The Jim Bakker Show

Turkey detains four Iraqi nationals for planning attack on U.S. Embassy

FILE PHOTO: People wait in front of the visa application office entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish police detained four Iraqi nationals on Monday on suspicion of planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, the state-run Anadolu Agency said, hours after the mission temporarily closed due to a security threat.

Police detained four Iraqis residing in the Black Sea province of Samsun who had been preparing for an attack on the embassy, Anadolu said.

The embassy said it was closed to the public on Monday due to a security threat was only providing emergency services would be provided. It did not specify the nature of the security threat. It will also be closed on Tuesday.

It advised U.S. citizens in Turkey to avoid large crowds, the embassy building, and to be aware of their own security when visiting tourist sites and crowded places.

While relations between the United States and Turkey – both NATO allies and members of the coalition against Islamic State – have been strained in recent months, Turkey said the embassy closure was not political.

“The decision to close the American embassy is not a political one, it was taken on security grounds. The embassy has shared intelligence with the Turkish intelligence service and security forces,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag, the government’s main spokesman, told a news conference.

“Both the intelligence service and security forces have taken extra measures, and important results have been achieved,” he said, without elaborating.

The United States suspended visa services at its missions in Turkey in October after two local employees were held on suspicion of ties to the failed 2016 coup. Ankara reciprocated and visa restrictions between the two were not lifted until the end of December.

The embassy said it would make an announcement when it was ready to reopen.

(Reporting by Mert Ozkan; Writing by Ezgi Erkoyun and Ece Toksabay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Trump-Netanyahu meeting is chance to project common front vs. Iran

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 25, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Ba

By Matt Spetalnick and Jeffrey Heller

WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold talks on Monday that offer a chance to project a common front against Iran but are expected to do little to advance seemingly stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects.

Mired in corruption investigations threatening his political survival, Netanyahu was confronted, only hours before the White House meeting, by news back home that a former spokesman had turned state’s witness in one of the probes. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing.

U.S. and Israeli officials said the agenda of Netanyahu’s talks with Trump would be topped by the president’s push to change or scrap Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and concerns over Tehran’s foothold in Syria.

Both leaders have railed against the deal, citing its limited duration and the fact it does not cover Iran’s ballistic missile program or its support for anti-Israel militants in the region.

Trump has threatened to quit the agreement unless European allies help “fix” it with a follow-up accord. An Israeli official said Netanyahu and Trump were likely to talk about how to overcome European resistance on the matter.

“I intend to discuss a series of issues with (Trump), but foremost Iran, its aggression, nuclear ambitions and aggressive actions in the Middle East, including along our very border,” Netanyahu told reporters on his departure from Israel.

Israel has accused Tehran of seeking a permanent military presence in Syria, where Iranian-backed forces support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war.

Netanyahu has cautioned that Israel could act against Iran itself after an Iranian drone flew into Israel last month and an Israeli warplane was downed while bombing air defenses in Syria. He accuses Iran of planning to build precision-guided missile factories in Lebanon, amid tensions on that border.

“We want to know and we must know, what the U.S. position will be if we do enter into some wider confrontation with Iran,” Michael Oren, a deputy Israeli cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington, said on Israel’s Channel 13 TV.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called on Iran to withdraw its military and militia from Syria. But with Russia the dominant international player in Syria, it is unclear what practical steps Washington could take to ease Israeli concerns.

Trump and Netanyahu will also discuss efforts led by the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner to develop an Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal, which the president has said could lead to the “deal of the century.”

The process has gone nowhere, however, since Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and announcement of the move of the U.S. embassy to the city in May, shortly after Israel’s 70th anniversary.

Kushner is on the defensive amid investigations into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. It is a case that has bedeviled Trump, who – like Netanyahu – has accused law enforcement officials of conducting a “witchhunt”.

Palestinian leaders have reacted to the change in decades-old U.S. policy on Jerusalem by rejecting Washington’s traditional leadership of peace efforts.

