| Iran troops to join Syria war, Russia bombs group trained by CIA Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:04 PM PDT  By Laila Bassam and Andrew Osborn BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lebanese sources said on Thursday, a sign the civil war is turning still more regional and global in scope. Russian warplanes, in a second day of strikes, bombed a camp run by rebels trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the group's commander said, putting Moscow and Washington on opposing sides in a Middle East conflict for the first time since the Cold War. Senior U.S. and Russian officials spoke for just over an hour by secure video conference on Thursday, focusing on ways to keep air crews safe, the Pentagon said, as the two militaries carry out parallel campaigns with competing objectives.
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| U.S. military plane crashes in Afghanistan, kills 10 Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:31 PM PDT Ten people were killed in a crash of a U.S. military transport aircraft at an airport in Afghanistan, a U.S. military spokesman said on Thursday, adding that there were no reports of enemy fire at the time and the incident was under investigation. The crew of five U.S. military servicemembers were among the dead, along with another five passengers, civilians who were contracted employees of the U.S.-led international force, the spokesman said. The incident took place at around midnight at Jalalabad airport in Afghanistan. |
| Afghan forces recapture city center amid fierce clashes with Taliban Posted: 01 Oct 2015 10:41 AM PDT  By Hamid Shalizi KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan troops recaptured the center of the strategic northern city of Kunduz on Thursday amid fierce clashes with Taliban militants, three days after losing the provincial capital in a humbling defeat for Kabul and its U.S. allies. "There are military helicopters in the sky and government forces everywhere," said Abdul Ahad, a doctor in the city. "Dead Taliban are on the streets, but there are still (militants) in some government buildings fighting Afghan forces."A Taliban spokesman said fighters had withdrawn to the edges of the city in order to attempt to encircle Afghan and U.S. troops.U.S. special forces accompanied and later fought alongside Afghan soldiers, the international military coalition confirmed, saying that they returned fire in self-defense.The Afghan army's Deputy Chief of Staff, Murad Ali Murad, said most Taliban fighters had fled, although some were holed up in civilians' homes.
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| Israel vows at U.N. never to allow Iran to join 'nuclear weapons club' Posted: 01 Oct 2015 01:09 PM PDT  By Louis Charbonneau and Hugh Bronstein UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his annual United Nations address on Thursday to launch an all-out assault on the historic nuclear deal with Iran, warning that his country would never let the Islamic Republic join the nuclear weapons club. Speaking at the yearly gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu reiterated Israeli criticism of a deal between Iran and major world powers aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program.
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| Burkina Faso coup leader handed over to government: sources Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:33 PM PDT  By Mathieu Bonkoungou and Nadoun Coulibaly OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - The leader of a short-lived coup in Burkina Faso, General Gilbert Diendere, was handed over to authorities on Thursday after seeking refuge in the Vatican embassy, sources in the transitional government said on Thursday. Diendere, a former spy chief, was at the head of a week-long power-grab by Burkina Faso's powerful presidential guard last month, during which the interim president and prime minister were held hostage. "He has been handed over to Burkinabe authorities," said a judicial source close to the transitional government.
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| Difficult to buy a gun in China, but not explosives Posted: 01 Oct 2015 02:19 PM PDT  By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - A series of deadly bomb blasts in China this week has shown how easy it is to acquire explosives in the country, revealing a major gap in its huge security apparatus as the economy slows and anger grows over issues like graft and poor public services. In a country where firearms are banned for most people, the bombings in the southwestern city of Liuzhou on Wednesday, and others in recent years around the country, demonstrate lax enforcement of rules to control access to bomb-making material. Private gun ownership is almost unheard of in China as controls are so strict, meaning gun crime is rare.
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| Rhein Gibson leads Web.com Tour Finals finale Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:37 PM PDT PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Rhein Gibson shot a 7-under 63 on Thursday to take a one-stroke lead in the Web.com Tour Finals-ending Web.Com Tour Championship. |
| US school shooting kills up to 10, gunman dead Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:35 PM PDT A 20-year-old gunman went on a shooting rampage at a community college in the US state of Oregon on Thursday, killing up to 10 people before he died in a shootout with police. A visibly angry President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for gun control in the wake of the shooting, blasting Congress for its failure to act in the face of "routine" mass killings. The unidentified man opened fire in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in rural Roseburg, and moved to other rooms methodically gunning down his victims, witnesses said. |
| Senior Tuareg rebel leader arrested for links to Burkina coup: military source Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:27 PM PDT  Ouagadougou (AFP) - The vice-president of a Tuareg rebel movement was arrested at Ouagadougou airport on Thursday over suspected links to last month's coup in Burkina Faso, a Burkinabe military source said.
