The Democrats got wrecked on Tuesday, and now Republicans are taking over the Senate. Some of the new Republican senators are outright climate deniers. Those who admit that climate change is happening often hide from the issue with nonsensical yammering about how global warming might be due to natural causes. Regardless of their views on the science, they are unanimous in their opposition to actually doing anything about it, and in their enthusiasm for exploiting America’s land and water for the benefit of the fossil fuel industries.

Below is a guide to the new Republican senators and their views on climate change, energy, and the environment. Note that we included Rep. Bill Cassidy, who is headed for a runoff against Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu that he is likely to win, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who is ahead of Sen. Mark Begich in the vote count thus far, although at press time Begich has yet to concede.

For those who have served in Congress, we’ve provided their lifetime environmental voting scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV). The score represents the percentage of time that they have taken the pro-environment vote on a bill. According to their grades, they’re a bunch of F students on the environment.

Iraqi Sunni gunmen defend the town of Dhuluiyah from jihadists in the Jubur area of Iraq.

After a few months of calm ushered in by a truce between Iraq’s Al Jubur tribe and Islamic State, came the curfew and the disappearances.

The two groups had battled for control of al-Alam town, north ofBaghdad, over several weeks in June. Sunni tribal elders then sat down with militant leaders and negotiated a deal that allowed Islamic State to raise its black flag, confiscate weapons and run local affairs.

“Everything was good and life was normal,” said Abdel-Latif Khalaf Saleh, a 38-year-old resident. “Until last week, when Abu Raad was appointed as Islamic State’s new emir in al-Alam.”

Since then, hundreds of men and boys, aged 12 to 70, have been rounded up and taken to unknown locations, said Khalaf Saleh and other witnesses interviewed by phone. In other areas of western Iraq, hundreds have been killed.

While the reprisals against Sunni tribes that resisted Islamic State’s drive to establish a caliphate are meant to eradicate opposition, they could have the opposite effect, said Julien Barnes-Dacey, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The executions aren’t random mass killings. It’s a powerful message that this is a consequence for those who challenge us,” Barnes-Dacey said by phone. Yet Sunni communities disenfranchised by the Shiite-dominated government and security forces assisted the Islamic State advance. “If that breaks down, it becomes harder,” he said.

Army Officers

One powerful tribal chief, Sheikh Faris al-Dulaimi, a leader of a clan network that formed the backbone of Saddam Hussein’s army for years, has already escalated the fight with Islamic State.

A thousand heavily armed tribal fighters have been sent to areas near the cities of Hit and Zawiya, west of Baghdad, to protect clans being threatened by the militants, Dulaimi said in a phone interview. They’re being led by former army officers and will be joined by government troops soon, he said.

“Islamic State believes the people of these tribes were born Muslims but abandoned their religion when they helped Shiites fighting against them,” al-Dulaimi said, explaining that when the group first entered Anbar province, it killed more than 30 members of his sub-tribe, Albu Assaf, and demolished their houses.

Al-Qaeda Letter

Extreme brutality was also a characteristic of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a previous incarnation of Islamic State. One of its most notorious leaders, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took over large areas of the country after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion before he was killed in a U.S. airstrike three years later.

Zarqawi sought to drag Iraqis into a sectarian war, in which he would position himself as the defender of minority Sunnis. That tactic eventually backfired as tribes turned against him during the so-called surge of American troops, something al-Qaeda leaders had warned him about.

A letter written by senior al-Qaeda figure Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, also known as Atiyatullah al-Libi, to Zarqawi in late 2005 refers to Algeria’s civil war, when jihadists lost support after killing hundreds of thousands of their countrymen. “I lived through that myself,” al-Libi said, according to a copy of the letter on the website of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. The jihadists “destroyed themselves with their own hands, with their lack of reason.”

‘Increasingly Challenged’

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been similarly warned over his brutality and harsh treatment of Sunnis by al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“Islamic State will be increasingly challenged from outside and from within,” said Barnes-Dacey. “There was an alliance of convenience formed out of the perceived need to push back against Baghdad, but it’s unlikely to hold.”

Even if the tribes swing behind Iraq’s army, it’s “going to be an enormous challenge to dislodge Islamic State,” he said.

The battle between the Al Jubur and Islamic State in Salahuddin province raged for two weeks. Under the cease-fire deal, the militant group agreed to leave residents alone. “Islamic State betrayed us, they broke the deal and the truce,” said Khalaf Saleh, who has now fled to the city of Kirkuk.

It was the killing of at least 320 members of the Albu Nimr tribe this month, one of the worst massacres committed by the militant group in Anbar province, that convinced him and a group of friends it wasn’t safe to stay.

