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Moscow Removes Ingushetia President - Yahoo! News : "Spontaneous dancing broke out in the streets Thursday night in the tiny Russian republic of Ingushetia, which borders the troubled Chechnya region. The reason for the celebration was that Moscow had accepted the 'voluntary resignation' of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov. No part of the Russian Caucasus today has a political situation hotter than Ingushetia's, and no leader in the volatile region has been less effective and more embattled than Zyazikov. Moscow had picked Zyazikov, a general of the FSB (the state security body that succeeded the KGB), in 2002 to replace then-Ingush President General Ruslan Aushev, whose 'fault' had been immensely popularity among his people and his opposition to the war in Chechnya. But under Zyazikov's tenure, Ingushetia has supplanted Chechnya as the permanent hub of anti-Moscow Islamist resistance in the Caucasus. Chechen rebels now wage hit-and-run attacks from the Ingu...

US still the villain in Iraq's former rebel bastion - Yahoo! News : "Anti-American sentiment and distrust for Washington runs deep even among senior Iraqi officials in Fallujah. 'I want to see the Americans leave as early as possible,' said Mayor Saad Awwad Rashid, a man well respected in Fallujah for his pro-active approach to ease the daily problems of his constituents. 'People hate Americans, especially when they come to arbitrary arrests, including of women. I want the Americans to go out of Iraq. It does not matter who wins US elections. It is of no interest to us.' The Sunnis of Fallujah, who have to carry special identity cards to move in and out of the city, also have no patience towards Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki or the security deal he is negotiating with Washington. 'We don't need Americans for three more years. We don't need SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement),' said Abdullah, referring to the security pact that will determine the p...

Top Obama Adviser Has Long Ties to Neocons - by Michael Flynn : "When Wolfowitz was tapped to head the State Department's Policy Planning Staff after the election of Ronald Reagan, he included Ross in his team of assistants, which, according to Mann, would go on to become, over the next two decades, 'the heart of a new neoconservative network within the foreign policy bureaucracy.' Other Wolfowitz team members from that time included I. Lewis Libby, a Washington lawyer who later became notorious as the disgraced former chief aide to Vice President Dick Cheney; James Roche, President George W. Bush's Air Force secretary who resigned after being implicated in the Boeing tanker leasing scandal; Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the UN and post-invasion ambassador to Iraq; Alan Keyes, the perennial Republican presidential candidate; and Francis Fukuyama, the 'end of history' theorist and erstwhile neoconservative ally who turned against the faction after the...

Sixty refugees found dead on beach - Yahoo! News UK Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said the latest victims of the perilous smuggling route across the Gulf of Aden had set off from the Somali port city of Bosasso, fleeing war and poverty in their homelands. In one of two incidents that caused the deaths, smugglers tipped the refugees into the sea at night after noticing lights on land and fearing they would be spotted by the coastguard, MSF quoted survivors as saying. "They forced us into the sea, even if the water was too deep. Several people did not know how to swim and they drowned," one survivor said. An eight-months pregnant woman was injured by the boat's propellor after being forced overboard. In a second incident, MSF workers discovered a group who had made it to shore after their boat capsized. They said they had buried 23 fellow passengers. "The boat was stuck almost upside down in the sand, not far from the beach. The fishermen were trying to find survivors...