Free Republic

GAZA, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Hamas militants will retaliate if the Egyptian army wages attacks against the Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip, a senior Hamas official warned on Sunday. Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas strongman, told a political seminar that he rules out any Egyptian war on Gaza, but said "under the current situation, everything is possible, and Hamas will respond to any Egyptian attack on Gaza." Ties between Hamas and Egypt deteriorated since the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, which was followed by security crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters leaving hundreds of them dead while thousands...

Both Turkish and Greek Cypriots have banded together to oppose plans to build a nuclear power station on nearby Turkey’s southern coast. The Cyprus Anti-Nuclear Platform brings together dozens of Greek and Turkish Cypriot groups opposed to the planned Akkuyu station some 80 kilometers from the island’s northern coastline. The opponents say completion of the Akkuyu plant carries huge risks because of the potential for an earthquake in the region. In a declaration on Wednesday’s fourth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, the platform said it also opposes any nuclear plants in other neighboring countries that may cause “a...

Parents are demanding that a teacher of religion classes in northern Turkey be fired after he told some of his female students that they “deserve rape” for not wearing an Islamic headscarf. “You don’t cover your head anyway, so raping you or doing evil to you is permissible [in Islam],” the female teacher, identified by the initials L.Y.İ., told students at the Halil Rıfat Paşa Middle School in the province of Tokat on March 9, according to parents who spoke to Doğan News Agency. The teacher was reportedly angered by noise caused by mixed male and female students in an...

Germany's ambassador to India stepped into a university admissions row after a professor said she wouldn't accept a male Indian student for an internship because of the country's “rape problem”. “We hear a lot about the rape problem in India, which I cannot support. I have many female students in my group,” Professor of Biochemistry at Leipzig University Annette Beck-Sickinger wrote in an email to the applicant. She continued defending her position when a friend of his wrote to her in support. “Reports reach Germany on a weekly base [sic], and especially these 'multi-rape crimes' are threatening, but for me...

Some 4,300 volunteer members of the Danish Home Guard are being told to disassemble their rifles in light of the fact that one of the weapons used in February's shootings in Copenhagen was a stolen military rifle.One of the weapons used in February’s terror attack in Copenhagen was an M95 rifle that had previously been stolen from the home of a Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet) member. As a result, the Home Guard has now decided that it will temporarily require all Home Guard members to turn in the bolts to their rifles, making them unable to be fired.Over 4,300 volunteer...

An "exceptional" tomb from the fifth century BC, likely that of a Celtic prince, has been unearthed in a small French town, shedding light on Iron Age European trade, researchers said Wednesday. The grave, crammed with Greek and possibly Etruscan artefacts, was discovered in a business zone on the outskirts of Lavau in France's Champagne region, said the National Archaeological Research Institute, Inrap. A team from the institute has been excavating the site since October last year, and have dated it to the end of the First Iron Age -- a period characterised by the widespread use of the metal....

Turkey’s Ziraat Bankasi General Manager Hüseyin Aydin has told reporters that the state-run lender plans to launch its off-shoot, Ziraat Katilim Bankasi, an Islamic participation bank, on May, 29, which is the anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. “The 300 million dollar-equivalent Turkish Lira capital has been provided by the Treasury,” Aydin said March 5 while speaking to reporters in Istanbul on the sidelines of a joint meeting of the Union of Arab Banks (UAB) and the Banks Association of Turkey (TBB), which he personally chairs. The participation bank will open 20 branches this year and will operate as...

Austria's parliament has passed a law banning foreign sources of financing to Muslim organisations and requiring imams to be able to speak German, in a move closely watched by other European nations facing growing problems with radical Islam. The text aims to promote what conservative Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz calls an "Islam of European character" by muting the influence of foreign Muslim nations and organizations, and offering Austrian Muslims a mix of increased rights and obligations in practising their faith in the central European country. But the law has generated opposition from several quarters, including Austrian Muslim groups that call...

The world will have to cooperate with Syria to halt the trade in looted antiquities that helps fund jihadist groups, Syria’s culture minister has said, putting the onus on Turkey to stop the smuggling across their shared frontier. Syrian Culture Minister Issam Khalil said a U.N. Security Council resolution aiming to stop groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), from benefiting from the illicit antiquities trade would not be effective without the help of Damascus, a pariah to many Arab and Western states since Syria’s war erupted in 2011. “We have the conclusive documents and evidence...

A prominent bishop on Feb. 25 accused Turkey of preventing Christians from fleeing Syria while allowing jihadists responsible for their persecution to cross its border unchecked. Jacques Behnan Hindo, the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Hasakeh-Nisibi, made the claim on Vatican Radio, a day after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group abducted at least 90 Assyrian Christians from villages which had been under the control of Kurdish forces. "Every day, families are emigrating from Damascus by plane because of the blockade we have around us," the bishop said. "In the north, Turkey allows through lorries, Daesh (ISIL)...

