Free Republic

Worshippers at a Canada mosque have confronted and restrained a man who was allegedly wielding an axe and attacked them with bear spray during Saturday morning prayers, police say. One worshipper knocked the axe from the man's hands, and held him down until police arrived, local media reports... ...Police have named the man they arrested as Mohammad Moiz Omar, and charged him with six offences including assault with a weapon and administering a noxious substance ...Following initial uncertainty over a possible motive, investigators now say they believe the attack was a "hate-motivated incident."...

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. State Department announced this week that it finally is going to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, it was a nonevent for most of our countrymen. That's because few Americans know how deadly the organization is. For that we can thank those at Foggy Bottom who are wedded to the naive hope of a near-term "diplomatic breakthrough" in Afghanistan. Couple that misguided belief with the Obama administration's self-deception that the radical Islamic jihad against the West ended with the demise of Osama bin Laden and it's understandable why the Haqqani network...

The administration has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban, initiated several months ago, that U.S. officials say they hope will enable President Obama to report progress toward a settlement of the Afghanistan war when he announces troop withdrawals in July. A senior Afghan official said a U.S. representative attended at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany, one as recently as “eight or nine days ago,” with a Taliban official considered close to Mohammad Omar, the group’s leader. State Department spokesman Michael A. Hammer on Monday declined to comment on the Afghan official’s assertion, saying the United States had a...