US Offers Iraq 'Intense and Sustained' Support

US Offers Iraq 'Intense and Sustained' Support

News Updates from CLG
24 Jun 2014

http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

 

Previous edition: US anthrax scare: 86 people possibly exposed to deadly bacteria NSAssociate Google Relegated 22 Jun 2014 CLG Newsletter to the Spam Bin  (Google subscribers: Google Filter Instructions for CLG Newsletter.)

 

US Offers Iraq 'Intense and Sustained' Support --John Kerry says the US will back Iraqi forces against militants, but urges the country's PM to share power with political rivals. 23 June 2014 US support for Iraq's security forces battling a militant insurgency will be "intense and sustained", John Kerry has said. Speaking after meeting Nouri al Maliki in Baghdad, the US Secretary of State said Iraq's embattled PM had reaffirmed his commitment to forming a new government by July 1.

 

Kerry confronts threat of new war in Iraq --U.S. secretary of state arrives in Baghdad 23 Jun 2014 Confronting the threat of civil war in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Baghdad on Monday to personally urge the Shiite-led government to give more power to political opponents before a Sunni insurgency seizes more control across the country and sweeps away hopes for lasting peace. The meeting scheduled between Kerry and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was not expected to be friendly, given that officials in Washington have floated suggestions that the Iraqi premier should resign as a necessary first step toward quelling the vicious uprising.

 

Iraq crisis: Key oil refinery 'seized by rebels' [#SorryNotSorry] 23 Jun 2014 Sunni rebels in Iraq say they have fully captured the country's main oil refinery at Baiji, north of Baghdad. The refinery had been under siege for 10 days with the militant offensive being repulsed several times. A rebel spokesman said the Baiji refinery, in Salahuddin province, would now be handed over to local tribes to administer.

 

LOL! America's corporate-run media praises 'democracy' in Afghanistan as the US installs its next troll to protect the CIA's poppy fields: Afghan election crisis: 'stuffed sheep' recordings suggest large-scale fraud 22 Jun 2014 Afghanistan's leadership crisis has deepened after one presidential candidate released audio recordings that he said captured a senior election official conspiring to commit large-scale fraud using the code word "stuffed sheep" to discuss illegally filled ballot boxes. In 15 minutes of sometimes slightly surreal conversation, two men urge an official to fire election staff with suspect loyalties and replace them with known supporters, ramp up plans for vote buying and ballot stuffing, and close down polling stations in areas thought to be unsympathetic."Take the sheep into the mountain and bring them back stuffed," one man says, before apparently lamenting the growing cost of buying votes. "The price of goats and sheep has gone up these days," he says ruefully.

 

Former Afghanistan POW Bergdahl discharged from hospital: Army 22 Jun 2014 U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who spent five years as a Taliban prisoner of war before being released last month, has been discharged from a military hospital in Texas and will continue treatment as an outpatient, the Army said Sunday. Bergdahl was transferred from Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, to the nearby Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, said Army spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Carol McClelland.

 

Donetsk self-defense forces agree to ceasefire until 0700 GMT Friday 23 Jun 2014 The leader of self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire in the region until 10 a.m. local time on Friday. He stressed that the self-defense force's ceasefire will come only as a reciprocal move. Ukrainian, Russian and OSCE representatives gathered in Donetsk on June 23 for talks on peaceful settlement of the conflict.

 

Putin orders forces in the Urals on combat alert 21 Jun 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday ordered military forces in central Russia on combat alert as well as a drill of airborne troops, a day after Ukraine ordered a cease-fire with pro-Russian rebels. NATO said earlier this week that Russia has resumed a military build-up on the border with Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting [unelected] government forces for weeks in a conflict that has left about 300 people dead and displaced over 34,000.

 

Israel strikes 9 military targets in Syria 23 Jun 2014 Nine Syrian military targets have been hit by Israeli jets and guided missiles, the IDF says, claiming it was a decisive response to a series of cross-border shootings to protect the citizens of Israel. The strikes on targets in Golan Heights were carried out shortly after midnight, Haaretz reports citing an IDF official, who called it a direct response to Sunday's deadly incident when an anti-tank projectile fired from Syrian territory struck near the border fence on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. A military command headquarters reportedly was among the targets hit in Syria.

 

Israel may have fabricated kidnapping, says Palestinian FM 22 Jun 2014 Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki claimed on Sunday that Israel may have staged the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers 10 days ago to deflect international criticism from it, arguing that the Jewish state had no proof that Hamas was behind the abduction. "They [the Israelis] have no proof that Hamas is behind this operation, as they have failed to provide any proof indicating this," Maliki told Saudi daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat from Jedda, where he, with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was visiting last week. "In the absence of proof, there are three possible scenarios for the issue: The kidnapping could be a childish game on the part of Israel to draw attention to it, it could be part of a larger game to turn the Israelis from aggressors to victims, or maybe they were really kidnapped," Maliki said.

