Mosul battle: 900 civilians flee city ahead of fighting
Some 900 people have fled the Iraqi city of Mosul and crossed the border into Syria, the UN refugee agency says.
This is the first large group of civilians confirmed to have escaped since the Iraqi government began its offensive to liberate Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS) on Monday.
As many as 1.5 million are thought to be in Mosul, with up to 5,000 fighters.
There are fears the militants will use the civilians as human shields as Iraqi forces get closer to Mosul.
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- Voices from Mosul as battle nears
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- Is so-called Islamic State finished?
A spokeswoman for the Office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that more than 900 people from Mosul had crossed the border into Syria and were now at a refugee camp.
Battle for Mosul: 'This is going to take a long time – Isis won't give up'
As the first clashes settle into a grind on day two, refugees speak of a desperate Isis dug in deep inside the strongholdMartin Chulov near Mosul
Their relief was palpable. Old men who had walked through the desert, families who arrived in clapped-out cars, and black-veiled women and girls: all were coming straight from the clutches of Islamic State (Isis).
The war’s most recent refugees queued on Tuesday at a checkpoint in the town of Khnash, around 14 miles from Mosul, where they spoke of the terror and confusion they had run from only hours before.
“It’s not good at all,” said a man from the nearby town of Adla, as he walked his elderly mother down a dusty hillside. He spoke of a counteroffensive staged there by the terrorist group. “The Iraqi army arrived yesterday and took the town, and today Isis came back and the army ran away. We weren’t expecting this.”
With his whine about vote rigging, Donald Trump is challenging the foundation of his country’s democracy
Four out of ten voters agree with the Republican candidate, say polls
It is easy to see Donald Trump’s charge that the election has been rigged in advance as no big deal – to be dismissed with the old schoolyard taunt, “Just because you’re losing.…” In fact, of the many threats he represents to America’s national and international wellbeing, this is surely the most dangerous. Trump is challenging the foundation of his country’s democracy.
No recent major party presidential candidate has ever talked this way: not Barry Goldwater, George McGovern or Walter Mondale, who all must have known well before election day they were heading for trouncings even more severe than the one Trump seems likely to suffer on November 8.
Several injured after police van rams into anti-US protest in Philippines
Protests in front of the US embassy in Manila have turned violent after a police van was seen ramming into protesters. The demonstrators were holding an anti-US rally in the Philippine capital.
Television footage aired on Wednesday showed a police van driving backwards and forwards into the protesters after they surrounded it and started hitting the van with wooden batons they had seized from the police.
Police also fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse the more than a thousand protestors who had gathered in front of the US embassy in the Philippine capital, Manila.
The violence happened as the protesters gathered to demand an end to the presence of US troops in the country and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the US, the country's longtime treaty ally.
Taliban reject reports of secret talks with Afghanistan
AFP
The Taliban on Wednesday rejected reports of secret meetings with the Afghan government in a bid to resume long-stalled peace negotiations, insisting that their hard line policy remains unchanged.
Afghan officials on Tuesday claimed they held two meetings since September in Doha, where the Taliban maintain a political office, after the news was first reported by Britain's The Guardian newspaper.
But Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement rejected any reports of talks or meetings.
Report finds racial bias in facial recognition technology
More than 40 rights groups asked the Department of Justice to launch a probe examining whether systems used by police to investigate crimes disproportionately identify blacks as criminal suspects.
US law enforcement agencies store images of 117 million adults as part of facial recognition programs that have become critical tools in modern police work.
But a report released on Tuesday raises serious questions about racial bias built into these systems designed to identify suspects, saying the technology disproportionately singles out blacks in criminal investigations.
The year-long study from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology charted the rapid increase in facial recognition programs at 52 police agencies nationwide. The programs contain mug shots, images from driver's licenses, and other pictures cataloged in systems created without legislative approval and operated without legal oversight, according to the study.
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