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Saudi Arabia on Sunday warned the West against putting pressure on Egypt's military-backed government to halt a crackdown on supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. "We will not achieve anything through threats," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, told reporters through an interpreter during a visit to Paris.The Saudi official made his comments after meeting French President Francois Hollande, who on Thursday called for a swift end to a state of emergency imposed by Egypt's military authorities.

Ahead of the new parliamentary term, French Ministers made predictions on how France will have evolved by 2025. The country will have no unemployment, little debt, housing for everyone and an industry that will be the envy of the world, they hope. … (Finance minister Pierre) Moscovici’s assessment is massively positive, even if it is tempered by the prediction that France’s position among the world’s top economic powers (it’s currently in 5th place) will drop to 8th or 9th place “if the huge growth of the emerging economies continues apace”. But France will nevertheless be in a much stronger position...

The rise of the “mostly secular” Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has had a decidedly non-secular effect: Persecution of Egypt’s Coptic Christians is on the rise. In the latest bout of civil unrest, the Brotherhood torched three churches. Copts are a minority in Egypt. They don’t control the military government any more than they controlled Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government. But notice how AFP characterizes the burnings.Supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi torched three churches in central Egypt on Wednesday in reprisal attacks as police dispersed demonstrations in Cairo, reports said.“Reprisal attacks”? They’re attacking Christians, who are largely powerless in Egypt,...

(CNSNews.com) – The leader of the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram – which the State Department so far has refused to designate as a foreign terrorist organization – boasted Monday that it was now strong enough to “comfortably confront” the United States. Boko Haram is not only fighting the cause of Islam in Nigeria, Abubakar Shekau said in a video message, but also against the leaders of the U.S., France and all other countries that do not rule according to the teachings of the Qur’an, the Lagos Guardian daily reported

France’s campaign in Mali exposes Europe’s unpreparedness for 21st-century war. WITH WELL-ARMED radical Islamist insurgents closing in last winter on Mali’s capital, Bamako, French President François Hollande suddenly decided to defend Western civilization. Plunging in the polls as the most unpopular French president since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, he just might have had ulterior motives; diverting hostile public opinion at home with a military escapade abroad is a tried and true tactic for floundering chiefs of state. Be that as it may, French troops, mainly Foreign Legion, began deploying to Mali in Operation Serval on January 11....

Chinese authorities have launched an investigation against French drugmaker Sanofi following a news report that accused the company of bribing hundreds of Chinese doctors in 2007. An unnamed whistleblower told the Guangzhou-based, state-owned 21st Century Business Herald that the French company had paid 503 doctors a total of $274,000 to prescribe Sanofi products, disguising the payments as grants for research programs. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday that the Beijing municipal health bureau was teaming up with disciplinary authorities to look into the research programs and determine whether the payments were actually bribes. …

The two most ardent boosters of the Normandy invasion were Stalin and Harry Hopkins ... Churchill famously urged that the advance on Germany continue from already-won bases in Italy and elsewhere in south-central Europe. Stalin’s demand for the big U.S.-British push in northern France, however, prevailed. According to the tally of one peeved letter to the editor in the New York Times, this would put the Allies on track to open their ninth front. Of course, in order to gather sufficient forces for the June 1944 D-Day invasion, men and equipment, particularly landing craft, had to be withdrawn from the...

Israel will not enter into any new agreements with the EU under the terms of the recently published settlement guidelines, diplomatic sources said Thursday following a meeting on the matter chaired by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Under the guidelines, Israel would have to sign a territorial clause reneging claims to the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan before entering in any future agreement with the EU. The guidelines also forbid any dealings with Israeli entities over the Green Line. The sources said that Israel would ask for further clarifications about the guidelines. It was not immediately clear whether Israel...

Forth In A Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Unlike any leader before him, Napoleon Bonaparte engineered his rise to power, almost out of nowhere, not only through military prowess — but also through his mastery of propaganda to stir the public. "What strikes one almost immediately is the depth to which Bonaparte understood the art of propaganda and the degree to which he was personally involved in its creation," wrote historian Wayne Hanley in "The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda, 1796-1799." That's what led to Napoleon — almost a foreigner — to reach the heights of power and secure...

A French government agency responsible for maintaining the country’s secular values has recommended banning university students from wearing religious symbols such as crucifixes, Jewish skullcaps and Muslim headscarves. In a report seen by French daily Le Monde on Monday, the High Council for Integration (HCI) said it was alarmed by “growing tensions in all sectors of university life” that were undermining the country’s secular values.

