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Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi government forces seized on Thursday a cache of chemical substances belonging to Islamic State militants in central Mosul, the police service said. Federal Police chief, Lt. Gen. Shaker Jawdat, said in a statement that the reservoir, found in Mekkawi street in Mosul’s Old City, included c4 and ammonia among other substances. Iraqi government forces regained control over the city of Mosul early July after a nine-month campaign seeking to bring down the self-styled “caliphate” declared by the militants from  Mosul’s Old City in 2014. Occasional reports had told of attacks by IS against civilians and security forces in which militants used improvised chemical weapons since an inventory of chemical arms was discovered by Iraqi forces inside laboratories of Mosul University in the eastern side of Mosul, which government troops took over from IS in January. Security personnel had seized a number of chemical stashes belonging to the extremist group during and after the end of the military campaign.The United Nations had previously confirmed cases of civilians being treated for symptoms of what seemed to be chemical agents.

A Turkish official said anyone supporting the YPG militia will become "a target", a warning likely to rile the United States as its forces work alongside the Kurdish armed group on the ground in northern Syria. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag's comments on Thursday came after Turkey threatened to attack the town of Manbij as part of its cross-border operation against the Afrin region, controlled by the Kurdish fighters. The US has about 2,000 soldiers based in Manbij - about 100km east of Afrin - who work with the YPG in fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). If the US wants to "avoid a confrontation with Turkey - which neither they nor Turkey want - the way to this is clear: they must cut support given to terrorists", Bozdag told Turkish broadcaster A Haber. "Those who support the terrorist organisation will become a target in this battle. The United States needs to review its soldiers and elements giving support to terrorists on the ground in such a way as to avoid a confrontation with Turkey," he said. There was no immediate response from the US to Bozdag's comments on Thursday.

A Turkish official said anyone supporting the YPG militia will become "a target", a warning likely to rile the United States as its forces work alongside the Kurdish armed group on the ground in northern Syria. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag's comments on Thursday came after Turkey threatened to attack the town of Manbij as part of its cross-border operation against the Afrin region, controlled by the Kurdish fighters. The US has about 2,000 soldiers based in Manbij - about 100km east of Afrin - who work with the YPG in fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). If the US wants to "avoid a confrontation with Turkey - which neither they nor Turkey want - the way to this is clear: they must cut support given to terrorists", Bozdag told Turkish broadcaster A Haber. "Those who support the terrorist organisation will become a target in this battle. The United States needs to review its soldiers and elements giving support to terrorists on the ground in such a way as to avoid a confrontation with Turkey," he said. There was no immediate response from the US to Bozdag's comments on Thursday.

The US military coalition operating in Manbij on Wednesday said American soldiers there have the right to defend themselves against any attack. "The coalition forces that are in that area have an inherent right to defend themselves and will do so if necessary," spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said. 

Commonwealth Bank of Australia ’s oversight of money transfers from that account to Lebanon last year was among many failures cited by the Australian federal government’s financial intelligence agency in its nearly US$530 million fine of the bank on Monday. If approved, the fine—meant to settle a lawsuit brought by the agency and founded on breaches of the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Act—would be the largest corporate civil penalty ever paid in Australia. Australia’s banks have long held a reputation for being among the world’s safest for investors. But a series of scandals over the past year has rocked the country’s top financial institutions. Commonwealth Bank has seen separate penalties for conduct in alleged interest-rate rigging and bad governance. On Friday, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. said it would defend against criminal prosecution for alleged cartel conduct in a 2015 capital raising. A public inquiry into the sector, launched last autumn by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, has heard accusations against Australia’s leading financial firms of inappropriate lending, collecting fees from dead customers for financial advice and lying to regulators. The tribunal has already claimed several big scalps. Beginning in late April, the chief executive, chairman and several board members at Australia’s largest wealth management company, AMP Ltd. , resigned after the company admitted it had misled regulators and been slow to compensate customers for fees charged for financial advice it didn’t deliver.

