A US soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing of their vehicle in Baghdad, the US-led coalition said yesterday.
The soldier who died in the attack at 10:30pm on Saturday has not been named.
The death brings to 782 the number of US soldiers who have been killed or died in accidents since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March last year.
Meanwhile, Shiite militiamen clashed with coalition troops in both central and southern Iraq yesterday as the month-old uprising led by radical cleric Moqtada Sadr showed no sign of abating while the US military came under new fire over the abuse of prisoners.
Three Iraqis were killed in an early morning rocket attack that targeted a British camp near the main southern city of Basra while two Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded in clashes in the central holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.
Twenty people were also wounded when a shell exploded in a market in Nasiriyah.
Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and the US-led coalition since Friday.
Ground forces commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez Saturday demanded a swift end to the Sadr insurgency, with fewer than 50 days to go to the coalition's June 30 deadline for the handover of power.
Interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday that the uprising was causing great "harm to the aims and aspiration of the Iraqi people."
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central