| Syria's army, allies plan offensive against insurgents in Aleppo Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:46 PM PDT  By Laila Bassam and Tom Perry BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's army along with Iranian and Hezbollah allies will soon launch a ground attack supported by Russian air strikes against insurgents in the Aleppo area, two senior regional officials told Reuters on Tuesday. Control of Aleppo city and the surrounding province in the area near the Turkish border is divided among the Syrian government, insurgent groups fighting Assad and the Islamic State group that controls some rural areas near the city. "There is a large mobilization of the Syrian army ... elite Hezbollah fighters, and thousands of Iranians who arrived in stages in recent days." Islamic State and other insurgents, including groups backed by Assad's foreign enemies, have been fighting each other north of the city in an area of territory where Turkey and the United States have been laying plans to crush Islamic State, which controls large swathes of Syria and Iraq.
|
| U.S. to raise Iranian missile test at U.N. Security Council Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:54 PM PDT  A missile test announced by Iran over the weekend was an apparent violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution and Washington will raise the incident at the United Nations, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday. Iran said it tested a new precision-guided ballistic missile on Sunday, signaling an apparent advance in Iranian attempts to improve the accuracy of its missile arsenal. "We'll obviously raise this at the UNSC as we have done in previous launches," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters, noting the test appeared to be a violation of U.N. Security resolution 1929.
|
| Blasts in northeast Nigeria's Maiduguri kill at least seven: Red Cross Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:19 PM PDT Blasts detonated by three suicide bombers in the northeastern Nigeria city of Maiduguri killed at least seven people on Tuesday, the Red Cross and a vigilante group member said. Explosive devices were detonated at Sajeri, a community on the outskirts of the city centre, around 8:30 p.m. local time (1930 GMT), said Ba'ana Musa, a member of a youth vigilante group that helped to evacuate people. "Seven dead bodies have been evacuated from the scene of the blasts," said a Red Cross official. |
| Flight MH17 shot down by Russian-built Buk missile, Dutch report says Posted: 13 Oct 2015 08:10 AM PDT  By Thomas Escritt and Toby Sterling GILZE-RIJEN, Netherlands (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board concluded on Tuesday in its final report on the crash in July 2014 that killed all 298 people on board, most of them Dutch. A bitter war was raging in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces when the aircraft was downed and, amid a huge international outcry, many Western experts and governments immediately blamed the rebels. This fits the kind of warhead installed in the Buk surface-to-air missile system," said Safety Board head Tjibbe Joustra, presenting the report.
|
| Palestinian 'Day of Rage' attacks kill three: Israeli police Posted: 13 Oct 2015 08:19 AM PDT  By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian men armed with knives and a gun killed at least three people and wounded several others in a string of attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv on Tuesday, police said, on a "Day of Rage" declared by Palestinian groups. With the worst unrest in years in Israel and the Palestinian territories showing no sign of abating, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting of his security cabinet to discuss what police said would be new operational plans. Officials said Israel's public security minister was considering whether to seal off Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, home of many of the assailants of the past two weeks, from the rest of the city.
|
| Washington Post reporter held in Iran angry, depressed, brother says Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:48 PM PDT  Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter jailed in an espionage case in Tehran, heard of his conviction on Iranian state TV and is depressed and angry about being deprived of information about his case, his brother said on Tuesday. Ali Rezaian said their mother, Mary Breme Rezaian, spoke with the reporter in a room at Tehran's Evin prison on Tuesday and described him as "terribly depressed" at the way the case had been handled. Jason Rezaian, who was arrested in July 2014 and holds U.S. and Iranian citizenship, was given 20 days to appeal, the Iranian news service ISNA said on Sunday, when the verdict was announced.
