Six In The Morning Monday March 23

Iraq says ISIL fighters in Tikrit under 'full siege'

Defence minister's claim comes as head of Shia armed group criticises Iraqi army for asking for coalition air strikes.

23 Mar 2015 09:19 GMT 

The Iraqi army, supported by Shia fighters, is laying "full siege" to the city of Tikrit where Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group fighters are now surrounded, according to Iraq's defence minister.

The Iraqi military - backed by at least 20,000 Shia fighters - has been fighting to regain control of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, one of several predominantly Sunni towns to fall to ISIL last year.

Operations to recapture Tikrit have been on hold for nearly a week, with Khaled al-Obeidi, the Iraqi defence minister, saying the army was trying to minimise casualties by not rushing the final assault.

Turkey's president Erdogan told to 'stop interfering' in government business

Recep Tayyip Erdogan told by deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc that he must allow government to conduct policy without his ‘emotional views’

Agence France-Presse

Monday 23 March 2015 03.24 GMT

An unprecedented rift has emerged between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the government over the handling of the peace process to end the decades-long armed struggle by Kurdish militants.

A senior minister told Erdogan to stop interfering and making “emotional” statements but the president snapped back that he had no intention of staying out of politics.

In remarks published in pro-Erdogan newspapers Sunday, the president said a meeting between the government and pro-Kurdish lawmakers three weeks ago to announce a call for disarmament was “not appropriate”.

The dispute is the most significant yet since Erdogan took the presidency in August 2014 after over a decade as premier, although analysts have noted increasing tensions between himself and hand-picked Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Women break with tradition in Afghanistan to help bury 'completely innocent' Farkhunda who was beaten to death by Kabul mob

A mob beat the 27-year-old woman to death before throwing her body off a roof, running it over with a car, setting it on fire and then throwing it in a river

LOULLA-MAE ELEFTHERIOU-SMITH

 

 

Monday 23 March 2015

The burial of a woman who was brutally killed in Kabul for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran, saw Afghan women break with tradition on Sunday and help to carry the 27-year-old’s coffin to its final resting place.

The woman, now named as Farkhunda, was beaten to death by a mob in Kabul last week following accusations she had burned a copy of the Koran. The mob of men threw her body off a roof after beating her, ran over it with a car, set it on fire and then threw it into a river next to a well-known mosque in their brutal attack.

Farkhunda, a veiled woman who had just finished a degree in religious studies and was about to take up a teaching post, had got into a dispute with a group of men who sold amulets at the Shah-Do Shamshera shrine, her family said. She had told women not to waste their money on the amulets, calling the sellers parasites.

Sarkozy denies far-right Le Pen victory in French local polls

Marine Le Pen had hoped her anti-immigrant, anti-euro party would emerge on top in first round

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party and their allies led in the first round of French local elections, exit polls showed yesterday, denying Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front (FN) first place.

If confirmed, the result would be a setback for Le Pen, who had hoped her anti-immigrant, anti-euro party would emerge on top in the first round, boosting her ambitions to win presidential elections set for 2017.

The UMP and its partners together secured 29.2 per cent of the vote nationally, an exit poll by Ifop showed, ahead of the FN on 26.3 per cent. A separate poll by CSA put Sarkozy and his allies on as much as 31 per cent, with the FN on 24.5 per cent.

Nine British medical students cross into Syria to help Islamic State

March 23, 2015 - 4:12PM

John Bingham

London: A group of British families is staging a desperate vigil on the Turkish-Syrian border after it emerged their children had offered themselves as volunteer medics to the so-called Islamic State.

Up to nine British medical students, five men and four women, who had been studying in Sudan, are understood to have flown to Istanbul 10 days ago and slipped into Syria overland.

British Foreign Office officials are providing consular support to several of the families who have congregated close to the border, desperately trying to urge their children home.

Although the students do not appear to have volunteered to fight, the families nevertheless fear they have been "brainwashed" into helping the militants. The parents have been in regular contact with their children by mobile phone and are pledging to stay there until they can successfully bring them home.

Richard III: Farewell to a King

By Bryony Jones, CNN

Updated 0121 GMT (0921 HKT) March 23, 2015

"God save King Richard!" A cry rings out in the bright spring air as the simple oak coffin of Richard III is carried away from the tower block-filled campus of the University of Leicester for the final time.

The medieval monarch's skeleton has been kept at the university since its discovery beneath a council car parking lot in the city sparked excitement around the world in August 2012.

But on Sunday the bones -- which have been studied by archaeologists and experts from all fields in the years since -- ended their tenure as scientific specimens and became, once more, the mortal remains of a king.