Free Republic

Minya, Egypt, Jul 19, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For Christians in Egypt, the possibility of martyrdom is not a remote one. Icon of the 21 Martyrs of Libya. Image courtesy of Tony Rezk, via tonyrezk.blogspot.com“It is something they concretely feel, it is part of their Christian life,” Father Paolo Asolan, an Italian priest who recently visited Egypt, told CNA. “And for a mother and a father, the fact that one of their sons can become a martyr is always a great gift.” The Islamic State’s beheading of 20 Coptic Christians and another man shocked the world in February...

After years languishing behind competitors at home and abroad, Russia's iconic MiG aircraft manufacturer has been thrown a lifeline. The company is now building 46 brand-new MiG-29M fighter jets in a contract reported to be worth at least $2 billion dollars. Yet despite the hints which have appeared in the Russian press over the past year, official confirmation remains elusive. The jets are being built for an unspecified buyer. Only a shareholder’s report released by a MiG component supplier has confirmed that the order is real. The document outlines a deal for 92 engines used in the MiG-29. With two...

A Muslim mob in southern Egypt stabbed a Coptic Christian to death over a personal feud, officials said Monday, stoking anger among Christians amid a spike in assaults on their community. Bishop Macarious of the southern Minya governorate said the mob attacked the families of two priests with knives and batons in the village of Tahna al-Gabal late Sunday. A family member, Fam Khalaf, 27, was killed and the father of one of the priests was wounded. Police said they arrested four people in connection to the incident. …

Turkey is convinced Arab countries were involved in Friday night’s failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem. The source said that Ankara believes the UAE and Egypt, two of the bitterest enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world, sought to undermine Erdogan’s regime, one of the movement’s staunchest allies and sponsors. Turkish embassies and intelligence agents across the Middle East have been trying to accumulate damning evidence of the involvement of these countries’ espionage agencies in the failed coup, he added. Turkey has also inquired whether the Turkish cleric Fethullah...

"Statement which urged all parties to 'respect the democratically elected government of Turkey' opposed by Egypt, which officials say argued that UNSC not in position to determine whether a government had been democratically elected" The United Nations Security Council failed on Saturday to condemn the violence and unrest in Turkey after Egypt objected to a statement that called on all parties to "respect the democratically elected government of Turkey," diplomats said. The U.S.-drafted statement also expressed grave concern over the situation in Turkey, urged the parties to show restraint, avoid any violence or bloodshed, and called for an urgent end...

Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters have claimed the deadly terrorist attack in France was “to make people lose attention” [sic] in their movement and focus on “white” lives instead. “Ok I’ve come to the conclusion that what happened in Nice was to make people lose attention off [sic] #BlackLivesMatter and focus and unite against us”, wrote Twitter user Semsa, who is based in London but says “Egypt’s the motherland”. She has since made her account private. “Don’t #PrayForNice we are fighting a civil war against whites. #BLM”, tweeted Franklin Omar, an activist who also appears to be from London, and...

Cairo (AFP) - The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is showcasing for the first time the earliest writing from ancient Egypt found on papyrus, detailing work on the Great Pyramid of Giza, antiquities officials said Thursday. The papyri were discovered near Wadi el-Jarf port, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Gulf of Suez town of Zafarana, the antiquities ministry said. The find by a French-Egyptian team unearths papers telling of the daily lives of port workers who transported huge limestone blocks to Cairo during King Khufu's rule to build the Great Pyramid, intended to be his burial structure. One document...

Considered one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world still in operation, the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai is home to more than two centuries of history — and more than that of legend. Tradition claims, for example, that the main altar of the monastery is built on the spot where the Burning Bush first addressed Moses. But the monastery, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO, also holds other seats of honor. For example, it accommodates the oldest continuously operating active library in the world.From the day it was founded in the sixth century (between 548 and...

Israel has carried out drone strikes against terrorists operating in the Sinai Peninsula in recent years, according to a Bloomberg news report Monday that quoted an unnamed former senior official. The airstrikes were conducted with Egypt’s knowledge and blessing, according to the ex-official, who spoke to the US-based news site on condition of anonymity. While it has become a well-known secret that Jerusalem and Cairo cooperate closely on security measures in the Sinai and Gaza, many of the details of that relationship have been kept a closely guarded secret. This report, published during Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry’s visit to...

