Iraqi officials: IS chemical attacks kill child, wound 600 ADVERTISING Iraqi officials: IS chemical attacks kill child, wound 600 BAGHDAD — The Islamic State group has launched two chemical attacks near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing a three-year-old
Iraqi officials: IS chemical attacks kill child, wound 600
BAGHDAD — The Islamic State group has launched two chemical attacks near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing a three-year-old girl, wounding some 600 people and causing hundreds more to flee, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
“What the Daesh terrorist gangs did in the city of Taza will not go unpunished,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said using an alternative acronym for the IS group during a meeting with village elders in Taza on Saturday. “The perpetrators will pay dearly.”
Security and hospital officials say the latest attack took place early Saturday in the small town of Taza, which was also struck by a barrage of rockets carrying chemicals three days earlier.
Sameer Wais, whose daughter Fatima was killed in the attack, is a member of a Shiite militia fighting IS in Kirkuk province. He said he was on duty at the frontline when the attack occurred early in the morning, quickly ran home and said he could still smell the chemicals in the rocket.
“We took her to the clinic and they said that she needed to go to a hospital in Kirkuk. And that’s what we did, we brought her here to the hospital in Kirkuk,” he said.
Poor offenders pay high price when probation turns on profit
MURFREESBORO, Tennessee — Outside the $200-a-week motel room that Steven Gibbs and his family call home, the afternoon sun sparkled. Inside, though, he had the curtains pulled tight. After working third shift at a round-the-clock McDonalds, his wife, Debbie, sat on the edge of one bed, her eyes closed. But the hour didn’t matter.
“Half the time I’m scared to go outside the door,” said Gibbs, 61, a former construction worker jailed twice since late 2013 after he couldn’t pay hundreds of dollars in probation fees for driving on a suspended license. Despite a court order barring the county and a private probation company from jailing him again, those fears lingered.
“I don’t trust none of them anymore,” Gibbs said, in late January. The company continued charging him fees until last week, when a judge agreed to put him on a new plan, supervised instead by the court, to pay down fines he owes the county.
Probation is supposed to substitute for jail or prison, requiring offenders to report regularly and maintain good behavior. But in this fast-growing county outside Nashville and more than a dozen states, probation for misdemeanors is a profit-making — and increasingly contentious — venture.
Those with cash to pay fines when they’re convicted often avoid supervision, while poor offenders can be snared in a cycle of debt and punishment. Critics of for-profit probation say it can create a modern “debtor’s prison.”
Even as political spending explodes, disclosure remains hazy
Politicians in Mississippi have used campaign money to pay for such things as a BMW, an RV and $800 cowboy boots.
In Wisconsin, a railroad executive was caught violating contribution limits after an ex-girlfriend he met on a “sugar daddy” dating website reported him for illegally funneling cash to Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign. Key to the investigation, election officials say, was a requirement that donors disclose their employers — but Republican lawmakers have since wiped out the rule.
Meanwhile, “dark money” spending by outside groups that aren’t required to disclose their donors is expected to explode during this presidential election year. States can take action to stem the tide at the local level, but few have. Congress could require more disclosure about who is financing campaigns, but it has made no move to do so.
Disclosure may be the public’s best and often only remaining way of knowing who is supporting political candidates in the wake of recent court decisions.
European migrant crisis prompts protests; leaders seek unity
PARIS — Left-wing European leaders tried to forge a common front Saturday in the continent’s migrant crisis while right-wing and extreme right groups protested current policies toward the waves of people fleeing war and poverty.
The meetings and demonstrations came as thousands of migrants have massed in muddy camps in the Greek border town of Idomeni after countries across the Balkans closed their borders.
Europe’s migrant crisis is forming the backdrop for key elections in three German states Sunday. The Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, is expected to make gains amid unease over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome last year for large number of refugees. However, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said Saturday that gains for the nationalist party won’t change his government’s stance.
But in Berlin, about 2,000 right-wing demonstrators carrying German flags chanted “Merkel must go!” and “We are the people!” in a protest Saturday, accompanied by a heavy police escort.
By wire sources