Disoriented investors now fear tighter regulation of a sector that has reliably returned a run of record annual underlying profits and solid dividends. The government has already beefed up penalties for corporate wrongdoing, including prison time, and strengthened the corporate regulator’s investigative powers. Commonwealth Bank shares recently tumbled to 5-year lows.

Those mistakes included not assessing the inherent risk of so-called intelligent deposit machines before mid-2015. Commonwealth Bank also didn’t limit the number of times that customers could deposit money each day, or create reports on thousands of deposits of A$10,000 (US$7,569) or more at the machines. These flaws created an architecture that money launderers could exploit, the financial-intelligence agency said.

Geert Wilders, who is often called “the Dutch Donald Trump,” will not necessarily head the government even if he wins the most seats in parliament. But he has taught the current Prime Minister Mark Rutte to pit Dutch voters against immigrants and their children.The American right’s favorite Islamophobe and a columnist for Breitbart news, Wilders is campaigning with the slogan, “The Netherlands Ours Again.” He promises to close all mosques and ban the Qur’an. He also calls for “Nexit” — the Netherlands leaving the European Union.In the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) and Trump’s election as US president, the world is obsessing over Dutch polls to see if “Trumpism” will score a victory in The Netherlands, one of the world’s most democratic countries.Wilders’s anti-Islamic, anti-EU and anti-immigration Party for Freedom (PVV) is in a tight race for the lead with Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). At a minimum, Wilders will likely add to his seats in parliament after the March 15 polls. About 40% of voters are undecided, giving hope to Dutch progressives that a left-wing coalition is still possible.

It is Rutte, in office since 2010, who has the best chance of forming a new government. Veering right, he is now competing with Wilders to articulate the feelings of a so-called “silent majority,” saying immigrant youth should fit in or pleur op (“fuck off”).The Dutch elections are the first in 2017’s super election year in Europe, with far-right parties in many countries campaigning on an anti-immigrant and anti-EU platform. The next test for populism, only a month away, will be in France, where the far-right leader Marine Le Pen seeks to become president. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, faces elections in September and could lose to a challenger from the left.

If Wilders gains power, he says the first thing he will do is hold a Brexit-style referendum. Leaving the European Union, the world’s biggest economic trading bloc, would hardly seem to make sense for the Netherlands, a small country that has grown wealthy off trade.Still, a new opinion poll confirms that the Dutch are falling out of love with the EU. It shows a slight majority actually favor Nexit if EU membership could be replaced with “bilateral trade relations.”It should not be forgotten that the Dutch voted down the 2005 EU constitution, which later became the Lisbon Treaty. They also rejected, by a wide margin, an EU treaty with Ukraine in a referendum last spring.

Jordan and the United States kicked off annual military exercises on Sunday known as "Eager Lion", with about 7,400 troops from more than 20 nations taking part, officials said. US and Jordanian officials said the manoeuvres would include border security, cyber defence, and "command and control" exercises, to bolster coordination in response to threats including terrorism.

Judicial Watch today announced that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ordered the U.S. Department of State to turn over to Judicial Watch “eight identical paragraphs” of previously redact material in two September 13, 2012, Hillary Clinton emails regarding phone calls made by President Barack Obama to Egyptian and Libyan leaders immediately following the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.  Both emails had the subject line “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt” and were among the emails stored on Clinton’s unofficial email server.  Judge Jackson reviewed the documents directly and rejected the government’s contention that the records had been properly withheld under the FOIA B(5) “deliberative process” exemption. Judge Jackson ruled:  “the two records, even if just barely predecisional, are not deliberative. [The State Department] has pointed to very little to support its characterization of these two records as deliberative, and the Court’s in camera review of the documents reveals that they do not fall within that category.” The full emails may reveal what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama knew about the September 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

