The strike against the jihadists was conducted on Haider al-Abadi’s order “because of the danger they pose to Iraqi territory,” a statement said.

The Iraqi air force on Thursday carried out a “deadly raid” against positions of the ISIS group in neighbouring Syria, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has asked Commonwealth leaders gathered at Buckingham Palace for the opening of a major summit to appoint her son Prince Charles to succeed her as their head.

She said it was her “sincere wish” that Prince Charles takes over “one day”, as she opened the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) attended by 53 member countries in London on Thursday, the BBC reported.

The Queen said that her son should follow her and lead the organisation which her father, King George VI, founded after the end of the British Empire.

The role is not hereditary and will not pass automatically to Charles, the Prince of Wales, on the Queen’s death. The Commonwealth leaders will make a decision on the succession on Friday, No 10 Downing Street said.

“It is my sincere wish that the Commonwealth will continue to offer stability and continuity for future generations, and will decide that one day the Prince of Wales should carry on the important work started by my father in 1949,” she told the leaders.

Over 100 officers and soldiers from the Coldstream Guards were in honour guard outside the venue, wearing scarlet tunics and bearskins, as a 53 gun salute marked the formal opening.

Issues under discussion at the two-day summit included ocean conservation, cyber security and trade between the countries.

Prime Minister Theresa May told the leaders the summit would “take on some of the 21st Century’s biggest questions”.

Speaking in the ballroom, which was decorated with the flags of the 53 nations, May said: “There have been difficulties, successes, controversies, but I believe wholeheartedly in the good that the Commonwealth can do.”

She also thanked the Queen for hosting the event, calling her a “steadfast and fervent champion” of the Commonwealth.

The ceremony was attended by 46 Commonwealth heads of government, out of the 53 member states, with the remaining attendees being Foreign Ministers.

In his speech, the 69-year-old Prince said: “For my part, the Commonwealth has been a fundamental feature of my life for as long as I can remember, beginning with my first visit to Malta when I was just five years old.

“The modern Commonwealth has a vital role to play in building bridges between our countries.”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and Prince William were among the other royals in attendance.

(IANS)

McDougal said she was in love with Trump and the affair started not long after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron.
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal reached an agreement on Wednesday with tabloid publisher American Media Inc that will allow her to speak freely about an affair she alleges she had with US President Donald Trump, the company said in a statement.

McDougal filed suit in California last month seeking to be released from a deal reached in 2016 with AMI, publisher of the National Enquirer, that gave the company exclusive rights to her story in exchange for USD 150,000.

“AMI is pleased that we reached an amicable resolution with Ms. McDougal today that provides both sides what they wanted as a result,” the company said in a statement.

Representatives for McDougal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the deal, AMI said it would have the right to receive up to USD 75,000 of any future profits from the sale of her story about the alleged 10-month affair, which she says started in 2006.

McDougal will also appear on the September 2018 cover of Men’s Journal magazine, which will include a feature-length article about her, the company said.

In an interview with CNN that aired last month, McDougal said she was in love with Trump and the affair started not long after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron.

The White House has said that Trump denies having an affair with McDougal.

AMI has said McDougal was permitted to speak about her relationship with Trump in response to “legitimate press inquiries.”

McDougal had argued in her lawsuit that the agreement was an illegal corporate donation from AMI to the Trump campaign that violated federal election law.

American Media head David Pecker has described Trump as a “personal friend.”

Trump has been engaged in a legal battle with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who says she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has sued Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen to be released from a 2016 agreement not to publicly discuss the alleged sexual encounter in exchange for USD 130,000.

The White House has denied that Trump had sex with Daniels.

US President Donald Trump has said that if his planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are not fruitful he will “walk out”, media reported.

He said this during a joint news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the BBC reported.

Trump said if he did not think the meeting would be successful he would not go, and if the meeting went ahead but was not productive, he would walk out.

“Our campaign of maximum pressure will continue until North Korea denuclearises,” he added.

Abe is at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for talks.

Earlier, Trump had confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Kim over the easter weekend.

He said Pompeo had forged a “good relationship” with Kim — whom he called the “little rocket man” in 2017. Trump said the Pompeo-Kim meeting had gone off “very smoothly”.

The visit marked the highest-level contact between the US and North Korea since 2000.

Child marriage among Syrian refugee children, primarily girls, is on the rise, according to data from Jordan’s court system.
The percentage of child brides in Syrian marriages in Jordan rose from 15 percent in 2014 to 36 percent today.

Poverty is the primary reason driving families to marry off their daughters as life for many refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria becomes increasingly difficult.

Last year, Jordan’s chief justice issued new stipulations allowing girls the right to demand a marriage contract with conditions including completing their education and working.

