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Tourists have always taken selfies of themselves at Sydney's most iconic landmarks, but on a day that has horrified the city many people are taking macabre snapshots for old times' sake as well. All day people were uploading selfies of themselves on Twitter from as close as possible to where the hostage siege was taking place. Just to make the photos more authentic some even took them with television cameras in the background. Two onlookers even looked like they were taking a 'celebration selfie' than one at a hostage siege. Others smiled happily as if they were standing in front...

Five people have escaped from a cafe in central Sydney where a gunman had earlier taken several people hostage Monday and forced two people to hold up a black flag bearing an Islamic message written in Arabic in the store's window.

SYDNEY (AP) — Five people escaped from a Sydney cafe where a gunman took an unknown number of hostages during Monday morning rush hour. Two people inside the cafe earlier held up a flag with an Islamic declaration of faith that has often been used by extremists, raising fears that a terrorist incident was playing out in the heart of Australia's biggest city. The first three people ran out of the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in downtown Sydney six hours into the hostage crisis, and two women sprinted from a fire exit into the arms of waiting police shortly afterward. Both...

he unidentified gunman has forced hostages to call him "The Brother" and demanded a flag of the Islamic State terror group in return for the release of a hostage. He has also demanded to speak directly with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Terror in Sydney As Gunman Takes At Least 13 Hostages At Lindt Cafe, forces crying women to hold black Islamic flag against the window and 'demands to speak to Tony Abbott' By EMILY CRANE and SARAH DEAN and LOUISE CHEER and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and CANDACE SUTTON 14 December 2014 | UPDATED: 21:56 EST, 14 December 2014 Witnesses described how a man wearing a headband covered in Arabic walked into the Lindt cafe in Martin Place and produced a shotgun from a blue bag at around 9.45am. Shortly afterwards hostages were seen with their hands pressed against the windows holding up...

This story is breaking now. Live stream here. “A man is holding several people hostage at Martin Place cafe,” News.com.au, December 15, 2014 (thanks to Jill): AT LEAST one armed man is holding several people hostage at a cafe in Martin Place in Sydney. There are hostages standing with their hands up at the windows in the popular Lindt chocolate shop, which has two or three entrances. There is also a black and white flag being held up in a window. It is believed to be the Black Standard, a jihadist flag. Staff in shop aprons can be seen with...

<p>The cafe in Sydney's central business district has been surrounded by armed police.</p>

A hostage has been forced to hold up an Islamic State flag in the window of a shop in Martin Place that is currently under siege. It is believed there are 12 hostages in the store and an ISIS flag has been placed in the window. Martin Place is the main financial area of the Sydney CBD.

<p>Police stormed a cafe in central Sydney early Tuesday where a gunman held more than a dozen hostages for more than 16 hours, firing automatic weapons and throwing grenades moments after captives were seen fleeing the buidling in terror. A scene of pandemonium erupted in the early morning just minutes after hostages started emerging from the cafe on their own or in small groups. Eleven hostages The dramatic end stage of the siege came as the gunman holding the remaining captives was revealed as a self-proclaimed Islamic cleric Man Haron Monis. Monis is a 49-year-old man living in southwest Sydney, but is originally from Iran and a self-proclaimed sheik, and also sent hate mail to the families of Australian dead soldiers between 2007 and 2009, according to The Daily Telegraph. The seige in the Lindt cafe in Martin Place on Monday follows an unsuccessful attempt to have these charges overturned in the High Court on Friday, The Age reported. Monis received 300 community service hours and a two-year good behaviour bond for the correspondence, which he claims were his version of sympathy cards, sent with the help from his girlfriend Amirah Droudis. Arriving as a refugee in Australia in 1996, the hostage-taker was charged as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife - who was allegedly stabbed and set on fire on a flight of stairs in her western Sydney apartment block in November 2013. The man's current partner was charged with murder but they both received bail as the case was deemed too weak.</p>

We don't know how the Sydney siege is going to end yet but of one thing we can be pretty sure: the main concern of Australia's national broadcaster ABC will not be the suffering and fear experienced by those innocent people who have been held hostage; rather it will be that there might be some anti-Muslim backlash. How do we know this? First, because ABC is so left wing it makes the BBC look like Fox News. Second, because this is how sensitive, progressive types always respond to incidents of this kind. (One of the BBC's first reactions after the...

