Sanders looks to press on to the convention
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Bernie Sanders’ campaign chief is vowing his candidate will stay in the Democratic race until the summer convention, even as Hillary Clinton looks to lock down her commanding position for the party’s nomination with a strong performance in a five-state round of contests Tuesday.
Clinton has the chance of a clean sweep or at least multiple victories Tuesday that would probably foreclose Sanders’ already narrow path to the nomination. But the Vermont senator’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said the millions of dollars flowing to Sanders and the boisterous rallies show that his “supporters will stand with us all the way to the end.”
Asked whether he expects a contested national Democratic convention, Weaver told reporters in Connecticut, “Absolutely, 100 percent.” Weaver said, “This is a powerful movement he’s built and we’re going to take it to the convention.”
Both Democrats spent the day before the Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island contests campaigning on the East Coast.
Obama boosts Islamic State fight, asks Europe to do the same
HANNOVER, Germany (AP) — Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up “momentum” in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own.
Obama’s announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the president’s professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden.
Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi.
The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation — a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent’s history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the “ruins of the Second World War.”
2 men including USAID employee killed in Bangladesh
NEW DELHI (AP) — Unidentified assailants fatally stabbed two men in Bangladesh’s capital Monday night, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, police said, in the latest in a series of attacks targeting atheists, moderates and foreigners.
Police said they suspected radical Islamists in the attack, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The victims were identified as USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a U.S. Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, Tanay Majumder, according to Mohammed Iqbal, a police officer in Dhaka’s Kalabagan area. Mannan was also an editor of Bangladesh’s first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan, as well as a cousin of former Foreign Minister Dipu Moni of the governing Awami League party.
Pakistan arrests prominent al-Qaida financier
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani authorities have arrested an al-Qaida financier who has been on a U.N. sanctions list since 2012, police said Monday.
Abdur Rehman Sindhi was detained during a raid by intelligence agencies in the southern port city of Karachi last week, said police officer Muqaddas Haider. He said a joint team of police and intelligence agents was questioning the suspect on what role he might have played in militant attacks in Pakistan in recent years.
Sindhi appeared before a court which allowed the police to interrogate him for two weeks, the police official said. He said he didn’t have any evidence so far that the suspect was linked to the U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl’s 2002 killing.
Also Monday, police said that a Sikh lawmaker gunned down last week was killed by a political rival from the minority community, who was arrested along with five other suspects.
