Global Networks

5:58 pm

Pakistan militants deny 30 killed in renewed Khyber fighting

(GNN) - Pakistan security forces killed 30 militants in gunbattles in the mountainous northwestern Khyber region on Saturday, a senior official said, but a spokesman for the militants denied suffering any losses.

The two sides have been making conflicting claims about their success in clashes in Tirah Valley, near the Afghan border, and there is no way to confirm casualties independently as the area is sealed off to journalists.

"The security forces had started advancement towards the hilltops where the terrorists had established sanctuaries," a senior security official in Peshawar, who requested that he not be identified, said.

"So far, 30 terrorists have been killed and a number of their compounds de‎stroyed." He said "fierce" fighting was continuing.

The government said on Saturday 32,347 people had been arrested on charges "aimed at ridding the country of terrorism and extremism" since the launch of the National Action Plan in December, Pakistan's APP news agency reported.

The plan was introduced after the Dec. 16 killing of 132 schoolchildren by suspected Taliban militants in Peshawar. The APP did not say what had happened to those detained.

The air force, struggling to reclaim land lost to the militants years ago, has been pounding positions in the Tirah Valley for days and the military said before Saturday's clashes it had killed more than 100 militants. At least seven soldiers had also been killed, it said.

Salahuddin Ayubi, a spokesman for the Lashkar-e-Islami, which announced an alliance with the Pakistani Taliban earlier this month, denied suffering losses on Saturday.

Ayubi said fighting between the militants and Pakistani forces started early on Saturday in parts of the valley.

"We didn't suffer human losses. Our fighters are engaged in fighting and didn't vacate their posts in Tirah," he told Reuters.

‎Taliban sources said that leaders had urged fighters to get to the valley and support Lashkar-e-Islami.

The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban share a similar jihadist ideology but operate as separate entities. The Pakistani Taliban is focused on toppling the state and establishing strict Islamic rule.

A military official said on condition of anonymity on Friday it would be extremely difficult for Pakistan to commit troops to a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen as it was already overstretched on its own borders.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Andrew Roche)

5:53 pm

Islamist groups seize Syrian city Idlib for first time

(GNN) - Islamist groups including al Qaeda's Nusra Front have seized the city of Idlib for the first time in Syria's civil war, fighters and a monitoring group said on Saturday.

By taking Idlib, capital of a northwestern province of the same name, hardline Islamist insurgents now control a second province after Raqqa, the stronghold of the Islamic State group which has been the target of U.S.-led air strikes.

Sunni Islamist groups have formed an alliance which includes Nusra, the hardline Ahrar al-Sham movement and Jund al-Aqsa, but not Islamic State, their rival. They launched the offensive to capture Idlib city on Tuesday.

Syrian officials could not be immediately reached for comment. State media said fighting continued and the army had managed to halt the insurgents' advances on the northern, eastern and southern sides of the city.

"The army is fighting fierce battles to restore the situation back to what it was," state television said, adding that the army had killed hundreds of fighters.

Groups taking part in the offensive to seize the city posted videos on the internet showing fighters roaming the streets. Voices in the videos said they were in the center of the city.

The film showed insurgents shooting in the air and chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) outside a compound formerly held by government forces.

"ARMY OF FATAH"

Idlib, a city whose population has been swollen by hundreds of thousands of displaced people from other parts of Syria, is close to the strategic highway linking Damascus to Aleppo and to the coastal province of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad.

"They have entered the city from several sides but the major push was from the northern and western sides," said Rami Abdelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group which monitors the civil war.

The Islamist alliance calls its operation Army of Fatah, a reference to the conquests that spread Islam across the Middle East from the seventh century.

Footage posted on the internet earlier on Saturday by Nusra Front showed dozens of fighters in the streets of what a voiceover said was Idlib city.

"This is my house, for four years I have not entered it. This is my neighborhood, this is our country and by God's will we will liberate it and settle Muslims in it," a fighter said in the video.

He was welcomed by several men. Some embraced him and wept.

In another video, fighters were shown on top of a building which bore the insignia of Assad's Baath party, trying to tear down huge posters of the president.

Syria's four-year-old war has killed more than 220,000 people and forced millions out of their homes.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Mariam Karouny; editing by Andrew Roche)

5:50 pm

Arab states see a month of Yemen strikes, maybe longer, official says

(GNN) - An Arab alliance attacking Shi'ite Muslim Houthi forces in Yemen initially plans a month-long campaign, but the operation could last five or six months, a Gulf diplomatic official said on Saturday.

