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Police in Washington state fired 17 shots at an unarmed Mexican migrant on Feb. 10, hitting him as many as six times, authorities said Wednesday.

Wednesday's statement from the Tri-Cities Special Investigations Unit, a squad of officers from four police departments assigned to investigate the killing of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, is the first time authorities have confirmed how many shots police fired during the confrontation over rock-throwing. The statement said five or six shots struck Zambrano-Montes.

A bystander used a cell phone to record the shooting of Zambrano-Montes, 35, in Pasco, Washington, setting off local protests and attracting national media attention as the video circulated online.

Police fired at Zambrano-Montes to stop him from throwing rocks at passing cars, according to Wednesday's statement. When officers confronted him, he threw rocks at the officers, even after they tried to use tasers to stop him, according to the release.

Consejo Latino, a Pasco-based civic group, has questioned whether the killing was justified. Rick Rios, one of the group's co-founders, said the number of errant police shots indicated a problem with police training.

"They were just spraying bullets everywhere," Rios told The Huffington Post. "That shows no concern for the public. ... These are highly trained officers, as we've been told over and over again. They were probably no more than 15 feet away from him."

In the weeks before the killing, Consejo Latino had pressed the police to address what Rios described as a "communication gap" between the largely Hispanic public in the agricultural town of 68,000 and the majority-white police department.

The press release says the final analysis from the medical examiner is expected to be completed within a month. Transcriptions of witness statements and a toxicology report also will not be available for weeks.

"At this time we know Antonio Zambrano-Montes was not shot in the back," the statement says.

The Special Investigations Unit called on demonstrators to act respectfully and noted that so far, "demonstrations have proven peaceful."

The killing touched off protests in the town, which is home to a large number of migrant workers. The New York Times and other observers have compared the killing of Zambrano-Montes with that of Michael Brown, the unarmed black man killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, touching off nationwide protests and sustained news attention.

In the video, officers appear to shoot at Zambrano-Montes, then chase him across a busy street as he fled with his hands up. When he stopped and turned toward the police, they fired again, killing him.

The attorney representing Brown's family in Missouri, Benjamin Crump, also will represent Zambrano-Montes' family.

Zambrano-Montes' death was the fourth police killing in Pasco in less than a year, according to The Associated Press.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's prime minister was briefing his party's lawmakers Wednesday on pledges made to European creditors to win a four-month extension of the country's bailout, amid simmering discontent with what some see as a capitulation.

Greece cleared a major hurdle on Tuesday after the finance ministers of the other eurozone countries approved a list of Greek policy goals, including pledges to fight corruption, and granted the four-month extension. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was elected last month on campaign pledges to repeal some of the budget cuts and tax hikes made in return for 240 billion euros (currently $272 billion) in rescue loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Without the extension, Greece faced the possibility of bankruptcy, limits on bank transactions and even a potential exit from euro, the joint currency used by 19 European nations.

While the government has sought to present the negotiated deal as a victory, it has faced criticism from party hardliners as well as opposition parties.

Energy and Environment Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, a party hardliner, has insisted he will stick to election promises not to go ahead with privatizations.

Wednesday's edition of the daily Ethnos newspaper quoted him as saying that the privatization of the power grid nor that of the country's power utility would be halted, as final binding bids had not yet been submitted.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, speaking on RealFM radio Wednesday, said the list he sent to Brussels included "constructive ambiguity" on the issue of privatizations. The text of Varoufakis' letter to Brussels says completed privatizations will not be rolled back and those where tenders have been launched "the government will respect the process, according to the law."

"The law gives the government possibilities to both change the terms of the procedure and at some point to check the legality of this procedure," Varoufakis said. "Our position is very simple. The sell-off of family silver at rock-bottom prices and in a way that doesn't lead to development for the economy must stop."

The most direct, and symbolically damaging, criticism came over the weekend from Syriza's European parliament member Manolis Glezos, famed in Greece for removing the Nazi flag from atop the Acropolis during the German occupation in World War II.

Glezos wrote an open letter over the weekend publicly apologizing to the Greek people for backing what he said was the "illusion" that the hated bailout austerity measures would be immediately repealed.

Greece's list of policy goals is being used as a starting point for the creation of new reform measures the Greek parliament will have to vote into law and includes pledges to fight tax evasion and corruption. It also says the government will not roll back privatizations as it had promised before being elected on Jan. 25 and not take any unilateral action without consulting with Greece's creditors.

The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, both bailout contributors, have expressed reservations about the Greek pledges, saying they were enough to approve the extension but were vague and needed to be translated into concrete action.

The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, foundation officials disclosed Wednesday.

TORONTO (AP) — Anyone interested in buying a piece of Rob Ford history now has the chance to do so.

The notorious former Toronto mayor and now city councilor is auctioning off some of the memorabilia he has collected over the years. Ford's term was plagued by scandals involving drinking, crack cocaine use and erratic behavior.

Ten percent of the proceeds will go toward research and care facilities for liposarcoma, the form of cancer Ford was diagnosed with last year.

The first item — a map of Toronto's port lands dated 1990 — went up on eBay, with bids starting at US$50-dollars.

