Thousands of Iraqis stage rally against corruption, call for a change in government
BAGHDAD (AP) — Thousands of Iraqis braved the scorching summer heat to stage a huge protest in central Baghdad on Friday, calling on the prime minister to dissolve the parliament and sack corrupt government officials.
Security forces and riot police sealed off Iraq’s iconic Tahrir Square and searched anyone who entered the area, but tens of thousands of men, women and children thronged the sprawling square, waving Iraqi flags.
“In the name of religion, the thieves robbed us,” they chanted long into the evening.
Men with the government-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, the umbrella group made up predominantly of Shiite militias, pulled up in trucks and handed out ice water bottles to the protesters.
Their gesture was welcomed by roaring shouts in support of the paramilitary force now fighting the Islamic State group. The PMU was hastily assembled last year, with pre-existing militias and new volunteers, to reinforce the Iraqi military after it crumbled in the face of the Sunni militant blitz that seized a third of the country.
Game on! After raucous debate, GOP’s rowdy field of White House candidates heads back to work
ATLANTA (AP) — The raucous field of Republican presidential candidates hustled back before voters Friday, hoping to build on momentum from their first meeting of the 2016 campaign — and clean up any debate-night messes left behind.
“It’s not easy with 10 people debating,” said Jeb Bush, who spent Friday on the New Hampshire coast before an evening town hall.
Bush, among the rivals scrambling for notice in a campaign dominated at the moment by Donald Trump, said, “I don’t view debating as a question of winning and losing. It’s the cumulative effect of shaping people’s opinions of who you are that matters over the long haul.”
After Thursday night’s debate, a long haul is what the GOP appears in for.
With billionaire businessman Trump showing no signs of letting up, and none of the other 16 major Republicans in the race ready to concede anything after just one debate, the contest for the Republican nomination is an unsettled affair that’s just getting started.
Debate shatters ratings record for Fox News, front-runner Trump feeling the heat
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump always boasted about his ratings for “Celebrity Apprentice.” Now he can say the same thing about his first presidential debate, even if he didn’t like the show very much.
Thursday’s prime-time GOP candidates’ forum on Fox News Channel reached a stunning 24 million viewers, by far the largest audience ever for that network and any cable news event. The closest was the 1992 “Larry King Live” debate between Al Gore and Ross Perot on CNN, which was seen by 16.8 million people, the Nielsen company said.
In fact, it stands as the most-watched television program of the summer so far, beating the last game of the NBA Finals and the women’s World Cup soccer finals, Nielsen said.
The debate left front-runner Trump singed by the aggressive questioning of Fox’s moderator team of Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. Trump tweeted out criticism of the moderators as “not very good or professional” and retweeted a message from a supporter who called Kelly a “bimbo.”
Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes called his moderators “the best political team ever put on television.”
Iran nuclear deal opens diplomatic channels seeking a way to end Syria’s civil war
BEIRUT (AP) — The nuclear deal with Iran was widely expected to affect other Middle East issues, and that may already be happening with Syria: A series of recent diplomatic maneuvers suggest a growing willingness to at least engage with the Iranian-backed government of Bashar Assad on ways to end the country’s civil war.
The embattled leader seems no more inclined to step aside now than he did four years ago, and any agreement still looks to be far off — but the search seems to be on for an elegant solution that might, for example, allow him a transitional role. In part, it is also driven by the new leadership team in Saudi Arabia, which emerged with the accession to the throne of King Salman in January.
Another factor is the emergence and spread of the violent and fanatical Islamic State group as the most potent opposition to Assad, far more so than the relatively moderate rebels who won a measure of world support after the conflict began four years ago. Despite his government’s brutality and aerial bombardment that has leveled some opposition-held areas, the 50-year-old former eye doctor now seems, at least to some, comparatively more palatable.
The civil war has killed at least 250,000, displaced half the population, flooded brittle neighboring countries with refugees and has left jihadis occupying not only much of Syria but also perhaps a third of Iraq.