‘ROUTINE CHECK-IN’

No major announcements or breakthroughs are expected from Trump’s talks with Netanyahu, whose relationship with the president has been among the closest of any other world leader.

“This is a routine check-in meeting,” one U.S. official said of Netanyahu’s second visit to the Trump White House.

For Netanyahu, the Oval Office meeting and an address to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC on Tuesday offered little respite from his legal troubles in Israel.

His former spokesman, Nir Hefetz, is one of the suspects in a case revolving around allegations that regulatory favors were granted to Israel’s biggest telecoms company and that in return, its owners provided favorable coverage for Netanyahu on a news site they controlled.

Netanyahu awaits a decision by Israel’s attorney general on whether to indict him, as police have recommended in two other bribery cases.

U.S. officials have said the investigations in Israel are not expected to affect Netanyahu’s talks.

The Trump administration remains hopeful the Palestinians can be drawn back into negotiations after a “cooling-off” period, one U.S. official said, while conceding there had been no sign that would happen any time soon.

Some analysts believe Kushner’s ability to run the Middle East initiative has been further handicapped by his loss of access to certain valued U.S. intelligence because of a recent White House clampdown on access to such secrets for those without full security clearance.

The Trump administration has no plans to use Netanyahu’s visit to roll out peace proposals Kushner’s team is crafting, a second U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We are as committed to peace as ever,” the official said. “We will release the plan when it is done and the time is right.”

U.S. officials have told Reuters it would deal with all major issues, including Jerusalem, borders, security and the future of Jewish settlements on occupied land and Palestinian refugees, and would also urge Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to provide significant financial support to the Palestinians.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Jeffrey Heller in Jersusalem; Editing by Daniel Wallis, William Maclean)

Half-a-million still without power after storm in U.S. Northeast

A worker clear debris from a tree that had fallen on to a house as a storm bringing high winds passes over Kensington, Maryland, U.S., March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

(Reuters) – Some 500,000 customers remained without power throughout the eastern United States on Sunday evening and New England coastal communities faced more flooding two days after a powerful storm snapped trees, downed wires and killed at least nine people.

The remnants of the storm, known as a nor’easter, lingered on Sunday, with the National Weather Service posting coastal flood advisories in effect until Monday morning in much of the U.S. Northeast even after the storm had passed.

Some half a million customers still lacked power, according to data provided by 10 major utilities in the Middle Atlantic, Midwest and Northeast. At one point, 2 million customers had lost power.

The brunt of the storm hit on Friday, packing hurricane-force winds in excess of 90 miles per hour (145 kph) and sending seawater churning into streets in Boston and nearby shore towns, marking the second time the area had been flooded this year.

Falling trees killed seven people in Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia, according to local media and police. Two others died in the storm, according to media reports, including a 41-year-old man in Andover, New Jersey, who came in contact with power lines.

Private forecasting service AccuWeather said the storm dumped as much as 18 inches (46 cm) of snow on parts of New York state and Pennsylvania. The Massachusetts town of East Bridgewater received nearly 6 inches (15 cm) of rain, the NWS said.

The storm also snarled transportation from the Middle Atlantic into New England, with more than a quarter of flights in and out of New York’s three major airports and Boston’s airport canceled on Friday, tracking service FlightAware.com reported.

The problems carried over into Saturday, with hundreds of flights canceled into and out of New York and Boston, according to the website.

One flight landing at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on Friday experienced turbulence so rough that most passengers became sick and the pilots were on the verge of becoming ill, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Magnitude 6.0 aftershock rattles quake-hit PNG highlands as toll rises

A local stands next to a damaged house near a landslide in the town of Tari after an earthquake struck Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands in this image taken February 27, 2018 obtained from social media. Francis Ambrose/via REUTERS

By Tom Westbrook

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Strong aftershocks rocked Papua New Guinea’s remote and rugged highlands on Monday, as the death toll climbed to 55 from a 7.5-magnitude earthquake a week ago, and is expected to rise further.

