The Middle East's hidden war

January 04, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Sunni-Shiite tensions exploded into the open in Iran and Saudi Arabia. But a recent event in Iraq has offered a different view of the religious feud.

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Saudia Arabia is severing diplomatic ties with Iran amid spiking tensions over the execution of a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric. The execution of a Shiite cleric in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia laid bare the divisions now gripping the Middle East, as protesters set fire Sunday to the kingdom's embassy in Tehran and demonstrators took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan. The mass execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others — the largest carried out by Saudi Arabia in decades — illustrates the kingdom's new aggressiveness under King Salman.

The first order of business for Congress this year will be a bill repealing President Obama's landmark health law, marking a sharply partisan start on Capitol Hill to a congressional year in which legislating may take a back seat to politics. Obama will veto the health law repeal bill, which also would cut money for Planned Parenthood. But that's the point for Republicans, who intend to schedule a veto override vote for Jan. 22, when anti-abortion activists hold their annual march in Washington to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in 1973 that legalized abortion.

President Obama is looking for ways to implement gun control requiring Congress to pass a law. He says he'll meet his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, on Monday to see what executive actions might be possible. Steps to strengthen background checks could come this week. "The gun lobby is loud and well organized in its defense of effortlessly available guns for anyone," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "The rest of us are going to have to be just as passionate and well organized in our defense of our kids."

The Mississippi River continued its retreat Sunday from historic and deadly winter flooding, leaving amid the silt a massive cleanup and recovery effort likely to take weeks if not months. The flood, fueled by more than 10 inches of rain over a three-day period that began Christmas Day, is blamed for 25 deaths in Illinois and Missouri. Risks remain, however, along the still-rising Illinois River north of St. Louis, where crests are to expected to reach new records before receding in coming days.

The number of rhinos poached in South Africa in 2015 was slightly lower than in the previous year, representing modest progress by law enforcement in countering poachers who have killed rhinos in record numbers, according to a conservation group. There were about 1,160 reported cases of rhino poaching last year, down from 1,215 in 2014. If the statistic is confirmed, it would be the first annual drop in numbers since rhino poaching surged around 2008 in South Africa, home to most of the world's rhinos.

Donald Trump brushed off his appearance in an African militant group's video to recruit Americans that shows him calling for Muslims to be banned from coming to the U.S., saying he wasn't surprised militants would try to target the GOP front-runner. The 51-minute video is by al-Shabab, al-Qaida's East Africa affiliate, and showed up Friday on Twitter. The video, broadly seeking the support of blacks and Muslims in the U.S.., contains a clip of Trump proposing the "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," an idea rebuffed by his rivals in both parties.

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