Apr 2015 07:54 AM PDT BERLIN (AP) — Swiss authorities say they have arrested a 24-year-old man who is suspected of seeking to join an Islamic extremist group in Syria or Iraq. |
| Islamic State bombs target Syria rivals, kill 31: monitors Posted: 08 Apr 2015 07:51 AM PDT Two car bombs set off by Islamic State insurgents killed at least 31 people in northern Syria including a senior rival fighter from al Qaeda's Nusra Front, a group monitoring the war said on Wednesday. Islamic State, which has captured wide areas of Syria and Iraq, has frequently fought rival armed groups but in some cases has also coordinated with them, complicating the four-year insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The bombs were detonated on Tuesday in the town of Marea, around 40 km (25 miles) north of Aleppo city, targeting the headquarters of rival insurgents and another area where they were operating, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. |
| U.S.-led forces conduct six air strikes in Iraq, Syria: military Posted: 08 Apr 2015 07:46 AM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces targeted Islamic State militants with four air strikes in Iraq and two in Syria since early Tuesday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. In Iraq, the air strikes hit Islamic State positions near Bayji and Kirkuk, among other places, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement. In Syria, the air strikes hit Islamic State positions near Al Hasakah and Kobani, it said. (Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Will Dunham) |
| How T.C. Boyle Finds His Endings Posted: 08 Apr 2015 07:28 AM PDT T. C. Boyle has never written the same book twice. In our conversation for this series, he analyzed how Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" pulls off an uncanny sleight of hand by bringing the story to a place readers never dreamed it could go. |
| ICC prosecutor: Slim chance of IS leaders facing war crimes inquiry Posted: 08 Apr 2015 07:12 AM PDT By Thomas Escritt THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said on Wednesday there is evidence of war crimes by Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria but little prospect yet that their leaders will be investigated by the ICC. Crimes attributed to the ultra-radical Sunni jihadist group range from mass executions, sexual slavery, rape and torture to forced recruitment of children and even genocide, Fatou Bensouda said in a statement. |
| Bob Simon's Daughter (and Producer) Pens Poignant Tribute: "His War Stories Were My Bedtime Stories" (Guest Column) Posted: 08 Apr 2015 07:00 AM PDT Tanya Simon grew up hiding the keys from her father so he wouldn't leave. But he was a '60 Minutes' correspondent and spent 47 years covering the world's dangers. Now, in The Hollywood Reporter's New York Issue, his only daughter writes about the life and work they shared and the final, tragic night he did not make it home. |
| Same Surveillance State, Different War Posted: 08 Apr 2015 06:58 AM PDT  It's been a long 22 months since the first of thousands of classified government documents became public in what has turned into a drumbeat of astonishing revelations about the scope of mass surveillance carried out by the United States government. On Tuesday evening, USA Today detailed a massive surveillance operation, run by the intelligence arm of the Drug Enforcement Agency, that began in 1992. The DEA revealed the existence of the now-discontinued program back in January, and USA Today's account offers remarkable details about how it worked. The program, which enabled the United States to secretly track billions of phone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens over a period of decades, was a blueprint for the NSA surveillance that would come after it, with similarities too close to be coincidental, according to USA Today.
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| Spain arrests 11 suspected of Islamic State links Posted: 08 Apr 2015 06:32 AM PDT  Spanish police Wednesday arrested 11 people suspected of links to the Islamic State group, including six Muslim converts, some of whom intended to launch attacks in the Catalonia region, officials said. Wednesday's arrests followed a year-long operation involving hundreds of police who made 13 raids around Barcelona and five other areas of the northeastern Catalonia region. "We are dealing with a cell openly linked to Daesh," another name for the group calling itself Islamic State, said Catalonia's regional interior minister Ramon Espadaler. They face charges including belonging to a terrorist group, recruitment and indoctrination, and incitement to terrorism.
