Pa. Attorney General's Office Calls Into Question Quality Of Product At Steel City Meats

KDKA's Meghan Schiller has more with the co-owner of the meat company, who is defending the product.

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  • With Strikes in Syria, Biden Confronts Iran's Militant Network

    BEIRUT — Since President Joe Biden entered the White House, Iranian-backed militants across the Middle East have struck an airport in Saudi Arabia with an exploding drone, and are accused of assassinating a critic in Lebanon and of targeting U.S. military personnel at an airport in northern Iraq, killing a Filipino contractor and wounding six others. On Thursday, the world got its first glimpse of how Biden is likely to approach one of the greatest security concerns of American partners in the region: the network of militias that are backed by Iran and committed to subverting the interests of the United States and its allies. U.S. officials said that overnight airstrikes ordered by Biden hit a collection of buildings on the Syrian side of a border crossing with Iraq on Thursday and targeted members of the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and an affiliated group. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times A Kataib Hezbollah official said that one of his group’s fighters had been killed in the airstrikes. But Iranian state television and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain, reported that 17 fighters had been killed in the airstrikes, which occurred near Abu Kamal, Syria, just across the border from Iraq. While the exact death toll remained unclear, Biden appears to have calibrated the strikes, hoping they would cause enough damage to show that the United States would not allow rocket attacks like that on the Irbil airport in northern Iraq on Feb. 15, but not so much as to risk setting off a wider conflagration. “He is kind of putting his first red line,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. She said the strikes signaled to Iran that his eagerness to return to a nuclear agreement would not lead Biden to ignore other regional activities by Iran and its allies, and particularly attacks on U.S. troops. “It is sending a message: The bottom line is that we won’t tolerate this and will use military force when we feel you’ve crossed the line,” Yahya said. Militiamen fled from six of the seven buildings hit in the strikes after spotting what they believed to be a U.S. surveillance aircraft, according to the Sabareen news channel on Telegram, which is used by Iran-backed groups. In a sign of heightened tensions between the Iraqi government and Iran-backed groups that are also part of Iraq’s security forces, Sabareen said the U.S. strikes had been aided by an Iraqi intelligence official posing as a shepherd. In an interview with a local television network Thursday, Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, said those calling themselves “the resistance” and launching rocket attacks in Iraq were no more than terrorists. Sabareen called Hussein’s comments “a green light to the international community to target and eliminate the resistance under the pretext of terrorism.” “We see these attacks as attacks on the Iraqi government,” Hussein said in a recent interview with The New York Times, referring to attacks on the U.S. Embassy and other American targets. Hussein is one of several Iraqi officials who have traveled to Iran in recent months to try to persuade it to use its influence to rein in militia forces. “I and others went to Tehran and had a frank and open discussion with the Iranians,” he said. “For a period of time, it stopped these attacks.” “At the end, the field of conflict is in Iraq,” Hussein said. Senior Iraqi officials have said they expect a more nuanced policy by the Biden administration toward Iraq. Hussein said Baghdad had no expectations that the administration would make Iraq a foreign policy priority, but said relations would be helped by the long experience of both Biden and key administration officials with Iraq and Iraqi politicians. Kataib Hezbollah says it maintains a presence at the border crossing to prevent the infiltration of Islamic State fighters into Iraq. The Iraqi government has struggled to rein in Iran-backed militias that have grown in influence since mobilizing to fight the Islamic State when it took over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group lost its last piece of territory two years ago, and many of the Iran-backed paramilitary groups have been absorbed into Iraq’s official security forces. Iraq has warned that conflict between the United States and Iran playing out on its soil threatens to destabilize the country. Attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq by suspected Iran-backed militias intensified after the United States killed an Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, and a senior Iraqi security official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020. “In the last year, Iraq has become a playground and battleground for this type of activity driven by the U.S.-Iran escalation,” said Renad Mansour, the Iraq Initiative director at Chatham House, a London-based policy group. “These groups began to spring up after the killing.” “There’s one clear message from all of them: that avenging the deaths isn’t over,” he said. “For them, time isn’t an issue.” Mansour, who tracks armed groups in Iraq, said the newer groups appeared to be made up of fighters armed with weapons connected to the larger Iran-linked paramilitaries. Some of the Iran-backed paramilitary groups are on the Iraqi government’s payroll as part of the Iraqi security forces but are only nominally under the control of the government. The tit-for-tat attacks come as the Biden administration begins the daunting task of trying to restore the nuclear agreement with Iran that President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from in 2018. Looming behind the question of the parameters of a new deal is the issue of Iran’s destabilizing activities across the Middle East, which are particularly concerning to U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran has spent decades building a network of partnerships with militia groups across the region that has allowed it to project power far outside its area of influence. These groups include the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, a number of groups in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. All of these groups have received at least some financing, support and weaponry from Iran over the years, and all share its ideology of “resistance,” or the struggle against Israel and U.S. interests in the region. The groups have developed numerous, often low-cost ways of creating headaches for the United States and its allies. Hezbollah has grown into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets pointed at Israel and seasoned fighters who helped turn the tide in Syria’s civil war in favor of President Bashar Assad. This month, the group’s foes in Lebanon accused the group of assassinating Lokman Slim, a publisher, filmmaker and vocal critic of the group who had close ties with Western officials. Hezbollah officials denied any connection to Slim’s killing. Days after Slim’s death, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing since 2015, targeted an airport in the Saudi city of Abha with an explosive-laden drone, damaging a civilian airliner. The Irbil rocket attack was claimed by a previously unknown armed group calling itself the Guardians of the Blood. U.S. officials said it appeared to be affiliated with one or more of Iraq’s better-known militias, and Thursday’s strikes in Syria targeted facilities belonging to them. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • CAS reduces ban on Akmal, imposes fine of $27,000

