Islamic State says it's holding Japanese man captured in Syria
Militants from the Islamic State claim they've detained a Japanese man who is believed to have been traveling with a rival Islamist group fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.
As Gaza war subsides, a battle over how it is investigated begins
Even before starting work as chairman of a U.N. human rights commission investigating the Gaza war, Canadian law professor William Schabas has been vilified as an apologist for Iran who is incapable of setting aside his perceived anti-Israel bias. Full-page adverts have been taken out ...
As Taliban push for territory quickens, Afghan troops get new kill orders
As U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan, the battlefield they leave behind is changing dramatically and becoming more deadly. No longer pinned down by U.S. air cover, Taliban fighters are attacking Afghan military posts in larger numbers with the aim of taking and holding ground — ...
Japanese man feared captured by Islamic State in Syria
The Foreign Ministry tries to confirm whether a Japanese man has been captured by the Islamic State in Syria after his purported interrogation is uploaded to the Internet.
Cricket star Khan overplays hand in Pakistani power game
Cricket hero Imran Khan rode a wave of discontent to finally break through as a serious player in Pakistani politics in last year's election. Now he is aiming even higher, leading thousands on a march to the capital in a bid to unseat the ...
Washington REUTERS The United States on Saturday conducted airstrikes in Iraq against Islamic State fighters near the Kurdish capital of Irbil and the Mosul dam, the U.S. Central Command said. The dam, Iraq's biggest, fell under control of Islamic State militants earlier this month. Control of the ...
No optical illusion: Obama balances world crises with golf, time off
President Barack Obama gave Americans an update on U.S. military strikes in Iraq on Saturday from a podium on the White House lawn with Marine One, the presidential helicopter, parked in the background. Four hours later, he offered a very different tableau: a golf game ...
Defiant al-Maliki deploys special forces to key areas of Baghdad: police
Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources said. Shiite ...
Islamic State killed 500 Yazidis and buried some victims alive, Iraq minister says
Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi ethnic minority during their offensive in the north, Iraq's human rights minister told Reuters on Sunday. Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Sunni militants had also buried alive some of their victims, including women ...
Iraq's Sunni Islamist insurgency has further crippled the nation's dream to match the oil power of Saudi Arabia, making oil fields in the safer south even more vital — but even that region has not been completely free from attacks. Baghdad is struggling to contain ...
Obama faces doubts latest foray in Iraq can turn tide against rebels
Even as warplanes dropped the first U.S. bombs on Islamic militant targets in northern Iraq, President Barack Obama faced doubts inside his administration and out that the limited mission he circumscribed is enough to shift the balance in a conflict threatening to tear Iraq ...
The Iraqi government provided a planeload of ammunition to fighters from Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region on Friday, a U.S. official said, in an "unprecedented" act of military cooperation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces brought on by an urgent militant threat. The official said Iraqi security ...
