US-Led Planes Strike Fighters Attacking Syria Town

AP --Provided by the U.S Air Force, an F-22A Raptor taxis in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility prior to strike operations in Syria. U.S. coalition-led warplanes struck Islamic State group militants near the northern Syrian town of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, near the Turkish border for the first time Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014, activists and a Kurdish official said. The coalition, which began its aerial campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria early Tuesday, aims to roll back and ultimately crush the extremist group, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border.

BEIRUT (AP) — U.S.-led coalition warplanes struck Islamic State fighters in Syria attacking a town near the Turkish border for the first time Saturday, as well as positions in the country's east, activists and a Kurdish official said.

The Islamic State group's assault on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has sent more than 100,000 refugees streaming across the border into Turkey in recent days as Kurdish forces from Iraq and Turkey have raced to the front lines to defend the town.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the strikes targeted Islamic State positions near Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, destroying two tanks. He said the jihadi fighters later shelled the town, wounding a number of civilians.

The United States and five Arab allies launched an aerial campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria early Tuesday with the aim of rolling back and ultimately crushing the extremist group, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border. Along the way, the militants have massacred captured Syrian and Iraqi troops, terrorized minorities in both countries and beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker.

The latest airstrikes came as Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV that airstrikes alone "will not be able wipe out" the Islamic State group. Speaking from New York where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly, al-Moallem said in remarks broadcast Saturday that the U.S. should work with Damascus if it wants to win the war.

"They must know the importance of coordination with the people of this country because they know what goes on there," al-Moallem said. The U.S. has ruled out any coordination with President Bashar Assad's government, which is at war with the Islamic State group as well as Western-backed rebels.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the coalition's strikes near Kobani came amid heavy fighting between the Islamic State group and members of the Kurdish force known as the People's Protection Units, or YPK.

The Britain-based group, which relies on activists inside Syria, had no immediate word on casualties from Saturday's strikes. The Observatory reported Friday that 13 civilians have been killed by the strikes since they began.

Kurdish fighter Majid Goran told the Associated Press by telephone from Kobani that two bombs were dropped over the nearby village of Ali Shar, at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT), but that the positions they struck were empty.

Turkey's Dogan news agency reported Saturday that the sound of heavy fighting could be heard from the Turkish border village of Karaca. The agency said Kurdish forces retook some positions they had lost to the Islamic militants a few days ago. It did not cite a source for the report.

Dozens of people wounded in the fighting arrived in Turkey for treatment on Saturday, it said. Another Kurdish fighter, Ismet Sheikh Hasan, said the Turkish military on Saturday night retaliated after stray shells landed on Turkish territory, firing in the Ali Shar region. He said the Turkish action left Kurdish fighters in the middle of the crossfire.

He said that on Friday, the Islamic militants were attacking the Kobani area from the east with tanks and artillery, advancing on Ali Shar and Haja. He said some 20 people were killed, including Kurdish fighters and civilians, while another 50 people were wounded.

The fighting around Kobani sparked one of the largest single outflows of refugees since Syria's conflict began more than three years ago. The Syrian Kurdish forces have long been one of the most effective fighting units battling the Islamic State, but the tide has turned in recent weeks as the Islamic militants have attacked with heavy weapons likely looted from neighboring Iraq.

The Observatory said other coalition airstrikes targeted Islamic State compounds in the central province of Homs and the northern regions of Raqqa and Aleppo. The group said 31 explosions were heard in the city of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital, and its suburbs.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said the strikes in the east hit the province of Deir el-Zour as well as Raqqa. The LCC also said the coalition targeted grain silos west of Deir el-Zour city.

It was not immediately clear why the silos were targeted. Max Blumenfeld, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said the U.S. airstrikes "don't target food or anything else than can be used by the civilian population." But he said that until the military reviews images from planes that participated in the strikes, he could not rule out that silos were hit.

He said the airstrikes are aimed at specific Islamic State targets such as command and control centers, transportation and logistics, and oil refineries, "but not food that could have an impact upon the civilian population."

"Our targets are structures that combatants would use," he said. Blumenfeld later said the U.S. did target what he called an Islamic State grain storage facility on Tuesday near Boukamal, a town close to the Iraqi border which was seized by the Islamic State group earlier this year.

In recent days coalition warplanes had struck oil-producing facilities in eastern Syria in a bid to cut off one of the Islamic State group's main revenue streams — black market oil sales that the U.S. says generate up to $2 million a day.

The coalition striking Syria includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan, and the strikes are an extension of the U.S. campaign in neighboring Iraq launched in August. Near the capital Damascus, Syrian troops meanwhile entered the once rebel-held northeastern suburb of Adra after days of clashes, Syrian state TV said. The advance came two days after troops captured the nearby Adra industrial zone.

Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, Thomas Strong in Washington and Mohammed Rasool in Suruc, Turkey, contributed to this report.

Refugees Settle In Thanks To Small Farm Plots

Alex Congera, originally from Burundi, holds African eggplant harvested from his garden at the Global Greens Farm, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2014, in West Des Moines, Iowa. A growing interest from consumers to buy locally grown fruits and vegetables has provided a robust new market for refugees who have fled violence in their home countries and have found peace in farming small plots of land in cities across the United States.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The rapidly rising demand for locally grown fruits and vegetables has created a robust new market for refugees who fled violence in their home countries and found peace in farming small plots of land in several U.S. cities.

