BAGHDAD - A military spokesman and a lawmaker say Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen have broken a two-month siege imposed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria extremist group on the northern Shiite Turkmen town of Amirli.

Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said Sunday that forces "reached" the town, but gave no details. Turkmen lawmaker Fawzi Akram al-Tarzi said the forces entered the town from two directions and are distributing aid to residents.

On Saturday, the U.S. conducted airstrikes against the Sunni militants and air-dropped humanitarian aid to residents. Aircraft from Australia, France and Britain joined the U.S. in the aid drop, which came after a request from the Iraqi government.

"These military operations were conducted under authorization from the commander in chief to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to prevent an (ISIS) attack on the civilians of Amirli," Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

More in The fight against ISIS

About 15,000 Shiite Turkmens were stranded in the farming community some 105 miles north of Baghdad.

Instead of fleeing in the face of the ISIS across northern Iraq, the Shiite Turkmens stayed and fortified their town with trenches and armed positions.

While Amirli fought off the initial attack in June, it has been surrounded by the militants since mid-July. Some residents have said that the Iraqi military's efforts to fly in food, water and other aid have not been enough amid oppressive heat, lack of electrical power - the town's power station was destroyed weeks ago - and 카지노사이트 - http://blog.printgila.com/ shelling from the militants - http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/search/site/militants .

U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, which began earlier this month, have targeted ISIS militants attacking Yazidi Iraqis on Mount Sinjar and the militant forces operating in the vicinity of Ibril and Mosul Dam. The beleaguered Yazidis received several humanitarian drops of tons of food and water as well as military support aimed at protecting them.

The issue is reviewed in an article published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine that focuses on a 57-year-old Pennsylvania woman who died in 2002 of a fungal infection in her muscles called Brachiola algerae.

Doctors were puzzled because the fungus was thought to be found only in mosquitoes and 카지노사이트 - https://www.shimly.com/ other insects. But it's not found in mosquito saliva like West Nile virus and malaria, so a simple mosquito - http://www.modernmom.com/?s=simple%20mosquito bite could not have caused the infection.

The article's authors concluded that the woman must have smashed a mosquito on her skin, smearing its body parts into the bite.

"I think if a mosquito was in mid-bite, it would be wiser to flick the mosquito off rather than squashing it," said one of the authors, Christina Coyle of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Many people already take similar advice when removing ticks. Doctors have long cautioned that squashing a tick on skin could put a person at greater risk of Lyme disease, said Dawn Wesson, a tropical medicine specialist at Tulane University.

Despite the Pennsylvania woman's case, Roger Nasci, a mosquito expert at a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facility in Fort Collins, Colo., said there is no scientific basis for switching to flicking.

He also pointed out that flicking the bugs off is not a permanent solution.

"Unfortunately, then the mosquito often goes on to bite another person, or bites you again," Nasci said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also is looking into a $1.5 million, end-of-year sale of stun guns by Taser International to a Prescott firearms distributor that some stock analysts have questioned because it appears to inflate sales to meet annual projections.

"We're confident that this is going to come out in our favor," Taser's president Tom Smith said late Thursday in announcing that it was cooperating with the SEC informal inquiry. An informal - http://www.fool.com/search/solr.aspx?q=informal inquiry is a step below a formal investigation, where regulators have subpoena power.

Smith added that the Scottsdale-based company stands by its safety statements and the recent sale.

In morning trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, Taser shares were down $3.94 to $23.68. They traded as high as $33.45 a share just last month.

Recent investigations by several newspapers have raised serious questions about the stun gun's safety record and about Taser's reports to shareholders.

Although Taser has repeatedly said its stun guns have never caused a death or serious injury, reports in The Arizona Republic have linked the stun gun to 11 deaths and to several injuries involving police officers.

"We feel very confident that the statements that we've made surrounding the safety of our products are supported with the safety studies," Smith said.

However, 카지노사이트 - https://www.avinordic.com/ questions about safety have already caused some police departments around the country to back off purchases of Tasers.

Some medical experts believe Taser shocks may exacerbate a risk of heart failure in cases where people are agitated, under the influence of drugs or have underlying health problems. Human rights advocates want law enforcement to stop using Tasers until scientific evidence can show they don't kill.

