Tonight’s news feed includes a number of articles from the past two days about the massacre at Garissa University in Kenya, where 148 people were killed by Muslim terrorists because they were Christians. People on the campus were separated by religion, and the Muslims were allowed to go free while the Christians were executed.
In other news, seventeen people were killed in an attack by the Islamic State in the Egyptian Sinai. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government says that its forces have retaken Tikrit from ISIS.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Caroline Glick, DS, Fjordman, Papa Whiskey, Upananda Brahmachari, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Cyprus Lifts Capital Controls Two Years After Deposits Bail-in
Cyprus will lift next week the last of the capital controls that were imposed two years ago as part of a 10-billion euro ($10.9 billion) European bailout.
The last restrictions on international transfers will be lifted on April 6, Cyprus government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg. Domestic capital controls ended in May 2014.
Cyprus is emerging from the crisis that forced it to seek a bailout and impose a levy on depositors two years ago while Greece, which in 2010 became the first country to be rescued by its euro-area partners, continues its tug-of-war with creditors.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece Considering Nationalising Its Banks and Issuing New Currency, Sources Claim
Greece’s government is prepared to nationalise the country’s banks and could create a new currency to pay its bills unless the eurozone nations back down over austerity, sources have reportedly said.
The left-wing Syriza party, which dominates the governing coalition, could also decide to not make a payment due to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next week under its bailout agreement, so that it can pay state employees’ wages and benefits.
A senior official told The Daily Telegraph: “We are a left-wing government. If we have to choose between a default to the IMF or a default to our own people, it is a no-brainer.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Record 12,202,000 Black Americans Not in Labor Force
(CNSNews.com) — A record 12,202,000 black people were not in the labor force in March, as the participation rate for this group declined over the month to 61.0 percent, according to data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
According to the BLS, the more than 12 million black people not in the labor force in March means that they did not have a job or actively seek one in the past four weeks. The number climbed from 12,122,000 in February to 12,202,000 in March, an increase of 80,000.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Two women accused of plotting to plant bombs in the United States, one of whom allegedly called Osama bin Laden her hero and praised the World Trade Center attacks, were arrested on terror charges in Queens by the Joint Terrorism Task Force early Thursday, federal officials familiar with the investigation tell NBC 4 New York.
The women, identified in court papers as 28-year-old Noelle Velentzas and 31-year-old Asia Siddiqui, are accused of conspiring to detonate an explosive device somewhere within the United States. The two suspects allegedly discussed possible targets online but there was no specific terror plot and no active explosive device, one official familiar with the case said. The women were alleged to have met with undercover officer posing as a would-be jihadist on many occasions since 2014.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Boston Bomber Could Live or Die Based on Whether He Was Radicalized Online
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an admitted accomplice in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; a federal court will soon decide on his punishment. His attorneys, hoping for leniency, have argued, plausibly, that he was an immature young man whose overbearing older brother coaxed him into a terrorist act about which he was ambivalent.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, have argued that Tsarnaev was a committed terrorist whose radicalization was largely the result of his own self-cultivated ideological beliefs. Copies of Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, as well as provocative speeches by extremist Muslim clerics pulled from Tsarnaev’s laptops, have been marshaled as evidence that he had in fact been largely radicalized on his own through the influence of materials he procured on the internet.
The question of whether Dzhokhar was driven to terrorism by the influence of his strong-willed older brother, Tamerlan, or by charismatic online “jihadist” preachers such as Anwar al-Awlaki, is one upon which his life may now depend.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
DEA Agents Had ‘Sex Parties’ Funded by Drug Cartels, Report Says
US Drug Enforcement Administration agents working abroad took part in “sex parties” with prostitutes that were funded by the drug cartels they were meant to be battling, according to a Justice Department report.
The agents denied knowing that the prostitutes were supplied by the cartels, but the department determined that “case files suggest they should have known the prostitutes in attendance were paid with cartel funds”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Drought Prompts 25 Per Cent Water Cut in California
They have been measuring the snowpack at Phillips in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California on the first day of April every year since 1941. It is the day the winter build-up of snow should have peaked. Typically, the researchers’ dipstick finds 1.5 metres of snow. This year, for the first time, there was none — only dry earth.
The state’s governor, Jerry Brown, made the journey for the annual measurement so he could stand at the snowless spot and declare he was imposing a 25-per-cent cut in water use across the state.
California is running out of water. This January was its driest since records began over a century ago, according to Jay Famiglietti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The current drought in the Sierra Nevada, which provides a third of the state’s water, began in 2011. It is a record-breaker and may be the worst for a thousand years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Eleven Teachers Face Prison for ‘Worst Cheating Scandal in US History’
Eleven former teachers and administrators from the US city of Atlanta are facing up to 20 years in jail after being convicted in the biggest school cheating scandal in US history.
The scandal, which first broke in 2008 when local school started to show inexplicably good test scores, has raised questions about the quality and competitiveness of education in the United States.
The teachers, including several school heads, were convicted of allowing students to erase incorrect answers to in order to inflate their schools’ rankings and collect cash bonuses for achieving high-performance targets.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Halal in the Family’ Takes Online Swipe at Anti-Muslim Bias
Aasif Mandvi is bringing the satire he’s honed on “The Daily Show” to a sitcom parody with a serious goal: unraveling anti-Muslim prejudice.
The four-episode “Halal in the Family,” starring Mandvi as the patriarch of an “all-American Muslim family,” debuts April 9 on the humor website Funny or Die, the actor and writer said Thursday.
The episodes, five minutes each, use sitcom conventions to address issues including FBI surveillance of Muslims in America, cyberbullying and hate groups, and media bias, Mandvi said. Problems facing the Halal clan will be resolved, in classic sitcom fashion, by each episode’s end.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hayley Okines, Who Bravely Fought Premature Ageing Disease Progeria, Dies Aged 17
A brave teenager who defied one of the world’s rarest genetic conditions has passed away at the age of 17.
Hayley Okines, who had the premature ageing disease progeria, was told she would not live past the age of 13.
But she pushed on with life courageously and at the age of 14 published her autobiography, called Old Before my Time.
However, despite pioneering drug treatment in the US that gave her a new lease of life, she was unable to conquer the disease.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Documents already obtained by Judicial Watch raise serious questions about source of explosion, cursory local investigation, barring of ATF agents from investigating
(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain records regarding its response to the January 1, 2014, explosion of an apartment building in the largely Muslim Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The FOIA lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v U. S. Department of Justice (No.1:14-cv-02212)).
