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The US House of Representatives passed a scathing rebuke Thursday night to a United Nations Security Council resolution the Obama administration allowed through last month that condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. House Resolution 11 declared the UN motion a “one-sided” effort that is an obstacle to peace, placing disproportionate blame on Israel for the continuation of the conflict and encouraging Palestinians from engaging in direct, bilateral negotiations. […] Introduced by California Rep. Ed Royce (R) and New York Rep. Elliot Engel (D), the top two members of the House Foreign Affairs committee, the resolution was co-sponsored 105 other House members,...

Moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could endanger U.S. diplomats and Marine guards there and elsewhere in the region — “and needlessly so” — State Department spokesman John Kirby warned Wednesday. He said the Obama administration, like previous ones, believes relocating the embassy “is not a good idea.” “It’s not constructive to the overall peace process. It could actually put some of our people, some of our troops, those that work at the embassy, in harm’s way, and needlessly so.” “It could exacerbate tensions not just there but elsewhere in the region too,” Kirby added,...

Bahrain announced on Thursday that it has restored the power of its domestic spy service to make some arrests, reversing a key reform recommended in the wake of the crackdown that followed the country’s 2011 Arab Spring protests. The decree affecting its National Security Agency comes as Bahrain is in the midst of a renewed clampdown on dissent. It also follows an armed assault on a prison that killed a police officer and freed 10 inmates. The decision came in decree, announced by the state-run Bahrain News Agency. It described the decision as making the arrest powers “limited” to terrorism...

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday warned of “serious implications” if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his election promise to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. "Moving the embassy will have serious consequences not only for the Palestinian people, but also for the legitimacy of the entire international struggle against the occupation," he told a visiting delegation from the leftist Meretz party, according to Army Radio. At the same time, Abbas said he does not believe that Trump would actually follow through with the move. "We are acting with patience and...

After the German Interior Minister put forth a bold plan on Tuesday to centralize the country’s security apparatus, conservative leaders at the state level have hit back. Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer on Wednesday categorically rejected Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière’s plan to increase federal powers in domestic security. Germany’s domestic intelligence services are currently decentralized, divided between the federal government and the 16 individual state governments. But de Maizière wants to move the states’ powers to Berlin under the federal BfV intelligence service. […] Hesse interior minister Peter Beuth, CDU, called the reform plans “nonsense” and said such swift moves...

Germany’s federal interior minister has presented “guidelines for a strong state in difficult times.” Some aspects already exist; others are doomed to fail in the face of constitutional reality. […] [Thomas] De Maizière envisions turning over protection of the constitution entirely to the federal government. That would require the dissolution of the agency’s 16 state offices. His rationale: No one intent upon attacking the constitution is interested in destroying governmental order “in one state alone.” Though this sounds plausible as a concept, it could turn out to be too complicated to be put into practice. Domestic security services are charged...

Cologne police have been accused of racial profiling after targeting men of North African appearance on New Year’s Eve. In the US racial profiling is illegal, but in Germany and the UK, the law isn’t that clear. There is no law in Germany that explicitly prevents a police officer from stopping and checking someone for the way he or she looks. Police in Cologne have drawn some criticism for focusing their attention on men who looked as if they might come from North Africa this past New Year’s Eve. They have denied the accusations of racial profiling, even though the...

Amnesty International is making a final push to convince President Obama to circumvent Congress and close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility before the end of his presidency. “On behalf of Amnesty International’s 1.2 million supporters in the United States, I write to make a final plea that you use all the powers of your office to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay,” Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA, wrote in a letter to Obama on Tuesday. “We are gravely concerned that if you fail to do so, President-elect Trump may attempt to bring dozens or even hundreds...

The first reprint of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in Germany since World War II has proved a surprise bestseller, heading for its sixth print run, its publisher said Tuesday. The Institute of Contemporary History of Munich (IfZ) said around 85,000 copies of the new annotated version of the Nazi leader's anti-Semitic manifesto had flown off the shelves since its release last January. However, the respected institute said that far from promoting far-right ideology, the publication had enriched a debate on the renewed rise of "authoritarian political views" in contemporary Western society. It had initially planned to print only 4,000 copies...

Sweden’s presidency of the UN Security Council will focus on conflict prevention and the inclusion of women in peace processes, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has revealed. Writing in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Wallström highlighted three areas Sweden will tackle during its presidency of the Security Council through January 2017. It is the first month of a two-year term as part of the body, after being elected in June last year as a non-permanent member for the 2017-18 period. […] Mali, Syria, Somalia, the DRC, Cyprus, Colombia and the peace process in the Middle East will all be discussed during the...

