British end military mission in Iraq (AP)

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press

BAGHDAD ? The last of Britain's military forces in Iraq pulled up anchor Sunday, ending more than eight years of fighting militants and training security forces since invading in 2003.

Eighty-one Royal Navy sailors turned over the task of patrolling waters off the southern port city of Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf to Iraq's fledgling navy. It was the last hands-on mission that British troops had in Iraq since combat forces pulled out of the southern city of Basra in July 2009.

Brig. Gen. Max Marriner, commander of British forces in Iraq, cited dramatic security gains across the country, and particularly in the south, that he said British troops helped make happen.

"Security has fundamentally improved and as a consequence, the social and economic development of the south has dramatically changed for the better, as too have people's lives," Marriner said in a statement.

He said the Iraqi Navy is ready to go the mission alone, "so now is the time for the UK to dress back and let them complete the mission they were created for."

Officials said 179 British troops died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

But the war has been unpopular in Britain, where a government inquiry is examining mistakes made in the build-up to and aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.

The question of whether information making the case for war that was presented to Parliament in September 2002 was "sexed up" has been hotly debated since the invasion, as has the failure to find any evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

A small number of British defense officials will continue to work at the embassy in Baghdad, and 44 British military personnel also will remain in Iraq as part of the NATO training mission at the Iraqi Military Academy at a base in the capital's south.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said U.S. sailors will continue training Iraqi forces to secure waters off the nation's coast through the end of the year.

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Obama says he'd repeat bin Laden raid (AP)

LONDON ? U.S. President Barack Obama says he would order another covert military raid like that which killed Osama bin Laden if it was necessary to stop terrorist attacks.

Pakistan is furious that that United States sent Navy SEALs to raid bin Laden's Pakistan hideaway earlier this month without informing Pakistani authorities.

Obama told the BBC in an interview broadcast Sunday that "we are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan," but "our job is to secure the United States."

He said he could not allow "active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action," and would send troops again if a senior Taliban leader was found in Pakistan.

"We cannot allow someone who is planning to kill our people or our allies' people ? we can't allow those kind of active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action," Obama said,

The president told the BBC's "Andrew Marr Show" that he hoped the raid would be "a wake-up call where we start seeing a more effective cooperative relationship" with Pakistan, an important but awkward ally in Washington's fight against al-Qaida-inspired terrorism.

Many in the U.S. suspect bin Laden must have had official help during his years hiding in Pakistan. Obama said it was unclear who knew of his whereabouts.

"What we know is that for him to have been there for five or six years probably required some sort of support external to the compound," Obama said. "Whether that was non-governmental, governmental, a broad network, or a handful of individuals, those are all things that we are investigating, but we're also asking the Pakistanis to investigate."

Obama said he had taken a "calculated risk" in launching the bin Laden raid, a triumph that could easily have ended in disaster.

He said the SEAL team was exceptionally well prepared, "but there's no doubt that that was as long a 40 minutes as I care to experience during my presidency."

Obama begins a six-day trip to Europe on Monday, visiting Ireland, Britain, France and Poland.

In Britain, he and his wife Michelle will stay at Buckingham Palace as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II.

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Durango's Killing Fields: The Grave in the Garden (Time.com)

By TIM PADGETT / DURANGO

Mexican soldiers found a seventh mass grave in Durango, Mexico, this week, and its location was as unexpected as the six before it. TIME was one of the first media at the scene on Thursday, May 19, as forensic officials descended on a white stucco house in the upscale Jardines de Durango neighborhood to unearth presumed drug-cartel victims buried in the garden. Like the other grisly fosas, or narco-graves, uncovered in this northern desert city since last month - many of which were in middle-class backyards or near schools - the latest raised an unsettling question: How could residents and authorities not know something was terribly amiss at the house on Calle Petunias? "That's the incredible part," says Jorge Santiago, spokesman for Durango State Human Rights Commission.