Last week, a Scottsdale investment analyst raised questions about the sale of 1,000 new consumer stun guns and other products to the distributor Davidson's Inc. that Taser announced on Dec. 20.

"It's a deal that could maybe make a quarter," said Rob Miceli, analyst with the Scottsdale firm Gradient Analytics Inc. "Anytime we see something like that it bears further investigation."

Davidson's has done business with Taser since 1999 and company CEO Bryan Tucker said there was no pressure from Taser executives to complete the deal before Taser's quarter and year end.

MANILA, Philippines - Under cover of darkness, 40 Filipino peacekeepers made a daring escape after being surrounded and under fire for seven hours by Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights, Philippine officials said Sunday, leaving 44 Fijian troops still in the hands of the al Qaeda-linked insurgents - http://search.un.org/search?ie=utf8&site=un_org&output=xml_no_dtd&client... .

"We may call it the greatest escape," Philippine military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said.

The peacekeepers became trapped after Syrian rebels entered the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between Syria and Israel this past week, seizing 44 Fijian soldiers and 카지노사이트 - http://www.fsssmxh.com/ demanding that their Filipino colleagues surrender. The Filipinos, occupying two U.N. encampments, refused and fought the rebels Saturday. The first group of 35 peacekeepers was then successfully escorted out of a U.N. encampment in Breiqa by Irish and Filipino forces on board armored vehicles.

The remaining 40 peacekeepers were besieged at the second encampment, called Rwihana, by more than 100 gunmen who rammed the camp's gates with their trucks and fired mortar rounds. The Filipinos returned fire in self-defense, Philippine military officials said.

More in Syria crisis

At one point, Syrian government forces fired artillery rounds from a distance to prevent the Filipino peacekeepers from being overwhelmed, said Col. Roberto Ancan, a Philippine military official who helped monitor the tense standoff from the Philippine capital, Manila, and mobilize support for the besieged troops.

"Although they were surrounded and outnumbered, they held their ground for seven hours," Catapang said in a news conference in Manila, adding that there were no Filipino casualties. "We commend our soldiers for exhibiting resolve even while under heavy fire."

As night fell and a cease-fire took hold, the 40 Filipinos fled with their weapons, traveling across the chilly hills for nearly two hours before meeting up with other U.N. forces, who escorted them to safety early Sunday, Philippine officials said.

During the siege, the Philippine secretaries of defense and foreign affairs, along with the country's top military brass, gathered at military headquarters in Manila to communicate with the Filipino forces and help guide them out of danger. The Syrian and Israeli governments, along with the United States and Qatar, provided support, the Philippine military said without elaborating.

"If they held their ground, they could have been massacred because they were already running low on ammunition," Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told The Associated Press. "So we discussed with them the option of escape and evasion."

Philippine military officials believed there may have been rebel casualties in the fighting in Rwihana. President Benigno Aquino III, Gazmin said, praised efforts that brought the Filipino peacekeepers to safety but wanted to be sure they could not be targeted by rebel retaliatory attacks.

In New York, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, whose mission is to monitor a 1974 disengagement in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, reported that shortly after midnight local time, during a cease-fire agreed with the armed elements, all 40 Filipino peacekeepers left their position and "arrived in a safe location one hour later."

The Filipinos escaped during the cease-fire because they refused to agree to surrender as the insurgents demanded, Philippine military spokesman Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala said.

Another group of 32 Filipino troops that had been trapped at a nearby encampment were extracted on Saturday morning with the help of Irish peacekeepers, the U.N. said.

The clashes erupted after Syrian rebel groups - including al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front - overran the Quneitra crossing on the frontier between Syrian- and Israeli-controlled parts of the Golan on Wednesday. A day later, Nusra Front fighters seized 44 Fijian peacekeepers.

In a statement posted on militant websites Sunday, the Nusra Front confirmed that it had seized the Fijians, and posted a photo showing what it said were the captured Fijians in their military uniforms along with 45 identification cards. The group said the men "are in a safe place and in good health, and everything they need in terms of food and medicine is given to them."

The statement mentioned no demands or conditions for the peacekeepers' release.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday ensured that the United Nations was doing its utmost to obtain the unconditional and immediate release of the Fijian peacekeepers detained in Golan Heights.

