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on Feb. 14, 2005, at 12:55 p.m., an explosion just in front of the St. Georges Hotel shook downtown Beirut. It destroyed a convoy of vehicles carrying Lebanon’s former and probably next prime minister, Rafik Hariri, killing him along with eight members of his entourage and 13 bystanders. Soon after the blast, an anonymous caller claiming to represent “Nusra and Jihad Group in Greater Syria,” a previously unheard-of organization, told a reporter at the Al Jazeera affiliate in Beirut that a videotape from the suicide bomber was hanging from a tree in Riad al Solh Square, just a few blocks...

BRUSSELS—French President François Hollande said Thursday Egypt will buy 24 of Dassault Aviation SA ’s Rafale in a contract worth around EUR5 billion ($5.7 billion), the first foreign order for the combat jet. Egypt will buy 24 Rafale and an accompanying frigate, Mr. Hollande said at a news conference after a European summit in Brussels. The French-made Rafale, which exists in land-based and carrier-based versions, has been in service with the French military for more than a decade, but repeatedly lost out to foreign competition and never been sold for export. The jet has seen action in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali,...

A senior FBI official has admitted the United States is finding it virtually impossible to screen out terrorists that could be hiding among the thousands of Syrian “refugees” heading soon to American cities. The U.S. simply does not have the resources to stop Islamic radicals in Syria from slipping into the country through the State Department’s refugee-resettlement program, said Michael Steinbach, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter terrorism unit. Separating legitimate refugees from terrorists was difficult enough in Iraq, where the U.S. had a large occupation force. Even then, the U.S. government’s vetting process missed “dozens” of Iraqi jihadists...

Egypt has offered to evacuate thousands of its citizens from Libya after Islamic State (Isis) released pictures showing 21 kidnapped Egyptian Christians paraded in orange jumpsuits. Egypt said it had no choice but take urgent measures on Friday with Isis expanding fast across Libya, its war-stricken neighbour. “We are helping them,” Cairo’s foreign ministry spokesman, Badr Abdelatty, said. “If they would like to come back from Libya, we are facilitating their return to their home country.” The Coptic Christian guest workers were kidnapped in Sirte, on Libya’s coast, by Isis units based there in two operations in December and January....

Harith al Nadhari recorded an audio eulogy for Mohammed al Zahawi, the leader of Ansar al Sharia Libya, shortly before his own death. Shortly before his own death in a US airstrike on Jan. 31, Harith al Nadhari, a senior sharia official in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), recorded an audio eulogy for another slain jihadist, Mohammed al Zahawi. Ansar al Sharia Libya confirmed earlier in the month that Zahawi, the group's leader, had died of wounds he suffered while fighting in Benghazi. And Nadhari wanted to make it clear that al Qaeda considered Zahawi to be...

(Reuters) - Islamic State insurgents took control on Thursday of most of the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, threatening an air base where U.S. Marines are training Iraqi troops, officials said. Al-Baghdadi, about 85 km (50 miles) northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province, had been besieged for months by the radical Sunni Islamist militants who captured vast swathes of Iraq's north and west last year. "Ninety percent of al-Baghdadi district has fallen under the control of the insurgents," district manager Naji Arak told Reuters by phone. Militants attacked al-Baghdadi from two directions earlier in the day and then advanced on...

In the wake of the Paris shootings and the horrors visited by ISIS upon Syria and Iraq and the genocide of Boko Haram, finally there seems to be an awakening even among some in the western mainstream media that there could be something endemic to Islam itself that accounts for violence occurring nearly everywhere Muslims abound. Since 9/11, there have been 25,000 attacks by Muslims worldwide.I posit in my book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, that if Islam is to undergo a reformation, it will require millions of Muslims to renounce Islam, and proclaim that they will not allow the faith to...

ALEX ORTIZ CBS February 10, 2015 Putin And Egypt's President Sisi: A New International Bromance? CAIRO -- Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inked a deal Tuesday for Russia to build Egypt's first nuclear power plant. That's big news for Cairo, but what really made this trip stand out was how famously the two leaders hit it off. One local paper termed Putin "the hero of our time" while another called him "Egypt's V.I.P." And they were right about that. Putin received a royal welcome, complete with honor guard and a chorus of children. Egypt quite literally rolled...

EU member states have been readying themselves to enforce sanctions on Israel for Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria, diplomats revealed Tuesday—and will strike hours after the March 17 elections. Israeli officials in recent weeks met with Europe’s most important foreign ministries at the EU headquarters in Brussels, an Israeli official told Walla! News on condition of anonymity, and said that the planned measures in Europe will be focused on “the illegality of the settlements under international law”—without any distinction between “settlement blocs” generally agreed upon to remain in Israel and isolated communities. “The guiding principle is their deepening and emphasizing the...

