• UN urges France to protect fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

    The current state of emergency in France and the law on surveillance of electronic communications impose excessive and disproportionate restrictions on fundamental freedoms, a group of United Nations human rights experts warned yesterday. In a list of concerns shared with the French government, the independent experts stressed the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions of the state of emergency and surveillance laws, related to the nature and scope of restrictions to the legitimate exercise of right to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association and the right to privacy.

  • Danish town requires public institutions to serve pork

    A small Danish town has passed an ordinance making requiring public institutions to serve pork products. The ordinance was passed against an intensifying conflict over food products in Denmark – in what has been dubbed the “meatball war.” Randers City Council in central Denmark announced it wanted to ensure public institutions, including nurseries, provide “Danish food culture as a central part of the offering — including serving pork on an equal footing with other foods.”

  • ISIS threatens India’s prime minister with death over beef consumption

    ISIS has sent a death threat to India’s prime minister Narenda Modi, over his party’s support for a ban on eating beef. The warning was issued by the Islamist group after Modi announced his support for restrictions on the slaughter and consumption of cows in some Indian states. Hinduism, the dominant religion in India, considers cows sacred and objects to the consumption of beef.

  • Iraq: Staggering death toll, sexual enslavement, killing of child soldiers: UN report

    A UN report released earlier today details the severe and extensive impact on civilians of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, with at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2015. Another 3.2 million people have become internally displaced since January 2014, including more than a million children of school age. ISIS is holding estimated 3,500 slaves in Iraq. ISIS has abducted between 800 and 900 children in Mosul for military training children who refused to fight are killed.

  • Cameron supports bans on Muslim face veils

    Prime Minister David Cameron said Muslim women can be banned from wearing veils in schools, courts, and other British institutions. Cameron said he will give his backing to public authorities which put in place “proper and sensible” rules to ban women from wearing face veils in comments which will reignite debates. Camron made his views known as his government is set to announce a series of measures aimed at stop British Muslims becoming radicalized.

  • New X-ray method could detect nuclear materials

    Inspectors need tools to help find nuclear materials hidden behind thick shielding or smuggled inside any of the 100 million-plus cargo containers shipped around the world each year. Uranium is perhaps the easiest nuclear material to obtain and hide. Physicists have demonstrated that their unconventional laser-based X-ray machine could provide a new defense against nuclear terrorism. The scientists used the laser-driven X-ray source to produce an image of a uranium disk no bigger than a stack of three nickels and hidden between 3-inch steel panels.

  • Boston Bomber ordered to pay $101 million to victims

    Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 22, the Boston Marathon bomber, has been ordered to pay more than $101 million to his victims. In June, Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for his role in the 2013 bomb attack. The attack killed three people and injured more than 260.

  • U.S. air strike on ISIS vault destroys “millions of dollars”

    The Pentagon has released footage of an airstrike against an ISIS bank in Mosul, Iraq. The strike destroyed millions of dollars the Islamist organization kept at the bank’ vaults. The attack took place on 11 January. A video footage shows large plumes of smoke emerging above the building after it was destroyed by two 2,000 pound bombs, followed by clouds of currency bills drifting above the explosion.

  • Bangladesh Islamist militants sentenced for bombing attacks

    Bangladeshi court sentences five members of the Islamist Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen to ten years in jail for masterminded a series of bombings in 2005 as part of a campaign to impose Sharia law in the moderate Muslim nation. The Islamist group had been quiet since six of its leaders were executed in 2007, but lately has resumed its terrorist attacks, targeting pro-democracy bloggers and activists for religious minorities.

  • Global persecution of Christians more extreme than ever before: Report

    Religious fundamentalism is sweeping the globe, according to figures released the other day as part of the Open Doors 2016 World Watch List. Systematic religious cleansing is widespread across Africa and the Middle East. Every year well over 100 million Christians are persecuted because of their beliefs. Open Doors reports that North Korea remains the worst place to be a Christian while Iraq (2) has replaced Somalia (7) as the second most dangerous place to be a Christian. Eritrea, now nicknamed the “North Korea of Africa” due to high levels of dictatorial paranoia, follows at number three. Afghanistan (4), Syria (5), and Pakistan (6) are the next most difficult places for Christians.

  • Ash Carter unveils a broader, more robust campaign to defeat ISIS

    Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that 2016 will be the year the American-led coalition attacks ISIS in its strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul, in what may be the Obama administration’s last chance to inflict a lasting defeat on the Islamist group. In a speech on Wednesday, Carter said that he had “big arrows” pointing at the Syrian and Iraqi cities that constitute Isis’s “center of gravity.” The campaign against ISIS will expand beyond these countries, Carter said, indicating that the drone campaigns conducted against militants in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan will target the militant group in other countries, most likely in north and west Africa.

  • 7 killed in ISIS suicide bombings, shootings in Indonesian capital

    ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in Jakarta earlier this morning (Thursday). Indonesian authorities say that the five ISIS attackers were helped by the local Jemaah Islamiyah group. Jemaah Islamiyah was behind a 2009 explosions at two Jakarta hotels that killed seven people, and the 2002 bombings at a Bali nightclub which killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists. Jemaah Islamiyah is similar to ISIS in that it aims to establish an Islamic “caliphate” in south-east Asian countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

  • Family of ISIS victim sues Twitter for enabling terrorism

    The family of Lloyd “Carl” Fields Jr., who was killed last year in an attack in Amman, the capital of Jordan in an ISIS shooting, is suing Twitter, claiming the network has not done enough about the spread of the group’s deadly reach. The complaint claims that the shooting might never have happened had Twitter not existed.

  • U.K. bail procedure to be changed to prevent jihadists from leaving country while on bail

    Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to oversee a shakeup of police bail procedures after a counterterrorism chief said the procedures were “weak and “toothless” and allowed jihadists to act with impunity. The weaknesses in the current bail system were highlighted by the revelations that Siddhartha Dhar, the Londoner suspected of being Isil’s new ‘Jihadi John’, was able to leave the United Kingdom without any problem while on bail despite being told to surrender his passport. Under current law, the police are powerless to escort a released suspect home to seize their passport because of bail regulations and human rights laws.

  • Suicide bomber kills 15 outside polio clinic in Quetta, Pakistan

    The Taliban’s violent campaign against bringing Western medicine to children in Pakistan, a campaign which focused primarily on disrupting the efforts of the Pakistani government and international NGOs to fight polio, continues. Earlier today (Wednesday), a suicide bomber has killed at least fifteen people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the city of Quetta in western Pakistan.