Following the announcement of a meeting between Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the two counterparts have agreed for the total withdrawal of all Turkish soldiers illegally stationed in the Bashiqa region near Mosul. Iraqi television quoted al-Abadi confirming an agreement reached with Turkey on the withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Iraq.

Turkish Prime Minister Ben Ali Yildirim is expected to also meet President Fuad Masum and Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jubouri following his meeting with Abadi, as well as community leaders of Iraq's Turkmen minority.

The deployment of Turkish troops near Mosul caused a political showdown between the two states, with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units vowing to rid Iraq of Turkish troops after defeating ISIS. Iraq also considered its options of attacking the illegally stationed Turkish troops.

Jawdat added that the Daesh headquarters were located in the south-eastern part of the city.

"Maps of IS [Daesh] attacks which were earlier carried out in various Mosul districts were found at the headquarters. Federal police discovered explosive belts and weapons," Federal Police commander Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat said.

Mosul operation commander Abdul Amir Rashid Jarallah said that the police also seized control over the nearby hospital and the area of the Al-Ghufran Mosque.

The Mosul operation aimed to liberate the city from Daesh forces started in October 2016. The operation is jointly conducted by Iraqi military forces, Iraqi Kurds and the United States-led coalition. The eastern part of the city has been recaptured from terrorists so far.

Julia Ioffe, a writer for The Atlantic who watches Russia carefully, tweeted this about the intelligence community's unclassified report on Russian hacking released Friday: "It's hard to tell if the thinness of the #hacking report is because the proof is classified, or because the proof doesn't exist."*


"Thin" is right. The report is brief — the heart of it is just five broadly-spaced pages. It is all conclusions and no evidence. In the introduction, the IC — the collective voice of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA — explains that it cannot supply evidence to the public, because doing so "would reveal sensitive sources or methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in the future."

The problem is, without evidence, it's hard for the public to determine just what happened in the hacking affair. So here are six questions the IC might consider answering in the days ahead:

The Austrian government wants to achieve a relaxation of the EU sanctions that were imposed on Russia for the Ukraine crisis. The Austrian government will press for this in the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), says its Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in an interview with Der Speigel.

In the new year, Germany's neighboring state assumes the OSCE Chairmanship. The Christian Socialist politician said: "We need to build confidence in Europe again and so far as sanctions are concerned, move away from a system of punishment to a system of incentive." So far, the agreement in the EU stipulated that the Russia sanctions would not be lifted until Russia fully met the conditions of the Minsk Peace Plan.

The German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had already undertaken a similar advance in the summer. "If we can make significant progress, there is nothing to prevent the sanctions being gradually slackened," Steinmeier said at the time - much to the annoyance of the Berlin Chancellery.

Steinmeier's Austrian colleague Kurz will now use his country's OSCE chairmanship to put the issue of Russia sanctions on the agenda again: "We should gradually relax the sanctions for any positive development on the ground." Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis there was a return to the block thinking of the cold war, he said. Therefore there needs to be "a trend reversal" in relation to Russia.

The CDC's facilities are among a small group of biolab operators that have the worst regulatory histories in the country, receiving repeated sanctions under federal regulations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has faced congressional hearings and secret government sanctions over its sloppy lab safety practices, is keeping secret large swaths of information about dozens of recent incidents involving some of the world's most dangerous bacteria and viruses.

CDC scientists apparently lost a box of deadly and highly-regulated influenza specimens and experienced multiple potential exposures involving viruses and bacteria, according to heavily-redacted laboratory incident reports obtained by USA TODAY. Several reports involve failures of safety equipment. In one, a scientist wearing full-body spacesuit-like gear to protect against lethal, often untreatable viruses like Ebola, had their purified air hose suddenly disconnect — "again" — in one the world's most advanced biosafety level 4 labs.

After taking nearly two years to release laboratory incident reports requested by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act, the CDC blacked out many details including the types of viruses and bacteria involved in the mishaps and often the entire descriptions of what happened. In several cases, clues about the seriousness of incidents is revealed because CDC staff failed to consistently black out the same words repeated throughout a string of emails.

The CDC would not answer USA TODAY's questions about specific incidents, which occurred at the agency's laboratory facilities in Atlanta and Fort Collins, Colo., during 2013 through early 2015. "None of the incidents described in these documents resulted in reported illness among CDC staff or the public," the CDC said in a brief emailed statement. Where incidents involved "inventory discrepancies," the agency said generally the problems were addressed without posing a risk to anybody. The CDC said incident reports cover a time period before the Atlanta-based agency created a new lab-safety office in the wake of three high-profile incidents during 2014 with anthrax, Ebola and a deadly strain of bird flu.

