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(Reuters) - German authorities said on Sunday the leak of a corrosive substance through the air conditioning system at Hamburg airport was not an attack, adding that police were investigating the incident that forced the brief closure of the facility. Firefighters and ambulances were rushed to the scene after some 50 people at one terminal complained of eye irritation and breathing difficulties. "I want to explicitly deny ... that this was a terrorist attack. As far as we know it was at no period considered a terrorist attack," Hamburg fire department spokesman Torsten Wessely told a news conference in the northern city. "A pepper spray-like canister has been found during our investigative searches which might be the source," he added. He said the substance was spread through the facility's central air conditioning system. Lightly dressed passengers were rushed outside the terminal in almost freezing temperatures, leaving their coats and jackets behind in

US Republican Senator John McCain President Donald Trump has lashed out at Republican Senator John McCain for criticizing the recent US raid in Yemen in which an American special forces trooper died. The White House has characterized the January 28 strike on purported al-Qaeda targets in the central Yemeni province of Bayda as a “huge success," despite the death of multiple civilians and children in an hour-long gunfight in which Navy SEALs and troops from the United Arab Emirates clashed with well-entrenched al-Qaeda militants. McCain told NBC News on Wednesday that he cannot call it a success "when you lose a $75 million airplane and, more importantly, an American life is lost." McCain, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who was briefed on the raid, called the mission a failure because one US soldier died and one military aircraft crashed, not because of the death of civilians. In a series of tweets on Thursday, Trump said that the Arizona senator’s ne

An investigator outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Tex., in May 2015. BRANDON WADE / ASSOCIATED PRESS An Arizona man was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday for aiding the Islamic State by helping two followers who attacked an anti-Islam event in Texas, leading to a deadly shootout with the police. Prosecutors were seeking a 50-year sentence for the man, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, an American-born Muslim convert who became the second person in the United States to be convicted on charges of supporting the Islamic State. He was convicted of conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization, interstate transportation of firearms and other charges. His friends Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were the only ones killed in the May 2015 shootout outside a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Tex. A security guard was wounded. The contest featured images that are offensive to Muslims. The authorities said Mr. Kareem had watched videos depicting violence by j

This file photo shows a missile being fired from the direction of Yemen toward Saudi Arabia. Yemen's local media have reported a ballistic missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh. The Yemeni army made the announcement of their first ever attack on the city via a  statement  released by the official state Yemen news agency on Sunday. In the statement, they claimed that the missile had been launched at a Saudi military base located to the west of the capital in retaliation for the kingdom’s relentless war against their country. It went on to stress that the attack shows that Riyadh is well within the range of Yemen’s missiles. Saudi officials have not made any comments on the reports yet, but locals have said on Twitter that the missile struck a military camp to the west of al-Mazahimiyah town near Riyadh. The regime in Riyadh has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in a bid to reinstall the country’s ex-government and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.