AP News in Brief
Iraqi helicopters conduct airstrikes targeting Sunni insurgents in northern city of Tikrit
• BAGHDAD (AP) -- The Iraqi military and witnesses say government helicopter gunships have conducted airstrikes in the northern city of Tikrit.
• Tikrit is the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein and one of two major cities to fall in recent weeks to the al-Qaida breakaway Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and allied Sunni militants.
• Chief Iraqi military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi says the air raids targeted Sunni insurgents attacking army troops, who have established a bridgehead at a university campus on the city's northern outskirts.
• Government troops were ferried in by helicopter to the sprawling campus early Friday morning.
• A Tikrit resident confirmed that air raids took place at the University of Tikrit around dawn Saturday. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.
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Russian foreign minister accuses United States of fueling confrontation in Ukraine
• MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's foreign minister on Saturday accused the United States of encouraging Ukraine to challenge Moscow and heavily weighing in on the European Union.
• Speaking in televised remarks Saturday, Sergey Lavrov said that "our American colleagues still prefer to push the Ukrainian leadership toward a confrontational path."
• He added that chances for settling the Ukrainian crisis would have been higher if it only depended on Russia and Europe.
• Lavrov spoke after Friday's European Union summit, which decided not to immediately impose new sanctions on Russia for destabilizing eastern Ukraine, but gave
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