At least four policemen and one suspect have been reported killed in heavy gunfire in the Jordanian village of Wesya in the outskirts of Karak city after security officers stormed an apartment.
Two more suspects were arrested in Tuesday's violence that came shortly after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack at a popular tourist destination in Karak city.
The security sources told Al Jazeera that the suspects were on the wanted list and were not affiliated with the gunmen from Sunday's attack.
A video uploaded to social media purported to show Tuesday's exchange of fire in Wesya.
On Tuesday, ISIL said "four soldiers of the caliphate" armed with machine guns and hand grenades carried out Sunday's attack at the Crusader-era Karak Castle that killed 10 people.
"We promise the Crusader coalition countries something worse and more severe, Allah permitting ...," it said, referring to the anti-ISIL coalition member states.
Jordanian authorities and ISIL said the gunmen were shot dead by police during the course of a siege that lasted several hours.
Jordanian officials have refused to identify the attackers, calling them "terrorist outlaws".
Security sources said the perpetrators were Jordanian nationals.
Seven members of the Jordanian security forces, two local bystanders and the Canadian tourist were killed in the attacks which also left 34 people wounded.
Salamah Hamad, the country's interior minister, said on Monday at least five suicide belts were found, together with an ammunition cache, automatic weapons and explosives in a hideout in a house in the desert town of Qatranah, 30km northeast of Karak.
The gunmen had sought refuge in the Crusader castle after opening fire on police patrols and a police station in the city in southern Jordan, Hamad said.
Based on the quantities of explosives and weapons, "I don't think the target was just Karak castle, it's more," he added.
He would not elaborate, saying disclosing details at this stage could imperil national security.
Oasis of stability
Sunday's shootings were the latest in a series of attacks over the past year that have challenged the pro-Western kingdom's claim to be an oasis of stability in a region.
Jordan plays a key role in the US-led military campaign against ISIL, which seized large areas in neighbouring Iraq and Syria in 2014 and proclaimed a "caliphate" there.
Many Jordanians oppose their country's involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Queen steps down as patron of several organisations
The Queen will step down as patron of a number of organisations at the end of her 90th birthday year.
Organisations including Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, Barnardo's, the Rugby Football Union, the British Cycling Federation and the NSPCC were on a list of 25 the monarch will step down from.
The patronages will be passed on to other members of the Royal Family from 2017, Buckingham Palace said.
The Duke of Edinburgh broke formal ties with some of his patronages when he turned 90 in 2011.
In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: "Her Majesty is currently patron of more than 600 organisations and has enjoyed a close and active association with a great number of them throughout her reign.
"Her Majesty will continue to serve as patron to hundreds of charities and institutions but will now share this work with her family.
"Many of the organisations listed below already have other members of the Royal Family as vice-patrons or presidents, which will ensure a smooth transition."
Organisations including Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, Barnardo's, the Rugby Football Union, the British Cycling Federation and the NSPCC were on a list of 25 the monarch will step down from.
The patronages will be passed on to other members of the Royal Family from 2017, Buckingham Palace said.
The Duke of Edinburgh broke formal ties with some of his patronages when he turned 90 in 2011.
In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: "Her Majesty is currently patron of more than 600 organisations and has enjoyed a close and active association with a great number of them throughout her reign.
"Her Majesty will continue to serve as patron to hundreds of charities and institutions but will now share this work with her family.
"Many of the organisations listed below already have other members of the Royal Family as vice-patrons or presidents, which will ensure a smooth transition."
The history of Hezbollah, from Israel to Syria
In July 2006, long-standing tensions flared into war when Hezbollah operators crossed into Israel, killed three soldiers and abducted two others. Israel responded with a furious spate of air strikes on Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, and violence soon swept the country, less than two decades after the population had emerged from its own civil war.
That summer, conflict between the two sides ripped through Lebanon's recovering infrastructure and displaced almost a quarterof its people.
