| Iraq says Russia, Iran, Syria cooperating on security issues in Baghdad Posted: 26 Sep 2015 04:28 PM PDT By Stephen Kalin BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said on Saturday that its military officials were engaged in intelligence and security cooperation in Baghdad with Russia, Iran and Syria to counter the threat from the Islamic State militant group, a pact that could raise concerns in Washington. A statement from the Iraqi military's joint operations command said the cooperation had come "with increased Russian concern about the presence of thousands of terrorists from Russia undertaking criminal acts with Daesh (Islamic State)." The move could give Moscow more sway in the Middle East. |
| Cameron to tell UN Syria peace impossible with Assad Posted: 26 Sep 2015 04:02 PM PDT  British Prime Minister David Cameron is to tell the UN that peace in Syria is impossible while President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, officials said. Cameron was to fly out to the United Nations in New York on Sunday as Western diplomats scramble to cobble together a diplomatic strategy to end the civil war in Syria. British officials say attempts to resolve the four-year conflict have been made more difficult by Russia's recent military support for the Assad regime.
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| Kerry says sees opportunity for progress on Syria as he meets Zarif Posted: 26 Sep 2015 03:42 PM PDT  By Arshad Mohammed and Parisa Hafezi UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he saw an opportunity for progress this week towards ending Syria's four-year civil war as he met Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday. Western officials said Kerry wants to launch a new effort at the U.N. General Assembly to try to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict, which has taken on new urgency in light of Russia's military build-up in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a refugee crisis that has spilled into Europe. The new U.S. approach, which officials stressed was in its infancy, could bring Russia, a major ally of Assad, together with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and that support Syrian opposition groups against Assad.
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| U.N. says world waited too long to act on refugee crisis Posted: 26 Sep 2015 03:09 PM PDT  By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations high commissioner for refugees said on Saturday the world waited far too long to respond to the refugee crisis sparked by the wars in Syria and elsewhere, though rich countries now appear to understand the scale of the problem. "Unfortunately only when the poor enter the halls of the rich, do the rich notice that the poor exist," U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. "Until we had this massive movement into Europe, there was no recognition in the developed world of how serious this crisis was," he said.
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| The Latest: Ban urges Hungary to respect refugee rights Posted: 26 Sep 2015 02:43 PM PDT  UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Latest developments at the United Nations summit on the adoption of an ambitious blueprint to eradicate extreme poverty and other global goals. (All times local).
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| French FM to attend Palestinian flag-raising at UN Posted: 26 Sep 2015 02:17 PM PDT  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Saturday he will attend a ceremony next week to raise the Palestinian flag at the United Nations, despite opposition from Israel and the United States. The Palestinians have invited hundreds of leaders to attend the event on Wednesday in the presence of president Mahmud Abbas.
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| West reaches out to Iran as Syria strategy stumbles Posted: 26 Sep 2015 01:43 PM PDT  US and Western diplomats scrambled on Saturday to cobble together a diplomatic strategy to end the war in Syria, after the latest humiliating blow to their military plan. Secretary of State John Kerry and his European counterparts reached out to traditional foe Iran on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Iran and Russia back Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington sees as the instigator of the civil war that left half his country in the hands of the Islamic State group.
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| U.S. reports 25 air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria Posted: 26 Sep 2015 10:05 AM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and its allies conducted 25 air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria on Friday, a U.S. military statement said. Twenty-four air raids were carried out against targets near 10 cities in Iraq, including Mosul and Ramadi, it said. In Syria, an Islamic State vehicle was destroyed in an air attack near Al Hawl, the statement added. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham) |
| As UN peacekeeping veers toward counterterror, US steps in Posted: 26 Sep 2015 09:38 AM PDT  UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Along a quiet cease-fire line in Cyprus, U.N. peacekeepers handle an increasingly old-fashioned job: actually keeping the peace. The last deadly incident was in 1996. Today's challenges include keeping poachers and rogue farmers out of no man's land. "Most of the time we don't wear weapons," said the force commander, Maj. Gen. Kristin Lund.
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| Iraq's stalemate in Ramadi raises doubts about US strategy Posted: 26 Sep 2015 09:03 AM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — A summer of stalemate in the effort to reclaim the Iraqi provincial capital of Ramadi, despite U.S.-backed Iraqi troops vastly outnumbering Islamic State fighters, calls into question not only Iraq's ability to win a test of wills over key territory but also the future direction of Washington's approach to defeating the extremist group.
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| IRAQ RAMADI Posted: 26 Sep 2015 08:18 AM PDT Map locates Ramadi in Iraq's Anbar province; 1c x 3 inches; 46.5 mm x 76 mm; |
| Four civilians killed amid clashes in southeast Turkey: source Posted: 26 Sep 2015 07:08 AM PDT  Four civilians have been killed after they were caught in clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants in the southeast, security sources said Saturday. The clashes broke out early Friday when outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and gendarmerie command posts in Beytussebab -- a day after two Turkish soldiers and 34 Kurdish rebels were killed in the region. Meanwhile the Turkish army announced on Saturday that its warplanes pounded PKK shelters and depots in the Gara region of northern Iraq.
