Military officials say 5 US airstrikes hit Islamic State forces near Iraq's Mosul Dam
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military says fighter aircraft and unmanned drones have struck Islamic State militants near Iraq's Mosul Dam.
In a statement issued Saturday, U.S. Central Command says the five latest U.S. airstrikes were in support of operations conducted by Iraqi security forces.
Officials say the airstrikes destroyed an armed vehicle, a fighting position and weapons and significantly damaged an Islamic State building.
Central Command says it has conducted a total of 115 airstrikes across Iraq.
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EU threatens more sanctions if Russia does not scale back Ukraine intervention
BRUSSELS (AP) — Despite tough rhetoric decrying Russia's increasing military involvement in Ukraine, European Union leaders on Sunday stopped short of imposing new sanctions against Moscow right away.
Instead, the 28-nation bloc's heads of state and government tasked their executive body to "urgently" prepare tougher economic sanctions that could be adopted within a week, according to EU summit chairman Herman Van Rompuy.
The decision on new sanctions will depend on the evolution of the situation on the ground but "everybody is fully aware that we have to act quickly," he added. The EU leaders call on Russia to "immediately withdraw all its military assets and forces from Ukraine," they said in a joint statement.
NATO said this week that at least 1,000 Russian soldiers are in Ukraine. Russia denies that. NATO also says Russia has amassed some 20,000 troops just across Ukraine's eastern border, which could rapidly carry out a full-scale invasion.
The fighting between the military and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has so far claimed 2,600 lives, according to U.N. figures.
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Syrian rebels holding 44 Fiji peacekeepers attack Filipino troops in Golan Heights
BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes erupted between al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels and U.N. peacekeepers in the Golan Heights on Saturday after the militants surrounded their encampment, activists and officials said, as the international organization risked being sucked further into the conflict.
Other U.N. peacekeepers were able to flee from a different encampment that that was also surrounded by rebels of the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, they said.
Late Saturday, the U.N. spokesperson's office reported that "the situation on the ground is calm but tense' in the Golan.
The clashes came after Syrian rebel groups, including the Nusra Front, overran the Quneitra crossing — located on the frontier between Syrian and Israeli controlled parts of the Golan Heights — on Wednesday, seizing at least 44 Fijian peacekeepers.
The Nusra Front also surrounded the nearby Rwihana and Breiqa encampments, where other U.N. peacekeepers were holed up.
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Ebola's toll on health care in W. Africa hits hard, will be felt for years to come
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — When the dreaded Ebola virus began infecting people in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema, Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan and his team were on the front lines. After stepping out of his protective suit following hours on a sweltering ward, he would jump on the phone to coordinate with the Ministry of Health, to deal with personnel issues and tend to hospital business.
He was jovial but forceful. When he walked into a room everyone looked to him for direction and he gave it decisively, said Daniel Bausch, an American doctor who worked with Khan.
But then Khan tested positive for Ebola at the end of July and died soon after. He is one of at least two leading doctors in Sierra Leone who have died in the outbreak, which has also hit Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal. The World Health Organization says it has sickened a higher proportion of medical staff than any other on record, with 240 contracting Ebola and more than half of them dying.
The toll on health workers was felt immediately by grieving and frightened colleagues and by patients who had fewer people to attend to them, and it will likely set back health care systems — poorly equipped amid rampant poverty to begin with — for years to come.
"These are people who were the backbone" of efforts to improve struggling health systems, said Bausch, a professor of tropical medicine at Tulane University. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone "are trying to dig themselves out of years of stalled or retrograde development and making some progress. This is setting them back immeasurably."
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Saudi king warns Europe and US of terrorist threat from extremist groups in Iraq, Syria
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — The king of Saudi Arabia has warned that extremists could attack Europe and the U.S. if there is not a strong international response to terrorism after the Islamic State group seized a wide territory across Iraq and Syria.
While not mentioning any terrorist groups by name, King Abdullah's statement appeared aimed at drawing Washington and NATO forces into a wider fight against the Islamic State group and its supporters in the region. Saudi Arabia openly backs rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, but is concerned that the breakaway al-Qaida group could also turn those very same weapons on the kingdom.
"If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America," he said at a reception for foreign ambassadors Friday.
Official Saudi media carried the king's comments early Saturday.
"These terrorists do not know the name of humanity and you have witnessed them severing heads and giving them to children to walk with in the street," the king said, urging the ambassadors to relay his message directly to their heads of state.