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| Egypt hopes King Tut's tomb could conceal Queen Nefertiti burial site Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:22 PM PDT  Egypt hopes it can soon announce the "discovery of the century" in Tutankhamun's tomb -- what a British archaeologist believes is the burial place in a secret chamber of Queen Nefertiti. "Finding Tutankhamun's tomb last century was the greatest cultural discovery in Egypt in the history of mankind," Antiquities Minister Mamduh al-Damati told a news conference on Thursday. "If we find anything today, it will be the most important discovery of the 21st century," he said.
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| Spain finds 300 kilos of cocaine in pureed banana shipment Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:21 PM PDT  Spanish authorities seized 300 kilos of cocaine worth 10 million euros ($11 million dollars) from a container loaded with pureed bananas that arrived from Costa Rica, the government tax office said Thursday. Police and customs officers found the cocaine on Monday in the Mediterranean port of Valencia, Spain's second busiest port, a tax office spokesman said. Spanish authorities were trying to figure out the origin of the cocaine, which arrived on September 26 on a boat that departed Puerto Moin just east of San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica.
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| C-130 plane crashes at Afghanistan's Jalalabad airport: US defense official Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:19 PM PDT  An American C-130 military transport plane crashed at Jalalabad airport in Afghanistan, a US defense official said Thursday, adding that it was not immediately clear if anyone was hurt. "A US C-130 aircraft crashed at Jalalabad airport," at about midnight local time on Friday morning (1930 GMT), the defense official said. The C-130 Hercules is a cargo plane built by Lockheed Martin.
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| U.S. fuel economy data on cars inaccurate and getting worse, study finds Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:07 PM PDT By Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's testing underestimates how much fuel cars will burn on the road, and the problem has gotten worse, according to a study released on Thursday. The release of the study funded by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory comes as regulators in the United States, Canada and Europe tighten their scrutiny of how cars perform in real-world conditions. The gap between the better performance of cars in testing by regulators and the lower fuel economy drivers experience has been widely known. |
| Merkel says can only end Syrian war with Russia's help Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:04 PM PDT German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that it would be possible to end to the civil war in Syria only with the help of Russia, which this week launched airstrikes in the war-torn country. "That's particularly true of Syria, where we have all known for years that there can only be a solution with Russian and not without Russia," Merkel said at speech in eastern Germany to mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of German reunification. The United States took a different stance, with the White House saying Russia's military actions in Syria risked prolonging the conflict in Syria. |
| Obama voices anger over Oregon shooting, urges gun control Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:04 PM PDT  US President Barack Obama on Thursday voiced his anger and sadness after the country's latest deadly shooting, this time at an Oregon community college, and made another impassioned plea for gun control legislation. "Somehow this has become routine," Obama said at the White House in reaction to the shooting by a 20-year-old gunman at Umpqua Community College in rural Roseburg, which left up to 10 dead. "We can actually do something about it, but we're going to have to change our laws," said a stony-faced Obama.
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| Gunman opens fire at Oregon college in mass killing Posted: 01 Oct 2015 04:01 PM PDT  By Shelby Sebens ROSEBURG, Ore. (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire at a community college in southern Oregon on Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding some 20 others before he was shot to death by police, state and county officials said, in the latest mass killing to rock a U.S. school. There were conflicting reports on the number of dead and wounded in the shooting rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, which began shortly after 10:30 a.m. local time. The state's attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, told the local NBC affiliate that 13 people had been slain, 20 wounded and the shooter was killed.
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| Trump plan to return refugees defies US laws Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:55 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he will send Syrian refugees home if he's elected president, but U.S. laws would interfere with his plans.
