Man gets knifed in road rage
and made his decision in response to the cleric’s remarks and to “facilitate and hasten its fulfillment as soon as possible.”
“I will submit to parliament an official memorandum resigning from the current prime ministry so that the parliament can review its choices,” he said. AbdulMahdi was appointed Iraq’s fifth prime minister since 2003 as a consensus candidate following months of political wrangling between rival political blocs.
If accepted when put to a vote, Abdul-Mahdi’s resignation would signal a return to square one in those slowmoving negotiations, Iraqi officials and experts said.
Abdul-Mahdi would be the second prime minister in an Arab country to be forced out by mass protests recently. In Lebanon, the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri exactly a month earlier, on Oct. 29, led to further political gridlock and uncertainty.
Abdul-Mahdi’s rise to power was the product of a provisional alliance between parliament’s two main blocs — Sairoon, led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and Fatah, which includes leaders associated with the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units headed by Hadi al-Amiri.
In the May 2018 election, neither coalition won a commanding plurality, which would have enabled it to name the premier, as stipulated by the Iraqi constitution. To avoid political crisis, Sairoon and Fatah forged a precarious union with Abdul-Mahdi as their prime minister.
Now, with his resignation, unresolved disputes between the coalitions threaten to reemerge, two Iraqi officials said.
“The two of them need to come to an agreement again for us to see a new prime minister,” said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Thanksgiving Day turned into a nightmare for a Long Island man when he was stabbed in the stomach by a deranged driver.
The 44-year-old victim was stabbed around 2:37 p.m. Thursday in Manorville by Gregory Spina, 43, as the victim’s wife watched helplessly, police said.
The victim, a Manorville resident, was driving along Wading River Road at about 2:30 p.m. when Spina, driving a gray Volvo, blazed past him at the South Street intersection, police said.
The victim, whose name was not released, believed Spina hit his 2017 Hyundai. So he pulled into a parking lot next to the intersection to inspect the damage, Suffolk County cops said.
The Volvo driver pulled into the lot after him, and began fighting with the victim and knifed him once in the stomach, cops said.
Spina, who lives in Glen Cove, jumped back into his car and fled the scene, police said. He was arrested Friday.
The victim was taken to Stony Brook University Hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries. The victim’s wife was not injured, police said.