Iraq ( U.S. Targets Iraqi Jihadists with 2nd Round of Airstrikes )

WASHINGTON – The United States carried out a second round of airstrikes against Islamic State forces near the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, the Pentagon said late Friday.

The additional missions were ordered “to help defend the city where U.S. personnel are assisting the government of Iraq,” the Defense Department spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said in a statement.

Dozens of U.S. diplomats and military advisers are based in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Drones were used to strike a “terrorist mortar position,” eliminating a number of IS fighters, before four F/A-18 jets were dispatched against a convoy and a second mortar position outside Irbil, Kirby said.

“The aircraft executed two planned passes. On both runs, each aircraft dropped one laser-guided bomb, making a total of eight bombs dropped on target, neutralizing the mortar and convoy,” the Pentagon spokesman said.

In the initial round of strikes earlier Friday, two F/A-18s bombed IS artillery pieces.

The jets took off from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, on station in the Persian Gulf.

Before the bombing runs, cargo planes escorted by fighters dropped food and water to nearly 200,000 civilians stranded on Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq.

The refugees are mostly Christians and Kurds of the Yazidi community fleeing before the advance of IS, which views Yazidis as heretics and has given Christians in the areas it controls a choice between converting to Islam or paying a special tax.

“When we face a situation like we do on that mountain – with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help – in this case, a request from the Iraqi government – and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye,” President Barack Obama said Thursday night, announcing the authorization for airstrikes.

Thousands of Christian families fled their homes Thursday after IS militants seized several areas in the northern province of Nineveh, including Qaraqosh, the largest Christian town in Iraq.

IS, which controls parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria, has proclaimed an Islamic caliphate.

Chile ( Elderly Nun Questioned for Abduction of babies )

 

SANTIAGO, Chile – A 93-year-old Chilean nun, sister Maria Graciela Soto, has been questioned regarding the alleged abduction of babies in public and private hospitals in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973-90).

The nun was interrogated by Judge Mario Carroza last Friday in her home, online daily Emol reported, citing prosecuting lawyer Cristian Letelier.

According to some plaintiffs, Sor Maria Graciela Soto was involved in the illegal handover of babies in the Barros Luco hospital of the Chilean capital during the 1970s and 1980s.

On April 15, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts suspended priest Gerardo Joannon, currently under investigation for the irregular adoption of newborns who were pronounced dead shortly after their birth.

The decision was taken following a report by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIPER), which cited the cases of several girls of single mothers who had been declared dead.

In most of the cases, according to CIPER, it was relatives of the mothers who decided to snatch the children and give them up for adoption with the help of priests and gynecologists, a fact that was admitted by Joannon.

Mexico ( Five Dead in Attack on Mexican Police Chief’s Home )

CULIACAN, Mexico – Five people died in an attack on the home of the police chief in a village in western Mexico, a source in the Sinaloa state Attorney General’s Office told Efe on Thursday.

The incident took place in Casas Viejas, a community within the municipality of Concordia.

Police chief Alejandro Guerrero Reyes was killed, along with his two brothers and two other males, including a 15-year-old.

A group of hooded men brandishing heavy caliber weapons arrived in the village aboard a pickup truck and asked for directions to the police chief’s home, according to the official report.

The gunmen went to the residence, burst in and began shooting at everyone present.

Police and army troops who showed up after the attack found and disarmed a live grenade left behind by the assailants.

The state that gave birth to the first generation of Mexican drug lords is suffering through a period of heightened violence as rival groups jockey for supremacy following the arrest in February of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman.

Sinaloa was among Mexico’s five most-dangerous states in 2013, with 41 homicides for every 100,000 residents.

UN chief: Gaza deaths and destruction shame world

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says “the massive deaths and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the world” and is demanding an end to “the senseless cycle of suffering” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We will build again, but this must be the last time to rebuild,” the UN chief told the General Assembly Wednesday. “This must stop now. We must go back to the negotiating table.”
Ban said the UN understands Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas rockets but “the horror that was unleashed on the people of Gaza” raises serious questions about respect for international law that requires a distinction between civilians and combatants and proportionality.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay told the assembly that “any attacks in violation of these principles .... may amount to war crimes.”