Three aftershocks of magnitude greater than 5 shook the mountainous Southern Highlands, about 600 km (370 miles) northwest of the capital Port Moresby early on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, including a shallow magnitude 6 quake.

“We haven’t slept. It’s been shaking all through the night,” William Bando, provincial administrator of Hela Province, said by telephone from Tari, about 40 km (25 miles) from the site of the shocks.

“What we experienced this morning could have caused more damage, but we don’t know … it almost threw me out of bed.”

The region had already been badly damaged on Feb. 26, when the largest quake to hit the seismically-active highlands in nearly a century flattened buildings, triggered landslides, and closed oil and gas operations.

The toll on Monday stood at 55 killed, said James Justin, a research officer at the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in Port Moresby, as news of more deaths arrived in the capital by shortwave radio.

Most of the confirmed fatalities were in and around the provincial capital of Mendi and the township of Tari, he said, where landslides buried homes and buildings collapsed on families.

“People are in great fear of their lives as the quakes are continuing ever since it started,” he said. “They actually want to know when it will stop.”

While the region has no major urban centres, around 670,000 people live within 100 km (62 miles) of the epicentre, according to the Red Cross.

The quake has been felt on global natural gas markets, with ExxonMobil Corp declaring force majeure on exports from Papua New Guinea, according to an industry source, pushing Asian spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices 5 percent higher.

The company declined to comment on the force majeure, but said production would be knocked out for about 8 weeks.

Aid agencies have said nearly 150,000 people remain in urgent need of emergency supplies.

Australia, New Zealand and the Red Cross have all pledged aid, though reaching the remote area has proven challenging as forbidding terrain, bad weather, as well as damaged roads and runways have delayed aid efforts.

“The only way for people to go out is by chopper, and it’s slow for information to come through”, said Martin Mose, director of Papua New Guinea’s National Disaster Centre, which has yet to complete a full assessment of damage.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook in Sydney; Additional reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Wellington; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Clarence Fernandez)

Trump joins mourners at funeral of U.S. evangelist Billy Graham

The casket is carried during the funeral service for U.S. evangelist Billy Graham at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Keane

By Jeff Mason and Greg Lacour

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – The faithful from small towns gathered on Friday with President Donald Trump and other powerful politicians in North Carolina for the funeral of evangelist Billy Graham, who preached to millions around the world in a 70-year career.

The service for Graham, who died on Feb. 21 at age 99, comes after he lay in honor at the U.S. Capitol in recognition of a clergyman who counseled presidents and became the first noted evangelist to take his message to the Soviet bloc during a time when its communist regimes were hostile to organized religion.

The North Carolina native will later be buried in a pine coffin made by a Louisiana prison inmate, and laid to rest next to his late wife, Ruth, at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.

Ahead of the ceremony, a steady stream of mourners braved brisk winds, some of them sharing how Graham’s preaching enriched their lives.

India and Greg Keith, family friends of the Grahams, pray before the funeral service for the late U.S. evangelist Billy Graham at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Margaret Zook, 74, came with her husband Bob, 71, from Sterling, Virginia, to mourn the man who had been an inspiration since she was a little girl.

Bob Zook said what he valued most about Graham was “the unbridled joy he had, the joy he had in delivering the Word.”

The 90-minute funeral service is scheduled to start at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT). It will be held under a canvas tent emblematic of Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles revival that marked his breakthrough as an evangelist.

Trump, a Republican, will take his place among about 2,300 invited guests, along with first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, organizers said. Ahead of the funeral, Trump met with Graham’s family, pool reports said.

Graham became the de facto White House chaplain to several U.S. presidents, most famously Richard Nixon. He also met with scores of world leaders and was the first noted evangelist to take his message behind the Iron Curtain.

U.S. President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Karen Pence attend the funeral of Rev. Billy Graham in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S. March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Graham’s son, the Reverend Franklin Graham, will deliver the eulogy at the funeral service.

Graham’s headstone will carry his name, dates of birth and death and the inscription “Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ” above the Bible reference “John 14:6.”

