China Decries U.S. Comments on South China Sea as ‘Not Constructive’

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/DAVID GRAYChina has accused the United States of undermining peace and development in the Asia-Pacific after a senior U.S. official said concern was mounting over China’s claims in the South China Sea.

“These actions are not constructive”, Hong Lei, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a statement issued late on Saturday.

“We urge the U.S. to hold a rational and fair attitude, so as to have a constructive role in the peace and development of the region, and not the opposite,” Lei said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel told a congressional testimony on Wednesday the United States had “growing concerns” that China’s maritime claims were an effort to gain creeping control of oceans in the region.

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At Pakistan’s ‘Taliban U,’ Jihadists Major in Anti-Americanism

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Photo Credit: Fox News A 90-minute drive northwest of Islamabad is an Islamic seminary that is considered the ivory tower of terrorism, a jihadist factory that has produced prominent Taliban fighters and its leadership for decades.

Unofficially dubbed “University of Jihad,” Dar ul Uloom Haqqania [House of Knowledge and Truthfulness] counts Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the dreaded Haqqani Network, among its alumni. Names of most of more than 8,000 former students who have passed through the seminary are encased in glass-covered wooden frames that hang on the walls inside the main building.

“The Haqqanis got their surname from Haqqania, this madrassa” “Ammanullah,” a proud member of the Class of 2007, told FoxNews.com during a recent tour, a rare look inside the seminary along the Grand Trunk Road in Akora Khattak.

The campus is the size of four football fields, encompassing several buildings guarded by one police gunman. About 3,500 students currently live and study at the compound, which has churned out generations of freedom fighters stretching back to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Closely aligned with the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is at violent odds with the current governments of both nations.

Founded by Maulana Abdul Haq just after Pakistan gained independence in 1947, the seminary propagates Deobandi, a revivalist and anti-imperialist movement of Sunni Islam formed in reaction to the Britain’s colonization of India.

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UN: ‘Unspeakable Suffering’ for Syria’s Children

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Manu BraboChildren in Syria have been tortured, sexually abused and subjected to “indiscriminate” attacks by President Bashar Assad’s forces, and recruited for combat and terror operations by the rebels fighting to topple him during the country’s nearly 3-year-old conflict, a new United Nations report said.

The report to the U.N. Security Council by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlights the plight of children in the conflict from the beginning of the uprising against Assad in March 2011 until Nov. 15, 2013. It was given to the council this week and posted on the U.N. website Tuesday.

Ban said Syrian children have been subjected to “unspeakable and unacceptable” suffering during that time. “Violations must come to an end now,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government missed another deadline for destroying its chemical weapons Wednesday, but pledged to complete the process by June 30 as promised.

Under a timetable set up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Syria was to have given up its entire stockpile of chemical weapons by Wednesday. Last week, a U.S. diplomat said Syria had only removed 4 percent of its most deadly chemicals so far. All should have been removed by Dec. 31 under the framework.

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Israeli Settlers Mock Kerry’s Peacemaking with Spoof Video

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Photo Credit: YouTubeIsrael’s Yesha [settlers] Council has posted online a deliberately disrespectful spoof depicting America’s top diplomat – played by an actor resembling John Kerry – riding a camel and making a series of preposterous statements that belittle his understanding of the region’s complexities.

At one point, the Mr Kerry character is seen down-playing the importance of the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, in Jerusalem’s old city.

“Dividing Jerusalem is not an easy thing,” the actor says. “We must realise it is holy to all religions – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Klingons and Hobbits. But what I’m saying is: ‘why fight over an old wall?’

I’ll build you a brand new wall, close to the beach.”

A woman with an American accent is then seen telling him: “I think you should go home, where you belong, and stay there.”

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Number of Christians Killed Through Persecution Increased by 75 Percent in 2013

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Photo Credit: APPersecution of Christians continues to worsen, fueled in part by the “Arab Spring,” which not only unleashed a wave of Islamist radicalism across the Arab world but also left Christians holding the blame for many of the uprisings that removed Arab leaders from power.

In 2013, 2,123 Christians were killed in persecution around the world, up from 1,201 in 2012.

In countries across the Middle East, North Africa and south Asia, Christians are murdered or imprisoned, their homes and businesses destroyed and their rights removed. This area represents just four percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, but the treatment they receive is nothing short of horrific.

“It is not an accident, the persecution and mass murder of Christians by Muslims,” said Lee Habeeb, a Lebanese Christian and vice president of content at Salem Radio Network. “It is not episodic. It is by design. It is part of a plan to destroy any competing narrative about God. To bully, threaten, and intimidate Christians into submission, or mass evacuation.”

Earlier this month, Open Doors, an organization dedicated to strengthening Christianity throughout the world, especially in oppressed nations, released its 2014 “World Watch List,” designed to highlight the countries where Christians are most oppressed. Countries in the Middle East, northern Africa and south Asia dominate the list. Here are some of the worst offenders…

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Child Soldier: Shocking Video Surfaces of Purported 4-Year-Old Jihadist in Syria

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Photo Credit: YouTubeAl Qaeda fighters in Syria may have sunk to a new low with a video that appears to show a four-year-old boy squeezing off rounds from an AK-47 as jihadists exhort him on with cries of “Alahu Akhbar.”

