| APNewsBreak: Turkey, Saudi in pact to help anti-Assad rebels Posted: 07 May 2015 04:07 PM PDT  ISTANBUL (AP) — Casting aside U.S. concerns about aiding extremist groups, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have converged on an aggressive new strategy to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad.
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| Syrian rebel training has started in Jordan Posted: 07 May 2015 02:31 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of delays and vetting, the training of moderate Syrian rebels has started in Jordan as part of a broader effort to build a force capable of fighting Islamic State extremists, U.S. and Jordanian officials said Thursday.
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| Senate OKs Oversight of Iran Nuke Deal, Leaving Cotton in the Dust Posted: 07 May 2015 02:10 PM PDT The Senate on Thursday swept aside challenges from two freshman Republican superstars and passed carefully crafted legislation giving Congress authority to review the terms of any final agreement between the U.S. and Iran that would force Tehran to curb its nuclear weapons program in return for lifting onerous economic sanctions that date back decades. Marco Rubio of Florida, an announced presidential candidate, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, an aggressive newcomer who has emerged as a leading conservative voice on defense and foreign policy, threatened to derail the measure with "poison-pill" amendments unacceptable to the Obama administration and the Iranians. |
| US trains Syrian rebels to take on Islamic State Posted: 07 May 2015 02:03 PM PDT  The US military has begun training a small unit of "moderate" Syrian rebels in Jordan to return home and take on the might of the Islamic State, after months of intense vetting. The long-delayed basic military training could eventually extend to similar programs in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a US official said, and the rebels could be backed by American air support if required. "There are about 90 of the trainees in this company-sized unit," US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters at the Pentagon. The United States and its allies launched air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August last year and in Syria in September.
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| Brunei arrests Indonesian with 'IS flag, bullets' Posted: 07 May 2015 01:36 PM PDT  Brunei has arrested an Indonesian man en route to Saudi Arabia after authorities found bullets and what appeared to be an Islamic State (IS) group flag in his luggage, Indonesian officials said Thursday. Rustawi Tomo Kabul, 63, was detained on Saturday in transit at Brunei airport after arriving from Indonesia, and claimed to be going on pilgrimage with a group from his home country, the foreign ministry in Jakarta said. "The man was detained because of suspicious things found in his luggage, such as bullets and what looked similar to an ISIS flag," said foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir, using an alternative name for IS.
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| White House fence getting sharper spikes in security upgrade Posted: 07 May 2015 01:00 PM PDT  The black iron fence surrounding the White House will be topped with a row of "sharp metal points" in July, the U.S. Secret Service said on Thursday, part of a series of security upgrades for the famous mansion where the president and his family live. The planned changes were sparked by an intrusion last September when an Iraq war veteran carrying a knife scaled the fence, ran across the North Lawn and entered the residence, running through a large ballroom before being tackled by a Secret Service officer. The incident was one of several embarrassing breaches for the agency, which is responsible for the security of President Barack Obama, and led to the resignation of the agency's director. The Secret Service released photos of the new "pencil point" spikes that in July will be bolted to the top of the fence and face outward at a 5 degree angle.
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| Texas attack inspired but not directed by IS: Pentagon chief Posted: 07 May 2015 12:41 PM PDT  An attempted attack on an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in Texas was inspired -- but not ordered by -- the Islamic State group, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Thursday. Prosecutors alleged he was planning to travel there to wage holy war, but a judge dismissed the charge.
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| U.S. has begun training Syrians to battle Islamic State: Pentagon Posted: 07 May 2015 12:34 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Thursday that U.S. military troops have begun training a small, company-sized group of Syrian fighters to battle Islamic State militants who have overrun parts of Syria and Iraq. Carter told a news conference a second company-sized group of Syrian fighters would begin training soon. The Pentagon chief said the company-sized unit that already has started training has about 90 personnel. (Reporting by David Alexander and Phil Stewart; Editing by Will Dunham) |
| Assad’s Days May Be Numbered in the Disaster Known as Syria Posted: 07 May 2015 11:50 AM PDT The end might not be in sight for the conflict in Syria, but there are signs the three-way battle between the regime of Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, and rebels seeking a representative government has turned a corner, according to experts in the field. "After roughly two years of being on the defensive, Syria's rebels are making dramatic gains in the north of the country," writes Charles Lister, a visiting foreign policy fellow in the Brookings Institution's Doha Center in Qatar. The response of the Assad regime has been fierce. Its soldiers have mounted new attacks, by land and air in an effort to beat back the strengthened rebels – including assaults with the infamous "barrel bombs" that have become a trademark of the Syrian Army. |
| Senator lambasts Congress on Islamic State: call a war a war Posted: 07 May 2015 11:18 AM PDT  Congress' failure to even debate U.S. military action against Islamic State nine months after air strikes began is cowardly and shameful as Americans fight an undeclared war, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine said on Thursday. Kaine, a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been a steady critic of Congress' failure to authorize military force against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq despite a U.S.-led bombing campaign that began Aug. 8. In a U.S. Senate speech to mark the beginning of the 10th month of the military campaign, Kaine lambasted Congress for its inaction. "The silence of Congress in the midst of this war is cowardly and shameful," Kaine said.
