US airstrike kills 40 in Syria mosque

The US military said Thursday it carried out a deadly air strike on an Al-Qaeda meeting in northern Syria and would investigate reports that more than 40 civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in the raid.

“We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target-which was where the meeting took place-is about 50 feet (15 meters) from a mosque that is still standing,” said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.
According to a Centcom statement, “US forces conducted an airstrike on an Al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists.”
The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear-but that it was the same one widely reported to have targeted the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.
“We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike,” he added, when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people had died, most of them civilians.
“We take that very seriously,” he said, adding that Centcom had not received any direct reports of civilian casualties.
Thomas said the unilateral US strike “destroyed one half of a building in which the meeting was occurring.”
Al-Jineh is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are thought to be present.
The Britain-based Observatory said that raids by unidentified warplanes had targeted the village mosque during evening prayers.
It said more than 100 people were wounded, with many still trapped under the collapsed mosque.
ec/ch

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Blizzard hits northeast US

Blizzard hits northeast US

Snow piled up rapidly in parts of the northeastern United States on Tuesday as a blizzard swept in, forcing airlines to ground flights and schools to cancel classes while shrouding an early herald of spring, Washington’s famed cherry blossoms, in ice.

The National Weather Service (NWS) warned some 50 million people from Pennsylvania to Maine of a “rapidly intensifying nor’easter” that was unusual for so late in the winter and many heeded the advice by staying home.

 But the NWS also sharply dialed back forecasts in some areas, notably in New York City, where residents had been warned to steel themselves for potentially record-breaking wintriness.

Still, some in the region could expect to find themselves surrounded by up to 2 feet (60 cm) of snow by early Wednesday, the weather service predicted, with the worst blizzard conditions forecast for parts of New England.

 Governors in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia declared states of emergency. New York’s Andrew Cuomo suspended above-ground portions of the city’s subway service and said the Metro-North commuter service to the suburbs would shut down at noon. Transit officials warned that more bus and train routes might be suspended throughout the day.

“There’s no real reason to be on the roads,” Cuomo said in an interview with MSNBC.

New York City was expected to escape the worst of it after the NWS withdrew its blizzard warning and roughly halved its snowfall forecast for the city to between 4 and 8 inches (10 and 20 cm).

Still, life was disrupted for many New Yorkers.

“It’s a ghost town,” Ali Naji, 33, said as he sat listening to Mexican pop music amid the emptiness of his usually bustling convenience store in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood.

 His morning commute was easy enough since he lives upstairs. “I drop a rope and come down,” Naji said, laughing, but added that he could see why others would be deterred. He gestured out the window, where an occasional pedestrian could be seen trudging in an umbrella-forward stoop against the wind and sleet.

In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Lisa Luna, 36, and a friend walked around, hungry for breakfast.

“We weren’t prepared for the blizzard and didn’t go shopping,” she said. “I just needed a bagel.”

AIR TRAFFIC SNARLED

Airlines canceled about 5,700 flights across the United States, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

American Airlines (AAL.O) canceled all flights into New York’s three airports - Newark, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International Airport - and JetBlue 

 Airways (JBLU.O) reported extensive cancellations.

Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) canceled 800 flights for Tuesday for New York, Boston and other northeast airports. United Airlines (UAL.N) said it would have no operations at Newark or LaGuardia.

New York City public schools - the largest U.S. school system - canceled classes on Tuesday as did schools in the Washington, D.C., area, Boston, Philadelphia and northern New Jersey.

In Washington, federal agencies were opening three hours later than normal after forecasters predicted 5 inches (13 cm) of snow.

At the open-sided Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the ice-slick marble floor served as a skating rink for some of the 71 eighth graders visiting from St. Mary’s Academy in Englewood, Colorado.

Math teacher Michael Pattison, 65, ticked off all the monuments and museums the students would see that day.

“This weather is not going to stop us,” he said, clapping his gloved hands.

“No, it’s not,” a couple of students shouted back.

Nearby, scores of cherry trees in early bloom, a tourist attraction and an emblem of springtime in the capital, were encased in ice.

The storm comes near the end of an unusually mild winter along much of the East Coast, with below-normal snowfalls.

In Boston, Kelley Peace, a 26-year-old dog walker, was out with three of her charges in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, where residents were braced for up to a foot of snow.

“The dogs are more hyper in this weather,” she said. “They want to play. “Especially the big dogs. The only thing is the salt. It burns their paws. So I put booties on them.”

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Japan, US navies drill in East China Sea

Japan, US navies drill in East China Sea

 The US and Japanese naval forces said Friday they finished a four-day joint exercise in the East China Sea, as pressure increases in the district taking after North Korea's rocket tests.

The preparation, portrayed by Japanese media basically as a show-of-compel exercise, agreed with restored pressures in the locale after North Korea's most recent ballistic rocket dispatches prior this week. 

The plane carrying warship USS Carl Vinson and the guided rocket destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer from the US Navy joined the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Samidare in the East China Sea to "increment capability in essential oceanic abilities and enhance reaction capacities," the US Navy said in an announcement.

Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force, the nation's naval force, said in a different proclamation that the activities concentrated on "strategic preparing", without expounding

Be that as it may, Japan's moderate Sankei Shimbun daily paper said the bore was gone for issuing a notice against atomic outfitted North Korea by "displaying the quality and obstruction force of the Japan-US cooperation."

The joint bore initiated a day after North Korea propelled four ballistic rockets on Monday, with three landing provocatively near Japan, which the US is committed to guard under a security settlement.

Pyongyang has asserted the dispatch was a preparation practice for a strike on US bases in Japan and directed by pioneer Kim Jong-Un.

Seoul and Washington are independently doing yearly joint military activities in South Korea.

The Japan-US preparing was likewise intended to show their joint nearness in the East China Sea, where Japan and China are secured a long-running disagreement about uninhabited islets, the Sankei said.

In Japan they are known as the Senkakus, while China asserts then as the Diaoyus.

Progressive US organizations have guaranteed Japan that the islands fall under their security bargain, which means in the event that they are assaulted the US will guard them.

The Carl Vinson was relied upon to join the South Korea-US bores after the activity with Japan, the Sankei said.

The two arrangements of activities come as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to visit South Korea, Japan and China one week from now for his first trek to the locale since he got to be President Donald Trump's top ambassador.

The US Pacific Command said Monday that the Americans had started conveying the THAAD against framework to South Korea, which is intended to protect the US partner from a North Korean assault.

The sending has shocked Pyongyang partner China, which firmly contradicts it as a test to its security aspirations in the district.

China reacted that it was "solidly contradicted" to the organization and promised to "undauntedly take essential measures" to safeguard its security advantages.

China has contended that the arrangement would additionally destabilize the circumstance on the Korean landmass.

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