Israel has launched wars on Lebanon and Hezbollah many times, often in the southern swath of land that Israel carved out of the country and deemed a security zone during its long occupation throughout the 1980s and 90s.
The zone, which at one point grew to 10 percent of Lebanese territory, endured past the end of Lebanon's civil war and generated frequent, bloody confrontations. Before Israel withdrew in 2000, Hezbollah carried out a dozen "self-martyrdom missions" on Israeli military targets; in 1996, the Israeli army launched a campaign that led to the massacre of civilians at a United Nations base in Qana.
Compared with the hostile decades of the security zone, the summer war was a short blip on the historical record: 33 days of destruction that punctuated each side's longer struggle against the simple fact of the other's existence.
Both Israel and Hezbollah claimed 2006 as a victory at first, yet it was clear that for Hezbollah the gains extended beyond the war zone's borders. Across the Arab world, citizens had been watching from afar as Israel's bombing of bridges and shelters locked Lebanese communities into a grinding summer siege.
In the book Hezbollah: A Short History, scholar Augustus Richard Norton notes how outrage quickly spread over Israel's military approach, termed the Dahiya doctrine for the neighbourhoods that Israel flattened across Lebanon's south. By late July, angry demonstrations were mushrooming across Egypt.
In Syria and Palestine, posters, bumper stickers and keychains blared strong messages of support for Hezbollah's soldiers. The group had become a regional anti-hero, exiting the war with a newfound cache of sympathy across the region.
"After the war in 2006, Hezbollah reached the peak of its popularity,"said Amer Sabaileh, a political analyst from the Washington-based Middle East Media and Policy Studies Institute. "[It] had the consensus of people when it came to resistance, credibility and speaking the truth."
Yet today, Hezbollah is in flux. Once a champion of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, the group's popularity in the Middle East hovers at a new low due to its association with Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime in Syria. In a 2015 Zogby poll, 96 percent of Egyptians agreedthat Hezbollah has contributed to growing regional extremism.
Other Arab countries have joined the chorus of disapproval, with 86 percent of polled Jordanians holding a negative view of Hezbollah.
As Hezbollah wages its new, more unpopular war in Syria, Lebanon's past summer conflict is once again surfacing to political relevance. Last July, a Hezbollah-affiliated TV channel released a documentary titled 2006 about the group's war against Israel. The series showed never-before-seen footage of Hezbollah operations, as well as interviews with high-ranking Israeli officials who were apparently tricked into appearing on camera.
Political forces often turn to the past to sow legitimacy. For Hezbollah, the documentary harkens back to a point in time when the group enjoyed widespread legitimacy, and its violence could be framed in easier, Arab v Israeli terms.
According to Sahar Atrache, the International Crisis Group's senior Lebanon analyst, Hezbollah has always worked to knit tenuous associations between the legitimacy it garnered in 2006, and its current, more polarising involvement in Syria.
"From the beginning, Hezbollah has tried to link the fight in Syria to Israel," she said. "It has kept saying that Syria's part of the same axis of resistance to Israel, and that the aim of the war in Syria … is a continuation of the war of 2006. Hezbollah keeps constantly going back to Israel; it's something that's very recurrent in its speeches and party narrative."
For so long, Hezbollah has set its legitimacy against the backdrop of Israel's regional unpopularity. Today, however, the group is seeing its resources drained by Syria's war, and is in need of a new raison d'etre to bolster this costly involvement. It will be the responsibility of the enigmatic Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to deliver.
Nasrallah is a polarising figure. For many, he possesses an undeniable reserve of charisma, despite his leading role in what several international bodies have classified as a terrorist organisation.
Born one of nine children, Nasrallah's early childhood in East Beirut is cloaked in political mythology. He is said to have been pious from an early age, often taking long walks to the city centre to find second-hand books on Islam. Nasrallah himself has described how his childhood free time was spent staring reverently at a portrait of the famous Shia cleric Musa al-Sadr - a pastime that foreshadowed his future concern with politics and Shia communities in Lebanon.