The Nusra Front accused the U.N. of doing nothing to help the Syrian people since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. It said the Fijians were seized in retaliation for the U.N.'s ignoring "the daily shedding of the Muslims' blood in Syria" and even colluding with Assad's army "to facilitate its movement to strike the vulnerable Muslims" through a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

The U.N. mission has 1,223 troops from six countries: Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, Netherlands and the Philippines. A number of countries have withdrawn their peacekeepers due to the escalating violence.

Philippine officials said Filipino forces would remain in Golan until their mission ends in October and not withdraw prematurely following the rebel attacks and the capture of the Fijian peacekeepers.

Both U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council strongly condemned Saturday's attack on the peacekeepers' positions and the ongoing detention of the Fijian peacekeepers.

The Nusra Front has recently seized hostages to exchange for prisoners detained in Syria and Lebanon.

Late Saturday, the group released four Lebanese soldiers and policemen taken captive earlier this month in a cross-border raid on the frontier town of Arsal, Lebanon's military said.

The Nusra Front and other militants still hold some two dozen Lebanese soldiers and police that they kidnapped in the town of Arsal on Lebanon's border with Syria.

Updated 4:43 p.m. ET

The Cannes Film Festival got off to a blockbuster, if stormy start, as Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" opened on a soggy French Riviera.

Amid heavy rain, dancing flappers flocked down the Cannes red carpet Wednesday night, bringing a touch of the Jazz Age to the Croisette. "Gatsby" stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire helped give the festival's opening day a strong dose of star power.

At the opening ceremony, DiCaprio, joined by his "Gatsby" co-star, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, declared the 66th Cannes officially begun.

Over the next 12 days, dozens of the world's most artistically ambitious films will premiere on Cannes' global stage. But Wednesday was a day for blockbusters - both the big-budget "Gatsby" and Hollywood's most accomplished director of spectacle: Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg is serving as jury president at this year's Cannes. His presence here is a rarity (he's had films at Cannes before, including "E.T." and "Sugarland Express," but never had a movie in competition), and 카지노사이트 - https://matras-crimea.com/ he was received like a visiting head of state, a king of cinema.

The "Lincoln" director received a standing ovation at the opening ceremony and was serenaded with a performance of "Miss Celie's Blues" from his 1985 film, "The Color Purple."

He heads the jury that will decide the prestigious Palme d'Or, given to one of the 20 competing films, with entries ranging from the Coen brothers ("Llewyn Davis"), Alexander Payne ("Nebraska") and Steven Soderbergh ("Behind the Candelabra").

This year's jury is an intimidating, starry bunch, including Nicole Kidman, Ang Lee and Christoph Waltz.

"Everyone sits in judgment of us," Spielberg said. "So it's our turn."

Luhrmann's 3-D adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is this year's festival opener, a choice that surprised many since the film opened last week in North America. Cannes typically takes precedence over release schedules, but "Gatsby" sails to the Croisette - http://realitysandwich.com/?s=Croisette after a robust weekend haul of $51.1 million.

After Luhrmann noted in a news conference that the film had pushed Fitzgerald's novel to the top of the bestseller list (selling more copies in a week than in the author's lifetime), DiCaprio added with a grin: "And a little film adaptation is doing quite well at the box office."

But while "Gatsby" is getting a victory lap on the Cannes' red carpet, it comes to the festival with the sting of mixed reviews. Many film critics have taken issue with the movie's stylistic flourishes.

"I knew that would come," said Luhrmann, noting Fitzgerald's 1925 novel was also initially received poorly. "I just care that people are going out and seeing it. I really am so moved by that."

"Gatsby" plays out of competition at the festival, but Spielberg should have his hands full with a slate lacking any obvious favorite. Internationally-respected filmmakers like Roman Polanski ("Venus in Fur"), Asghar Farhadi ("The Past) and Jim Jarmusch ("Only Lovers Left Alive") are to premiere their films in competition.

Every year, the Cannes jury president is psychoanalyzed to help predict the Palme d'Or winner. This year is no different, with onlookers guessing that Spielberg will either gravitate toward the kind of warm-hearted films he's best known for, or seek to deliberately contradict that assumption with a more audacious choice.

The international jury also includes Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, Japanese director Naomi Kawase, French actor Daniel Auteuil and Bollywood star Vidya Balan.