As I reported in last night’s news feed, the new French Counterjihad celebrity, known everywhere only by her soubriquet “The Blonde”, was suppressed by YouTube: Google’s behemoth took all three of her videos down.

The full parliament is now expected to formally lift her protection from prosecution as an MEP after a vote on the recommendation on July 3, clearing the way for her to face race hate charges in a French court. Sajjad Karim, a British Tory MEP on the parliament's legal affairs committee, voted in favour Ms Le Pen losing her parliamentary immunity. "There is a red line between freedom of speech and inciting racial hatred," he said. "I, along with many other MEPs, today voted to drop Ms Le Pen's immunity and I am confident that the majority of the European...

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's hopes of a political comeback got a boost on Tuesday after a fundraising campaign he spearheaded to avert a financial crisis for his conservative UMP party raised 8.3 million euros in less than a month. The national drive to refill the UMP coffers -- dubbed "Sarkothon" by the media -- underscores Sarkozy's continued star appeal among centre-right voters despite his loss of the presidency to Socialist Francois Hollande in May 2012. With the UMP's finances now largely repaired, Sarkozy can more easily prepare for a possible presidential bid in 2017. For this, he will have...

France and Germany are closing their embassies in Yemen on Sunday and Monday, which follows in the wake of the United States, which issued a global travel alert yesterday citing an al-Qaeda threat. That alert also caused the State Department to announce it would close its embassies this Sunday around the Muslim world. Interpol, meanwhile, issued a global security alert Saturday in connection with suspected al-Qaeda involvement in several recent prison escapes including those in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan. The alert calls on Interpol's 190 member countries to help determine whether these events are co-ordinated or linked.

"Everybody in France knows there is anti-Semitism except Jacques Chirac,” said Olivier Guland, editor of France's largest Jewish newspaper, Tribune Juif. Guland was speaking with Arutz Sheva Israel National Radio about his revealing conversation with Chirac, during which the French President denounced reports of anti-Semitic incidents in France as “rumors.” Two days ago, during a presidential reception for newspaper editors, Guland was angrily received by Chirac when he introduced himself as the editor of the Jewish Tribune Juif. “You must stop,” Chirac said. When Guland asked, “Stop what, Mr. President?” Chirac answered, “Stop saying that there is anti-Semitism in France. ...

PARIS, May 11 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac warned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday of repercussions if Israel continued what Chirac called an "anti-French campaign" maligning France as anti-Semitic. "The president objected strongly to the anti-French campaign currently being waged in Israel in an attempt to present France as an anti-Semitic country," spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said after Chirac telephoned Sharon. "This campaign is unacceptable and cannot continue without repercussions," Chirac told Sharon, according to Colonna. Chirac, re-elected in a landslide victory over extreme-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen last Sunday, phoned both Sharon and Palestinian President...

French President Jacques Chirac on Monday urged the international community to avoid punishing the Palestinians even if Hamas offers no clear, quick responses to demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel. Chirac spoke after talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II, who said the region could plunge into a decade or more of violence if the Palestinians do not have their own state within two years. The meeting with the king reflected Chirac's long-standing efforts to court Arab countries and project himself as a force of moderation between the West and the Muslim world. "We must find a way to...

Feb. 26, 2003 Belgium's Michel hits back at Israeli critics of war crimes law By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BRUSSELS, Belgium - Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel hit back Wednesday at Israeli critics of Belgium's contentious war crimes law, saying his government was not behind efforts to bring Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon to trial. In a letter published in Belgian and Israeli newspapers, Michel said Belgium's 1993 law was the "expression of the political will to put an ethical dimension into our foreign policy." Michel criticized the Israeli government, which recalled its ambassador two weeks ago after Belgium's Supreme Court ruled...

Nathalie Soussan loves her native France but thinks she may have to build a life elsewhere. At 21 she is an intern for the French House at Columbia University, and says she is afraid to return to France because of the pervasive acceptance of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in her country. Soussan is Jewish. There are roughly 5 million Muslims and 650,000 Jews in France, the largest number for both communities in Europe. Most of the attacks on Jews occur in Paris suburbs and other neighborhoods where Jews and Muslims live in close proximity. “Since the Jewish and Muslim...

Sins on the Seine Reviewed by   NOAH POLLAK DAVID PRYCE-JONES Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews Encounter Books, 2006, 171 pages  On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah militants launched rockets and mortars into Israel to divert attention from a simultaneous ambush on an Israel Defense Forces border patrol, in which three soldiers were killed, two were abducted, and five more were killed in the rescue attempt that followed. Two days later, French President Jacques Chirac pronounced Israel’s nascent military response “completely disproportionate” and added that “One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to...