UN report: Iraqi civilians dying at a ‘staggering’ rate
UN report: Iraqi civilians dying at a ‘staggering’ rate
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq witnessed a sharp increase in civilian deaths following the fall of large swaths of territory to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014. Now despite a string of recent battlefield losses for IS, civilians in Iraq continue to die at a “staggering” rate, according to a new United Nations report.
At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between the start of 2014 and Oct. 31 of last year, according to the U.N. report released Tuesday. In just one six-month period between May and October last year, more than 10,000 civilians were killed.
“Despite their steady losses to pro-government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering,” U.N. envoy Jan Kubis said in a statement, using an alternative acronym for the extremist group.
The numbers are nowhere near the death tolls recorded during Iraq’s bloody civil war. In 2006 alone more than 34,000 civilians were killed, according to U.N. data.
The following year the Iraqi government refused to provide the U.N. with death toll statistics, stating that the government wanted to prevent the data from painting a negative image of the country. But civilian casualties since the rise of IS in Iraq are considerably higher than the preceding years of relative stability. In 2011, the number of civilian deaths due to violence was at its lowest since the civil war, with fewer than 2,800 killed.
Cruz dons face paint in appeal to hunters, gun owners
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s an image football fans in Iowa are likely to see this weekend: Ted Cruz, his face smeared with black greasepaint, sitting in a Louisiana duck blind with a borrowed shotgun.
His Republican presidential campaign said Tuesday it’s spending $700,000 to air a gun-friendly ad during the NFL conference championship games.
Cruz has made the defense of Second Amendment rights a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, touting his past legal work fighting against gun control laws. But records suggest the 45-year-old politician’s passion for the issue emerged relatively recently in his life, coinciding with his ascent in Republican circles in Texas.
Cruz was in Louisiana last week to film a campaign video with Phil Robertson, the gray-bearded patriarch of reality TV’s “Duck Dynasty” clan. The junior senator from Texas, clad in camouflaged overalls, is shown squeezing off a couple of rounds toward the gray sky. It was not clear whether the candidate struck any ducks.
Looking into the camera, Robertson says his selection criteria for endorsing a candidate include “would they kill a duck, put ‘em in a pot and make ‘em a good duck gumbo.” He then tells Cruz, “You’re one of us, my man.”
IS acknowledges death of ‘Jihadi John’ in magazine
NEW YORK (AP) — The Islamic State group has acknowledged the death of the masked militant known as “Jihadi John,” who appeared in several videos depicting the beheadings of Western hostages, the SITE Intelligence Group reported Tuesday.
SITE, which monitors terrorist activity, reported that IS published a “eulogizing profile” of Jihadi John in its English-language magazine Dabiq on Tuesday. Jihadi John had been identified by the U.S. military as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen.
“His harshness towards the kuffar (disbelievers) was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kufr, the entire world bearing witness to this,” the Dabiq article said, according to a translation provided by SITE.
Army Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, said in November that the Army was “reasonably certain” that a drone strike in Syria had killed Emwazi, who spoke in beheading videos with a British accent as he wielded a knife.
Separately, a U.S. official said three drones — two U.S. and one British — targeted the vehicle in which Emwazi was believed to be traveling in Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in northern Syria. The official said the U.S. drone fired a Hellfire missile that struck the vehicle.
Latest gauge on China slowdown brings relief it wasn’t worse
BEIJING (AP) — The slowdown of China’s once-sizzling economy has fueled anxiety over its impact on the rest of the world. Yet when Beijing reported Tuesday that its economy grew last year at the slowest pace in a quarter-century, the reaction seemed to be mainly relief it wasn’t worse.
Economists welcomed details in the report suggesting that the world’s second-biggest economy is making some progress in a difficult and complex transition — away from a reliance on manufacturing and investment in real estate and factories and toward dependence on services and consumer spending.
Stocks rose Tuesday in Asia and Europe. By midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was up modestly.
“Things are OK,” said Fotios Raptis, senior economist at TD Economics. “There’s not an outright collapse going on in China.”
Beijing reported that economic growth fell in 2015 for a fifth straight year — to 6.9 percent , down from 7.3 percent in 2014 and the slowest rate since 1990. For the October-December quarter, growth inched down to 6.8 percent, the weakest quarterly expansion in six years.