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| Bald eagle statue stolen from New Hampshire vets memorial Posted: 07 May 2015 10:59 AM PDT WEBSTER, N.H. (AP) — A concrete statue of a bald eagle has been stolen from a New Hampshire veteran's memorial. |
| Bosnia, Kosovo tighten noose on radical Islamists Posted: 07 May 2015 10:29 AM PDT  Bosnian police have arrested 11 people on suspicion of plotting "terrorist acts", a week after a deadly Islamist attack on a police station, officials said Thursday. The arrests were part of an operation to root out radical Islamists in the semi-autonomous Serb-run Republika Srpska (RS). Those detained were suspected of having stockpiled weapons and explosives "aimed at committing terrorist acts against the institutions of the Republika Srpska and their representatives", prosecutors said in a statement. Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), a gunman opened fire on a police station, killing one officer and wounding two others before himself being shot dead by police.
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| Kosovo indicts 32 for fighting and recruiting for Islamic State Posted: 07 May 2015 10:13 AM PDT By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA (Reuters) - A prosecutor in Kosovo indicted 32 people on Thursday for fighting alongside Islamist insurgents in Syria and Iraq and recruiting others from the impoverished Balkan country to fight. Security officials say more than 200 people from Kosovo have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, stirring fears of the threat they might pose when they come home. "For some of the suspects there is strong evidence that they fought and joined the terrorist group in Syria known as ISIS," a statement from the state prosecutor's office said, referring to Islamic State. "Others have recruited people to send to the war in Syria and have collected money for terrorist organizations." All the indicted men were arrested in August 2014, when police began a large-scale operation to deter would-be Islamic State fighters. |
| Texas shooting sign of lone wolf attacks to come in U.S.: experts Posted: 07 May 2015 10:12 AM PDT  By Doina Chiacu WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attacks like Sunday's shooting at a Texas event featuring cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad are a bigger threat in the United States than any by foreign fighters returning radicalized from Syria or Iraq, security experts told a U.S. Senate panel. The so-called lone wolf attackers will be American, inspired by the Islamic State militant group, radicalized online and have easy access to guns, Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation think tank said at a Senate hearing. U.S. investigators are examining the influence of Islamic State on the two men shot to death by authorities after they opened fire in Garland, Texas. There is no evidence either man traveled to Syria or Iraq but they exchanged Twitter messages with Cybercaliphate, an Islamic State affiliate.
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| Kuwait to order Boeing F/A-18 fighters worth $3 bn Posted: 07 May 2015 10:05 AM PDT  Kuwait plans to order 28 Super Hornet advanced fighter jets worth $3 billion from Boeing, a person close to the deal told AFP Thursday. The order for the F/A-18E/F multirole aircraft marks an important victory for Boeing over European rivals, which had been pitching the Eurofighter Typhoon to the Gulf country. The move would beef up Kuwait's air force, as the country takes part in the Saudi-led coalition attacking Huthi rebels in Yemen. Six Gulf Cooperation Council leaders will visit the White House on May 13, followed the next day by a trip to the bucolic Camp David presidential retreat near Washington.
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| Iraqi journalist shot dead by unknown assailant Posted: 07 May 2015 08:43 AM PDT The body of an Iraqi journalist critical of the government has been found at his home in Baghdad with a single bullet wound to the chest after he received threats, relatives, acquaintances and police said on Thursday. "He paid the price of being a journalist in Iraq," said Jubbouri's brother Ahmed. The head of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory and a person who knew Jubbouri said the presenter had been threatened several times before his death and gave them telephone numbers to call if anything should happen to him. Iraq has consistently ranked amongst the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, long-running civil conflict combining with political tensions in Baghdad. |
| Social media and mourning: Funerals may be the last frontier Posted: 07 May 2015 07:41 AM PDT  Taya Dunn Johnson has been living large online for years, embracing Facebook, Twitter and other social streams to frequently share her most mundane and intimate moments. Her husband — her high school sweetheart ...