Just as staggering is the number of bodies recovered so far in the Durango fosas: 218, a figure sure to rise with the newest discovery, and which surpasses the 183 exhumed since last month in the border state of Tamaulipas. Like the Tamaulipas corpses, many of those found in Durango are believed to be innocents as well as mafiosos. Either way, the sheer volume has human rights advocates looking at Mexico's bloody drug war, which in four years has produced almost 40,000 gangland murders, through a more disturbing prism. To them it smacks of massacres witnessed in the Balkans in the 1990s, or Central America in the 1980s or South America in the 1970s - especially since corrupt Mexican police, like the 17 arrested for alleged involvement in the Tamaulipas slaughter, frequently take part. "It's purely demoniacal," says Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet whose son, Juan Francisco Sicilia, 24, was murdered by narco-criminals this year. "It threatens our democracy." (Read about why Mexico's drug cartels are moving into human smuggling.)

But like the killing of Sicilia's son, the macabre fosas are also putting more human names and faces on the victims of Mexico's narco-carnage, including the thousands of missing persons. As bodies, many badly decomposed, were brought to refrigerated trailers behind the Durango state attorney general compound this week, hundreds of families braved the overpowering stench to come and take DNA tests, hoping to find out if any of the fosa dead are loved ones who violently disappeared months or years ago - either because they were involved in drug trafficking themselves, or because they were targeted for robbery, kidnapping and extortion amid turf battles between gangs like the powerful Sinaloa Cartel and the vicious army commandos-turned-narcos known as the Zetas.

Among those coming forward was Rosario L�pez, 34, a Durango hair stylist whose longtime boyfriend, Julio C�sar Rocha, 23, a car stereo technician, was snatched off the street seven months ago by suspected narcos - who, say witnesses, may also have been cops - in a black Ford Lobo truck. L�pez says local authorities have done little to investigate his disappearance. (More than 90% of Mexico's violent crimes go unsolved.) But after convincing his parents to offer DNA samples, she now waits to see if Rocha is one of those recently exhumed - to get closure but, just as important, to finally force a professional probe into his case. "It's a pain, a daily anguish you can't describe," says L�pez, who lived with Rocha and planned to marry him. "These criminals don't just take people, they take away whole futures." (See "Can Obama and Calderon Solve Mexico's Bloodshed [EM] and the Bad Blood?")

Residents like L�pez applaud the state and federal governments for giving them access to the DNA tests. But other families, many arriving at the attorney general's office from nearby states, were more circumspect - worried that narco spies were scattered around the compound listening to their conversations. Durango officials fear it too. "We don't know who's friend or enemy here anymore," one told TIME.

One hope, says Sicilia, who has turned his son's killing into a surprisingly broad civic protest movement against Mexico's violence, is that cases like Rocha's will help the world realize "that the dead aren't just figures and abstractions, narcos killing narcos, but potentially all of us." And that in turn may put pressure on Mexican leaders to get more serious about judicial and police reform - which is the country's only real solution to the narco-crisis, and which President Felipe Calder�n has pushed along with his gutsy but ill-conceived military campaign against the cartels - and on U.S. leaders to reduce the drug consumption and smuggled guns that play such a large role in the tragedy south of the border. (See pictures of Mexico's drug tunnels.)

Calder�n sent federal forensic aid to Durango this week to help state investigators, who human rights monitors had complained were ruining evidence at the fosas by using large backhoes to extract bodies. (Calder�n, however, didn't help his p.r. cause on Thursday when, during a visit to Las Vegas to promote Mexican tourism, he less than tactfully quipped that the "only shots" visitors to Mexico will face are "tequila shots.") As more decapitated bodies begin turning up in the city - including that of a local high-ranking prison official - the President has also sent in highly trained Marine units.

To symbolize the shared responsibility of the drug war, Sicilia's Hasta la Madre! (We've Had It!) movement supporters are planning a caravan next month from Mexico City to the violence-plagued border city of Ju�rez. There they hope a southbound American caravan will arrive across the Rio Grande at the U.S. border city of El Paso, Texas. It won't end Mexico's narco-violence, but it might wake more people up to the kind of human horror that Durango is now discovering in its gardens.

