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US Warns Against Egypt Travel After Reports Say American Killed

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Photo Credit: Sky News

Photo Credit: Sky News

By Associated Press. The Obama administration on Friday warned Americans against all but essential travel to Egypt and moved to reduce the official U.S. presence in the country amid fears of widespread unrest.

Just hours after Egyptian officials said an American had been killed in clashes between government supporters and opponents in the city of Alexandria, the State Department said Americans should defer nonessential travel to Egypt, citing the uncertain security situation. It also said it would allow some nonessential staff and the families of personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to leave Egypt until conditions improve.

“Political unrest, which intensified prior to the constitutional referendum in December 2012 and the anniversary in 2013 of Egypt’s 25th January Revolution, is likely to continue in the near future due to unrest focused on the first anniversary of the president’s assumption of office,” it said. “Demonstrations have, on occasion, degenerated into violent clashes between police and protesters, resulting in deaths, injuries and extensive property damage.”

“Participants have thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails and security forces have used tear gas and other crowd control measures against demonstrators. There are numerous reports of the use of firearms as well,” it said. Read more from this story HERE.

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US Citizen Killed In Alexandria Protests

By Sky News. Violent clashes in the Egyptian city of Alexandria have left two people dead and more than 70 people injured.

A senior security official said a 21-year-old US male died from a stab wound to the chest after violence erupted between supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi.

The second victim was shot dead during the clashes.

It comes as leading clerics warned of “civil war” in Egypt after violence in the last week has left several dead and hundreds wounded.

They backed President Morsi’s offer to talk to opposition groups ahead of mass protests scheduled for Sunday. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Tells Egyptian Christians to not Protest Muslim Brotherhood

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Photo Credit: FrontPagemag

Photo Credit: FrontPagemag

As Egyptians of all factions prepare to demonstrate in mass against the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi’s rule on June 30, the latter has been trying to reduce their numbers, which some predict will be in the millions and eclipse the Tahrir protests that earlier ousted Mubarak. Among other influential Egyptians, Morsi recently called on Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to urge his flock, Egypt’s millions of Christians, not to join the June 30 protests.

While that may be expected, more troubling is that the U.S. ambassador to Egypt is also trying to prevent Egyptians from protesting—including the Copts. The June 18th edition of Sadi al-Balad reports that lawyer Ramses Naggar, the Coptic Church’s legal counsel, said that during Patterson’s June 17 meeting with Pope Tawadros, she “asked him to urge the Copts not to participate” in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood.

The Pope politely informed her that his spiritual authority over the Copts does not extend to political matters.

Regardless, many Egyptian activists are condemning Patterson for flagrantly behaving like the Muslim Brotherhood’s stooge. Leading opposition activist Shady el-Ghazali Harb said Patterson showed “blatant bias” in favor of Morsi and the Brotherhood, adding that her remarks had earned the U.S. administration “the enmity of the Egyptian people.” Coptic activists like George Ishaq openly told Patterson to “shut up and mind your own business.” And Christian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris—no stranger to Islamist hostility—posted a message on his Twitter account addressed to the ambassador saying “Bless us with your silence.”

Indeed, the U.S. ambassador’s position as the Brotherhood’s lackey is disturbing—and revealing—on several levels. First, all throughout the Middle East, the U.S. has been supporting anyone and everyone opposing their leaders—in Libya against Gaddafi, in Egypt itself against 30-year U.S. ally Mubarak, and now in Syria against Assad. In all these cases, the U.S. has presented its support in the name of the human rights and freedoms of the people against dictatorial leaders.

Read more from this story HERE.

Aljazeera Reports that Egypt is Threatening War With Ethiopia Over Water

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Egypt’s president has warned Ethiopia that “all options are open” in dealing with its construction of a Nile dam that threatens to leave Egypt with a dangerous water shortage.

Speaking in a live televised speech before hundreds of supporters on Monday, Mohammed Morsi said Egypt was not calling for war, but it is willing to confront any threats to its water security.

“If it loses one drop, our blood is the alternative,” he said to a raucous crowd of largely Islamist supporters that erupted into a standing ovation.

Ethiopia’s $4.2 billion hydroelectric dam, which would be Africa’s largest, challenges a colonial-era agreement that had given Egypt and Sudan the lion’s share of rights to Nile water.

Experts estimate that Egypt could lose as much as 20 percent of its Nile water in the three to five years needed for Ethiopia to fill a massive reservoir.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul Warns that US Taxpayers Could Fund Attack on Israel

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Photo Credit: AP

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday slammed the administration’s funding and arming of Israel’s foes, including Egypt, and said it is likely that if Muslim nations attack Israel as feared, American taxpayers might be partly responsible.

Addressing the Faith & Freedom Coalition convention in Washington, he also called for an end to funding of nations that persecute Christians. “Christians in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria are on the run—persecuted or under fire—and yet, we continue to send aid to the folks chasing them,” said Paul. “While they burn the American flag and the mobs chant ‘Death to America,’ more of your money is sent to these haters of Christianity. Not one more penny to countries that are burning the American flag.”

Paul, who recently visited Israel to show his support for the Jewish State, expanded his embrace in calling for an end to the administration’s plan to send Air Force jets to Egypt and continue the long-standing aid to the nation, now under control of Muslim radicals. “The new leader of Egypt is Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Recently, he stood by when a radical cleric said a prayer for the destruction of Israel and her supporters in his presence,” said Paul.
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“How does your government respond? The bipartisan consensus in Washington vows to increase Egypt’s funding. The president is currently requesting a billion dollar increase in aid to Egypt. This is an outrage!

