China Defence Budget To Rise 10.7% In 2013

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Photo Credit: APChina’s defence budget is set to rise 10.7 percent this year, state media said on Tuesday as the national parliament’s annual gathering opens, a slight drop from a 11.2 percent increase in 2012.

“China plans to raise its defence budget by 10.7 percent to 720.2 billion yuan” ($115.7 billion) in 2013, the Xinhua news agency said, citing a budget report that will be reviewed by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature.

China’s military budgets have risen steadily in recent years along with the country’s booming economic growth, and experts say the actual totals are usually substantially higher than the publicly announced figures.

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Hamas Steps Up Threats On Obama’s Israel Trip

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Photo Credit: WNDDespite there being no information President Obama plans to ascend the Temple Mount on his upcoming trip to Israel, Hamas last night stepped up its threats regarding Palestinian rumors the U.S. president may visit the sacred site.

“Visiting of Obama with Israeli soldiers entering the Al Aqsa Mosque will actually touch the deep and the tender part of the Palestinian, Arabic and Islamic countries all over the world,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas’s senior leader in the Gaza Strip, stated.

Zahar apparently was alluding to previous Palestinian and Arab rioting instigated after then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000.

Zahar continued: “If he is looking to have this visit it means he is accepting Israel as a legitimate occupation, which is undermining his morality and his credibility. Jerusalem up to this moment and all of the Palestinian land is under occupation.” The Hamas leader was speaking Sunday night on WABC Radio’s “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”

Zahar said his group doesn’t have “any hope of any results from his visit to the region.” Asked if his expects Obama to open dialogue with Hamas during the president’s second term, Zahar replied, “Up to this moment there is no indication about this.

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Empire Strikes Back: Report Confirms China Assaulting Home Churches

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Photo Credit: WNDChina’s crackdown against its thriving home-church movement is surging, only a few months after it was reported the communist nation’s attacks on Christians had subsided, according to a new report from the Chinese-focused human rights group China Aid.

China Aid said its research shows a 42 percent increase in persecution over the past 12 months.

China Aid founder Bob Fu, who says the Chinese government is wary of organized groups, confirmed, “Experts say the Communist Party in China has long felt threatened by any movement that galvanizes a large sector of the population, fearing it could wield political clout.”

Now, he said, “The nation has become more systematically hostile to worshipers.” China Aid spokesman Mark Shan told WND the government appears to intend to do what is necessary.

“There is a major effort now to wipe out the house churches by any means. The government will shut down the church,” Shan said. “Or, they will force the house church members to join an official church.” Those official groups, recognized and allowed by the government, also are influenced by the government, critics have explained.

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Kerry: US Releasing Millions In Aid To Egypt, But With Promise Of Reform

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Photo Credit: APSecretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the United States will give Egypt $250 million more in aid, following President Mohammed Morsi’s pledges for political and economic reforms. However, Kerry also said the Obama administration will hold Morsi, who came to power in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president, to his commitment.

“The American people want to see the political and economic success of our long-time partners and friends in Egypt,” Kerry said in Cairo. “We look forward to continuing to work closely with all Egyptians. But “it is clear that more hard work and compromise will be required to restore unity, political stability and economic health to Egypt.”

Egypt was one of Kerry’s first stops on his first tour of Arab nations since becoming secretary. Kerry will be meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, in the Saudi capital Riyadh Monday.

While in Saudi Arabia Kerry will also meet with Saudi and Gulf Arab officials for talks expected to focus on the crisis in Syria and fears about Iran’s nuclear program.

Kerry’s two days of meetings in Egypt have proven tense and fraught with political peril. “I expect a lot,” Egyptian Defense Minister Abdul Al-Sisi told Kerry on Sunday. Kerry replied: “I expect a lot from you.”

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Al Qaeda Finds New Stronghold In Rugged Mountains Of Mali As It Regroups In Africa

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Photo Credit: APAl Qaeda has established a vast mountain stronghold in Mali’s lawless north, launching attacks and then melting into the rugged hills, which they vow will become an Afghanistan-style quagmire for North African governments and Western militaries, according to experts.

Like Tora Bora, the mountain labyrinth in Afghanistan where Al Qaeda evaded Western militaries for years under Usama bin Laden, Mali’s Tigharghar Mountain chain allows terrorists to strike within the region and then vanish when pursued, according to a new report by Stratfor, a Texas-based intelligence firm. Caves, tunnels and land mines have made the jagged mountains an impenetrable safe haven for the terrorists, who authorities say were behind last month’s attack on an Algerian gas plant and yesterday’s car bombing that killed six in Kidal, a key city in northern Mali.

The terrorist groups are believed to be behind a month-old insurgency in Mali, which the government is fending off with help from France, which seeks to protect the interests of mining and energy companies in the region. But experts believe the effort is part of a larger bid to destabilize northern Africa, where Al Qaeda is regrouping after fighting American-led Western allies for more than a decade in the Middle East. Extremists vow the mountain refuge will ultimately be worse for their enemies than the decade-long struggle in Afghanistan.

“They made the mountains’ terrain even more impassable by using land mines and improvised explosive devices and digging tunnels,” the report states. “The militants could already use the extensive network of caves in the mountains, the entrances to which are extremely difficult to spot; in fact, the only way to confirm a cave’s location is to observe militants entering and exiting the cave.”

Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Africa — Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM — has been a lurking presence for years in Mali, a country decimated by poverty and hunger. But political instability following a military coup last year has emboldened them to take over an enormous territory larger than France or Texas — and almost exactly the size of Afghanistan.

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Opposition Leaders Refuse to Meet With Kerry As Violent Protests Outside Cairo Spread

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PORT SAID, Egypt — Violent protests erupted outside Egypt’s capital on Saturday as activists accused police of using excessive force in two cities and running over protesters, including one who was crushed to death by an armored vehicle.

The violence in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura and the Suez Canal city of Port Said came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Cairo meeting with opposition figures.

Some liberals and seculars are angry that Washington is urging them to take part in next month’s parliamentary elections and see U.S. support for the vote as backing for President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party. The U.S. Embassy invited 11 opposition figures to meet with Kerry, but five declined.

The U.S. State Department said Kerry had a telephone conversation with opposition figurehead and Nobel laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, who heads the opposition National Salvation Front. Kerry also met with Amr Moussa, a longtime diplomat and prominent figure in the group. Kerry was scheduled to meet with Morsi on Sunday.

Protesters in Mansoura and Port Said have been calling for civil disobedience campaigns, or work stoppages, to bring down Morsi. The Interior Ministry, embattled by months of demonstrations aimed against its forces, called on political groups to reign in protesters in Mansoura who stormed the city’s old police headquarters Saturday evening.

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Al Qaeda Calls For Jihadists To Kill Ex-Leaders Clinton, Bush, Blair

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Photo Credit: Ron EdmondsThe latest edition of al Qaeda’s English-language online magazine Inspire urges readers to become “lone wolf” jihadists focused on assassinating current and former leaders of Western countries.

“It is easy,” an al Qaeda “consultant” writes of killing the U.S. or French president.

“These people have many weak points, especially during parties, ceremonies and election campaigns.”

In the article titled “You ask, we answer,” the consultant says that “individual mujahids” or holy warriors, who are daunted by the task of killing current world leaders should consider murdering their predecessors.

“If you think you are unable,” the consultant writes “then you have easy targets like [former U.S. Presidents George W.] Bush [and] Bill Clinton, [and former U.S. Secretaries of State] Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, … [as well as former French President Nicholas] Sarkozy and [former British Prime Minister] Tony Blair. “It is now easy to reach these guys, especially since they aren’t in office anymore.”

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U.S. To Instigate Insurgency in Lebanon?

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Photo Credit: WNDA delegation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards arrived in Lebanon to oversee the reinforcement of Hezbollah positions throughout South Lebanon amid Iranian concerns the U.S. and other nations are seeking to arm Christian and Druze opposition groups there, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.

The security officials told WND the U.S., France and Saudi Arabia held serious discussions in recent days about possibly arming Lebanese groups to act against the Hezbollah-Iran axis in Lebanon.

If confirmed, any such arming could expand the growing insurgency in Syria to neighboring Lebanon, a country that has been devastated by civil wars on multiple occasions.

Iran’s reported reinforcement of Hezbollah comes as the U.S. earlier this week pledged $60 million in food rations and medical supplies to the Free Syrian Army. It marked the first time that the Obama administration publicly committed itself to sending aid to the armed factions battling President Bashar al-Assad.

A major issue is the inclusion of jihadists, including al-Qaida, among the ranks of the Free Syrian Army and other Syrian opposition groups.

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Al Qaeda On The Warpath

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Al Qaeda affiliates have spread throughout the Middle East and Africa, transforming al Qaeda into an increasingly dangerous global network, research analysts at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said during a panel Wednesday.

“Al Qaeda is stronger at an operational level than it has been for many years” and the prospects of al Qaeda strengthening are more likely, AEI senior research analyst Katherine Zimmerman said.

Even though the United States successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda movement has spread to Yemen, North Africa, Syria, Somalia, and other areas in the Middle East.

Al Qaeda is “not defeated or on the verge of defeat,” Zimmerman said.

With the outbreak of the Arab Spring, local affiliated al Qaeda groups have infiltrated unstable locations in the Middle East.

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Currency Wars: Why Is The French Industry Minister Rooting For The Devaluation Of The Euro

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Photo Credit: The BlazeFollowing his embarrassing brush with U.S. CEO Maurice Taylor, French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg has turned to the devaluation of the euro as a means of saving France’s battered economy.

No, really.

“France’s industry minister Tuesday called for a lower euro and said the European Central Bank’s [ECB] role should be reinterpreted, wading back into a currency debate that had been calmed by an agreement between the world’s top finance ministers earlier in the month to refrain from competitive devaluations of their currencies,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“I am for a less-strong euro,” Montebourg said Tuesday, adding that it is “good news” the euro has declined against other currencies.

As noted in the WSJ report, the euro has fallen about 4.6 percent against the U.S. dollar since February:

“I am very happy, [the decline] should continue,” Montebourg added.

The report continues:

Earlier this year, French officials complained about the euro being too strong and making the country’s exports less competitive. In a speech to the EU parliament in early February, French President Francois Hollande said the euro shouldn’t be left to fluctuate according to the mood of the markets and warned that a strong euro wipes out efforts to make economies more competitive.

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