World/Nation Briefs
• Cease-fire holds as Israelis, Palestinians talk
CAIRO - As a new temporary truce took hold, negotiators from Israel and the Hamas militant group resumed indirect talks Monday to reach a long-term cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
The two sides huddled in an Egyptian government building for nine consecutive hours, a Palestinian official said Monday, in what are expected to be marathon negotiations in the coming days.
The Palestinian delegations were more optimistic Monday, the Palestinian official told The Associated Press, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the negotiations with the media. He said progress was made on several issues.
The 72-hour truce, brokered by Egypt, took effect just after midnight, in the second attempt to halt a month of heavy fighting between the sides.
A similar three-day truce collapsed on Friday when militants resumed rocket fire on Israel after the sides were unable to make any headway in Egyptian-brokered negotiations for a more lasting deal. Hamas is seeking an end to an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade, while Israel wants Hamas to disarm.
• Power struggle deepens in Iraq; U.S. boosts role
BAGHDAD - Iraq's president snubbed incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and picked another politician Monday to form the next government, setting up a fierce political power struggle even as the country battles extremists in the north and west.
The showdown came as the United States increased its role in fighting back Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group that is threatening the autonomous Kurdish region in the north. Senior American officials said U.S. intelligence agencies are directly arming the Kurds who are battling the militants in what would be a shift in Washington's policy of only working through the central government in Baghdad.
U.S. warplanes carried out new strikes Sunday, hitting a convoy of Sunni militants moving to attack Kurdish forces defending the autonomous zone's capital, Irbil. The recent American airstrikes have helped the Kurds achieve one of their first victories after weeks of retreat as peshmerga fighters over the weekend recaptured two towns near Irbil. The Pentagon's director of operations said the effort will do little to slow Islamic State militants overall.
Haider al-Ibadi, the deputy speaker of parliament from al-Maliki's Shiite Dawa party, was selected by President Fouad Massoum to be the new prime minister and was given 30 days to present a new government to lawmakers for approval.
U.S. President Barack Obama called al-Ibadi's nomination a "promising step forward" and he urged "all Iraqi political leaders to work peacefully through the political process."
• Liberian doctors get experimental Ebola drug
MONROVIA, Liberia - Liberia announced Monday that it would soon receive doses of an experimental Ebola drug and give it to two sick doctors, making them the first Africans to receive some of the scarce treatment in a spiraling outbreak.
The U.S. government confirmed that it had put Liberian officials in touch with the maker of ZMapp, and referred additional questions to Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. In a statement, the California-based company said that in responding to a request from an unidentified West African country, it had run out of its supply of the treatment.
The news comes as anger is growing over the fact that the only people to receive the experimental treatment so far have been Westerners: two Americans and a Spaniard, all of whom were evacuated to their home countries from Liberia.
Late Monday, the World Health Organization said 1,013 people had died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Authorities have recorded 1,848 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of the disease, the U.N. health agency said.
- The Associated Press