The FOIA lawsuit, filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a March 12, 2014, FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), seeks:
Any and all records regarding, concerning or related to the investigation of the January 1, 2014 explosion and fire at the Cedar-Riverside apartment complex in Minneapolis, Minnesota, based on searches of the FBI’s Electronic Case File system, Central Records System and Electronic Surveillance records, as well as any cross-referenced files concerning the explosion and fire.
At 8:16 a.m. on New Year’s Day in Minneapolis, a building at 516 Cedar Avenue containing a grocery store and several apartments exploded, killing three people and injuring 13. All of the apartments were occupied by single men. Many were hurt while jumping out of the burning building’s windows in order to escape the carnage.
[…]
Within 48 hours, the FBI denied any terrorist activity was associated with the explosion.
Documents separately obtained by Judicial Watch from the State Fire Marshal Division of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, however, reveal that the explosion apparently was never thoroughly investigated.
In his January 10, 2014, report, Deputy State Fire Marshal Investigator Ronald C. Rahman admitted, “I did not retain any evidentiary artifacts from the scene.”
Before the building’s destruction, G. Schmitz, fire investigator for the Minneapolis Fire Department, and the official investigating the scene on the day of the explosion reported, “The origin of the fire is undetermined.” And suggestions by some that the fire may have been caused by “some kind of gas leak,” were quickly refuted by Minnesota’s Centerpoint Energy spokeswoman Becca Virden, who stated, “We have specialized a gas leak that can detect a gas leak even when you can’t detect it — highly sensitive equipment,” she said. “They have checked there were no gas leaks reported before and there are no gas leaks in the area now.” Virden added, “We had no natural gas in the area.”
[One of Mao Tse-tung’s dictums was that “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” The huge influx of Somali Muslims facilitated by the U.S. State Department has created a “sea” some 30,000 strong in the Twin Cities. This incident is clear evidence of the “fish” swimming in it, which the Obama adminstration seems determined to cover up, lest its demographic machinations be thwarted. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Literacy Gap Between Latino and White Toddlers Starts Early, Study Shows
Latino toddlers whose language comprehension is roughly similar to white peers at 9 months old fall significantly behind by the time they are 2, according to a study released Thursday.
The UC Berkeley study found that four-fifths of the nation’s Mexican American toddlers lagged three to five months behind whites in preliteracy skills, oral language and familiarity with print materials.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ramparts, The CIA, And Cold War Revisionism
By Sol Stern
The cover of Karen M. Paget’s “Patriotic Betrayal” consists entirely of an extraordinary advertorial instructing readers how they should think about the book’s revelations. The text declares that in February 1967, “CIA director Richard Helms had, as he would later recall, ‘one of my darkest days,’ when President Lyndon Johnson told him that the muckraking magazine Ramparts was about to expose one of the Agency’s best-kept secrets: a covert project to enroll American students in the crusade against communism.” Asserting that the Ramparts article revealed only “a small part of the story of the CIA’s two-decades-long effort to ensnare the National Student Association,” the cover then boasts that Paget “tells the rest of the tale, which reads like a John le Carré novel, filled with self-serving rationalizations, layers of duplicity, and bureaucratic double talk.” It also claims that Paget “throws a sharp light on the persistent argument, heard even today, about whether America’s national-security interests can be secured by skullduggery and deception.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I winced when I read those words. That’s because I was one of the editors of Ramparts and the principal author of the article exposing the CIA’s covert funding of the NSA, only one part of an elaborate web of anti-Communist citizen groups supported by the spy agency during the first decades of the Cold War.
[…]
It was not a “liberal anti-Communist,” but rather Kennan, a professional diplomat, who provided the political analysis that convinced the Truman administration to create covert programs to counteract Communist front organizations in Europe. Kennan was the most knowledgeable observer of Soviet affairs in the U.S. diplomatic service. As World War II ended, he held the No. 2 position in the American embassy in Moscow. In January 1946, his State Department superiors asked him to provide an evaluation of Soviet intentions in Europe. Kennan drafted a prescient memorandum declaring that the Stalinist dictatorship was committed to a course of territorial expansion that could not be countered by the United States through traditional diplomacy or the negotiation of treaties.
Kennan’s analysis was published a year later in the influential journal Foreign Affairs under the title “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” The pseudonymous article (the byline was “X”) proposed that the United States embark on “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interest of a peaceful and stable world.”
Kennan also made this bold prediction: “The United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.”
Kennan stressed that the new threat facing the United States had more than a military dimension. The international Communist movement had become adept at advancing Soviet interests through the use of front organizations operating freely within the Western democracies. These “progressive” groups spoke in innocent-sounding slogans about the need for disarmament, world peace, and social justice, while hiding the fact that they were controlled by Moscow. If the new policy of containment was to be effective, it would have to supplement Western military preparedness with a program to mobilize pro-democracy civic groups in the U.S. and Europe (e.g., students, labor unions, artists, and writers) to oppose the Communist propaganda machine. Anticipating the problems that might be created for these ostensibly independent citizen groups if it became known that they were accepting subsidies from the U.S. government, Kennan recommended that they be funded covertly.
[…]
Paget is not content to merely present a historical critique of Cold War liberalism. She also wants her book to serve as a cautionary tale for our own turbulent times, a warning to “those who believe that the kind of Cold War operations documented in this book should be replicated to fight radical Islam.”
Unfortunately, there’s not much danger of anything like that happening right now. The liberals who currently make foreign policy for the United States, and who have cleansed themselves of the historical sin of rigid anti-Communism, aren’t about to be tempted to use any of those old Cold War methods against America’s new foreign enemies. And it certainly won’t happen as long as the president of the United States refuses to even name those enemies.
We can only hope that another George F. Kennan emerges to make the case for an aggressive new containment policy against the forces of radical Islam and sells it to the next administration — including the mobilization of pro-democracy citizen groups willing to take up the long struggle against the new totalitarian threat to our civilization and our freedoms.
[We’re on it, Sol. But none of us are holding our breaths waiting for the feds to help out. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Two Women Arrested in Alleged Terrorist Bomb Plot Targeting New York
Two women suspected of being terrorist sympathizers were arrested Thursday for allegedly plotting to detonate pressure cooker bombs in New York, Fox News has learned.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed the arrests, but circumstances surrounding the arrests or the alleged plot were not immediately clear. NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said the arrests were part of a local and federal investigation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Watchdog Sues DHS for Terrorist ‘Hands Off’ List
By Kerry Picket
The Department of Homeland Security was slapped with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in February, D.C. watchdog organization Judicial Watch (JW) announced Tuesday, for refusing to comply with a July 2014 FOIA request for material relating to a “terrorist hands off” list.