Ford's assistant has said Ford would be selling some items, but didn't say how many — or where the rest of the funds raised will end up.

KABUL, Feb 26 (Reuters) - An explosion rattled windows in the diplomatic quarter of the heavily fortified Afghan capital on Thursday morning, sending the city's embassies onto high alert.
"This is a security announcement: there has been an explosion inside the city," the British embassy broadcast to staff on its compound.
Further details on the location of blast were not immediately available. (Reporting by Jessica Donati; Editing by Douglas Busvine)

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Two senior U.S. Senate Democrats invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to a closed-door meeting with Democratic senators during his upcoming visit to Washington, amid tensions over his plans to address the U.S. Congress on Iran's nuclear program.
Senators Richard Durbin and Dianne Feinstein extended the invitation "to maintain Israel's dialog with both political parties in Congress," according to a letter to the Israeli leader obtained by Reuters.
Netanyahu has faced criticism at home and in the United States for his plans to address Congress on March 3, just two weeks before Israeli elections. He was invited by Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress who consulted neither Democrats in Congress nor Democratic President Barack Obama's administration.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Walsh)

If the Greeks leave the Eurozone, it would be awful. Both Greece and the remainder of the euro area would experience damaging volatility and uncertainty. But "Grexit" does not have to be all bad. In fact, if the Eurozone countries use the crisis to push through long-needed reforms, they could wind up in a much stronger position in the long run.

The Eurozone faces two related challenges. The first, fundamental challenge is that the single currency arrangement lacks the tools to maintain economic synchrony across diverse economies. The political cost of sacrificing fiscal independence has always stymied efforts to build features like burden-sharing arrangements between countries.

The Global Financial Crisis revealed the consequence of this shortcoming. It ripped through the periphery economies, but left core countries in much better shape. With only one Eurozone-wide interest rate to respond, the ECB was unable to avoid the eruption of what we now know as the Eurocrisis.

A second challenge has now come to the fore, as Greece plays high-stakes poker with the European Commission. Agreement to exceptional treatment for Greece risks establishing a precedent that Eurozone rules can be broken. Failure to reach an agreement could mean Grexit.

The first structural challenge clearly set up the second Greek bailout challenge. But now capitulation to Greek demands would feed back to exacerbate the structural challenge. Not only would Eurozone institutions be inadequate, but they would have weak authority. This is not a tenable outcome for the Eurozone.

Grexit would be better. Clearly it would create a chaotic situation in Greece that would make things worse before they got better. However, reasonable economists can debate whether staying in the Eurozone with a too-strong exchange rate and high debt would be better for Greece. In any case, the ball is in Greece's court to make this decision, so presumably they will choose the option that they feel works best for Greece. God speed.

For the Eurozone, the biggest risk from Grexit is that membership appears optional. Despite all laws and institutions designed for permanence, any member - even Germany - could be viewed as having one eye on their own exit should some economic disjuncture become unbearable. Moreover, domestic euroskeptic parties would surely try to capitalize on the momentum provided by Grexit. The Eurozone would face a true risk of break up.

Yet, much as they may like to entertain the idea of greater national autonomy, the average European does not at all want to see a total break up of the Eurozone. This is a key fact. Faced with the bald reality of that scenario, it is reasonable to imagine that panic will set in and support will shift massively to the side of Eurozone solidarity.

The Eurozone has been in need of just such an existential crisis to provide the proverbial kick in the pants to its members to commit to greater fiscal burden sharing. If European leaders play their cards right, they can leverage this shift in sentiment to overcome previous political hurdles to greater fiscal integration.

Stronger fiscal arrangements would make the Eurozone much more durable. In that sense, it could serve as an effective adhesive applied to the perceived cracks Grexit would create. It may remain true that exit is an option for remaining members, but stronger fiscal arrangements reduce the economic disjuncture that makes exit attractive. The door may be open, but everyone takes a big step back away from it.

The question then becomes what form the fiscal burden sharing arrangement takes. The new fiscal compact, currently being tested by France's request for forbearance, is insufficient. While Greece's problems (absent the accounting fraud) might have been limited by a fiscal compact, neither Ireland nor Spain would have been saved.

A minimum requirement is greater financial safety nets. Eurozone members balked at creating area-wide deposit insurance two years ago. Instead, ECB-led supervision with a bailout fund is a step forward, but not quite there yet. The European Commission envisions a process of deepening of fiscal integration culminating in an autonomous Eurozone budget with automatic cross-border fiscal stabilizers.

The best outcome would be for Greece and the European Commission to find a bargain that preserves the integrity of Eurozone discipline and meets Greek demands for less austerity. The scenario in which Grexit results in a stronger fiscal union among remaining members is very risky. It assumes leaders are able to perform political judo in managing the popular reaction to Grexit.

But given the choices the European Commission faces, this strategy may not look so bad. If played right, Greece leaving the Eurozone could ironically result in a more robust, more viable currency union than they have today.

WASHINGTON -- Turkey made its boldest move yet against the Islamic State over the weekend.