With help from a federal grant program and local charities, refugees like Angelique Hakuzimana of Des Moines are now harvesting crops — some of which are native to their home countries — to meet local demand. They're also finding their place in new communities through an activity many are accustomed to, the federal program director said.

Hakuzimana, 39, was displaced by war in Rwanda in 2009 and settled in Iowa through a program sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. On a recent September morning, she picked vegetables as farm manager Zach Couture read off an order sheet from a food cooperative.

She excitedly showed off rows of tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, kale, lettuce and eggplant planted as part of the Global Greens program through the Lutheran Services of Iowa. The hotel housekeeper also grows cassava, a carbohydrate-rich root that's a dietary staple in Africa.

"I really like my garden. I like to work myself. Here you can do anything you like to do," Hakuzimana said, at times struggling to find the English words to express her thoughts. "I've got a lot a food."

The organization received $85,000 for its program, which offers farm plots on land owned by a West Des Moines church to 26 refugee families from several nations, including Bhutan, Burma, Burundi and Rwanda.

It's one of 11 organizations to receive grants this year through the federal Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program, which started in 2003, provides about $1 million a year, said Ron Munia, director of the Division of Community Development in the Office of Refugee Services. The program also has funded plots in New York City; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Honolulu, Hawaii; Nashville, Tennessee; Providence, Rhode Island; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Tampa, Florida.

"The big thing is that many refugees come from agrarian backgrounds and this is something that they are extremely accustomed to," said Munia, whose office is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "The interaction with the local population and other refugees is a huge factor in helping them integrate.

"The fact that they're growing food, sharing it with each other, sharing recipes and cooking for each other really helps. Their kids are out there playing together which helps with the language barriers."

Lutheran Services has helped refugees farm for several years, but sought grants after some families asked to expand their plots, program supervisor Hillary Burbank said. Eighteen have beginner gardens of about 50 feet by 50 feet to grow food primarily for their own use, and eight families have advanced to larger quarter-acre plots, the products of which are sold at a farmers market and to the Iowa Food Cooperative.

The Lutheran Services of Iowa organizes a small farmers market on Saturday mornings in its parking lot. On a recent morning, Pacifique Simon, 22, and his mother, Mariselina, stood before a table filled with potatoes and peppers from their garden.

His family — mom, dad and seven siblings — came to the United States in January 2008 under the United Nations refugee program, leaving their homeland in Burundi for the Democratic Republic of Congo to escape war, and later fleeing to Tanzania.

"We were in a refugee camp and life was not good there but the United States gave us the opportunity to come here," said Simon, who is studying agriculture systems technology at Iowa State University. "This means a lot to me because we get to sell stuff and make a little bit of money so we can help our family and we can grow food so our family can feed other people and feed ourselves too."

Simon's hope is to someday return to Africa "to teach them new techniques to grow food and fight hunger," he said. Burbank said having families make money is a great part of the Global Greens program, "but it's also about being able to grow some of their own cultural crops. It's being able to involve their families, being able to just have their own land."

Follow David Pitt at http://twitter.com/davepitt

Ebola Clinics Fill Up As Liberia Awaits Aid

Ethel Konneh, left, is consoled by her daughters outside the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment center, after she learned her other daughter Rose past away from Ebola in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. The outbreak of Ebola has overwhelmed the weak health systems of some of the world's poorest countries - there aren't enough doctors and nurses or even clinics to treat the spiraling number of cases.

MONROVIA, LIBERIA (AP) — Fourteen-year-old D.J. Mulbah set off at dawn with his mother and grandmother in desperate pursuit of a coveted bed at the Ebola clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Liberia's capital.

Too weak to stand, they bundled him up into a taxi with his backpack and a yellow plastic bucket for his vomit. Now he lay on the dirt beside the worried women awaiting word on how many new patients would enter the clinic today.

"He's been sick for a week with a runny stomach," says his distressed mother, wiping the sweat off the boy's brow with her bare hands. "We tried calling an ambulance days ago but nobody ever came." Six months after West Africa's first Ebola outbreak emerged, generous offers of aid are finally pouring in, but beds for the sick are filling up as fast as clinics can be built. The hundreds of millions of dollars will also be arriving too late for thousands here as the world's worst-ever outbreak now has killed more than half its victims.

And even as countries try to marshal more resources to close the gap, those needs threaten to become much greater, and possibly even insurmountable. Ambulance sirens blare through standstill traffic here in Monrovia, though often there is nowhere to take the sick except to so-called "holding centers" where they await a bed at an Ebola treatment facility.

By 8 a.m. there are a dozen suspected Ebola patients crouching and sitting on the ground outside the metal padlocked gates of a Monrovia facility that can only hold 160 patients. Soon a triage nurse approaches, her voice muffled through a surgical mask covered by a plastic face shield. The news is good, and D.J. manages a faint smile: The clinic will take the boy.