According to a JW press release, the original FOIA request sought out a copy of a copy of the DHS Inspector General report regarding a “hands off list” reportedly maintained by DHS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and/or US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The Obama administration’s unlawful secrecy on this ‘hands off’ list raises concerns about terrorists being allowed into the country,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Even when it comes to protecting our borders from known terrorists, the Obama administration places secrecy and politics above national security. Our nation has reached a dangerous pass.”
The list, JW says, was used to allow entry of particular individuals into the U.S. who had been previously denied entry or were made to undergo secondary screening by CBP based on suspicion of terrorism ties. The watchdog group also wants DHS to handover “any and all records of communication to or from DHS Inspector General Charles Edwards from May 21, 2014 regarding the aforementioned OIG report.”
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley released internal DHS e-mails in May of last year detailing an alleged “hands off” list that permitted individuals with potential terrorist ties into the U.S. The e-mails and a letter were sent to DHS Sec. Jeh Johnson asking about the “hand off” list.
In the letter, Grassley specifically asks for information about a nameless individual who allegedly is a member of the “Muslim Brotherhood and a ‘close associate’ of a supporter of Hamas, Hizbollah, and [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad,” and was allowed into the country by DHS as a consequence of the alleged DHS policy.
[…]
Almost two weeks after Grassley released the terrorist “hands off” list e-mails, the issue was found to be already under investigation by then-newly appointed DHS Inspector General John Roth.
Roth’s predecessor, Charles Edwards, was forced out of his position after a series of allegations claimed he whitewashed IG reports to avoid embarrassing the Obama administration.
An April 2014 report from an oversight panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee stated that Edwards “failed to uphold the independence of the OIG… and directed that reports be altered or delayed to accommodate senior DHS officials.”
[Who shall remain as nameless as the Muslim Brotherhood member who was allowed into the country. The Fifth Column marches on. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
What Really Happened to Harry Reid? Part 3
by John Hinderaker
On Monday I got a phone call from a man named Easton Elliott. We talked briefly on Monday, and have had additional telephone conversations since then. Elliott* is a businessman who lives in the Las Vegas area, and he thinks he knows what really happened to Harry Reid. This is the story as he related it to me:
Elliott spent a portion of last New Year’s Eve at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Henderson, Nevada. His AA group has meetings every hour on New Year’s Eve, along with a pot luck supper. There were approximately 20 people present at the meeting during the events described below.
Some time between 10:00 and 11:30 p.m., a man entered the meeting. His appearance was striking: there was blood on his clothing, beginning around his midsection. His left hand was swollen. He appeared to be somewhat intoxicated and was visibly agitated. He introduced himself as “Larry.”
In a group discussion that was heard by a number of people, Larry said that he had just had a fight with a family member. Larry said he had been at a family get-together, and he didn’t remember much about the fight because he had blacked out. When he came to, he was rolling on the ground, fighting with a family member, and his clothes were bloody. Now, he said, he was frightened that the Secret Service would come after him.
This last reference was not taken seriously by the group, although it was obvious that Larry had indeed been in a fight. Larry stayed for the rest of the meeting, and for a while afterward. There is a front room where coffee is served, and he remained there for a while. At some point during that time, he asked whether anyone could give him a ride to Searchlight.
Larry’s appearance at the AA meeting was memorable, as references to fighting, bloody clothes and so on are extraordinary in that group.
Easton Elliott didn’t think much more about Larry until, several weeks later, he saw a newspaper story about Larry Reid, Harry Reid’s brother, being arrested for DUI and assaulting a highway patrolman…
| — Hat tip: DS | [Return to headlines] |
Dutch MPs Call for National Laws to Have Priority Over TTIP Trade Treaty
The Dutch parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted in favour of a motion stating a new trade treaty between the US and Europe should not disadvantage the Dutch legal system and Dutch democracy. The TTIP is a new free trade agreement which supporters say will boost prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. However, its detractors claim Europe will lose control over product safety and workers rights and that it will give big business free play to challenge government policies.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germanwings Crash: Co-Pilot Lubitz ‘Accelerated Descent’
Data from the second ‘black box’ flight recorder belonging to the Germanwings plane that crashed in the French Alps confirms that the co-pilot acted deliberately, investigators say.
The French BEA crash investigation agency said Andreas Lubitz repeatedly accelerated the plane’s descent.
The second flight recorder from the plane was recovered on Thursday.
All 150 people on board the flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf on 24 March were killed.
“A first reading shows that the pilot in the cockpit used the automatic pilot to put the airplane on a descent towards an altitude of 100ft (30m),” the BEA said in a statement on Friday.
“Then several times the pilot modified the automatic pilot settings to increase the speed of the airplane as it descended,” it added.
Earlier findings from the cockpit voice recorder suggested Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
How to Tackle Racism in UK Universities
Social scientist Kalwant Bhopal discusses why black and minority ethnic academics are considering leaving the United Kingdom.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Intact Ottoman ‘War Camel’ Found in Austrian Cellar
A complete camel skeleton dug up from a 17th-century Austrian cellar shows tell-tale signs that it was a valuable riding animal in the Ottoman army.
It was probably left behind or traded in the town of Tulln following the Ottoman siege of nearby Vienna in 1683.
DNA analysis shows that the beast — the first intact camel skeleton found in central Europe — was a Bactrian-dromedary hybrid, popular in the army.
It also has bone defects that suggest it wore a harness and was ridden.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Nigel Farage Says UKIP’s Popularity is Falling
The UK Independence Party’s popularity has “dipped” since its extraordinary electoral success last year, Nigel Farage has admitted.
The Ukip leader admitted in an interview that he would prefer people were worse off if it meant that immigration numbers were better controlled.
In an interview with BBC Radio Four, Mr Farage said that the party’s popularity had slipped since its “remarkable” 2014 when it won the European Parliament elections and was left with its first two MPs.
He said: “(The year) 2014 was remarkable. We won the European elections, we had two surprise defections, principled resignations and we won by-elections people didn’t think we could win. We have dipped a little bit since then.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Paris Supermarket Hostages Sue French Media Over Live Reports
Survivors of January’s deadly jihadist attack at a Paris supermarket have sued French media for live broadcasts which revealed they were hiding in a store freezer during the siege.
The civil suit brought by six people singles out 24-hour news channel BFMTV, claiming the live reports about their location and security forces’ movements during the standoff endangered their lives.
