Free Republic

ADEN, Yemen, April 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 15 were killed and 10 others wounded as army troops loyal to the Shiite Houthi group were hit by bombs in Yemen's southern province of Lahj on Monday evening, a government official told Xinhua. "Suspected al-Qaida terrorists planted explosive device on a bicycle and the device exploded at a military site manned by pro-Houthi forces in Houta city, Lahj's provincial capital, killing 15 soldiers and injuring 10 others including five civilians," the local government official based in Lahj said on condition of anonymity. A military intelligence source in Lahj confirmed to Xinhua...

A Muslim cleric has for the first time in 85 years recited the Koran in the Hagia Sophia, the world famous landmark of Istanbul which is now a museum after serving as a church and a mosque, reports said Saturday. The Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum accessible to all by the secular founders of modern Turkey in the 1930s and secular Turks are wary of any moves to re-Islamise the building. A passage from the Koran, the holy scripture of Islam, was recited late Friday at a ceremony in the Hagia Sophia to mark the opening of a...

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was welcomed during a ceremony on April 10 with the "New Turkey Anthem" performed by an Ottoman military band, which praised him as "Our Leader." During the inauguration ceremony for New Turkey Strategic Research Center in the Gölbaşı neighborhood of Ankara, Erdoğan listened to the anthem, composed by writer and former politician Hasan Celal Güzel. The Mehter band of Ankara Municipality performed the anthem. "The struggle for New Turkey is our Red Apple," Erdoğan said in reference to the lyrics in his speech. Denoting the mythical Turkish land in Central Asia, "Red Apple" is a symbol...

California lawmakers on Wednesday pushed forward a bill that would ban parents from citing their personal beliefs as a reason to let their school-going children remain unvaccinated. The measure passed the state Senate health committee by a vote of 6-2, the bill's co-author, Democrat Richard Pan, said in a statement. "I've personally witnessed the suffering caused by vaccine-preventable diseases, and all children deserve to be safe at school," said Pan, who is also a pediatrician. "The personal belief exemption is now putting other school children and people in our community in danger." Pan proposed the bill, which would leave in...

Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has released a fatwa stating that usage of toilet paper is permissible within Islam, though it emphasized that water should be the primary source of cleansing. Reminding that for a prayer to be religiously legitimate, one’s body, clothes and the place where the prayer is to be performed should be free of items defined as “unclean” by Islam, the fatwa said the cleaning should be conducted with water. “If water cannot be found for cleansing, other cleaning materials can be used. Even though some sources deem paper to be unsuitable as a cleaning material,...

Turkish officials have launched a probe after a teacher posed for a photo with her students who made a snowwoman that “violates social values,” Turkish media reported April 7. Çilem Sakine Coşkun, a physical education teacher at Nurhak Anadolu High School in the southern Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş, was recently photographed with a group of students who had made a snowwoman in the schoolyard. But local Education Ministry officials launched a probe into Coşkun for “appearing in a photograph that violates social values,” according to an April 7 report by daily Vatan. Although officials did not clarify what exactly “violates...

The United States has taken more than 5,600 refugees from Turkey, including 664 Syrian refugees, and expects to see those numbers rise in the coming months, a U.S. State Department official said April 3. “The U.S. took a total of 5,624 refugees out of Turkey last year, including 664 Syrian refugees, as well as significant numbers of Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans,” U.S. Assistant Secretary Anne C. Richard of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration said at a press roundtable at Ankara’s U.S. embassy on April 3. The event discussed the number of Syrian refugees taken in...

The firm operating the Paris subway has come under fire for apparently pushing France's beloved secularity too far with its refusal to display an ad with the mention "Christians of the East." French music group "The Priests" had planned to advertise their upcoming June concert in Paris with a poster sporting a banner that said proceeds would go towards the cause of Christians persecuted in places such as Iraq and Syria.But the state-owned RATP firm that operates the subway and its advertising agency Metrobus ordered the group's producers to take off the banner, pointing in a statement issued last week...

NAIROBI, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan authorities on Sunday revealed the identity of one of the terrorists who attacked Garisa University college on Thursday. The spokesman in the Ministry of Interior Mwenda Njoka named Abdirahim Abdullahi, the son of a Mandera chief, as one of the four terrorist. He was also a law graduate from the University of Nairobi. Abdullahi was positively identified by family and friends. He disappeared from Kenya in 2013 and his family and security officials suspected he had joined the Al-Shabaab.