<p>ANKARA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Turkey will go ahead with plans to order a $3.4-billion missile defence system from China, Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said, despite U.S. and NATO concerns over security and compatibility of weaponry.</p>

Doha, Feb 19 (IANS) Qatar said Thursday it has recalled its ambassador to Cairo for consultations following an Egyptian official's statement accusing Doha of supporting terrorism. "The state of Qatar recalled its ambassador to Cairo for talks following the statements made by Egypt's envoy at the Arab League," the official Qatar News Agency reported, citing a Qatari foreign ministry source. Earlier, Saad ben Ali Almohanady, a Qatari foreign ministry official in charge of Arab affairs, rejected the Egyptian statement by Tariq Adel, as "mixing terrorism with the murder and burning of civilians in a barbaric manner". The official repeated Doha's...

Beirut, Feb 17 (IANS) Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah voiced support for "a national anti-terror strategy", affirming that dialogue will continue between the Hezbollah and former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri's al-Mustaqbal movement. In a speech commemorating Hezbollah's "martyr leaders", Nasrallah revealed for the first time that his group was fighting the Sunni jihadi organisation Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, according to a Xinhua report. Hezbollah is already fighting in Syria, alongside President Bashar Assad's forces. Nasrallah said: "I tell those who are asking us to withdraw from Syria, let us go together to Syria and Iraq and to...

Six Bosnian immigrants have been accused of sending money and equipment to terrorists oversees, including fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and al-Qaida in Iraq, the U.S. attorney’s office announced Feb. 6. An indictment unsealed Feb. 6 in St. Louis said the defendants donated money themselves and in some cases collected funds from others in the U.S. and sent the donations oversees. It says two of the defendants used some of the money to buy U.S. military uniforms, firearms accessories, tactical gear and other equipment, which was shipped to people in Turkey and Saudi...

The deputy leader of right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) said on Wednesday that all migration from Arab countries should be stopped. "We should no longer support immigration by people who are totally foreign to our cultural tradition, in fact we ought to block it," Alexander Gauland told Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper. "There are cultural traditions that have a very hard time integrating here ... those cultural traditions are at home in the Middle East," Gauland said. He added that there was a danger of "parallel societies" developing in Germany "with which we won't be able to cope with in...

An Egyptian court on Saturday banned the armed wing of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, declaring it a "terrorist" group, a judiciary official said. Since Egypt's military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the authorities have accused Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, of aiding jihadists who have increased their attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula. Saturday's court verdict followed a complaint from a lawyer accusing the Hamas armed wing of direct involvement in "terrorist operations" in the Sinai, a court official said. The lawyer also accused the movement of using tunnels under the...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodogan said Jan. 31 that the Gulenists in the country, which he dubs “the parallel structure,” have joined forces with the Israeli intelligence service. “The sincere people backing this parallel structure should see with whom this structure is cooperating with,” Erdogan said, while addressing a meeting of the All Industrialist and Businessmen’s Association (TUMSİAD) in Istanbul. “Shame on them if they still cannot see that this structure is cooperating with the Mossad,” he said. Erdoğan accuses the followers of the U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen for illegal wiretappings and a “coup attempt,” starting from the revelation...

A businessman in central Sweden is advertising what he claims is the world’s first Hummer limousine snowplough for hire on Blocket, Sweden’s version of eBay. Håkan Andersson, who runs the Haga Limo company in the tiny town of Töreboda, is leasing out the unlikely machine on the site under the slogan “plough in style”. "We have given an incredible number of tours with our limousines to everyone from students to the municipality's director, all of them swilling bubbly, so now we're taking it a step further and offering ploughing in a little style," Andersson told the local Skaraborgs Läns Tidning...

A woman places flowers at a makeshift memorial in Yangon on January 23, 2015 for two school teachers found dead in a remote village in Shan state Myanmar on Thursday said it would investigate the deaths of two teachers who activists claim were raped and murdered by government troops, as crowds gathered in the country's far north amid rising anger over the killings. The battered bodies of the two women, aged 20 and 21, were found Monday in a remote village in Shan state where they were teaching children on behalf of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC), according to the...

Ömer Sicimoğlu, who works in real estate, bought the abandoned church building in 2013 for personal use. AA Photo An 18th century Greek church in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri has been put up for sale online by its owner, with an asking price of 450,000 euros. Ömer Sicimoğlu, who works in the real estate business, bought the abandoned church building in 2013 for personal use. “The church, which is an important cultural asset, can be restored. We want it to be bought by those who will renovate it," Sicimoğlu told Anadolu Agency. He put an advertisement for the...