Amedy Coulibaly stormed the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket two days after the deadly attack on the office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Coulibaly killed four people before police stormed the grocery store and shot him.
The lives of those hiding “could have been at risk if Coulibaly had been aware in real time what BFMTV was broadcasting,” Patrick Klugman, a lawyer representing the group, told news agency AFP.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Prosecutors: Co-Pilot in Germanwings Crash Researched Suicide Methods, Cockpit Security
The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have researched suicide methods and cockpit door security in the days before the plane crashed last week, German prosecutors announced Thursday.
Duesseldorf prosecutors said investigators found a tablet computer at Andreas Lubitz’s apartment. They said they were able to reconstruct searches from March 16 to March 23.
Investigators believe the 27-year-old Lubitz locked his captain out of the A320’s cockpit on March 24 and deliberately crashed the plane. All 150 on board died.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Rural Swedes Protest ‘Fanatical Urbanisation’
On Friday, rural residents drove tractors and other vehicles with banners into several Swedish cities to protest what they are calling the injustice they experience in the countryside. They say their concerns are largely ignored by politicians.
“There is a fanatical urbanisation taking place at the expense of the rural areas even though we pay the same taxes,” said Erika Sörengård from Ervalla near Örebro. “There has to be the same level of basic services in the countryside, as well.”
Sörengård is the initiator of Landsbygdsupproret (Rural Revolt) 2015, which has some 5,000 followers on Facebook. On its homepage, the movement complains of Sweden’s “urbanization, rural mobbing, centralization, unfair competition, shut-down schools and discontinued services.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Visas Back on Table as Row With Sweden Ends
The Swedish Foreign Ministry expects Saudi Arabia to start issuing visas to Swedish business travellers again as relations return to normal after a diplomatic spat, a spokesman said on Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Second Black Box Confirms Co-Pilot Deliberately Crashed Germanwings Plane
French investigators say data from the second black box of a crashed Germanwings flight confirms that the co-pilot deliberately flew the plane to its destruction. The crash killed all 150 people on board.
French investigators on Friday said data from the black box showed that the co-pilot had deliberately accelerated the plane several times as it descended toward destruction.
Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is thought to have deliberately locked the captain of the flight out of the cockpit before intentionally flying the Airbus into the ground.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Survivors of Paris Terror Attacks Sue French Media
French media outlets are have been taken to court by survivors of January’s Islamist attacks in Paris who are claiming that their coverage of the siege endangered their lives.
Gunman Amedy Coulibaly stormed the Hyper Casher Jewish supermarket on 9 January, killing four people and taking others hostage. The six survivors, including a three-year-old child and a one-month-old baby, had been hiding from Coulibaly in the supermarket’s cold room.
Patrick Klugman, a lawyer representing the group, said broadcasts from the scene during the siege had endangered those still alive inside, singling out the 24-hour news channel BFMTV, which revealed, live on air, that the group were in the cold room.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Claims Ties With KSA Back to Normal
Sweden said on Thursday that relations with Saudi Arabia were back to normal and that Riyadh would lift its temporary visa ban.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Saudi Arabia to Lift Business Visa Ban
Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that relations with Saudi Arabia were back to normal after a diplomat row and that Riyadh would lift its temporary visa ban.
“Saudi Arabia has informed us that it saw its relationship with Sweden as normalised. As part of this, visas will be given again to Swedes. Exactly when, we cannot say,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson told news Agency AFP.
The ministry also confirmed that the Saudi ambassador to Stockholm will return to Sweden this week.
The row between the two countries dates back to early March when Sweden’s minister of foreign affairs, Margot Wallström, told parliament that Saudi Arabia was a “dictatorship” that violated human rights.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
What Physicists Are Looking for Now That They’ve Found the Higgs Boson
The world’s most epic physics experiment will flip back on as early as Saturday. After a two-year tuneup, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will run at twice the power it needed in 2012 to find the Higgs boson, the long-theorized particle that confers mass onto matter.
As monumental as the Higgs discovery was — its theorists won the Nobel Prize in Physics the next year — physicists still have very little idea what’s going on in the universe, beyond the stuff we can see, touch, and smell. A big question concerns “dark matter,” what scientists call the stuff that makes up 80 percent of galaxies but that doesn’t interact with light, atoms, and molecules. They know it’s there, but it’s hiding from us.
With the Higgs in hand, finding traces of dark matter is the next big hunt in high-energy physics.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Jihadists Kill 15 Soldiers and Two Civilians in Sinai
Jihadists in Egypt’s Sinai killed 15 soldiers and two civilians in attacks on checkpoints on Thursday, security officials said, the deadliest in months despite a massive army campaign against the insurgents.
The gunmen, believed to be members of the Islamic State group’s Egypt branch, simultaneously opened fire with assault rifles and grenade launchers at five checkpoints in the restive north of the peninsula, the security officials said.
Medics confirmed 15 soldiers and two civilians were killed in the attacks.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS-Linked Group Claims Sinai Attacks
A militant group, which has recently pledged allegiance to ISIS, claimed on Friday deadly attacks on several security checkpoints a day earlier in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Welayet Sinai, formerly known as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, said on Twitter that its fighters had attacked seven checkpoints on a highway linking northern Sinai’s Sheikh Zuweid and al-Arish cities with rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy-duty weapons at dawn Thursday.
The group also claimed that its militants had all managed to flee the scene after killing “dozens” of military personnel.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamic State Strikes Again, Killing 17 in Sinai
Today, several heavily armed gunmen launched an attack on several military checkpoints in Sinai, killing 15 soldiers and two civilians. The attack also injured 17 security personnel and 13 civilians; security personnel on site managed to counter attack and kill 15 of the militants. There has been no claim as to the perpetrators of the attack but it is extremely likely that Wilayat Sinai carried out the attack. It was the deadliest attack in the region since the bombing of the military base in El-Arish this January. Even though the Egyptian military and security forces have mounted a considerable counter-insurgency campaign against the Islamic State-affiliated forces, today’s attack suggests that Wilayat Sinai is still very much capable of conducting large scale attacks on military outposts.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Al Qaeda Frees 300 Inmates Amid Fighting in Yemen
Al Qaeda militants in Yemen have stormed a jail and freed hundreds of prisoners including a prominent terrorist leader. In another side of the complex conflict, Saudi-led troops beat back Houthi rebels in Aden.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Al Qaeda Takes Over Mukalla Army Base in Yemen
Al Qaeda fighters have seized a local army headquarters in Mukalla, fueling the fears of the terror network expanding its foothold in Yemen. The Islamists now control most of the City.