But the United Nation’s children agency says girls need even great protections.

“What we would like to do more is the prevention,” said UNICEF’s Maha Homsi. “It is working with the Sharia courts and religious leaders to promote the right of girls to education and to break the cycle of poverty and prevent them from dropping out of school and going into early marriage.”

Fatima,16, was living in a Syrian refugee camp when she got married over a year ago. She now has a five-month-old daughter and another baby on the way.

Speaking to Al Jazeera she said that while she loves her husband and feels that her early marriage is normal, she regrets being unable to complete her education after dropping out of school when she was 10 years old.

“I wish I could have continued my studies,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I won’t let my daughter get married young. She needs to be 25 or so. It’s too much responsibility.”

Aljazeera

Rights groups allege war against the armed group has included a shadowy campaign of enforced disappearances.

As lightning cuts across the darkened Peshawar sky, Manzoor Pashteen implores thousands of demonstrators to no longer be afraid.

The rain lashes down upon them, as they stand in rapt attention, listening to the leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), a civil rights movement that has quickly risen to national prominence across Pakistan.

Among the crowd, dozens of people clutch posters, photocopied legal documents or passport-sized photographs of their loved ones, holding them aloft.

The pictures are of Pakistan’s disappeared, the detritus of the security forces’ more-than-a-decade-long war against the Pakistan Taliban armed group and its allies. Since 2011, a government commission investigating the enforced disappearances has dealt with more than 4,929 cases of Pakistan’s “missing people”. Rights groups say the figure is vastly under-reported.

“I am not against any institution, but if they are being oppressive, then we are against them!” thunders Pashteen. “Every oppressor, whether it is a member of the Taliban … or it is the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s most powerful intelligence agency), or the MI (Military Intelligence) or the army, we are against anyone who is committing cruelty!”

In Pakistan, ruled for roughly half of its 70-year history by its powerful military, people have been disappeared for less.

Indeed, often they have disappeared for no apparent reason at all.

‘If he is guilty, charge him’
Ikram Behram, 26, was a tailor working in the city of Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where much of Pakistan’s war against the Pakistan Taliban has taken place.

On August 10, 2013, his family says, a group of armed security forces personnel abducted him from his shop. He has not been seen or heard from since.

Amna Janjua has been fighting the case of her husband who went missing in 2005 [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera]
“Elite anti-terrorist force police came into the shop and asked for him by name,” says Sarfaraz Ahmed, 23, Behram’s cousin. “When he identified himself, they abducted him and took him away.”

It has been five years, Ahmed says, but Behram’s family “has been told nothing” by the authorities.

“If he is guilty of a crime, then charge him in court,” says Ahmed. “At least then, we will know what has happened.”

Al Jazeera reviewed 22 cases of “disappeared” citizens for this report. The oldest case dates back to 2005, and the most recent abduction allegedly occurred on December 3, 2017. Those allegedly taken include students, scholars, IT consultants, shopkeepers, daily wage labourers, a policeman, a tailor and a hotel waiter.

Pakistan’s military was provided details of each of the cases, but did not offer comment.

Often, those who disappear are traced to being in security forces custody in a network of internment centres operated across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, says Farid Khan, who works for the government’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.

In an ongoing Supreme Court case on the issue, however, the government has so far refused to share a list of those being held in captivity, often under vague charges or under a 2011 “anti-terrorism” law that allows indefinite detention for “terrorism” suspects.

Of bodies, and secret courts
Not all who enter the internment centres come out alive. According to the Defence of Human Rights (DHR) rights group, at least 153 people have died while in custody at the centres.

Yaqoob Khan, 32, a shopkeeper originally from the tribal district of Bajaur, was abducted while sitting in an Islamabad park with his son Ilyas in December 2015, his father says.

“On February 12 [this year], I got a letter saying I should pick up the dead body of my son from [the eastern city of] Lahore.”

Many of those held in the internment centres have been tried in Pakistan’s secretive military courts for civilian “terrorism suspects”. Since 2015, when those courts were formed, they have sentenced at least 375 people, with a conviction rate of 88 percent, according to data gathered by Al Jazeera.

Legal advocacy groups have alleged rampant rights abuses in the courts.

Sohail Ahmed, 28, was one of those to be tried. Ahmed went missing from his home in the northern Swat Valley in 2010, his father Usman Ali told Al Jazeera, after military personnel raided their home.

Ahmed was missing for four years before a court petition traced him to being in military custody at an internment centre in Paitam.

“I met him four times, but they never told me his crime,” says Ali.

On January 19, a military press release declared that Ahmed had been tried and sentenced to death by a military court, having allegedly confessed to being a member of an armed group and killing four people.

