| U.S. launches airstrikes around Iraq's Haditha Dam Posted: 07 Sep 2014 04:38 AM PDT  Islamic State insurgents are targeted there for the first time in a move to prevent the group from capturing the vital dam.
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| Obama to give speech Wednesday on Islamic State Posted: 07 Sep 2014 08:11 AM PDT WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will begin laying out a strategy this week to defeat Islamic State militants in the Middle East, meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday and giving a speech Wednesday, the eve of the 13th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. |
| Ukraine shelling claims lives, sets houses ablaze Posted: 07 Sep 2014 08:58 AM PDT SPARTAK, Ukraine (AP) — Clashes broke out Sunday outside the main rebel-held city in eastern Ukraine, throwing the freshly forged cease-fire agreement between government troops and Russian-backed separatists into further doubt. |
| Abbas may end unity with Hamas over Gaza governance Posted: 07 Sep 2014 08:51 AM PDT  Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has threatened to break off a unity agreement with Hamas if the Islamist movement does not allow the government to operate properly in the Gaza Strip. Abbas's accusation that Hamas was effectively running a parallel administration in Gaza drew an angry reaction from the Islamist movement, which denounced his allegations as "baseless."
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| Obama to set out plan to go on offensive against Islamic State Posted: 07 Sep 2014 08:57 AM PDT  By Roberta Rampton and Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will explain to Americans and congressional leaders this week his plan to go on the offensive against Islamic State militants, who he said could eventually become a threat to the United States. Obama said he will make a speech on Wednesday to "describe what our game plan's going to be," and will meet congressional leaders on Tuesday to seek their support for his strategy to halt the militant Islamist group. "I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it and to have confidence that we'll be able to deal with it," Obama said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that aired on Sunday. The speech underscores the degree to which Islamic State has become an urgent issue for the United States.
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| Obama: U.S. must fight Ebola now or face long-term risk Posted: 07 Sep 2014 07:04 AM PDT  The United States needs to do more to help control West Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak to stop it becoming a global crisis that could one day threaten Americans, President Barack Obama said in an interview. Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the outbreak, which has killed 2,100 people in African five countries, was unlikely to spread to the United States in the short term. "If we don't make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa but other parts of the world, there's the prospect then that the virus mutates. "If we do that, then it's still going to be months before this problem is controllable in Africa," he said.
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| Wreckage of small U.S. plane believed sunk in ocean, Jamaica says Posted: 06 Sep 2014 07:01 PM PDT  The plane, with an unresponsive pilot, crashed on Friday after veering far off its course to Florida and triggering a U.S. The Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority said the wreckage is believed to have sunk into the ocean in an area about 6,600 feet (2,000 meters) deep. "We would have to assume that the debris sank because we didn't find it at the surface," Jamaica Coast Guard Commander Antonette Wemyss-Gorman said at a news conference on Saturday. The Jamaica Defense Force "conducted searches overnight and this morning in same location where they spotted an oil spill," she said.
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| Monsoon floods kill nearly 300 in India, Pakistan Posted: 07 Sep 2014 06:07 AM PDT  SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Landslides and flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed nearly 300 people in large swaths of northern India and Pakistan, officials said Sunday.
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| Explosions in east Ukraine threaten cease-fire Posted: 07 Sep 2014 08:05 AM PDT  Fighting around two flashpoint cities in eastern Ukraine on Sunday rattled a tenuous truce between government troops and pro-Russian rebels less than 48 hours after it came into force. Insurgent militias bombarded a government-held checkpoint on the eastern edge of the port city of Mariupol overnight, local officials said, killing one woman and triggering panic among residents. The violence erupted just hours after a phone call between Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who agreed that the ceasefire was "generally being observed". Mariupol city hall said one woman had died in the shelling, the first reported death since the ceasefire.
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| U.S. missionary with Ebola showing signs of improvement, wife says Posted: 06 Sep 2014 08:15 PM PDT  Dr. Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician, arrived Friday at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for treatment after being flown there from Liberia, one of five West African countries affected by an outbreak of the virus. "Rick is very sick and weak, but slightly improved from when he arrived yesterday," Debbie Sacra said Saturday. Sacra said she and the couple's 22-year-old son are in Nebraska, but they visited with Rick, isolated in the hospital's biocontainment unit, for about 25 minutes over a video link. She said he remembered little of his journey from Liberia and that she was "relieved to see his face and hear his voice again." Dr. Sacra contracted Ebola while working at a hospital in Liberia on behalf of the North Carolina-based Christian group SIM USA.
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| North Korea sets trial date for detained American Posted: 06 Sep 2014 04:00 PM PDT  SEOUL (Reuters) - Matthew Miller, one of three detained Americans in North Korea, will face trial next week, a short statement carried by state media said on Sunday, without elaborating any further on what charges the U.S. citizen faced. Miller, of Bakersfield, California, will go to trial in North Korea on Sept. 14, the short statement said. The 26-year old was arrested in April for tearing up his visa upon his arrival in the isolated country, state media said at the time. The statement did not mention fellow U.S. ...
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| Somali extremists name new leader after U.S. strike, warn of revenge Posted: 06 Sep 2014 01:33 PM PDT  By Feisal Omar and Abdi Sheikh MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab confirmed on Saturday that its leader Ahmed Godane had been killed in a U.S. Western governments and neighboring countries want to neutralize a group that they say has exploited Somalia's chaos to attract jihadists and train them to fight. In a statement, al Shabaab reaffirmed its affiliation to al Qaeda, and named its new leader as Sheikh Ahmad Umar Abu Ubaidah, warning its enemies to "expect only that which will cause you great distress". Little is known of al Shabaab's new leader, but a local elder who asked not be named said he had joined al Shabaab in 2006 and, like Godane, hailed from the Dir clan.
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| Next for former Va. governor: sentencing, appeal Posted: 06 Sep 2014 08:26 AM PDT  RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Prosecutors and defense attorneys aren't through fighting over the fate of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen.
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