In 1974, Sadr founded an organisation - the Movement of the Deprived - that became the ideological kernel for the well-known Lebanese party and Hezbollah rival, Amal. Grown into a political heavyweight in the 1980s, Amal mined support from middle-class Shia who had grown frustrated with the sect's historic marginalisation in Lebanon. Besides commandeering an anti-establishment message, Amal also provided stable income to many Shia families, unfurling a complex system of patronage across Lebanon's south.
After the outbreak of civil war between Lebanon's Christian Maronites and Muslims, Nasrallah joined Amal's movement and fought with its militia. But as the conflict progressed, Amal adopted a staunchly unsympathetic stance towards the presence of Palestinian militias in Lebanon, and it was from opposition to this sentiment that Hezbollah emerged.
Nourished by a steady lifeline of Iranian military support, Hezbollah's revolutionary ideology attracted many Amal defectors, among them a young Nasrallah, fresh out of his stay at a Shia seminary in Iraq. By 1985, Hezbollah had crystallised its own dogma in a founding document, which addressed the "downtrodden of Lebanon" and named the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran as its one true leader.
Throughout the civil war, Hezbollah and Amal evolved in bitter tandem, often jostling with each other for support among Lebanon's Shia constituents. As Norton notes in his book, political alliances in Lebanon's Shia communities have never been rigid. Personal allegiances change over the course of a lifetime; families often become messy sites of overlap, with members of the same household supporting different groups. Indeed, Nasrallah's brother, Hussein, has been a lifelong member of Amal.
Championing the Palestinian cause as its own, Hezbollah expanded during the Lebanese civil war under a shadow of kidnappings, hijackings and violence. The group abducted dozens of foreigners and leveraged them in complex negotiations that muddled their interests with Iran's. It drove bomb-laden trucks to US targets in Lebanon, and killed hundreds of people, both abroad and at home: Until 9/11, Hezbollah had taken more American lives than any other US-deemed terrorist groups.
Jo Cox's husband condemns Farage tweet 'blaming' Merkel for Berlin attack
The husband of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox has hit back after Nigel Farage 'blamed' Angela Merkel's immigration policy for the Berlin attack.
Following the suspected terror attack on the Christmas market in the German capital, the former UKIP leader tweeted: "Terrible news from Berlin but no surprise. Events like these will be the Merkel legacy."
Mr Farage was referring to the German Chancellor's open-door policy on welcoming immigrants fleeing Middle East war zones.
:: LIVE: Berlin Christmas market attack
In what was widely interpreted as a reference to the murder of his wife by a far-right terrorist during the EU referendum campaign, Brendan Cox quickly responded: "@Nigel_Farage blaming politicians for the actions of extremists? That's a slippery slope Nigel."
Following the exchange, Mr Farage defended his comments telling LBC radio: "Well of course he would know more about extremists than me, Mr Cox, he backs organisations like Hope Not Hate, who masquerade as being lovely and peaceful but actually pursue violent and very undemocratic means.
"And I'm sorry Mr Cox, it is time people started to take responsibility for what's happened. Mrs Merkel had directly caused a whole number of social and terrorist problems in Germany, it's about time we confronted that truth."
Mrs Cox was gunned down by extremist Thomas Mair on 16 June. As he launched his attack he said: "This is for Britain", "keep Britain independent" and "Britain first".
Brexiters have been accused of stoking hate crime after police figures showed an significant and sharp increase in the late stages of EU campaigning, and afterwards.
On the day of Mrs Cox's murder, Mr Farage launched a poster showing a long queue of refugees with the slogan "breaking point".
At the time, it was criticised by Remain campaigner and former chancellor George Osborne, who likened it to 1930s fascist propaganda, and Brexit campaigner and then justice secretary Michael Gove, who said it made him shudder.
Mrs Merkel has said that it would be "particularly sickening" if the Christmas market attacker is an asylum seeker.
