| Serbia has no more beds for migrants as bottlenecks build: UNHCR Posted: 30 Dec 2016 03:22 PM PST  Serbia's centers for housing migrants are completely full, the U.N. refugee agency said, leaving more than a thousand facing a winter sleeping rough in the Balkan country that has become a bottleneck as the European Union sealed its borders. At least 7,000 migrants mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are trapped in Serbia, many spending months in a country culturally and financially ill-equipped to care for them and where few of them want to stay. Despite the official closure of the so-called Balkan route, which has eased pressure on rich nations like Germany, aid agencies estimate more than 100 new migrants are entering Serbia every day, while only around 20 are allowed to enter Hungary - Serbia's only neighbor in Europe's Schengen visa-free area.
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| Victoria Beckham, Mark Rylance receive UK honours Posted: 30 Dec 2016 02:36 PM PST  Ex-Spice Girl turned fashion designer Victoria Beckham and Oscar-winning actor Mark Rylance were among the public figures to receive Britain's traditional New Year Honours on Friday but two recipients turned theirs down. Beckham, who rose to fame in the 1990s girl band the Spice Girls and is married to former England footballer David Beckham, launched her first fashion label in 2006. Beckham was also criticised in British tabloid newspapers for telling her family she would be receiving an OBE before the announcement, with MP Peter Bone telling the Daily Mail it was "a betrayal of etiquette".
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| US says Islamic State chief alive, still leading Posted: 30 Dec 2016 02:32 PM PST  The Pentagon said Friday it believes that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is indeed alive, despite repeated efforts by the US-led coalition to take out the jihadist group leader. Baghdadi has kept a low profile, despite having declared himself the leader of a renewed Muslim caliphate, but last month released a defiant audio message urging his supporters to defend the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. "We do think Baghdadi is alive and is still leading ISIL and we are obviously doing everything we can to track his movements," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told CNN.
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| Aircraft carrier group returns from the Middle East Posted: 30 Dec 2016 12:34 PM PST  NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Sailing on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lara Runge placed a rare phone call to her wife Jessica in Chesapeake, Virginia, on Election Day.
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| UN extends Iraq compensation requirement Posted: 30 Dec 2016 12:13 PM PST UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council has voted unanimously to postpone by six months a requirement that Iraq contribute a portion of petroleum export sales into a U.N. compensation fund for victims of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. |
| Kosovo jails Albanian for 7 years for recruiting extremists Posted: 30 Dec 2016 11:38 AM PST PRISTINA, Albania (AP) — A Kosovo court has sentenced an Albanian citizen convicted of recruiting for extremist groups in Syria to seven years imprisonment. |
| Iraq's resumed assault on IS in Mosul makes gains Posted: 30 Dec 2016 10:38 AM PST  MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — Iraq's special forces continued to push back Islamic State militants in the eastern sector of Mosul on Friday in intense fighting that forced scores of people to flee their homes.
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| 93 journalists killed in 2016: press watchdog Posted: 30 Dec 2016 10:36 AM PST  Ninety-three journalists and media staff were killed around the world in the course of their work in 2016, with Iraq and Afghanistan the deadliest countries, the International Federation of Journalists said Friday. The IFJ said the figure, 19 less than in 2015, was for journalists killed in targeted attacks, bomb blasts or caught in the cross-fire. "Any decrease in violence against journalist and media personnel is always welcome but these figures... leave little room for comfort and reinforce hopes for the end of the security crisis in the media sector," IFJ president Philippe Leruth said in a statement.
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| 93 journalists killed in 2016; 29 more die in accidents Posted: 30 Dec 2016 10:02 AM PST BRUSSELS (AP) — The International Federation of Journalists says that 93 journalists and media staff were killed in targeted attacks, by bombs or by crossfire in 2016 while a further 29 died in two plane crashes. |
| Tunisia says 800 returning jihadists jailed or tracked Posted: 30 Dec 2016 09:59 AM PST  Tunisia said Friday it has jailed or closely monitored 800 jihadists who have returned from foreign battlefields in the past decade. "Some are in prison, some are under house arrest and others are under close surveillance", government spokesperson Iyed Dahmani said of the fighters who have returned since 2007. The United Nations puts this figure at 5,000.
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| Some in Mosul wary of return of Iraq's government Posted: 30 Dec 2016 09:48 AM PST  MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — The 19-year-old resident of Mosul pulled up his shirt and showed a festering wound on his back. It came, he said, from Iraqi troops who detained him for three days and beat him, trying to get him to confess to belong to the Islamic State group.
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| Iraqi forces face fierce Islamic State combat in south Mosul Posted: 30 Dec 2016 09:29 AM PST  By Stephen Kalin NEAR MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi forces faced fierce resistance from Islamic State militants in southern Mosul on Friday, the second day of a renewed push to take back the city after fighting stalled for several weeks. An officer in the federal police forces, which joined the battle on Thursday, said there were heavy clashes in the southeastern Palestine district, but they had made progress in two other neighborhoods, disabling a number of car bombs. Iraqi forces in the east and north of the city were clearing areas they had recaptured on Thursday before advancing any further, officers said, and the army was trying to cut supply lines to the town of Tel Keyf, north of Mosul.
