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Showing posts from December 13, 2015

North Caucasus Militants Return to Russia From Turkey, Use Visa-FreeRegime

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North Caucasian militants get medical care in Turkey and then go back to Russia with Turkish passports, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) —North Caucasian militants receive medical assistance in Turkey and then go back to Russia with Turkish passports using the visa-free regime between the countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. "We are recording that there are militants in Turkey from the North Caucasus… They are there receiving medical treatment and being guarded. Then they use the visa-free entry, enter with Turkish passports and ‘vanish’," Putin said at his annual press conference. © Sputnik/ Grigory Sysoyev Putin at Annual Press Conference: Russia Does Not Consider Turkey Hostile State, but Relations Have Spoiled The Russian leader added that after that the Russian law enforcement has to search for the militants in the North Caucasus region or in major cities. Russia is suspending its visa-free regime w

Iraqi strike may be a 'mistake' by both sides: Pentagon chief Carter

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Ashton Carter   File Photo US Defence Secretary Ash Carter says an American airstrike that may have killed a number of Iraqi soldiers seems to be "a mistake that involved both sides." Carter has called Iraq's prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to express condolences. Carter spoke to reporters during a visit today to the USS Kearsarge in the Persian Gulf. The  US military  says an airstrike on Friday against  Islamic State  targets may have resulted in the death of Iraqi soldiers near the city of Fallujah. The military didn't say how many may have been killed. Other officials said the Iraqis initially reported that about 10 may have died. The US military says the strikes came in response to requests and information provided by Iraqi security forces on the ground near Fallujah, which IS controls.  Source  http://dnai.in/d5oF

Could cyberattack on Turkey be a Russian retaliation?

Could the cyberattack on Turkey be a political response? Unlikely, say cybersecurity experts Picture: 2015 Anadolu Agency At least 400,000 websites, including government institutions, were brought down by hackers this week At least 400,000 websites in Turkey are under cyberattack, with unsubstantiated suspicions that the hackers are of Russian origin. The attack, known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, reportedly started on Monday morning, and still continues to cripple systems. The targets were all websites with the country's official domain name suffix: the two-letter country code .tr, which is used by hundreds of thousands of websites, including government institutions, universities and schools, the military and thousands of national businesses. According to the Daily Dot,  Turkey’s National Response Centre for Cyber Events closed down all incoming traffic to the five servers that act as the Yellow Pages for Turkish websites - meaning any webs

Turkey Strengthens Border with Syria

Turkey says it is taking steps to strengthen its border with Syria. But some experts are unsure if the country will take strong action against the Islamic State terrorist group. Some of Turkey’s Western allies do not know if the country is part of the problem or part of the solution in the fight against the militants. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter was in Turkey this week. He urged its leaders to secure the border with Syria. Carter said that is the most important step Turkey can take in the fight against the Islamic State group. Earlier this month, Turkey placed the border with Syria under emergency rule. Semih Idiz publishes his opinions about politics in a Turkish newspaper. He says the decision shows that international pressure on Turkey is working. He says the policy change happened because “there is a lot of pressure from the West -- from (Turkey’s) closest allies -- (that the) border must be  sealed .” He writes that many people will ask why the border wasn’t

Obama urges Turkey's Erdogan to withdraw troops from Iraq

Source http://news.yahoo.com/obama-urges-turkeys-erdogan-withdraw-troops-iraq-210312272.html Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama urged Turkey's leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to pull troops out of Iraq Friday, amid a row that has split key members of the coalition fighting the Islamic State group. Obama "urged President Erdogan to take additional steps to deescalate tensions with Iraq, including by continuing to withdraw Turkish military forces," the White House said after a phonecall between the two leaders. Obama also "reinforced the need for Turkey to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq." The Iraqi government has demanded the "complete withdrawal" of Turkish forces from its territory, indicating Ankara's partial pullout was not enough. Perennially embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has faced intense political pressure to end the Turkish deployment. Turkey said it had deployed troops and tanks

Taliban Saw Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl As A 'Golden Chicken,' According ToThe Latest 'Serial' Podcast

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In the days after Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan, his captors made a decision: They would take the soldier west to Ghazni province, knowing that U.S. forces would be pouring into the eastern region around the Pakistani border looking for Bergdahl. The detail, relayed by a Taliban official in a new episode of the podcast "Serial," might help explain how the Taliban fighters holding Bergdahl prisoner managed to evade the U.S. military after capturing the soldier on June 30, 2009. Bergdahl would be held captive for the next five years until he was set free in a controversial prisoner swap approved by the White House in which five Taliban officials were released from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into supervision by the Qatari government. The Taliban saw Bergdahl as a "golden chicken," the podcast reported Thursday morning in the second episode of its new season, which is focused on the disappearance, recovery

State Of Emergency Declared In San Bernardino After Shooting

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Los Angeles:  California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino County on Friday following the December 2 attack there that killed 14 people. The bureaucratic move lets the state allocate funds to the county health department "until the county is able to resume normal staffing levels," and suspends fees on things like "copies of certificates of death records by any person who suffered a loss of a family member due to the terrorist attack." The shooters targeted a San Bernardino County health department holiday party. Declarations like this are routine in cases of natural disaster. The San Bernardino rampage was carried out by US-born Syed Farook and his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik. The radicalized Muslim couple is believed to have been inspired, if not directed, by the Islamic State terror group. In the declaration, Brown mentions that 26 people were wounded in the attack. Until now officials had only mentioned 22 wounded. Sto