"I'm going to have to look at the Sidney Lumet film `12 Angry Men,' again as a tutorial to prepare myself for the final day of deliberation," Spielberg said with a smile.

Here's the list of the 19 films that will compete for the top prize, the Palme d'Or:

"A Chateau in Italy" by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi

"Inside Llewyn Davis" by Ethan and Joel Coen

"Michael Kohlhaas" by Arnaud Despallieres

"Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian)" by Arnaud Desplechin

"Heli" by Amat Escalante

"The Past" by Asghar Farhadi

"The Immigrant" by James Gray

"Grigris" by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

"A Touch of Sin" by Jia Zhangke

"Like Father, Like Son" by Kore-Eda Hirokazu

"The Life of Adele" by Abdellatif Kechiche

"Shield of Straw" by Takashi Miike

"Young and Pretty" by Francois Ozon

"Nebraska" by Alexander Payne

"Venus in Fur" by Roman Polanski

"Behind the Candelabra" by Steven Soderbergh

"The Great Beauty" by Paolo Sorrentino

"Borgman" by Alex van Warmerdam

"Only God Forgives" by Nicolas Winding Refn

LONDONA major casino operator is accusing Phil Ivey, an American who is one of the world's top professional poker players, of amassing millions of dollars in winnings by cheating at baccarat.

Court papers filed in Britain's High Court by the Malaysia-based Genting Group say that Ivey and an accomplice successfully used a scam to rack up winnings of roughly $11.9 million last summer.

The case has rocked the world of professional poker by pitting one of its most charismatic young stars against a major resort and casino operator. The game in question took place on Aug. 20-21 at Crockfords, one of London's oldest and most respected casinos.

The long-simmering dispute was first made public last month when Ivey filed a claim against the Genting Group in London's High Court. His lawyers said the casino refused to pay Ivey the money he had won playing baccarat at Crockfords, which is part of the Genting Group.

The casino responded in court Tuesday by accusing Ivey of cheating, saying his winnings were invalid because they were "based upon illegal acts."

On Wednesday, Ivey issued a statement through his lawyers denying any misconduct.

"The fact that I have issued a lawsuit in the face of what they are alleging says everything about how comfortable I am with my conduct and the validity of my win," he said. "Any allegations of wrongdoing by Crockfords are denied by me in the very strongest of terms."

Ivey, a 37 -year-old - http://photobucket.com/images/-year-old American, has been phenomenally successful, winning numerous World Series of Poker Championship bracelets. He has attracted a large fan base and been active with several charities since winning millions of dollars at poker.

The casino group said in the court papers that Ivey's "illegal acts" void his claimed winnings. It said he was able to have a "significant advantage" over the casino by using improper means to determine whether the first card being dealt in the baccarat hands would be a powerful or weak card, allowing him to place his bets accordingly.

The court papers say Punto Banco Baccarat is played with six or eight decks of cards placed in what is called a dealing "shoe." The goal in each hand, which consists of two or three cards, is to get closest to nine — the best first cards are a 7, 8 or 카지노사이트 - http://treelandscaping.net/ 9 since a 10 or a picture card counts as zero.

Players can bet that they will win, that the bank will win, or that the hand will be a tie.

The court papers say that Ivey and his accomplice, after some trial and error, found a "shoe" that contained decks of cards with an asymmetrical design. They were then able to convince the dealer, after cards were revealed, to turn the card either sideways or end over end. The staff was not suspicious because the accomplice, who spoke Cantonese with the dealers, acted like she was superstitious and just changing the way the cards lay for good luck, court papers say.

The effect was that the dealer inadvertently sorted the cards so that 7, 8 and 9 cards were distinguishable from others. Ivey sustained his success, the court papers claimed, by asking that the cards be shuffled automatically by a machine, which meant the way the cards were arranged was not altered as the game progressed.

The court papers also claim that Ivey specifically asked for an Asian dealer so his accomplice could communicate with that dealer in a language not known by the rest of the casino staff.

Today, many doctors in training are making their first diagnoses — and their first mistakes — on plastic, wires and computer circuits rather than flesh and blood. These virtual patients come in different shapes and sizes, much like the real ones

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Some are almost lifelike mannequins with plastic ears and hair, veins that can be injected, eyes that can move and interchangeable genitals. They can't be hurt or killed, even though they have a pulse, a beating heart and lungs that breathe. The most sophisticated can be programmed to simulate every imaginable medical crisis and then respond as a doctor works on the "patient.