    The Court of Arbitration for Sport has reduced the ban on international cricketer Umar Akmal to 12 months and fined him 4.25 million rupees ($27,000) for breaching the Pakistan Cricket Board’s anti-corruption code. Akmal was suspended in February 2020 for failing to report details of corrupt approaches made to him just before the start of the fifth Pakistan Super League. The PCB’s disciplinary panel last April found Akmal guilty on two charges of separate breaches and handed him a three-year suspension — with the periods of ineligibility to run concurrently.

  • UK top court says IS schoolgirl can't return

    The UK’s top court has unanimously ruled that a British-born woman who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State should not be allowed to return.The Supreme Court said on Friday (February 26) Shamima Begum cannot come back to Britain to challenge the government taking away her citizenship because she poses a security risk.She left London in 2015 when she was 15 years old and went to Syria via Turkey with two school friends, where she married an IS fighter. Since that time she gave birth to three children, all of them died.Now aged 21, Begum is being held in a detention camp in Syria.President of the UK Supreme Court Robert Reed said on Friday "The right to a fair hearing does not trump all other considerations, such as the safety of the public".It was stated that Begum can still pursue her appeal against the revoking of her citizenship, but she cannot do that in Britain.This decision overturns a ruling made by the Court of Appeal last year saying she could only have a fair appeal if she were allowed back to the UK.The case has provoked heated debate in Britain, pitting those who say she gave up her right to citizenship by traveling to join IS against those, including Human Rights groups who argue she should not be left stateless but rather face trial in Britain.

  • Tourists can 'golf quarantine' in Thailand

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  • Biden Fires a Warning Shot at Iran

    After only a month in power, President Biden has used lethal military force in reaction to Iranian-sponsored attacks on Americans in Iraq. The strike, said to be by F-15 jets, apparently attacked buildings owned by Iraqi Shiite militia groups along the Iraqi-Syrian border. It’s worth pausing to note that those Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups and not the government of Iraq control that part of the border. In other words, Iran and its proxies control a route from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon, where the largest Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, is situated. The borders have been erased. The Biden strike is a message to Iran, a warning shot against continuing attacks by the militias Tehran backs. According to press reports, Biden was presented with a range of options and chose one of the softest — a limited strike inside Syria rather than Iraq. There is a logic to this choice. First, U.S. attacks inside Iraq would likely complicate life for Prime Minister Kadhimi, whom we are generally supporting, and spur the forces hostile to any U.S. presence — not least the Iranian-allied militias — to demand that all U.S. forces be expelled. Second, should further Iranian-sponsored attacks require Biden to hit Iranian-backed forces again, this limited strike allows him to say he tried patience and restraint and they failed. But the strike inside Syria and at Iranian proxies may also send messages Biden does not intend: that the United States will never hit Tehran’s proxies inside Iraq and that it will never hit Iran. If that’s what the Iranian regime infers, they will have the militias strike again and again; they will not be deterred because they will see the attacks as nearly cost-free. The law of averages suggests that sooner or later these continued attacks will kill Americans. That’s when the president will face the need to punish Iran and truly establish deterrence; merely attacking its proxies will be inadequate. One of the key functions of the Shiite militias in Iraq is to allow Iran to attack U.S. forces while, by absorbing any penalty, keeping Iran safe. If there are a series of attacks, harming Americans and eventually killing one or more, the kind of limited response from the United States that we saw this past week will not be enough. That does not mean World War III and it does not mean American bombers over Tehran, but it does mean that Biden must contemplate striking Iranian assets rather than expendable proxy groups. Meanwhile, there was zero progress on the nuclear-negotiations front this past week. On the contrary, Iran did not agree to attend the EU-sponsored talks that the United States has agreed to attend, it limited International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors’ access to Iran, and it threatened to enrich uranium to 60 percent. Nuclear power requires enrichment to no more than 5 percent; the only use for uranium enriched to 60 percent is in preparing a nuclear weapon. The very least that can be said about President Biden’s second month in power is that we are seeing any dreams of a quick return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, and a quick resolution to U.S.-Iranian confrontations dissolve before our eyes. The president’s refusal, thus far, to lift any sanctions and his willingness to use force against Iranian proxies suggest a more realistic assessment of Iran than many feared. No doubt there will be many deep discussions, even debates, within the administration over what the next move should be. The administration’s willingness to return to the JCPOA if Iran went back into compliance with it has not moved the Islamic Republic an inch. Similarly, the administration’s reversal of the designation of the Houthis in Yemen as a terrorist group, and its decision to halt the sale of “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, were met with zero flexibility by the Houthis — who have carried out additional terrorist attacks since the policy changes. Down the road the administration faces an even greater challenge than what to do about attacks on Americans in Iraq. President Biden has already decided that they will be met with force, and one must assume that if the attacks continue and escalate, the counter-attacks will as well. But what about Iran’s expulsion of nuclear inspectors, which violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the “Additional Protocol” to the JCPOA (that allowed snap inspections)? What about enrichment to 60 percent, if that indeed occurs? How far down the road toward building a nuclear weapon will the administration be willing to let Iran go? That’s a hypothetical question today, but if Iran keeps going it will soon be keeping U.S. officials up at night. Biden is the fifth American president in a row, by my count, to say Iran would never be permitted to build a nuclear weapon. Unless Iran changes course he could be the first to have to prove it.

