Baghdad cancelled a $4.2 billion (3.3 billion euro) weapons package with Russia on Saturday citing graft concerns, torpedoing a deal that would have made Moscow Iraq's biggest arms supplier after the US.

Cancellation of the deal, which had been announced when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki led a delegation to Russia last month, is a setback for Moscow's attempts to firm up its slipping foothold in the Middle East and also throws into doubt efforts by Iraq to equip its armed forces.

"The deal was cancelled," Maliki's spokesman Ali Mussawi said.

"When Maliki returned from his trip to Russia, he had some suspicions of corruption, so he decided to review the whole deal... There is an investigation going on, on this."

Mussawi declined to say who specifically was being investigated, or if Iraq would begin new negotiations with Moscow.

He also did not say exactly when the final decision was made to stop the deal.

The Russian embassy in Baghdad was not available for comment.

Had the deal been finalised and implemented, it would have made Russia Baghdad's second-biggest arms supplier, after the United States.

Published: 10 November 2012

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America has moved from the bitter election campaign that gave President Barack Obama a second White House term towards a test of whether Republicans and Democrats are now ready to set aside their deep partisan divisions and legislative gridlock.

Meanwhile US stocks suffered their worst one-day loss of the year as investors looked past the election and focused on big problems ahead in Washington and Europe.

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 313 points to end at 12,933, its worst day of 2012, the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 34 points to 1,395 and the Nasdaq composite index gave up 75 points to 2,937.

The challenge is to overcome the self-imposed "fiscal cliff", dramatic and automatic tax increases and spending cuts that could drag the nation back into recession.

But in day-after-election remarks Republicans signalled no readiness to give up on their ideological opposition to raising taxes on high-income Americans, but instead were continuing to push for lower rates across the board.

That Reagan era theory, known as trickle-down economics, holds that cutting taxes will vastly increase the size of the income and profit pie, thereby producing more revenue even at lower tax rates.

Speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, John Boehner, laid down that position yet again as the condition for working for any increase in government revenue in return for Mr Obama's stated - but undefined - willingness to cut spending on crucial social programmes.

Published: 08 November 2012

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David Cameron has sent his congratulations to Barack Obama, saying: "I think he's a very successful US president and I look forward to working with him in the future."

Speaking during a tour of the Middle East, the Prime Minister said: "I would like to congratulate Barack Obama on his re-election.

"I have really enjoyed working with him over the last few years and I look forward to working with him again over the next four years.

"There are so many things that we need to do: we need to kick start the world economy and I want to see an EU-US trade deal.

Published: 07 November 2012

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Troops rescued more people from storm-flooded homes on Thursday and millions remained without power along the US East Coast even as New York struggled back to life with the first subway trains rolling in four days.

The US death toll from Hurricane Sandy rose to at least 85 as New York reported a major jump in fatalities caused by Monday's storm. Fuel shortages led to long lines of cars at gasoline stations in many states and the country faced a storm bill of tens of billions of dollars.

Despite a huge cleanup operation after the devastating storm, major difficulties remained along the East Coast, particularly in New Jersey.

National Guard troops were still helping to get people out of flooded homes in Hoboken, across the Hudson River from New York, a Guard spokesman said. "We are still doing search and rescue operations across the state," the spokesman said.

Hoboken authorities estimated on Wednesday that 20,000 people were stuck in their homes and high-wheel military trucks were brought in to reach stricken houses and apartment blocks.

The floodwaters receded slowly, leaving desolation on Thursday. A yacht, thrown up by the storm, blocked one street near the Hoboken ferry terminal. 

New Jersey, where President Barack Obama went Wednesday, emerged as the state with the most widespread destruction. At least 12 people were reported dead in the state, and many isolated districts were still being searched.

Some 1.8 million people in New Jersey were still without electricity three days after the storm and fuel shortages were becoming critical, with huge queues of cars at the rare gas stations open in the state.

The first subway trains brought some cheer to New York City, but difficulties remained significant with Con Edison power company saying that about 650,000 thousand people in the city were still without power.

Con Edison spokesman Alfonso Quiroz promised that more than 200,000 Manhattan customers blacked out by an explosion at a sub-station would have power by Saturday morning.

