US military air strike may have hit MSF hospital in Afghan city

KABUL—US air strikes "may have" hit a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a NATO forces spokesman said, after the medical aid group blamed an aerial attack for the destruction in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz that killed three staff.

US forces conducted an air strike in the city at 2:15 a.m. on Saturday, Col. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for the NATO-led coalition, said in a statement on Saturday.

"The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility," he said. "This incident is under investigation."

Dozens of staff were still missing after the attack that partially destroyed its trauma center, MSF has said. —Reuters

Pentagon launches lab review, widens moratorium after anthrax find

WASHINGTON  - The Pentagon has launched a safety review at nine U.S. military labs and expanded a moratorium on the production and shipment of deadly toxins after anthrax contamination was discovered in a Utah facility.

The contamination at the Dugway Proving Ground Life Sciences Test Facility in Utah was in "secure areas located outside the primary containment area," the Pentagon said in a statement on Thursday. The lab conducted a full decontamination and did not detect anthrax during re-testing.

Specifically, the deadly anthrax bacteria was found on the floors of two laboratories, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.

"If proper biosafety procedures had been followed, these surfaces should have been free of the agent," it said, adding there was no public health risk.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh on Wednesday directed all nine Department of Defense labs and facilities involved "in the production, shipment, and handling of live and inactivated select agents and toxins" to conduct safety reviews immediately, according to the Pentagon.

The Army had already suspended production, handling, testing and shipment of anthrax at all four Defense laboratories that work with the bacteria. Now, that moratorium extends to critical reagents and other agents and toxins, the statement said.

Alongside Dugway, the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and the Naval Medical Research Center Biological Defense Research Directorate are involved in anthrax research, according to the Defense Department.

In late May, officials discovered live anthrax had been shipped to researchers in the United States and other countries and in July the Pentagon said the error exposed major problems in how it handles the killer bacteria.

The Defense Department then conducted a comprehensive review of its policies and procedures on anthrax, which led to an ongoing investigation at Dugway. The Pentagon said the CDC had also found incorrect and incomplete record keeping at Edgewood and the infectious diseases institute.  — Reuters

Obama won't let Islamic militants create caliphate – NYT

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said he was willing to consider broader use of military strikes in Iraq to beat back Islamist militants, but Iraqi political leaders must first figure out a way to work with each other, the New York Times reported.

In a wide-ranging interview conducted on Friday, Obama also expressed regrets over not doing more to help Libya, pessimism about prospects for Middle East peace, concerns that Russia could invade Ukraine, and frustration that fellow economic superpower China has not stepped up to help.

Obama on Thursday authorized the U.S. military to conduct targeted strikes on Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq, a limited operation designed to prevent what he called a potential "genocide" of a religious sect and also protect American officials working in the country.

But in the interview with Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Obama said the United States may eventually do more to help Iraq repel the militant group, which seeks to control its own state.

"We're not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq," Obama said in the interview, excerpts of which the Times posted on its website late on Friday.

"But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void," he said.

He praised officials from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region for being "functional" and "tolerant of other sects and religions" and said the United States wanted to help.

"But, more broadly, what I've indicated is that I don't want to be in the business of being the Iraqi air force," he said.

Obama has faced growing criticism for being too reluctant to intervene in thorny foreign policy issues which have piled up under his watch.

He quipped that he sometimes wished the United States was more like China: a superpower that no one expects to intervene.

"They are free riders, and they've been free riders for the last 30 years, and it's worked really well for them," Obama said.

He told the Times that he regretted his government did not do more to help rebuild Libya after NATO-led air strikes in 2011 that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. The nation has been wracked by fighting and chaos.

"So that's a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, 'Should we intervene militarily?'" Obama said. "Do we have an answer the day after?"

Obama's administration has also been trying to encourage ceasefires in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinians, and applying economic sanctions against Russia to try to get Moscow to stop supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine.

He expressed doubts about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could come to the kind of longer term peace deal that former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was able to broker, and that former Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin accepted.

"In some ways Bibi's too strong, in some ways Abbas is too weak to bring them together and make the kind of bold decisions that a Sadat or a Begin or a Rabin were willing to make," Obama said.

Obama said he feared that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not back down from eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has supported separatists.

"He could invade," Obama said. — Reuters