Islamic Terrorists With Believed Al Qaeda Links Take U.S. Hostages in Algeria (+video)

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Militants with possible links to al Qaeda seized about 40 foreign hostages, including several Americans, at a natural-gas field in Algeria, posing a new level of threat to nations trying to blunt the growing influence of Islamist extremists in Africa.

As security officials in the U.S. and Europe assessed options to reach the captives from distant bases, Algerian security forces failed in an attempt late Wednesday to storm the facility.

A French effort to drive Islamist militants from neighboring Mali that began with airstrikes last week expanded on Wednesday with the first sustained fighting on the ground. France’s top target, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, claimed responsibility for the Algeria kidnappings, calling it retaliation. The claim couldn’t be verified, although AQIM has its origins in Algeria and operates across a swath of Africa.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. would take “necessary and proper steps” in the hostage situation, and didn’t rule out military action. He said the Algeria attack could represent a spillover from Mali.

U.S. and European officials said Wednesday that they received reports that three Americans had been kidnapped, out of a total of nine U.S. staff working at the site, a gas field in east-central Algeria, along the Libyan border operated by BP BP.LN -0.41%PLC, Norway’s Statoil ASA STL.OS -0.56%and Algerian energy company Sonatrach.

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Video Emerges of Egyptian Leader Morsi Blasting Jews, Zionists in 2010

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As Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi claims he will uphold a peace treaty with Israel, a video has emerged of 2010 speech in which he lashes out at Jews and Zionists.

According to The New York Times, Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, spoke at a rally against the Israeli blockade of Gaza, telling Egyptians to “never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.”

Morsi went on to say Palestine would be freed through resistance, and called President Obama a liar.

The speech was first shown Friday on Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef’s television show, according to the paper, and was made after a flareup in 2010 between Israel and Gaza.

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Syria Bombs Damascus Suburbs to Keep Rebels Out

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BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian government bombed areas around Damascus on Monday as part of its push to keep rebel fighters out of the capital, leaving many children among the dozens killed, anti-regime activists said.

An international aid organization cited such raids, along with rape and widespread destruction, as key factors in the exodus of more than a half-million Syrians to neighboring countries since the conflict began in March 2011.

The International Rescue Committee said it could be “months, if not years” before the refugees can return home, and the organization warned that Syria’s civil war could inflame tensions in the Middle East.

After nearly two years of violence, it appears unlikely the war will end soon. Although rebels seeking to oust President Bashar Assad have made gains in the country’s north and east and outside Damascus, they have yet to seriously challenge his hold on the capital or other parts of the country.

Earlier this month, Mr. Assad dismissed calls from the U.S. and others that he step down and vowed to keep fighting until the country is free of “terrorists” — his government’s shorthand for rebels.

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North Korea Says It Is Bolstering Its War Defenses

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PYONGYANG, North Korea – North Korea vowed Monday to strengthen its defenses amid concerns the country may conduct a nuclear test as a follow-up to last month’s long-range rocket launch.

Citing U.S. hostility, Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said in a memorandum that North Korea will “continue to strengthen its deterrence against all forms of war.”

The memorandum carried by state media did not say what action North Korea would take to defend itself. However, North Korea has claimed the right to build atomic weapons to protect itself from the United States, which stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea.

North Korea sent a satellite into space on Dec. 12 aboard a long-range rocket, a launch that the U.S. and its allies have criticized as a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

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Jackie Chan Slams America As “the Most Corrupt [Country] in the World”

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Action star Jackie Chan has once again sparked controversy by branding America the world’s “most corrupt” country in a TV interview . . .

Chan told Phoenix TV that China has been bullied by international powers for a long time and only began making progress in recent years.

Chan added that while China has a corruption problem, so do other nations, including America.

“If you talk about corruption, the entire world – America – has no corruption?” said the actor.

He went on to say America is “the most corrupt [country] in the world” – not China. “Where does this great breakdown [of corruption] come from? It started exactly from the [rest of the] world, the United States … If our own countrymen don’t support our country, who will?” he said.

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The Fall of Europe: Criticizing Islam Considered National Security Threat in Spain

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WASHINGTON – As tensions continue to surge over the expansion of Shariah law both in the Middle East and in Europe, a new speech rights case has emerged in Spain where an ex-Muslim Christian convert is threatened with deportation for speaking out against Islam.

