Two US security contractors were killed and a third wounded in a roadside bomb attack south of the Iraqi capital, the US Embassy said yesterday.
The three were working for Blackwater Security, a North Carolina-based contracting firm that provides security for US State Department officials in Iraq. They were attacked on the main road to Hillah, south of Baghdad, US Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said.
In Sharqat, 260km northwest of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle on Saturday outside the house of the town's chief of special police forces, police Colonel Jassim al-Jubouri said in Tikrit, further south. Four people were killed and several others were injured, he said.
In other violence, a US soldier was gunned down late Saturday in a small arms fire attack in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, 360km northwest of Baghdad, the US command said Sunday.
The death brought to at least 1,514 the number of members of the US military who've died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Foreign contractors, too, are often targeted by anti-US guerrillas. At least 232 US civilian security and reconstruction contractors were killed in Iraq up to the end of last year, according to the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
The Blackwater employees killed Saturday were in the last vehicle in a four-vehicle convoy and were traveling to Hillah from Baghdad, Callahan said.
The road south traverses an area known as the "Triangle of Death" because of the frequency of insurgent attacks.
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RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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