 

Edward Snowden rejects German plans for meeting in Moscow 20 Jun 2014 Whistleblower Edward Snowden has rejected a German request for a meeting in Moscow, where he is living under temporary asylum. Snowden's lawyer told DW that German intelligence has downplayed its ties to the NSA. In a letter to German lawmakers, Snowden's Berlin-based lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck, dismissed their request for an informal meeting with the former intelligence official in Russia. There was "no room or need for an oral, 'informal' meeting in Moscow," Kaleck wrote, adding that a hearing "in the desired form" is only possible in Germany.

 

MH370 pilot 'chief suspect' 22 June 2014 The official Malaysian police investigation of the disappearance of the airliner MH370 has identified the captain as the prime suspect after checks cleared all the other people on board, TheSunday Times can reveal. The criminal inquiry does not rule out the possibility the plane was lost due to mechanical failure or terrorism, but the police view is that if it was the result of human action, the captain was the most likely perpetrator. Malaysia's special branch focused the inquiry on Captain Zaharie Shah, 53, after intelligence checks failed to substantiate any suspicions about the other people on board the jet, which was lost on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew.

 

Man Arrested for Threatening Phone Calls After Sandy Hook 23 Jun 2014 A man was arrested for making threatening phone calls to the residents of Newtown, Connecticut, two days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that claimed 26 lives in December 2012. Cardenas Hoffman, 30, of Venezuela, wasarrested Saturday in a Miami airport for allegedly calling residents and claiming to be Adam Lanza, the late shooter, according to a U.S. Department of Justice statement. Hoffman was charged with a criminal complaint in May 2013 for "threats in interstate or foreign commerce to injure the person of another," the statement said.

 

Angry Japan farmers bring diseased cow from Fukushima to Tokyo 24 Jun 2014 Angry farmers from Fukushima brought a large cow to the centre of TokyoFriday to demand Japan's government investigate a disease they say cattle have developed since the nuclear disaster three years ago. Operators of non-profit "Kibo no Bokujo", or "Farm of Hope", delivered a full-size black cow to the front of the agriculture ministry to demand an investigation into why it and many other animals have developed white dots on their skin since reactors went into meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The farm is located only 14 kilometres from the nuclear plant and is keeping some 350 cows that were abandoned in the area when their owners had to evacuate because of radiation contamination.

 

CDC reassigns director of lab behind anthrax blunder 23 Jun 2014 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reassigned the director of the bioterror lab behind the potential anthrax exposure of dozens of scientists and staff, sources told Reuters, as the anthrax controversy intensified. Michael Farrell, head of the CDC's Bioterror Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Laboratory, has been reassigned as the agency investigates the incident, two CDC scientists who are not authorized to speak with press told Reuters. The possible exposure has forced as many as 84 86 employees at the agency's Atlanta campus to get a vaccine or take powerful antibiotics with known side effects to ward off potentially deadly anthrax disease.

 

Ebola epidemic is 'out of control' 23 Jun 2014 The deadly Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has hit "unprecedented" proportions, according to relief workers on the ground. "The epidemic is out of control," Dr. Bart Janssens, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, said in statement. There have been 567 cases and 350 deaths since the epidemic began in March, according to the latest World Health Organization figures.

 

West African nations report 49 new Ebola cases --Overall outbreak total at 567, including 359 deaths 23 Jun 2014 Three West African countries at the center of the region's Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak saw no letup in infections last week, reporting 49 new cases and 12 more deaths, most of them in Sierra Leone, according to an update yesterday from the World Health Organization (WHO). The first reports of EVD in the region emerged in March, marking West Africa's first experience battling the virus in an outbreak that has become the largest and deadliest since the first human infections were detected in Africa in 1976.

 

HAARP is a busy little bee! 8.0 earthquake hits off Alaska's Aleutian Islands--Quake prompts tsunami warning 23 Jun 2014 A magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck deep under the ocean floor near Alaska's Aleutian Islands, triggering shaking that could be felt for vast distances and prompting a tsunami warning, the U.S. Geological Survey and National Tsunami Warning Center said. The tsunami warning, later downgraded to an advisory, prompted the evacuation of about 150 residents of the town of Adak to higher ground, according to media reports. The quake was so large and deep that it triggered dozens of aftershocks within an hour and prompted enough shaking that it will be picked up by seismometers around the world over the next 24 hours, said Mike West, a seismologist who serves as director of the Alaska Earthquake Center.

 

Cruise ship springs leak, forcing evacuation of nearly 200 people 22 Jun 2014 A cruise ship carrying 154 passengers and 40 crew was evacuated after it sprang a leak on a river in the eastern Netherlands early on Sunday morning, emergency services said. All the passengers, mostly pensioners from Germany and Austria, were safely helped off the 110-metre (360-foot) long Britannia and taken to shelters. The cause of the leak was not immediately known.

 

*****

CLG needs your support.

http://www.legitgov.org/donate.html

Or, please mail a check or m*ney order to CLG: Citizens for Legitimate Government (CLG)
P.O. Box 1142
Bristol, CT 06011-1142
Contributions to CLG are not tax deductible.