|
| Puerto Rico seizes $12M worth of cocaine abandoned at sea Posted: 13 Oct 2015 04:11 PM PDT SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Authorities in Puerto Rico say they have seized $12 million worth of cocaine found floating in waters off the U.S. territory's southeast coast. |
| Exclusive: Jeb Bush says Putin's Russia should face consequences over Syria Posted: 13 Oct 2015 04:09 PM PDT  By Steve Holland PETERBOROUGH, N.H. (Reuters) - Republican Jeb Bush vowed on Tuesday to take a more aggressive approach to countering Russia if he is elected president next year, calling Vladimir Putin an "agile adversary" who is exploiting a vacuum of U.S. leadership in Syria and elsewhere. In an interview with Reuters, Bush said that if elected in 2016 he would seek to build a coalition of European and Arab partners to work for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which he said is key to resolving the festering conflict and a worsening refugee crisis. Calling Putin a "bully", Bush said the United States and Europe should also extend sanctions against Moscow over its military aggression in Ukraine that are set to expire at year's end.
|
| Belgium tops FIFA ranking, Netherlands down-and-out Posted: 13 Oct 2015 04:09 PM PDT  BRUSSELS (AP) — The Dutch charmed the world with their free-flowing Total Football during the 1970s. In 2015, they are just a Total Loss.
|
| Three dead in Jerusalem's bloodiest day of rising unrest Posted: 13 Oct 2015 04:04 PM PDT  Jerusalem suffered its bloodiest day yet Tuesday in the recent wave of unrest, with at least three Israelis killed as Palestinian attackers shot at a bus and another rammed a car into pedestrians. The bus attack was the first assault with a gun in Jerusalem in the two-week-old upsurge of Palestinian violence. The rising tide of violence, which has seen a series of stabbing attacks and protests, has raised fears of a full-scale third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
|
| US and Russian military talks Wednesday: Carter Posted: 13 Oct 2015 04:03 PM PDT  Military commanders from Russia and the United States will hold another round of talks Wednesday on how to stay out of each other's way in the skies over Syria. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the latest "de-confliction" talks as jets from both countries pounded targets in the war-torn Middle Eastern country. "Russia must act professionally in the skies over Syria and abide by basic safety procedures," Carter said in Boston after talks with his Australian counterpart.
|
| Top Asian News at 11:00 p.m. GMT Posted: 13 Oct 2015 04:02 PM PDT GILZE-RIJEN AIR BASE, Netherlands (AP) — The missile shot skyward from war-ravaged eastern Ukraine. With deadly accuracy more than six miles up, it detonated just in front of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner, sending hundreds of jagged steel shards ripping through its aluminum skin at up to 5,600 mph and shearing the cockpit from the rest of the plane. The two pilots and purser in the cockpit died instantly, and the Boeing 777 disintegrated and fell to earth, killing the rest of the 298 men, women and children aboard Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, Dutch investigators said Tuesday in a long-awaited report. |
| Kerry seeks to calm Palestinian-Israeli tensions, to travel soon Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:59 PM PDT By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday he was working on calming violence between Palestinians and Israelis, and will travel to the region soon to try to move the situation "away from this precipice." "I will go there soon, at some point appropriately, and try to work to reengage and see if we can't move that away from this precipice," Kerry told an audience at an event sponsored by Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Kerry said the United States' goal for the region, the two-state solution "could conceivably be stolen from everybody" if violence in the region were to spiral out of control. "You have this violence because there's a frustration that is growing and a frustration among Israelis who don't see any movement," Kerry said. |
| ICC prosecutor formally asks to probe 2008 Georgia war Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:53 PM PDT  The prosecutor for the world's only permanent war crimes court Tuesday formally requested to open the tribunal's first inquiry into alleged abuses by Russia, by probing its 2008 war with Georgia. In her request to a three-judge panel, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said a preliminary investigation had found evidence of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian, Georgian and pro-Russian South Ossetian forces during the brutal, but swift, 2008 conflict. The initial inquiry had found "killings, forcible displacements and persecution of ethnic Georgian civilians, and destruction and pillaging of their property, by South Ossetian forces," Bensouda said.