“My son never mentioned anything about a military court and insisted he was innocent,” says Ali, of the last time he met Ahmed, roughly a month before the military court verdict was announced.

‘I could hear their screams’
Sometimes, the missing do come back.

On January 4, 2017, Ahmed Waqass Goraya, an IT developer who was also the administrator of a Facebook page critical of the military, went missing while out house-hunting in Lahore. Roughly three weeks later, he was released outside a nearby hospital with a warning to never speak of what he endured while in custody.

“At first, I was beaten, with slaps and punches. My eardrum was torn by the force of one blow,” Goraya told Al Jazeera. “Then, they laid me down and started beating me with wooden sticks. I was tied up and my hands were in handcuffs.”

During the course of his detention, Goraya chronicles hours of interrogation and alleged torture, saying his captors repeatedly accused of him criticising the Pakistani military at the behest of foreign intelligence services.

“They had a special stand to hang me off and beat me on my legs, back and hands. I had realised at that point that this is not the police. This is the ISI.”

Goraya says he was not alone in the detention centre where he was being held. At least four other social media activists were detained within days of his abduction. One of them told Al Jazeera he was being held at the same site as Goraya, and corroborated his account of alleged abuse.

“They were continuously beating me in the first eight days. It was 24 hours of torture. And I could hear the screams of others being tortured as well,” said Goraya.

The case of the five missing activists gained widespread media attention, and four of them were released on January 28, 2017. Goraya said he was blindfolded and hooded while being driven around Lahore, and thought he might be killed.

Eventually, they stopped by the side of the road and forced him out of the vehicle.

“They removed the blindfold, but I was told not to open my eyes. I sat on my own motorbike and opened my eyes two minutes later.”

A ‘rigged system’
For others, the ordeal can last more than a decade.

Amna Janjua, the chairperson of the DHR rights group, has been fighting to locate her husband, Masood Janjua, a Rawalpindi-based businessman, since July 2005, when he suddenly went missing on his way to Peshawar for a business trip.

It is Janjua’s case that first gained the attention of Pakistan’s Supreme Court in 2006, and led to the formation of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.

The commission, however, is “toothless”, says Janjua, and no one in the judiciary or security services is serious about offering clarity regarding the fate of Pakistan’s disappeared.

“They always promised that we will help, but that promise was never fulfilled,” she says.

Ikram Behram, c ousin of Sarfaraz Khan, back left, went missing in August 2013
Even in the case of releases, she says, the security forces act with impunity, with no one held responsible for the years the men may have been missing. DHR has traced at least 311 people to security forces custody.

“The impunity is so extreme that not a single person has ever been charged in connection with a missing persons case,” she says.

Pashteen’s PTM is clear about their demands: when it comes to the disappeared, they are not asking for releases, only due process.

“You have to treat [alleged] ‘terrorists’ according to the law as well,” says Mohsin Dawar, a PTM leader. “Let’s suppose for the sake of an argument that if we accept that so-and-so is a terrorist – does that mean that you can keep them disappeared for 10 years? Just because you have labelled someone a ‘terrorist’, that does not necessarily make them a ‘terrorist’.”

Back at the rally in Peshawar, Pashteen is adamant that the era of fear for those caught in the crossfire of Pakistan’s war against armed groups is over.

“What were you thinking, that you could scare us with murders? No one could even take their names! This, taking the names of the MI and ISI, was treated like a capital offence by them,” he roared.

“Here I am, taking your names openly. I am taking your names with my head held high!”

Aljazeera

A surfing event in an Australian state was called off on Wednesday due to multiple shark attacks that took place in the area earlier this week.

World Surf League (WSL) CEO Sophie Goldschmidt said that it was a difficult decision to cancel the popular Margaret River Pro event, but surfer and staff safety were paramount, reports Xinhua news agency.

The first incident occurred at Cobblestones beach in Gracetown when 37 year-old Alejandro Travaglini was mauled by a shark. He had to undergo emergency surgery on both legs.

Just hours later at a nearby beach known as Lefthanders, Jason Longgrass, 41, was also bitten on the leg.

Earlier that morning Surf Life Saving Western Australia reported several sightings of sharks in the area, including a four-metre Great White.

According to Australia’s Shark Smart website, a decomposing whale carcass nearby was likely to be what had attracted the predators.

Top 34 global technology and securities firms, led by Microsoft and Facebook, have signed a “Cybersecurity Tech Accord” to defend people from malicious attacks by cybercriminals and nation-states.

The watershed agreement will prevent them help governments launch cyber attacks against innocent citizens and enterprises. It will also protect against tampering or exploitation of their products and services through every stage of technology development, design and distribution.