His fortune though comes only from the sorrow of others: Only seven of the 30 beds made available Saturday morning were vacated by survivors. The rest had died. And the limitations are stark: A sign in a staff tent inside the outdoor hospital warns: "NO IV lines to be inserted until we have enough staff."

Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, urged world leaders this week to take "immediate action." "The promised surge has not yet delivered," she said. Statistics reviewed by The Associated Press and interviews with experts and those on the scene of one of the worst health disasters in modern history show how great the needs are and how little the world has done in response.

— The existing bed capacity for Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and Nigeria is about 820, well short of the 2,900 beds that are currently needed, according to the World Health Organization. Recently 737 beds were pledged by countries. Yet even after the promised treatment facilities are built, they will still be at least 2,100 beds short.

And if more people get sick than those who recover or die, the shortage will grow even more pronounced. MSF and other aid workers are distributing home care kits with gloves and surgical gowns to try and keep those awaiting hospital beds from infecting relatives while at home, though the distribution of thousands is still far short in Monrovia, a city of 1.6 million.

— The shortage of health workers is also great. WHO has estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 international health workers are needed in West Africa and says it is having trouble recruiting enough help. More than 200 health workers have died as they tried to save lives, complicating recruiting efforts.

Doctors Without Borders, which has more Ebola clinics than anyone, currently has 248 foreign aid workers in the region. The U.S. has pledged to train some 500 local health workers a week, but officials acknowledge that goal is unrealistic in the current environment.

The African Union has said it will deploy 100 health workers to assist the West African countries affected by Ebola. The first batch of an AU Ebola taskforce, totaling 30 people, left for Liberia on Sept. 18. Taskforce members are expected to arrive in Sierra Leone on Oct. 5 and in Guinea by the end of October.

Meanwhile, Liberia's chief medical officer placed herself in quarantine for 21 days after her office assistant died of Ebola. Bernice Dahn, a deputy health minister who has represented Liberia at regional conferences, told The Associated Press on Saturday that she did not have any Ebola symptoms but wanted to ensure she was not infected.

In Liberia's capital, construction workers are building new centers until nightfall, putting up tin-roof structures with white plastic sheeting for walls. In two weeks' time — if the work isn't delayed by the rainy season's torrential downpours — 200 sick people can be treated there.

Dr. Frank Mahoney, co-lead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control team in Liberia, said: "We have been working furiously trying to set up treatment centers but (incoming patients) have been outpacing our ability to set them up."

Unless the situation is put under control, the outbreak may infect as many as 1.4 million people by the end of the year and nearly half of those people could die, the CDC estimated this week. More than 3,000 are currently believed to have died from Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of the sick.

"If this outbreak continues, the sheer caseload will make it much more difficult to contain," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, assistant-director general in charge of emergencies at WHO. "We will need more health workers to take care of them, more PPE (protective suits), more hospitals, more of everything."

President Barack Obama has ordered up to 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa to train health workers and build more than a dozen 100-bed field hospitals including reserved sections for infected aid workers in Liberia, the country hardest hit by the disease.

Britain and France have both pledged to build field hospitals in Sierra Leone and Guinea. China is sending a 59-person lab team to Sierra Leone. Cuba will send 461 health workers, who will be trained in biosecurity, and some will go to Liberia and Guinea.

A top priority is sending enough protective equipment, including gloves, gowns, masks and boots. WHO is shipping about 240,000 protective suits a month in addition to supplies sent by other agencies. Yet there are still reports of under-sourced clinics washing and reusing protective gear that is meant to be worn once and then incinerated.

"We still do have gaps in the supply, which are quite significant," said Antonio Vigilante, the Deputy Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in Liberia. "Nobody expected that the requirements of protective gear would go in the order of millions." Liberia now requires an estimated 1.3 million protective suits, Vigilante said.

One of the world's top makers of the suits, DuPont, says it has more than doubled production but would not say who has placed orders. Officials are also looking into whether protective clothing can be locally produced.

"The situation on the ground is just disastrous," said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who recently returned from Liberia. "The idea of having hundreds of people in tent structures for Ebola management is unbelievable but the way this is spreading, we need to find a solution now."

AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng reported from London. Sarah DiLorenzo in Dakar, Senegal and Randall Chase in Dover, Del., contributed to this report.

Follow Krista Larson on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/klarsonafrica

Help Wanted: Free Lawyers For Immigrant Children

Detainees sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville,Texas. More than half of the nearly 60,000 Central America children who have arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year still don’t have lawyers to represent them in immigration court and many of those who do have volunteer attorneys scrambling to brush up on immigration law. Advocates are holding training sessions to help private sector attorneys learn how to work with traumatized, Spanish-speaking children, many of whom have come fleeing violence.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Most of the nearly 60,000 Central American children who have arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year still don't have lawyers to represent them in immigration court, and advocates are scrambling to train volunteer attorneys to help cope with the massive caseload.

With the number of unaccompanied immigrant children more than doubling this past fiscal year, the need for attorneys has surged, and it has been exacerbated by the immigration courts' decision to fast-track children's cases, holding initial hearings within a few weeks instead of months.

