World Cup Airport Strike Threatens Chaos In Rio

Thousands of football fans flying to Brazil for the start of the World Cup are facing a chaotic welcome, after ground staff voted to stage a 24-hour strike.

Hours before the tournament gets under way, workers at Rio de Janeiro's Galeao airport, which is expected to be one of the busiest in Brazil over the next four weeks, have declared a partial walkout in a row over pay.

Baggage handlers and check-in staff will join colleagues at the city's Santos Dumont airport - an important hub for flights to Sao Paulo, where England play Uruguay next week - in downing tools.

Rio de Janeiro's airports are busy even in a non-World Cup month

They have promised to maintain an 80% service and although fans heading to Sao Paulo will be at least be able to catch the subway after metro staff voted against taking industrial action themselves, there is potential for disruption at already-stretched terminals.

Some 2.1 million people passed through the two airports last month - an average of 68,000 people a day - with World Cup arrivals set to bolster those numbers further still.

Excitement is building in Brazil as the four-week tournament gets under way

Sky's Sports Correspondent Paul Kelso, in Rio de Janeiro, said: "This city is a hub for many supporters, including England fans heading for their team's opening game in Manaus on Saturday, and if the strike goes ahead they face disruption.

"The vote by Sao Paulo's metro workers is a significant relief for organisers, but it may not lift the considerable anxiety around the start of the tournament."

All the latest World Cup news and analysis on the Sky News catch up service

After a build-up dominated by delays to infrastructure projects, deaths at stadium construction sites and protests over spiralling costs, the World Cup kicks off in Sao Paulo later today.

The host nation face Croatia in the tournament's curtain-raiser after an opening ceremony featuring performances by the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull.

The pitch in Manaus appears dry and yellow

England's first match is on Saturday and as Roy Hodgson's players continue to acclimatise, the pitch at Manaus' Amazonia Arena where they will face Italy appears to be in poor condition.

A journalist for the AFP news agency said the playing surface was noticeably dry and particularly bare around one of the goals, "revealing large yellowing areas of turf".

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ISIS Vulnerable Despite Seizing Swathes Of Iraq

Born in Iraq, toughened and grown in Syria, the Middle East's most violent Islamist group has returned to the motherland with a vengeance.

Known as the Islamic State in Iraq and al Shams, ISIS has stormed Mosul, Iraq's second city, then stampeded south at breathtaking speed threatening the capital, Baghdad.

That, ISIS's leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi may soon learn, was the easy part.

He may soon be proclaimed the Emir of a new Islamic caliphate - making real the fantasy of a state.

That will be the moment when his movement becomes most vulnerable.

Spreading terror, organising insurrections, undermining governments and guerrilla war are challenges that legitimate rulers could only ever dream of.

Insurgent tactics almost always give the initiative to the insurgent.

Al Baghdadi, who is believed to be Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, a native of Samarrah, has applied himself with extreme skill to the task of wrecking.

He took over that was then al Qaeda in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other senior leaders were killed in American and British attacks which were orchestrated with the help of fellow Sunnis who had turned against their extreme view of Islam.

AQI has been almost crippled by 2011.

But the Syrian civil war, which it joined to depose Bashar al Assad, provided a resuscitating boost to a movement - which has so frequently tortured and murdered that the global leaders of al Qaeda have disowned it.

The suicidal daring of its members, many of them volunteers from Europe and Chechnya, at first impressed Syria's other rebel movements.

But by the end of last year the extreme violence of ISIS's methods had alienated even al Qaeda sponsored groups like the al Nusra front.

ISIS has been locked in bitter fighting against other rebel groups inside Syria.

Funded with donations from the Gulf, ISIS began turning its energies back into Iraq  - six months ago it captured the city of Falluja.

It was able to draw on Sunni dismay of what has largely been seen as exclusion from power by the Shia dominated government of Nuri al Maliki.

And translate that into a devastating military campaign as it stormed south from Mosul though Baiji, Tikrit, and Sammarah, about 60 miles from Baghdad.

ISIS is unlikely to attack either Kirkuk or Baghdad, where it would meet resistance from Shia and Kurds.

But it may declare itself the "state" or "caliphate" it has always wanted to be.

If it does that it will mutate from a metastasizing idea of violent jihad to become an entity, a thing in a known place, not an idea with agents in the shadows.

Then it can be attacked, and even destroyed.

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Iraqi Militants: 'Battle Will Rage In Baghdad'

Militants who stormed cities in northern and central Iraq now plan to launch a wave of attacks on the capital Baghdad, their leader has reportedly warned.

In a statement translated by intelligence officials, Abu Mohammed al Adnani, who heads the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), promised battle would "rage" in the city and Karbala further south.

It came as officials in Iraq allegedly asked the US to consider air strikes, including drone attacks, to halt the militants' progress.

"The battle is not yet raging, but it will in Baghdad and Karbala," al Adnani said, according to the US-based monitoring group SITE.

Militants left a trail of destruction in the northern city of Mosul

"Do not relent against your enemy," he added. "Put on your belts and get ready."

Karbala, a city southwest of the capital, is considered one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims according to SITE.

ISIS, an al Qaeda splinter group, seized control of Tikrit on Wednesday after a devastating show of strength in Mosul, where more than 500,000 people have fled.

Iraqi police said hundreds of prisoners were freed in Tikrit, the home town of former dictator Saddam Hussein, after militants arrived in a convoy of more than 60 vehicles.

The insurgents took over local government buildings and set fire to the court house before heading back out on the road.

They battled security forces on the northern outskirts of Samarra as they closed within 70 miles (110km) of the capital.

An American defence official, speaking to the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity, said the Iraqi government had privately asked for help in stopping them.

A formal request has not yet been made, although the US is considering sending "more weaponry", the official said.

Security has been stepped up at checkpoints in the Iraqi capital

American troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011 after a bitter conflict that left 4,800 coalition soldiers dead.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the US would support a "unified approach against ISIS' continued aggression", adding it had long warned of the dangers posed by the group.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has condemned the abductions and the seizure of territory and urged the international community to "show solidarity with Iraq".

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki asked parliament to declare a state of emergency that would grant him additional powers to tackle the crisis. MPs will hold an emergency session on Thursday to vote on the measure.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Baghdad will co-operate with Kurdish forces to "flush out these foreign fighters" and said Iraq's leaders have to unite to face a "mortal" threat.

ISIS, which wants to create a Sunni state, or caliphate, straddling the border between Iraq and Syria, has made serious gains in Iraq in the last year, seizing control of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi.

It was formed after a split with al Qaeda's international leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.

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