Read more from this story HERE.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Government Imprisons 43 Pro-Democracy Activists

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Photo Credit: Zuma Press

A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced 43 democratic activists to up to five years in prison. The charges include operating illegal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and receiving foreign funds without permission. Egypt’s spiral down continues.

Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute is the only American citizen who remained in Egypt to face the charges. He and four others were given a two-year sentence. Twenty-seven other foreign employees were sentenced in absentia to five years each, while 11 Egyptians received one-year suspended sentences.

The 43 worked for such nonsubversive outfits as Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Working for unlicensed NGOs is illegal under Egypt’s 2002 Associations Law. The statute, a relic of the Mubarak era, was applied selectively in pre-revolution Egypt, mainly to squelch the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.

Read more from this story HERE.

Some 100,000 Christians Killed Per Year Over Faith, Vatican Says

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Photo Credit: Fox News

A staggering 100,000 Christians are killed annually because of their faith, according to the Vatican — and several human rights groups claim such anti-Christian violence is on the rise in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt.

“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year,” Vatican spokesman Monsieur Silvano Maria Tomassi said Tuesday in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“Other Christians and other believers are subjected to forced displacement, to the destruction of their places of worship, to rape and to the abduction of their leaders, as it recently happened in the case of Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, in Aleppo [Syria],” Tomassi said.

While several human rights groups could not comment specifically on the Vatican’s number, organizations, like Persecution.Org, said the persecutions of Christians have been on the rise in places like Africa and the Middle East over the last decade.

“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise,” Jeff King, the group’s president, told FoxNews.com.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cold War? Russia Seeks to Replace U.S.

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Photo Credit: WNDRussia has been exerting pressure on Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to cancel weapons deals with the U.S. and instead sign with Moscow at cheaper prices, according to an informed Egyptian security official.

The official said Russia is also attempting to exert its influence at the expense of the U.S. throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Western Asia, including in Turkey.

Currently, Russia is urging Egypt to sign a deal for the creation of a 155-mm guided shell for U.S.-provided M-109 howitzers, which are being used on tanks sold to the Egyptian army by the U.S.

Moscow officials told Egyptian leaders that Russia is interested in replacing the U.S. as the Middle Eastern country’s main weapons dealer, the Egyptian official said.

Similar messages were sent to Turkey, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia and other countries, the official said.

Read more from this story HERE.

New Video Shows Egyptian Police Involved in Deadly Attack on Coptic Cathedral

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Photo Credit: archer10 (Dennis)Newly-emerged video appears to show Egyptian police standing idly by – and even helping attackers during a deadly assault earlier this month on a Coptic cathedral where Christians were mourning five men killed in an earlier clash with Muslims.

The video shot April 7 and first obtained by MidEast Christian News, shows a men shooting guns, wielding machetes and hurling stones and possibly Molotov cocktails as mourners carry caskets out of St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the Abbassia District of Cairo as uniformed police watch, unmoving. At one point, a police officer appears to help a gunman take aim at a courtyard full of mourners who had spilled out of the church. The attack left two Copts dead and another 84 people injured, including 11 police officers.

When it was over, the only arrests made were of four Copts. Christians, who were already outraged over a three-day attack that began April 4 attack in Khosous which saw the four men killed and homes, a nursery and a church burned, said the events show how elusive justice is for Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the nation’s population.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Indian Police Attempt to Bribe Father to Keep Quiet About Horrific Rape of His 5-Year Old Child

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Photo Credit: Washington Post

Anger over sexual assaults erupted on the streets of the Indian capital once again Saturday, as hundreds of people protested the rape of a 5-year-old girl and continuing violence against women and children despite strengthened rape laws.

Police arrested a suspect in the case, Manoj Kumar, 22, who is accused of locking up the girl for 40 hours in his rented room in New Delhi and brutally raping her. The girl had gone missing Monday, when she was playing in her working-class neighborhood in the eastern part of the city.

The girl is in stable condition and alert, according to a medical bulletin released Saturday.

As details of the incident emerged, protesters gathered outside the hospital where the girl is being treated and outside police headquarters and the homes of politicians, demanding the removal of the city’s police chief.

The anger was fueled by comments the girl’s father made to reporters Friday in which he accused police of offering him money for keeping quiet about the incident.

Read more from this story HERE.

Christians Killed, Shops Destroyed in Egypt Again

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded in clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said on Saturday, in some of the worst sectarian violence in Egypt for months.

Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hardline Islamists repressed under his rule.

Four Christian Copts and one Muslim were killed when members of both communities started fighting and shooting at each other in El Khusus north of the Egyptian capital, the sources said. State news agency MENA put the death toll at four.

An angry crowd smashed shops belonging to Christians, residents said. A Reuters reporter saw a burned-out Coptic day care center and several damaged shops belonging to Christian traders. An apartment inhabited by Muslims was also burned.

Residents said the violence broke out on Friday when a group of Christian children were drawing on a wall of a Muslim religious institute. A Reuters reporter saw what looked like a swastika drawn on the wall. Muslim residents said it had offended them because it looked like a cross.

Read more from this story HERE.