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| Iraqis rally for release of female journalist Posted: 30 Dec 2016 09:22 AM PST  Around 1,000 people protested Friday in central Baghdad demanding the release of an Iraqi female journalist after she was abducted by unknown gunmen. "Freedom for Afrah!" cried the demonstrators, who included many women, after Afrah Shawqi was seized on Monday from her home in a southern neighbourhood of the capital. "We demand the release of Afrah but we don't know who kidnapped her," Sana Rassoul, a woman doctor, told AFP in the capital's Tahrir Square.
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| Year's top news filled with division _ and no middle ground Posted: 30 Dec 2016 09:11 AM PST  Fed up with Europe's union across borders? Reject it. Disgusted with the U.S. political establishment? Can it.
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| Iraq forces fight muddy street battle against IS in Mosul Posted: 30 Dec 2016 08:53 AM PST  Iraqi forces are fighting a muddy street battle against jihadists in southeastern Mosul, facing suicide bombers on the ground and a drone that can drop explosive charges from above. Baghdad's forces have overwhelming firepower and numbers in Mosul, but the Islamic State group has a vast city in which to launch ambushes, plant bombs and try to make the battle as slow and costly as possible. More than two months into the operation to retake the city, Iraqi forces have recaptured a large chunk of east Mosul, but IS still holds parts of it as well as all of its western side.
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| Turkey seeks to upstage US with Syria ceasefire Posted: 30 Dec 2016 08:34 AM PST  By brokering with Russia a ceasefire agreement for Syria, Turkey is hoping to sideline the United States at a time of rising tension and ensure Ankara has a say in its neighbour's postwar future. One year ago, it was inconceivable that Turkey and Russia would agree a truce for Syria, with both spitting out venomous accusations over the shooting down by Ankara of a Russian war plane.
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| Tunisian foreign fighters to be dealt with under anti-terrorism law: PM Posted: 30 Dec 2016 05:44 AM PST  By Mohamed Argoubi TUNIS (Reuters) - Returning Tunisian militants will be immediately arrested and judged under anti-terrorism laws, the prime minister said, seeking to calm fears over the homecoming of some of the country's several thousand jihadists. Tunisia is among the countries with the highest per capita number of militant Islamists, a problem linked to widespread radicalization among disillusioned youth and a loosening of security controls after Tunisia's 2011 uprising. Last week, the interior minister said 800 had already come back to Tunisia, without giving details on what had happened after their return.
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| A 2016 love story: the Macedonian cop and the Iraqi refugee Posted: 30 Dec 2016 03:24 AM PST  The scene was hardly conducive to romance: she was a sick Iraqi in a wave of refugees trying to enter Serbia, while he belonged to the stern Macedonian police force keeping guard. Bobi recalls the rainy day he first saw Noora in no man's land between the two Balkan countries, when he was working only by chance after swapping shifts with a colleague. Early in 2016, Noora and her brother, sister and parents abandoned their home and began a long journey west, crossing the border into Turkey, taking a boat to the Greek island of Lesbos and eventually entering Macedonia.
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| Correction: Iraq-Christmas Mass story Posted: 30 Dec 2016 02:46 AM PST  BARTELLA, Iraq (AP) — In a story Dec. 25 about Iraqis celebrating Christmas in a town retaken from the Islamic State group, The Associated Press reported erroneously that the Mass was celebrated at an Assyrian Orthodox church. It is a Syriac Orthodox church.
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| Philippines blames Islamic militants for Christmas holiday bombings Posted: 30 Dec 2016 02:28 AM PST  The Philippine government blamed Islamic militants Friday for bomb attacks that left 52 people injured during the mainly Catholic nation's Christmas holidays. An explosion ripped through fight fans watching a boxing match in the central town of Hilongos late Wednesday, while six people were hurt in a roadside bomb attack on the southern island of Mindanao the same night. Police said 13 people were also injured in another blast outside a Catholic church during Christmas Eve mass on Mindanao on Saturday.
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| Former hospital intern charged with terror counts in France Posted: 30 Dec 2016 01:53 AM PST PARIS (AP) — A former hospital intern in the southern city of Marseille suspected of planning a trip to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamic extremists has been charged with terror offenses. |
| Serbia has no more beds for migrants as bottlenecks build -UNHCR Posted: 30 Dec 2016 01:33 AM PST  Serbia's centres for housing migrants are completely full, the U.N. refugee agency said, leaving more than a thousand facing a winter sleeping rough in the Balkan country that has become a bottleneck as the European Union sealed its borders. At least 7,000 migrants mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are trapped in Serbia, many spending months in a country culturally and financially ill-equipped to care for them and where few of them want to stay. Despite the official closure of the so-called Balkan route, which has eased pressure on rich nations like Germany, aid agencies estimate more than 100 new migrants are entering Serbia every day, while only around 20 are allowed to enter Hungary - Serbia's only neighbour in Europe's Schengen visa-free area.
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| Syria truce holding despite isolated violence Posted: 30 Dec 2016 12:44 AM PST  A fragile calm was holding across Syria on Friday after a truce brokered by Russia and Turkey came into effect, a potentially major breakthrough after nearly six years of conflict. There were reports of isolated violence, including clashes in central Hama province between government forces and jihadist factions, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were casualties among regime forces in the clashes after midnight with jihadists near the town of Mahardeh.
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