‘Tide Turning’

“We escaped running through farms, and carrying nothing with us,” he said. “I was starving and thirsty and walked for two days, avoiding main roads.” Separated from his friends, Khalef Saleh said he hitchhiked to the first Peshmerga checkpoint at Kirkuk, where he was met by his brother.

Al-Dulaimi, the tribal leader, said he believes the death toll among Albu Nimr may be double the government estimate of 320. “At first they were killing people with knives, but later, to save time and effort, they began shooting them,” he said. At least 50 bodies were recovered from a well.

Abu Raad is targeting Al Jubur for fighting against Islamic State before the truce and providing a refuge for thousands of people who fled amid a militant offensive in nearby Tikrit, said Bassam al-Juburi, another al-Alam resident who escaped.

“They arrested my cousin so I fled to Kirkuk. I knew what was going to happen,” he said.

In advancing through Syria and Iraq, Islamic State has beheaded, crucified and shot opponents from all ethnic and religious communities, and forced women and girls into marriage.

“This is a group that grew out of the ashes of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which burnt itself out because of the untrammeled level of its brutality and its alienation of Sunnis,” Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said by phone. “ISIL has learnt some of those lessons but is applying them unevenly,” he said, using another name for Islamic State.

“The tide against ISIL may be turning as most Sunnis in Iraq are repelled by what they see even if they aren’t ready to do anything about it.”

(Bloomberg)

U.S. President Barack Obama (L) speaks as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel listens before the start of a Cabinet Meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, November 7, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing

By Phil Stewart and Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of U.S. forces on the ground helping Iraqi and Kurdish forces battle the militant group Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Obama's decision greatly expands the scope of the U.S. campaign and the geographic distribution of American forces, some of whom will head into Iraq's fiercely contested western Anbar province for the first time to act as advisers.

It also raises the stakes in Obama's first interactions with Congress after his Democratic Party was thumped by Republicans in mid-term elections this week. The White House said it would ask Congress for $1.6 billion for a new "Iraq Train and Equip Fund" and billions more for operations to battle the group.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said those funds would need to be approved before the first additional forces head to Iraq, something one official speculated could happen in just weeks.

"(Iraqi forces are) going on the offense now. And what this is designed to do is to help them continue to be able to do that, to improve their capability and their competence on the battlefield," Kirby said, stressing no American ground forces will take on combat roles.

Alarmed by the advance of Islamic State militants across Iraq, Obama began sending non-combatant troops back to Iraq in the summer for the first time since he withdrew U.S. forces from the country in 2011.

At the time of the withdrawal, the Pentagon boasted of Iraqi military capabilities. But Iraqi forces crumbled in the face of Islamic State's offensive, exposing the toll sectarian strains and mismanagement took on the military.

Officials denied the new U.S. troop buildup amounted to "mission creep" and said it was justified partly because of new Iraqi Shi'ite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's efforts to reach out to Sunni tribesmen and new calls from Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric to rush to the Sunni tribes' aid.

AUTHORITY FOR 3,100 U.S. TROOPS

One Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed to an Iraqi plan to "organize and equip 5,000 tribesmen in Anbar."

"This is now being openly discussed in Iraq and it's starting to happen," the official said.

About 1,400 U.S. troops are now on the ground, just below the previous limit of 1,600 troops. The new authorization gives the U.S. military the ability to deploy up to 3,100 troops.

Kirby said about 870 of the additional U.S. troops would be involved in "hands-on training," and disclosed that "well over 700 additional trainers will come from foreign governments."

The Pentagon said it planned to establish several sites across the country to train nine Iraqi army brigades and three brigades of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. They would be set up in northern, western and southern Iraq.

Kirby said the training would focus on tasks such as battlefield leadership, tactical organization, logistics and intelligence matters.

The remaining 630 or so American forces would help establish "advise and assist" operations centers, adding to similar centers in existence in Baghdad and Arbil.

Kirby said many of the additional American troops would be dedicated to securing bases where training and advising would take place and cautioned that American troops still face risks.

"We already had a couple of military deaths associated with this conflict ... Nothing we do is without risk," he said.

FIGHTING IN ANBAR PROVINCE

Officials said one location to which military advisers would soon travel was western Anbar province, bordering Syria, where Islamic State fighters are on the offensive.

Iraq's main military divisions in Anbar have been hit hard. At least 6,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed through June and double that number have deserted, according to medical and diplomatic sources.

The announcement of the force expansion was made on the same day Obama met with members of Congress at the White House and updated them on the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria.

Obama's Iraq campaign has been criticized, particularly by some Republicans concerned about his determination to limit the U.S. role to air strikes and advising and training missions far from the front lines.

U.S. Representative Buck McKeon, a California Republican, said in a statement: "I would urge the President to reconsider his strategy and clearly explain how this additional funding supports a new direction. Such clarity is more likely to find swift Congressional approval."