The 34 companies include Cisco, HP, Nokia, Oracle, VMware, Dell, CA Technologies, Symantec, Bitdefender, F-Secure, RSA and Trend Micro, among others.

“The devastating attacks from the past year demonstrate that cybersecurity is not just about what any single company can do but also about what we can all do together,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement on Tuesday.

The “Cybersecurity Tech Accord” is a public commitment among 34 global companies to protect and empower civilians online and to improve the security, stability and resilience of cyberspace.

“This tech sector accord will help us take a principled path towards more effective steps to work together and defend customers around the world,” added Smith who has been arguing for a “digital Geneva Convention” for years.

The companies made commitments in four areas — stronger defence, no offence, capacity building and collective action.

“The companies will do more to empower developers and the people and businesses that use their technology, helping them improve their capacity for protecting themselves,” said cybertechaccord.org.

This may include joint work on new security practices and new features the companies can deploy in their individual products and services.

The Tech Accord remains open to consideration of new private sector signatories, large or small and regardless of sector, who are trusted, have high cybersecurity standards and will adhere unreservedly to the Accord’s principles.

“The real world consequences of cyber threats have been repeatedly proven. As an industry, we must band together to fight cybercriminals and stop future attacks from causing even more damage,” said Kevin Simzer, Chief Operating Officer, Trend Micro.

The victims of cyberattacks are businesses and organisations of all sizes, with economic losses expected to reach $8 trillion by 2022.

The cyber attacks in the past have caused small businesses to shutter their doors, hospitals to delay surgeries and governments to halt services, among other disruptions and safety risks.

“The Tech Accord will help to protect the integrity of the one trillion connected devices we expect to see deployed within the next 20 years,” said Carolyn Herzog, General Counsel, Arm.

On Monday, Cyber security representatives from the US and Britain warned of Russian state-sponsored cyber-attacks that are targeting network infrastructure devices such as routers and firewalls, to compromise government and private sectors globally.

According to a US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT), the Technical Alert provided information on the worldwide cyber exploitation by Russian state-sponsored cyber actors.

(IANS)

A female passenger was killed after a US flight made an emergency landing in Philadelphia city due to engine failure, authorities said.

The Boeing 737-700, operated by Southwest Airlines, was flying from New York City to Dallas on Tuesday when one of its engines failed, reports Xinhua news agency.

Passengers said the plane was able to land “safely”, and initial reports said one person, who was hurt by crashed window, was taken to hospital.

US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Robert Sumwalt later confirmed one passenger had died from the accident.

Southwest Airlines said in a statement that 143 travellers and five crew members were on the flight.

Photos shared on social media by passengers showed the engine was badly damaged. Local news reports said the damage was caused by an explosion.

According to multiple accounts, passengers on board the plane went through terrifying moments as the plane dived, and some were said to be crying or vomiting.

The Philadelphia fire department said at a press conference the plane came down “in a fairly rapid manner”, and preliminary examination of the flight record showed the aircraft dropped 5.2 km in five minutes.

A passenger made a brief Facebook live on his account at the final moments of the flight, saying “Engine exploded in the air and blew open window three seats away” from him.

The NTSB has announced an investigation into the incident.

All air traffic at Philadelphia was put on hold.

(IANS)

US President Donald Trump’s administration carried out a retaliatory strike on Syria last week even though intelligence agencies did not have absolute certainty that the Assad regime had used the nerve agent sarin against civilians, a media report said.

The decision to proceed with the strikes on the night of April 13 met a standard of evidence needed that officials felt they could accept, intelligence and defence sources told CNN on Tuesday.

Administration officials were adamant that whatever was used by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to attack civilians in Douma on April 7 was a chemical agent and that alone justified taking action.

The lack of complete information played a role in deciding not to strike a larger set of targets including airfields, aircraft and helicopters, a defence official told CNN.

Other factors, like Russian positioning, also played a role in the decisions.

On Tuesday afternoon, Secretary of Defence James Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chair Joseph Dunford held a classified briefing for senators on the Syria strike that was launched in coordination with France and the UK.

Before the briefing, officials would not comment on whether the intelligence had become more certain post-strike.

Witnesses reported seeing at least one helicopter overhead at the time of the Syrian attack that had taken off from an airfield.

But at the time, intelligence officials did not have a full picture of the event, which would have included intercepts of conversations and verified paths that helicopters flew, the sources told CNN.

Prior to the US strike, full confirmation could not be made of whether Syria had used sarin in its attack.

“It’s a hard, long process, especially in an attack like this without physical access to victims, site. Therefore we had to work with closest allies quickly to ensure we had confidence in the intelligence picture, enabling policymakers to choose best course of action,” an intelligence official told CNN.

The Trump administration determined a “standard of evidence had been met”, the official added.

(IANS)