US-Egyptian Christians Fear for Faith Under Morsi’s Islamist Agenda (+video)

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It seems like every Sunday, there’s a new face sitting in the pews of the Church of Saint Verena and the Three Holy Youth in Orange, Calif. Most are young professionals or families with small children and some have been living in the United States for a just few weeks.

“The first waves of immigration,” said Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California and Hawaii.

These worshippers are Egyptian Christians, better known as Copts. Their church is Coptic Orthodox, the largest Christian church in Egypt and the Middle East with services similar to other Christian faiths. They perform sacraments like the Catholics and recite prayers many faithful Americans would recognize, including “Our Father” and “Hail Mary.” Mass is spoken in a mix of English, Arabic and the ancient Coptic language.

“We are Christians,” said Bishop Serapion. “We believe in the Holy Bible as the word of God.”

While small, the Coptic Christian population in the United States has been growing since the 1950s, particularly in Southern California, New York and New Jersey. But since the Arab Spring began in early 2011, Department of Homeland Security figures show the number of Egyptians seeking asylum has doubled. Unofficial estimates are that 100,000 Egyptians have so far sought refuge in the U.S. Many of them are believed to be Copts but there are no official statistics on their numbers.

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Chinese Investors Take 80% Stake in AIG Aircraft Leasing Unit

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American International Group agreed Monday to sell an 80.1% stake in its giant aircraft leasing business to a group of Chinese investors.

The investor group, which includes New China Trust, China Aviation Industrial Fund and P3 Investments, will pay $4.23 billion to acquire the stake in AIG’s International Lease Finance Corporation. The deal includes an option for the investors to purchase an additional 9.9% stake.

The acquisition is part of AIG’s (AIG, Fortune 500) drive to sell non-core assets, a strategy designed to help the insurance company emerge from the financial crisis, during which it required a government bailout, as a leaner business.

If the option to expand the purchase to 90% of ILFC is exercised, the investor group will grow to include New China Life Insurance and an investment arm of ICBC International.

ICBC International is a Hong Kong-based subsidiary of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China — a state-owned enterprise and one of the largest banks in the world.

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Chinese Buyers Lead Foreign Investment in US Housing Market (+video)

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As the U.S. housing market slowly starts to recover, foreign investment is helping it along.

According to the National Association of Realtors, non-American buyers accounted for $82 billion in home sales last year. More than $7 billion of that is by the Chinese, who are now the second largest foreign home purchasers after Canadians. They’re buying high-end, multimillion-dollar homes from California to New York and paying cash.

“They’re probably the top 1 percent of the Mandarin speakers that are coming from China,” said Brent Chang, a Coldwell Banker realtor in Southern California. “They’re really the people who have their own businesses or maybe were part of the government.”

Some of these homes are specifically catered to Chinese buyers. Fox News visited a home listed at $8 million in Pasadena, Calif., that had two kitchens, the smaller one had ventilation for the cooking for aromatic or “stinky” foods like fish. It also has a lower level in-law suite and even a koi pond.

“People from China do a lot more business in their homes so they want their homes to really scream that they’ve made it and they’re successful, ” said Chang.

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Israeli Ambassador: Syria Transfer of WMD to Militants Would Be ‘Game Changer’

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Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. said that if Syria were to transfer chemical weapons to Hezbollah or other militant groups, it would be a “game changer.”

Ambassador Michael Oren, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said he could not confirm reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had prepared sarin gas for use. But he said Israel was worried that Syria could transfer the weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party that receives support from Syria and Iran.

“We are watching the situation very carefully,” Mr. Oren said. “Syria has a very varied, deep chemical weapons program. It is geographically dispersed as well. Were those weapons to pass in to the wrong hands, Hezbollah’s hands, for example, that would be a game changer for us.”

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United Nations Green Climate Fund May Require Carbon Tax As Loan Contingency For Developing Countries

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The Green Climate Fund, designed to channel as much as $100 billion a year in pledges to emerging nations, may try to wean recipients off fossil fuel and encourage them to put a price on carbon, according to an overseer.

The fund may guarantee bank loans in developing nations for projects ranging from wind farms to building insulation and less-polluting agricultural equipment, Naoko Ishii, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility in Washington, said yesterday in an interview in Doha. She heads one of two secretariats governing the fund.

Climate projects may be able to get private-sector finance augmented by guarantees from the fund, alongside discounted loans from government or development banks, Ishii said. The 24- member board of the Green Climate Fund, which is still waiting to recieve money from developed nations, may make loans or guarantees conditional on the recipient having the right environmental policies in place, she said.

“I know that conditionality is a very sensitive word, but from the donor point of view, if the money is to be impactful, there must be some policy environment put in place,” Ishii said.