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| Morocco eyes boycott of Swedish companies over Western Sahara Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:54 PM PDT By Aziz El Yaakoubi RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco said on Thursday it was considering a boycott of Swedish companies operating in the North African kingdom because of Sweden's position on the conflict over Western Sahara. The government said Sweden has been campaigning to boycott products from Western Sahara and international companies with a presence there. "We are heading toward a boycott of Swedish companies according the principle of reciprocity after similar campaigns to boycott Moroccan companies," the statement issued after the weekly cabinet meeting said. |
| Israel mulls authorising wildcat West Bank settlements Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:46 PM PDT  Israel is considering authorising wildcat settlement outposts in the West Bank near a village where a firebombing killed an 18-month-old Palestinian boy and his parents, court documents showed Thursday. The government confirmed it was considering the authorisation in a court document first made public by rights group Yesh Din, which has been involved in legal action against one of the outposts. The international community regards all Jewish settlements in the West Bank as illegal, but the Israeli government makes a distinction between those it has authorised and those it has not.
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| Fight for Ramadi essentially on 'pause': US official Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:45 PM PDT  The fight to retake Ramadi from Islamic State jihadists has been on an "operational pause" and Iraqi troops weren't trained to deal with the group's battlefield techniques, a US official said Thursday. US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren, speaking via video from Baghdad, told reporters that the effort had been delayed in part because of record summer temperatures but also because of the way IS fighters had defended the city, which they seized in mid-May. Iraq had planned to quickly retake Ramadi, but Warren acknowledged the fight had been tough.
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| Pressure on England, with World Cup progression at stake Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:43 PM PDT  LONDON (AP) — Knocking the host nation out of Rugby World Cup contention is only a secondary consideration for Wallabies coach Michael Cheika.
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| EPA says 'likely' recall of VW diesel cars Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:42 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday that a recall of affected Volkswagen < diesel cars in the ongoing emissions scandal would "likely" take place. |
| European automakers ask policymakers for time on emissions Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:42 PM PDT By Barbara Lewis BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European carmakers have asked EU policymakers not to over react following the scandal over Volkswagen's emissions tests, saying the industry needs until 2019 to meet fully some new pollution limits. Volkswagen has admitted cheating in diesel emissions tests in the United States and Germany's transport minister says it also manipulated them in Europe, where it sells about 40 percent of its vehicles. In response, the European Commission has said it plans to reform the regulatory framework and is also pressing ahead with work underway to tighten vehicle testing procedures. |
| Volkswagen says emission scandal investigations to take months Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:42 PM PDT  By Andreas Cremer BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen said on Thursday it would take longer than expected to investigate its rigging of vehicle emissions tests, raising the prospect of months of uncertainty for customers, shareholders and staff. After a seven-hour meeting late on Wednesday, the German carmaker's supervisory board said it would take "at least several months" to complete investigations, including an external inquiry by U.S. law firm Jones Day. Europe's largest carmaker has admitted cheating in diesel emissions tests in the United States and Germany's transport minister says it also manipulated them in Europe, where Volkswagen sells about 40 percent of its vehicles.
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| Burkina Faso coup leader hands himself in Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:37 PM PDT  The leader of Burkina Faso's short-lived coup was in police custody on Thursday after handing himself in. General Gilbert Diendere, who had said several times that he was willing to face justice following the September 17 putsch, was being held at the Paspanga police base near the centre of the capital Ouagadougou. "General Diendere and his accomplices will answer for all the offences of which they are accused," the country's interim government said in a statement, adding that a "commission of inquiry" was already "hard at work" investigating the coup.
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| New Michalak record boots France to verge of World Cup last eight Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:37 PM PDT  Frederic Michalak became France's record World Cup points scorer on Thursday as the French took a massive step towards the quarter-finals with a 41-18 win over Canada. The 33-year-old fly-half, already France's all-time leading scorer, scored 14 points to go 12 past Thierry Lacroix's previous mark of 124. Michalak earned the man-of-the-match award in front of a record crowd for Stadium mk of 28,145 including Prince Harry.
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| Hurricane Joaquin batters Bahamas; storm could threaten US Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:36 PM PDT ELEUTHERA, Bahamas (AP) — Hurricane Joaquin unleased heavy flooding as it roared through sparsely populated islands in the eastern Bahamas on Thursday as a Category 4 storm, with forecasters warning it could grow even stronger before carving a path that would take it near the U.S. East Coast. |
| Blasts hit Maiduguri, NE Nigeria: witnesses, police Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:32 PM PDT  A series of explosions rocked the city of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria on Thursday, with casualties feared, witnesses and police said. It was not immediately clear how many blasts hit the Borno state capital but one police officer said as many as seven went off and locals reported at least two bombs were strapped to teenage girls. Boko Haram Islamists have increasingly used suicide bombers to target civilians, including in Maiduguri, where on September 20 at least 117 people were killed in a wave of attacks.
