Meet the gun-toting women waging a fierce war against ISIS

 

Tales of the men fighting the battle raging in Mosul between Iraqi forces and the fighters of IS are myriad. But elsewhere in Northern Iraq, a group of women warriors are making a defiant stand against the Islamist State.

These Iranian Kurdish women fighters hold a desert position in northern Iraq, and IS hit's them regularly with mortars. Their response? Singing through loudspeakers. Then they let rip with machine gun fire.

Like Wonder Woman's Amazonian tribe, these women are band of sisters, battle-hardened and fighting for a cause they truly believe in; protecting the land and those they love. 

"We wanted to make them angry. To tell Daesh that we are not afraid," Mani Nasrallahpour, 21, one of about 200 female peshmerga fighters, who left behind their life in Iran to take on the hardline Sunni militants, told Reuters.

A commander said Islamic State -- known to its enemies by the Arabic acronym Daesh -- deliberately targeted the female unit with 20 mortars when the singing began.

Islamic State prohibits singing and music. It has also imposed tight restrictions on women and took hundreds of them as sex slaves since sweeping through northern Iraq in 2014 and declaring a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.

The Kurdish women are part of a larger armed unit of some 600 fighters aligned with the Kurdistan Freedom Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PAK.

This group has joined an array of Iraqi and Kurdish forces who are backed by a US-led coalition in an offensive designed to push Islamic State out of their stronghold of Mosul.

It also has a far more ambitious goal of creating an independent Kurdish nation that would stretch across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria -- a concept those nations reject.

"We fight to protect our soil, whether it is the Kurdistan of Iran or Iraq. It does not matter whether it is Daesh or another group that has occupied our soil," said Nasrallahpour, clutching an AK-47 assault rifle.

Their presence is a reminder of the complexities of the battlefield in northern Iraq, where the women recently joined Iraqi male Kurdish fighters in driving Islamic State out of the village of Fadiliya.

Avin Vaysi ran into that fight toting a heavy machinegun and battling Islamic State street by street.

"They are afraid of women," she said. "It is true that Daesh is dangerous but we are not afraid of them."

So far in the offensive, one woman fighter from the group has been killed.

Shopian encounter: Terrorist neutralised, two soldiers injured

Srinagar [India], Nov. 7 (ANI): A massive gunfight broke out in Shopian, Jammu and Kashmir today in which a terrorist was neutralised and an Army personnel sustained injuries.

A joint team of 62 Rashtriya Rifles and the JK Police launched an operation last night after receiving specific information about untoward elements.

One AK 47 rifle along with other ammunition and warlike stores were also recovered.

A total of two Army soldiers were injured in the overnight operation and were immediately evacuated and are stable now.

Yesterday, an Army jawan was killed in a ceasefire violation in Poonch district.

The firing from Pakistan came hours after an Indian soldier was killed and a civilian was injured at the R.S Pura Sector.

The Indian Armed Forces aptly retaliated the heavy firing initiated by the Pakistani Rangers, which began at 2 a.m. yesterday.

Indian Army's northern Command took to its official Twitter handle to declare the incident.

"CFV in Poonch Sector. Being strongly retaliated. Heavy damage to Pak posts. Own one soldier fatal, two injured (sic)," it said.

Yesterday's ceasefire violation takes place three days after two women were killed and a child was severely injured in Manjakote Sector of Rajouri district. (ANI)

Blac Chyna plans to have her baby in the same $4,000-a-night maternity suite Kim K used

Blac Chyna is planning to give birth to her daughter with fiancée Robert Kardashian in the same maternity suite that Kim Kardashian used. According to TMZ, Chyna is having a C-section next week at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. where Kim and Kanye paid $4000 a night when she gace birth to her son, Saint. The maternity suite has 3 beds, 2 baths and a lounge area and complimentary robes. Photos of the suite after the cut...

 

The Moscow grave of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in jail. Russia has used Interpol to pursue an American-born client of his.  