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Resurgent pro-Russia rebels brim with confidence in Ukraine after gaining ground
STAROBESHEVE, Ukraine (AP) — As the survivor of a tank attack on a Ukrainian army truck was being carried into an ambulance, he was showered with verbal abuse by a rebel fighter.
"Why didn't you say before that you were alive? Why so quiet?" the rebel taunted. Minutes later, the Ukrainian soldier drew his last breath.
Under the gaze of rebels, Ukrainian soldiers loaded the bodies of six other dead comrades onto trucks outside the village of Starobesheve. A couple of kilometers away, in the village itself, other rebels made wisecracks and boasted about dealing another punishing blow to Ukrainian forces.
After weeks of yielding ground, the Russian-backed separatists are brimming with confidence following a string of seemingly effortless victories.
On Saturday, Ukraine announced it was abandoning Ilovaisk, a city 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of Starobesheve. Surrounded on all sides over several days, they sustained fire so intense that the government was compelled to plead for a corridor out.
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International group says it will take 20 years to build adequate housing for Gaza
JERUSALEM (AP) — An international organization involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction says it will take 20 years under current levels of restrictions to rebuild the Gaza Strip's battered and neglected housing stock following the war between Hamas and Israel.
Most of the new building would be to make up for the current housing deficit, rather than to address damage from fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants.
Meanwhile, appearing in a round of post-war interviews on Israeli TV channels, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was not ready to return to the negotiating table with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unless he distances himself from Hamas militants. Hamas and Abbas' Palestinian Authority have a unity government in Gaza.
Netanyahu has regularly condemned the formal Abbas-Hamas relationship.
The housing assessment by Shelter Cluster, chaired by the Norwegian Refugee Council with the participation of the U.N. refugee agency and the Red Cross, underscores the complexities involved in an overall reconstruction program for the Gaza Strip, which some Palestinian officials have estimated could cost in excess of $6 billion.
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Nicaraguan officials: Rescuers reach 20 trapped gold miners; others still being sought
BONANZA, Nicaragua (AP) — Rescue workers and trapped miners alike frantically dug away at opposite sides of rock and mud that blocked a Nicaragua gold mine, finally succeeding in freeing at least 20 men. Efforts to reach five miners still missing continued Saturday.
Antonio Diaz said the miners tried to cheer each other up inside the dark, cold shaft, attacking the slide with their picks and shovels by the light of helmet lamps. But after 24 hours, they began feeling hungry and some started losing hope.
"The sadness of feeling yourself trapped in a hole is immense but I never lost hope," said the 32-year-old miner from a hospital bed in the town of Bonanza, near the El Comal gold and silver mine. "I kept thinking I was too young to die and above all, I thought about my two daughters."
He said the miners finally cut a hole through the blockage and started shouting, but at first there was no answer.
"Hours later, someone heard us, and when he answered us we felt life returning to our bodies," Diaz said. "God had answered our pleas to keep living."
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AP PHOTOS: Police unit treats girls from Brazilian slum to a fairy-tale evening
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Dressed in long evening gowns, girls from Rio de Janeiro's Santa Marta "favela" slum have celebrated a fairy-tale evening in a debutante ball sponsored by local police.
The 15-year-old girls were escorted to the ball held in a Copacabana dancehall Friday night by members of the Pacifying Police Unit from their community. The police units have re-conquered slums ruled for decades by drug-dealing gangs.
The girls were coiffed and made up by volunteers, and their dresses were loaned by a formal wear shop.
Debutante balls have been a custom among upper-middle-class and wealthy Brazilian families. They mark a girl's transition from childhood to adulthood.
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Rams cut Michael Sam, 1st openly gay player drafted in the NFL
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Not long after Michael Sam waved to an adoring crowd at Missouri's season opener, he looked down at his cell phone.
It was 3 p.m. CT, the deadline for NFL teams to pare rosters to 53 players. And the Rams coach was talking to the players who didn't make the cut.
He headed into the locker room. At some point, his phone rang with the bad news: He didn't make the cut.
Twenty others were cut by the St. Louis Rams on Saturday, all of them mere footnotes. For Sam, it meant a roadblock in his journey to become the first openly gay player to make an NFL roster.
Over and over, coach Jeff Fisher said, it was purely a football decision.
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