The Iraq-Ukraine connection

August 07, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Diplomacy must clear the way to protect Iraqis from the group called the Islamic State.

Subscribe Now to read this post!

To read this post and thousands more articles, subscribe today!

Indirect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over extending a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and ending a blockade of the battered territory got underway in Cairo on Wednesday, with both sides taking hard-line positions and much jockeying expected ahead. Israel wants the Islamic militant Hamas to disarm, or at least ensure it cannot re-arm, before considering the group's demand that the territory's borders be opened. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's intense bombardment of Gaza, saying that despite the high civilian death toll it was a "justified" and "proportionate" response to Hamas attacks.

Health workers in West Africa appealed on Wednesday for urgent help in controlling the world's worst Ebola outbreak as the death toll climbed to 932 and Liberia shut down a major hospital where several staff were infected, including a Spanish priest. The World Health Organization (WHO) said it would ask medical ethics experts to explore the emergency use of experimental treatments to tackle the highly contagious disease after a trial drug was given to two US charity workers infected in Liberia.

Car bombs tore through busy shopping streets in two Baghdad neighborhoods on Wednesday night, killing 51 people as the army announced that one of its airstrikes had killed 60 militants in the northern city of Mosul. Baghdad police said the first attack was a pair of car bombs that exploded in the densely populated Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, killing 31 people, followed by another bomb in the nearby area of Ur that claimed another 11 lives. Baghdad has been on edge since Sunni militants led by the radical Islamic State group conquered large swaths of the country's north, including the second largest city of Mosul. While the fighters have stopped short of advancing on the capital there has been a steady campaign of car bombs in the city, though none this deadly.

The US military began questioning freed US prisoner-of-war Bowe Bergdahl Wednesday on the circumstances that led to his 2009 capture in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Bergdahl's lawyer said on Tuesday. Bergdahl, an Army sergeant, will be questioned by investigating officer Major General Kenneth R. Dahl at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, where Bergdahl has been stationed for the past several weeks.

The founder of Argentina's leading human rights group said Monday that she had located the grandson taken from her daughter while a prisoner of the military dictatorship in the 1970s, one of the long-unsolved mysteries from the "dirty war" era that still haunts the country. Surrounded by her large extended family, an emotional Estela Barnes de Carlotto, founder of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, announced that her long hunt for her grandchild had ended, while acknowledging other families are still searching for hundreds of children taken under similar circumstances.

Economists have long argued that a rising wealth gap has complicated the US rebound from the Great Recession. Now, an analysis by the rating agency Standard & Poor's lends its weight to the argument: The widening gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else has made the economy more prone to boom-bust cycles and slowed the 5-year-old recovery from the recession. Economic disparities appear to be reaching extremes that "need to be watched because they're damaging to growth," said Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at S&P.

Dozens of people helped rescue a fellow commuter in Australia by pushing against a train car to free the man whose leg slipped between the platform and the train. Closed-circuit footage released by the Western Australia State Public Transport Authority showed the man lost his footing while boarding the train at a station in the city of Perth on Wednesday. A passenger alerted railway staff who stopped the train from leaving, local media said. When railway workers realized the man couldn't move, they called on other passengers to help. The footage showed dozens of people rushing to help tilt the car to free the man, who fell at least thigh deep into the platform gap.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

Subscribe Now to read this post!

Are you sure?

Forgot to add folder?

Tags Error