The United States is deploying armored vehicles and a small number of troops along the Syrian – Turkish border after recent airstrikes killed about 20 Syrian – Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Unit (YPG). The YPG is a key member organization of the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The troops and armored vehicles were deployed on Friday amidst increased tensions between the YPG and Turkey, as well as increased tensions between Turkey and Turkey’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah in the Kurdish region of northern Syria, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters. The YPG reported that a series of air strikes and attacks between April 25 and April 28 resulted in the death of at least 20 of their fighters. Both Russia, Syria and the United States expressed grave concerns about Turkey’s military actions against the YPG. All three stressed that Turkey should rather focus on fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). The Turkish AKP government, for its part, considers the YPG as a terrorist organization on par and allied with the PKK. Moreover, Turkey strongly opposes the creation of a Kurdish state construct or a federal, predominantly Kurdish construct in northern Syria, fearing it would strengthen the PKK. Turkey is therefore counting on its cooperation with Islamist insurgents, often with links to Al-Qaeda affiliates, under the euphemism Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Pentagon Spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, did not dispute that U.S. troops are operating with elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) along the Turkish border, but he would not get into specifics. The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated alliance fighting IS that includes Kurdish and Arab fighters as well as fighters from other local ethnic and other militia. Deserted Free Syrian Army officers and fighters are also part of the SDF. Davis commented “We have U.S. forces that are there throughout the entirety of northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Davis said. “The border is among the areas where they operate.” He said the U.S. wants the SDF to focus on liberating the IS-held town of Tabqa and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa, “and not be drawn into conflicts elsewhere.” In March 2016, about 200 Marines were deployed to Syrian Kurdistan backed with howitzers, significantly widening the U.S. support for the SDF, especially in the highly complex battlefield around Raqqa.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk call records.  A report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats presented the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting the phone records and contacts of people that the US and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to "terrorism". NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on only 42 suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year, the report said.

James Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Emerging Threats at NATO – now that’s a lovely title – recently gave a talk at a private club in London on the Islamic State/Daesh. Shea, as many will remember, made his name as NATO’s spokesman during the NATO war on Yugoslavia in 1999.After his talk Shea engaged in a debate with a source I very much treasure. The source later gave me the lowdown.  According to Saudi intelligence, Daesh was invented by the US government – in Camp Bacca, near the Kuwait border, as many will remember — to essentially finish off the Shiite-majority Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad.

It didn’t happen this way, of course. Then, years later, in the summer of 2014, Daesh routed the Iraqi Army on its way to conquer Mosul. The Iraqi Army fled. Daesh operatives then annexed ultra-modern weapons that took US instructors from six to twelve months to train the Iraqis in and…surprise! Daesh incorporated the weapons in their arsenals in 24 hours. In the end, Shea frankly admitted to the source that Gen David Petraeus, conductor of the much-lauded 2007 surge, had trained these Sunnis now part of Daesh in Anbar province in Iraq. Saudi intelligence still maintains that these Iraqi Sunnis were not US-trained – as Shea confirmed – because the Shiites in power in Baghdad didn’t allow it. Not true. The fact is the Daesh core – most of them former commanders and soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s army — is indeed a US-trained militia. True to form, at the end of the debate, Shea went on to blame Russia for absolutely everything that’s happening today – including Daesh terror. 

TEHRAN (FNA)- Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mostafa Izadi announced that the country is in possession of evidence and documents proving Washington's direct support for the ISIL terrorist group."We are facing a proxy warfare in the region as a new trick by the arrogant powers against the Islamic Republic," Izadi said on Sunday. "As the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution (Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei) said, we possess documents and information showing the direct supports by the US imperialism for this highly disgusting stream (the ISIL) in the region which has destroyed the Islamic countries and created a wave of massacres and clashes," he added. In relevant remarks on Friday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani condemned the Wednesday terrorist attacks in Tehran, and said that Washington is behind most of the terrorist acts in the world. "The United States has aligned itself with the ISIL in the region," Larijani said on Friday, addressing a funeral ceremony held for the victims of ISIL's Wednesday terrorist attacks on the Iranian parliament and the holy shrine of late Imam Khomeini in Tehran. He reiterated that Washington has demonstrated that it is the international ISIL. Three male assailants fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran on Wednesday morning. The assailants opened their way into the parliament's administrative building while shooting at the guards. A similar attack took place at the holy shrine of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, parallel with the parliament attack. 17 people, including the parliament's guards, were killed and 52 others were wounded in the twin attacks. The ISIL claimed the responsibility for both attacks.