The al Qaeda jihadists killed an unspecified number of soldiers and captured a large cache of military hardware, a security official speaking on conditions of anonymity said Friday.
“The soldiers resisted the al Qaeda elements as much as they could, but they could not stop them from controlling the command headquarters,” the official said.
The regional commander and his troops pulled back to military camps near the city’s airport, which is one of the few areas not controlled by al Qaeda, according to military sources. The Jihadist forces captured a tank and two armored vehicles.
Residents were reportedly fleeing the city in panic, while several hundreds of al Qaeda fighters were patrolling and setting up roadblocks in the city, flying the black banner of the extremist network.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
British Medical Student Who Joined Islamic State Wants Out — If Terror Group Permits
A British medical student who joined the Islamic State group has changed her mind and wants to come home — if the Sunni terrorists permit.
A 19-year-old student identified only as Lena traveled with six other Britons, an American and a Canadian in March on a mission to join the terror group in Syria.
“We will try tomorrow to bring her and those who are with her back, if we can persuade them,” Turkish lawmaker Mehmet Ali Ediboglu said Wednesday, Reuters reported. The young woman conveyed her desire to return home by contacting her family.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: The Diplomatic Track to War
The world powers assembled at Lausanne, Switzerland, with the representatives of the Islamic Republic may or may not reach a framework deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But succeed or fail, the disaster that their negotiations have unleashed is already unfolding. The damage they have caused is irreversible.
US President Barack Obama, his advisers and media cheerleaders have long presented his nuclear diplomacy with the Iran as the only way to avoid war. Obama and his supporters have castigated as warmongers those who oppose his policy of nuclear appeasement with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.
But the opposite is the case. Had their view carried the day, war could have been averted.
Through their nuclear diplomacy, Obama and his comrades started the countdown to war…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
For ISIS, ‘All Roads Lead to Rome’
The Islamic State has named many targets, including the “lands of al-Haramein” (two holy places), i.e. Saudi Arabia. But its most significant goal seems to be Rome.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France FM: U.S. Surrendered to Iran’s Last Minute Demands at Nuke Talks
The French delegation in Switzerland felt the outline for a nuclear deal with Iran was “not solid enough,” and wanted to improve upon the deal before signing off on the accord, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Europe 1 radio on Friday.
However, the Iranian delegation threatened at the last minute to leave the talks entirely, which persuaded the American delegation to capitulate to the demands of the Ayatollah’s regime, Fabius revealed. The French Foreign Minister said he wanted a strong, comprehensive deal that dissuades “other countries in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia from embarking on nuclear proliferation.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque Calls for All-Out War Against Shi’ites and Christians
Amid the ongoing Sunni-Shiite wars, on the eve of April Fools’ Day, an audio recording was circulated online of the man who presides over the holiest site for Muslim around the world. The caption on photo accompanying the recording read, “Imam of the grand mosque in Mecca calls for all-out war against Shiites.”
“Our war with Iran, say that out loud, is a war between Sunnis and Shiites,” Sunni preacher Abdul Rahman al-Sudais says in the nearly seven-minute clip. “Our war with Iran…is truly sectarian. If it was not sectarian, we will make it sectarian… The Jews and cross” — meaning Christians — “I swear by Allah that they will have their days…The prophet said that Rome will be conquered …Our disagreement with Rafidha” — another word for Shiites — “will not be removed, nor our suicide to fight them… as long as they are on the face of the earth….
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Brags About Nuke Concessions
Sanctions to be terminated, no nuke sites closed, research and development to continue
By Adam Kredo
LAUSANNE, Switzerland—Iran and world powers on Thursday announced that following the latest round of nuclear negotiations, Western powers agreed to permit Iran to continue operating the core aspects of its nuclear program and that all sanctions of the Islamic Republic would be terminated.
After failing to meet a March 31 deadline for the announcement of a firm political agreement, Secretary of State John Kerry and Javad Zarif, his Iranian counterpart, said that the sides had agreed in principle to let Iran continue running major portions of its nuclear program.
Despite threats from Obama administration officials that the United States would abandon talks if Iran continued to demand greater concessions, Kerry extended his trip and conducted a series of meetings aimed at hashing out a statement of progress—a far cry from the detailed document officials vowed would be finalized by now.
The sides continue to disagree over Iranian demands that it be permitted to continue key nuclear research and granted the ability to ramp its program up to industrial capacity after a decade.
However, Zarif said many of these issues are closer to being resolved.
“None of those measures” that will move to scale back Iran’s program “include closing any of our facilities,” Zarif said. “We will continue enriching; we will continue research and development.”
“Our heavy water reactor will be modernized and we will continue the Fordow facility,” Zarif said. “We will have centrifuges installed in Fordow, but not enriching.”
The move to allow Iran to keep centrifuges at Fordow, a controversial onetime military site, has elicited concern that Tehran could ramp up its nuclear work with ease.
Zarif said that once a final agreement is made, “all U.S. nuclear related secondary sanctions will be terminated,” he said. “This, I think, would be a major step forward.”
[“Peace in our time!” The ghost of Neville Chamberlain walks. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Triumphant: Nuclear Deal Capitulates to Nearly All Iranian Demands
by John Hayward
A beaming Iranian foreign minister emerged from the meeting rooms in Switzerland to announce that all of the theocracy’s major demands had been met. According to the new provisions released on the nuclear deal, Iran will get to both keep active its centrifuges and receive sanctions relief.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Nuke Agreement Full of Holes
by Amir Taheri
Many of the agreements plainly benefit Iran:
Iran will continue its full nuclear program, keeping open all its sites — including Fordo, Isfahan, Natanz and Arak, the closure of which had been a key demand of the United States and its allies for the past decade or so.
The heavy-water nuclear plant at Arak will be finished, despite Washington’s once-strong objections.
Iran can upgrade its installations at Fordo but will focus the site on producing isotopes for medical and agricultural use. (Of course, Iran can switch the site back to producing weapons materiel whenever it chooses.)
Once the final draft is approved by the UN Security Council, all sanctions imposed against Iran would be lifted. In the meantime, the P5+1 agree not to impose any new sanctions on Iran over the nuclear issue.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iraqi Officials: 2 Bombings in Baghdad Kill 11 People
Iraqi officials say two separate bombings have targeted public places in the capital of Baghdad, killing 11 people.
Police officials say a car bomb exploded near a bus stop and an out-door market in Baghdad’s Bab al-Muadam area on Thursday evening, killing eight people. Two of the dead were women, and the explosion also wounded 18 people.