New York authorities handed out ice across the city to help people preserve food.

A skeleton metro service started just before dawn and trains were quickly packed. Train fees were waived on Thursday and Friday. "It is not comfortable but it is a huge relief to get moving again," said commuter Dave Stetman.

In a bid to avoid gridlock traffic jams that hit Manhattan on Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said cars entering the island must have at least three occupants. Police set up checkpoints at bridges on Thursday and turned back hundreds of cars.

Police said the New York City death toll from Sandy in the city had risen from 24 to 37. At least 85 people have now been reported dead along the 15 eastern states hit by Sandy.

The overall toll from the storm thus went up to 157, including fatalities in Canada and the Caribbean, where Haiti and Cuba were hit particularly hard.

In New York the majority of those killed were hit by trees that fell on their homes or cars as the storm whipped into the city.

But some heartbreaking stories emerged from the storm.

Two brothers, aged two and four, were swept from their mother's arms in the floods as the family tried to escape the rising seas in Staten Island in the New York suburbs.

Published: 01 November 2012

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Hurricane Sandy has forced Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to cancel up to two days of campaigning in the last full week of one of the closest presidential contests in recent US history.

While putting a severe limit on campaigning, the storm gave Mr Obama the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in the face of crisis. On the other side, there was the risk that the federal government, as in past emergencies, could be faulted for an ineffective response.

He cancelled campaign events in the key battleground state of Florida to hurry back to Washington and oversee the federal response to Sandy.

Parts of four swing states were in the hurricane's path: Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and New Hampshire. Those and five others - Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado - that do not reliably vote Democrat or Republican will decide the close election.

The storm threatened to draw attention from both candidates' campaigns and hinder early voting before the November 6 election. Voters in many states are already casting ballots early, and about one-third of the electorate will have voted before Election Day.

Both campaigns used social media to urge supporters to donate to the Red Cross and said they would stop sending fundraising emails to people living in areas in the storm's path.

The storm took attention from Mr Romney, and power cuts could end up halting the deluge of television ads and automatic phone calls in the eastern battleground states.

Published: 29 October 2012

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Hurricane Sandy is heading north from the Caribbean - where it left nearly 60 people dead - to threaten the eastern US with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow as millions were warned to get out of its path.

Sandy is expected to affect up to 60 million people when it meets two other powerful winter storms. Experts said it will not matter how strong the storm is when it hits land - the rare hybrid that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

"This is not a coastal threat alone," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "This is a very large area."

New Jersey governor Chris Christie declared a state of emergency as hundreds of coastal residents started moving inland and the state moved to close its casinos. New York's governor is considering shutting down the subways to avoid flooding and half a dozen states warned residents to prepare for several days of lost power.

Sandy weakened briefly to a tropical storm early on Saturday but was soon back up to Category 1 hurricane strength, packing 75mph winds about 335 miles south east of Charleston, South Carolina.

Published: 28 October 2012

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Hurricane Sandy has hit Cuba after lashing shanty towns, stranding travellers and downing power lines across Jamaica.

Sandy made landfall just west of Santiago de Cuba in southern Cuba, and the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said it had maximum sustained winds of 114mph. The storm, which packed heavy wind and rain as it roared across Jamaica, could go on to threaten the Bahamas and possibly Florida.

Sandy's death toll so far is at least two. An elderly man was killed in Jamaica when he was crushed by a boulder that rolled on to his clapboard house, and a woman in Haiti was swept away by a rushing river.

The storm hit Jamaica as a Category 1 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 90mph, then strengthened as it spun over open sea towards Cuba. In some southern towns on Jamaica, a few crocodiles were caught in rushing floodwaters that carried them out of their homes in mangrove thickets, showing up in districts where electricity was knocked out.

The hurricane's eye crossed over Jamaica and emerged from its northern coast near the town of Port Antonio, meteorologists said, but rain and wind continued to pound the Caribbean island.

It was the first direct hit by the eye of a hurricane on Jamaica since Gilbert 24 years ago, and fearful authorities closed the island's international airports and police ordered 48-hour curfews in major towns to keep people off the streets and deter looting. Cruise ships changed their itineraries to avoid the storm, which made landfall five miles east of the capital Kingston.