The Minister of State for Security has issued a stark warning that ISIS is plotting a chemical attack on Britain. Ben Wallace said exercises are being carried out to prepare for such an atrocity. ISIS has the capabilities to produce their own mustard gas, having already used the tactics in the Middle East. Troops fighting against the terror group have been left with appalling injuries — including agonizing blisters on their skin and badly damaged lungs — in a frightening echo of warfare in the trenches on the Western Front. Ingredients to make these bombs are fairly common and easy...

For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it simple: Barack Obama and John Kerry admire and want to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. I have covered this issue my entire adult life and have never met two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy.

Police have confiscated tens of thousands of copies of a banned version of the Koran that came under fire for promoting religious hatred. Now the authorities must decide what to do with them. Throughout 2016, German authorities carried out raids on hundreds of locations across 10 federal states in a crackdown on the “True Religion” Salafist group, confiscating tens of thousands of copies of a fundamentalist translation of the Koran. According to media reports on Friday, the government was grappling with how to dispose of the texts — and the only option may be to bury the whole lot in...

New United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres asked the world “to put peace first,” in New Year’s comments on Sunday, marking his first official statement as head of the organization. The former Portuguese prime minister has taken over after 10 years of leadership from his predecessor Ban Ki-moon. “How can we help the millions of people caught up in conflict, suffering massively in wars with no end in sight?” Guterres asked. “Civilians are pounded with deadly force. Women, children and men are killed and injured, forced from their homes, dispossessed and destitute. No one wins these wars; everyone loses.” …

Sweden’s Migration Agency accepted 77 percent of the record 112,000 asylum claims it processed in 2016, it has revealed in its end of year figures. The agency processed twice as many decisions in 2016 as it did in 2015, putting on track to clear the backlog built up during Europe’s refugee crisis. Some 17,000 asylum seekers were registered as refugees, 47,000 were given a permit due to “alternative needs of protection”, and 5,880 withdrew their applications. “We’re handling it,” the agency’s General Director Mikael Ribbenvik told Sweden’s TT newswire after issuing the figures in a press statement. “In the autumn...

Swedish police faced a hand grenade attack, youths firing rockets and throwing powerful bangers at them, and an axe attacker in an unusually busy New Year’s Eve. […] In Western Sweden alone, there were more than 50 cases of youth shooting rockets at police, the rescue services, or public transport. At close to the strike of midnight, a suspected hand grenade was thrown at a police station in Katrineholm, 150 km southwest of Stockholm, shattering the station’s entry door and window, and damaging four cars parked outside. At around 5.30am, Malmö police shot a 28-year-old man wielding an axe and...

Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Germans on Saturday to hold firm to democratic values in the face of jihadist terror, urging them to counter “murderers who are full of hate” with compassion and cohesion. In her New Year’s address delivered less than two weeks after a Tunisian suspect rammed a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people, Merkel acknowledged it was “bitter and sickening” that the attack and others in July were carried out by asylum seekers. Nevertheless, she defended her decision in September 2015 to let in tens of thousands fleeing war from mostly Arab...

Abdul Yusuf and Jamal Abdulahi hadn’t seen the need before, but a few weeks after the November election the two men went to a gun store and started the paperwork for permits to carry. They are among the Muslims and members of other minority groups who are joining the ranks of Minnesotans who applied to become gun owners in 2016. For Abdulahi, it’s a natural response to an uptick in hate crimes since the election of Donald Trump. “Donald Trump has directly pointed fingers at the Somali community,” Abdulahi said, referring to the president-elect’s statements before the election that Somalis...

A Christian woman was stabbed by an asylum seeker after he heard her reading from the Bible. The 50-year-old woman was only saved by her winter coat when she was attacked with a knife in the accommodation in Timelkam in Vöcklamarkt in Upper Austria. Her alleged attacker is a 22-year-old man from Afghanistan who had taken offense to the fact that the woman had been invited by Christian residents of the property to discuss the Bible. […] When questioned by police, the man accepted he had overreacted, but claimed he was suffering from “personal problems”. …

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he is willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump to reach a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel. Abbas spoke Saturday at an event marking the anniversary of his Fatah party. He said "We want to emphasize our willingness to work with the newly-elected American administration... to achieve peace... based on a two-state solution." Abbas thanked the U.S. for its U.N. abstention vote last week, which allowed the Security Council to adopt a resolution declaring Israeli settlements in territory claimed by Palestinians illegal.