Earlier, a bomb blast near a small restaurant killed three people and wounded eight in the capitals’ northern Shiite suburbs of Husseiniyah.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iraqi Bomb Squads Comb Tikrit for Booby Traps, Bombs Left Behind by Islamic State Militants
TIKRIT, Iraq — After a month of ferocious street battles that finally pushed Islamic State militants out of Tirkrit, a dangerous calm has descended on this city north of Baghdad as Iraqi bomb squads fan out to remove booby traps and explosives left behind by the extremists.
Ahmed Khamis and his team of 12 explosives experts from Iraq’s Federal Police have their work cut out for them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Multiple US Concessions Drove Iran Nuclear Talks to Framework Deal, Report Claims
U.S. negotiators repeatedly shifted their goals during talks over Iran’s nuclear program in response to intransigence from Tehran’s representatives, according to a published report. Meanwhile, France’s top diplomat urged caution Friday about the possibility of a final deal being agreed to and admitted that his country had initially held out for firmer terms.
Diplomats representing the so-called P5+1 powers and Iran announced that they had a framework of an agreement Thursday after marathon talks in Switzerland that stretched two days past their original deadline.
However, not all of the Western powers appeared completely pleased with the agreement. On Friday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Europe 1 radio that France had rejected an original of the deal outline as “not solid enough”, and had held out for firmer conditions. However, Fabius told the radio station that the Iranian delegation had responded by threatening to walk out of the talks.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syria Now at a ‘Dangerous Tipping Point, ‘ UN Warns
The four-and-a-half-year old Syrian civil war has become an “unsustainable” humanitarian disaster that threatens soon to undermine the stability of neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, United Nations aid officials are warning.
While the world’s wealthier countries this week pledged $3.8 billion in new relief, that is inadequate to deal with the 4 million refugees from the battle zone who have sought refuge outside Syria, combined with 7.6 million Syrians displaced internally, and 12.2 million—half the country’s pre-war population — considered overall to be in dire need of humanitarian aid—up from 9.3 million at the end of 2013.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Top Iranian Cleric Praises Nuclear Negotiations
A top Iranian cleric celebrated the country’s nuclear negotiators during Friday prayers in Tehran, praising President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in particular.
“All these gentlemen, especially the esteemed president and foreign minister should be congratulated, wished more power to their elbows and reminded of the holy Qur’anic verse that victories are granted from Almighty Allah’s side to pious believers,” Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani was quoted as saying by Iran’s state news agency.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey Nabs 10 Westerners, 4 Russians Trying to Cross Into Syria to Join ISIS
Turkish officials announced Thursday that they nabbed 10 Westerners and four Russians allegedly trying to cross into Syria to join ISIS in what may be an effort to stem international criticism that Ankara has been too lax in stopping the tide of foreign fighters using the Arab nation as a conduit on their way to join jihadists.
Three men, two women and four children from the UK and one French national were detained Wednesday by soldiers at a military outpost after being caught in the Hatay region of southern Turkey, Turkish armed forces said in a statement on its website. Separately, on Thursday, officials in the southeastern city of Gazientep announced four Russians had been detained on Thursday, just two days after they deported a Belgian national caught trying to cross into Syria.
This news comes on the same day that U.N. Security Council experts reported to the U.N. that more than 25,000 foreign fighters from 100 countries are linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, comprising a “veritable international finishing school for extremists.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UN Report: More Than 25,000 Foreigners Fight With Terrorists
By Edith M. Lederer
The number of fighters leaving home to join al-Qaida and the Islamic State group in Iraq, Syria and other countries has spiked to more than 25,000 from over 100 nations, according to a new U.N. report.
The panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against al-Qaida said in the report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press that its analysis indicates the number of foreign terrorist fighters worldwide increased by 71 percent between mid-2014 and March 2015.
It said the scale of the problem has increased over the past three years and the flow of foreign fighters “is higher than it has ever been historically.”
The overall number of foreign terrorist fighters has “risen sharply from a few thousand … a decade ago to more than 25,000 today,” the panel said in the report to the U.N. Security Council.
[Not to worry! That’s only about a division or two. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
UN: Number of Foreign Fighters Joining Militants Skyrockets to 25,000
A panel commissioned by the UN has found that the number of would-be militants and their countries of origin have increased dramatically. The report calls Syria and Iraq “finishing school” for foreign extremists.
From a few thousand fighters in a handful of countries a decade ago, the number of foreign fighters leaving home to join groups like al Qaeda and the “Islamic State” (IS) has skyrocketed to 25,000 people from over 100 nations according to a United Nations report obtained by the media late Wednesday.
The report made by experts at the behest of the UN Security Council said the number of foreigners joining militant organizations had increased by 71 percent between mid-2014 and March 2015, making the scale of the problem “higher than it has ever been historically.”
“Those who eat together and bond together can bomb together,” the experts wrote. “The globalization of al Qaeda and associates, particularly visible with (Islamic State), but also evident with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (in Yemen), creates a deepening array of transnational social networks.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen Shiite Rebels Capture Aden Presidential Palace
Shiite rebels and their allies have seized the presidential palace in Aden. The capture followed heavy clashes in the commercial center of the southern Yemen coastal city. Unidentified troops have also reportedly landed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Was Stalin’s Terror Justified? Poll Shows More Russians Think it Was
Nearly half of all Russians think the sacrifices made under dictator Josef Stalin were justified by the Soviet Union’s rapid economic progress during his rule, a poll published Tuesday showed, reflecting a boost in Stalin’s popularity in recent years.
Forty-five percent of those questioned by independent pollster the Levada Center said they definitely or to some degree thought that the sacrifices made by the Soviet people under Stalin’s rule were justified in light of the country’s rapid development. Two years ago, that figure stood at only 25 percent, according to the report.
The pollster also found that while a large number of respondents (46 percent) thought Stalin’s death put an end to mass repression and terror, that figure was higher (56 percent) two years ago. During that same period, the number of Russians who saw Stalin’s death as a great loss grew from 18 percent to 24 percent.
In a summary of its findings, the Levada Center said its latest poll indicated a growing shift in public perceptions of Stalin since the turn of the 21st century.
“If the prevailing attitude toward (Stalin) was negative at the start of the millennium, now a large proportion of respondents (39 percent) now evaluate him positively,” the Levada Center said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Mustafabad’ will be renamed as ‘Saraswati Nagar’. ‘Banda Bairagi Memorial’ will be built at Sadhaura.
