Associated Press Videos
Greek Vote Appears Close As Referendum Looms

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greeks started casting ballots early Sunday in the closely watched bailout referendum, with opinion polls showing people evenly split on whether to accept creditors' proposals for more austerity in exchange for rescue loans, or defiantly reject the deal.

Polling stations are open until 7 p.m. (1600 GMT; noon EST).

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is gambling the future of his 5-month-old left-wing government on the snap poll — insisting that a "no" vote would strengthen his hand to negotiate a better deal with the country's creditors, and a "yes" would be a capitulation to their harsh demands.

The opposition accuses Tsipras of jeopardizing the country's membership in the eurozone and says a "yes" vote is about keeping the common currency.

Tsipras' high-stakes standoff with lenders— the European Union and the International Monetary Fund — resulted in Greece defaulting on its debts this past week and shutting down banks to avoid their collapse, and lose access to billions of euros after an existing bailout deal expired.

The sense of urgency was palpable all week when Greeks struggled to decipher a convoluted referendum question while being bombarded with frenzied messages of impending doom or defiance.

View gallery

Tourists look at a map as they stand at Syntagma square in front of the parliament in central Athens …

A series of polls published Friday at the end of a frantic weeklong campaign showed the two sides in a dead heat, with an incremental lead of the "yes" vote well within the margin of error. They also showed an overwhelming majority of people — about 75 percent — want Greece to remain in the euro currency.

Aris Spiliotopoulos, a 22-year-old who is launching his own tourism start-up, said he believes the vote is about whether Greece choses to stay among the club of nations that uses the euro as their currency and ultimately whether the country opts to stay in the European Union itself.

"I am voting 'yes' because I believe that my future and even my kids' future, in twenty or thirty years from now, is in the eurozone and the European Union," Spiliotopoulos said on the eve of the referendum.

Gym teacher Alkiviadis Kotsis said he is voting "no" because the country and its people simply can't take more austerity.

"No matter how many loans you take, you cannot get by if you don't produce things. You can't do anything," he said.

View gallery

A man walks by a "YES" poster as speaks on his mobile phone in front of the parliament in …

No matter the referendum result, Tsipras faces a tough road ahead, fraught with uncertainty about whether he will be able to deliver an improved bailout agreement.

Yale University political science professor Stathis Kalyvas said the Greek government will face daunting challenges no matter which way the vote goes. In case of a "no" win, Kalyvas said the Greek government could be confronted with the refusal of other eurozone countries to negotiate a better deal because of their distrust of Tsipras.

A "yes" win won't mean a road to the negotiating table strewn with roses either, but would likely usher in a new government with a shot at negotiating an improved deal, Kalyvas said.

He said if the European Union wants to keep Greece in the eurozone, it will have to come up with "a very generous plan" since the cost of the crisis has shot up to unanticipated levels.

That was borne out by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who told daily Bild on Saturday that future negotiations between Greece and its creditors will be "very difficult," because the country's economic situation has worsened dramatically in recent weeks.

View gallery

A banner reading ''NO for democracy and for dignity'' referring to the upcoming refe …

Schaeuble repeated the German government's position that for a community like Europe to work, all countries need to abide by the rules.

Meanwhile, Greece's Finance Minister Yianis Varoufakis launched a salvo at other eurogroup nations, accusing them of holding out on a bailout deal to allow bank coffers to run dry so they could spring a "vile ultimatum" on the government to accept what he called a humiliating deal.

Writing in the Saturday edition of daily Kathimerini, Varoufakis said other eurogroup members rejected Greece's "honorable" counter-proposals and insisted on extracting "humility."

Varoufakis said accepting the creditors' terms would be a "permanent condemnation" while rejecting it would offer the "only prospect for recovery."

With speculation swirling on the referendum's impact on Tsipras' government, Greece's Deputy Prime Minister Yiannis Dragasakis denied media reports that he would accept to lead a new "grand coalition" government.

View gallery

A banner reading ''NO for democracy and for dignity'' referring to the upcoming refe …

"The country has a prime minister who will have an even stronger popular mandate and support. I will serve this mandate on my part," he said in a statement.

___

Online:

Official referendum website: http://www.referendum2015gov.gr/en/

___

Associated Press writers Iuliia Subbotovskaia and Eftehia Katsareas in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.

Opinion polls show Greeks are evenly split on whether to accept creditors' proposals for more austerity.
Daunting challenges ahead

Beirut (AFP) - A US-led coalition has carried out some of its heaviest air strikes yet on the Islamic State group's de facto Syrian capital, killing more than 30 people, including six civilians.

The strikes on Saturday night and Sunday morning also damaged infrastructure in Raqa city, the group's bastion in northern Syria.

Elsewhere, regime forces backed by Lebanon's Hezbollah advanced on the last rebel-held town in the Qalamun region by the Lebanese border.

And fighting continued between government troops and two rebel coalitions seeking to capture territory from the regime in northern Aleppo city.

In Raqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 30 people had been killed in US-led coalition strikes late Saturday and early Sunday.

The dead included six civilians, among them a child, but the rest were IS fighters, the Britain-based monitor said.

The US-led coalition said the strikes were some of its heaviest since it began carrying out raids against IS in Syria last September.

"The significant air strikes tonight were executed to deny Daesh (IS) the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq," spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gilleran said in a coalition statement.

"This was one of the largest deliberate engagements we have conducted to date in Syria and it will have debilitating effects on Daesh's ability to move from Raqa."

Coalition forces "successfully engaged multiple targets" throughout Raqa, the statement said, destroying IS structures and transit routes.

View gallery

Image made available by Jihadist media outlet Welayat Homs on May 28, 2015 claims to show a flag of …

The strikes "have severely constricted terrorist freedom of movement," it added.

