THE TELEGRAPH: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized Al-Qaryatain town and monastery Mar Elian earlier this month, kidnapping local Christians
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants have destroyed a historic monastery seized in their latest advance across central Syria.
Photographs appeared online of fighters from Isil with bulldozers at the Mar Elian monastery in Al-Qaryatain, in Homs province.
The monitoring group Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said the Catholic monastery was then destroyed "on the pretext that it was used for worshipping others than God". » | Richard Spencer, Middle East Editor | Friday, August 21, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
London 'Draw Mohamed' Exhibition Cancelled due to 'Real Possibility People Could Be Killed'
A planned 'Draw Mohamed' exhibition has been cancelled in London after counter-terrorism police warned that people could be killed if it went ahead.
Organiser Anne Marie Waters, Sharia Watch director and former UKIP candidate, revealed that security services had reason to believe the event might be attacked, with a "very real possibility that people could be hurt or killed - before, during and after".
Organisers asked more than 200 galleries to host the exhibition but their requests were almost universally refused, with even the gallery that eventually agreed later pulling out.
Waters says police did not force her to shelve the exhibition, but it was clear that Britain had become a "frightened nation" afraid of exhibiting controversial Mohamed cartoons.
"We need an international campaign comprising all who seek free speech protection, particularly from Islam," she wrote for Breitbart London. » | Jess Denham | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Etats-Unis: un touriste touché par la peste au parc Yosemite
Faut-il craindre le retour de la peste? Un touriste a contracté la maladie dépeinte par Albert Camus après avoir visité le parc du Yosemite en Californie, l'un des plus populaires des Etats-Unis.
Le patient, originaire de Géorgie, dans le sud-est des Etats-Unis, s'était rendu en vacances dans le Yosemite et le massif montagneux de la Sierra Nevada avant de tomber malade, selon le services de santé publique de Californie (CDPH). "Les avertissements sur la peste diffusés par les autorités californiennes ont été très utiles jusqu'en Géorgie (car ils ont) permis à ce patient de recevoir rapidement l'attention médicale nécessaire pour se remettre de cette maladie", a déclaré le docteur Karen Smith, directrice du CDPH dans un communiqué. » | Par LEXPRESS.fr avec AFP | jeudi 20 août 2015
Greek Bailout: Alexis Tsipras to 'Step Down and Call Snap Elections'
Alexis Tsipras insisted that accepting tough reform demands is the only way to ensure Greece remains in the eurozone. |
The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has decided to step down and call snap elections for 20 September, government officials said.
As the debt-crippled country received the first tranche of its new €86bn (£61bn) bailout, Tsipras was set to make the formal announcement later on Thursday, government sources told Reuters.
Once he submits his resignation the prime minister would be replaced by the president of Greece’s supreme court, Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou – a vocal bailout opponent – who would oversee the elections as the head of a transitional government. » | Jon Henley | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Labels:
Alexis Tsipras,
Greece
Former President Jimmy Carter to Be Treated for Brain Cancer
Appearing calm and lucid, Carter, 90, told a news conference that he will cut back dramatically on his schedule to receive treatment every three weeks after doctors detected four "very small spots" of melanoma on his brain. » | David Beasley | Atlanta | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Labels:
cancer,
Jimmy Carter,
USA
The Watchman: Sunni And Shia Jihadists Battle
North American Jews Return To Israel
Labels:
Canada,
Israel,
Jews,
North America,
USA
Schwere Krawalle in Flüchtlingsheim
In einem Flüchtlingsheim im thüringischen Suhl ist es am Mittwochabend zu Ausschreitungen gekommen. Nach Angaben der Polizei attackierte eine Gruppe von 20 Asylbewerbern einen Mitbewohner wegen eines Streits um Glaubensfragen. » | syd/dpa/AFP | Donnerstag, 20. August 2015
Labels:
Deutschland,
Flüchtlinge
Cairo Blast: Isis-linked Group Claims Responsibility
Isis-affiliated militants in Egypt have claimed responsibility for an explosion at a Cairo security building that left six police wounded.