HENB | Yamunanagar | March 31, 2015:: StrongHindu Iron Man of Haryana, the Chief Minister of the state, Shri Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday announced that the State Government would ensure development of Adi Badri Heritage Board so as to further increase the importance of Adi Badri, the starting point of the mythical Saraswati River. [Actually, it is not a mythical matter, there was a rich Saraswati Civilization along with the flow of river Saraswati as per the high research and evidences on it. ~ Editor, Hindu Existence.]
The Chief Minister while addressing his first public meeting of Sadhaura Assembly constituency near Yamunanagar on Monday said that the Government has already constituted Adi Badri Heritage Board and will ensure its progress in right direction.He also announced to start the excavation of Saraswati River which is also the biggest work for the area…
| — Hat tip: Upananda Brahmachari | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysian Cartoonist Charged With 9 Counts of Sedition Over Critical Tweets
A Malaysian cartoonist known for lampooning the ruling coalition was charged Friday with nine counts of sedition over a series of tweets criticizing the country’s judiciary.
The charges against Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque, better known as Zunar, came amid a widening government crackdown on opposition politicians and the media using the colonial-era law, slammed by critics as a move to stifle freedom of expression.
Zunar faces up to 43 years in jail if found guilty on all nine charges, she said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Has China Weaponized the Internet?
China’s internet censorship went on the offensive this week, enlisting computers around the world in a DDoS attack.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Marshall Islands to Appeal in Nuclear Case vs. US; Says US is Modernizing Arsenal, Not Cutting
The tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands is persisting with an unprecedented lawsuit demanding that the United States meet its obligations toward getting rid of its nuclear weapons. It filed notice Thursday that it will appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the case.
The island group was the site of 67 nuclear tests by the U.S. over a 12-year period after World War II, with lasting health and environmental impacts, including more than 250 people exposed to high amounts of radiation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Are You Muslim or Christian? Death to Christians!’
Muslim wholesale slaughter of Christians struck again on April 2 in Kenya. Gunmen from the Somali Islamic group, Al Shabaab—”the youth”—stormed Garissa University, singled out Christian students, and murdered them, some beheaded. A total of 147 people were killed in the attack—making this jihad more spectacular than the 2013 Al Shabaab attack on the Nairobi mall, which left 67 people dead (then, Islamic gunmen also singled out Christians for slaughter).
According to eyewitnesses present at Garissa University, the Islamic gunmen were careful to separate Christians from Muslims before they began the carnage of the former. After all, although Kenya is 83% Christian, it is still approximately 11% Muslim. Joel Ayora, who survived the attack, said gunmen burst into a Christian service, seized worshippers, and then “proceeded to the hostels, shooting anybody they came across except their fellows, the Muslims.”
Collins Wetangula, vice chairman of the student union, said he could hear from inside his room where he was hiding the gunmen opening doors and inquiring if the people inside were Muslims or Christians: “If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot. With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die.”
The fact that Christians were singled out and slaughtered has received little attention in the mainstream media: most mention it, but only towards the very bottom as an incidental, peripheral matter of little significance (see for example the BBC’s minimal treatment); others portray it as a new tactic or phenomenon.
In fact, Al Shabaab has a long history of singling Christians out from among Muslims for slaughter.
[The bilingual (in English and Arabic) Ibrahim gives a number of examples. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Garissa Attack: Many Bodies Still on School Ground; Victims Face Down, Shot in Back of Head
Garissa, Kenya (CNN) The ambulances come and go through the gates of Garissa University College, as townspeople strain from a distance to see what’s going on.
Soldiers shoo them them away, drag them away, but they keep coming back.
In this small town, about 90 miles from the Somali border, nothing much usually happens.
But not so Thursday when Al-Shabaab militants raided the Kenyan campus, leaving 147 dead.
A day later, there are still bodies on the school grounds waiting to be transported off.
A medic said most of the victims had been shot from behind in the back of the head.
“They’re facing down, always,” a worker with St. John’s ambulance service said Friday. “They’re always facing down, and they’re shot in the heads, around the back.”
[This pitiless massacre is just part of a worldwide uptick in the operational tempo of Islam’s war on everyone who does not submit. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya’s Garissa University College Awakens to Islamist Militants’ Terror
(CNN) The sun hadn’t risen at Garissa University College. Most students slept in their beds. A few had woken up to head to early morning Christian prayers.
Then the terror began.
It started with an explosion and gunshots around 5:30 a.m. Thursday (10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday) at the Kenyan school’s front gates. The attackers continued to fire as they stalked through campus, with the Red Cross saying they stopped at a girls’ dormitory.
At one point, they burst into a room where Christians had gathered and took hostages, said lecturer Joel Ayora. A student in the room told Alex Kubasu, a reporter with CNN affiliate Citizen TV, that the terrorists sprayed bullets indiscriminately, striking his thigh.
“Then they proceeded to the hostels,” Ayora told CNN, referring to the university dorm, “shooting anybody they came across — except their fellows, the Muslims.”
According to AFP, the gunmen separated the students by religion and allowed Muslims to leave. This would be consistent with the past practices of Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based terror group that’s claimed responsibility for the attack.
[…]
It wasn’t until about 15 hours after the attack began that the explosions and gunfire around Garissa finally ended. Interior Ministry Secretary Joseph Nkaissery announced that four terrorists were killed and the operation had ended “successfully.”
By then, 147 people were dead and plans were “underway to evacuate students and other affected persons,” the Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre tweeted.
[Al-Shabaab, the charming outfit that exhorted Somali expats in Minneapolis to attack the Mall of America a month ago. The Twin Cities are full of colleges, not a few of which are Christian. If you attend one, best walk heavy and watch your six. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya Al-Shabab Attack: Security Questions as Garissa Dead Mourned
Kenya is mourning 148 people killed in Thursday’s al-Shabab attack on Garissa university campus, amid questions over why warnings were ignored.
Another survivor, Helen Titus, told the news agency AP that one of the first things the gunmen did when they assaulted the campus was head for the lecture hall, where Christian students were gathered for morning prayer.
“They investigated our area. They knew everything,” the 21-year-old said.
Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, said it carried out the attack. The group says it is at war with Kenya, which sent troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the militants.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya University Attack: ‘They Were Lined Up and Executed’
Most of the 147 victims of a terror attack on a Kenyan university on Thursday died execution-style as they lined up waiting for their turn to be shot, a senior Kenyan government source has told The Telegraph.
The suicide vest-clad gunmen, whom the Somali terror group al-Shabaab claimed as their own after they stormed Garissa University in northeastern Kenya, also told students they were “here to make your Easter holidays better” and warned of further attacks to come, survivors revealed.
