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last year, eroding confidence between the sides at a crucial turning point in the conflict. So-called insider attacks killed 62 personnel in 47 incidents last year compared to 35 killed in 21 attacks a year earlier, according to NATO.
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Obama urges supporters of gun limits to help push stalled legislation after mass shootings
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Days after mass shootings in both of his hometowns, President Barack Obama urged his most ardent supporters Saturday "to get back up and go back at it" and help push stalled legislation out of Congress so dangerous people won't get their hands on guns.
• "We can't rest until all of our children can go to school or walk down the street free from the fear that they will be struck down by a stray bullet," Obama said in a keynote speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner.
• Legislation calling for expanded background checks failed to clear the Senate earlier this year despite a strong push by Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, people whose loved ones had been killed by gunfire and other gun-control advocates.
• The bill was part of a package of measures Obama promised to put the full weight of his office behind after 20 first-graders and six educators were killed last December in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
• Republicans and some Democrats voted against the measure.
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Suicide bombers target mourners at Shiite funeral as day of violence in Iraq claims 96 lives
• BAGHDAD (AP) -- Two suicide bombers, one in an explosives-laden car and the other on foot, struck a cluster of funeral tents packed with mourning families in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks around Iraq that killed at least 96 people on Saturday.
• The assaults, the latest in a months-long surge of violence, are a chilling reminder of insurgents' determination to re-ignite sectarian conflict more than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion.
• Thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violent attacks in recent months -- a level of bloodshed not seen since Iraq pulled back from the brink of civil war in 2008 -- despite appeals for restraint from Shiite and Sunni political leaders.
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