According to his ministry, Graham preached Christianity to more people than anyone else in history.

But Graham found himself at times in controversy over his disapproving stand on gay rights, as well as over a secretly recorded conversation with Nixon in which the cleric complained that Jews had too much influence on the U.S. media.

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington and Jeff Mason in Charlotte, North Carolina; writing by Ian Simpson and Jon Herskovitz; editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis)

Teacher tried to create ‘army of children’ to launch terror attacks in London

A man walks across London Bridge as the sun rises behind Tower Bridge in London, Britain, January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – A British supporter of Islamic State was found guilty on Friday of trying to recruit children he was teaching into an “army” of jihadists to help carry out a wave of attacks across London.

Umar Haque, 25, showed the children beheading videos and other violent militant propaganda, forced them to re-enact deadly attacks on the British capital and made them role-play attacking police officers.

“His plan was to create an army of children to assist with multiple terrorist attacks throughout London,” said Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command. “He tried and he did, we believe, radicalize vulnerable children from the ages of 11 to 14.”

Despite having no qualifications and being employed as an administrator, police say Haque used the guise of teaching Islamic studies to groom 110 children into becoming militants at the Lantern of Knowledge, a small private Islamic school, and at a madrassa connected to the Ripple Road Mosque in east London.

Of those children, 35 are now undergoing long-term safeguarding measures involving social services and other authorities. Six of the group gave evidence at Haque’s trial, detailing how he taught them fighting was good and had given them training such as doing push-ups to build their strength.

His intention was to use them to attack London targets such as the Big Ben tower, soldiers from the Queen’s Guards, a large shopping center, banks, and media stations, prosecutors said.

Believed to have been self-radicalized online, Haque was inspired by an attack in March last year when Khalid Masood plowed a rented car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four, before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament.

He had discussed with Abuthaher Mamun – a 19-year-old who also taught at the mosque – carrying out a similar attack using guns and a hire car packed with explosives. He had made the children re-enact Masood’s assault and told another co-defendant the public deserved to be annihilated.

ROLE-PLAYING

“He tried to prepare the children for martyrdom by making them role-play terrorist attacks. Part of that role-playing was re-enacting attacking police officers,” Haydon said.

“He had shown them graphic terrorist videos – beheading videos and frightening terrorist activities overseas. He described himself as a loyal follower to IS.”

Haydon said the children had been “paralyzed by fear” into not telling their parents or teachers, with Haque saying he was part of IS and threatening that they would suffer the same fate as those in the militant videos he showed them.

However, Haque’s “ambitious”, long-term plans were in an early stage, he said. No issues had been raised at the school – rated outstanding by government inspectors – prior to Haque’s arrest and when it came to light what was going on, police initially met a wall of silence from the children.

“He shouldn’t have been teaching, so that’s a concern,” Haydon said. “We have had challenges with both the local community and some of these institutions.”

Haque was found guilty at London’s Old Bailey Court of a number of offences including preparing terrorist acts, having previously pleaded guilty to four charges.

Mamun, who police said was involved in fundraising and attack planning, and Muhammad Abid, 27, were also convicted of helping him. They will all be sentenced at a later date.

(Editing by Stephen Addison)

Flooded streets and evacuations as storm pounds Boston and U.S. Northeast

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – Seawater on Friday flowed onto some coastal streets around Boston, where businesses set up flood barriers and piled sandbags around their doors as a powerful storm threatened to flood pockets of the U.S. coast from Maine to Virginia.

Over 700,000 homes and businesses were without power in the U.S. Northeast, hundreds of flights were canceled at New York’s three major airports and Boston’s Logan International, and the federal government closed offices in Washington.

It was the second time this year that Boston streets, including areas around the Long Wharf and the rapidly developing Seaport District, flooded in a winter storm.

“It’s crazy. I guess this is sea-level rise in action,” said Bob Flynn, 38, who had stepped out from his work at Boston’s Children’s Museum to survey a partially submerged walkway along the city’s Fort Point Channel.