Iraqi military say they've destroyed Islamic State camp (video)

- IS executions in Palmyra -

The raids came after IS released a video Saturday showing the execution of 25 Syrian soldiers in the ancient amphitheatre in the city of Palmyra.

The executions had been reported earlier, in the days after IS seized the town from government forces on May 21, but the video was the first evidence of the killings.

The soldiers were shot in the head by boys and teenagers in military uniforms, with a large IS flag hung behind them on the amphitheatre's stage.

Palmyra's ancient ruins are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and there has been concern that IS might seek to destroy the city's heritage, as it has done elsewhere in Syria and Iraq.

In Syria's Qalamun region, regime forces backed by fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement advanced against rebels in an operation to capture the town of Zabadani.

The town was one of the first to fall to the opposition in 2012, and is now the last major town in the Qalamun area near Damascus that remains in rebel hands.

The Observatory said at least 14 regime forces and Hezbollah fighters had been killed in fighting for the town in the last 24 hours, along with at least 11 rebels.

The monitor said regime forces had pounded the city and its surroundings with dozens of aerial attacks, as well as rocket fire and heavy artillery in the last 48 hours.

In Aleppo, fighting continued between government forces and two rebel coalitions seeking to capture regime-held districts in the west of the city.

The Observatory said an assault by a grouping of Islamist fighters and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front on the Zahra neighbourhood had largely failed, but that fighting on the outskirts of the district was ongoing.

A second coalition, known as Conquest of Aleppo and grouping more moderate rebels, has captured a military barracks in one neighbourhood, though regime forces were battling Sunday to recapture the facility.

Aleppo city, once Syria's economic powerhouse, has been divided into government-held territory in the west and rebel-held territory in the east since shortly after fighting arrived there in mid-2012.

The situation is largely reversed in the countryside surrounding the city, and both sides have at times attempted to encircle the other portion of Aleppo and lay siege to their opponents.

The latest fighting in western Aleppo began earlier this week and is some of the fiercest seen in the area since mid-2012.

More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011.

A military vehicle is seen in Baiji, north of Baghdad, July 2, 2015. REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State suicide bombers and fighters attacked the center of Iraq's northern oil refinery town of Baiji overnight, forcing the army and Shi'ite fighters to pull back, military sources and the local mayor said on Sunday.

The town of Baiji and its refinery - Iraq's largest - have been a battlefront for more than a year. The hardline Islamists seized the town in June 2014 as they swept through much of northern Iraq towards the capital Baghdad.

Control of Baiji neighborhoods has changed hands many times during the conflict. The latest Islamic State offensive comes after authorities said they controlled nearly the whole town and expected to drive insurgents from the refinery within days.

The militants attacked around 8 pm (1300 EDT) on Saturday with two suicide car bombings. The blasts were followed by fierce clashes that lasted until midnight and drove the army and mainly Shi'ite Hashd Shaabi forces from the center of town, two army colonels said.

Baiji mayor Mahmoud al-Jabouri said there had been a pattern of withdrawals by Islamic State fighters in the town followed by counter-offensives. "Their lethal weapons are suicide attacks and snipers, and this is why we have fighting back and forth."

Army officers said the army and Hashd groups were preparing a response. "Islamic State fighters are still holding positions in three neighborhoods in Baiji and they are still receiving reinforcements," said one of the army colonels.

View gallery

A member from the Iraqi security forces guards as smoke rises from Baiji oil refinery, north of Bagh …

In Anbar province west of Baghdad, witnesses said two rockets hit a crowd in the Islamic State-controlled provincial capital Ramadi on Saturday evening, killing at least 18 people.

They said a group of people had gathered after the daily Ramadan fast to play Muhaibis, a game where players have to identify a member of the opposing team who is hiding a ring.

"I heard a blast and saw fire coming from Dolphin Square. I ran to the place and saw vehicles carrying bodies and wounded covered with blood. They were innocent people playing a ring game; they were not making bombs,” said Haj Thamir Ahmed, a Ramadi resident who lives nearby.

In northwest Baghdad, at least three people were killed and 11 wounded when a bomb went off near a restaurant in the mainly Shi’ite district of Shulaa on Sunday morning, police and medical sources said. Another two people were killed by a bomb in Hussainiya on the city's northern outskirts.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for those attacks, but statements in the name of Islamic State said the group carried car bombings on Saturday evening in Baghdad and Balad Roz which killed 10 people.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Larry King)

New Horizons is scheduled to fly by Pluto on July 14 and use the seven instruments on board to collect information that will significantly advance the way we understand this tiny, icy world that's floating in space 4.67 billion miles away.

However, that goal is now in jeopardy.

At 1:54 p.m. ET on July 4, something happened that caused New Horizons to cut communications with Earth, NASA reported. Scientists are now trying to figure what that "something" was.

Fortunately, the agency was able to reestablish a connection with the spacecraft within the next 90 minutes. They reported that the spacecraft is still "healthy" and on course to fly by Pluto.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that in order to reestablish connection, the spacecraft kicked itself into safe mode and is now no longer collecting scientific data. So all of the photos and scientific measurements that scientists have been looking forward to for nearly a decade, since New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, might never be collected.

"This is scary," wrote Emily Lakdawalla for The Planetary Society. "It's not what the team wanted to be dealing with right now."

The main objective now for the New Horizons team is to get the spacecraft back into normal operating mode. Within hours of the reported problem, the team convened a review board that is now "working to return New Horizons to its original [science] flight plan."

But that's going to take longer than anyone would like because of how far away New Horizons is from Earth. And with only nine days until the spacecraft is scheduled to fly by Pluto, the clock is ticking.

It takes 4.5 hours for the spacecraft to transmit information about what might have happened to it back to Earth. NASA reported that "full recovery is expected to take from one to several days."