The official, from a country that belongs to the alliance, said Shi'ite Iran, the Houthis' main foreign ally, was likely to retaliate indirectly, by encouraging pro-Iranian Shi'ite activists to carry out armed attacks in Bahrain, Lebanon and eastern Saudi Arabia.

Iran, in a tug-of-war with Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia for influence across the Middle East, has denied supporting the Houthis militarily, and has criticized the Gulf Arabs for their military action.

Since the Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes against them early on Thursday, the Houthis, seeking to overthrow the Western- and Saudi-allied President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, have continued to make gains.

But the official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the attacks would go on until Yemen was able to resume a U.N.-backed political transition interrupted by the Houthis' seizure of Sanaa in September.

He said Gulf Arab concern over the Houthis' influence in Yemen had been heightened in January by satellite imagery showing Houthi forces repositioning long-range Scud missiles in northern districts near the Saudi border.

The Scuds, with a range of between 250 km (150 miles) and 650 km (400 miles), were aimed northwards at Saudi territory.

He said Yemen's military had about 300 Scuds, the bulk of which were believed to be in the hands of the Houthis and allied military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and that the campaign so far had destroyed 21 of them.

STRUGGLE FOR STABILITY

Yemen, by far the poorest country on the Arabian peninsula, has struggled to regain stability since mass protests in 2011 that eventually unseated Saleh after 33 years in power. Hadi led a national dialogue that was discussing a new constitution when the Houthis took the capital and pushed him aside.

The Gulf diplomatic official said the coalition would not accept that the Houthi "coup" had succeeded, and wanted Yemenis to push for a resumption of the U.N.-backed process.

He said it could take five or six months for the campaign's aims to be realized, but there was room for everyone, including Houthis, in that process of forging a new constitution.

The official said Houthi forces were being trained and supported on the ground by about 5,000 experts from Iran and its regional allies, the Hezbollah group in Lebanon and Iraqi Shi'ite militias.

He said the Houthis were today a "quintessentially Yemeni tribal" movement, but with a few years of Iranian training would become a more formidable force, capable of ruling much of the country.

It was widely recognized that Hadi lacked a significant power base, the official said.

But Arab states supported Hadi as he was Yemen's legitimate head of state and had a role as a temporary, transitional figure leading the U.N.-backed reform process, which was meant to shepherd Yemen to stability after decades of autocracy followed by political upheaval.

Saleh's political party called on Friday for a cessation of hostilities by both sides, a statement carried by the party's website said. The Gulf diplomatic official welcomed that, but said it would be good to hear Saleh say it in his own words.

(Reuters)(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

5:48 pm

Four Iraqi soldiers killed fighting with Islamic State in Tikrit

(GNN) - Four Iraqi soldiers were killed in street fighting with Islamic State militants in Tikrit overnight as they advanced slowly into the city, a Sunni jihadist bastion, in the wake of coalition air strikes, a security official said.

The troops entered Tikrit's southern Shishin and northern al-Qadisiya neighborhoods on Friday, after the U.S.-led international alliance carried out air strikes against Islamic State, the officer from the Salahuddin province operation command told Reuters on Saturday.

The campaign was slowed on Friday evening by clashes with Islamic State that killed of four and wounded 11 other soldiers, the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Most of the Iranian-backed Shi'ite paramilitaries, which Iraqis call the Popular Mobilization Committees, or Hashid Shaabi in Arabic, are openly hostile to the United States and have opposed coalition air strikes.

The groups continue to hold their positions around the city's borders but, with the exception of the Badr Organization, are boycotting the current Iraqi military foray in protest against the coalition's involvement.

The force of more than 20,000 fighters and military personnel, the majority of them from Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, launched the offensive on March 2, but it stalled two weeks ago, with officials citing high casualties among the fighters and concerns about civilians trapped in the city.

Iraqi military commanders called for coalition air strikes to break the deadlock, but Shi'ite militia leaders said they did not need help, least of all from the United States, which some view as their enemy and even accuse of aiding Islamic State.

Iraqi officials, speaking in private, described the U.S. government as unhappy with a Shi'ite militia-led assault on one of the largest Sunni Muslim cities in Iraq.

Sunnis have accused the Shi'ite militia fighters of displacing civilians and carrying out extra-judicial killings in areas they have liberated from Islamic State, including in eastern Diyala province and the farmlands surrounding Baghdad.

The decision by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to request U.S.-led air strikes on Tikrit came even though many Iraqi politicians believed he could not risk going against the wishes of the paramilitary fighters on the ground.