Posted one hour ago. Granted its only a Facebook post but a good one I'm sure we all applaud!!

The supposedly unprecedented step taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his plan to speak directly before Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat on March 3, rather than working exclusively with the White House on the issue, actually has an interesting precedent—established in 1975 by none other than Yitzhak Rabin and America’s Democratic Party. That spring, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger undertook a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The negotiations quickly ran into trouble, when Egypt refused to offer anything more than a brief a period of “non-belligerency” in...

Intelligence gathered by Egypt and Israel attest to the former Ansar Bait al-Maqdis - now reborn as the Islamic State’s operational arm in Sinai – being well into advanced preparations for a large-scale terrorist offensive targeting Israel forces manning the Egyptian frontier, along with a string of Egyptian targets across Sinai up to and including the Suez Canal and Cairo. According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terrorism sources, the Islamist group was so elated by the outcome of its multiple attacks on Jan. 29, which left at least 40 Egyptian soldiers dead and more than 100 injured in Sinai and Suez towns, that...

Russian president Vladimir Putin has flown to Cairo for a two-day visit, in a move nominally aimed at bolstering bilateral ties with Egypt that also allows both countries to send pointed messages to the US. As Russian and western diplomats struggle to reach a peace deal over the conflict in Ukraine, Putin will spend Monday evening at Cairo’s opera house. In meetings on Tuesday, the day before the resumption of Ukraine peace talks, Putin is expected to hold discussions about ending the use of the US dollar in bilateral trade between Egypt and Russia. Collaboration between a Russian and Egyptian...

IDF soldier guards weapons confiscated from inside a tunnel near Kibbutz Sufa, July 17, 2014. Photo Credit: IDF Spokesperson The IDF has destroyed “the remains” of a terrorist tunnel that led from Gaza into southern Israel, apparently discovered during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge. The tunnel “penetrated into Israel from the Gaza Strip,” the IDF Spokesperson revealed this morning, Feb. 9 in a statement sent by SMS to media. “During the activity, forces discovered a cache of weapons and explosives,” the statement continued. This indicates — at least to this writer — that either the tunnel was not completely destroyed...

**SNIP** What caused the violence wasn't immediately clear. Security officials said Zamalek fans tried to force their way into the match without tickets, sparking clashes. Fans have only recently been allowed back at matches and the Interior Ministry planned to let only 10,000 fans into the stadium, which has a capacity of about 30,000, the officials said. Zamalek fans, known as "White Knights," posted on their group's official Facebook page that the violence began because authorities only opened one narrow, barbed-wire door to let them in. They said that sparked pushing and shoving that later saw police officers fire tear...

Susan Rice pushed back on critics of President Obama's foreign policy Friday as she unveiled the White House’s new national security strategy. Rice, the White House's national security adviser, said in a speech at the Brookings Institution that the nation is “stronger than we have been in a very long time” despite the bitter debates raging in Washington. “Too often, what's missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World...

A top Iranian military leader claims that U.S. officials have been “begging us” to sign a nuclear deal during closed door negotiations with Tehran over its contested nuclear program, according to recent comments made to the Iranian state-controlled media. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the Basij, a paramilitary group operating under the wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), recently claimed that the “Americans are begging us for a deal on the negotiation table,” according to comments published in Persian and independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon. Naghdi added that American officials routinely “plea” with Iran in...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon visited the Hermon Division of the IDF on Wednesday, following last week’s antitank missile attack from Hezbollah in the nearby Har Dov area, which killed two IDF soldiers. During the visit, Netanyahu and Ya’alon briefed Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Yair Golan, and Northern Command Chief Major General Aviv Kochavi, and met with mayors from the region. “I came here with the defense minister and army commanders, to see the IDF’s preparedness against emerging threats against us in Golan Heights,” Netanyahu stated. “For some time, Iran has been trying to open...

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt refuses to accept the verdict of the electorate and is trying, through brutal terrorism, to delegitimize President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Ever since the el-Sissi government's democratic election, Egypt has been plagued by a wave of terror perpetrated by the Brotherhood against the country's army and security forces in Egypt proper and the Sinai Peninsula, which has damaged the economy and infrastructure. In his most recent speech at Al-Azhar ‎University, on Jan. 1, el-Sissi tried conveying to the "sane" senior religious leaders a brave message about the need to fight terror, calling for introspection and for them...

The following is a letter to the editor submitted by the (Egyptian) Embassy to the Washington Post regarding their editorial board’s recent commentary.To the Editor, The Post’s January 30 editorial entitled “A bleak anniversary in Egypt” is biased and insensitive, to say the least. Published barely hours after the terrorist attack that needlessly took the lives of over 30 of my countrymen, the editorial board fails to show even the slightest compassion for the plight of the victims’ families. The only mention of the attack was by way of laying the blame for the terrorists’ acts squarely on the Egyptian...