Flash floods and mudslides were a threat for the debt-ridden tropical island of about 2.7 million inhabitants, which has a crumbling infrastructure and a number of sprawling shanty towns built on steep embankments and along gullies that sluice run-off water to the sea.

Published: 25 October 2012

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US President Barack Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, on Saturday began preparing for their final debate, with Obama hunkering down at Camp David and Romney staying in Florida.

The third and last of their debates is scheduled for Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.

On Friday, Obama set an aggressive tone accusing Romney of suffering from policy "Romnesia," a barb dismissed by the Republican as pettiness 18 days before the election.

One night earlier, both men had traded light-hearted banter at a charity dinner, but on Friday the verbal attacks turned nasty, with the Democratic incumbent taunting Romney's efforts to tack to the center as polling day looms.

"Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year," Obama said at a rally attended by some 9,000 people at a university campus outside Washington.

The Obama camp's previous bid to skewer Romney with insulting tags -- such as pushing the Robin-Hood-in-reverse term "Romney Hood" to tarnish his tax policies -- have done nothing to protect the president's shrinking poll lead.

But, with the pair's last of three head-to-head debates set for Monday, the campaign returned to its tried and tested formula of branding Romney an untrustworthy flip-flopper.

"I mean, he's changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping, we've got to name this condition that he's going through. I think it's called 'Romnesia.' That's what it's called," Obama told the crowd.

The Republican nominee meanwhile campaigned in the biggest political battleground of all, Florida, where Monday's debate will be held, and he didn't hesitate to strike back at the president's comments.

"They've been reduced to petty attacks and silly word games," Romney told a crowd of more than 8,500 people at Daytona Beach, adding that Obama's re-election bid "has become the incredible shrinking campaign."

"This is a big country, with big opportunities and great challenges, and they keep on talking about smaller and smaller things."

Romney, accompanied by his running mate Paul Ryan, laid into the incumbent for failing to map out his plan for another four years should he win re-election.

"They have no agenda for the future, no agenda for America, no agenda for a second term."

While Romney's camp dismissed Obama's taunt as a gimmick, the image of Romney as a flip-flopper, one that his fellow conservatives have hit him with in the past, might yet gain traction with undecided voters.

One source that definitely does not back the multimillionaire private equity baron is The Salt Lake Tribune, the local paper in the home city of Romney's Mormon faith, albeit a liberal one that endorsed Obama in 2008.

In an editorial, the paper lavished praise on Romney for saving the city's 2002 Winter Olympics, but said his subsequent courting of the right-wing Tea Party movement and refusal to detail his tax plan should rule him out.

Published: 20 October 2012

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An Afghan police officer and cook poisoned their colleagues at a checkpoint in an assault co-ordinated with rebel fighters which left six dead in the country's south, officials say.

It was the latest in a string of attacks from inside the Afghan army and police that are threatening to undermine both the partnership with international troops - which have been the target of many attacks - and the morale of Afghan forces, who have suffered equally heavy casualties from such strikes.

The police officer and the cook worked with outside insurgents in the assault, which hit police manning a checkpoint in the Gereskh district of Helmand province, the governor's office said in a statement.

They poisoned two of the officers and then the militants attacked from outside, killing the remaining four officers, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zirak said. He did not say how the officers were poisoned.

The police officer was captured as he fled, but the cook escaped and remains at large, Mr Zirak added.

The insurgent gunmen escaped by motorcycle with weapons and ammunition, the governor's statement said.

Published: 20 October 2012

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Three jailed members of the Russian band Pussy Riot have told an appeal court they should not be imprisoned for their irreverent protest against president Vladimir Putin.

The women insisted that their impromptu performance inside Moscow's main cathedral was political in nature and not an attack on religion.

Dressed in neon-coloured miniskirts and tights, with homemade balaclavas on their heads, the women performed a "punk prayer" asking Virgin Mary to save Russia from Mr Putin as he headed into a March election that would hand him a third term. They were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in prison.

"We didn't mean to offend anyone," said Maria Alekhina, who along with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich spoke in court from inside a glass cage. She said they were protesting at Mr Putin and also the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy for openly supporting his rule.

"We went to the cathedral to express our protest against the joining of the political and spiritual elites," Ms Alekhina said.

Published: 10 October 2012

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