Local media has reported the suspect arrested at the scene was a Pakistani who arrived in Germany in either 2015 or early this year. He was is believed to have been living at the Tempelhof refugee centre.
The far-right has been seeking to make political capital out of the attack in Berlin, which has left 12 people dead and 48 injured.
In a tweet sent just minutes after the attack, Eurosceptic MEP Marcus Pretzell described those who had been killed in the attack as "Merkel's dead".
The MEP for the right wing Alternative for Germany Party, which is making strong showing in Germany, wrote: "When will the German rule of law strike back? When will this cursed hypocrisy end? It is Merkel's dead!"
Following the suspected terror attack on the Christmas market in the German capital, the former UKIP leader tweeted: "Terrible news from Berlin but no surprise. Events like these will be the Merkel legacy."
Mr Farage was referring to the German Chancellor's open-door policy on welcoming immigrants fleeing Middle East war zones.
:: LIVE: Berlin Christmas market attack
In what was widely interpreted as a reference to the murder of his wife by a far-right terrorist during the EU referendum campaign, Brendan Cox quickly responded: "@Nigel_Farage blaming politicians for the actions of extremists? That's a slippery slope Nigel."
Following the exchange, Mr Farage defended his comments telling LBC radio: "Well of course he would know more about extremists than me, Mr Cox, he backs organisations like Hope Not Hate, who masquerade as being lovely and peaceful but actually pursue violent and very undemocratic means.
"And I'm sorry Mr Cox, it is time people started to take responsibility for what's happened. Mrs Merkel had directly caused a whole number of social and terrorist problems in Germany, it's about time we confronted that truth."
Mrs Cox was gunned down by extremist Thomas Mair on 16 June. As he launched his attack he said: "This is for Britain", "keep Britain independent" and "Britain first".
Brexiters have been accused of stoking hate crime after police figures showed an significant and sharp increase in the late stages of EU campaigning, and afterwards.
On the day of Mrs Cox's murder, Mr Farage launched a poster showing a long queue of refugees with the slogan "breaking point".
At the time, it was criticised by Remain campaigner and former chancellor George Osborne, who likened it to 1930s fascist propaganda, and Brexit campaigner and then justice secretary Michael Gove, who said it made him shudder.
Mrs Merkel has said that it would be "particularly sickening" if the Christmas market attacker is an asylum seeker.
Local media has reported the suspect arrested at the scene was a Pakistani who arrived in Germany in either 2015 or early this year. He was is believed to have been living at the Tempelhof refugee centre.
The far-right has been seeking to make political capital out of the attack in Berlin, which has left 12 people dead and 48 injured.
In a tweet sent just minutes after the attack, Eurosceptic MEP Marcus Pretzell described those who had been killed in the attack as "Merkel's dead".
The MEP for the right wing Alternative for Germany Party, which is making strong showing in Germany, wrote: "When will the German rule of law strike back? When will this cursed hypocrisy end? It is Merkel's dead!"
Trump vs. Obama in the alleged war on Christmas: Ugliness in a season of joy
“Happy holidays,” the grocery clerk said to the customer in front of me the other day.
“You mean Merry Christmas,” the customer snapped back.
The clerk sighed.
A war on Christmas? Yes, please. Because Christmas — the way we play it — needs some help.
The season meant to celebrate joy, generosity, love and kindness is now an annual cultural battleground for our divided nation.
Think this isn’t real? Just look at the White House.
The incoming president — a man not known for his religious devotion — trumpeted his Christmas bona fides during his “Merry Christmas USA Thank You Tour.” Donald Trump’s stages were decorated with Christmas trees — 16 of them in Orlando — and he made not a single mention of Hanukkah or any other holiday Americans observe.
President Obama and his family, on the other hand, were once again flambéed online because of their take on the season.
Their crime? A family holiday card. Yup. Holiday card, not Christmas card. A subversive, rebel plan to overthrow the nation’s $655.8 billion December industry because they didn’t put the words “Merry Christmas” on it, for the eighth year in a row!