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Other, virtual reality-type simulators combine video or computer images with tactile feedback. Trainees insert needles or surgical tools into a plastic box whose innards give the sensation of cutting flesh or pushing through body parts such as the throat or colon. A video screen shows what a doctor would watch during the procedure, such as ultrasound images

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"Do I think this is a wave of the future? No question," said Dr. Stephen Miller of the American Board of Medical Specialties, which oversees certification for medical specialists. "This is a major goal of the medical education and evaluation system.

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The top systems are pricey but so realistic that experts predict they'll become standard for training new doctors and for testing experienced ones who soon will face tougher recertification

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The technology is barely 10 years old, and already simulators are widely used for training U.S. military - http://www.gameinformer.com/search/searchresults.aspx?q=military medics and nurses and medical technicians at many community colleges

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At least half of the nation's 120 medical schools already use simulators such as Medical Education Technologies Inc.'s Human Patient Simulator mannequin and Laerdal Medical's SimMan to teach students and residents, or graduates completing training at hospitals

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"The mannequin is excellent," said Dr. Eric Chang, a second-year surgical resident who has trained in the simulation center at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick. "This kind of buffs you up in terms of encountering certain problems ... You have to react to what's happening" and select the right treatment

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Cynthia Yuan, a second-year resident in anesthesia, said the mannequin "helps them to think when they're in a real situation. I think they should do more of this.

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Medical school professors say simulators help their students and residents build confidence and make mistakes — before they treat real patients - http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/real%20patients

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"It's an extraordinary advantage," said Dr. Adam I. Levine, director of the anesthesiology residency program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "If you have to think through the problem yourself and get your answer, you learn it better

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Students sometimes get so caught up in a training scenario that they are upset if a monitor shows the patient has died. One anesthesiology resident who had sedated a "patient" for surgery, then couldn't insert a breathing tube, frantically resorted to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Levine recalle

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"They just were so desperate to come up with a way to get oxygen to this patient ... who was dying in front of them," Levine sai

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Dr. Jeffrey S. Hammond, professor of surgery at Robert Wood Johnson, said advanced simulators offer better surgery practice than cadavers, pigs or dog

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"I think every school is ultimately going to ... determine this is one of the more effective and cost-effective ways to train students," said Hammond, who is working with colleagues at the American College of Surgeons on national standards for simulator center

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He notes two studies have shown that surgical residents trained on simulators made fewer errors and operated more quickly than those who got the traditional "See one, do one, teach one" training, in which residents observe experienced doctors, do procedures under supervision and then independently, and later train other

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A six-month study just released by Immersion Medical, a top maker of virtual reality patient simulators, shows its Accutouch simulators can pay for themselves in less than six months because trainees can do procedures quicker and make fewer error

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Still, the simulators are expensiv

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Scaled-down simulators cost at least $40,000 and the most high-tech ones cost well over $200,000. Because different models teach different skills, putting together a bare bones lab costs at least $600,000 and a top-notch center can cost $2.5 million, Hammond sai

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Given the cost crunch for medical schools and other training programs, Dr. Stephen Small, director of the University of Chicago's patient safety center, is working to create a regional simulator center for training doctors, nurses and even teaching paramedics to handle biochemical attacks or other mass casualtie

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"The goal is to get people to work as a team under stress ... (and) improve patient care," Small sai

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One pioneer in simulator development, Stanford University obstetrics and gynecology professor Dr. LeRoy Heinrichs, is about to open the school's third simulator lab and is working on ways to use the computer-based systems for distance learning. He's also a consultant to Immersion Medical, which recently rolled out a new model for gynecological surger

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Immersion's widely used CathSim, 카지노사이트 - https://www.iozk.de/ which combines computer images with an "arm" to insert the needle, makes students go through all the steps of a blood draw, from confirming a patient's identity to pushing the needle in the until they feel the "pop" as it enters a vei

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Even though the rubber forearm and attached box don't look that realistic to professor Jesse Guiles at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, he says his students still get upset if the computer indicates they hurt the patient.