Immigrants can have counsel in immigration courts, but lawyers are not guaranteed or provided at government expense. Having an attorney can make a big difference: While almost half of children with attorneys were allowed to remain in the country, only 10 percent of those without representation were allowed to stay, according to an analysis of cases through June by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Efforts are underway from White Plains, New York, to New Orleans to train attorneys at private law firms on the country's byzantine immigration laws and how to work with traumatized, Spanish-speaking children, many of whom are fleeing violence — a far cry from the corporate clients most deal with on a daily basis.

"We're doing pretty well on finding willing lawyers. We've got to get them trained, we've got to get them matched to that child," said Reid Trautz, director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's practice and professionalism center. "It just takes time."

Last month, Vice President Joe Biden urged lawyers to increase efforts to take on the children's cases. Since then, the cities of San Francisco and New York have each announced plans to allocate roughly $2 million to help provide more lawyers for unaccompanied minors. California's Legislature approved $3 million for the effort.

About 800 immigration lawyers have signed up to volunteer on the cases, the immigration lawyers association said. So have many other attorneys without any background in immigration law. They are being trained and paired with experienced immigration practitioners, who serve as mentors.

"We've had tax lawyers do this, corporate lawyers, real estate — anybody can do it," said Ricardo Martinez-Cid, president of the Cuban American Bar Association, which started a program earlier this year to represent unaccompanied children in Miami.

Immigrant advocates say the efforts are working, but not as quickly as desired. Nonprofit organizations have been boosting staff, but there aren't enough experienced immigration lawyers to take on the cases or to mentor volunteers. Nor is there enough long-term funding for cases that can take more than a year to resolve, they said.

"It is very much a triage situation, and it is very, very frustrating because you know when someone calls and you turn them away, it is very unlikely they'll find counsel," said Judy London, directing attorney of the immigrants' rights project at Los Angeles-based Public Counsel.

Some children will apply for green cards under a federal program for abused and abandoned children, while others who came fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are seeking asylum. One of the biggest challenges for volunteer lawyers is getting clients to open up about their lives when they have been beaten, raped or seen friends and family killed.

Three of the 30 children whose cases are being handled by Public Counsel have a history of suicide attempts or risk of suicide, London said. Most children are not going to feel comfortable walking into a fancy law firm and would probably run from the building, she said, unless an attorney meets the child outside and walks jointly through the door.

Jack Ross, an attorney in Southern California, said he met with a 16-year-old client four times before he told his full story. The boy, who arrived in the country two years ago, fled years of violence from his father and a police department that refused to protect him, he said.

"It's some of the most compelling legal work you can do, because the stakes are so high," said Ross, who represents hospitals and care providers in negligence claims and contract disputes. "You become so emotionally invested in the client, their well-being is really at the forefront of everything, and that doesn't happen a lot in law."

Before the recent influx of unaccompanied children, only about half were represented, said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that pairs volunteer lawyers with children. She could not say how many children now have lawyers, but said certainly fewer than before.

Advocates have sued to demand the government provide the children with attorneys at the government's expense. The lawsuit is pending before a judge in Seattle. They say children with representation are more likely to attend their court hearings.

This week, the Homeland Security Department acknowledged that tens of thousands of young families caught on the border failed to meet with federal immigration agents as instructed. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said she could not say whether they attended court hearings on their cases.

At a recent immigration court hearing in Los Angeles, most of the 19 children whose cases were scheduled showed up. Seven had attorneys. Others were accompanied by a relative, as the judge reviewed their names and ages.

Their guardians were given a handout with a list of low-cost legal service providers and told to return in December with a lawyer.

Britain Joins Fight Against Islamic State Group

This image taken from the Parliamentary Recording Unit via Associated Press shows British lawmakers preparing for the debate on air strikes against the Islamic State group in the Houses of Parliament, London, Friday, Sept. 26, 2014. David Cameron told lawmakers "there is no more serious issue than asking our armed forces to put themselves in harm's way to protect our country" as he set out the case for British participation in air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq.

LONDON (AP) — Britain, Belgium and Denmark on Friday joined the U.S.-led coalition of nations that are launching airstrikes on the Islamic State group in Iraq, committing warplanes to the struggle against the extremists.

The European lawmakers flatly described the moves as critical to security on home soil, arguing that facing down terrorists has become a matter of urgency. British Prime Minister David Cameron made a passionate plea for action in drastic terms — noting that the militants had beheaded their victims, gouged out eyes and carried out crucifixions to promote goals "from the Dark Ages."

"This is about psychopathic terrorists that are trying to kill us and we do have to realize that, whether we like it or not, they have already declared war on us," he said. "There isn't a 'walk on by' option. There isn't an option of just hoping this will go away."

Cameron told a tense House of Commons during more than six hours of debate that the hallmarks of the campaign would be "patience and persistence, not shock and awe" — a reference to the phrase associated with the invasion of Iraq.

That unpopular intervention has cast a shadow over the discussions because critics fear that Europe will be drawn into a wider conflict, specifically taking on the Islamic group's fighters in Syria. British lawmakers voted 524-43 for action after being urgently recalled from a recess. Belgian lawmakers also overwhelmingly approved, voting 114-2 to take part, despite widespread concerns that more terrorism may follow in their homeland as a result.

