An anonymous painting of Turkish Emperor Mahmud II leading his troops. By DAVID MOTADEL May 23, 2015 CAMBRIDGE, England — THE last several months have brought a dramatic escalation in conflict across the Middle East, almost all of it involving tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims — which are in turn fueled by a power struggle between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional supremacy. Tehran runs a […]
By PETER BAKER May 21, 2015 WASHINGTON — President Obama denied that the United States and its allies were losing the fight against Islamic State forces in the Middle East, but he acknowledged in an interview posted online on Thursday that more should be done to help Iraqis recapture lost territory. While repeating his refusal to commit large-scale American forces to the region, the president said Sunni fighters in […]
Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, center, with Ofer Eini, head of the Israeli soccer association, left, in Jerusalem on Tuesday. By JODI RUDOREN May 19, 2015 RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian grievances against Israel are familiar ones: hampering travel, blocking import of equipment, rampant racism and the treatment of settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli response is also a repeat: security concerns, mostly. But this round […]
Slide Show | The Ancient Syrian City of Palmyra Islamic State militants have destroyed historical sites and sold off artifacts in other cities, and some fear they may do the same in Palmyra. By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD May 20, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State militants swept into the historic desert city of Palmyra in central Syria on Wednesday, and by evening were in control of it, residents and […]
Iraqi security forces in Tikrit, Iraq, on Monday. By ROD NORDLAND March 30, 2015 TIKRIT, Iraq — Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations used a visit to Baghdad on Monday to warn the Iraqi government to treat civilians decently after it liberates territories like Tikrit, where a government offensive has been supported by heavy American-led airstrikes for the past five days. “Civilians freed from the brutality of […]
The Yemeni president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has fired his powerful predecessor’s son as ambassador to the UAE, according to reports. Ahmed Ali Saleh and his father, the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, wield major influence in army units fighting alongside Houthi militias which have been hit by three days of Saudi-led air strikes, said Reuters. President Hadi departed on Thursday from his last base in the southern […]
I wonder: did Australian television broadcast Bagpuss to its younger viewers during the Seventies? I’m asking because the Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, grew up in New South Wales. Maybe she loved Bagpuss as much as I did; one story in particular: “Charliemouse then tells Bagpuss and Yaffle that the mill makes chocolate biscuits out of breadcrumbs and butterbeans. The mice run the Mill, and it does […]
Camp Taji Journal American military personnel, recently deployed to Iraq, found remnants of the previous United States military presence, mostly untouched since their comrades left Camp Taji three years earlier. By TIM ARANGO January 6, 2015 CAMP TAJI, Iraq — The calendar on the wall reads November 2011. On the ground is a half-filled tin of Copenhagen smokeless tobacco. Scattered here and there are bottles of Gatorade, cans of […]
Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters. Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond. […]
I recently reached out to my Twitter followers, asking “What can I, as a VOA reporter in Washington, write about that you need/want to know?” The responses were varied and interesting, but one topic dominated: U.S. policy in Syria. Why hasn’t the U.S. done more to help the Syrian people? “There is lot of frustration with the Obama’s administration’s ambiguous, vague and often incoherent strategy regarding dealing […]
By SOMINI SENGUPTA November 10, 2014 UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations secretary general announced on Monday that a five-member panel would investigate the attacks on more than 100 United Nations facilities and the death of 11 of its staff members during the Gaza conflict during the summer, defying Israeli demands to wait until the conclusion of its own government inquiry. The United Nations usually conducts such in-house inquiries […]
A view of the Dome of the Rock, which along with Al Aqsa Mosque is on the site in Jerusalem known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims and Temple Mount to Jews. By JODI RUDOREN November 6, 2014 JERUSALEM — One cartoon circulating on social networks on Thursday depicted a car as the barrel of an automatic weapon, captioned in Arabic, “Revolt and resist, even by your car.” Another […]