The details are still sketchy, but this is what is apparently confirmed as of this writing (8PM EST Sunday night): as many as 50 people have been taken hostage in the Lindt Chocolat Café in Sydney, Australia’s central pedestrian mall, Martin Place. Some of the hostages have been forced at gunpoint to hold up the black flag of Islamic jihad against a window of the café.

The suspected jihadist holding up to 15 people hostage in a Sydney cafe is an Iranian murder and sex assault suspect known for sending hate mail to the families of Australian soldiers killed overseas, police confirmed. As the standoff entered its 15th hour, with police and news crews surrounding the shop as frightened hostages looked out through the front window, police identified Man Haron Monis as the gunman holding captives inside Lindt Chocolat Cafe. His identity was known early on to police and media alike, but was only released for the record by police sources as night fell on Sydney...

Moscow, December 15, Interfax - The Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society (IOPS) has announced the creation of a White Book on crimes against Christians in the Middle East, which will be presented at the United Nations Human Rights Council in February 2015. "We are working to compile the so-called White Book, containing a sorrowful list of names of the slain and tortured Christians, instances of churches and shrines being destroyed, and eyewitness accounts. We would like to present this book at the UN HRC at its next session in late February - early March," IOPS Vice President Yelena Agapova told a...

Radical Muslim cleric Sheik Man Haron Monis has been revealed to be the ringleader in the Sydney cafe siege that has seen up to 30 people held hostage for more than 10 hours. Monis was born Manteghi Bourjerdi and fled from Iran to Australia in 1996 where he changed his name to Man Haron Monis and assuming the title of Sheik Haron. He has gained media attention in the past for a "hate mail" campaign, protesting the presence of Australian troops in Afghanistan. The campaign saw him and his partner Amirah Droudis post hate-filled letters to the families of dead...

<p>A QUARTER OF a century has passed since 44 states said "No, thanks" to Jimmy Carter's offer to serve a second term, yet he still evidently thinks his loss is explained not by foreign policy debacles, such as invading Iran with eight helicopters, and a misery index — inflation plus unemployment — of 22, almost triple today's index.</p>

Last week a U.S. journalist, Serena Shim, was murdered in Turkey for exposing the truth of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan allowing and facilitating ISIS militants going to and from Turkey into strategic positions around Kobane (Kobani). Now an independent journalist team have used video to show Turkish police and military meeting with ISIS militants on the Turkish border. Obviously the brutal reality of this expose’ is dangerous to Erdogan’s deceptive claims to the contrary. As a consequence, and in an effort to hide the inherent reality while simultaneously deflecting attention from both events, the Erdogan administration is directing Western media

Relying on allies that aren’t allies is yet another consequence of the Washington establishment’s determined refusal to face the realities of the jihad, and to formulate policy based on those realities. “Qatar ‘broke promise to US over Guantanamo detainee,'” by David Blair, the Telegraph, December 12, 2014 (thanks to Lookmann): Qatar broke an “explicit” promise by allowing a former Guantánamo detainee who had trained with al-Qaeda to leave the country and visit Britain, a new report has found. Jarallah al-Marri, who attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks on September 11, was freed from Guantánamo in...

In an impromptu sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheik Omar Abu Sara called to slaughter the Jews, whom he called "the most evil of Allah's creations." The sermon was posted on the Internet on November 28, 2014. Transcript is pending. Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon delivered by Palestinian preacher Sheik Omar Abu Sara at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was posted on the Internet on November 28, 2014: Omar Abu Sara: Let me start by saying that talking about the traits of the Jews requires one to get into a special mode, because we are dealing with people to...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) announced on Sunday that the draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council that would set a two-year deadline for Israel to “end its occupation” will be submitted on Wednesday. "The Palestinian leadership took a decision to go to the Security Council next Wednesday to vote on their project to end the occupation," senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) member Wassel Abu Yussef told AFP after a meeting in Ramallah. The Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment ahead of Monday's meeting in Rome between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry...

OPEC won't rush to cut oil production even if prices fall as low as $40 per barrel, one of the cartel's members said Sunday. The energy minister for the United Arab Emirates told Bloomberg at a Dubai conference that the middle eastern oil producers believe "the market will stabilize itself." "We are not going to change our minds because the prices went to $60 or to $40," Suhail Al-Mazrouei said. Even as it has watched prices dip, OPEC declined to cut back on production at its November meeting. Some observers had expected a production cut to boost the price of...