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Showing posts from December 7, 2014

Neo-Nazis burn asylum homes, Merkel condemns racism

Buildings in a Bavarian town being turned into refuges for asylum-seekers were set on fire and daubed with swastikas. Merkel condemned all such crimes World Bulletin/News Desk The German government has condemned a "xenophobic" attack on three buildings housing refugees in the southeastern German town of Vorra, which burned down in what police suspect was an arson attack by neo-Nazis.   Fire tore through the buildings sited in different parts of the town, 50 kilometers (32 miles) northeast of the city of Nuremberg, which had been recently renovated to house asylum seekers. Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned a series of anti-Muslim demonstrations centred on the eastern city of Dresden, saying via an aide on Friday that there was "no place in Germany" for hatred of Muslims or any other religious or racial group. "In the name of the government and the chancellor I can say quite clearly that there is no place in Germany for religious hatred, no matter which religion

Attackers Cross Lake Chad to Strike Cameroon

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FILE - Cameroon soldiers have been battling militants in the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram. Cameroon authorities say at least 600 suspected Boko Haram fighters crossed Lake Chad and simultaneously attacked several villages and towns Friday, leading to the arrests of 25 of the insurgents and the drowning deaths of hundreds of others. Issa Tchiroma Bakari, Cameroon's minister of communication, said fierce fighting erupted in the villages of Ngouma, Sagme, Ardebe, Dambore and Soueram when government forces attempted to retake them from insurgents. The fighters, thought to have come from Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria, had entered northern Cameroon from Lake Chad, which also borders Nigeria, Chad and Niger. They reportedly ransacked the Cameroonian villages and stole livestock. "Our defense and security forces vigorously retaliated against this barbaric attack and forced the attackers to retreat,” Tchiroma said. “This terrorist organization is only aimed at jeopardizing pe

Britain’s MI6 helps India home in on Mehdi

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Traced through mobile number after second interview to Channel 4 A globally co-ordinated effort with British and Indian intelligence agencies coming together with Bangalore City Police led to the swift arrest of 24-year-old Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the alleged owner of the pro-IStwitter account @ShamiWitness, early on Saturday. Biswas, an engineering graduate from Kolkata and working as a manufacturing executive at ITC Foods in the city since 2012, was picked up from his one room flat in Jalahalli in the city's north-eastern part. The arrest came just hours after he established contact on his mobile phone with Channel 4 representatives for the second time. Sources say all telephone call traffic between Bengaluru and London was being monitored since Friday, after Channel 4 broadcast his first interview that unmasked his identity. Officials also said the operation had MI6, the British intelligence agency, passing information to their Indian counterparts. A Bangalore police official said

2 coalition soldiers, 12 workers clearing mines killed in Afghanistan

A series of attacks in Afghanistan killed at least 21 people, including 12 members of a landmine clearance team and two soldiers of the U.S.-led military coalition, officials said Saturday. In the deadliest incident, gunmen attacked a group working to clear land mines in the Shorabak district of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. After the attack, the assailants engaged in a firefight with Afghan army soldiers. Provincial officials in Helmand said they killed four assailants and detained three others. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taliban insurgents and their allies in the past have targeted teams working to clear land mines in Afghanistan, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. In April, Taliban militants attacked a demining team in eastern Logar province, killing 12 people. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for an attack Friday night in the northern province of Parwan that targeted soldiers belonging to the U.S.-led mili

Nanjing Massacre ‘undeniable’: Xi

Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday said that no one can deny the Nanjing Massacre, as China for the first time held a national day of remembrance for the Japanese military rampage that Beijing says killed 300,000 people. State media estimated 10,000 people attended a ceremony in Nanjing to mark the 77th anniversary of the massacre, including aging survivors — some in their 90s — of the Japanese invasion of the eastern city on Dec. 13, 1937. The crowd sang a boisterous rendition of China’s national anthem at the ceremony broadcast live on CCTV state television, followed by a moment of silence, as a siren symbolizing grief blared and the Chinese flag flew at half-mast under clear skies. “Anyone who tries to deny the massacre will not be allowed by history, the souls of the 300,000 deceased victims, 1.3 billion Chinese people and all people loving peace and justice in the world,” Xi said in a speech at the ceremony, according to Xinhua news agency. National People’s Congress hea

Iraq helicopter shot down by IS

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Islamic State militants in Iraq have shot down another helicopter Islamic State group militants have shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, officials said today, killing the two pilots on board and raising fresh concerns about the extremists' ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing US-led coalition air strikes. The attack happened in the Shiite holy city of Samarra, about 60 miles (95km) north of Baghdad, late yesterday. A senior Defence Ministry official told the Associated Press that the Sunni militants used a shoulder-fired rocket launcher to shoot down the EC635 helicopter on the outskirts of the city. An army official corroborated the information. The EC635, built by Airbus Helicopters, is used for transportation, surveillance and combat. The militants shot down at least two other Iraqi military helicopters near the city of Beiji in October. Some fear the militants may have captured ground-to-air missiles capable of shooting down planes when they overran Iraqi and Syrian army

Middle East updates / Two U.S. soldiers killed by Taliban bomb near Kabul

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'160,000 Christians have fled ISIS-held Iraqi city of Mosul'; Obama thanks Saudi Arabia for help against Islamic State; Afghan police say Supreme Court official shot dead. Click here for Friday's updates 7:40 P.M. Egypt refers 439 suspects to military tribunals An Egyptian security official says the country's top prosecutor has referred more than 400 suspected Islamists to military tribunals for acts of violence and killings of policemen. The official says that among the men it describes as Islamists were 300 from the southern province of Minya and 139 from the Nile Delta province of Beheira. The case involves last year's wave of violence that came in retaliation to a bloody police dispersal of an Islamist sit-in. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. In October, Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi ordered the military to join forces with police in guarding vital institutions. The decree stipulated