See pictures of a Mexican meth gang waging a drug war.

See the world's most influential people in the 2011 TIME 100.

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Bids for bizarre royal wedding hat pass $120,000 (AP)

LONDON ? Auction site eBay says a bidder has offered 75,000 pounds ($120,000) for the spiraling headpiece worn by Princess Beatrice to last month's royal wedding.

The 22-year-old granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II startled commentators with the swirling hat she wore to the wedding of her cousin Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The silk Philip Treacy creation has been compared to antlers, a toilet seat and a pretzel, and has been photoshopped into scores of unlikely scenarios on the Internet.

Beatrice has taken the joke in stride and put the hat on sale for charity. Proceeds will go to UNICEF and Children in Crisis.

On Saturday 38 bidders were competing for the hat, described on eBay as a "unique sculptural celebratory headpiece."

The auction ends Sunday.

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Baghdad trials city-wide security siren (AFP)

BAGHDAD (AFP) ? Iraqi authorities tested a Baghdad-wide siren system on Friday designed to alert residents to foreign attacks, natural disasters and fires, the first such system since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.

Hundreds of sirens are due to be rolled out across the country in the coming months and years, but at 11:00 am (0800 GMT) on Friday, 126 loud hailer sirens rang out across the violence-wracked capital for one minute.

"The system has four tones to warn of natural disasters, fires, pollution and war," Major General Latif Karim Mizhir, the head of Baghdad's emergency response unit, told AFP. A fifth tone, which was used in the test, signals all-clear.

"It will also help us connect with emergency response centres in all of Iraq's regions, and to address the people," he added.

Friday's siren alerts were preceded by a media campaign and a mass mobile phone text message sent to residents to warn them of the test. Baghdad authorities also used the loudspeaker system Friday morning for reminders.

A total of 300 sirens have so far been installed -- 126 in Baghdad and the rest in provincial cities -- with a further 700 set to be put in place across the country.

Despite what is ostensibly a city-wide deployment, parts of the capital did not hear the sirens, such as the south Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora.

Saddam's regime had its own siren system in the major cities that was used frequently during the 1980-1988 war with Iran and the 1991 Gulf War, but no such system has been used since he was overthrown by US-led forces.

"I was born listening to these sirens," said 62-year-old Abu Shaala, speaking in central Baghdad's commercial Karrada district. "From the years of the Iran-Iraq war, and then the Gulf War, and then the invasion in 2003."

Nearby, 36-year-old Uday said that the volume of the siren was "lower than the old one".

"The older one used to shake us in our beds, and woke us up in the middle of the night," he said. "It only meant war, and it only meant that we had to take cover."

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Yemen opposition signs transition of power deal (Reuters)

By Mohamed Sudam and Mohammed Ghobari

SANAA (Reuters) ? Yemen's opposition signed a Gulf-brokered transition deal on Saturday that will ease President Ali Abdullah Saleh out of power within a month, provided he ratifies the agreement as promised on Sunday.

Saleh, a shrewd political survivor who has outlasted previous challenges to his nearly 33-year rule, faces mounting diplomatic pressure to sign after backing out twice before over technical details at the last minute.

"We signed the initiative in the presence of envoys from the U.S., Britain, the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council secretary-general Abdullatif al-Zayani," the opposition leader, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

A Yemeni official earlier said Zayani, who heads the GCC bloc grouping Yemen's wealthy Gulf Arab neighbors which have headed mediation efforts, was in Yemen to see the opposition sign, and that Saleh and the ruling party would sign on Sunday.

The United States and Saudi Arabia, both targets of foiled attacks by al Qaeda's Yemen wing, are keen to end the Yemeni stalemate to avert deeper chaos that could give one of the militant network's most potent arms more room to thrive.

Washington has stepped up pressure on Saleh to sign and implement the deal, and President Barack Obama said in a speech on U.S. policy in the Arab world on Thursday that Saleh needed to "follow through on his commitment to transfer power."

