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French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday that six-power talks with Iran being held at the United Nations had failed to yield progress on curbing Tehran’s nuclear program. “At this time as I speak, there is no significant progress,” Fabius told journalists on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. “We were due to have a meeting this morning of the P5+1 on one side and the Iranians on the other but because of a lack of progress, this meeting (had) to be called off,” Reuters quoted him saying. Israel, meanwhile, voiced vociferous objections to a reported American proposal to...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday sought to leverage the crisis in the Middle East to ease sanctions on his country as part of nuclear talks, suggesting during a United Nations address that security cooperation between Iran and other nations could only occur if they struck a favorable nuclear deal. The Iranian president, meanwhile, sought to lay the blame for raging violence in the Middle East at the feet of western nations. He strongly condemned terrorism and described it as a serious threat, but also said the West’s “blunders” in the region have created a “haven for terrorists and extremists.”...

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has arranged for two jurors to get legal help to ensure they are paid by their employers during a lengthy criminal trial of Blackwater security guards. Four former Blackwater guards have been on trial since June 17 in the shootings of more than 30 Iraqi citizens seven years ago in Baghdad. Jury deliberations began Sept. 2 and are continuing. In a court proceeding with lawyers from both sides, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said he had learned that one juror hasn't been paid by her employer since the first two weeks of the trial. In...

LONDON (AFP) — British Prime Minister David Cameron will hold talks on Wednesday with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani over unrest in Iraq and Syria, officials said, announcing the first meeting between the countries’ leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The talks will occur on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. They come as Western powers seek to build support for the fight against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, which holds swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and which has beheaded two US journalists and a British aid worker. Britain has had tense ties with...

The Iranian president left Tehran for New York on September 22 to attend the 69th Annual Meeting of the UN General Assembly. Hassan Rouhani is expected to deliver his speech at the meeting on September 25, IRNA news agency reported. It will be Rouhani's second visit to New York since he took the office last year. Rouhani paid his first visit to New York to attend the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. Prior to his departure to New York, Rouhani met with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on September 21. Iranian officials earlier said any possible meeting...

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has raised the public alert of a terror threat in Australia to high, “Our security agencies have raised the alert level based on an accummulation of indicators,” he said in a press conference today. The terror level has been set at medium on the National Terrorism Public Alert System since the system was introduced in 2003. The four levels include: • low — terrorist attack is not expected • medium — terrorist attack could occur • high — terrorist attack is likely • extreme — terrorist attack is imminent or has occurred. The move is expected...

Credible information has reached Saudi, British and Australian agencies that two al Qaeda branches – IS in Iraq and Syria and AQAP at its base in Yemen - have wrapped up plans to roll out coordinated terrorist spectaculars around the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2011 attacks on New York and Washington. According to DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources, they are preparing to strike simultaneously in the Middle East and a West European city. Next, they will go for US targets in the Middle East and Europe. In the estimate of Islamist experts, the IS and AQAP have decided to delay...

Two teenage girls have been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to blow up a synagogue in Lyon, Newsweek reported on Friday, citing French news websites. According to JSS News and Europe 1, a source from the French security agency the Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence revealed that two Muslim girls, aged 15 and 17, were arrested in the Tarbes and Venissieux neighborhoods a week ago, after authorities uncovered a plan to carry out a suicide bombing inside the Great Synagogue of Lyon. The two were indicted on August 22 for conspiracy to commit terrorism, reported Newsweek. An unnamed security source...

Man with ISIS flag on vehicle threatens cops with bomb Updated: Aug 28, 2014 3:17 PM CST CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) - A man who had an ISIS flag waving from his vehicle is facing several charges after he threatened police with a bomb Wednesday morning when he was pulled over on the Southwest Side. Emad Karakrah, 49, was charged with felony counts of disorderly conduct and aggravated fleeing; and a misdemeanor count of driving on a never-issued license, according to Chicago Police. He was also issued three traffic citations. Someone called police after seeing a “suspicious person” driving a...