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| "Jihad Intel" Launched by the Middle East Forum Posted: 07 May 2015 07:30 AM PDT PHILADELPHIA, May 7, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Middle East Forum announces Jihad Intel, a project to provide U.S. law enforcement with detailed information on violent Islamist groups. Jihad Intel, jihadintel.meforum.org, gives police tools to identify terrorists acting on behalf of Islam and to connect the dots before a terrorist incident takes place. So, in response, Jihad Intel has established a public, gratis database of visual identifiers of over 125 Islamic terrorist groups – hundreds of emblems, flags, headbands, graffiti, propaganda, social media tags and other symbols used to incite Muslims to violence – with new groups and identifiers added continually. Jihad Intel also provides background information on each terrorist organization, including a list of Western countries which have designated the organization as terrorist. |
| Egyptian army forces free Ethiopians held in Libya: Sisi Posted: 07 May 2015 07:29 AM PDT By Mahmoud Mourad CAIRO (Reuters) - A group of Ethiopians who had been kidnapped in Libya arrived at Cairo airport on Thursday after Egyptian army forces rescued them, state media quoted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as saying. State TV broadcast live footage of Sisi greeting about 30 Ethiopians who had arrived on an Egyptian government plane. "Sisi announced during a seminar the success of the armed forces in returning the Ethiopian brothers who had been kidnapped in Libya," state news agency MENA reported. "The Libyan government came and took us to the anti-illegal immigration body and then the Egyptian government took us from there," he told reporters at the airport. |
| Flights to besieged Afghan city canceled as Taliban, army clash Posted: 07 May 2015 07:21 AM PDT  By Mirwais Harooni KABUL (Reuters) - Commercial flights to Afghanistan's besieged northern city of Kunduz have been suspended, an official said on Thursday, as hundreds of Taliban militants fought against government forces struggling to oust them from the city's outskirts. Nearly two weeks of clashes around Kunduz have forced thousands of people to flee their homes and posed the biggest challenge to the NATO-trained Afghan army and police since foreign combat troops withdrew at the end of last year. Government forces have vowed that the northern provincial capital will not fall into the hands of the Taliban, who officials said were fighting alongside foreign jihadists. The fighting prompted Afghan airline East Horizons to suspend its once-weekly flight from Kabul to Kunduz, the only commercial passenger air link to the northern city.
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| Hundreds of bodies may be buried in Nepal avalanche, official says Posted: 07 May 2015 07:08 AM PDT  By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Body parts are strewn on the slopes of a mountain in Nepal, and up to 300 people, many of them foreigners, are believed buried there by an avalanche set off by last month's earthquake, an official said on Thursday. Rescuers pulled out six bodies from the Langtang village area, 60 km (40 miles) north of Kathmandu, on Wednesday but operations were being hampered by bad weather, said Gautam Rimal, assistant district administrator.
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| Emergency funds for Nepal quake slow to come in, says U.N. Posted: 07 May 2015 07:02 AM PDT By Krista Mahr KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Only a fraction of the emergency funds the United Nations has requested for victims of Nepal's earthquake have come in, U.N. officials said on Thursday, as crises around the world put unprecedented demands on international donors. Of the $415 million requested by the U.N. and its partners last week, just $22.4 million has been provided. "It's a poor response," Orla Fagan, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Reuters on Thursday. Fagan attributed the shortage to "donor fatigue," citing more than a dozen other long-running international crises, such as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, which are also making demands on donor nations. |
| Fierce fighting in Iraq's largest refinery Posted: 07 May 2015 06:12 AM PDT  The Islamic State jihadist group launched a fresh offensive Thursday against Iraq's largest refinery, where a military official said security forces are facing one of their toughest battles. The country's largest refinery is located near the city of Baiji, around 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Baghdad. Control of the Baiji area is seen as key step toward the reconquest of the main IS hub of Mosul. The vast complex, which once produced 300,000 barrels per day of refined products meeting half of the country's needs, remained besieged by IS fighters for months following the group's massive onslaught across Iraq in June 2014.
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| Saudi Arabia says considering five-day Yemen truce Posted: 07 May 2015 05:42 AM PDT  Saudi Arabia proposed a five-day humanitarian truce in Yemen on Thursday after weeks of air strikes and fighting, but said a ceasefire depended on the Houthi militia and its allies also agreeing to lay down arms, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing a news conference alongside Jubeir in Riyadh, welcomed the proposal and added that neither Saudi Arabia nor the United States was talking about sending ground troops into Yemen. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in air raids and fighting since a Saudi-led coalition began strikes against the Houthis on March 26, aimed at pushing the Iranian-allied militia back from captured areas and restoring President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government. The fighting and a coalition arms embargo have also caused hunger and shortages of food and fuel, worsening Yemen's humanitarian crisis and prompting alarm around the world.
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| Canada lawmakers vote to ramp up spy agency powers Posted: 07 May 2015 02:31 AM PDT  Lawmakers passed a bitterly opposed anti-terror law dramatically expanding the powers and reach of Canada's spy agency, allowing it to operate overseas for the first time. A large number of critics -- including celebrated author Margaret Atwood -- have vehemently decried bill C-51 as an unprecedented assault on civil rights, saying it lacks oversight and is overly broad. It criminalizes the promotion of terrorism, makes it easier for police to arrest and detain individuals without charge and expands the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's (CSIS) mandate from intelligence-collection to actively thwarting terror plots and spying outside Canada. At least six Canadians have died over the last two years fighting alongside extremists in Syria and Iraq.
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| Gunmen kill 2 Egyptian policemen in Sinai Posted: 07 May 2015 01:52 AM PDT  Gunmen attacked an Egyptian police camp Thursday in the Sinai Peninsula, killing two officers, authorities said, as security forces battle an insurgency led by an affiliate of the Islamic State group. The assailants in a car opened fire on the policemen while they were on duty outside the camp in the town of Rafah on the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, according to security officials. The Sinai has been shaken by regular militant attacks despite stringent security measures adopted since a deadly assault in October that killed 30 soldiers. The jihadist group Sinai Province has spearheaded an offensive against security forces on the peninsula since the overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi by the army in 2013.
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| Forces loyal to Libya's official government claim they shot down rival war plane Posted: 07 May 2015 01:36 AM PDT  Forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government said that on Wednesday they had shot down a war plane belonging to a rival administration controlling Tripoli. Both governments have been fighting each other with aircraft and ground troops on several front, part of a wider conflict in the oil-producing nation four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi. "Our forces shot down a plane trying to attack Zintan airport," said Mohamed El Hejazi, a spokesman for the army loyal to the official government, which has been based in the east since a rival faction seized Tripoli in August. Omar Matoog, a spokesman for the airport in Zintan, a western region allied to the eastern government, also said a MiG belonging to a rival administration in Tripoli had been shot down.
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| Texas incident fuels concern about lone-wolf terror attacks Posted: 07 May 2015 12:32 AM PDT  NEW YORK (AP) — The attempted attack on a provocative cartoon contest in Texas appears to reflect a scenario that has long troubled national security officials: a do-it-yourself terror plot, inspired by the Islamic State extremist group and facilitated through the ease of social media.
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| Cameron faces voters after lacklustre campaign Posted: 06 May 2015 11:01 PM PDT  Prime Minister David Cameron appears to face two thankless alternatives after Thursday's general election -- losing his job aged 48, or leading a fractious government until he steps down. Cameron's Conservatives have been virtually tied in opinion polls with Labour for months, confounding the party's expectations of a late boost in numbers.
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| Britain votes in election which could define its future Posted: 06 May 2015 07:40 PM PDT  Britain goes to the polls Thursday in the closest general election for a generation -- but voters may have to wait days for a new government as politicians battle to take power. The election looks set to deliver a minority government for the first time since 1974 but could also push Britain closer to leaving the European Union and hasten Scottish independence. The Conservatives, who have led a coalition government since 2010, are fighting to stay in office but are locked in a dead heat with Labour, according to the final opinion polls before election day. While the leaders of both main parties insist in public they can win a clear majority in the 650-seat House of Commons, they will almost certainly have to work with smaller parties to form a government.
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| Texas attack shows evolution of 'lone wolf' militants: U.S. officials Posted: 06 May 2015 07:23 PM PDT  By Mark Hosenball and Jon Herskovitz WASHINGTON/AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. investigators believe two men killed after opening fire on a Texas event that offered a prize for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad represent an evolving model of "lone wolf" militants who are radicalized partly by themselves and partly through long-distance engagement with organized militants. Although the Islamic State movement claimed credit for the Texas shooting, several U.S. officials said investigators have no evidence that either of the men shot dead by security personnel after they opened fire at the Garland, Texas, event traveled to Syria or Iraq. U.S. court documents do show that one of the men, Elton Simpson, once tried to travel to Somalia. Officials also said that no hard evidence had emerged to demonstrate that Simpson and the second Texas shooter, Nadir Soofi, attacked the contest venue under direct orders, or encouragement, from Islamic State leaders.
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