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Prosecutors in southern France say five Russians from the Chechnya region have been detained on suspicion of preparing an attack. Local prosecutor Yvon Calvet said the suspects were detained January 19 in the town of Beziers near the Mediterranean coast, around 70 kilometers from Montpellier. French media reports say the five are also suspected of hiding a cache of explosives that was found near a stadium in Beziers

A widely distributed political cartoon by Ranan Lurie, published after the massacre of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, depicts a tiny shrub above ground, and just below the surface, supporting the plant, is a web of thick twisted roots spread in the design of the swastika. These Nazi roots are more than a cartoonist's imagination, carefully tended by the anti-Semites of France, exposed when the French rounded up their Jews, men, women and children, and shipped them to the death camps of World War II. If the cartoonist had dug deeper, he could have drawn the roots...

Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union address was an homage to France. The president might not have intended it as such -- he mentioned the nation only glancingly when denouncing terror attacks in Pakistan and Paris. Yet France was at the heart of the president's address. France has everything that Obama finds wanting in his own country. His entire presidency is a prolonged effort to tear the United States away from free market economics and decentralized political power (what the French deride as the "Anglo Saxon model") toward the kind of socialist, government-dominated society France has achieved. France is...

While the Western world was watching and grieving over the slaughter in Paris last week, and my colleagues in the media were fomenting a meaningless debate about whether President Obama should have gone to Paris to participate in a televised parade, the feds took advantage of that diversion to reveal even more incursions into our liberties than we had known about. We already knew that the NSA, our 60,000 domestic spies, has captured and retained the contents of nearly all emails, text messages, telephone calls, bank statements, utility bills and credit card bills of all Americans since 2009. We already...

The vast majority of Muslims in Germany condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. But they are concerned that a new wave of Islamophobia may wash over the country anyway. […] Germany has experienced a fundamental shift, from a republic that sought to keep immigrants at arm’s length to one that is now the second-most attractive immigrant country after the United States. But societal cohesion is currently being tested. The anti-immigration, Islamophobic protests in Dresden organized by PEGIDA have shown that there is still a significant amount of angst about foreigners in Germany and the Paris attacks have triggered...

Paris, the City of Lights: What will happen to all the art, icons, sculptures, statues, old Basilicas, archeological ruins, when Muslims become the majority in Paris and Europe On my third trip to Paris, it was ten days of drizzly and bone-chilling December. We stayed in a cozy but insufficiently heated hotel, just narrow and winding streets away from the magnificent Basilica of Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre. The stark white dome of Sacré-Cœur situated on top of the hill was visible on a sunny day from most points in Paris. Winding down the cozy village-like streets from the Basilica was Place...

In the wake of the terrorist attack on a kosher market in Paris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked French Jews to come home. I don't particularly like that advice. I think it would be a tragedy if centuries of Jewish French culture had to die out because Jews were chased out by Islamist thugs. The French government agrees -- for now at least -- and has posted armed soldiers everywhere Jews live and gather. Still, what Netanyahu understands is that there is strength in numbers. The more Jews there are in Israel, the stronger Israel will be. The flip...

What is the New York Times’ first response after Muslims massacred secular cartoonists and Jews? Start immediately collecting Muslim whining to bolster claims of Islamophobia. (via Israel Matzav) In the aftermath of the Paris attacks last week, the New York Times is understandably interested in hearing about the experiences of minorities in Europe these days. That is commendable. It’s just the kind of journalism that sheds light on everyday life of people facing adversity the world over. It’s important and informative and insightful, and we applaud it, and look forward to reading it.Scratch that. Actually, the Times is obsessively...

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this? When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions...

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told CNN Tuesday she intends to sue Fox News in the wake of the channel's coverage of supposed "no-go zones" for non-Muslims. Hidalgo said the channel had "insulted" her city. "When we're insulted, and when we've had an image, then I think we'll have to sue, I think we'll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed," Hidalgo told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced."

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Tuesday it was his fault the White House didn’t send the president or another senior member of the administration to a unity rally in Paris earlier this month following the terror attack on a satirical newspaper. “We’ve said we regret we didn’t send someone more senior than out ambassador,” McDonough said in an interview with NBC’s “The Today Show. “That rests on me, that’s my job.” McDonough said he regretted the decision in particular because “the melee that ensued after that has covered up and obfuscated the very good progress that our...