The White House said in a statement that it welcomed the countries to the coalition. "These decisions — along with those by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar to participate in airstrikes against ISIL in Syria — demonstrate the clear commitment of the international community to take action together against these terrorists," the statement reads.

In May, Belgium was shaken when a gunman opened fire at a Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. The suspect, French citizen Mehdi Nemouche, has been identified as a returning Islamic fighter from Syria, and leaders in Belgium and other European countries have expressed their fears that other returnees from Syria and Iraq may cause further havoc.

"We must fight against torture, against decapitations, so it's time to act," said Belgian lawmaker Veli Yuksel, a Flemish Christian Democrat Denmark pledged seven F-16 fighter jets. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said her government would send four operational planes and three reserve jets along with 250 pilots and support staff for 12 months. Lawmakers in Denmark must also approve, but that is considered a formality.

"No one should be ducking in this case" she said. "Everyone should contribute." Britain is expected to deploy Tornado GR4 aircraft, a handful of which are in Cyprus, within striking distance of northern Iraq.

The Tornados give the coalition an enhanced ability to hit moving targets with the use of the Dual Mode Brimstone missile, said Ben Goodlad from IHS Jane's. He said the weapons have a particular ability to hit convoys and fleeing targets.

The British resolution does not address any action in Syria, though many lawmakers tried to push the government to admit that this is the likely next step. Cameron has justified action in Iraq as lawful because the Iraqi leadership has asked for help.

No European nation has yet agreed to join the U.S. and some Arab states in strikes in Syria. The motion before Britain's Parliament set no time limit, and that caused unease. Many lawmakers suggested the fight could stretch for years.

"ISIL is a death cult, it's a gang of terrorist murderers. It's not an army and it's certainly not an army that's going to be destroyed by aerial bombardment," said legislator George Galloway, using a former name for the radicals.

Cameron ensured his success by keeping the motion narrowly tailored — staving off the defeat suffered a year ago when Parliament shot down the idea of intervening in Syria to thwart Assad's use of chemical weapons.

Defense Secretary Michael Fallon later indicated that the government might later ask Parliament for support for Syrian airstrikes. "ISIL is based in Syria, that's where its headquarters are, that's where its resources, its people are. To deal with ISIL you do have to deal and defeat them in both Iraq and in Syria," he told BBC. "We are taking this in a calm, measured way, step-by-step, but it is clear to us that obviously ISIL, in the end, has to be tackled on a broader front."

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed.

Chelsea Clinton Gives Birth To Baby Girl

Former President Bill Clinton hugs his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, during the closing session of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. At right is Chelsea's husband, Marc Mezvinsky.  Clinton announced the birth of daughter Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, 1st grandchild of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, Saturday Sept. 27, 2014.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bill and Hillary Clinton are grandparents. The couple's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, has given birth to her first child, a daughter named Charlotte.

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former president and ex-secretary of state, announced the baby's birth on Twitter and Facebook early Saturday, saying she and husband Marc Mezvinsky are "full of love, awe and gratitude as we celebrate the birth of our daughter, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky."

Clinton spokesman Kamyl Bazbaz said the child was born on Friday but did not immediately provide additional details. The couple lives in New York City. The Clintons quickly retweeted their daughter's message on Twitter but did not immediately comment on the baby's arrival.

The baby arrives as Hillary Clinton deliberates on whether to seek the White House in 2016, a decision that could put her on a path to becoming the nation's first female president. Clinton is the leading Democratic contender to succeed President Barack Obama, her former 2008 campaign rival, and has said she expects to make a decision around the beginning of next year.

The baby has been eagerly anticipated as Hillary Clinton considers her political future — she has called the prospect of becoming a grandmother her "most exciting title yet." She even has picked out the first book she intends to read to her grandchild, the classic "Goodnight Moon."

She has said she didn't want to make any decisions about another campaign until the baby's arrival, pointing to her interest in enjoying becoming a grandmother for the first time. If Clinton decides to run for president, her campaign would coincide with the baby's first two years.

The former president has been eager to become a grandfather. During an event with former President George W. Bush in September, Mr. Clinton's cell phone rang on stage and he joked that only two people had the number "and they are related to me," musing that he hoped he wasn't becoming "a premature grandfather."

"Every day I get up and I say, 'You have to remember whose child this is. Do not interfere. Be there when you are welcome. Be loving but not judgmental," Clinton said to laughs in an interview with CNN at his annual Clinton Global Initiative, only days before the baby's arrival.

Even Obama got into the act. Addressing the annual Clinton confab, Obama quipped if Chelsea Clinton went into labor during his speech, "she has my motorcade and will be able to navigate traffic." The 34-year-old Chelsea Clinton said in an interview with Glamour magazine last year that she and her husband had hoped to make 2014 "the year of the baby." She announced her pregnancy in April at the end of a forum in New York on female empowerment.

"I just hope I will be as good a mom to my child and, hopefully, children as my mom was to me," she said at the time. Chelsea Clinton grew up in the public eye as a teenager in the White House, later graduating from Stanford and Columbia universities. She worked in finance in New York and in public health, earning a doctorate from Oxford University.