|
| Bank's liquidation creates uncertainty in Honduras Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:52 PM PDT MEXICO CITY (AP) — Honduras' eighth largest bank is expected to reopen its doors Wednesday amid depositor fears that its liquidation could contaminate the rest of the country's financial sector. |
| Marlon James becomes first Jamaican to win Man Booker Prize Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:51 PM PDT  Jamaican author Marlon James on Tuesday won the Man Booker Prize for "A Brief History of Seven Killings", a re-telling of the attempted assassination of musician Bob Marley. James, 44, is the first Jamaican to win the award in its 47-year history. One of the world's most prestigious literary awards, the Man Booker Prize carries a £50,000 (67,000 euro, $77,000) prize and winners enjoy a boost in sales and a global readership.
|
| Dutch probe: Buk missile downed Malaysian jet in Ukraine Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:47 PM PDT  GILZE-RIJEN AIR BASE, Netherlands (AP) — The missile shot skyward from war-ravaged eastern Ukraine. With deadly accuracy more than six miles up, it detonated just in front of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner, sending hundreds of jagged steel shards ripping through its aluminum skin at up to 5,600 mph and shearing the cockpit from the rest of the plane.
|
| Jamaica's Marlon James wins Booker Prize for fiction Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:45 PM PDT  LONDON (AP) — Marlon James became the first Jamaican winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday with a vivid, violent, exuberant and expletive-laden novel based on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley.
|
| UK landlords renting to illegal immigrants could face jail Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:44 PM PDT  British lawmakers pushed a bill against illegal immigrants over its first parliamentary hurdle on Tuesday, amid warnings of a possible rise in discrimination as the government hardens its rhetoric. The proposed law is at the heart of the push by Prime Minister David Cameron's centre-right Conservatives to create a "hostile environment" for people not authorised to be in the country. Under the proposed measures, British landlords could be jailed for up to five years if they rent property to people they know or have reasonable grounds to suspect of being illegal immigrants.
|
| MH17 wreckage reveals horror of plane's last moments Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:43 PM PDT  Gilze-Rijen (Netherlands) (AFP) - A partial reconstruction of a Malaysia Airlines jet made of wreckage found strewn across eastern Ukraine told the graphic story Tuesday of its violent last moments after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Dutch-led air crash investigators concluded some of the 298 people on board may have been known for up to 90 seconds after the Russian-made BUK missile ripped into the left side of the cockpit that they were about to die. "The forward section of the aircraft was penetrated by hundreds of high-energy objects coming from the warhead," said the report released Tuesday by the Dutch Safety Board concluding a 15-month investigation.
|
| Dominican, Haiti leaders vow to work toward easing disputes Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:30 PM PDT SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — The leaders of Haiti and the Dominican Republic have pledged to work toward "better harmonization" regarding a thorny citizenship dispute and ease a trade squabble between the two neighbors. |
| Brazil president gets temporary impeachment reprieve Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:29 PM PDT  Brasília (AFP) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff won a temporary reprieve Tuesday from threatened impeachment thanks to a Supreme Court intervention and her principal opponent's decision to hold off for now on opening proceedings. Brazil's highest court slowed an expected rush to impeach Rousseff by ruling against lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha -- the man with the power to trigger impeachment -- on procedural questions. Cunha said the ruling did not affect the basis for impeachment but delayed his final decision, which had been expected Tuesday, on several impeachment requests filed in Congress.
|
| US women's soccer to play China in victory tour finale Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:28 PM PDT CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. women's team will play China in an exhibition at the Superdome in New Orleans on Dec. 16, the final game of the Americans' post-Word Cup victory tour. |
| South Africa get training bonus from England World Cup flop Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:23 PM PDT  South Africa have picked up a bonus from England's World Cup failure -- their upmarket Pennyhill Park training base to use ahead of this weekend's quarter-finals. Situated in leafy grounds in Bagshot, south-west of London, Pennyhill has been England's training base for about 15 years. It is a private hotel which accepts guests, but England's Rugby Football Union have ploughed a reported £3 million ($4.5 million) into Pennyhill, including installing a state of the art Desso 'hybrid' pitch and the latest gym equipment.