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters are headed to Kobani to help Syrian Kurds who have been fighting Islamic State militants since September for control of the town just south of the Turkish border. Saleh Moslem, co-chairman of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Reuters that some peshmerga fighters were expected to arrive in Kobani late Tuesday. Kurdish officials said 80 fighters, equipped with artillery and machine guns, […]
News Analysis By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK October 24, 2014 CAIRO — The British police arrest four men accused of plotting a bombing on the scale of the Mumbai hotel attack six years ago. The Australian authorities arrest a ring of 12 accused of plotting daring murders, including a public beheading. In Canada, a gunman assaults the Parliament building and kills a soldier guarding a war memorial, and a motorist strikes […]
|By Rashidul Bari| When I was writing Grameen Social Business Model, a book detailing the search for a weapon to use against poverty and terrorism, Malala Yousafzai played a key, but kind of secondary, role, a supporting character. But I kind of found, when I was writing another article, “Why do they Hate Obama?” that the force of Malala kept trying to take over, kept trying to […]
NEW DELHI: DRDO is developing an air-launched version of the 1,500-km-range Nirbhay sub-sonic cruise missile which would be capable of being fired from the Air Force’s frontline Su-30MKI combat aircraft. “This Nirbhay missile would be capable of being used from air, land and ships and submarines. An air-launched version of the missile is also being planned,” DRDO chief Avinash Chander told PTI here. He said […]
By BRIAN KNOWLTON October 12, 2014 WASHINGTON — Fighters for the Islamic State were managing to blend in with disenfranchised Sunni populations in some Iraqi towns and villages near the capital, raising the chances of militant attacks against targets in Baghdad, President Obama’s top military adviser said on Sunday. “I have no doubt there will be days when they use indirect fire into Baghdad,” the adviser, Gen. Martin E. […]
October 10, 2014 Open Source By ROBERT MACKEY The American-led coalition’s bombing campaign against Islamist militants in Syria has focused new attention on the Westerners among their ranks. In television interviews broadcast this week, American, Australian and Dutch citizens who traveled to Syria to take part in the jihad against President Bashar al-Assad’s government expressed bitterness at the airstrikes their nations have carried out against Islamist rebels. […]
Video | Fighting Rages in Syrian Border Town President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey warned that the Syrian border town of Kobani might fall to Islamist militants as fighting intensified between Kurdish rebels and Islamic State fighters. By KARAM SHOUMALI and ANNE BARNARD October 7, 2014 MURSITPINAR, Turkey — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said Tuesday that the Syrian border town of Kobani, under siege from Islamic State fighters, was […]
Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid last year referred to Israeli expats in Berlin as willing to throw Israel “in the garbage” for a cheaper cost of living. Bloomberg News Back in 2011, rising dairy prices sparked a cottage cheese protest in Israel. Now there’s a pudding protest. The first campaign, which called for a consumer boycott of dairy goods, eventually helped bring hundreds of thousands of middle […]
Slide Show | Preparing for New Risks in Golan Heights The fighting in Syria has prompted residents of the Golan Heights, Israel’s quietest frontier, to reassess the potential danger. By JODI RUDOREN October 4, 2014 EIN ZIVAN, Golan Heights — The updates poured in by two-way radio and cellphone as Tomer Lahav’s pickup sped around this kibbutz near Israel’s cease-fire line with Syria one recent evening. Mortars were falling […]
By ANNE BARNARD October 4, 2014 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighting continued Saturday across Syria, with the militant group Islamic State assaulting a Kurdish enclave on the Turkish border, American-led airstrikes hitting Islamic State positions in northeastern Syria and Syrian government airstrikes pounding other insurgents near Damascus, Syria’s capital. Video surfaced of Peter Kassig, an American medical worker held by the Islamic State, in which the militants threatened that he […]
By DAVID E. SANGER and ANNE BARNARD September 27, 2014 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said on Saturday that it had conducted its first strikes against Islamic State targets in a besieged Kurdish area of Syria along the Turkish border, destroying two armored vehicles in an area that has been the subject of a weeklong onslaught by the Islamic State. The action around Kobani, where at least 150,000 refugees have crossed into Turkey, appeared to signify the opening of […]
Turkish Kurds watched Kurdish forces battle with Islamic State militants across the border in Syria on Saturday. Turkey fears the fight against the Islamic State may embolden Kurdish separatists. By ANNE BARNARD and MARK LANDLER September 27, 2014 KARACA, Turkey — No American ally is closer to the threat of the Islamic State than Turkey, and no country could play a more important role in a coalition that President Obama is […]