Minya (Agenzia Fides) - An appeal to ask the police to enforce the law protecting citizens from any sectarian discrimination was launched yesterday by Anba Makarius, Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Minya, after the series of incidents which in recent weeks have again recorded a sharp rise in cases of violence suffered particularly by Egyptian Christians. Now – highlighted Coptic Orthodox Archbishop - such violent attacks from the assault on homes to targeted kidnappings for ransom, are continuing at an average of one every ten days. In recent times the assault on homes of Christian families perpetrated in the village of...

Egypt’s foreign minister paid a rare visit to Israel on Sunday, saying that his country remains a “steadfast and unwavering” supporter of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians but warning that conditions for achieving that are deteriorating. Sameh Shoukry’s trip was the first official visit to Israel since 2007 and reflected the strong but low-profile ties that have developed between the two countries in recent years. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Shoukry’s visit was aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. …

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Saturday rejected a proposal to include a statement in the party's platform calling for Israel's "end to occupations and illegal settlements," CNN reported. ... While the committee voted against the addition 95-73, CNN reported that the move garnered the loudest negative response of the day from the audience. ... One crowd member was escorted out of the meeting after he stood up and yelled that the party had "sold out" to AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

The time has surely arrived for trilateral negotiations to be commenced between Israel, Jordan and Egypt to allocate sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza between their respective sovereign States The Quartet—America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations—has effectively consigned any negotiated two-state solution to political oblivion with its latest Report. Two statements in the Report stymie any resumption of negotiations—stalled since April 2014.

A senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently threatened Israel, saying the ground is ready for the annihilation of “the Zionist regime”. The comments by IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami were made at a sermon in Tehran this past Friday prior to prayers marking Al-Quds Day. He also declared that Iran has over 100,000 missiles waiting in Lebanon alone and that tens of thousands of other missiles were placed throughout the Muslim world in order to wipe "the accursed black dot" – that is Israel – from the map of the world. Salami also threatened Kurdish leaders...

President Hassan Rouhani said the last year’s nuclear deal “was the cheapest way to achieve Iran’s goals and interests.” Speaking in Tehran on Saturday at an iftar meal breaking the Ramadan fast, Rouhani said the pre-Iran nuclear-deal era is past and Iran now needs to take advantage of the new atmosphere to pursue its “national interests more than before,” Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for student associations to establish a “unified anti-US and anti-Zionist front” among the Muslim world’s students, Tasnim News Agency reported. “By using advanced means of...

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated over a stall in an arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Obama once questioned the necessity of maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge in the region, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday. Panetta was confirming a report from Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who attributed the claim to him in an article on Obama's foreign policy doctrine published last March. The former Pentagon chief said the White House, at the time, was deeply concerned that Israel was preparing to unilaterally strike Iran. Simultaneously, the administration was also hoping to complete with Riyadh a significant sale of fighter jets....

Three years into the tenure of Hassan Rouhani who himself and many in the West promised to be a “moderate” and “reformist” poised to bring about change in Iran, we have only witnessed an unprecedented spike in human rights violations, including horrendous public floggings and especially executions. Overt 2,400 executions in the past three years is the report card Iran and Rouhani carry, with Amnesty International and many other international human rights organizations registering Iran sent nearly 1,000 people to the gallows in 2015 alone. Various religious minorities, including Arabs, Baha’is, Christians, Jews and others have also been targeted...

Reports indicate that a supporter of the anti-Israel BDS movement and a self-proclaimed radical who has supported numerous anti-American initiatives has been named the host of a new late night talk show on VH1. Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN commentator, will launch VH1 Live which will begin airing weekly on the Viacom-owned cable network on Sunday, July 17 at 10 PM. Would a supporter of segregation be rewarded with a talk show? How about someone who is fiercely anti-LGBT? It seems that bigotry is only OK if it is directed at Israel. Hill is a staunch opponent of Israel, a...

The plane’s cockpit voice recorder indicates there was a fire on the aircraft before it crashed — and an attempt to put it out, a senior source from the airline told CNN Tuesday. The revelation adds another detail to a picture that’s been slowly emerging since the May 19 crash. But investigators have said it’s still too soon to say what happened aboard the flight. The cockpit voice recorder captures sounds from the flight deck, including flight crew conversation, alarms and background noise that can help investigators understand what the flight crew was doing. Authorities haven’t released a transcript or...

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". demotic [dig MOT ik]hear it pronounced adjective Demotic pertains to anything relating to the common people. In that sense, it can be use as synonymous with "popular."Demotic has a narrow, specialized sense as a designation of a simplified form of ancient Egyptian writing in which the priests kept their records.The adjective comes from the Greek demotikus (popular, plebian), based on 111111111111,i1.demotes (a plebian) and demos (the common people, the populas.King Demos is a facetious...