|
| Croatia qualifies for Euro 2016 with help from Italy Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:22 PM PDT  ROME (AP) — With some help from Italy, Croatia qualified for its fourth consecutive European Championship after a 1-0 win at Malta on Tuesday.
|
| Guatemala ends search for victims of slide that killed 280 Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:21 PM PDT  GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan authorities on Tuesday called off the search for victims buried under a massive landslide that killed at least 280 people near the Central American nation's capital.
|
| Shots fired in Guinea capital after opposition election protests Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:18 PM PDT  CONAKRY (Reuters) - Gunshots rang out in residential neighborhoods of the Guinean capital Conakry on Tuesday following clashes between security forces and supporters of opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo, who rejected Sunday's election, residents said. "There is shooting here," said Fatoumata Bah, a resident of the Simbayah neighborhood. "I don't know how we will get any sleep in these conditions." (Reporting by Saliou Samb)
|
| Tim Howard back in goal for US for 1st time since World Cup Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:12 PM PDT HARRISON, N.J. (AP) — Tim Howard is back in goal for the United States for the first time since last year's World Cup. |
| John Kerry, Ash Carter meet with Australian counterparts Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:09 PM PDT  BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter met with their Australian counterparts in Boston on Tuesday to discuss security and trade issues.
|
| Palestinians assailants often leave behind ordinary lives Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:04 PM PDT  JERUSALEM (AP) — They lived ordinary lives with ordinary ambitions — an electrician saving up to get married, a fitness buff, a worker in a butcher shop, a teen with plans for study in Europe after high school. But then these young Palestinians seemingly snapped.
|
| Netherlands loses 3-2 to Czech Republic, misses Euro 2016 Posted: 13 Oct 2015 03:00 PM PDT  AMSTERDAM (AP) — The Netherlands squandered its last chance of reaching the playoffs for next year's European Championship in a humiliating 3-2 defeat by 10-man Czech Republic on Tuesday.
|
| Kerry condemns Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:58 PM PDT  BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday condemned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and said that violence between Israelis and Palestinians "has got to stop."
|
| Carter: US, Russia nearing accord on air safety over Syria Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:56 PM PDT WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Ash Carter says the U.S. is nearing an agreement in its discussions with Russia about flight safety in the skies over Syria, and talks may conclude soon. |
| US vows to respect Colombia's decision on extraditing FARC Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:55 PM PDT BOGOTA (AP) — The U.S. ambassador in Bogota is pledging to respect Colombia's decision on whether to extradite guerrilla leaders. |
| Groups: UN must provide 'justice' for Haiti cholera victims Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:52 PM PDT  PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Five years after a cholera epidemic started a deadly march across this poor Caribbean country, international and Haitian human rights activists asserted Tuesday that the U.N. is failing to provide justice for the many Haitians who have died or been sickened.
|
| Ramsey and Bale get Welsh party started Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:51 PM PDT  Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale scored as Wales celebrated reaching next year's European Championship by defeating minnows Andorra 2-0 in Cardiff in their final qualifying match on Tuesday. Wales had qualified for their first major tournament in 57 years on Saturday when they lost 2-0 away to Bosnia-Herzegovina but Cyprus's 2-1 win in Israel guaranteed them a place in the top two in Group B. Second-half goals from Ramsey and Bale -- his seventh of the campaign -- got the qualification party started at the Cardiff City Stadium and ensured that Chris Coleman's men signed off on a winning note.
|
| Deadly explosions rock Maiduguri, NE Nigeria Posted: 13 Oct 2015 02:49 PM PDT  Three blasts hit the city of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday killing a number of people, locals and the Red Cross said. The "huge explosions" happened in the Ajilari Cross area of the city, which has been targeted by similar attacks twice in the last month, including on September 20 when at least 117 were killed. The previous attacks were blamed on Boko Haram Islamists, which has increasingly hit "soft" civilian targets in recent months using suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices.
|