She serves as vice chair of her family's foundation, which was renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and helps direct the organization's humanitarian and philanthropic efforts around the globe. She recently departed NBC News, where she served as a special correspondent.

The new parents, who married in 2010, were friends as teenagers in Washington and both attended Stanford. Mezvinsky is a hedge fund manager and the son of former Reps. Majorie Margolies of Pennsylvania and Edward Mezvinsky of Iowa, longtime friends of the Clintons.

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

Holder Resigning: Attorney General Backed Rights

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Attorney General Eric Holder, speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2014, to announce Holder is resigning. Holder, who served as the public face of the Obama administration's legal fight against terrorism and weighed in on issues of racial fairness, is resigning after six years on the job. He is the first black US attorney general.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eric Holder, America's first black attorney general and an unflinching champion of civil rights in enforcing the nation's laws, announced his resignation Thursday after leading the Justice Department since the first days of President Barack Obama's term. He is the fourth-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history.

Holder, the administration's point man on the civil rights investigation into the police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, won't leave until a replacement is confirmed, which means he could remain in office for months.

In an emotional ceremony at the White House, Obama said Holder did a "superb job" and credited him with driving down both the nation's crime and incarceration rate — the first time they have declined together in more than 40 years.

"He believes as I do that justice is not just an abstract theory," Obama said. "It's a living and breathing principal. It's about how our laws interact with our daily lives." In a speech earlier this week, Holder described the dual personal perspective he brought to the job and how it applied to the Ferguson shooting, in which a young black man was shot and killed by a white policeman. He said he had the utmost respect for police as a former prosecutor and the brother of an officer. But, he added, "As an African-American man who has been stopped and searched by police in situations where such actions were not warranted, I also carry with me an understanding of the mistrust that some citizens harbor."

Holder told The Associated Press in an interview that he's not sure whether the Justice Department will finish its investigation into the shooting before he leaves. "I don't want to rush them," Holder said. He said once out of office, he will direct attention to "issues that have animated me" during his tenure, including criminal justice and civil rights.

"If you asked me what my biggest regret was, I would say that it was the failure to pass any responsible and reasonable gun safety legislation after the shootings in Newtown," Holder said. He said he thought in the aftermath of the school shootings in Connecticut that the nation would embrace change that was "not radical but really reasonable" on gun ownership.

Holder aggressively enforced the Voting Rights Act, addressed drug-sentencing guidelines that led to disparities between white and black convicts, extended legal benefits to same-sex couples and refused to defend a law that allowed states to disregard gay marriages. He oversaw the decision to prosecute terror suspects in U.S. civilian courts instead of at Guantanamo Bay and helped establish a legal rationale for lethal drone strikes on suspects overseas.

He was a lightning rod for conservative critics and faced a succession of controversies over, among other things, an ultimately abandoned plan to try terrorism suspects in New York City, a botched gun-running probe along the Southwest border that prompted Republican calls for his resignation, and what was seen as a failure to hold banks accountable for the financial system's near-meltdown.

Only three other attorneys general in U.S. history have served longer than the 63-year-old Holder. He also is one of the longest-serving of Obama's original Cabinet members. Two others remain: Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Holder and his wife are close personally to the Obamas, having recently vacationed together on Martha's Vineyard, and Obama told him of his intention to depart over the summer. White House officials said Obama had not made a final decision on a replacement for Holder, who was one of the most liberal voices in his Cabinet. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said naming a new attorney general would be a high priority for the president.

Some possible candidates that have been mentioned among administration officials include Solicitor General Don Verrilli; Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole; White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler; Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; Jenny Durkan, a former U.S. attorney in Washington state, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a former Rhode Island attorney general.

A former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, Holder was pulled away from private practice to reshape a Justice Department that had been tarnished by a scandal involving fired U.S. attorneys and that had authorized harsh interrogation methods for terrorism suspects. He immediately signaled a new direction for the incoming administration by declaring that waterboarding was torture, contrary to the George W. Bush administration's insistence that it wasn't.

In the first year of his tenure, Holder was widely criticized by Republicans and some Democrats for his plan to try professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged co-conspirators in New York. The plan was doomed by political opposition to granting civilian criminal trials to terrorist suspects, but Holder continued to maintain that civilian courts were the most appropriate venue.

Under his watch, the Justice Department cracked down on news media reporting on national security matters. The department secretly subpoenaed phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors and used a search warrant to obtain some emails of a Fox News journalist as part of a separate leak investigation.

Stung by criticism that the department hadn't been aggressive enough in targeting financial misconduct, Holder in the past year and a half secured criminal guilty pleas from two foreign banks and multibillion-dollar civil settlements with American banks arising from the sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities. Even then, critics noted that no individuals were held accountable.

On matters of policy, Holder spoke frankly about how his upbringing — his father emigrated from Barbados and his sister-in-law helped integrate the University of Alabama — helped shape his thinking. He referred to America in 2009 as a "nation of cowards" in its discussions of race. He later lamented that "systemic and unwarranted racial disparities remain disturbingly common."

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Pete Yost and Jesse Holland in Washington and Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed to this report.