<p>Yesterday, in New York, the sister of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev was arrested for allegedly threatening to blow someone up in what appears to be some kind of weird love triangle situation. You will, of course, remember the Tsarnaevs as the infamous terrorist duo behind the Boston Marathon bombing, which took place back in April of 2013.</p>

Says who? In 1965-66 I huddled at night inside my dug-in defensive perimeter and watched the flickering lightning of the explosions of Operation Arc Light, an aggressive use of American heavy bombing capabilities against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese enemies we faced. The sky-lighting flashes accompanied seconds later by muted rumbles gave only the barest hint of the unbelievable violence being unleashed upon our enemy a few kilometers distant. Days later, our ground patrolling into the bombed areas gave us an awed appreciation of the power of America’s Air Forces. The former jungle terrain was a scorched and scarred...

In the early morning hours of August 26, 1980—29 years ago today—men wearing white jumpsuits and pretending to deliver an IBM copy machine rolled a bomb into Harvey’s Resort Hotel and Casino in Stateline, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. So began one of the most unusual cases in our history.

TEHRAN: Iran is ready to join international action against jihadists in Iraq provided the West lifts crippling sanctions, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday. His comments followed a call by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius Wednesday for all countries in the region, including Iran, to join the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) fighters who have seized swath of Iraq as well as neighboring Syria. "If we agree to do something in Iraq, the other side of the negotiations should do something in return," the official IRNA news agency quoted Zarif as saying. "All the...

The Islamic militants reportedly expanded their drive near Iraqi Kurdistan Saturday despite two U.S. airstrikes aimed at mortar positions and a seven-vehicle convoy to stop the advance on Kurdish capital of Irbil. The Wall Street Journal reported that the militants appear to have their sights on connecting towns seized along the Kurdish-control territory. The most recent town to be seized was identified as Sheikhan… Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held in schools in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of...

A US Republican congressman has called for the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, saying in case of US hesitancy, Israel should be allowed to do that. Speaking on the House floor on Tuesday, Republican Louie Gohmert said that Israel’s invasion of Gaza means that it is time to bomb Iran. “It is time to bomb Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It is time for the United States, if we are not going to stop Iran’s nukes, then let Israel do it. A friend will not put another friend in this kind of jeopardy.” Israel and the US accuse Iran of pursuing non-civilian...

The deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed revenge against Israel for its ongoing military incursion into Gaza, which has already killed hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis. “You [people of Israel] are trees without any roots which were planted in the Islamic lands by the British,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said at this week’s Friday prayer sermon in Tehran, Fars News Agency reported. That statement referred to the Balfour Declaration, which led to the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the eventual creation of the state Israel in 1948. “We will chase you house...

With just 6 days left to a July 20 deadline, US secretary of state makes a push to overcome major differences in negotiations US Secretary of State John Kerry was due Monday to hold a second day of talks with Iran seeking to overcome major differences blocking what would be a momentous nuclear deal. With just six days until a deadline to strike an accord, the differences appear considerable, however, with Kerry and other Western ministers failing on Sunday to achieve a breakthrough. Such an accord is aimed at ending once and for all worries that Iran might develop nuclear...

VIENNA — With the Vienna negotiations over Iran’s nuclear activities making halting progress at best and a deadline looming, the Obama administration announced Thursday that Secretary of State John Kerry would fly here this weekend to assess whether a deal is possible — and perhaps to begin negotiating an extension in the talks that both sides said they had wanted to avoid. Mr. Kerry will be joined by the foreign ministers of several, but probably not all, of the other nations engaged in the talks, which include Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has...

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has censured the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for its failure to abide by its previous agreements with Tehran. In a Thursday interview with Inter Press Service, Ali Akbar Salehi said pursuant to the February 2014 “Framework for Cooperation” agreement between Tehran and the IAEA, the UN nuclear supervisory body should have ended the investigation into Iran’s “exploding bridge-wire (EBW) experiments.” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has so far refused to finalize the issues regarding the fast-functioning detonators, despite the fact that the EBW was the first issue that the two sides...

NOGALES, Ariz. — The FBI is investigating an explosion at a power plant in southern Arizona caused by a makeshift bomb. Nogales police say the explosion Wednesday morning at the UniSource Energy Services Valencia Plant ruptured a diesel storage tank and caused a small spill, but the fuel didn’t ignite. Read more: http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/11/makeshift-bomb-explodes-at-nogales-power-plant/#ixzz34RsZsRse Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter