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Charlie Hebdo staff have been threatened with a new attack following the publication of their latest edition, the cover of which features a cartoon naked Muslims at a beach, with the words “Muslims loosen up”. The latest issue of the controversial satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo features a naked man and woman running towards the shoreline of a beach.The man’s penis can be seen through his long beard, and the woman is totally naked except for her veil over he head and shoulders.The caption reads “The reform of Islam: Muslims, loosen up” or “Musulmans decoincez vous”. The issue was released on...

PARIS — The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into death threats against the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which was the target of a sophisticated terror attack in 2015. Office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said Wednesday that the investigation for “written death threats” follows about a dozen postings in July and August on the paper’s Facebook page, which carried a cover cartoon mocking Muslims at the beach. The investigation came after the newspaper filed a police complaint on Thursday, a shareholder said. Eric Portheault told AFP the threats began in mid-July but mounted on Tuesday after the magazine...

This time it’s Paris that will show solidarity with the victims of a terror attack elsewhere in the world. The Eiffel Tower will be lit up in the rainbow colors of the gay flag in solidarity with the victims of the shootings in Orlando, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted. The City Hall also raised the Stars and Stripes and the rainbow flag on Monday, with Hidalgo expressing her “compassion, solidarity and affection” for the American people after the massacre. …

European Union governments should agree tighter gun control laws on Friday (10 June) in the wake of Islamist shooting attacks in France and Belgium, despite opposition from some states which say they will hurt only law-abiding enthusiasts. The Czech Republic is among the loudest critics of rules that EU officials expect to secure comfortable majority backing when the 28 interior ministers meet in Luxembourg on Friday. It argues the measures will not prevent criminals acquiring weapons, but will penalize hunters and collectors. Since the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015 by men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles apparently...

Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has once again slammed the media for claiming that the atrocities carried out against Christians by Islamic extremists have "nothing to do with religion" following the attack that killed 70 Pakistani Christians, mostly women and children, on Easter Sunday in Lahore. On Tuesday, the 75-year-old "God Delusion" author took to Twitter to offer a brief commentary on the recent tragedy: "Pak bomb kills 72," he wrote, and quoted the perpetrators of the attack as stating, "We have carried out this attack to target Christians who were celebrating Easter." "Ah, nothing to do with religion, then," Dawkins...

The French women’s rights minister, already under fire for provocative comments relating to Islamic dress for women, is now caught between Air France management and unions in a row over a requirement that air hostesses wear headscarves when the airline renews flights to Iran this month. Following the easing of sanctions under the nuclear deal, Air France is resuming three weekly flights from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Tehran on April 17 after an eight-year suspension. And management of the airline want female flight attendants to comply with Iranian modesty norms. The unions are incensed over a management...

HOW DID WE END UP HERE? Par Charlie Hebdo - 30/03/2016 For a week now, experts of all kinds have been trying to understand the reasons for the attacks in Brussels. An incompetent police force? Unbridled multiculturalism? Youth unemployment? Uninhibited Islamism? The causes are numerous beyond counting and everyone will naturally choose the one that suits best their own convictions. Law and Order fans will denounce the haplessness of the police. Xenophobes will blame immigration. Sociologists will rehash the evils of colonialism. Urban-planners will point to the evils of ghettoisation. Take your pick. In reality, the attacks are merely the...

The Jewish president of Oberlin College in Ohio has defended one of his professors who spewed anti-Semitic hate on social media – including blaming Jews for 9/11 and the rise of ISIS. In a letter to the Oberlin community, President Marvin Krislov said that he believes in protecting freedom of speech at all costs and will not fire associate professor Joy Karega. 'I believe, as the American Association of University Professors says, that academic freedom is "the indispensable quality of institutions of higher education" because it encourages free inquiry, promotes the expansion of knowledge, and creates an environment in which...

Germany's ambassador to the Vatican, Annette Schavan, still sees religion as a peacemaker, despite wars and terrorism. In an interview with DW, she calls for more interfaith dialogue and respect between all religions. [...] 'There are warmongers who embrace religion. But that does not mean that religion promotes war. Religion has the great power to bring peace. People are upset by the numerous attacks and wonder, "Should we equate these images of violence with Islam?" One gets the impression that Islam is part of the problem. But that's not true. It must become clear that it is part of the...

Cartoon suggests drowned refugee boy would have grown up to be a 'groper'The aunt of drowned Syrian refugee boy Alan Kurdi says a controversial new cartoon from French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is "disgusting." "I hope people respect our family's pain. It's a big loss to us. We're not the same anymore after this tragedy. We're trying to forget a little bit and move on with our life. But to hurt us again, it's not fair," said Tima Kurdi from her home in Port Coquitlam, B.C. The cartoon suggests that Alan Kurdi, had he grown up, would have been like...

The anniversary of the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo has inevitably generated some reflection in the media. Some people dug out what they wrote at the time to see how they’d fared, a new BBC documentary was screened and several commentators have written their ‘one year on’ pieces. Glenn Greenwald became such a commentator when he posted Where Were the Post-Hebdo Free Speech Crusaders as France Spent the Last Year Crushing Free Speech. Normally you would have to pay me to read Greenwald but after having been so revolted by his post-Hebdo article a year ago I was...

President Obama spent the week defending his proposals to curb gun violence, culminating in a CNN town hall. Think about that. What else happened during the last few days that might warrant a presidential town hall? Oh, nothing much: Iranian protestors stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran after the House of Saud executed a Shiite cleric, escalating sectarian warfare in the Middle East The stock market tumbled on fears of a global economic slowdown A U.S. soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan, where the Taliban controls more ground than at any time since 2001 Iran revealed the existence of...

Police in Paris have shot a man dead who tried to enter a police station armed with a knife, shouting “Allahu Akbar.” The man was found to be carrying a cellphone and a paper with an Islamic State flag, the Paris prosecutor says. The incident took place at the Goutte d'Or police station in Paris’ 18th district. The incident comes as Paris marks the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which killed 12 people on January 7, 2015.

French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will mark a year since the jihadist attack on its offices with a cover featuring a bloodied, gun-toting, bearded God figure, under the headline: "One year on: The assassin still at large". The cover has also been translated as "The assassin is still out there." One million copies of the special edition will go on sale in France Wednesday, on the eve of the first anniversary of the killing of 12 people at the magazine's Paris offices by brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. Eight Charlie Hebdo staff were among the victims of the January 7,...

In what looked like a staged moment on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton fielded a question from a nine year-old boy at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire concerning pay inequity between the sexes. The boy, Relic Reilly, asked why his engineer father earned more than his mother, a pre-K teacher. "I think my mother is working much harder, is working more harder than my father and she deserves to have more money, like, get more money, than my father. Because she's taking care of children and I just don't think it's fair." Mrs. Clinton used the opportunity, one...

Michel Houellebecq is a sardonic and iconoclastic French novelist, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, and subject of considerable controversy in Europe these days. He deserves to be controversial here in the United States as well. He calls his most recent novel a work of "political fiction." Titled "Soumission" (in English, "Submission," in Arabic, an accurate translation would be "Islam"), it is set in the near future, in France, "a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes." Coincidence No. 1: "Soumission" was published in France the same week jihadis attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering as many members...

Michel Houellebecq is a sardonic and iconoclastic French novelist, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, and subject of considerable controversy in Europe these days. He deserves to be controversial here in the United States as well. He calls his most recent novel a work of "political fiction." Titled "Soumission" (in English, "Submission," in Arabic, an accurate translation would be "Islam"), it is set in the near future, in France, "a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes." Coincidence No. 1: "Soumission" was published in France the same week jihadis attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering as many members...

When asked on camera whether it is good to kill French people for Allah, Muslim migrants seeking asylum in Italy answered affirmatively, remarking that it is “good” to kill French people, and warning of a looming December 8 Islamist attack on Rome. In a disturbing new video produced by the Italian television program “L’aria che tira” (“What’s Trending”), presenters asked some asylum seekers and other migrants what they thought about the November 13 Paris attacks.

France's far-right National Front is set to score huge gains in regional elections on Sunday, redrawing the political landscape of the euro zone's second-biggest economy as it gears up for the next presidential election in 2017. The anti-immigration, anti-Europe party, boosted by fears over the refugee crisis and the Nov.13 Islamic State attacks that killed 130 in Paris, is seen leading in the first round on Dec. 6 in six out of 13 regions, a survey by Ipsos pollsters showed on Thursday. The party, known by its initials FN, has become increasingly popular since Marine Le Pen took over the...

In the month of October alone, Israel suffered 609 attacks. The world's only Jewish state has suffered almost daily attacks from their Palestinian neighbors (mostly stabbings) after unfounded rumors of changes on the Temple Mount were circulated over social media. Yet, the big three ABC, NBC, and CBS found it hard to blame radical Islam for the surge in violence, as noted by the Media Research Center's Newsbusters division:3 Month Failure: Nets Make No Mention of 'Islam' in Israeli Terror Attacks In the three months leading up to the ISIS's deadly Paris attacks, the ABC CBS and NBC evening news...