The claim came in a message circulated on social media by the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, which has claimed a series of similar bombings in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.
The blast happened just before 2am close to the national security agency building in Shubra al-Khaima, a neighbourhood on the northern edge of the Egyptian capital. The sound of the explosion echoed across Cairo, rattling windows and waking residents miles from the blast.
Egypt’s interior ministry said in a statement that a car had exploded outside the security compound. The assailant fled the scene on a motorcycle, it said. » | Jared Malsin in Cairo | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Isil Murders Scholar Who Hid Treasures of Palmyra
THE TELEGRAPH: Isil extremists behead revered antiquities scholar Khaled al-Asaad in ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, says government official
Militants from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have killed a revered archaeologist in the Syrian city of Palmyra, after he refused to give up the secrets of its ancient treasures.
Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said on Tuesday that 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, longtime director of the Palmyra museum, was beheaded in a local square before his body was placed on display in public.
The archaeologist had been detained and interrogated for over a month by Isil, Mr Abdulkarim told Reuters. The jihadists had wanted to extract information about the whereabouts of precious Palmyra antiquities which had been removed as the extremist group advanced on the city. » | Louisa Loveluck | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Militants from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have killed a revered archaeologist in the Syrian city of Palmyra, after he refused to give up the secrets of its ancient treasures.
Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said on Tuesday that 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, longtime director of the Palmyra museum, was beheaded in a local square before his body was placed on display in public.
The archaeologist had been detained and interrogated for over a month by Isil, Mr Abdulkarim told Reuters. The jihadists had wanted to extract information about the whereabouts of precious Palmyra antiquities which had been removed as the extremist group advanced on the city. » | Louisa Loveluck | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Labels:
ISIL,
Khaled Asad,
Palmyra
Pope Francis Poses with 'Dialogue for Malvinas' Sign
THE TELEGRAPH: Pope Francis poses with a propaganda sign calling for "dialogue" between Britain and Argentina
Pope Francis has posed with a propaganda poster backing Argentina's call for dialogue with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
The move risked angering residents of both the Falklands and Britain, which has always considered its sovereignty over the islands beyond question.
The Argentine pontiff, who has previously refused to get involved in the disagreement, was visited at the Vatican by an activist from the "Dialogue for Malvinas" campaign.
The activist presented the Pope with a sign reading: "It's time for Argentina and Britain to discuss the Falklands."
Britain and the Falkland Islanders have long rejected calls for dialogue, with the argument that there is nothing to discuss.
The islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain British in a March 2013 referendum. Read on and comment » | Harriet Alexander | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Pope Francis has posed with a propaganda poster backing Argentina's call for dialogue with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
The move risked angering residents of both the Falklands and Britain, which has always considered its sovereignty over the islands beyond question.
The Argentine pontiff, who has previously refused to get involved in the disagreement, was visited at the Vatican by an activist from the "Dialogue for Malvinas" campaign.
The activist presented the Pope with a sign reading: "It's time for Argentina and Britain to discuss the Falklands."
Britain and the Falkland Islanders have long rejected calls for dialogue, with the argument that there is nothing to discuss.
The islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain British in a March 2013 referendum. Read on and comment » | Harriet Alexander | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Donald Trump to the Pope: 'Isil Wants to Get You'
THE TELEGRAPH: Billionaire Republican frontrunner says he would like to meet Pope Francis but would not tolerate any criticism of capitalism
Donald Trump says he would not allow the Pope to criticise capitalism if they were to meet face to face, and would scare him into silence by reminding him that violent jihadis of the Islamic State want to invade the Vatican.
It was a typically bombastic Trump moment delivered during a wide-ranging interview in which he took on Hillary Clinton, underlined his views on illegal immigrants and said he would allow women to fight in American special forces. » | Rob Crilly, New York | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Donald Trump says he would not allow the Pope to criticise capitalism if they were to meet face to face, and would scare him into silence by reminding him that violent jihadis of the Islamic State want to invade the Vatican.
