ISIS use of children for suicide missions skyrocketing - report

Video: CAIR-MN Condemns 'FMuslims' License Plate

U.S. Targets ISIS in Libya, Citing National Security Threat

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Defense Department reported Friday that its bombing of an Islamic State camp this Friday in Libya was carried out after discovering the jihadists there “were planning external attacks on U.S. and other Western interests in the region.”

“The U.S. military conducted an airstrike in Libya targeting an ISIL (an alternate acronym for Islamic State) training camp near Sabratha and Noureddine Chouchane, a.k.a. ‘Sabir,’ a Tunisian national who was an ISIL senior facilitator in Libya associated with the training camp,” the department said in a statement.

“We took this action against Sabir and the training camp after determining that both he and the ISIL fighters at these facilities were planning external attacks on U.S. and other Western interests in the region,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.

Cook recalled that Sabir was considered one of the suspects in perpetrating the deadly March 2015 attack on Tunisia’s Bardo Museum and has helped move potential foreign combatants affiliated with IS from Tunisia to Libya and other countries.

The U.S. attack left some 40 people dead, mostly Tunisians and Algerians, authorities in Libya said, adding that no Libyans were killed.

“This was an instance where we saw an opportunity to strike at ISIL in Libya and we carried out that strike and we feel confident this was a successful strike,” Cook said.

Tunisia together with France are the chief exporters of volunteers to IS, from where close to 5,000 combatants have emigrated to Syria and Iraq, according to official figures.

A large part of those who have returned to Tunisia have traveled on to Libya, where they have contributed to helping develop the branch of IS in that country.

Media Owner Killed in Southeast Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Moises Dagdug, a media owner, journalist and former federal lawmaker, was stabbed to death at his home in the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco in a suspected robbery, according to one of his associates, who told EFE that Dagdug had received threats.

The homicide occurred early Saturday at the 65-year-old Dagdug’s home in Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, with the assailants making off with the victim’s vehicle after killing him.

Dagdug was the owner of a radio station and a television news channel in Tabasco that was part of the Grupo VX media group, according to local media. He also hosted a show on that same radio station, XEVX La Grande de Tabasco, in which he was very critical of the current state governor, Arturo Nuñez Jimenez.

“The editorial line of Grupo VX ... was certainly critical, questioning the government’s bad actions,” the group’s news director, Angel Antonio Jimenez, told EFE.

He recalled that Dagdug had received threats and indeed had publicly denounced them on his show, titled “De frente Tabasco,” adding that Tabasco was suffering “a public safety crisis.”

“He wasn’t afraid to say that he’d been threatened, that he was receiving constant threats. In fact, the criminals had entered his private home on a couple of occasions. He changed his security system, and indeed his lifestyle had changed dramatically,” the news director said.

Dagdug represented Tabasco in the national legislature between 2006 and 2009 as a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for the practice of journalism, with more than 100 members of the media having been killed since 2000, according to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Freedom of Expression.

Moscow calls on US to be responsible in choosing targets for air strikes

MOSCOW, February 20. /TASS/. Moscow calls on the United States and other NATO countries to show responsibility in choosing targets for their air strikes to avoid casualties among civilians, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a comment posted on the ministry’s website on Saturday.

"We call on the United States and other NATO countries to be responsible and discriminate in choosing targets, like the Russian aerospace forces are doing in Syria. There have been numerous reports about innocent civilians killed in NATO air strikes. The United States and its allies obviously must be guided by international law in conducting such operation. They should not act unilaterally but instead they must coordinate their steps with all members of the international community concerned," the document says.

"We extend our deepest condolences to the families of the officers of the Serbian embassy in Libya, Jovica Stepic and Sladjana Stankovic, who were killed as a result of the US’s air strike at a facility where they were kept as Islamic State hostages. These people were abducted on November 28, 2015. Belgrade was aware of their whereabouts and was in talks on their release," the Russian foreign ministry said.

  

Japan Asks China for Convincing Explanation of Missile Deployment

TOKYO - Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani Friday asked China to give a "clearer and more convincing" explanation of its recent deployment of anti-aircraft missiles on an island in the disputed South China Sea.

Japan has confirmed the deployment, undertaken last week in Woody Island, through satellite images of the island and other sources, Nakatani told the press, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The minister also restated Tokyo's opposition to "unilateral actions to change the status quo" in the region, such as the construction of outposts and their use for military purposes, and stressed the unanimous concern of the international community about such actions.

Tokyo continues to collect information about Chinese activities in the South China Sea after the missile deployment, and feels the action will escalate tension in the region.

The defense minister also recalled Chinese President Xi Jinping's remarks about not militarizing the South China Sea during his visit to Washington in September last year.

The Paracel archipelago is controlled by China, however Taiwan and Vietnam stake claims of sovereignty over it.

The South China Sea region has witnessed escalated tensions since last year after it was revealed that Beijing has built military installations in islets and reefs in the Spratly Islands, partially controlled by China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Mexican Who Tried to Smuggle Iguanas Out of Galapagos Gets 2 Years in Prison

QUITO – A Mexican man who tried to smuggle 11 iguanas out of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands has been sentenced by a judge to serve two years in prison and pay a fine of $20,000, Galapagos National Park said in a Twitter post Sunday.

Gustavo Eduardo Toledo Albarran was arrested last year when he tried to smuggle the marine and land iguanas out of Santa Cruz Island.

“The judge from the multi-jurisdiction unit in the district of Santa Cruz sentenced the citizen of Mexican nationality, Gustavo Eduardo Toledo Albarran, to two years in prison at the Guayaquil-Varones Social Rehabilitation Center ... where he is being held,” the national park said.

Toledo was arrested on Sept. 6, 2015, in Puerto Ayora “while carrying 11 native iguanas, including nine marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) and two land iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus), unique species in the world, in a backpack that belonged to him,” the national park said.

The Mexican citizen was charged with wildlife trafficking under Article 247 of the Ecuadorian Criminal Code.

Wildlife trafficking is the third most profitable illegal activity in the world, trailing only drug and arms trafficking, the Ecuadorian Environment Ministry said last year.

The crime is punishable by up to three years in prison in Ecuador.

The Galapagos Islands are located about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) west of the coast of continental Ecuador and were declared a World Natural Heritage Site in 1978.

Some 95 percent of the territory’s 8,000 sq. kilometers (a little over 3,000 sq. miles) constitutes a protected area that is home to more than 50 species of animals and birds found nowhere else on the planet.

The islands were made famous by 19th-century British naturalist Charles Darwin, whose observations of life on the islands contributed greatly to his theory of the evolution of species.