The little tyke, whose father stands proudly behind him, is dwarfed by the heavy automatic weapon, and props the barrel up on a street barricade in the stomach-turning clip. The gun’s recoil knocks him back, and his father helps him hold it, offering encouragement in Arabic. International experts say the use of child soldiers is a disturbing trend previously seen in the bloody Syrian civil war, but the use of such a young boy is a new depth.

“Syria is unique to any other conflict we’ve worked in over the last 20 years,” Kate Adams, policy and advocacy manager at London-based charity War Child told FoxNews.com. “Children do seem to have been targeted by both sides, more than we might necessarily see in other conflicts. Children are being used almost as pawns of the war and not just as collateral damage.”

The child, identified as “Muhammad,” wears a black mask as he fires the gun, then removes it to reveal the chubby cheeks of a boy who should be playing harmless games with friends. Local reports say he arrived in Syria with his father from either Uzbekistan or Albania, along with the thousands of foreign fighters who are now answering the call for Holy War in the key Middle East nation.

The original video of the boy carried the title, “A message from one of the cubs of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” an Al Qaeda-linked group bent on establishing a terrorist state spanning Iraq and Syria. The video was removed from YouTube, but copies of the brief 30-second clip had already been released onto the web.

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Forgetting Gun Was in Glove Box Could Land Veteran in Canadian Prison for 3 Years

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Photo Credit: Reuters Retired Army Sergeant Major Louis DiNatale was on his way to Vermont for vacation in his wife’s car when he took a wrong turn, ended up on a bridge to Canada, and was charged for possession of a firearm after Canadian customs agents found a small-caliber pistol in his wife’s console.

Although DiNatale made it clear he was on the bridge inadvertently and simply wanted to u-turn and return to the United States, he was handcuffed and could face three years in prison.

According to the LA Times, DiNatale had forgotten the gun was in his wife’s console shortly after putting it there so it wouldn’t be in his truck when he drove onto base at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. He put the pistol in his wife’s car for safe-keeping then forgot all about it.

When a Canadian custom agent asked DiNatale if he owned guns, the retired Sergeant Major said, “yes.”

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US Secretary of State Threatens Israeli Boycott, Warns of ‘Deligitimization’ of Israel

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Photo Credit: CBSIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday brushed off U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning that Israel faced a growing boycott threat if peace talks with the Palestinians fail, saying the campaign would not achieve its goal.

In the latest flare-up between the two allies, two of Netanyahu’s Cabinet ministers went even further, lashing out at Kerry and accusing him of undermined the Jewish state’s legitimacy and the chances of reaching a peace agreement.

Israel and the Palestinians launched peace talks in July after a long lull and have thus far shown little signs of progress. Facing an April deadline, Israel is working against a backdrop of increasing international pressure to reach a deal, coupled with a growing call for boycotting Israel over its settlements in areas it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

A small but growing number of European businesses and pension funds have begun to drop investments or limit trade with Israeli firms involved in the West Bank settlements. At a security conference in Germany this weekend, Kerry warned that a breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian talks would accelerate this trend and could threaten Israel’s economic prosperity and its safety.

“You see for Israel there’s an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things,” Kerry said. “Today’s status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100 percent, cannot be maintained. It’s not sustainable. It’s illusionary. There’s a momentary prosperity, there’s a momentary peace.”

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Activists: Syrian Forces Launch New Aleppo Strikes

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Photo Credit: YahooSyrian military helicopters dropped barrels packed with explosives in the government’s latest air raids on rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, killing at least 23 people including a family trapped in a burning car, activists said.

In neighboring Lebanon, a car bomb blew up near a gas station in a Shiite town, killing at least three people, in the latest attack linked to the war in neighboring Syria.

Footage on al-Manar television, associated with the Shiite group Hezbollah, showed a bright orange blaze as black silhouettes of people ran by the gas station in the northeastern town of Hermel that lies near the Syrian border. Blasts could be heard in the background. The Lebanese Red Cross said another 18 people were wounded. The organization initially reported that four people were killed, but later revised the number downwards.

The large blast occurred near a school for impoverished and orphaned children. None were injured, officials said.

It was the latest in a series of attacks targeting Lebanon’s Shiite community, as Syria’s violence causes neighboring Lebanon’s sectarian tensions to escalate into outright violence.

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‘Dragging Their Feet’: US Struggling to Make Assad Turn Over Chemical Weapons On Time

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Photo Credit: Fox News No longer facing the imminent threat of a U.S. military strike, the Assad regime is dragging its feet on relinquishing its chemical weapons — leaving U.S. officials scrambling to pressure the Syrian government to honor the terms of last year’s deal.

The Obama administration acknowledged on Thursday that the regime has shipped out less than 5 percent of its chemical arms. The country is weeks behind schedule, and may miss next week’s deadline to ship all its chemical agents out of the country.

This, despite President Obama declaring in his State of the Union address that Syria’s chemical weapons “are being eliminated” thanks to American diplomacy.

The administration still hopes diplomacy will prevail. It also may have few other options, with little appetite in Congress for military intervention.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday that officials are working with partners to “keep up the pressure” on the regime.

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