Imran Farasat, who was interviewed by WND, is a Pakistani Christian who converted from Islam in 2004, after, he said, “I realized that what I was following for 26 years of my life is not a religion but in reality is a political dictatorship which persecutes and teaches to persecute through the orders and teachings of a self-proclaimed prophet (Muhammad).”

After his conversion to Christianity, he began to speak out against Islam. He told WND, “Muslims are involved everywhere in terrorism. Christians are being persecuted in Islamic countries to the maximum level of torture and suffering and Islam is trying to invade the Western world and kill our values. Who will stop this all?”

In his legal fight, he’s represented by The Legal Project, which describes itself as working “…to protect the right in the West to freely discuss Islam, radical Islam, terrorism, and terrorist funding.”

It has a large, transnational clientele that “includes authors, bloggers, journals and politicians.”

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World’s Population In Decline?

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In the 1973 movie Soylent Green, the world had turned (spoiler alert!) to cannibalism to feed its billions of unwashed masses by 2022. But nine years before that milestone, it looks as if the world’s population could actually be starting to decline.

The number of people on the planet has grown exponentially in the past half-century alone, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to an estimated 7 billion in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The world’s 7 billionth person, born sometime last March, elicited concern that we would run out of food and resources for everyone. An ever updating Census Bureau population clock shows the numbers rising.

People have worried about this since at least the 18th century, when British political economist Thomas Malthus first theorized that unchecked population growth would ultimately lead to starvation. China, so concerned about the drain of overpopulation on its resources, instituted a one-child policy in 1979, imposing heavy fines on parents who go over the limit.

But it turns out the world’s population isn’t growing nearly as fast as it once did. In fact, experts say the rate of population growth will continue to slow and that the total population will eventually — likely within our lifetimes — fall.

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Hundreds of Thousands Due in Paris to Protest Homosexual Marriage

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Several hundred thousand people are expected to march through Paris on Sunday against the planned legalization of same-sex marriage in the first mass protest against the unpopular President Francois Hollande.

Strongly backed by the Catholic hierarchy, lay activists have mobilized a hybrid coalition of church-going families, political conservatives, Muslims, evangelicals and even homosexuals opposed to gay marriage for the show of force.

So many are expected to converge on Paris from around France that police had organizers split it into three separate columns starting from different points around the city and meeting in the Champ de Mars park at the Eiffel Tower.

Frigide Barjot, an eccentric comedian leading the so-called “Demo for All,” insists the protest is pro-marriage rather than anti-gay and has banned all but its approved banners saying a child needs a father and a mother to develop properly.

“We’re all born of a man and a woman, but the law will say the opposite tomorrow,” she said last week. “It will say a child is born of a man and a man.”

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Spain Seizes Materials Bound for Iran’s Nuclear Program

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MADRID – Spanish police arrested two men and seized the contents of a truck bound for Iran loaded with materials destined for use in the Islamic state’s nuclear program, the Spanish Interior Ministry said on Friday.

The truck, intercepted on a motorway in northern Spain early on Wednesday, was carrying highly corrosion-resistant valves, the ministry said in a statement.

Police were examining computer databases and documents at the company, Fluval Spain, a ministry spokesman said. The two arrested men were employees at the firm, he said . . .

The company had commercial links with Iranian firms that featured on lists drawn up by the European Union as having connections with Tehran’s nuclear program, the ministry said.

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Mali War Escalates as French Battle Islamist Militants

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BAMAKO, Mali – With Islamist militants controlling more than half of the northwest African nation of Mali and threatening the rest of government-held territory, France launched airstrikes in a dramatic escalation of the conflict that some observers have called the next Afghanistan. French commandoes also reportedly attacked an Islamist base in Somalia to try to rescue a French hostage.

The raid early Saturday in Somalia could have been aimed at preventing al-Shabab fighters from harming the kidnapped French security official in reprisal for the French military intervention in Mali. A Somali intelligence official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the case with the news media, said the raid in Bulomarer killed “several” al-Shabab fighters but he had no information on the hostage.

An al-Shabab official confirmed the fighting and said the group held one dead French soldier. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

However, the office of Col. Thierry Burkhard, the French military’s main spokesman for overseas operations, said it had no information about any Somalia action.

French President Francois Hollande said the “terrorist groups, drug traffickers and extremists” in northern Mali “show a brutality that threatens us all.” He vowed that the operation would last “as long as necessary.”

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