Heavy rains, extreme high tides and a wind-driven storm surge could combine to cause several feet of water to flow onto streets in coastal Massachusetts, with government and private weather forecasters warning of a repeat of an early-January storm that drove a couple of feet of icy seawater onto Boston’s streets. High winds gusting up to 60 miles per hour (97 kph) could also bring extensive power outages.

“The winds are going to keep on increasing and the seas are going to go higher and higher for the next three high tide cycles,” said Bill Simpson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts. Floodwater surged in during high tide around 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT), and forecasters warned that strong winds coming in off the ocean could keep levels high through the next two high tides.

Residents of coastal areas that regularly flood in storms, including the towns of Newburyport, Duxbury and Scituate had been encouraged to evacuate their homes and head to higher ground, said Chris Besse, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

He added that it is hard to predict where the storm will take its heaviest toll.

“It could be that the first high tide washes away dunes from one beach and the second washes away houses,” Besse said.

Sarah Moran, a 59-year-old mother of six, was fretting whether her family’s oceanfront home in Scituate, Massachusetts, south of Boston, would survive the storm.

“Every house south of mine has been washed away since the 1978 blizzard. That risk is part of the package – the house comes complete with ocean views, taxes, maintenance and risks,” she said in a phone interview from Burlington, Vermont, where she owns a catering business.

The National Weather Service had coastal flood watches and warnings in place from southern Maine through coastal Virginia, including New York’s eastern suburbs, and was also tracking a snowstorm heading east from the Ohio Valley that could drop significant amounts of snow in northern New York State. It forecast storm surges of up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) for eastern Massachusetts.

More than 700,000 homes and businesses were without power across the region, with the largest number of outages in New York, utilities said.

Federal offices closed on Friday in Washington, while dozens of schools throughout the region canceled classes. More than a quarter of flights into and out of New York’s three major airports and Boston’s airport were canceled, according to tracking service Flightaware.com.

Southern California was also facing weather dangers, with risks of rain-driven mudslides prompting mandatory evacuations ordered for some 30,000 people living near fire-scarred hills around the Santa Barbara coast.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Gina Cherelus in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Jonathan Oatis)

Kremlin rejects U.S. charge Russia in breach of arms control treaties

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the Federal Assembly, including the State Duma parliamentarians, members of the Federation Council, regional governors and other high-ranking officials, in Moscow, Russia March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin on Friday rejected a U.S. allegation that Russia had been developing destabilizing weapons systems for over a decade in direct violations of its treaty obligations.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders made the allegation on Thursday after President Vladimir Putin announced an array of new nuclear weapons, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Friday that Russia categorically denied it was in breach of any international arms control pacts.

Peskov also rejected an assertion that Putin’s speech, one of his most bellicose in years, would deepen Russia’s international isolation and said it did not herald the start of a new arms race.

“Russia does not plan to get dragged into any arms race,” said Peskov.

(Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya/Polina Devitt; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Snowstorms shut down Ireland, Britain calls in army for hospitals

People walk along the street through the snow near Sterling Castle, Scotland, Britain, March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

By Conor Humphries and Elisabeth O’Leary

DUBLIN/EDINBURGH (Reuters) – Snowstorms shut most of Ireland on Friday and forced Britain to call in the army to help battle some of the worst weather seen for nearly 30 years.

After a blast of Siberian cold dubbed “the beast from the east”, southern Britain and Ireland were battered by Storm Emma that arrived from the south and blocked roads, grounded planes and stopped trains.

Overnight blizzards left snow drifts up to three feet (90 cm) deep across Ireland and Scotland. The storm knocked out Ireland’s entire public transport network, closing its airports and leaving roads “extremely dangerous,” the government said.

Women take pictures of a statue of horses that is frozen over in the city centre of Dublin, Ireland, March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

At the peak of the storm, over 100,000 homes and businesses were left without power. On Friday the Irish stock exchange was shut, as were all schools and most government offices as a status Red weather alert remained across most of Ireland.