U.S. military officials, mindful of the controversy around their joining a fight in which Iran has provided critical military support, have describe the ground offensive as involving Shi'ite fighters not aligned with Iran.

(Reuters)(Reporting By Saif Hameed and Ned Parker; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

5:38 pm

Chile desert rains sign of climate change: chief weather scientist

(GNN) - The heavy rainfall that battered Chile's usually arid north this week happened because of climate change, a senior meteorologist said, as the region gradually returns to normal after rivers broke banks and villages were cut off.

"For Chile, this particular system can only be possible in an environment of a changed climate," Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Jeremiah Lengoasa told Reuters on a visit to Santiago on Friday.

The intense rainfall that began Tuesday in an area that is home to the Atacama, the world's driest desert, had resulted in nine deaths by Friday, with 19 people still missing, nearly 6,000 people in temporary housing and some roads cut off, the government's emergency office Onemi said.

Under a more familiar beating sun, people began to trickle back to debris-strewn villages and smashed houses. A curfew is in place in the Atacama region tonight, Onemi said, while operations at some mines in the top copper producer are still on hold.

Local media reported that one of those who lost his home was Victor Zamora, one of the 33 miners whose dramatic rescue from a mine in nearby Copiapo in 2010 attracted global attention.

While the worst seems to be over, Chile can expect to see more of this kind of event in the future, Lengoasa said.

"This is an example of an extreme (event) - it's an unprecedented event in a place where you would not normally expect it to happen," he said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by Bernard Orr)

5:33 pm

U.S.-Russian crew reaches space station for year-long stay

(GNN) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, sending a U.S.-Russia crew to the International Space Station for a year-long flight, a NASA Television broadcast showed.

The capsule holding NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, 51, and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko, 54, and Gennady Padalka, 56, slipped into a docking port on the station’s Poisk module at 9:33 p.m. EDT/0133 GMT. The trio blasted off about six hours earlier.Kelly and Kornienko are slated to make the first year-long stay on the orbital outpost, double the current mission durations. Padalka, who is making his fifth flight, will return to Earth in September after racking up 878 days in space, setting a new record for the total amount of time anyone has spent in space.

Four Soviet-era cosmonauts lived on the now-defunct Mir space station for a year or longer, but the missions, which concluded in 1999, did not have the sophisticated medical equipment that will be used during International Space Station investigations, NASA said.

Scientists are interested in seeing how the human body fares during longer stays in space, as the United States and other countries begin planning for multi-year missions to Mars.

In addition to more exposure to radiation, astronauts experience bone and muscle loss and changes in their cardiovascular, immune and other systems.

Kelly and Kornienko will participate in a battery of experiments before, during and after their flight to assess psychological and physiological changes from being in microgravity for a year.

A third participant is Kelly’s identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut who will serve as a ground-based subject for genetic and other studies.

“The classic question is ‘How much of our health and our behavior is determined by our genes, and how much by our environment?’ – the nature versus nurture discussion,” Craig Kundrot, deputy chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, said in a NASA interview.

“In this case, we’ve got two genetically identical individuals and we can monitor what kind of changes occur in Mark in an ordinary lifestyle and compare that to the changes that we see in Scott in flight,” he said.

While no definitive conclusions can be made from a study of a single set of twins, scientists hope the experiments may provide clues for follow-up investigations.

The station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations, is a research laboratory that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.

(Reuters)(Editing by Ken Wills)

3:21 pm

Turkey's Erdogan says can't tolerate Iran bid to dominate Middle East

(GNN) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Iran on Thursday of trying to dominate the Middle East and said its efforts have begun annoying Ankara, as well as Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab countries.

Turkey earlier said it supports the Saudi-led military operation against Houthi rebels in Yemen and called on the militia group and its "foreign supporters" to abandon acts which threaten peace and security in the region.

"Iran is trying to dominate the region," said Erdogan, who is due to visit Tehran in early April. "Could this be allowed? This has begun annoying us, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. This is really not tolerable and Iran has to see this," he added in a press conference.

Warplanes from Saudi Arabia and Arab allies struck at Houthi forces in Yemen, who have taken over much of the country in their campaign to oust President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi-led intervention marked a major escalation of the Yemen crisis, in which Shi'ite Muslim Iran supports the Shi'ite Houthis, and Sunni Muslim monarchies in the Gulf back Hadi and his fellow Sunni loyalists in Yemen's south.

Erdogan said the conflict has evolved into a sectarian one and urged Iran to withdraw. "Iran has to change its view. It has to withdraw any forces, whatever it has in Yemen, as well as Syria and Iraq and respect their territorial integrity."