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| EU, Iran discuss push for peace in Syria Posted: 26 Sep 2015 06:48 AM PDT  The European Union's diplomatic chief and Iran's foreign minister met in New York to discuss the war in Syria ahead of a UN push for peace talks, an EU statement said Saturday. A key ally of President Bashar al-Assad, Iran has been kept out of UN diplomatic efforts to end the four-year war that has killed more than 240,000 people. During their meeting late Friday, EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif "underlined the need to bring the war in Syria, which has caused so much suffering, to an end," said the EU statement.
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| Sinai bombing kills two Egypt police Posted: 26 Sep 2015 04:45 AM PDT  Two Egyptian policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, the interior ministry said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. The ministry said 16 policemen were also wounded when the bomb hit their convoy in the north of the peninsula, where security forces are struggling to quell an Islamist insurgency. The Islamic State's Egypt affiliate said on Twitter that its militants had detonated the bomb as police tried to set up a checkpoint.
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| Migrant arrivals unlikely to bring major changes to Europe Posted: 26 Sep 2015 04:03 AM PDT  STOCKHOLM (AP) — Inside the strip mall in Stockholm's Rinkeby neighborhood, a string of Swedish flags hangs over a coffee shop offering Swedish cinnamon buns and Middle Eastern pastry.
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| ICC arrests rebel accused of attacking ancient Timbuktu monuments Posted: 26 Sep 2015 03:40 AM PDT  An Islamist rebel suspected of attacking mosques and monuments in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu has been handed over to the International Criminal Court, the first ever detained for wrecking cultural heritage. The court has been examining events in Mali since 2012, when Islamist Tuareg rebels seized large parts of the country's north and imposed strict Muslim religious law and began desecrating ancient shrines, mosques and monuments in Timbuktu. The court said Ahmad Al Mahdi Al Faqi, known as Abu Tourab, had headed Hesbah, or "Manners' Brigade", in 2012, which helped execute the decisions of the Islamic Court of Timbuktu.
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| Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf: Who are they? Posted: 26 Sep 2015 03:02 AM PDT  A boat suspected of being used in the kidnapping of three Westerners and a Filipina has been found abandoned on the Philippines' remote Jolo island, the stronghold of the militant Abu Sayyaf group. The loosely organised band emerged in the early 1990s -- with funding provided by a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden -- as an even more violent offshoot of a decades-old Muslim insurgency that has wracked the southern region of Mindanao since the 1970s. The group has also abducted Western tourists and missionaries in the Philippines and Malaysia, sometimes beheading captives if ransoms are not paid.
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| Iraqi asylum seekers in Jordan hesitant to travel to Europe Posted: 26 Sep 2015 01:01 AM PDT  Hanna Yussef dreams of following thousands of fellow Iraqi Christians to refuge in Europe, abandoning a precarious existence in Jordan, where he has lived since fleeing Islamist violence at home. Like so many other Iraqi Christians, this 45-year-old father is a refugee after fleeing Iraq's northern city of Mosul, which was overrun by the Islamic State (IS) group in June of last year. For more than a year and a half, Yussef, his wife and four children have been waiting for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to give them refugee status and a country in which to resettle.
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| ALL IN THE FAMILY Posted: 25 Sep 2015 10:00 PM PDT All three are reaching toward North American leadership, with Bush and Clinton running for president and Trudeau hoping to follow his father as prime minister in Canada's federal elections next month. The second and sixth presidents of the United States bore the name Adams, the ninth and 23rd chief executives were named Harrison, the 26th and 32nd were named Roosevelt, and the 41st and 43rd (and perhaps the 45th as well) were named Bush. |
| Today in History Posted: 25 Sep 2015 09:02 PM PDT Today is Saturday, September 26, the 269th day of 2015. There are 96 days left in the year. |
| China says to improve terror intelligence cooperation with U.S. Posted: 25 Sep 2015 07:25 PM PDT China and the United States will improve cooperation on fighting militancy, including intelligence exchanges, and work together to bring peace to Afghanistan, China's foreign ministry said after a leaders' summit in Washington. China says it faces a serious threat from Islamist militants in its far western region of Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in violence in recent years. Worries over human rights violations have also meant China has traditionally received little cooperation from Western countries in dealing with the issue. |
| US-trained Syria rebels gave ammo, equipment to Qaeda group Posted: 25 Sep 2015 05:46 PM PDT  The Pentagon said a group of US-trained Syrian rebels had handed over ammunition and equipment to Al-Qaeda's affiliate in the country, the Al-Nusra Front, purportedly in exchange for safe passage. The startling acknowledgement contrasted with earlier Pentagon denials of reports that some fighters had either defected or handed over gear. "Unfortunately, we learned late today that the NSF (New Syrian Forces) unit now says it did in fact provide six pickup trucks and a portion of their ammunition to a suspected Al-Nusra Front (group)," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.
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| Islamic State gaining ground in Afghanistan: UN Posted: 25 Sep 2015 04:59 PM PDT  The Islamic State group is making inroads in Afghanistan, winning over a growing number of sympathizers and recruiting followers in 25 of the country's 34 provinces, a UN report said Friday. The jihadist group, which controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, has been trying to establish itself in Afghanistan, challenging the Taliban on their own turf. Afghan security forces told UN sanctions monitors that about 10 percent of the Taliban insurgency are IS sympathizers, according to the report by the UN's Al-Qaeda monitoring team.
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