When they tell you it's not Islam you know they have lost their political compass. They are losing their countries out of sheer willful blindness and their inability to face the truth and deal with it. French President Hollande said the murderous Paris terror attacks were “an insult to Islam.” His Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, said, “We are at war with terrorism and radical Islam.” Days later he said France was at war with “terrorism, jihadism and radicalism.” Then, in the same speech he said, “France is not at war against Islam and Muslims,” before announcing a series of measures...

Fox News issued an unusual on-air apology on Saturday night for having allowed its anchors and guests to repeat the false claim that there are Muslim-only “no-go zones” in European countries like England and France that are not under the control of the state and are ruled according to Shariah law. The statement was referred to as “a correction” by the Fox Report host Julie Banderas, who said that “over the course of this last week, we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France.” “Now this applies...

As parliaments in more and more European nations vote to recognize “Palestine,” European politicians insist they are doing so to promote the objective of an independent Palestinian state living in peace beside a secure Israel. But both the declared aims of Palestinian leaders and the pattern of European policy vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians give the lie to European averments of benign intent. Neither party of the divided Palestinian leadership has, to say the least, demonstrated an interest in peace with Israel. Hamas, now controlling Gaza and enjoying extensive popularity in the West Bank, openly trumpets its objective not only...

Dear French personnes, I’ve been deep in thought while drinking a Double Ristretto Venti Half-Soy Nonfat Organic Chocolate Brownie Iced Vanilla Double-Shot Gingerbread Frappuccino at Starbucks, and feel like I owe an apology to you people for ditching France last Sunday. I realize over 40 world leaders and as many as three million people walked in the France Unity March to show solidarity against the fatal terrorist attacks on the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. As you know, I’m the most powerful man in the world, and up until the country started to go downhill under my administration, the U.S....

Last week, France faced the threat that is arguably the toughest to defeat—a threat from within, from its own terrorists. By now, the stories are familiar. France has a problem with homegrown radicals. At least 900 French citizens are among the 2,000 to 3,000 westerners who’ve left home for jihadist training or to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In many ways, the western jihadist represents the worst threat. Able to speak the language fluently, completely familiar with their home countries, and possessing a key weapon -- an American, British, French, or German passport -- they can easily cross...

The gruesome attack on Charlie Hebdo has rallied the French political class, including the magazine’s former critics, behind the banner of “national unity”. But the leader of France’s National Front says she has been left out. Wednesday’s shooting, in which 12 people were killed, including some of France’s most celebrated cartoonists, triggered poignant and spontaneous demonstrations across France, where many held aloft pens to voice support for freedom of expression. The outpouring of grief and solidarity underscored France’s attachment to a cherished tradition of satirical cartoons that goes back to the French Revolution. It also belied the inherently controversial nature...

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will publish a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed along with the words "All is forgiven" Wednesday on the cover of its first issue since Islamist militants killed 12 people at its central Paris offices. In a further show of defiance, the fearless magazine announced it would print three million copies – not the usual 60,000 – when it reappears on newsstands on Wednesday. It will also be translated into six languages including English, Arabic and Turkish, editor-in-chief Gérard Biard told a Paris news conference Tuesday. Daily newspaper Libération, which hosted Charlie Hebdo staff as...

Despite the French president calling for “unity” in the light of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an almighty row broke out on Thursday after the National Front were not invited to Sunday’s Republican rally. France’s politicians were not able to show their new found unity for long. Just a day after the Charlie Hebdo shooting left 12 dead and had politicians calling for the country to unite, a row between politicians broke out after the National Front were not invited to take part in Sunday’s rally for “national unity” in Paris. For her part Marine Le Pen was furious that the...

“We have a lot of new friends, like the pope, Queen Elizabeth and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It really makes me laugh,” Bernard Holtrop, whose pen name is Willem, told the Dutch centre-left daily Volkskrant in an interview published today. France’s far-right National Front leader “Marine Le Pen is delighted when the Islamists start shooting all over the place,” said Willem, 73, a long-time Paris resident who also draws for the French leftist daily Liberation. He added: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”