Erdogan's plans to visit Iran had not changed, his spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, told journalists earlier on Thursday without giving a specific date.

In an interview with France 24, Erdogan also criticized Iran's role in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq, saying Tehran was aiming to drive out the Sunni insurgents only to replace them.

"Iran's attitude towards the matter is not sincere because they have a sectarian agenda. So they will want to fill the void that will be created by Daesh (Islamic State) themselves," Erdogan said in comments dubbed to English.

Iraqi forces launched military campaign to retake the city of Tikrit three weeks ago, the largest offensive to be undertaken by the Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militias since Islamic State overran a third of the country last year.

The most prominent Iranian military officer seen on the battlefield during the Tikrit offensive is Major-General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the al-Quds brigade of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

"This is someone I know very well," Erdogan said, referring to Soleimani. "Yes, he is part of the operations in Iraq. So what is their objective? To increase the power of Shi'ite in Iraq. That's what they want," he said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Trevelyan/Ruth Pitchford)

3:17 pm

Yemen war clouds raise dangers for top oil shipping route

(GNN) - Conflict in Yemen risks spilling out into the busy sea lanes that pass it and potentially disrupt the narrow Bab el-Mandeb passage through which nearly 4 million barrels of oil are shipped daily to Europe, the United States and Asia.

Oil prices rose as much as 6 percent on Thursday after neighboring Saudi Arabia and its allies launched air strikes on Yemen that targeted Iran-backed Houthi rebels fighting to oust Yemen's president.

The development is a gamble by the world's top oil exporter to check Iranian influence in its backyard.

"The collapse of Yemen as a political reality and the power of the Houthis will enable Iran to expand its presence on both sides of the Bab el-Mandeb, in the Gulf of Aden and in the Red Sea. Already discrete numbers of Iranian naval vessels regularly sail these waters," J. Peter Pham of U.S. think tank the Atlantic Council said.

Analysts say Houthi forces do not themselves have the maritime capabilities or the interest to target the Bab el-Mandeb, while warning of Iranian influence.

"If the Iranians were to gain access to a de facto base in some port or another controlled by the Houthis whom they have aided in the latter’s fight, the balance of power in the sub-region would shift significantly," said Pham, who also advises U.S., European and African governments

The United States and its allies regularly stage naval exercises in the Gulf. The head of U.S. forces in the region said on Thursday the U.S. military would work with Gulf and European partners to ensure the Bab el-Mandeb remained opened.

Militants have launched successful maritime attacks in the area before. Yemen has a 1,900-km (1,181 mile) coastline that also juts into the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.

A suicide bombing carried out by al Qaeda killed 17 sailors on the U.S. warship Cole in Aden's port in 2000. Two years later, al Qaeda hit a French tanker in the Gulf of Aden, south of the Bab el-Mandeb.

Egypt has said it could not stand by if its interests were threatened.

Maritime sources said four Egyptian naval vessels have crossed the Suez Canal en route to Yemen to secure the Gulf of Aden and were expected to reach the Red Sea later on Thursday.

Iran, which denies providing money and training to Houthi militia, demanded an immediate halt to all military "aggressions" in Yemen.

Last year Israel seized a ship in the Red Sea on suspicion of smuggling arms from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

"If such operations were to increase or an intrusive inspection regime introduced, there would be obvious repercussions to shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb, possibly even creating a real choke point," the Atlantic Council's Pham said.

The area has also witnessed multiple hijackings on merchant ships by Somali pirate gangs in recent years, which has abated due to the presence of international naval forces including the United States and Iran.

INSURANCE RISKS

Shipping and insurance sources say disruptions to shipping would raise costs. Yemen shut its major seaports on Thursday due to the fighting.

"If a ship is attacked or damaged that would lead to an immediate market reaction. No one at the moment wants to be first to do anything. But everyone is watching this minute by minute," a top ship insurer said.

Any closure of Bab el-Mandeb, Arabic for "Gate of Tears" due to its precarious navigation, would close off the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline that connects to the Mediterranean and supplies oil to southern Europe.

"If an escalating conflict results in the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Straits, tankers from the Persian Gulf would be unable to reach the Suez Canal and the SUMED Pipeline, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa, a journey of at least 40 days," said shipping analyst Natasha Boyden with MLV & Co.

Yemen was already considered a higher risk area than Syria and Iraq, shippers said.

"Because of recent events, Yemen is now really in a category where no one is binding new business. Instead they are working on evacuation and business interruption for existing clients who are abandoning assets," said Smita Malik of insurance provider Clements Worldwide.