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Facing trial in Russia over the theft of a street-art drawing valued by its creator at $1.55, Nikita Kulachenkov, a Russian forensic accountant involved in anticorruption work, fled to Lithuania to avoid what he decided was a doomed battle against trumped-up charges.
What he did not realize was that Russia’s reach these days extends far beyond its borders. Arriving in Cyprus from Lithuania in January to join his mother for a holiday, Mr. Kulachenkov was stopped at airport passport control, questioned for hours by immigration officials and then taken in handcuffs to a police detention center.
“They told me there was a problem with Russia and kept asking me what crime I had committed,” Mr. Kulachenkov recalled. Cypriot immigration and police officers seemed as mystified as he was, he said, by a note in their computer systems that described him as a wanted criminal requiring immediate arrest.
The wanted notice had been put there in August last year by Russia, where the theft of millions and even billions of dollars by the politically connected goes mostly unpunished but where the alleged theft of a street sweeper’s all-but-worthless drawing has been the focus of a lengthy investigation involving some of the country’s most senior law enforcement officials.
The arrest demand, known as a “diffusion,” had gone out to Cyprus and 50 other countries through the international police organization, Interpol. It had not been endorsed by Interpol, which is “strictly forbidden” by its Constitution from any action of a “political character,” but nonetheless labeled the 34-year-old anticorruption activist as a criminal in databases around the world.
Determined to punish domestic opponents who flee abroad, as well as non-Russians whose lives and finances it wants to disrupt, Moscow has developed an elaborate and well-funded strategy in recent years of using — critics say abusing — foreign courts and law enforcement systems to go after its enemies.
Some countries, including Russia, “work really hard to get Interpol alerts” against political enemies, said Jago Russell, the chief executive of Fair Trials International, a human rights group in London, because “this helps give credibility to their own prosecution and undermines the reputation of the accused.”
“It is also potentially a good threat to use against people still in the country: ‘You may be able to leave, but don’t assume you will be safe,’” he added.
The efforts have often fallen flat in the end, but have succeeded in tying up their targets in legal knots for months and years.
Acting on a Russian request, a British court, for example, froze the worldwide assets of Sergei Pugachev, a former close friend of President Vladimir V. Putin’s who fell out with the Kremlin in a squabble over property and fled to Britain, then France.

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Pope Francis warns against 'building walls' ahead of U.S presidential election

On Saturday evening, while addressing the Third World Meeting of Popular Movements at the Vatican, the Roman Catholic Pope, Pope Francis warned against building 'walls', saying tyranny doesn't find support unless it taps into people's fears.
Donald Trump's proposal to build a wall between the United States and Mexico has been a major focus point of his campaign mantra, but the Pope, without directly calling out the U.S Republican presidential candidate, stated clearly that 'all walls fall', saying God doesn't want a life of enclosure of banishment for his children.

"No tyranny finds support without tapping into our fears," Francis said.  "This is key. Hence, all tyranny is terrorist. And when this terror -- which was sown in the peripheries, with the massacres, looting, oppression and injustice -- explodes in centers with different forms of violence, even hateful and cowardly attacks, citizens who still retain some rights are tempted to the false security of physical or social walls. "Walls that enclose some and banish others. 

Walled citizens, terrified on one side, excluded, exiled, and still more terrified on the other. Is that the life that our Father God wants for their children? "Dear brothers and sisters -- all walls fall. All of them. Do not be fooled."

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Pacquiao wins lopsided decision with Mayweather watching

 

LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. stopped by to see an old foe, and Manny Pacquiao tried his best to give him a show.
With Mayweather watching intently from a ringside seat, Pacquiao dropped Jessie Vargas in the second round and bloodied his face Saturday night on his way to a lopsided decision that gave him a piece of the welterweight title once again.
Pacquiao won on all three ringside scorecards — 118-109, 118-109 114-113 — to take the piece of the title Vargas won in his last fight. The AP scored it 119-109 for Pacquiao.
"Not bad," Mayweather said, giving Pacquiao a thumbs up after the fight.
It was vintage Pacquiao at times, even though he couldn't stop Vargas like he desperately wanted to. And with Mayweather at ringside it certainly will stir talk of a second fight between the boxers who went at it last year in the richest fight ever.
That, of course, would depend on Mayweather coming out of retirement and Pacquiao being able to fight while still attending to his duties as a senator in the Philippines. Mayweather did not answer questions about a possible return to the ring shouted at him by writers at ringside.
"I invited him to be here tonight," Pacquiao said, saying "we'll see" when asked if the two could meet again.
Pacquiao pressed the fight from the opening bell, trying to score a knockdown. He looked as if he would when he caught Vargas with a straight left that put him on the canvas, but Vargas got up quick and fought the distance.
"I feel I could do more but every round I tried to knock him out," Pacquiao said.
Just before the bell rang to start the fight, Pacquiao smiled and waved a fist at Mayweather. He clearly wanted to impress Mayweather, who won their first fight easily.
But Pacquiao, who has not knocked out an opponent in seven years, wasn't going to stop the younger Vargas in his hometown. Vargas had difficulty dealing with Pacquiao's speed, but was more than willing to trade punches to try and lure him into a brawl.
In the eighth round he succeeded at doing that, hitting Pacquiao with a big right and punching his gloves together as if to tell him to stand and fight. Pacquiao went right back after him and they traded punches before staring at each other when the bell sounded to end the round.
"Fighting Manny Pacquiao is like playing a very fast game of chess," Vargas said. "You have to be alert at all times, there are a lot of punches coming in. He was very fast and he was very sharp."
Vargas was cut over the right eye by an accidental clash of heads in the eighth, and blood trickled into his eye but it didn't seem to be a factor.
The taller Vargas landed some good right hands of his own, but they were infrequent and he rarely followed up on them. Still, they were enough to keep Pacquiao away at times and offset some of his advantage with speed.
"I didn't want to be careless," Pacquiao said. "I was very careful to go inside because I know he will counter me."
Pacquiao was credited with landing 147 of 409 punches to 104 of 562 for Vargas. Pacquiao also was given a 101-70 advantage in power punches.
Mayweather took a ringside seat alongside his daughter to watch the man who helped make him untold millions when they fought in 2015. Mayweather won that fight, and Pacquiao's performance was largely panned, though he claimed to have an injured shoulder.
Pacquiao, fighting in his 22nd title fight in a pro career that stretches back to 1995, trained at night in the Philippines in the weeks leading up to the fight so he could tend to his day job as a newly elected senator. With the senate out of session, he was back in a more familiar place, with a crowd of some 16,132 nearly filling the UNLV campus arena to watch him take on Vargas, who was in only his second title bout.
Pacquiao, who earned a reported $100 million to fight Mayweather in the richest fight ever, was guaranteed $4 million plus a percentage of the revenue of the fight. Vargas got $2.8 million.
Pacquiao improved to 59-6-2, while Vargas fell to 27-2.

                      

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Secret Service rushes Donald Trump off stage at rally

RENO, Nev. — Donald Trump was abruptly brought off the stage by Secret Service in the middle of a Saturday night rally when an unidentified man apparently tried to rush the stage.

Multiple witnesses near the front of the stage told reporters that they believed that the man had a gun, but the Secret Service said no weapon was found.

Trump had paused his stump speech to call out a protester when several Secret Service agents suddenly rushed to him and grabbed him off the stage. Chaos ensued as the crowd began to hurry away from the stage. Some moved back toward a barricaded area where the press corps was set up and began screaming at them.

“Why don’t you cover this!” a man screamed as reporters stood on their chairs with cameras, trying to get a better look. “Liars!”

As rally attendees began to fearfully race for the exits, Trump aides rushed to the candidate’s traveling press corps and ordered them to immediately head to the motorcade.

Reporters ran through the crowd. Heavily armed police officers with machine guns were seen escorting a man backstage. They declined to comment to reporters about the incident.

Trump’s traveling press corps was initially rushed toward the motorcade, amid word from the campaign that the candidate would not return to the stage. But about seven minutes after the incident began, Trump’s entrance song — “God Bless the USA” — suddenly boomed throughout the convention hall and reporters hurried back in the room, where the candidate retook the stage.

“No one ever said it would be easy for us,” Trump said, thanking the Secret Service. And then he returned to his usual stump speech.

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