Among the developments of recent days:
Deadline set by Islamic State extremists for Croatian hostage in Egypt passes, tensions high
CAIRO (AP) — Police searches and diplomatic efforts intensified over the fate of a Croatian hostage held in Egypt by Islamic State extremists, who threatened to kill him Friday if the government did not release imprisoned Islamist women.
The group’s Egyptian affiliate said Wednesday that it would kill 30-year-old Tomislav Salopek in 48 hours if the Egyptian government did not release jailed “Muslim women” — a reference to those detained in the government’s crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.
As extremist sympathizers noted the passage of the deadline on social media, Croatia’s foreign minister, Vesna Pusic, met with her Egyptian counterpart in Cairo to press efforts. Foreign Minister Sameh Shourki’s office pledged in statement that Egypt “will spare no effort” in the search for Salopek.
No other information was immediately available about the fate of the hostage, a married father of two. In previous kidnapping situations involving the Islamic State group, deadlines have passed and videos of killings have appeared later.
Salopek, a surveyor in the oil and gas industry working with France’s CGG Ardiseis, was abducted in Cairo last month. The extremists’ videotaped demand, entitled “A Message to the Egyptian Government,” was shot in the style of previous Islamic State propaganda videos in which they threaten and behead hostages. It was the first time such a video had featured a foreign hostage in Egypt.
Jury reaches decision on whether Colorado theater shooter should get life term or execution
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — Jurors in the Colorado theater shooting case reached a decision Friday on whether James Holmes should be sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty.
They deliberated for about six and a half hours over two days. The sentence will be announced at 5 p.m.
Jurors reached their verdict after the judge granted their request earlier in the day to re-watch a graphic crime scene video taken immediately after the massacre. The 45 minutes of footage, played during the trial, shows 10 bodies lying amid spent shell casings, popcorn and blood.
The same jurors rejected Holmes’ insanity defense and convicted him of murdering 12 people and trying to kill 70 others three years ago inside a midnight Batman movie in suburban Denver.
The decision follows more than three months of often emotional testimony from those who survived the attack — some in wheelchairs — and the children and parents left to figure out their lives without their loved ones.
France expands hunt for debris in week-long search in the island of Reunion
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A French search plane lifted off Friday for a bird’s-eye view of Reunion Island, seeking any more potential debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
French authorities said Friday they’ve launched a one-week-long operation with boats and aircraft scouring the Indian Ocean island, where a wing fragment was discovered nine days ago. Malaysian officials say it came from the missing Boeing 777 but investigators from other countries are being more cautious.
The prefect of the French overseas department, Dominique Sorain, said Friday that the search would cover an area 120 kilometers (75 miles) by 40 kilometers (25 miles) around the east coast — where the 2-meter-long wing fragment was found.
Sorain said other objects have been found on the island’s beaches since last week and have been removed for examination, but he said officials “don’t know” if these belong to a plane.
There remained a difference of opinion between Malaysian officials and their counterparts in France, the U.S. and Australia over whether the wing part, known as a flaperon, was definitely from Flight 370.
Jordan tries to stem IS-style extremism in schools, mosques; critics say campaign superficial
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — In pro-Western Jordan, a leader in the fight against Islamic State militants, school books warn students they risk “God’s torture” if they don’t embrace Islam. They portray “holy war” as a religious obligation if Islamic lands are attacked and suggest it is justified to kill captured enemies.
Christians, the country’s largest religious minority, are largely absent from the texts.
The government says it’s tackling the contradiction between official anti-extremist policy and what is taught in schools and mosques by rewriting school books and retraining thousands of teachers and preachers.
Critics say the reforms are superficial, fail to challenge hard-line traditions, and that the first revised textbooks for elementary-school children still present Islam as the only true religion.
“Islamic State ideology is there, in our textbooks,” said Zogan Obiedat, a former Education Ministry official who published a recent analysis of the texts. If Jordan were to be overrun by the militants, a large majority “will join IS because they learned in school that this is Islam,” he said.