"It is like the analogy that you can’t insure your house when it is already on fire."

(This story has been refiled to correct the spelling of reporter's name to Yeganeh from Yaganeh in the additional reporting line at the bottom of the story)

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington, editing by William Hardy and David Evans)

3:13 pm

Stocks slide, oil prices jump after Yemen air strikes

(GNN) - Oil prices jumped 5 percent and stock markets worldwide slumped on Thursday after Saudi Arabia and allies carried out air strikes in Yemen, which fueled worries Middle East that energy shipments may be put at risk.

Wall Street steadied in late trading, narrowing losses that had been as much as 1 percent to close just modestly lower with support from economic data and corporate earnings reports.

"The air strikes in Yemen have really created a risk-off mood," said Rabobank strategist Philip Marey.

Brent oil LCOc1 closed up nearly 5 percent at $59.19 a barrel, but off a session high of $59.78. U.S. crude CLc1 closed up 4.5 percent at $51.43 a barrel after reaching $52.48.

The MSCI world equity index .MIWD00000PUS, which tracks shares in 45 countries, was last off 0.80 percent.

In currency markets, the dollar fell against traditional safe havens the Swiss franc and the yen after warplanes from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries struck Shi'ite Muslim rebels fighting to oust Yemen's president.

The dollar later recovered against the franc CHF= and was last up 0.4 percent at 0.9633 francs. Against the yen, the dollar was last at 119.26 yen JPY=, off 0.18 percent.

The dollar was down earlier against the euro EUR=RR but recovered in New York trading on the view that central bank policy was more favorable for the U.S. currency. The euro was last off 0.80 percent at $1.0884.

Iran denounced the attacks as the Saudi military also targeted Iran-backed Houthi rebels besieging the southern Yemen city of Aden. Arab producers ship oil via the narrow Gulf of Aden and the prospect of bigger Middle East conflict sparked fears of a disruption of crude supplies.

A vertiginous slide in oil prices from more than $115 a barrel last June to a low of $45 in January has been a major driver of financial markets and a key factor driving global interest rates down and stock markets up.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 closed down 0.8 percent. In Germany, a major industrial economy heavily dependent on oil imports, the DAX index .GDAXI ended off 0.2 percent.

Wall Street's Dow Jones industrial average .DJI closed off 40.31 points, or 0.23 percent, to 17,678.23, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 4.9 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,056.15 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 13.16 points, or 0.27 percent, to 4,863.36.

Gold rose, climbing 0.75 percent to $1,203.20 an ounce XAU=, supported by the weak dollar and Middle East tensions.

Yields on U.S. Treasuries, often a safe haven for fretful investors, rose as the government held a sale of $29 billion of Treasury notes that met with soft demand. The benchmark 10-year note US10YT=RR was off 25/32 and yielded 2.0069 percent, compared to 1.92 percent on Wednesday.

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Marc Jones and Nigel Stephenson in London; Editing by James Dalgleish and Leslie Adler)

3:08 pm

Obama discusses Yemen, Iran in call with Turkey's Erdogan

(GNN) - President Barack Obama spoke with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday about pressing issues in the Middle East, including the crisis in Yemen, the White House said.

The hour-long call was initiated by Turkey, sources in the Turkish president's office said. It came on a day when Erdogan later complained at a news conference that "Iran is trying to dominate the region" and must withdraw forces from Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

Turkey and the United States support the Saudi-led military operation against Houthi forces in Yemen, who have taken over much of the country in an effort to oust President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Iran supports the Houthis.

The leaders also discussed U.S.-led negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, the White House said in a statement. Erdogan is scheduled to visit Tehran in April.

Obama and Erdogan discussed their cooperation fighting Islamic State militants and "common efforts to bring security and stability to Iraq and Syria," the White House said in a statement about the call.

"The two leaders reviewed the train-and-equip program for vetted members of the moderate Syrian opposition. They discussed efforts to deepen cooperation to stem the flow of foreign fighters," the White House said.

Obama "expressed appreciation for Turkey's continuing support to nearly two million refugees from Iraq and Syria," the White House said, noting they also discussed the crisis in Ukraine.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason in Washington and Humerya Pamuk in Istanbul; Editing by Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)

3:05 pm

U.S. has no policy to protect Syrian force after training: general

(GNN) - Syrian opposition forces being trained to fight Islamic State militants will need support from the U.S.-led coalition when they return home, but the Obama administration has yet to decide what protection to offer, a top U.S. commander said on Thursday.