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| ICC prosecutors says she can't investigate IS atrocities Posted: 08 Apr 2015 05:57 AM PDT THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Islamic State terror group has committed "crimes of unspeakable cruelty" in Syria and Iraq, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor said Wednesday, but added that she does not have jurisdiction to open an investigation. |
| Iran says working to help Yemen form unity government to fix crisis Posted: 08 Apr 2015 05:18 AM PDT Iran says Yemeni factions should form a national unity government to resolve the crisis there and that it is working to help achieve that, a senior Iranian official said on Wednesday. Morteza Sarmadi, deputy foreign minister, reiterated Iran's call for an immediate halt to the two-week-old military campaign being led by Saudi Arabia against Yemeni Houthis who have seized much of Yemen and forced its Saudi-backed president to flee. Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, Sarmadi said Yemen could not be governed by one political faction alone. "All influential and active political currents and factions" with popular backing should stand together "to form a government of national unity that can govern Yemeni affairs in the best way possible", he said. |
| Spain arrests 11 in operation against Islamists in Catalonia Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:48 AM PDT  Spain arrested eleven people on suspicion of being part of a militant Islamist cell planning an attack in the northeastern region of Catalonia, a Catalan police spokeswoman said. About 360 police took part in early morning raids at 17 properties, part of a year-long investigation which has also included the arrests of three Spaniards attempting to enter Syria from Bulgaria in December, the spokeswoman said. "The arrested are assumed to be implicated in diverse crimes related to jihadist terrorism, especially linked to Islamic State," the police said in a statement. Spain has arrested more than 30 people for suspected militant activity this year and is making efforts to stop the radicalisation of young Muslims and prevent them joining armed groups in Syria or Iraq or attacking targets at home.
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| 10 ways virtual reality is revolutionizing medicine and healthcare Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:30 AM PDT  Virtual reality isn't just about gaming. Here are 10 ways VR is, and has been, seeping into the way medical professionals train, diagnose, and treat.
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| Reenacting War to Make Sense of It Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:30 AM PDT  About halfway through In Country, Mike Attie and Meghan O'Hara's documentary about war reenactment, O'Hara asks one of the participants—a high school senior—why he's there, toting a gun and seeking out the Vietcong. The 80-minute film, in theaters Friday, follows a group of Vietnam War reenactors as they traipse through the Oregon woods, pretending to engage in firefights or to mow down the enemy. Sure, some of the reenactors fit the weekend-warrior stereotype—they like the idea of pretending to go to battle—but others have a more direct relationship with the subject: At least one is a Vietnam veteran, while others fought in the Iraq War. The obvious comparison here is with Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 The Act of Killing, in which veterans of the brutal 1965 Indonesian genocide re-staged their crimes.
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| The Invisible Democratic Majority Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:30 AM PDT  After the GOP triumph in the 2014 elections, one of them recanted, instead proclaiming an Emerging Republican Advantage. A study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that, over the course of 2014, American adults were far more likely to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, by a margin of 48 to 39 percent. Democrats still found some solace in longterm demographic trends: Republicans may enjoy the support of older, white Americans, but Democrats remain strong among young people and ethnic minorities, who will make up an ever-increasing share of the population in coming years. The GOP's advantage, they assumed, would be temporary, and an enduring Democratic majority would indeed emerge over time.
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| Two policemen shot dead in Saudi capital Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:09 AM PDT  Two Saudi policemen were killed when their patrol came under fire in Riyadh early on Wednesday, police said, in the second drive-by shooting targeting police in less than two weeks. The pre-dawn attack came in an eastern district of the capital, a police spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. "A security patrol was carrying out its duties in east Riyadh when it came under fire from an unidentified vehicle," the spokesman said. On March 29, two policemen were wounded in a similar attack in Riyadh, just days after the Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef ordered that security be tightened nationwide as the kingdom launched air strikes against Iran-backed Shiite rebels in neighbouring Yemen.
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| The Brontosaurus Would Like to Know: What Is a Species, Really? Posted: 08 Apr 2015 04:07 AM PDT  In 1989, the U.S. Postal Service released a collection of 25-cent commemorative postage stamps celebrating a series of dinosaurs. They also featured, however, the brontosaurus, or the "thunder lizard"—which had been reclassified under the genus apatosaurus ("deceptive lizard") in 1903. The brontosaurus—the gentle giant that ate plants and sneezed on children—has spent the past century-plus as, if not an actual genus, then a cultural one. So it was big news, this week, when a new paper brought some redemption—for brontosaurus fans, for Linnaean taxonomy, for the U.S. Postal Service.
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| Government Waste Gets a New Warrior Posted: 08 Apr 2015 03:15 AM PDT  Before he retired and left Washington in January, former Sen. Tom Coburn released an annual "Wastebook" report highlighting what he deemed to be the most egregious examples of government waste each year. When it came to government agencies, Coburn's Wastebook took no prisoners. He'd target overlapping government programs, science research he categorized as frivolous, and agencies he thought do not serve a useful purpose at all. His last report identified $25 Billion in potential government waste. Now, just months after Coburn left Washington, another Oklahoma lawmaker/warrior is attempting to keep the former Senator's efforts alive.
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