It was a typically bombastic Trump moment delivered during a wide-ranging interview in which he took on Hillary Clinton, underlined his views on illegal immigrants and said he would allow women to fight in American special forces. » | Rob Crilly, New York | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Labels:
capitalism,
Donald Trump,
ISIL,
Pope Francis
The Crucial Role of Women within Islamic State
Manchester twins Zahra and Salma Halane travelled to join US in 2014; they both married IS fighters but were widowed by the end of the year |
Islamic State, also known as Isis, has a dual attitude to women.
On the one hand it treats those it considers heretics as almost sub-human, as commodities to be traded and given away as rewards to jihadist fighters.
Shocking footage from a modern-day sex-slave market in Mosul, Iraq, shows militants discussing prices for Yazidi girls, captured last year, many of them underage.
At least 2,000 Yazidi women are still being held, only a few have escaped.
'Corner stones'
"They put us up for sale," said one who did recently escape. "Many groups of fighters came to buy. Whatever we did, crying, begging, made no difference."
But on the other hand, IS has big plans for Muslim women who migrate to their territory to play a key role in building the so-called caliphate.
"They want women to join them," says Dr Katherine Brown, an expert in Islamic Studies at King's College London.
"They see women as the corner stones of the new state and they want citizens.
"What is really interesting is that people talk of IS as being a death cult, but that is the opposite of what they are trying to create... they want to create a new state... and they very much want women to join that as part of this utopian politics."
That utopia includes a treatise published in Arabic in February, setting out a code of conduct that harks back 1,400 years.
It is aimed primarily at Arab women in the Gulf states and the wider Middle East and includes passages that are incomprehensible to most people in the West:
"It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of nine. Most pure girls will be married by 16 or 17, while they are still young and active," the treatise says. » | Frank Gardner, BBC Security correspondent | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Slovakia Refuses to Accept Muslim Migrants
Slovakia has said it will not accept any Muslims under an EU scheme to share migrants more evenly between member states.
“We want to help Europe with the migration issue. We could take 800 Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?” Ivan Metik, an interior ministry spokesman, said.
Slovakia is to host 200 migrants under an EU plan to redistribute 40,000 away from Italy and Greece, which are overwhelmed with the numbers arriving across the Mediterranean.
The Slovakian government said it plans to ask the migrants their religion on arrival.
The European Commission expressed its displeasure at the Slovakian plans. “We act here in the spirit of the treaty, which prevents any form of discrimination,” Annika Breidthardt, a spokesman, said.
While it is legal to prioritise Christians who are at extra risk of persecution because of their religion, turning away Muslims because there are no mosques would be discriminatory and of dubious legality, according to one EU source. » | Matthew Holehouse, Brussels, and Justin Huggler, Berlin | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Labels:
Muslim migrants,
Slovakia
IS-Extremisten köpfen Chef-Archäologen von Palmyra
Die Terrormiliz Islamischer Staat (IS) hat nach Angaben des staatlichen Leiters für Antiquitäten, Mamoun Abdul Karim, den 82-jährigen Chef-Archäologen der antiken Wüstenstadt Palmyra in Syrien geköpft. Khaled Asaad hatte seit mehr als 50 Jahren die Forschungsarbeiten an den Ruinen des Unesco-Welterbes geleitet.
Nach Angaben seiner Familie wurde er vor über einem Monat von den Dschihadisten verschleppt. Zur Machtdemonstration wurde sein enthaupteter Leichnam an einer Straßenkreuzung der Stadt zur Schau gestellt und ein Foto davon im Internet veröffentlicht. » | Reuters/rct | Mittwoch, 19. August 2015
Left for Dead: Afghan Translator 'Abandoned' by UK Killed Trying to Escape Taliban
Labels:
Afghan translator,
Taliban,
UK
‘It’s a Real Massacre, But the World Is Silent’: Up to 200 People Killed by ISIS in Sirte, Libya
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