Army General Lloyd Austin, the head of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate hearing the Syrian opposition force being trained by the coalition would need help with logistics, air strikes and intelligence but said the administration had not agreed on a policy about providing protection once the troops returned home.

His remarks prompted Senator John McCain, a Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to slam the administration for launching the training effort before it had worked through how it would support the forces once they returned to Syria.

"General, that's immoral. It's not only unworkable, it's immoral," McCain said.

"I do not know how you recruit young people to fight and ... we don't have a policy yet whether we're going to protect them or not," he said.

The United States and coalition partners have begun vetting members of the Syrian opposition and plan to offer military training in as many as four countries across the region. The training is expected to begin this spring, building to about 5,000 troops a year for three years.

Syria is currently in the middle of a civil war between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebel factions opposed to his rule. A power vacuum in areas of the country enabled Islamic State militants to expand their power and overrun parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Austin said he intended to seek support for the Syrian opposition troops once they returned to their homeland.

"My best military advice as we go forward is that as we introduce the forces that we've trained and equipped, then we should provide them support," he said. "We should not only look to provide them fires (air strikes), we should provide them logistics, we should provide them intel (intelligence) support."

He acknowledged the Syrian opposition could be targeted by Assad's forces, which have targeted rebels with improvised barrel bombs.

"My recommendation would be that we protect them no matter who's attacking them," Austin said.

Pressed on whether provisions were in place do that, Austin said, "We currently don't have that policy decision." He added he was "very hopeful" about being able to tell them they would receive U.S. support.

"I'm very hopeful, too," McCain replied, "but hope really doesn't stop barrel bombing."

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Leslie Adler)

3:03 pm

Arab foreign ministers agree on unified military force

(GNN) - Arab foreign ministers meeting in Egypt agreed a draft resolution on Thursday to form a unified military force, in a move aimed at countering growing regional security threats.

The agreement came after warplanes from Saudi Arabia and Arab allies struck Shi'ite Muslim rebels in Yemen on Thursday, in an effort to check Iranian influence in their backyard without direct military backing from Washington.

"The Arab ... ministers agreed on adopting an important principle, which is forming the unified Arab military force," Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby told reporters after the meeting in the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.

"The task of the force will be rapid military intervention to deal with security threats to Arab nations," Elaraby added.

The draft resolution will be referred to the Arab leaders during their March 28-29 summit in Egypt.

Egyptian TV reported earlier that the ministers asked Elaraby to coordinate with Arab armies' chiefs of staff within one month to begin forming the unified force.

The Arab league chief described the resolution as "historic".

The idea was first floated by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The 22 Arab states often have different views on how to tackle crises and calls for a unified force in the past have failed to produce tangible results.

The dangers facing the region have perhaps never seemed starker. Conflicts are intensifying in Yemen and Libya and the civil war in Syria is entering its fifth year.

Islamic State militants have taken over swathes of Iraq and Syria and spawned splinter groups across the Arab world. The United States and other major powers are seeking a final nuclear deal with Iran, in a process that worries many Sunni Arab leaders wary of Shi'ite Iran's growing influence in the region.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Mahmoud Mourad and Ali Abdelaty; Editing by Michael Georgy and Andrew Roche)

2:59 pm

New Jersey lawmakers send post-Exxon pollution bill to governor

(GNN) - New Jersey lawmakers sent a bill to Governor Chris Christie on Thursday that calls for more money from environmental settlements to fund cleanups.

The legislation came after the Christie administration announced a controversial $225 million deal with Exxon Mobil Corp on March 5 over environmental contamination from two of its former New Jersey refineries.

Environmentalists consider the sites, known as Bayway and Bayonne, the most polluted in a state infamous for its industrial contamination.

Christie, a likely Republican contender in the 2016 U.S. presidential election who faces a budget crunch at home, has called the accord a "really good deal" because the money comes on top of what Exxon would have to pay to clean up the sites.

His administration has said money from the settlement would not be available until at least fiscal 2016.

The state's Democrat-led legislature is asking for documents and questioning why the administration would settle a case worth potentially $8.9 billion for so little. The judge overseeing the state's 2004 lawsuit against Exxon must still approve the settlement after a public comment period.

Currently, the first $50 million of environmental settlements, like the one struck with Exxon, is used for restoration. Any remaining money can go into the state's general fund.

The bill that now heads to the governor calls for the use of 50 percent of that remaining money for environmental purposes as well.

"Residents have been terribly shortchanged by this settlement. Using these funds as a short-term budget fix adds insult to injury," said John McKeon, one of the bill's sponsors, in a statement.

Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said the office does not comment on pending legislation.

