Six In The Morning

Pentagon investigates ‘IS online threat’ to US military

   

BBC

The US defence department says it is investigating an online threat allegedly made by Islamic State (IS) to about 100 of its military personnel.

A list of names and addresses was posted on a website linked to the group alongside a call for them to be killed.

The group said it obtained the information by hacking servers and databases but US officials said most of the data was in the public domain.

A US security source told the BBC that those on the list were being contacted.

The group, which called itself the Islamic State Hacking Division, said the personnel named had participated in US missions against IS.

  Tony Blair joins a strange and exclusive club of political leaders whose careers have been blighted by the Middle East

 World View: A new tomb has just gone up in that graveyard of US and British political reputations

Patrick Cockburn Sunday 22 March 2015

Tony Blair stepping down as a Middle East peace envoy after eight years was greeted almost everywhere with a mixture of harsh criticism, derision and relief. He had reportedly long been allocating three days a month to the job and devoting the rest of his time to his business interests.

Blair is a member of a strange but exclusive club consisting of British and American political leaders whose careers have been blighted or terminated over the past century by calamitous involvement in the Middle East. On the British side members include Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and Anthony Eden, and among the Americans are Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush.

  The woman who leads a rebel Ukraine army unit

 Previously, she worked at a casino. She now leads an artillery unit in eastern Ukraine. DW’s Kitty Logan travels to Donetsk to meet one of the female leaders of the self-declared “People’s Republic.”

DW

 She goes by the code name “Nut” – a young woman in her twenties with close-cropped, red hair. She wears a standard issue rebel soldier’s uniform. She does not want to reveal her identity.

Nut sits in her room in the stark, sparsely furnished barracks in the Petrovsky district, a suburb to the southeast of rebel-held Donetsk. A machine gun is propped up beside her narrow, single bed. Her loyal dog, Loki, growls at visitors.

This quiet, slight woman from Donetsk is in charge of an artillery unit of 50 men in the rebel Oplot battalion. The battalion is led by the “Prime Minister” of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic himself, Alexander Zakharchenko.

 In Naples, Pope Francis encourages young to resist the Mafia

 On a day trip to Naples, where youth unemployment is rampant, Pope Francis encouraged Neapolitans to resist exploitation by the Mafia and instead seek honest jobs.

  By Associated Press

Naples, Italy – Pope Francis, visiting Italy’s impoverished south on Saturday, encouraged Neapolitans to resist exploitation by Mafia dons and instead seek the dignity of honest jobs.

On a day trip to Naples, Francis spoke to residents in Scampia, a rundown neighborhood dominated by Camorra mobsters.

In places like Scampia, youth unemployment is rampant. Many wind up working for the Naples-based crime syndicate as drug couriers or extortionists, shaking down merchants for so-called “protection money.”

 Indonesia leader eyes investment, defence on Japan trip

 

    Tokyo (AFP)

Indonesian President Joko Widodo will arrive in Tokyo late on Sunday, kicking off a week-long tour of Japan and China aimed at attracting investment and boosting defence co-operation.

“We want to develop (infrastructure) with particular focus on electric power plants, railways and express ways. I would like to ask Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for co-operation on this issue,” Widodo said in footage aired by Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

Widodo, who took office in October, will be in Japan until Wednesday and will meet Abe as well as Japanese businessmen.

Tunisia airs video of gunmen in Bardo museum attack

 Security footage released along with stills of the bodies of the gunmen who stormed museum in Tunis, killing 21 people.

  22 Mar 2015 06:34 GMT

Tunisia has released CCTV footage of the gunmen who stormed a museum in the capital Tunis, killing 21 people, mostly foreign tourists.

The footage was released along with two stills, said to be showing the bodies of the gunmen – named as Yassine Laabidi, 20, and 26-year-old Hatem Khachnaoui, who were killed after the attack.

The two Tunisians trained in neighbouring Libya and left the country last December, Rafik Chelly, the country’s secretary of state, said days after the attack.