It wasn't to help the U.S.-led air campaign against the group, something Turkey could do by making its strategic Incirlik Air Base available to American jets. It wasn't, as has been the case for Egypt and Jordan, to avenge an attack by the extremist group on its nationals. And it wasn't to aid the Syrian Kurds of Kobani, who faced an Islamic State assault for months as Turkish tanks stood idle on nearby hilltops.

It was, instead, because of history.

Turkey sent tanks and hundreds of troops into Syria late Saturday to save a celebrated shrine threatened by Islamic State militants.

The shrine is the tomb of Suleyman Shah, whose grandson founded the Ottoman Empire. That empire, the immediate predecessor of the modern Turkish republic, decayed for centuries and eventually collapsed after World War I. But many Turks -- among them Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- see the Ottoman period as their nation's grandest moment. Though the tomb is in Syria, where Shah is thought to have died in the 13th century, Turkey retained control of it through a 1921 agreement with Syria's former colonial ruler, France.

That arrangement, like others in the region, appears to have worked fairly well until the Islamic State entered the picture. Militants linked to the extremist group and other rebels who seek to take portions of Syria from the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad have been operating near and indirectly threatening the Suleyman Shah shrine for months. In March 2014, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's then-foreign minister and current prime minister, said his country would counter any assault on the mausoleum.

"Should there be an attack, either from the regime, or radical groups or elsewhere, it would be countered equally," Davutoglu said, according to The New York Times. The comments made clear that the Turkish government, a vocal opponent of Assad, would enter his country to defend the shrine.

The incursion over the weekend was the first overt Turkish participation in the four-year Syrian civil war. Reports say up to 40 Turkish soldiers were rescued from the shrine, along with the historical remains and relics stored there. One Turkish soldier was killed in an "accident" during the operation, the Turkish military said. Whether the Turks had to actually fight off Islamic State militants remained unclear.

The government was reportedly nervous that the Islamic State would take the soldiers stationed at the tomb hostage, the way it kidnapped 46 Turks and three Iraqis working with them when it took over the Iraqi city of Mosul over the summer. (The 49 hostages were eventually released under circumstances that remain murky.)

The fighting around the shrine had become more intense in recent days as Syrian Kurdish fighters, fresh from a victory in Kobani, were advancing against fighters with the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Two Turkish newspapers, multiple Kurdish sources and a Turkish security source interviewed by Reuters said that the Turkish troops that went to the tomb, 20 miles from the border with Syria, passed through Kobani. That would represent an easing of tensions between the Turks and the Syrian Kurds, whose relationship has historically been poor because of the Syrian Kurds' connection to a Kurdish movement that has battled the Turkish state. That relationship worsened when the Turks failed to substantively support Kobani -- and, it appeared, permitted ISIS to exploit territory they had abandoned. An improved relationship would be very good news for the U.S.-led fight against ISIS.

The Assad regime, which has made its own efforts to look like a partner to the U.S. against the extremist group, blasted the Turkish move. Turkey is helping the U.S. to train and equip anti-Assad moderate Syrian rebels battle ISIS.

The ancient relics -- which include three important sarcophagi -- are, for now, being kept at another burial site in Syria, one much closer to the Turkish border (and to the Syrian Kurds.) Though Turkey has destroyed the old mausoleum, Davutoglu said it would like to return the artifacts to that site eventually.

See below what the monument looked like before the raid to rescue it from ISIS -- and what has happened to its celebrated relics since.



FILE - In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Turkey's Minister of Foresty and Waters Veysel Eroglu, fourth from right, and unidentified Turkish officials are seen during a ceremony at the entrance of the memorial site of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, in Karakozak village, northeast of Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/ Ministry of Foresty and Waters.)



FILE - In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Turkish soldiers stand guard at the entrance of the memorial site of Suleyman Shah. (AP Photo/File)



In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Turkish soldiers stand guard during a ceremony at the entrance of the memorial site of Suleyman Shah. (AP Photo/ Ministry of Forestry and Waters, File)



New position of the Suleyman Shah mausoleum is pictured from Turkish side of the border as Turkish army vehicles move inside Syria on Feb. 22, 2015, at Birecik in Sanliurfa, during an operation to relieve the garrison guarding the Suleyman Shah mausoleum in northern Syria. The operation was jointly conducted by the intelligence organization and the Turkish army, a few days after reports suggested that the tomb was besieged by jihadists belonging to the Islamic State. (ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/Getty Images)



Military ceremony for Halit Avci, the soldier who died as a result of an "accident" during the Suleyman Shah tomb operation in Syria, on Feb. 22, 2015. (Veli Gurgah/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)



Soldiers stand during a ceremony held for coffins brought from the tomb of Suleyman Shah to a provisional tomb in Syria on Feb. 22, 2015. (Okan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)



Soldiers stand during a ceremony held for coffins brought from the tomb of Suleyman Shah in Karakozak village, northeast of Aleppo, Syria. (Okan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)



Soldiers and an imam pray beside coffins brought from the tomb of Suleyman Shah in Syria to a provisional tomb on Feb. 22, 2015. (Okan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)