"However, as a budgetary matter, this is something we expect will be resolved through budget negotiations," he said.(Reuters)(GNNet)

2:56 pm

Study shows acceleration in decline of Antarctic ice shelves

(GNN) - Satellite data from 1994 to 2012 reveals an accelerating decline in Antarctica's massive floating ice shelves, with some shrinking 18 percent, in a development that could hasten the rise in global sea levels, scientists say.

The findings, published on Thursday in the journal Science, come amid concern among many scientists about the effects of global climate change on Earth's vast, remote polar regions.

The study relied on 18 years of continuous observations from three European Space Agency satellite missions and covered more than 415,000 square miles (1,075,000 square km).

During the study period's first half, to about 2003, the overall volume decline around Antarctica was small, with West Antarctica losses almost balanced out by gains in East Antarctica. After that, western losses accelerated and gains in the east ended.

"There has been more and more ice being lost from Antarctica's floating ice shelves," said glaciologist Helen Fricker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

The Crosson Ice Shelf in the Amundsen Sea and the Venable Ice Shelf in the Bellingshausen Sea, both in West Antarctica, each shrank about 18 percent during the study period.

"If the loss rates that we observed during the past two decades are sustained, some ice shelves in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas could disappear within this century," added Scripps geophysics doctoral candidate Fernando Paolo.

The melting of these ice shelves does not directly affect sea levels because they are already floating.

"This is just like your glass of gin and tonic. When the ice cubes melt, the level of liquid in the glass does not rise," Paolo said.

But the floating ice shelves provide a restraining force for land-based ice, and their reduction would increase the flow of the ice from the land into the ocean, which would increase sea levels.

"While it is fair to say that we're seeing the ice shelves responding to climate change, we don't believe there is enough evidence to directly relate recent ice shelf losses specifically to changes in global temperature," Fricker said.

Oceanographer and co-author Laurie Padman of Earth & Space Research in Corvallis, Oregon said for a few Antarctic ice shelves, ice loss can be related fairly directly to warming air temperatures. Much of the increased melting elsewhere is probably due to more warm water getting under the ice shelves because of increasing winds near Antarctica, Padman added.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Will Dunham; editing by Andrew Hay)

2:53 pm

Seven die in Chile floods, military rescues stranded residents

(GNN) - The death toll in Chile rose to seven after rains battered the north and caused flooding, the government said on Thursday, while 19 others were unaccounted for as the military rushed to rescue stranded villagers.

The downpours in the usually arid region have been the heaviest in about 80 years, although the worst of the bad weather appeared to be over, meteorologists said.

Rivers have burst their banks, flooding towns, making roads impassable and forcing miners in Chile, the world's top copper exporter, to suspend operations.

Chile, a sliver of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains in one of the world's most seismic zones, is used to dealing with natural disasters.

Military helicopters flew in supplies and evacuated residents from three villages in the Atacama region that were entirely cut off and only reachable by air, Mahmud Aleuy, the deputy interior minister, said on Thursday.

"We're transporting medicine and will start a process of mass vaccinations" in order to avoid the spread of diseases, Aleuy added.

The city of Copiapo, some 800 km (497 miles) north of Santiago and home to 160,000 people is also partly cut off, he said, adding that the airports of both Copiapo and Antofagasta further to the north have been closed to commercial air traffic.

The unusual weather phenomenon was caused by a cold front hitting the Andes. Spurred by high temperatures, it produced strong rains at the high altitudes instead of snow, which swept down to valleys and towns in the foothills.

The scenes contrasted with those of parched fields further south, which were desperate for rain after a hot, dry summer that hurt farming and mining production.

But the rains fell in a different part of the country and did not signal the end of an eight-year drought, said climatologist Claudia Villarroel.

"These rains serve to accumulate water, but the superficial run-off is very high. What is best is a little, constant rain," she said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Antonio de la Jara and Rosalba O'Brien; Additional reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Diane Craft)

1:55 pm

EU regulators take Germany to court over Hamburg coal plant

(GNN) - EU regulators have referred Germany to the EU Court of Justice over a failure to look into alternative cooling processes at a coal-fired plant in Hamburg, operated by Vattenfall [VATN.UL], in order to protect wildlife, the European Commission said.

The first of two blocks at the Moorburg power station on the river Elbe started up commercial power production earlier this month, marking the end of seven years of political controversy over the project.

Moorburg risked having a negative impact on a number of protected fish species passing near the power plant when migrating from the North Sea which is 100 kilometres away from the port of Hamburg to spawning grounds in the Czech Republic some 800 km further upstream, the Commission said.

