Around the World: February 19, 2015

 

DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine (AP) — Debaltseve appeared to be largely under the control of rebels Thursday, a day after Ukrainian forces began withdrawing from the besieged town.

 

Associated Press journalists who drove around about half the town found that all neighborhoods were under the control of rebel fighters, most of them appearing to be Cossacks.

 

Nikolai Kozitsyn, a Russian Cossack leader who has been a prominent warlord in separatist eastern Ukraine, was seen driving around in a Humvee-like vehicle that had been captured from Ukrainian troops.

 

Cossack fighters laughed, hugged each other and posed for photos.

 

But one car carrying Cossacks hit a land mine about 200 meters from the journalists, killing one Cossack and injuring one other.

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the fight against violent extremism, President Barack Obama has argued the U.S. has one thing going for it that Europe doesn't: a long tradition of warmly embracing its immigrants, including Muslims.

 

With the Islamic State group spreading and terrorists gaining strength in the Mideast and Africa, Obama has sought to use this week's White House summit on violent extremism to urge the world to broaden its response far beyond military interventions. U.S. airstrikes have managed to blunt some of the militants' gains in Iraq and Syria, but they don't address the extreme ideologies that underpin deadly groups such as IS, al-Shabab and Boko Haram.

 

"If we're going to prevent people from being susceptible to the false promises of extremism, then the international community has to offer something better — and the United States intends to do its part," Obama told the summit Wednesday. He planned to speak again Thursday when delegates from about 65 countries gather for the summit's closing session at the State Department.

 

But not all Muslim-Americans feel like full members of American society, and security experts warned against assuming that the U.S. is impervious to those who seek to recruit and radicalize.

 

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. has largely been spared the terrorist assaults that have hit cities in Denmark, Belgium and France, growing out of radical interpretations of Islam. In the weeks since the Charlie Hebdo newspaper shootings in Paris, Obama and other U.S. figures have portrayed the U.S. as being at a lower risk. After all, America is known as the "Great Melting Pot," where minorities of all stripes are made to feel at home.

 

 

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) — Shiite Arab militias have flooded into northern Iraq's Kirkuk region to help Kurdish forces battle the Islamic State group, but their uneasy alliance threatens to reignite a much older conflict over the oil-rich area pitting the largely autonomous Kurds against the Arab-led government in Baghdad.

 

All across Iraq, the rapid advance by the Islamic State extremists over the past year has drawn longtime rivals into reluctant alliances. The shared struggle could with time help Iraqis forge a long-elusive sense of national unity. But it also risks papering over disputes that could burst into the open if the threat subsides.

 

 

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese were seeing in the Year of the Sheep on Thursday, but with fortune-tellers predicting accidents and an unstable economy and some parents-to-be fretting over the year's reputation for docile kids, it wasn't exactly warming everyone's heart.

 

This animal sign, which comes once every dozen years, can be said to have an identity crisis. Known variably as the Year of the Goat, Sheep or Ram, the sign's confusion stems from its Chinese character, "yang," which broadly describes any of the ruminating mammals, with or without horns.

 

Many Chinese prefer to translate it as the "Year of the Sheep" because sheep are more cute and cuddly, and large sheep figures have appeared around the capital's shopping areas in recent weeks.

 

The goat, however, is more likely to be the original meaning because it was a popular farm animal among Han Chinese who started the zodiac tradition, Huang Yang, a researcher on the roles of sheep and goats in Chinese culture, was quoted by the official Xinhua News agency as saying.

 

Still, Xinhua is going with "Year of the Sheep" in its English-language reports rather than "Year of the Goat."

 

Greeks would see living standards plunge; other countries would be hit by billions in losses

So what would it cost if Greece left the euro?

 

As European policymakers struggle to reach a deal to keep the country from a bankruptcy, experts are making rough estimates of the potential costs of failure.

 

Neither side wants Greece to leave the single currency zone. It's all about the conditions for staying: Athens is sick of the budget cuts they're being asked to make in return for 240 billion euros in loans. Greece's new government says a six-year recession shows that the requirements to restrain spending are strangling the economy.

