Pope Francis warned against religious fanaticism on Saturday, wrapping up a brief trip to Cairo where he urged Muslim leaders to unite against violence by Islamic militants threatening to rid the Middle East of its ancient Christian communities. Francis’ trip comes three weeks after Islamic State killed at least 45 people in attacks on two […]
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French intelligence has concluded that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria and that Assad or members of his inner circle ordered the strike, a declassified report showed. The chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of people, […]
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Pedestrians and traffic in downtown Jerusalem, and across Israel, stood still Monday morning (April 24) as a two minute siren wailed to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. A day earlier, survivor Zwi Nigal shared his experiences during World War Two with a few dozen people who gathered in an apartment in central Israel on Sunday […]
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Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen are set to face each other in a May 7 runoff for the French presidency after coming first and second in Sunday’s first round of voting, according to multiple projections. Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, opinion polls […]
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Three women dressed in burqas killed a man who had been accused of blasphemy in 2004 in a northeastern Pakistani town, police said on Thursday, the second brutal killing over alleged insults to Islam in a week. Blasphemy is a highly charged topic in Pakistan where there have been at least 66 murders over unproven […]
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Gunmen attacked security forces near St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s south Sinai on Tuesday, killing at least one police officer and injuring four others, the Health Ministry said, just a week after two deadly church bombings killed 45. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on a police checkpoint several hundred metres (yards) from the […]
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Members of Egypt’s Christian minority flocked to traditional services this Easter weekend in sombre mood following attacks last Sunday that killed 45 people, and security was especially tight at the two churches hit by the bombers. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks on Palm Sunday targeting Egypt’s nearly 2,000-year-old Coptic Christian community and has […]
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25 people were killed and 60 injured on Sunday when an explosion rocked a Coptic church in Egypt’s Nile Delta, state television reported, the latest assault on a religious minority that has increasingly been targeted by Islamist militants. The bombing in Tanta, a Nile Delta city less than 100 kilometres outside Cairo, comes as Islamic […]
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Pope Francis condemned a deadly blast at a church in Egypt and said at a Palm Sunday Mass that the world was suffering from wars, terrorism and “interests that are armed and ready to strike”. Francis, who has not made any direct public comment on the current Middle East crisis, said the Mass as international […]
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A truck drove into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing three people and wounding eight in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack. Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train […]
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