Members of Turkey’s Jewish community attend the reopening ceremony of the Great Synagogue in Edirne on March 26 after a five-year government restoration project. REUTERS Photo Just a week before Passover, Turkish Jews woke up to a morning full of excitement and hope. They got on the buses waiting to take them to Edirne, to the city that their families once had to leave following the Thrace pogroms in 1934. It was the reopening day of the Great Synagogue, which had been left in ruins for decades. “I was the last rabbi that had served in the synagogue,” said David...

The town that inspired the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet in the movie "Star Wars" has become a backdrop in Tunisia's struggle to prevent the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from gaining a foothold there, CNN reported March 24. This struggling town on the fringes of the Sahara still draws a few fans of the movie but now finds itself part of a real conflict, as a way-station for jihadists crossing the Libyan border 60 miles to the east, according to the report. Earlier this month, before the gun attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis,...

AMMAN, March 24. /TASS/. Jordan and Russia on Tuesday signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Jordan. According to a TASS correspondent, the document was signed by chief of Russia’s state-run corporation Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko and Jordan Atomic Energy Commission Chariman Khaled Toukan. "I would like to stress that Rosatom and the entire Russian nuclear sector take Jordan’s invitation to build its first nuclear plant as big trust," Kiriyenko said. He pledged that the Russian side would use "its entire experience to build the most state-of-the-art and safest nuclear plant." Apart from...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a new Republican-backed law in Wisconsin that requires voters to present photo identification when they cast ballots. The court declined to hear an appeal filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law.

Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top officer responsible for foreign operations, provides assistance in Iraq "whenever we need him," Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr militia, said on Sunday. "He was giving very good advice. The battle ended now, and he returned to his operations headquarters," Ameri told journalists close to the Al-Alam area north of Baghdad. He was apparently referring to the battle to retake the nearby city of Tikrit from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, which began earlier this month and has since become a siege. "Qassem Soleimani is here whenever we need him," said Ameri, whose Badr...

NEW DELHI, India - Police in eastern India were left red-faced when a raid on a sex district discovered four of their own along with a convicted murderer whom they were supposed to be guarding, a report said Sunday. The four constables had been tasked with transporting the murderer from a jail in Jharkhand to hospital for a check-up, the Hindustan Times reported. But the officers decided to make a 206-kilometer (128-mile) detour to visit the red-light area in the town of Asansol across the border in West Bengal state, the newspaper said. West Bengal police rounded up the four...

Toyota Motor is finalising plans for its first passenger car assembly plant in Mexico that could be approved by its board as early as next month, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The plant would make the popular Corolla compact sedan and begin production in 2019. Based on recent investments by rivals, including Volkswagen, a new assembly plant would represent an investment of over $1 billion for Toyota. A green light for the plant would signal an end to a 3-year expansion freeze imposed by the Japanese automaker's president Akio Toyoda, who has blamed aggressive expansion a...

Vegetarians look away. If you've ever craved the smell of fast food all day long, Burger King has come up with the ultimate solution with the launch of a new burger-scented cologne. The cologne will supposedly imitate the signature aroma of the Whopper Burger, which consists of 100 per cent flame-grilled beef, freshly sliced onions, lettuce and mayonnaise. The scent, which has been named Flame-Grilled, is set to be launched by Burger King Japan on 1 April 2015. There will also supposedly be a one day promotion, whereby every customer will receive a free Whopper Burger with their purchased perfume...

The head of a provincial branch of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has stirred the pot by tweeting that the country should “get ready for the caliphate” of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Fuat Özgür Çalapkulu, the head of the AKP in the eastern province of Siirt, sent the controversial tweet on March 17, hours after Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said his party “will never let you be president [in a presidential system].” In his tweet, Çalapkulu said Erdoğan’s opponents had in the past claimed that Erdoğan could not even be a village...

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Sweeping first-in-the nation legislation making voter registration automatic in Oregon was signed into law on Monday by Governor Kate Brown, potentially adding 300,000 new voters to state rolls. The so-called Motor Voter legislation will use state Department of Motor Vehicles data to automatically register eligible voters whose information is contained in the DMV system, with a 21-day opt-out period for those who wish to be taken off the registry. Supporters say the legislation's goal is to keep young voters, students and working families who move often from losing their right to vote. Republican lawmakers, who unanimously...

A teacher in Ankara has been convicted to five months in prison for cutting a 12-year-old schoolgirl’s throat with a box cutter, Turkish media reported March 16 in the latest episode of violence against women in Turkey. Onur Özbek, a 35-year-old science class teacher at Ülkü Ahmet Durusoy Secondary School in the Turkish capital, received a five-month sentence for “deliberately injuring a person.” The school’s principal received the same sentence for “not reporting a crime committed by a public servant,” daily Habertürk added. The lightly injured school girl reportedly told the court that she had no previous disagreement with the...