"The species are harmed by the water abstraction process used to cool the power plant," the EU executive noted in a statement, adding when authorizing the plant, Germany failed to carry out assessments required by the Habitats Directive, a nature legislation adopted in 1992.

A spokesman for the environment agency of the Hamburg state government said the Commission had signaled its intention last autumn.

"We see our chances (of winning) as good as we think we have good arguments on our side," he said.

Hamburg had stipulated that Vattenfall build a cooling tower at the 1,635 megawatt (MW) plant and fish steps at Geesthacht south-east of Hamburg, which had proven to be successful - more fish than expected used them, he said.

Formally, the Hamburg agency comes under the Berlin environment ministry which is targeted by the EU action. Berlin and Hamburg would consult over the process where likely timing could not be gauged, the spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Vattenfall said, "We are not the subject of this process. We have a valid operating license."

Faced with opposition over carbon emissions from the plant and the fish issue, the Swedish utility in 2010 agreed to environmental measures which it has said will eat into the profitability of the 3 billion euro ($3.28 billion) project.

The European Court has the power to hand out steep fines if it finds in favor of the Commission.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Vera Eckert; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

1:53 pm

Britain's greenhouse gas emissions down 8.4 percent in 2014

(GNN) - Britain's greenhouse gas emissions fell 8.4 percent in 2014 due to a decline in fossil-fuel power generation, preliminary government data showed on Thursday.
The fall largely resulted from a 15 percent decrease in emissions from the energy supply sector as coal-fired generation fell and output from renewable power sources rose.

Output of the heat-trapping gases in Europe's second-largest emitter fell to 520.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) last year down from 568.3 million tonnes in 2013, preliminary data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas blamed for climate change dropped 9.7 percent to 422 million tonnes.

The bulk of Britain's emissions, some 36 percent, came from energy supply, followed by transport at 28 percent, business at 17 percent and residential at 15 percent. The rest came from sectors including agriculture and waste management.

Data published in February showed overall British power generation fell 7.2 percent in 2014, while coal-fired generation which emits almost double the amount of CO2 as gas, dropped to a five year low.

British utilities are major buyers of carbon permits under the European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS), which requires big emitters to surrender one permit for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit each year.

The fall in emissions is likely to mean Britain's carbon permit demand declined last year.

On April 1, the European Commission will grant access to 2014 CO2 figures for the near 12,000 installations covered by the EU ETS, which account for around 45 percent of the bloc's greenhouse gas emissions.

The data release is an important date in the EU carbon market's calendar as it gives a glimpse of the overall demand-supply balance for EU emission permits.

Britain has a legally binding target to cut its CO2 emissions by 2050 to 80 percent below 1990 levels.

(Reuters)(Reporting By Susanna Twidale Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

1:48 pm

U.S. Air Force overstepped bounds in SpaceX certification: report

(GNN) - The U.S. Air Force overstepped its bounds as it worked to certify privately held SpaceX to launch military satellites, undermining the benefit of working with a commercial provider, an independent review showed on Thursday.

The report cited a "stark disconnect" between the Air Force and SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, about the purpose of the certification process and recommended changes.

Air Force Secretary Deborah James ordered the review after the service missed a December deadline for certifying SpaceX to compete for some launches now carried out solely by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.

The Pentagon is eager to certify SpaceX as a second launch provider, given mounting concerns in Congress about ULA's use of a Russian-built engine to power its Atlas 5 rocket.

The Air Force said on Monday it was revamping the certification process, but did not release the report on the review until Thursday and hoped to complete the work by June.

The report, prepared by former Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch, said the Air Force treated the process like a detailed design review, dictating changes in SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and even the company's organizational structure.

That approach resulted in over 400 issues that needed to be resolved, which was "counterproductive" to a national policy aimed at encouraging competition in the sector.

In fact, the process was intended to show that SpaceX met overall requirements to launch military satellites, not carry out the more detailed review required for each launch on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Welch faulted SpaceX for assuming its experience launching other Falcon 9 rockets would suffice to be certified, and not expecting to have to resolve any issues at all.

"The result to date has been ... the worst of all worlds, pressing the Falcon 9 commercially oriented approach into a comfortable government mold that eliminates or significantly reduces the expected benefits to the government of the commercial approach. Both teams need to adjust," he said.

He urged the Air Force's Space and Missiles Systems Center to "embrace SpaceX innovation and practices," while SpaceX needed to understand the Air Force's need to mitigate risks, and be more open to benefiting from the government's experience.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Andrea Shalal. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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