Saleh also appeared to be under pressure to sign ahead of a meeting of GCC foreign ministers expected on Sunday in Riyadh to discuss prospects for Yemen after Saleh failed to sign the deal last week in a last-minute reversal.

Protesters, frustrated that three months of daily rallies have failed to dislodge Saleh, want him out immediately in the Arabian Peninsula state, which is also facing revolts from northern Shi'ite rebels and southern separatists.

They have threatened to step up their campaign by marching on government buildings, a move that brought new bloodshed last week as security forces fired to stop them. Strikes have brought commerce to a halt in many cities.

On Saturday, 35 protesters were wounded as security forces confronted protesters at a university in the Red Sea port city of Hudaida, witnesses said. Dozens were suffering from the effects of teargas.

AL QAEDA THREAT

Saleh, who appeared willing to finally agree to hand over power despite months of resistance, nevertheless warned Yemen's allies that al Qaeda could take over in a political and security vacuum after he steps down.

"If the system falls ... al Qaeda will capture Maarib, Hadramout, Shabwa, Abyan and al-Jouf (and) it will control the situation," Saleh said, listing provinces where al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing has been active.

"This is the message that I send to our friends and brothers in the United States and the European Union ... The successor will be worse that what we have currently," he said.

Saleh is a clever operator who has survived many tussles with rivals in the fractious Arabian Peninsula state, and has skillfully used patronage and favors to keep tribal and political backers loyal.

He called on Friday for early presidential elections, which he said was aimed at preventing bloodshed as protests raged on. Saleh has seen a wave of desertions, including from within Yemen's military and political elite, since protests began.

"We welcome the Gulf initiative and we say that we will work with it in a positive way for the sake of our homeland (although) in reality it is a mere coup operation ... and part of foreign pressures and agendas," Saleh said at a ceremony.

A civilian was shot dead on Friday as gunmen clashed with the army at security checkpoints around the flashpoint province of Abyan, where al Qaeda militants are active.

Yemen, where half the 23 million population owns a gun, has caused concern for regional stability among its Gulf neighbors, particularly top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States, which has seen Yemen as an ally against al Qaeda.

(Writing by Firouz Sedarat and Cynthia Johnston; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Five killed in north Iraq violence: police (AFP)

KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) ? Violence in the disputed northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk left five people dead on Saturday, police said, just two days after a string of anti-police attacks in the region killed 29.

The latest violence further raises tension in Kirkuk and its eponymous capital, which are claimed by both the central government in Baghdad and Kurdish regional authorities in Arbil.

US officials have persistently said that the unresolved row is one of the biggest threats to Iraq's future stability.

On Saturday, gunmen killed Salim and Samah Abdulwahab, two Kurdish brothers aged 23 and 21 respectively, inside their home in north Kirkuk city, police First Lieutenant Laith Mahmud said.

Salim was a policeman while Samah worked in an auto repair shop.

"Police found their bodies covered in blood inside their home," Mahmud said.

In the east of the city, meanwhile, insurgents gunned down a handicapped man who was responsible for operating a neighbourhood electricity generator, Mahmud added. Kirkuk, like the rest of Iraq, suffers chronic power shortages, so districts often join together to pay for a communal generator.

And in Al-Rashad, 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of the provincial capital, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed two soldiers and wounded two others, according to police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader.

A separate roadside bomb against a police patrol in Al-Riyadh, east of Kirkuk city, also wounded two civilians, Qader said.

Saturday's violence comes two days after three bombings against police in the provincial capital killed 29 people, 26 of them policemen, and wounded 90 others, Iraq's deadliest day since March 29.

Kirkuk lies at the centre of a tract of disputed territory claimed by both Iraq's central government and by Kurdish regional authorities.

Currently, US forces participate in confidence-building tripartite patrols and checkpoints with central government forces and Kurdish security officers in Kirkuk and across northern Iraq.

But the withdrawal of some 45,000 US troops still in Iraq must be completed by the end of the year.

Violence is down dramatically in Iraq from its peak, but attacks remain common. A total of 211 Iraqis were killed in violence in April, according to official figures.

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