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Roberta Rampton; Additional reporting by David Alexander, Julia Edwards and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Storey, Andre Grenon, Toni Reinhold and Ken Wills)

• - Three Mexican gang members admit burning alive some of the students
• - Some of the fires lasted more than 15 hours according to eyewitness reports
• - Gang members waded into the ashes to remove remaining teeth and bone
• - Investigators have found 19 mass graves round Iguala, in Guerrero State
• - So far 70 people have been arrested including the former mayor and his wife
• 
  

By CHRIS SPARGO FOR MAILONLINE and REUTERS

PUBLISHED: 01:16 GMT, 8 November 2014 | UPDATED: 12:59 GMT, 8 November 2014

Gang members in Mexico have admitted to massacring 43 students who went missing in September.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo said on Friday that three detainees revealed that they set fire to the group - some of whom were still alive - at a rubbish dump near Iguala in the state of Guerrero, close to where the students went missing.

So far, 19 mass graves have been discovered around Iguala and more than 70 people have been arrested.

The 43 students, pictured, went missing as they travelled to a protest in Iguala, Guerrero State in September

Residents have held demonstrations calling for a full investigation into the fate of the 43 missing students

The 46 students have not been seen since they disappeared near the southern city of Iguala on September 26 after being attacked by police.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said: 'The high level of degradation caused by the fire in the remains make it very difficult to extract the DNA that will allow an identification.'

The bone fragments are being sent to Austria to a specialist laboratory for DNA testing.

Police allegedly handed the students over to the Guerreros Unidos cartel who are believed to have killed them and disposed of their bodies.

Murillo Karam said there is no evidence the students were involved in organized crime.

Some 74 people have been detained so far in the case. Authorities say it started when police, under orders of then Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca, opened fire on students who were in Iguala collecting donations and had commandeered public buses.

Jose Luis Abarca, left and his wife Maria de Los Angeles Pineda are believed to have links to the drug cartel

Investigators believe the bodies of the 43 missing students were burned at this rubbish dump

Six people were killed in two confrontations before the 43 students were taken away and allegedly handed over to Guerreros Unidos.

Abarca and his wife, who were captured Tuesday after weeks of being on the run, are among those in custody.

Jose Luis Abarca, who was previously mayor of Iguala, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda were found and arrested in Mexico City on Monday. They are accused of organising the alleged massacre.

Pineda demanded that police arrest they students when they threatened to ruin a party she was having, and once the police had the students they were then handed over to the gang members.

Prior to this the police also opened fire on the group, killing several before the bodies were burned.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo is seen leaving the prison after speaking with three gang members

Protesters walk with a sign featuring a photograph of the students

Pineda was able to make these demands as she is at the top of the criminal underworld tree in Iguala, and it was believed her speech may have been her announcement of her desire to succeed her husband as mayor.

What's worse, the students had no intention of disrupting Pineda's speech, but were merely travelling through the town on buses they'd hired to take them to Mexico City for a remembrance service in honor of students massacred there in 1968.

There has been and continues to be a massive outcry across Mexico to see that justice is served for this mass murder.

Authorities searching for the students have found a large number of bodies, although Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said he would have to wait until the results of DNA tests have been returned before confirming their identities.

He admitted that many of the bodies had been badly burned which will make the process of extracting DNA more difficult.

He said: 'I have to identify, to do everything in my power, to identify, to know if these were the students.'

Watch video

Some parents of the missing students do not believe that their children are among the dead.

Mario Cesar Gonzalez told CNN: 'We are not going to believe anything until the experts tell us: You know what? It is them.'

Isrrael Galindo, claimed: 'The government is trying to resolve things its way so that to rid itself of this great problem it is facing. My son is alive. My son is alive. My son is alive.'

The victims were mostly in their 20s studying to be teachers when they planned to travel to Iguala on September 26 for a demonstration.

Locals have lost faith in the Mexican government and their ability to investigate incidents such as this


Some of the families are unwilling to accept that their relatives are dead until they receive conclusive proof

Amnesty International has criticised the Attorney General over his handling of the case.

Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director of Amnesty International said: 'Tragically, the enforced disappearance of these student teachers is just the latest in a long line of horrors to have befallen Guerrero state, and the rest of the country.

'The warning signs of corruption and violence have been there for all to see for years, and those that negligently ignored them are themselves complicit in this tragedy.'

Amnesty said the mayor of Iguala has long been suspected of criminality and links to drugs cartels.

Ms Guevara Rosas said: 'If the allegations against Iguala’s mayor and the federal and local police had been investigated when other serious human rights violations occurred, it is more than likely that the terrible murders and enforced disappearances of the students would not have taken place.'

Amnesty International has criticised Mexican authorities for their failure to clamp down on corruption