United Nations envoys from about 200 nations meeting in the Qatari capital this week are seeking to extend the Kyoto Protocol and lay the groundwork for a global climate agreement for 2020. Financing from richer nations to the developing world for the next seven years will help cut emissions before the new deal comes into force, Ishii said.

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Egyptian Opposition Leader Ahmed Said: US Ignored Warnings on Brotherhood (+video)

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Washington has failed to heed warnings from inside Egypt about the true intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian opposition leader Ahmed Said tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

“Unfortunately the United States was not listening,” Said told Newsmax. Said, a former member of the Egyptian parliament, heads the Free Egyptians Party, a staunchly pro-Western, pro-democratic political party.

“I was a member of parliament for the past five months before the parliament was dissolved, and I have met with several congressional delegations and met with Sens. John McCain and John Kerry — and I don’t think they’re really listening, to be very honest

Said, whose group is among the many opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the first elected head of state in the country’s history, tells Newsmax.TV that Egyptians hoped that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would be elected to the White House last month because of his tough foreign policy positions.

“The United States has a reputation of only respecting those in power who think they are strong — and people were hopeful, to a certain extent, that if Romney took over, he would be more aggressive with respect to dealing with human rights in Egypt and things like that,” he said.

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Lord Monckton Ejected From U.N. Climate Meeting For Telling Truth

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Stifling Dissent: A lone voice cried out against the global warming sham at the United Nations climate change conference and it was unceremoniously silenced. What are the alarmists afraid of?

Christopher Monckton, the third viscount of Benchley, adviser to Margaret Thatcher and global warming realist, shook up the U.N.’s talks in Doha, Qatar, when he told the delegates that “in the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all.”

“If we were to take action,” he continued, “the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptive measures later. So our recommendation, therefore, is that we should initiate very quickly a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track.”

His statement was met with boos and heckles — and, of course, an ejection and seizure of his credentials.

The U.N. will justify the ejection on grounds that Monckton deceptively posed as a delegate from Burma when he spoke. But how else could a skeptic speak at such a gathering?

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Russia Arms Syria With Powerful Ballistic Missiles

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Hours after NATO agreed on Tuesday to send Patriot missiles to Turkey because of the crisis in Syria, Russia delivered its first shipment of Iskander missiles to Syria.

The superior Iskander can travel at hypersonic speed of over 1.3 miles per second (Mach 6-7) and has a range of over 280 miles with pinpoint accuracy of destroying targets with its 1,500-pound warhead, a nightmare for any missile defense system.

According to Mashregh, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard media outlet, Russia had warned Turkey not to escalate the situation, but with Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles, it delivered its first shipment of Iskanders to Syria.

Reporting today, Mashregh said the handover occurred when Russian naval logistic vessels docked at Tartus in Syria.

The Iskandar is a surface-to-surface missile that no missile defense system can trace or destroy, Mashregh said. Russia had earlier threatened that should America put its missile defense system in Poland, it would retaliate by placing its Iskander missiles at Kaliningrad, its Baltic Sea port.

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New York Times Cairo Bureau Chief: Muslim Brotherhood Is ‘Moderate, Regular Old Political Force’

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The New York Times Cairo bureau chief David K. Kirkpatrick insists that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force,” despite Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent power grab and the Islamist organization’s radical views.

Kirkpatrick called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday from Egypt as the Brotherhood’s supporters battled opponents who feared a return to dictatorship on the streets of Cairo. When asked by Hewitt whether the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, a former top ideological enforcer in the movement, were consolidating power in Egypt to pursue an undemocratic Islamist agenda, Kirkpatrick said he thought such criticism was “misplaced.”

“The Brotherhood, they’re politicians,” he said.

“They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate — conservative but religious, but moderate — regular old political force. I find that a lot of the liberal fears of the Brotherhood are somewhat outside. That said, you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of what the good life looks like. But in the short term, I think they just want to win elections.”

Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s slogan is the not-so-moderate “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

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Looming Catastrophe: Syria Mixes Chemical Weapons to Bomb Civilians? (+video)

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Syrian forces have mixed chemical weapons and loaded them into bombs in preparation for possible use on President Bashar Assad’s own people, Fox News confirms.

A senior U.S. official told Fox News that bombs were loaded with components of sarin gas, a deadly nerve gas. Syrian forces have 60 days to use these bombs until the chemical mixture expires and has to be destroyed.

NBC News, which first reported this latest escalation in the Syrian civil war, cited sources saying bombs filled with a sarin component have not yet been loaded onto planes, but the Syrian military is prepared to use these chemical weapons against civilians pending orders from Assad.

The sarin could be delivered in several ways but is believed to have been placed in fracturable canisters that can be dropped from planes, according to a senior US military source.

“We think they have it in aerosol form,” the source told Fox News.

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