Indonesia Enlists Wasps In War On Crop

Pest pink cassava mealybugs are shown in a laboratory at Bogor Agricultural University in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2914. They are the size of a pinhead and don't even pack a sting, but these tiny wasps are cold-blooded killers nonetheless. They work as nature's SWAT team, neutralizing a pest that threatens to destroy one of the developing world's most important staple foods: cassava. The wasps are being released in Indonesia, the latest country threatened by the mealybug. It's a white fuzzy-looking insect shaped like a pill that's been making its way across Southeast Asia's fields for the past six years. Scientists will put 2,000 wasps into a holding cage at an affected field in Bogor. They will be monitored to see how well they handle local conditions as they multiply to an expected 300,000 over the next month before being released into the wild to start their relentless killing spree.

BOGOR, INDONESIA (AP) — They are the size of a pinhead and don't even pack a sting, but these tiny wasps are cold-blooded killers nonetheless. They work as nature's SWAT team, neutralizing a pest that threatens to destroy one of the developing world's most important staple foods: cassava.

The wasps are being released in Indonesia, the latest country threatened by the mealybug. It's a chalky white insect shaped like a pill that's been making its way across Southeast Asia's fields for the past six years. The pest first appeared in Indonesia in 2010. Bogor on the outskirts of Indonesia's capital Jakarta was ground zero.

But unlike in Thailand, where infestations reached some 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) of crops grown mostly as part of a huge export business, cassava in Indonesia is a vital local food source second only to rice. That makes the mealybug a serious threat to food security in Indonesia, which already has one of the region's highest child malnutrition rates.

The parasitic wasps, or Anagyrus lopezi, need the mealybug to survive. Females lay their eggs inside the insect and as the larvae grow, they eat the bug from the inside out, slowly killing it until there's nothing left but its mummified shell.

On Wednesday, scientists put 3,000 wasps into a secure tent-like habitat in an affected field in Bogor. They will be monitored to see how well they handle local conditions as they multiply to an expected 450,000 within a month. Once a government permit is obtained, the wasps can be released into the wild to start their relentless killing spree.

It's unclear how much damage mealybugs have already caused to Indonesia's crops, but infestations have been reported on the main cassava-growing island of Java and in parts of Sumatra, said Kris Wyckhuys, an entomologist at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, which is helping to coordinate the release.

He said the idea is to introduce the wasps early in a pre-emptive strike because the pests if left unchecked can destroy more than 80 percent of a harvest by sucking the plant's sap until it withers and dies.

"It is entering into areas where it is expected to cause the biggest yield impact and the biggest impact on food security and on cassava-related livlihoods," Wyckhuys said. Cassava farmer Wahyu Hidayat said the pests hit about three hectares of his five hectacre crop four years ago. The leaves started shriveling and falling off the plants that grow up to four meters tall, and no one had ever seen anything like it. It lowered production from five kilos of cassava from one tree down to two kilos.

"It's really difficult for us," he said, welcoming the government's wasp intervention. "As a traditional farmer, we didn't know how to deal with it." Indonesia is one of the world's top producers of cassava, planting around 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) a year, half of which is eaten as a staple food across the sprawling archipelago of 240 million people.

The long roots of the shrub-like plant are a major source of carbohydrates and provide an array of nutrients. Like the potato, cassava is a versatile starch that's an essential part of daily meals across much of the developing world. In Indonesia it is boiled, fried, made into noodles, crackers and even cakes.

Known elsewhere as manioc, tapioca and yucca, it is also made into livestock feed and used as an ingredient in a variety of products worldwide, ranging from lipstick and artificial sweeteners to paint and glucose IV drips.

Portuguese traders first brought the plant from South America centuries ago, and many of the world's poorest people today depend on it for survival. It grows well in bad soil conditions and doesn't need much water, making it ideal for hot areas hit by drought.

It is especially important in Africa, which suffered a massive mealybug attack in the 1980s. Wasps were first imported there from Paraguay and released across the continent by airplane. The method was effective, wiping out up to 95 percent of the bugs in some areas, and has been credited with averting famine and saving $20 billion.

Wyckhuys said the wasps have not created any unintended problems within ecosystems since the so called pink mealybugs only eat cassava and the tiny wasps only eat mealybugs. However, he said it's impossible to erradicate all of the pests because the wasps must keep some hosts alive in order to keep from dying out themselves.

Mealybugs, or Phenacoccus manihoti, are believed to have hitchhiked into Thailand in 2008, most likely aboard cassava cuttings transported from Africa. But without the wasps to keep them in check, they quickly spread to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Small releases have been conducted within those countries, and the wasps imported in 2009 to Thailand have also slowly migrated into neighboring countries. The wasps have vastly improved the problem in Thailand, the worlds's largest cassava exporter, but not eliminated it entirely. Several wasp releases are planned in different parts of Indonesia using insects brought from Thailand.

