Tag: Weekend News Digest

The comments by Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi came after police and hospital officials reported that 12 people had died in overnight clashes in Sadr City.

U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by air power have largely blocked off the southern section of the sprawling district in a bid to prevent Shiite militia fighters led by the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr from firing rockets at the U.S.-protected Green Zone.

The kind of “quiet diplomacy” that the U.S. is practicing is a better way to send a message to China’s leaders rather than “frontal confrontation,” Stephen Hadley said.

President Bush has given no indication he will skip the event. “I don’t view the Olympics as a political event,” Bush said this past week. “I view it as a sporting event.” The White House has not yet said whether he will attend the opening ceremony on Aug. 8.

At least 13 Shiite militants died in the clashes, which erupted Friday night and tapered off early Saturday, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police reported seven civilians were killed as a result of the fighting between U.S and government troops and al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

Al-Sadr blamed the Americans and their Iraqi allies for the assassination Friday of one of his top aides, Riyadh al-Nouri, director of his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Gunmen ambushed al-Nouri as he was returning home from Friday prayers.

To the north, police said gunmen seized 42 students off a bus near the city of Mosul – al-Qaida’s last major urban stronghold – but later released them unharmed.

The U.S. military said that fighting broke out overnight in Sadr City, a stronghold of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militants. Officials at two local hospitals said 22 people were killed and 92 wounded. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, did not say whether the casualties were civilians or fighters. U.S. and Iraqi forces released no information about the casualties.

A police officer said that a U.S. Stryker armored personnel carrier was damaged in the fighting, which continued with sporadic exchanges of fire through Sunday morning.

Two armored Humvee vehicles and two trucks belonging to the Iraqi army were also destroyed, said the officer, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Republican Sen. John McCain will get a chance to argue that last year’s U.S. troop buildup has been a success and withdrawal would be a mistake. Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama will have an opportunity to ask why the United States is still fighting more than five years after the invasion.

All three presidential contenders serve on Senate panels that will hear and question the top U.S. military commander in Iraq when he testifies Tuesday. McCain and Clinton serve on the Armed Services Committee; Obama is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Michael Hayden cited the belief by intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden is hiding there in arguing that the U.S. has an interest in targeting the border region. If there were another terrorist attack against Americans, Hayden said, it would most certainly originate from that region.

“It’s very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able for the past 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, and that they’re bringing in operatives into the region for training,” he said.

The 2004-05 Defense Ministry scandal was just one in an unending series of setbacks in the five-year struggle to “stand up” an Iraqi military and allow hard-pressed U.S. forces to “stand down” from Iraq.

The latest discouraging episode was unfolding this weekend in bloody Basra, the southern city where Iraqi government forces – in their toughest test yet – were still struggling to gain the upper hand in a five-day-old battle with Shiite Muslim militias.

Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, freestanding Iraqi army has seemed always to slip further into the future. In the latest shift, with Petraeus now U.S. commander in Iraq, the Pentagon’s new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when homegrown units will take over security responsibility nationwide, after last year’s reports had forecast a transition in 2008.

This month’s violence in Tibet and neighboring provinces has turned into a public relations disaster for China ahead of the August Olympics, which it had been hoping to use to bolster its international image.

The Chinese government said through official media that formerly restive areas were under control and accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, of trying to harm China’s image ahead of the summer games.

Also Saturday, Iraqi authorities reported that a U.S. airstrike north of the capital killed six members of a U.S.-backed Sunni group – straining relations with America’s new allies in the fight against al-Qaida.

Two Iraqi civilians also died in the roadside bombing, which occurred as the Americans were patrolling an area northwest of the capital, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Protests against Chinese rule of Tibet were reported in neighboring Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and also in western Gansu province. All are home to sizable Tibetan populations.

The demonstrations come after protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa escalated into violence Friday, with Buddhist monks and others torching police cars and shops in the fiercest challenge to Beijing’s rule over the region in nearly two decades.

How big? One-half of a percentage point, some economists say. Investors and others hope for even more, a three-quarters cut or perhaps a full point, given the turmoil on Wall Street. It will be a close call, Fed watchers say.

The speculation ends Tuesday afternoon after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and central bank policymakers have met.

The longtime Republican district fell to the Democrats Saturday when wealthy scientist and businessman Bill Foster snatched the seat in a closely watched special election.

While Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen predicted Foster’s win would send out a “political shock wave,” Republicans were quick to downplay its significance.