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  • Prince Harry Tells Friend James Corden He Left the Royal Family Because It Was Destroying His Mental Health

    KOEN VAN WEELPrince Harry has said that he stepped back from royal duties because the British press was “toxic” and “destroying” his mental health.In an extraordinary interview unparalleled in the annals of royal history, Harry gave a candid interview to his close friend James Corden on The Late Late Show while they toured Los Angeles on an open-air double-decker bus. Corden was a guest at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018 and arrived at the evening reception dressed as Henry VIII. Another guest at the wedding, Oprah Winfrey, has taped an interview primarily with Meghan that will be screened next weekend.Oprah Winfrey’s Interview With Meghan Markle and Harry Will ‘Shine a Light on What They Have Been Through’The two men were served afternoon tea, which Corden said he had provided to remind Harry of home, however the tea service was abandoned after the bus braked sharply, depositing the contents of a tea trolley on top of the prince.“Clear it up, Harry,” Corden joked as the prince picked up tea cups and scones.While the 17-minute long package had a humorous tone and was packed with jokes and gags, it also provided the most candid insight yet into why Harry withdrew from royal duties.Asked about his decision to leave royal life, Harry said he was left with no choice because the British press “was destroying my mental health.”He said of the “toxic” situation: “I did what any husband and father would do—I need to get my family out of here.”In what will be perceived as a dig at the royal establishment that refused to accept Harry and Meghan’s proposal of a hybrid public-private role, Harry said: “We never walked away, and as far as I’m concerned, what decisions are made on that side, I will never walk away.”Royal Family ‘Wringing Their Hands’ at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ActivismHarry said that his life now would continue to be about “public service” and added that he and Meghan were “trying to bring some compassion and try to make people happy and try to change the world in any small way we can.”When Harry said he and Meghan often watched Jeopardy! and Netflix (with whom the couple recently signed a $100 million production deal) in the evenings after putting Archie to bed, Corden asked him about The Crown and its controversial portrayal of his family’s history.Harry, who joked he would like to be played in the series by Damian Lewis, said he preferred it to the tabloid media coverage of the royals because it “does not pretend to be news.”He added: “It’s fictional. But it’s loosely based on the truth.“Of course it’s not strictly accurate, but it gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle—the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else—what can come from that.”He continued: “I’m way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing the stories written about my family, or my wife or myself, because it’s the difference between fiction—take it how you will—and being reported on as fact because you’re supposedly news. I have a real issue with that.”Harry also opened up about meeting Meghan and how he knew she was the one on their second date.“We hit it off with each other, and we were just so comfortable in each other’s company,” he said.“Dating me or any member of the royal family is kind of flipped upside down. All the dates become dinners or watching the TV or chatting at home.“We went from zero to 60 in the first two months.”Meghan, who is pregnant with the couple’s second child, made a cameo in the interview via FaceTime when Harry and Corden paid a trip to the house from the ’90s TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.When Corden suggested the couple should buy the house, Meghan said: “I think we’ve done enough moving.”During the visit to the house, Corden and Harry spoke to the owner and jokingly made an offer to buy it, before Harry asked if he could use the toilet.“I’m actually dying for a pee. Can I use your bathroom?” he asked.Showing that family relations are at least still somewhat functional, Harry said his grandmother, the queen, bought his son Archie a waffle maker for Christmas.He revealed Meghan now makes waffles with a “beautiful organic mix” and they eat them for breakfast with toppings including berries and syrup.He also said that both his grandparents know how to use Zoom, but joked that his grandfather slams the laptop shut physically to finish a call.Over to you, Oprah.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.