“The country needs to more or less stay in hibernation today,” deputy prime minister Simon Coveney told state broadcaster RTE. “Hopefully we can continue to get through these freak weather conditions without tragedy.”

In Britain, a seven-year-old girl was killed in the far southwestern county of Cornwall after a car crashed into a house in icy conditions, the BBC reported. Dozens of passengers were stranded on trains overnight in southern England.

The army was summoned to help rescue hundreds of drivers stuck in the snow and to transport National Health Service workers. Roads and schools were closed and many flights canceled across Britain.

Weather conditions in Scotland, which initially bore the brunt of the Siberian cold front, improved slightly, but the authorities warned people not to travel on Friday and during the weekend.

DIGGING OUT SNOWBOUND ROADS

Around 30 vehicles were stuck on a road near Aberdeen, the local council said, with many other roads closed due to snow drifts. Residents of the Scottish border area were asked to help dig out roads where a number of motorists were stranded. Care workers in rural areas were moving around in tractors.

“In the current bad weather, I want to say thank you to everyone going the extra mile to keep our country moving – and to keep us safe,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said.

Airbus said its Filton plant in Bristol, which helps make wings for passenger jets, was closed on Friday due to the heavy weather.

Audit firm PwC estimated that the cost of insurance claims by consumers and businesses in United Kingdom to date as a result of the severe weather was at least 15 million pounds, though it was too early to forecast the final bill.

“We have already had over 8,000 road accidents in the past three days and this could increase significantly with more snow set to fall today,” said Mohammad Khan, head of PwC’s general insurance business in Britain.

Social media across the British Isles was dominated by the weather, as some mocked the authorities’ struggles to manage the snowfall while others showed near misses on slippery roads and people abandoning their cars.

People stand and watch rough seas as Storm Emma makes landfall in Dublin, Ireland March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

In Dublin, which last saw a major snowfall in 2010, videos posted on social media showed people used bathtubs and baking trays as improvised sleds. Panic-buying of bread left shelves empty across the capital.

Snow and icy conditions continued to cause disruption in southern Europe too. In the Liguria and Emilia-Romagna regions of northern Italy, the weather forced the closure of key sections of major highways and paralyzed rail traffic.

Train service between major cities such as Genoa and Milan and Genoa and Turin, the three points in Italy’s north known as the industrial triangle, was either suspended or suffered from long delays because of ice.

Traffic on secondary, regional roads was backed up after vehicles were diverted onto them from closed highways.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout and Carolyn Cohn in London, Tim Hepher in Paris and Philip Pullella in Rome; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Syrian Observatory: Turkish jets attack pro-government forces in Afrin

BEIRUT/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish warplanes attacked pro-Syrian government forces overnight, killing at least 17 people in a village in the north of the Afrin region in northwestern Syria, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

The dead included three members of the Syrian Kurdish YPG force, while the rest came from militias that support President Bashar al-Assad and entered Afrin last week to help repel a Turkish offensive, the Observatory said.

The Turkish military declined to comment on the Observatory report, but the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Friday that Turkish attack helicopters had killed nine YPG fighters in the west of Afrin.

Another Turkish news agency, Dogan, reported that Turkish and allied forces had started an operation on Friday morning to take control of the town of Rajo in Afrin.

Turkey and allied Syrian rebel groups began their operation against the YPG in Afrin in January, aiming to drive out the Kurdish militia, which Ankara sees as a terrorist group linked to an insurgency inside Turkey’s borders.

Despite making slow progress at first, the offensive has gained control over all Afrin’s border areas adjoining Turkey. Late on Thursday, the Turkish military said eight Turkish soldiers had been killed and 13 injured in clashes in Afrin.

Last month, after the YPG asked the Syrian government to send its army to repel the offensive, pro-Syrian government militias crossed into Afrin and deployed along the frontlines with Turkey.

However, the move did not deter the Turkish offensive and has not so far heralded any wider escalation involving the Syrian government and the forces that support it.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall in Beirut, Daren Butler in Istanbul and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show