Follow Margie Mason on Twitter at twitter.com/MargieMasonAP

Arab States Risk Backlash By Joining Syria Strikes

 By the official Saudi Press Agency, Saudi pilots sits in the cockpit of a fighter jet as part of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on Islamic State militants and other targets in Syria that began early Tuesday. Arab countries’ prominent role in initial airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria shatters the notion of what a typical American-led military operation looks like and won the Mideast allies' praise from U.S. President Barack Obama for their willingness to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder" with the United States. It is a reflection of their growing concern about the threat posed by Islamic extremists, and a chance to flex some military muscle toward regional rival Iran _ a key supporter of governments in both Syria and Iraq. The strategy is not without risks.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Arab nations that joined the United States in striking the Islamic State group in Syria were unusually open about it, throwing aside their usual secrecy and wariness about appearing too close to Washington. Saudi Arabia even released heroic-looking photos of its pilots who flew the warplanes.

Their boasting reflects the depth of Gulf nations' concern over the threat of the extremist group sweeping over Iraq and Syria. It also shows their desire to flex some military muscle toward regional rival Iran, a key supporter of the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

But the Sunni monarchies run the risk of a backlash by hardline Islamists angered by seeing them help strike Sunni fighters who many of them see as battling a Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Notably, militant websites sympathetic to the Islamic State group lit up on Wednesday with the photos of the Saudi pilots, alongside calls for them to be killed.

Even beyond the ranks of hardliners, many around the region are suspicious of U.S. motives in yet again launching military action in an Arab nation. Many among the Syrian rebels grumble that the United States and Arab nations ignored their pleas for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad for years and are acting now only in their own interest against the radicals.

Moreover, the U.S. expanded the strikes beyond the Islamic State, hitting al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, in a bid to take out a cell called the Khorasan Group believed to be plotting attacks against the United States. That has other Syrian rebel factions with Islamic ideologies — and there are many of them — worried they too could be hit by the Americans.

"For four years, we called on the West to help us topple the regime, but it's clear the target is the Islamic factions," said a Damascus-based opposition activist, Abu Akram al-Shami, speaking via Skype. "This will affect the revolution on the ground."

The countries whose air forces carried out strikes were all Sunni-led states run by hereditary monarchs with longstanding ties to the American military: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain. Another Gulf monarchy, Qatar, played a supporting role, according to the Pentagon. President Barack Obama — who had been eager for Arab backing in the campaign — praised them for their willingness to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States.

Perhaps most vulnerable to a backlash is Jordan, which borders Syria and has a strong community of Islamists and ultraconservative Salafis who have sympathies with the Islamic State group. Jordan was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant who founded al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, which eventually evolved into the Islamic State group, years after he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq.

Mohammed al-Shalabi, a prominent figure in the jihadi-Salafi movement in Jordan, told The Associated Press, that while the Islamic State group has "made mistakes" — killing journalists, for example — it is still part of the Muslim nation and U.S. strikes against it will only build support for it.

"The U.S. is hated in the region because of its support for Israel. People will now feel sympathy with (the Islamic State group) against the U.S.," he said. "This war is not in Jordan's interests," the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Zaki Bani Rsheid, told the Al-Ghad newspaper. He warned that the war would only boost the power of Iran across the region and that Jordan's participation could bring "responses targeting its internal security and stability."

In a move some saw as an attempt to soothe Salafi anger, a Jordanian court on Wednesday acquitted and freed a radical Muslim preacher known for his pro-al-Qaida sermons, Abu Qatada. Analysts said the preacher could help give legitimacy to the campaign against the Islamic State group — or at least help keep Salafis quiet over it.

The action in Syria makes for the largest grouping of Arab military forces against a common target since the broad-based coalition formed to evict Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, according to analysts at the Austin, Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company Stratfor.

Their participation marks the growing concern among Gulf countries — particularly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates — about the rise of Islamist groups in the wake of the Arab Spring, ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood movement to al-Qaida affiliates.

"The Islamic State represents a direct threat to the national security of these countries," said Hossam Mohamed, a political analyst at the Regional Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, the two richest of the group, boast some of the region's best-equipped militaries, including Western-made fighter jets, attack helicopters such as the AH-64 Apache, and transport and refueling aircraft.

The Emirates in particular has been playing a more active military role in trying to shape regional conflicts. It has deployed troops as part of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and, along with Qatar, contributed warplanes to the alliance's aerial campaign over Libya in 2011 that helped lead to the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi. American officials have also said it carried out airstrikes against Islamist rebels in Libya last month, but the Emirates has not confirmed doing so.

American and French sorties targeting the extremists have flown from air bases in Qatar and the Emirates, and from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, which is assigned to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host training facilities for Syrian rebels on its territory.

It remains unclear how much of a military role the countries will play going forward. Their participation may turn out to be token, the Stratfor analysts said — or "these airstrikes could develop into a small but growing assertiveness among the region's Arab monarchies."

Beyond striking the extremists, however, Saudi Arabia and its allies are looking further. They want to pressure Iran and, they hope, eventually turn the campaign against Assad, whose ouster they seek, said Mustafa Alani, an expert on security and terrorism at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.

"They are not hoping to topple the regime by military strikes. Military strikes are only a means to generate pressure on the regime to accept a diplomatic political solution," Alani said. "The idea is to weaken the regime to send a clear message."

Associated Press journalists Lee Keath in Cairo, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Mohammed Daraghmeh in New York, Taymour El-Alfy in Cario, and Diaa Hadid in Beirut contributed to this report.

Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adamschreck