 

The eurozone creditor countries, however, are refusing to lend it any more money without tough conditions.

 

Without more money, Greece may default on debts due this spring and summer. Default, or fears of one, could trigger turmoil that would collapse Greece's banks. And that could force it to print its own currency to bail them out.

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans support increasing the minimum wage, as well as requiring employers to provide paid sick leave and parental leave, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

 

All three were proposed by President Barack Obama during his recent State of the Union address as ways to increase protections for American workers. But the poll also found that most Americans don't approve of the job Obama is doing helping the middle class.

 

 

PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) — Candles lit up the plaza of a central Arizona courthouse Wednesday as hundreds gathered to honor the American woman pictured before them who was taken hostage by Islamic State militants.

 

Kayla Mueller's death earlier this month was confirmed by her family and U.S. officials. The 26-year-old international aid worker from Prescott, Arizona, had been captured in Syria in August 2013.

 

Friends, family and strangers wore pink ribbons on their shirts as they listened to speakers reflect on Mueller's life and work. Strangers and friends dropped off cards and wrote messages for a scrapbook, calling Mueller an angel and saying she represented the best of humanity.

 

Mueller's brother, Eric Mueller, encouraged the crowd to live as his first friend, best friend and sister did by reaching out to those who are suffering and give them a hug. His father, Carl Mueller, stood up immediately after his son finished speaking and hugged him tightly at the bottom of the stage.

 

"May God keep you from any more harm, any more hurt," Eric Mueller said to his sister. "You are in his hands now. You do not have to suffer anymore. Only now will you be able to see how much you really did and truly did for this world by looking down on it from above."

 

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Contaminated medical instruments are to blame for infecting seven patients — including two who died — with an antibiotic-resistant and potentially deadly "superbug" at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, hospital officials said. A total of 179 patients may be infected.

 

They were exposed to Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, during endoscopic procedures between October and January when it was discovered during tests on a patient, said Dale Tate, a University of California, Los Angeles spokeswoman.

 

The potentially infected patients are being sent free home-testing kits that UCLA will analyze, the university said.

 

The bacteria may have been a "contributing factor" in the deaths of two patients, a university statement said.

 

Similar outbreaks of CRE have been reported around the nation. They are difficult to treat because some varieties are resistant to most known antibiotics. By one estimate, CRE can contribute to death in up to half of seriously infected patients, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

 

LANTANA, Fla. (AP) — Vanilla Ice has been released from custody in Florida after being arrested and charged with breaking into and stealing from an abandoned home.

 

Police in Lantana say the recording artist and home-improvement-show host had been renovating a home next to the victim's. They said some of the stolen items were found at his property.

 

Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, rose to fame with the hit "Ice Ice Baby." He also hosts DIY Network's "The Vanilla Ice Project."

 

The 47-year-old was charged Wednesday with burglary of a residence and grand theft and taken into custody. He was released from the Palm Beach County jail Wednesday night on a $6,000 bond.

 

He told TV station WPTV as he left that the situation was a "misunderstanding" that's been "blown out of proportion."

 

 

PARIS (AP) — A black man who was blocked from boarding a Paris metro train by Chelsea soccer fans chanting racist slogans wants the group to be "found, punished and locked up."

 

In an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, the man — identified only as Souleymane S. — said he had lost his phone in the scuffle in the metro and didn't learn until Wednesday evening that the altercation was filmed. Because he doesn't speak English, he said he didn't fully grasp what the rowdy group was saying — they chanted "we're racist, we're racist, and that's the way we like it" — but their meaning was clear.

 

The incident happened Tuesday evening, a short time before Chelsea played Paris Saint-Germain at Parc des Princes in the Champions League.

 

"They were saying things to me in English and I didn't really understand the meaning of the words. I understood that it had to do with Chelsea fans and made the link with the PSG match that was happening that night. I also clearly understood that they were hassling me because of the color of my skin," he said.

 

In a video posted by the Guardian newspaper, the man pushes back and says in French "Can I get on or what?" before again being shoved away.