ISIS will never be able to step in India: Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

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Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi in Uttar Pradesh's capital city Lucknow on Saturday said that ISIS would never be able to make hold over India and will not succeed in their "evil design" on Indian soil. "The propaganda they (ISIS) are spreading of making inroads among Indian Muslims is mischievous. The claim of making hold over India is a kind of mischief. We have full faith that such powers have neither been able to maintain any hold over India nor will they succeed in their nefarious or evil  design on Indian soil," Naqvi told media persons. The Minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs said that their destructive agenda cannot defuse the agenda of development and good governance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.   "We are committed for overall development through good governance," he said. Naqvi said that on one hand the world is facing many challenges on which the future of humanity critically depends and on the other hand India is strongly and

IS' Twitter account handler Mehdi held in Bengaluru, group vows to free him

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The young engineer behind a popular pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter account was arrested on Saturday at his one-room rented accommodation in an upscale Bengaluru neighbourhood, triggering pledges to free him by those subscribing to the terror group’s alarming agenda. Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the man who operated pro-IS Twitter handle, worked for a MNC. (Photo courtesy- Bengaluru City Police on Twitter) “On the basis of credible intelligence inputs ... we have apprehended Mehdi Masroor Biswas from his apartment,” said director general of police LR Pachuau. The mobile phone — the one that he apparently used to tweet thousands of jihadi posts to his 17,000 followers on Twitter — was confiscated along with a laptop and other documents for evidence. Police said 24-year-old Mehdi from a Kolkata suburb working with ITC in Bengaluru didn’t probably have any direct links with the terror group which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq as part of its campaign to create an Islamic caliphate. “He appear

Moazzam Begg: Guantanamo detainee's 20-year link with extremists

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Background During a holiday to Pakistan in 1993, he met veterans of the war against Russia in Afghanistan and took them up on an offer to visit training camps in Afghanistan. He would later describe the experience as “life changing.” On his return, he became involved with the plight of Muslims in Bosnia, and went on a number of aid convoys, as well as spending time at a training camp for foreign fighters. By his late 20s he was married and a devout Muslim. In 1998 he lived in Pakistan before returning to Birmingham and opening an Islamic book and video store. CIA Director John Brennan addresses the press in the wake of the report In 1999, “UK authorities had a number of UK-based extremists under investigation, including Moazzem Begg,” according to a CIA document quoted in the US Senate Intelligence Committee Report released this week. It adds: “The Maktabah al-Ansar bookshop he ran in Birmingham was described as a ‘known jihadist gathering place’.” A year later, special branch and MI5

Finances of jihad: How extremist groups raise money

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Finance and security analyst Islamic State earns money from oil, taxation and looting Twelve months ago, the group now known as Islamic State (IS) was little recognised on the international stage beyond those inspired to travel and join the group as fighters or those in the security and academic worlds monitoring developments in Syria and Iraq. Even at its emergence, it was dismissed as just another of the multitude taking advantage of the chaos created in Syria by the wide-ranging conflict with President Bashar al-Assad. In January 2014, US President Barack Obama downplayed the capabilities and threats posed by those flying the al-Qaeda flag in Falluja and elsewhere across Iraq and Syria. But within a few months, IS controlled a vast and valuable swathe of territory across northern Syria and Iraq. Former US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel described IS as being as "sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen". "They're beyond just a terrorist group…

Swarens: Extremists on either side of gun issue aren’t stopping the killing

The plates had been cleared from the table and the breakfast crowd had given way to the lunch rush at Café Patachou in Downtown, but the passionate, at times contentious, conversation about guns, constitutional rights and the violence that bloodies this city’s streets continued. Jim Lucas was frustrated with me, and I by him. But that’s natural when the issues are so complex and the stakes so high. Smart and intense, Lucas is beginning his second term as a Republican state representative from Seymour. He also is as close to an absolutist on Second Amendment rights as I’ve encountered, and I’ve talked to a lot of gun-rights advocates over the years. Lucas, for example, helped push legislation through the General Assembly that allows people licensed to carry a concealed weapon to keep their guns locked in their vehicles while visiting a school. I asked Lucas, somewhat cheekily, about the logic of telling people concerned about self-defense that they must leave their guns in their cars. W

New People’s army poses ‘minimal’ risk to PHL typhoon rescue mission

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Ruby victims in Samar rise from the rubble . Typhoon victims on Tuesday, December 9, recover a television set from the ruins of a house destroyed by Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit) in San Julian, Eastern Samar on December 6. Emergency workers are struggling to reach coastal villages on an island hardest hit by Ruby where thousands of homes have been wrecked by powerful winds and a storm surge rising three to four meters (10 to 13 feet).  Reuters/Erik De Castro  Rescue teams were struggling on Wednesday to reach upland communities on in eastern Samar, which took the brunt of Typhoon Ruby at the weekend amid security fears in an area known as a hotbed of Maoist insurgents.  Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit) destroyed nearly 16,500 houses and damaged more than 33,100 on the island of Samar before making its way slowly across the country. It has since been downgraded to a tropical storm and on Wednesday was headed for southern Vietnam. The national disaster agency said nine people were killed as the storm chu