After years of deriding the U.S. war in Afghanistan as “complete waste”, U.S. President Donald Trump trumped his previous position and election promises on Monday, when he said he now believes it is in the United States’ interest to remain committed to Afghanistan. 

In an evening address from a military base outside Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his administrations new policy without unveiling many details of it. Trump said his policy was base on a “condition-based” approach to defeating terrorism in the country and said the United States will no longer use its military to construct democracies or rebuild other countries in its own image. His goal, he said, is to stop the re-emergence of safe havens for terrorists to threaten America and make sure they do not get their hands on nuclear weapons. “We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities,” Trump told about 2,000 service members at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. “Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.” Trump has reportedly approved up to 4,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Currently, there are about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Most are advising Afghan forces, though some are tasked with carrying out counterterrorism operations against groups such as the Taliban or the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate. That number is down significantly from the height of former President Barack Obama’s troop surge, which saw nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in August 2010. However, there has also been a significant resurgence of the Taliban and ISIS has entered the Afghan theater since.

Following Trump’s speech, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released a statement saying: “We stand ready to support peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban without preconditions. We look to the international community, particularly Afghanistan’s neighbors, to join us in supporting an Afghan peace process.” Trump, in his address, put Pakistan on notice. “We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists they are fighting. But that will have to change and that will change immediately,” Trump said. Many perceived Trumps statement to “not allowing terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons” as a reference to Pakistan as well. The conflict in Afghanistan, a country with a factionalized unity government, with former war lords holding key government positions, and riddled with systemic corruption,  has dragged on for 16 years. It is becoming the longest U.S. war ever, since the September 11, 2001 “incidents” in the United States. It is worth noting that a growing number of U.S. Americans no longer believe in the “official narrative” about the events on 9/11 and would like to see an independent investigation. Expressing frustration Trump informed Afghanistan that the commitment by the United States is not unlimited and America’s support not a blank check. The American people, he warned, expect “to see real reforms and real results.” Trump’s policy announcement follows a months long review. However, there are many Afghan politicians including former President Hamid Karzai who are opposed to an increase in troops and who call for a political settlement instead.

Interpol has voted to admit Palestine as a full member, dealing a significant diplomatic blow to Israel, which has strenuously lobbied against Palestinian admission. In a secret vote of representatives of the international police organisation’s members in China, Palestinian membership was approved by 75 to 24 votes, with 34 abstentions – exceeding the two-thirds requirement of yes to no votes. “The State of Palestine and the Solomon Islands are now Interpol member countries,” the organisation tweeted after the ballot. Set up almost a century ago, Interpol was designed to help countries share police intelligence and cooperate against crime that crosses international borders, including terrorism and human trafficking,. It now has 192 international members. It is perhaps best known to the wider public for its “red notice” system, which issues requests to locate and provisionally arrest individuals pending extradition. The Palestinian bid was part of a series of efforts to push for membership of international institutions and thereby advance the goal of statehood.