The gunmen targeted Christians over Muslims according to al-Qaeda guidelines the terrorists who attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi two years ago also followed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Laughing Somali Gunmen Taunted Victims in University Massacre
Piles of bodies and pools of blood running down the corridors: survivors of the Kenya university massacre described how laughing gunmen taunted their victims amid scenes of total carnage.
Salias Omosa, an 20-year-old education student, said the victims were woken up at gunpoint in Thursday’s pre-dawn attack, and Muslims and non-Muslims picked out by “how they were dressed”.
“‘We don’t fear death, this will be a good Easter holiday for us,’ the attackers were shouting in Swahili, then shooting their guns,” Omosa recounted, still trembling with terror and sitting in the refuge of a military camp.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia’s al Shabaab Muslim terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack.
The Muslim terror group said that they have released all Muslims but are “holding many Christians alive” after storming a university in Kenya.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Poo Protest’ Topples British Imperialist in South Africa
Cape Town (AFP) — A bucketload of human excrement flung at a statue has toppled a symbol of British imperialism in South Africa, marking the emergence of a new generation of black protest against white oppression.
The senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) on Friday bowed to student demands that a brooding bronze statue of colonialist Cecil John Rhodes should be removed from the campus.
UCT, the oldest university in South Africa and regularly ranked as the best on the continent, was built on land donated by Rhodes, a mining magnate who died in 1902.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Shabab Attack on a Kenya University Kills 147, Officials Say
NAIROBI, Kenya — Gunmen attacked a university campus in northeastern Kenya early Thursday, clashing with guards, forcing their way into dormitories, taking hostages and singling out non-Muslims, the authorities said.
Kenya’s interior minister, Joseph Nkaissery, said that 147 people had been killed, including four attackers. He contended that the deadly siege at the university had ended, and that security forces were carefully sweeping the campus for any remaining threats.
Kenyan security forces surrounded the campus of Garissa University College and clashed with the gunmen throughout the day, eventually cornering them in one dormitory, officials said.
Abdikadir Sugow, the spokesman for the Garissa county government, said the gunmen were seen wearing “combat gear,” including what appeared to be “either bulletproof vests or suicide bomb vests.”
The Shabab, an extremist group based in Somalia and affiliated with Al Qaeda, issued a statement through a radio station it controls claiming responsibility for the attack.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
South African Radicals Set British War Memorial Ablaze
Members of a radical South African movement have burned and charred a monument to British soldiers who died in the Boer Wars (1899-1902), describing it as a “colonial statue”.
The protesters “put (a burning) tyre over the statue” of a soldier in the centre of the southern town of Uitenhage, police warrant officer Basil Seekoei told AFP.
“We haven’t arrested anyone yet. We’re still busy with the investigation first,” he added.
Responsibility for the incident on Thursday was swiftly claimed by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a political party formed in 2013 by Julius Malema, formerly the firebrand youth leader of the ruling African National Congress, which expelled him after a conviction for hate speech.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Venezuelan Hotels Are Asking Tourists to Bring Their Own Toilet Paper
Venezuela’s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday.
In Merida, a state in western Venezuelan that’s known for its stunning mountain landscapes, small hotels are struggling to stock their rooms with basic supplies, especially as the busy Semana Santa or Holy Week holiday gets underway.
“It’s an extreme situation,” says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. “For over a year we haven’t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
3 in 4 Refugees on Food Stamps, Many Using Other Forms of Public Assistance
The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Annual Report to Congress for FY2013 reveals that nearly 3 in 4 refugees were on food stamps.
Additionally, nearly half were on some form of cash assistance and more than a half were on medical assistance. More than 20 percent were on Supplemental Security Income, more than 22 percent were in public housing and nearly 20 percent were on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Population Projected to Catch Up to Christians by 2050
The Muslim and Christian populations could be nearly equal by 2050, with Islam expected to be the fastest-growing faith on the planet, according to projections released Thursday.
The Pew Research Center’s religious profile predictions assessed data from around the world on fertility rates, trends in youth population growth and religious conversion statistics, reports AFP.
“Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion,” according to the report.
The authors predicted there will be 2.76 billion Muslims on the planet by then, and 2.92 billion Christians. Those figures would correspond to about 29.7% and 31.4% of the world population, respectively.
There were 1.6 billion Muslims on the planet in 2010, compared to 2.17 billion Christians. “The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world,” it added.
Hindus will be third, making up 14.9% of the world’s total population, followed by people who do not affiliate with any religion, accounting for 13.2%.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Star’s Birth Glimpsed ‘In Real Time’
Astronomers have witnessed a key stage in the birth of a very heavy star, using two radio telescope views of the process taken 18 years apart.
The young star is 4,200 light-years from Earth and appears to be surrounded by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The World’s Fastest-Growing Religion Is …
(CNN)If tech futurists are to be believed, by the year 2050, robots will do many of our errands and drive our cars. If a new study on religious trends is to be believed, many of those robot-controlled cars will stop and park at mosques and churches.
Yes, despite predictions that religion will go the way of dinosaurs, the size of the almost every major faith — sorry, Buddhists — will increase in the next 40 years, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.
The biggest winners, Pew predicts, will be Islam and Christianity.
Islam, the world’s fastest-growing faith, will leap from 1.6 billion (in 2010) to 2.76 billion by 2050, according to the Pew study. At that time, Muslims will make up nearly one-third of the world’s total projected population of about 9 billion people.
Christianity is expected to grow, too, but not at Islam’s explosive rate. The Pew study predicts Christians will increase from 2.17 billion to 2.92 billion, composing more than 31% of the world’s population.
This means that by 2050, more than 6 out of 10 people on Earth will be Christian or Muslim. And, for perhaps the first time in history, Islam and Christianity would boast roughly equal numbers.
[…]
[…] nobody at Pew has a crystal ball, so events like cataclysmic wars, rampaging diseases, natural disasters and economic meltdowns could throw the numbers off.
[Cataclysmic wars? You mean like the one that’ll break out when Iran gets the bomb? — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
“1. Cape Town (AFP) — A bucketload of human excrement flung at a statue has toppled a symbol of British imperialism in South Africa, marking the emergence of a new generation of black protest against white oppression.”
“2 Members of a radical South African movement have burned and charred a monument to British soldiers who died in the Boer Wars (1899-1902), describing it as a “colonial statue”.
The British Empire was not perfect. Neither was it the Pan Global holocaust proclaimed by leftists either.
South Africa has had a communist government since black majority rule, the latter having given some form of respectability to the former. However, they cannot keep hiding their current transgressions by maligning people who are long dead.