user: Trump changes tune on taxing the wealthy

Donald Trump during his victory rally. (AAP)

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he's open to raising taxes on the rich, backing off his prior proposal to reduce taxes on all Americans and breaking with one of his party's core policies dating back to the 1990s.

"I am willing to pay more, and you know what, the wealthy are willing to pay more," Trump told ABC's This Week.

The billionaire real estate tycoon has said he would like to see an increase in the minimum wage, although he told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday he would prefer to see states take the lead on that front instead of the federal government.

"I don't know how people make it on $US7.25 an hour," Trump said of the current federal minimum wage. "I would like to see an increase of some magnitude. But I'd rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide."

Trump's call for higher taxes on the wealthy is a break with Republican presidential nominees who have staunchly opposed tax hikes for almost three decades.

Democrats, including presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, have pressed for increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans for years.

Trump released a tax proposal last September that included broad tax breaks for businesses and households. He proposed reducing the highest income tax rate to 25 per cent from the current 39.6 per cent rate.

Pressed on the contradiction between his latest comments on taxes and the September tax plan, Trump said he viewed his original proposal as "a concept" and that he expected it would be changed following negotiations with congress.

"By the time it gets negotiated, it's going to be a different plan," Trump told ABC. He emphasised in separate interviews with ABC and NBC that his priorities were lowering taxes on the middle class and businesses.

"The middle class has to be protected," Trump told NBC. The rich are "probably going to end up paying more", he said.

The Clinton campaign said Trump was trying to pander to voters beyond those who supported him in the Republican nominating contests and that he had no intention of raising the taxes of wealthy people.

"Don't believe Donald Trump's weak attempts at a general election 'makeover' for even a second," Christina Reynolds, a Clinton campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement.

"Trump's economic plans take direct aim at working Americans - his proposal to cut trillions in taxes for the top one per cent would almost certainly come at the expense of working- and middle-class families."

Republicans remain deeply divided over Trump's candidacy, although he has pledged to try to unite the party ahead of its convention in July.

Prominent party leaders such as Paul Ryan, the top elected US Republican, have distanced themselves from Trump.

Ryan, who will preside over the July 18-21 convention in Cleveland where the party will formally nominate its presidential candidate, said last week he hoped to eventually support Trump. But he added: "I'm just not there right now."

Underscoring the party's divisions, Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and a Trump supporter, criticised Ryan for failing to endorse Trump.

The conservative populist firebrand said she would work to defeat Ryan in his August 9 primary race against a conservative businessman.

Clinton said she hoped to take advantage of Republican reticence over Trump to draw the support of party defectors.

"I am asking people to come join this campaign," the former secretary of state told CBS. "And I've had a lot of outreach from Republicans in the last days who say that they are interested in talking about that."

summary: Taxes for the wealthy should go up and so should the minimum wage, says US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Saddam’s tomb suffers extensive damage in Iraq fighting

The tomb of Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein was virtually leveled in heavy clashes between militants from the Islamic State group and Iraqi forces in a fight for control of the city of Tikrit.

Fighting intensified to the north and south of Saddam Hussein’s hometown Sunday as Iraqi security forces vowed to reach the center of Tikrit within 48 hours. Associated Press video from the village of Ouja, just south of Tikrit, shows all that remains of Hussein’s once-lavish tomb are the support columns that held up the roof.

Poster-sized pictures of Saddam, which once covered the mausoleum, are now nowhere to be seen amid the mountains of concrete rubble. Instead, Shiite militia flags and photos of militia leaders mark the predominantly Sunni village, including that of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful Iranian general advising Iraqi Shiite militias on the battlefield.

“This is one of the areas where IS militants massed the most because Saddam’s grave is here,” said Captain Yasser Nu’ma, an official with the Shiite militias, formerly known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. “The IS militants’ set an ambush for us by planting bombs around” the tomb.

The extremist Islamic State group has controlled Tikrit since June, when it waged its lightning offensive that saw Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, come under their control. The Islamic State was helped in its conquest of northern Iraq by Saddam loyalists, including military veterans, who appealed to Sunnis who felt victimized by Baghdad’s Shiite-dominated government.

The Islamic State group claimed in August that Saddam’s tomb had been completely destroyed, but local officials said it was just ransacked and burned, but suffered only minor damage.

Saddam was captured by U.S. forces in 2003 and was executed by hanging in December 2006 after an Iraqi special tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity for the mass killing of Shiites and Kurds. His body has been kept in the mausoleum in his birthplace, Ouja, since 2007. The complex featured a marble octagon at the center of which a bed of fresh flowers covered the place where his body was buried. The extravagant chandelier at its center was reminiscent of the extravagant life he led until U.S. forces toppled him in 2003.

Iraqi media reported last year that Saddam’s body was removed by loyalists amid fears that it would be disturbed in the fighting. The body’s location is not known.

Recapturing Tikrit, a Sunni bastion on the Tigris River, would pave the way for an assault on Mosul, which U.S. officials have said could come as soon as next month.

Concerns are mounting that Iraq’s Shiite militias, of which an estimated 20,000 are fighting in Tikrit, will carry out revenge attacks on this and other areas that are home to predominantly Sunni residents.

Amnesty International last year said the militias wear military uniforms but operate outside any legal framework and without any official oversight, adding that they are not prosecuted for their crimes. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch echoed those concerns, calling on the Iraqi government to protect civilians in Tikrit and allow them to flee combat zones. Its statement noted “numerous atrocities” against Sunni civilians by pro-government militias and security forces.

Shiite militants are increasingly being accused of leveling the Sunni towns they capture from the Islamic State group, making it impossible for residents to return. Tikrit has already been heavily damaged in months of violence. A satellite image of Tikrit, released last month by the United Nations, observed that at least 536 buildings in the city have been affected by the fighting, with at least 137 completely destroyed and 241 severely damaged.

Local Sunni tribal fighters have formed uneasy alliances with the Iraqi army and Shiite militias in the battle for Tikrit, which Iraqi and U.S. officials believe is essential for defeating the Sunni militant group.

Yazan al-Jubouri, a Sunni from Tikrit fighting alongside the Shiite militias, said that the Islamic State militants killed 16 of his relatives and kept his family living in horror.

“We want to take revenge on those IS militants who killed our children,” he said.

summary:

assistant: The tomb of Saddam Hussein was virtually leveled in heavy clashes between militants from the Islamic State group and Iraqi forces.