USA TODAY's "Biolabs in Your Backyard" investigation has revealed hundreds of safety incidents at public and private research facilities nationwide and highlighted how many university, government and private labs have fought to keep records secret about incidents and regulatory sanctions. The USA TODAY investigation also exposed that more than 100 labs working with potential bioterror pathogens have faced secret federal sanctions for safety violations, yet regulators allowed them to keep experimenting while failing inspections, sometimes for years.

USA TODAY also revealed details about the operations and safety records of more than 200 high-containment labs across the nation, facilities whose identities have eluded even the Government Accountability Office.

Donald Trump has been officially confirmed as the 45th President of the US after a joint session of Congress certified the votes of the Electoral College, sweeping away a myriad of attempts to contest the validity of his election triumph.

In a last ditch effort to invalidate Trump's victory, 10 US representatives objected to the House's certification, but failed to convince any senators to join them. As a result, the Electoral College results were confirmed.

Citing voter suppression, stifled recount efforts, and Russian meddling, House Democrats attempted to challenge Trump's victory on Friday. The effort was short-lived and unsuccessful, prompting Vice President Joe Biden to declare, "It is over" after a House member's failed objection.

California Democrats Rep. Barbara Lee and Rep. Maxine Waters, along with Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas challenged the electoral vote certification on Friday. Jackson Lee raised objections to multiple state vote counts, including in Wisconsin where recounts maintained Trump's lead over Hillary.

The undisguised and clearly politically motivated report on the alleged 2016 US "election hack" displays a severe lack of "professional discipline" in the intelligence community, former NSA technical director and whistleblower William Edward Binney told RT.

While the report is full of allegations, it clearly lacks proof and even the wording used in the report points out that the authors have been playing a guessing game, Binney believes.

"I see a lot of allegations in what I've read so far of the report, but certainly it's kind of light on proof of anything... They should've included at least some evidence of what they are asserting. And they haven't done any of that, " Binney said.

German mosques run by clerics adhering to the ultra-conservative sect of Sunni Islam called Salafism should be shut down, their communities broken up, and preachers expelled, believes German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel.

"On this question I am for zero tolerance," the German official told Der Spiegel in an interview, commenting on the links between the Christmas market truck attacker and a Salafist preacher.

"Salafist mosques must be banned, the communities broken up, and the preachers expelled. And as quickly as possible," he said in an interview published on Friday.

Gabriel was referring to Salafist preacher Abu Walaa, who was arrested in November along with others for recruiting people in Germany on behalf of the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Truck attack suspect Anis Amri, who killed 12 people at a Berlin Christmas market, is believed to have communicated with the cleric.

Salafism is growing fast in Germany, flourishing on grants and other forms of support from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. The creed calls for returning to the fundamental roots of Islam, and states that it is incompatible with modern forms of society. The movement is associated with radical Islamist groups, including IS.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldier and medic Elor Azaria, who was filmed last March (by Imad Abu Shamsiya, a Palestinian B'Tselem volunteer) executing an incapacitated Palestinian man, Fattah al-Sharif, in cold blood has been convicted of manslaughter. He is now the modern Israeli hero, "the child of all of us" as many Israelis refer to him.

Shortly after the verdict was announced a poll showed that a whopping 70% of the Israeli public support Azaria's pardon. What's more, key figures of the Israeli government have unified in their call for pardoning Azaria in what can only be interpreted as an expression of cynical political opportunism. Those calling for a pardon include Education Minister Naftali Bennett, Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, and of course Israel's Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, who is currently under investigation for numerous corruptions. Even Shelly Yacimovich of the opposition, to the extent that the use of the word is even valid when referring to the Israeli Knesset, has conveyed her support for pardoning Azaria.

For decades, the United States, together with its allies, has enjoyed almost absolute control of the media narrative in the English-speaking world, both at home and abroad. Recently, however, the success of RT, and some other outlets, in attracting an international audience, has punched a few holes in the establishment's complete command of the news space.

Audiences have welcomed this, embracing diversity in news, because they gained access to a range of stories and opinions that often reflected the reality around them, yet were inexplicably absent in the bulletins of their local broadcasters.

It is just that reality, and reporting thereof, with which the chief of American intelligence is now taking an issue.