While Trump's Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader's "anti-Muslim videos", there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video. That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed "moderate".  So a sitting US president shared a video which reveals a Syrian "rebel" fighter committing war crimes who was part of one of the very groups backed by the CIA as official US policy under the Obama administration. Of course it is likely that Trump himself is not fully aware of this, yet the astounding geopolitical irony in this should not be missed, even as public outrage is reduced to merely discussing "anti-Muslim bigotry" and whether or not Trump is being "presidential".

nd while multiple media outlets, for example NPR, continue to claim the videos are "unverified" and "have no context" or are of "murky origins" (as the Washington Post wrongly claims), this particular video especially was widely shared and discussed among the world's top Syria analysts and Middle East scholars at the time. The video was taken in 2013 and shows the Wahhabi cleric and FSA commander smashing the Christian statue in connection with the US-backed group's prior attack on Yakubiya in Idlib province. The book, The Islamic State: Combating The Caliphate Without Borders, authored by counter-terrorism experts Yonah and Dean Alexander, gives his full name as Omar Gharba al-Khojji and like vast numbers of FSA fighters he eventually jointed ISIS (some online sources alternately list his name as Omar Raghba).

akubiyah was a mostly Christian village principally comprised of Armenian Orthodox and Catholic churches which after being taken over by the FSA was subsequently held by ISIS. The local Christians saw no distinction between the invading FSA and ISIS fighters as it was primarily the US-backed FSA which began massacring Christians and looting churches. Even the US government funded Voice of America news had this to say based on an interview with a Christian survivor: Christian refugees described to VOA the execution of a half dozen of their co-religionists in the northwestern village of al-Yakubiye, in Idlib province, by Sunni Muslims aligned with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. Rahel, a 45-year-old former teacher, said, “Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army.”   ...Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, an estimated 600,000, have fled the country. Before the war, Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 22 million. And The Daily Beast also confirmed at the time that "nearly all Christians have fled [Yakubiyah] after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped" by the US sponsored FSA. Furthermore, an October 2013 report in Arabic media confirmed that, Terrorists belonging to al-Nusra front broke into homes in Yakubiyah in Syria's Idlib province, killed a Chrisitan man and destroyed a Virgin Mary statue. Upon arrival at a house that had the statue of virgin Mary, Wahhabi cleric, Omar Gharba' carried the statue of the Virgin Mary after it was taken over by militants from the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and broke it by throwing it on the ground. He stated that he and his fellow Wahhabis won't tolerate any form of worship except strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.   "God willing, Only God will be worshipped in the land of the Levant," the terrorist who destroyed the statue said, noting that "no other idol will be worshiped after these days . We won't accept but the religion of Allah and the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed bin Abdullah." In 2012 and 2013 Omar Gharba's name appeared somewhat frequently in Western news reports as he was interviewed on a few occasions and presented as a "moderate" rebel, for example by BBC Arabic in 2012. The below video is one such example of Omar Gharba insisting that he and his fellow FSA militants would be tolerant and respectful of Christians and other religious minorities should they inherit power by toppling the Assad government  - though he was subsequently outed as the destroyer of the Virgin Mary statue, as the edit of the video interview makes clear.

The US Pentagon has inked plans to the White House to fight in Somalia for two more years, the New York Times reported yesterday.

According to the blueprint, the US will conduct an internal review on Somalia within 24 months to decide whether to continue fighting in the country. The news comes off the back of an escalation in counter-terrorism drone strikes in Somalia under President Donald Trump.

rump has already provided the US military and CIA broader authority to execute strikes in Somalia, considering it an “area of active hostilities”. As a result, 30 airstrikes have been executed in Somalia, with the most recent killing some 100 Somalis. Controversial raids have also taken place under Trump, with the most notable taking place in August, killing 10 civilians in southern Somalia as they ran and took cover behind banana trees. A US investigation concluded that no civilians were killed in the raid, despite human rights groups disputing the claim.

President Trump signed an executive order Friday allowing the Air Force to recall as many as 1,000 retired pilots to active duty to address a shortage in combat fliers, the White House and Pentagon announced.By law, only 25 retired officers can be brought back to serve in any one branch. Trump's order removes those caps by expanding a state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush after 9/11, signaling what could be a significant escalation in the 16-year-old global war on terror."We anticipate that the Secretary of Defense will delegate the authority to the Secretary of the Air Force to recall up to 1,000 retired pilots for up to three years," Navy Cdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. But the executive order itself is not specific to the Air Force, and could conceivably be used in the future to call up more officers and in other branches.