Victims of Israeli barbarity buried

GAZA: For days bodies filled the morgues. Only since guns fell silent have volunteers come to dig graves in the sand in Rafah, Gaza’s “town of martyrs,” devastated by Israeli bombardment.
For three days the strategic southern town went through hell.
“The tanks came,” says Mohammed Abu Luli, 50, who fled his home after the bombardment started.
“There were strikes from air, land and sea. The bombs rained down everywhere. I have never seen anything like it in all my life,” he added.
In neighborhoods, houses lie flattened or ripped open by shelling. Asphalt on the road has been ripped up by the weight of Israeli tanks.
Rafah experienced some of the worst fighting during the month-long war between Israel and Hamas.
Mohammed’s brother Mahmud Abu Luli was sheltering in a UN school in the center of Rafah.
“But there was an Israeli bombardment just outside the school, in the street. I saw everything, there was a pool of blood on the ground,” he said behind his bushy white beard.
“Rafah is a town of martyrs!” he adds as men standing by nod in a agreement and children collect pieces of shell and mortar from the ground.
Even morgues overflowed.
“We had to use all the places in the hospital and neighbors’ houses and rental refrigerators for vegetables and put the bodies in them. The situation was a tragedy,” said Mohammed Al-Masri, director of the small Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah.
In a cemetery just 100 meters from the Egyptian border, men dig trenches in the sand and put in cement blocks to form small tomb-like rectangles. Each body is placed in a rectangle, then the whole space covered up into a mass grave.
Thirty little anonymous mounds quickly form in the sand. Outside the cemetery a group of relatives mourn the death of Sumaya Abid Duhair, a nurse killed in an air strike on her house. “We have to keep working because other bodies will be buried here,” says Nidal Shalagel, a volunteer in his 30s. “That’s enough. We need peace. No one likes death.”
Meanwhile, Save the Children placed full-page adverts in British newspapers on Wednesday listing the names of 373 Palestinian children killed as part of the charity’s campaign for a permanent cease-fire.
The black-and-white advert in broadsheet newspapers carries the names of the children that the Palestinian Ministry of Health and United Nations have reported to have died between July 8 and Aug. 3.
Readers are invited to send text messages as part of the campaign to force a permanent cease-fire “for the children of Gaza and Israel.”
In a separate statement, Save the Children said the public health system in Gaza was close to collapse and that half a million people were displaced from their homes.
Save the Children’s David Hassell said: “For the sake of children and their families, we are hoping that this cease-fire holds.
“It is desperately needed, as essential services in Gaza have all but collapsed and we are struggling to reach the most vulnerable children caught in this conflict.”

Ted Nugent claims to be more Indian than American Indians

Blog: Ted Nugent claims to be more Indian than American Indians
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014
Filed Under: Opinion 
More on: bozos, media, racism, ted nugent

      

 

Ted Nugent on stage in a headdress. Photo from Facebook Rocker Ted Nugent again blames the media for claiming he made negative comments about Native Americans as he lists all of his "friends" in Indian Country: Ted Nugent called in to Glenn Beck’s program on Friday to defend himself after a number of his shows have been cancelled by Indian tribes because of his long history of racist remarks. Nugent told Beck that in fact “my lifestyle as a white guy — though I’m hard to accept that designation — is more in the Indian tradition than many of the Indians themselves.” In response to reports that he called protesters at one of his recent shows "unclean vermin,” Nugent told Beck, “I have a spiritual blood-brother relationship with these Indians and then the left literally creates the nastiest, hateful lie they can, put quotes around words attributed to me, Glenn, claiming that I called my red brothers ‘unclean vermin,’ which I never said in my life. They created that out of whole cloth.”

man kicks squirrel off canyon to death