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| U.S. to curb smog but stops short of toughest limits Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:32 PM PDT  The Obama administration on Thursday trimmed the amount of ozone allowed in the air, issuing a regulation to fight smog that will prevent hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks but cost businesses and utilities billions of dollars. The Environmental Protection Agency set a new standard of 70 parts per billion (ppb) for the amount of ground-level ozone allowed, from the current level of 75 ppb set under former President George W. Bush in 2008. Ground-level ozone is a main component of smog.
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| Russia again strikes Assad's foes, amid US concerns Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:29 PM PDT  Russian jets unleashed a new wave of strikes against opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, as Moscow and Washington discussed how to keep out of each other's way. It was the second day of Russian raids in Syria, and came on the eve of talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Francois Hollande in Paris. Russia's defence ministry said its air force struck five Islamic State group targets, although Western officials expressed concern that they are hitting opposition rebel fighters.
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| French Channel Tunnel train drivers 'haunted' by migrant deaths Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:23 PM PDT  French train drivers who work for Eurotunnel said Thursday they were so overcome with fear and anxiety over the deaths of migrants trying to cross to Britain that they could no longer do their job. The drivers with France's largest labour union, the CGT, published an open letter calling for action following the deaths of at least 13 migrants in five months as they tried to access the tunnel. The most recent reported death was on Wednesday when an Eritrean in his twenties was found dead after being hit by a freight train.
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| Palestinians kill Israeli couple in West Bank shooting: Israeli army Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:21 PM PDT  Palestinian gunmen shot dead an Israeli couple travelling in a car with their four young children in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Israeli army said, vowing reprisals for the "barbaric attack" amid a spike in tensions. The victims were named as Eitam and Naama Henkin, both in their 30s and residents of the central West Bank settlement of Neria, near Ramallah. "The army has launched an operation to find those responsible for this heinous and barbaric attack," he added.
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| Hurricane Joaquin strengthens, now 'extremely dangerous' Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:17 PM PDT  Joaquin strengthened into an extremely dangerous Category Four hurricane Thursday as it barreled through the Bahamas, while the eastern United States battened down ahead of the massive storm's possible arrival. Joaquin was packing maximum sustained winds of 130 miles (215 kilometers) per hour and could grow even stronger over the next 24 hours, the National Hurricane Center said. It will move near or over portions of the central Bahamas Thursday and into the night, dumping heavy rain, and pass near or over the northwestern Bahamas on Friday, the NHC said.
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| Russia strikes add to chaotic mix of players and interests in Syria Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:10 PM PDT  The start of Russian air strikes in Syria has added yet another dimension to a war that already featured multiple actors pulling in different directions and serving their own interests, say experts. "We've seen incredibly complicated, multi-faceted conflicts in the past," said Shashank Joshi, senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, giving the Bosnian war of the 1990s as an example. "If Iran loses Syria, it loses by far its biggest ally in the Middle East.
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| Israel says 2 killed in West Bank shooting Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:08 PM PDT  JERUSALEM (AP) — A Palestinian shot and killed two Israeli parents driving with their four children along a West Bank road on Thursday, the Israeli military said, amid mounting unrest surrounding a Jerusalem site that is holy to both Muslims and Jews.
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| US, Russia hold military talks to avoid mishaps in Syria Posted: 01 Oct 2015 03:01 PM PDT  The Pentagon held talks with officials in Moscow on Thursday, the second day of Russian bombing in Syria, in a bid to avoid mishaps in the region between the two military powers. US military officials were furious Wednesday after Russia gave them only an hour's vague "heads-up" that warplanes would begin bombing. With a US-led coalition carrying out near-daily air strikes in Syria, the Pentagon worries that Russian planes crossing paths with coalition aircraft could spark a major international incident.
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| Afghan troops push into city of Kunduz, Taliban in retreat Posted: 01 Oct 2015 02:59 PM PDT  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Government troops seized control of the strategic northern city of Kunduz on Thursday, the Afghan president announced, following a six-hour battle that saw the Taliban insurgents who had held it for three days largely melt away.
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| 5 passengers injured on bumpy flight to Miami Posted: 01 Oct 2015 02:53 PM PDT MIAMI (AP) — American Airlines officials say five passengers have been injured on a flight from Grenada to Miami after the plane encountered some unexpected turbulence. |
