Archive for category: News

Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian city of Kobani against the ISIL say the Takfiri militants have used chemical weapons.

Kurdish officials and doctors said on Wednesday that the terrorists released a sort of toxic gas in the eastern side of the Kurdish city late on Tuesday.

Aysa Abdullah, a senior Kurdish official based in Kobani, said the victims had symptoms that included dizziness and watery eyes and that there was no equipment to precisely determine what kinds of chemicals had been used.

Other reports said the victims were transferred to a hospital in neighboring Turkey.

Many have joined the ISIL from Iraq’s former Ba’athist regime, highly skilled at using chemical weapons.

The Ba’athists are led by Izzat Ibrahim, the henchman of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The ISIL terrorists have been committing heinous crimes in the captured areas, including mass executions and beheading of people.

The ISIL militants received training to use light and heavy weapons with the help of the US government at a secret base in Jordan in 2012, informed Jordanian officials say.

NT/AS/MHB

US Secretary of State John Kerry says the White House does not need congressional approval to suspend sanctions against Iran.

The Obama administration is reportedly planning to suspend sanctions against the Islamic Republic without an immediate vote in Congress, but it says lawmakers will have the final word on whether to permanently terminate the sanctions.

“On sanctions, what we’ve merely said to people is that — and we’ve said this in public testimony as well as in private conversations — that in the first instance, we would look to suspend sanctions, which the president can do, simply because that’s the necessary way to proceed with respect to the negotiations themselves,” Kerry said Wednesday at a press conference in Berlin.

The plan, first revealed by The New York Times on Sunday, does not suggest that the US Congress will be sidestepped on any nuclear deal with Iran, Kerry said.

“I have too much respect for the process of the Congress, the rights of the Congress, and the importance of the relationship between the Executive and the Congress, the Legislative Branch, to ever suggest that there would be any credibility to this notion there’s some thought of going around it,” he stated.

The top US diplomat said that administration officials were engaged in “a regular series of briefings” with lawmakers on the issue, emphasizing that “Congress has an extremely important role to play in this.”

Iran and the P5+1 group– Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany – are negotiating to narrow their differences over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program ahead of a November 24 deadline.

Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block to resolving Western disputes over Iran’s nuclear issue is the removal of sanctions, not the number of centrifuges or the level of uranium enrichment.

In July, the US representative in nuclear talks, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, testified that the White House would consult with Congress but did not need its approval to suspend sanctions against Iran.

HRJ/HRJ

 

A medical team of 83 doctors and nurses have left Cuba for Guinea and Liberia to help the ongoing battle against the Ebola Virus in West African countries.

The 35 doctors and 48 nurses leaving for West Africa bring the total number of medical workers fighting the spread of Ebola from Cuba to 248.

The health workers were sent to Guinea and Liberia in an arrangement reached with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Epidemiologists, intensive care doctors and nurses, general practitioners, surgeons, pediatricians, and anesthetist are among the team of medical workers.

Havana has already sent 165 medical professionals to Sierra Leone.

On October 21, two people were killed in Sierra Leone in a riot triggered by health workers attempting to take a blood sample from an elderly woman suspected of being infected by the virus. About 10 others were also wounded.

In Sierra Leone alone, the epidemic has claimed about 1,200 lives.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently called on the international community to commit to the fight against the virus, warning that an entire generation of Africans was at risk of “being lost to an economic catastrophe” triggered by the epidemic.

Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever. Its symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding and they typically start between two days and three weeks after contracting the virus.

It spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

WHO says the death toll for Ebola is nearing 4,900 people, with a total of around 10,000 cases being reported.

SZH/AB/SS

British Prime Minister David Cameron has been hit by a fresh setback in his bid to curb EU migration, after incoming European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said rules on freedom of movement cannot be changed.

Juncker said Wednesday that he is not willing to compromise on rules allowing EU nationals to live in any of the bloc’s 28 nations.

Freedom of movement has been “a basic principle of the European Union since the very beginning and I’m not prepared to change this,” said Juncker.

Juncker has also reportedly told Marianne Thyssen, his new commissioner for employment, social affairs, skills and labor mobility that the rules for migration should be slackened.

In a letter sent last month, Juncker told the elected commissioner that she should be “improving the conditions for geographic and professional mobility across Europe.”

Cameron has presented plans to cap EU migration by limiting national insurance numbers available to workers, a move which Brussels has called “illegal” under EU laws. 

Juncker also called for flexibility from Britain regarding the issue and its discussions with Brussels over UK’s membership terms.

“I do want flexibility from Britain and then flexibility can be the answer from the European Union not only as far as this problem is concerned but all the problems,” said Juncker.

The remarks came on the same day as the European Parliament approved the new European Commission headed by Juncker. The commission is set to take office on November 1.

Cameron had voiced opposition to Juncker’s candidacy for the post, saying the former prime minister of Luxembourg is too much in favor of closer political union.

CAH/HMV/SS

 

American professor Paul Sheldon Foote says that Congress is pressurizing the Obama administration over Iran’s nuclear deal in order to conduct political maneuvering in the run-up to the midterm elections.

“We have very important elections in the couple of weeks coming, so this is an ideal time to go into these political maneuvers,” Foote told Press TV on Wednesday.

In the first week of November, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. Also at stake are 38 state and territorial governorships, 46 state legislatures, and numerous state and local races.

Now, several lawmakers on Capitol Hill are openly criticizing the White House for its plans to avoid a vote in Congress on any nuclear accord with Iran.

The Obama administration is reportedly planning to suspend sanctions without an immediate vote in Congress, but it says lawmakers will have the final word on whether to permanently terminate sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
 
“There should have been no sanctions to begin with against Iran or anybody else,” Foote said.

“This is a chance to posture in the last minute, the Senate is up for grabs,” he added.

He also said that American people, by voting in the elections, can show whether they recognize American values or stand by Israel.
 
“This (the election) will give a chance for people to show what they’re really stand for  — proper American values or they stand on the side of the AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the Zionist totalitarians,” he stated.
 
The powerful Israel lobby is leading the charge against lifting anti-Iran sanctions.

“I’m delighted to see that the president is going through this posturing at this stage, it couldn’t be a better time to force the issue,” the American academic noted. 

AT/GJH