“ ‘Merry Christ . . . er . . . scratch that. ‘We Are the Obamas, and It’s Some Random Holiday!’ ” Sarah Palin tweeted, when she saw the new Obama family card this year.
[The Obamas: Refusing to give in to the haters after years of threats and abuse]
Oops. There are a few other holidays this time of year, and the folks who celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Saturnalia, Festivus and Ramadan — which does fall in December occasionally — are also citizens of America.
But never mind. More Christmas! Because the holiday that launches layaway plans in August and begins its relentless soundtracks in October is totally endangered.
“Shocker, Obama’s final White House ‘Christmas card’ DOESN’T mention Christmas. . . . That’s ok, Trump has Merry Christmas all over his podiums,” tweeted another supposed Christian who somehow believes that the spirit of Jesus or Saint Nicholas comes alive in podium slogans.
It was a little more than a year ago that Trump, in one of his many campaign promises, vowed to win the alleged war on Christmas.
Last year, he took on this pressing American crisis when Starbucks unveiled its holiday paper cup as an ombre red number, without snowflakes or reindeer or snowmen, the things that would’ve surely cemented a company’s dedication to the only son of God.
[The phony ‘War on Christmas’ is back, fueled by those Starbucks Jesus haters]
Plenty of self-described holy folks were outraged at the design aesthetic, and Trump suggested a Starbucks boycott to a crowd in Springfield, Ill., promising: “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again. That I can tell you.”
Because he’s going to repeal HB 666, the bill that makes it a crime to say “Merry Christmas”? I missed that one.
Never fear, Trump’s launched a Merry Christmas victory tour so the Christmasers can keep winning.
There isn’t and never was a war on this thing we think is Christmas. You can’t swing a cat anywhere in America today and not hit a piece of tinsel. Don’t worry, you’re covered if that’s what Christmas means to you.
Even most of the folks who described themselves as deeply religious told the Public Religion Research Institute in its 2013 survey that they don’t mind hearing “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” this time of year.
This isn’t about religion. It’s about politics. Again.
I said it last year, and I’ll say it again this year. Yes, there is a war on Christmas. The real Christmas.
If the real Christmas is about honoring the birth of a child to a humble couple far from home who must eventually flee a tyrant to keep their baby safe, then, yes, there is a war on Christmas.
If Christmas is about peace, joy, generosity, thankfulness and goodwill among people, then yes, there is a war on Christmas.
If Christmas is about honoring the spirit of Saint Nicholas — Nikolaos the Greek bishop of Myra — the young man born into wealth who gave all his riches to the poor by tossing bags of gold coins through windows of struggling, impoverished families in his home town, which is now part of Turkey, then yes, there is a war on Christmas.
The tragedies of that time that spurred men like Saint Nicholas and Jesus into action? They’re with us today.
There is a gruesome massacre underway in Aleppo, Syria, recorded on video and shared on social media in real time every day. In our country, 21 percent of American children live in poverty and half a million Americans are homeless.
Nicholas rescued children from slavery, death and poverty. Jesus fed the hungry, cured the sick and comforted the afflicted.
But our answer to the contemporary suffering we see before us?
We’re going to fight over whether we say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas. Saint Nick and Jesus would be horrified.
Come on, America. We’ve got to be better than this.
NHS left with 'shocking' £30m bill by overseas patients
Overseas patients left the NHS with an unpaid bill of £30m in one year, an investigation has found.
Patients not entitled to free treatment on the health service owed £29,530,378 in 2015/16, according to data obtained by the Press Association under the Freedom of Information Act.
More than 120 NHS trusts were asked for details on overseas patients who were billed for NHS care and not covered by reciprocal arrangements with the UK.
Results from 104 trusts across England that responded suggested the unpaid bill is rising year on year.
The amount outstanding last year was equivalent to 0.03% of the annual NHS budget of £116bn.