Turkey kills 55 Kurdish militants in major crackdown

Turkish security forces have killed 55 Kurdish militants during a major operation to root out Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels from two urban centres in the troubled southeast, security sources said on Friday. With the crackdown now in a fourth day, a Turkish soldier was killed in intense clashes with the PKK, the first fatality suffered by the army in the operation, the security sources told AFP. The operation in the towns of Cizre and Silopi began on Tuesday, with 25 militants killed in first two days.  But the latest figure more than doubled the number of casualties, implying a heavy toll during Thursday’s fighting inside the towns. The vast operation, which is now in its fourth day and reportedly involves some 10,000 troops, is centered on two towns in Kurdish-dominated Sirnak province where the military has imposed blanket curfews. The state-run Anatolia news agency said 49 militants had been killed in Cizre and 6 in Silopi. The dead soldier was killed in Cizre

Barack Obama Urges Americans Remain Vigilant Against Homegrown Threats

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Washington:  President Barack Obama urged Americans to remain vigilant against the potential threat of homegrown Islamic State militants on Friday due to the difficulty of tracking "lone wolf" attackers like those who went on a shooting spree in California. Obama appeared in the White House press briefing room for a year-end news conference shortly before travelling to San Bernardino, California, where the Dec. 2 shootings took place, to meet privately with families of the victims en route to spending the holidays in Hawaii. Obama talked tough about the prospects of defeating Islamic State militants who control broad swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq but admitted U.S. law enforcement agencies have limitations in tracking the threat at home. "All of us can do our part by staying vigilant, by saying something if we see something that is suspicious, by refusing to be terrorized and by staying united as one American family," Obama said. A day after telling Am

About 200 ISIS Terrorists Killed In Iraq Offensive: US

Washington:  Some 200 Islamic State jihadists were killed by US-led coalition aircraft during an intense battle in Iraq this week, a US military spokesman said Friday. Baghdad-based Colonel Steve Warren, who represents the US-led coalition that is attacking the ISIS group in Iraq and Syria, said about 500 jihadists had carried out an offensive against Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces in the northern province of Nineveh on Wednesday Coalition aircraft from five nations responded and dropped nearly 100 bombs during the overnight fight, he added. "Air power alone killed nearly 200 of them, about 187 by last count," Warren told Pentagon reporters in a video call. "So, a significant blow to this enemy. And then, of course, ground forces. We don't have a good count yet for how much damage the pesh (peshmerga) were able to inflict on this enemy during the course of this fairly long battle. But we know it was significant." The multi-pronged ISIS offensive saw jih

UN security council adopts resolution on Syrian peace process

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The UN security council has unanimously agreed a resolution endorsing an international roadmap for a peace process in  Syria , a rare show of unity among major powers on a conflict that has claimed more than 250,000 lives. “This council is sending a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support,” US secretary of state  John Kerry  told the 15-nation council after the vote. The resolution came after  Russia and the US clinched a deal on a text. The two powers have had very different views on what should happen in Syria, where Islamic State militants control considerable territory. Kerry made clear that there were still differences on the future of Syrian president  Bashar al-Assad , a close ally of Russia and Iran. Western governments want him to be ousted. The resolution does not touch on the question of Assad’s fate. “We are under no i

Pentagon Chief In Afghanistan As Violence Escalates

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Kabul, Afghanistan:  US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter arrived in Afghanistan Friday for meetings with military commanders, as the security situation deteriorates with a surge in Taliban attacks and the creeping emergence of the Islamic State group. The unannounced visit comes just days after a Pentagon report presented a grim portrait of the war which has inflicted a growing number of casualties on hard-pressed Afghan forces. During an event with soldiers at a US base near Jalalabad city in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Secretary Carter warned of the Taliban's continued threat to security in the country, while lauding the troops for training Afghan forces to battle the insurgents. "The Afghan security forces are getting there," said Carter, according to a statement released by the Department of Defense. "They're fighting, number one, and number two, they're fighting more and more effectively as they operate more and more on their own." The v

Republicans are so bullish on war that 30% would bomb a fictionalcountry

 | Trevor Timm A   poll on Friday by Public Policy Polling  perfectly encapsulates the Republican presidential race so far: “30% of Republican primary voters nationally say they support bombing Agrabah.” That would be the fictional country in Aladdin. Republican voters, urged on by the Republican candidates, are now eager to bomb anywhere that has a Muslim-sounding name regardless of whether it comes from a cartoon. While the poll itself may be amusing, it’s not exactly surprising given the cartoonish levels of tough-guy militarism that spews from the mouth of every Republican candidate as they try to one-up each other on who would start more wars harder and quicker. Ted Cruz has spent the past two weeks  calling for a “carpet bombing”  of the Middle East in an attempt to destroy Isis, saying he wants to see if “ sand can glow in the dark ”. He  defended this call  on national television Tuesday while outright avoiding the question of whether that means he’s prepared to kill t

President al-Assad to DUTCH NPO2 TV: The western policy towardscounter-terrorism file is not objective

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Syrian TV -  President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the majority of international reports about Syria are politicized, incredible and financed by the Qataris and Saudis. President al-Assad added in an interview given to DUTCH NPO2 TV that the western policy towards counter-terrorism file is not objective and not stable. Following is the full text; Question 1: Mr. President, after four years of civil war in your country, what’s left of Syria? President Assad: What’s left is about the people. If you talk about the infrastructure, many have been destroyed during the last four years and few months, but it’s about the people, what’s left of the people, that is the question, and it’s about how much they withstand this dark ideology that the terrorists brought with them from different countries. I think the majority of the people now support their government, regardless of their political spectrum, and they still support the unity of Syria and the integration of the society as o