Turkey to let Iraqi Kurds join Kobane battle |
Minister says Iraqi Peshmerga will be allowed to cross Turkey's border to aid fight for Syrian town besieged by ISIL.
Last updated: 21 Oct 2014 04:32
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Turkey has said it will allow Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to cross its borders and join Syrian Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Syrian town of Kobane.
The reported shift in Turkish policy came after a phone call between US President Barack Obama and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"We are assisting Peshmerga forces to cross into Kobane," Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish foreign minister, announced in Ankara on Monday, adding that talks on the issue were under way.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, said there was no official decision by Iraq's Peshmerga forces to send fighters to Kobane, which is close to the Turkish border.
Availability of cheap mobile to hasten Burma’s emergence from isolation
Letter from Rangoon: Burma’s mobile phone revolution
Joe Woods
Just over a year ago in one of the world’s least-connected countries, I tried to buy a Sim card for my mobile phone. Through a series of middle-men – or middle- women in my case – I got my card along with files and photos of the former owners, which felt like I was buying a car and its history and not a microchipped piece of plastic.
I was charged Kyat 280,000 or €220 and presented with the coveted card, which has functioned reasonably well despite limited connectivity, dropped calls, and, inevitably, many wrong number calls, no doubt to the former owners.
Soon after my investment, a taxi driver laughed when he heard how much I’d paid for mine. He paid €157, hardly a bargain when you consider the average monthly salary in Rangoon is €100 per month.
Violence erupts in Saudi Arabia after verdict
The death sentence of a Shiite preacher has sparked renewed violence in Saudi Arabia. Whether Iran is behind the unrest, or whether it's a result of the marginalization of Saudi Shiites, remains unclear.
Nearly a week after prominent Shiite cleric Sheik Nimr al-Nimr was sentenced to death for sedition and other charges, renewed violence between Sunni leaders and the Shiite minority is threatening to escalate in Saudi Arabia.
Following the sentence, unknown gunmen attacked a police patrol in the country's restive eastern provinces. According to authorities, the attack set an oil pipeline on fire. The conflict has even spread across the border into neighboring Iraq, where a Shiite militia called for attacks on Saudi facilities over the weekend. Authorities in Saudi Arabia would face "serious consequences" if they did not withdraw the death sentence, came the warning. Shiite Iran has also warned Saudi Arabia over the possible execution.
Iraqi militias explain why they fight ISIL: it's not to please the West
Paul McGeough
Chief foreign correspondent
Baghdad: In a city awash with blood and gore, it borders on precious for the perpetrators of some of the brutality to demand that we slice and dice words in depicting their actions for a foreign audience.
But at a succession of meetings in Baghdad's Shiite districts – in the cinder-block drabness of the Sadr City slums; the effete cafe society of inner Karrada; and in the commandeered mansions that comprise a new Shiite political enclave on the banks of the Tigris River – I found that "militia" had become the dirtiest word in the English dictionary.
At a city cafe I was introduced to men from the Imam Ali Brigade, a splinter movement from the Mahdi Army, which fought ferociously against the Americans and their coalition colleagues after the US-led invasion of 2003. Fadil al-Shairawi, an actor and poet, was one of the so-called "marsh warriors" who fought running battles against Saddam Hussein in the vast southern marshlands – he wore Ray-Ban glasses. Ahmad Hatif, a television and film scriptwriter, arrived in a dapper white sports coat.
Condemned Christian woman to take blasphemy case to top Pakistani court
A Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan plans to take her case to the country's highest court after a high court last week rejected her appeal, her attorney says.
Asia Bibi, a mother of five from Punjab province, was accused of defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed during a 2009 argument with Muslim fellow field workers.
The workers had refused to drink from a bucket of water she had touched because she was not Muslim.
In November 2010, a Pakistani district court found Bibi guilty of blasphemy. The offense is punishable by death or life imprisonment, according to Pakistan's penal code, and Bibi was sentenced to hang.
On October 16, the Lahore High Court upheld the verdict.
Human Rights Watch described the court's decision as a "disgrace to Pakistan's judiciary."
The Russian Crusade Against the Golden Arches
By Adam Chandler11 hours ago
Following the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year, the three McDonald's outlets in the erstwhile Ukrainian peninsula were shuttered. At least one of the stores was taken over by RusBurger, the nationalist Russian hamburger chain, which boasts Czar cheeseburgers instead of Big Macs and pear lemonade instead of Coca-Cola.
In the ensuing months, as tensions have flared between the United States and Russia over the (still) ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the Golden Arches
have become a casualty in the battle. The oldest McDonald's in Russia, which for decades sat on Pushkin Square in Moscow, was among the four stores that were forced closed for "numerous violations of the sanitary code” back in August. According to The Times, it had once been the busiest McDonald's in the world.
The campaign against (perhaps) the most symbolically American brand has coincided with an international escalation of sanctions against Russia.
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