:: NHS patients could have to show passports for treatment
The most commonly used departments included maternity and general medicine - with just over £21m recovered from overseas patients in 2015/16.
Some trusts are still trying to chase patients for the money owed, while others have written off a portion as bad debt.
The true amount owed could be far higher as the figure does not include overseas patients who are never asked to pay - for example those who can provide a UK address.
Eight London trusts are owed more than £1m for 2015/16, while a further 21 across England are owed at least £100,000 - including hospitals in Liverpool, Birmingham, Oxford and Sheffield.
Barts and The London NHS Trust had the biggest bill last year, with £4,987,190 and is owed £10,340,322 for the last four years.
The trust managed to recover £6,754,000 last year.
St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London - which hit the headlines after pregnant health tourists went there to give birth - managed to recover £159,012 in 2015/16 but had an unpaid bill of £347,019.
In total, it is owed £2,550,059 from the last four years.
St George's said it expected the bill to rise "year on year" and estimated that overseas patients who do not pay actually cost in the region of £4m to £5m per year.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "It is shocking that so many costs are left unpaid by overseas patients using the NHS.
"If this money was reinvested in the NHS it could mean the difference between hiring more nurses or paying for additional equipment."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "The NHS is a national - not an international - health service and we are determined to stamp out abuse of the system to ensure it remains free at the point of need in this country."
Patients not entitled to free treatment on the health service owed £29,530,378 in 2015/16, according to data obtained by the Press Association under the Freedom of Information Act.
More than 120 NHS trusts were asked for details on overseas patients who were billed for NHS care and not covered by reciprocal arrangements with the UK.
Results from 104 trusts across England that responded suggested the unpaid bill is rising year on year.
The amount outstanding last year was equivalent to 0.03% of the annual NHS budget of £116bn.
:: NHS patients could have to show passports for treatment
The most commonly used departments included maternity and general medicine - with just over £21m recovered from overseas patients in 2015/16.
Some trusts are still trying to chase patients for the money owed, while others have written off a portion as bad debt.
The true amount owed could be far higher as the figure does not include overseas patients who are never asked to pay - for example those who can provide a UK address.
Eight London trusts are owed more than £1m for 2015/16, while a further 21 across England are owed at least £100,000 - including hospitals in Liverpool, Birmingham, Oxford and Sheffield.
Barts and The London NHS Trust had the biggest bill last year, with £4,987,190 and is owed £10,340,322 for the last four years.
The trust managed to recover £6,754,000 last year.
St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London - which hit the headlines after pregnant health tourists went there to give birth - managed to recover £159,012 in 2015/16 but had an unpaid bill of £347,019.
In total, it is owed £2,550,059 from the last four years.
St George's said it expected the bill to rise "year on year" and estimated that overseas patients who do not pay actually cost in the region of £4m to £5m per year.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "It is shocking that so many costs are left unpaid by overseas patients using the NHS.
"If this money was reinvested in the NHS it could mean the difference between hiring more nurses or paying for additional equipment."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "The NHS is a national - not an international - health service and we are determined to stamp out abuse of the system to ensure it remains free at the point of need in this country."
Donald Trump's White House win confirmed by Electoral College
Donald Trump's election as the 45th president of the United States has been confirmed by the Electoral College.
The billionaire sailed past the 270 votes needed to make his victory official clearing the way for him to succeed Barack Obama on 20 January.
Mr Trump said in a statement: "I thank the American people for their overwhelming vote to elect me as their next president of the United States.
"With this historic step we can look forward to the bright future ahead.
"I will work hard to unite our country and be the president of all Americans."
With Hawaii still to vote, Mr Trump had 304 votes and Hillary Clinton had 224.
It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency. Texas put Trump over the top, despite two Republican electors casting protest votes.
On 6 January a joint session of Congress will certify the results of the Electoral College vote.
Once that happens, the winner - almost certainly Donald Trump - will be sworn in on 20 January.
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