Month: July 2016

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday that Turkey’s purge of the military, after the coup that failed to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is hindering efforts to fight the Islamic State…

Former wrestling champion Hulk Hogan is allowed to start seizing assets from Gawker CEO Nick Denton after a judge ruled that Denton had lied to the court about the value of his company.

PARIS (AP) — You can’t put a guard in every church and patrol every beach. But after a wave of attacks in Western Europe, authorities are struggling to protect their people as best they can. The French Riviera city of Cannes has banned large backpacks on beaches lest they hide explosives, and Britain is providing extra funding for security at tens of thousands of places of worship. The grisly slaying this week of an elderly priest celebrating Mass in a Normandy church, less than two weeks after 84 revelers were mowed down by a truck on a beachfront promenade in Nice, sounded the alarm that nothing is sacred and no place is safe. Four attacks in a week in Germany sealed that conviction. “Churches take great pride in being open. But there comes a time when the reality of crime and the reality of terrorism may mean that some of that balance needs to be readjusted,” said Mark Gardner, spokesman for Community Security Trust which provides extensive protection to Jewish synagogues and schools throughout Britain. The Trust started operating in 1994 after a car bomb attack on the Israeli Embassy in London injured roughly 20 people and a devastating attack

MUNICH/BERLIN, July 30 (Reuters) – Bavaria’s premier, whose state bore the brunt of recent attacks in Germany, took aim at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy on Saturday by rejecting her “we can do this” mantra. The comments from Horst Seehofer, whose Christian Social Union is the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s conservatives, exacerbate the chancellor’s difficulty in standing by a policy that her critics have blamed for the attacks and which risks undermining her popularity before federal elections next year. “‘We can do this’ – I cannot, with the best will, adopt this phrase as my own,” Seehofer told reporters after a meeting of his party. Five attacks in Germany since July 18 have left 15 people dead, including four assailants, and dozens injured. Two of the attackers had links to Islamist militancy, officials say. Germany is wrestling with how to respond. Jens Spahn, deputy finance minister and a senior member of Merkel’s conservatives, said that integrating the refugees was a Herculean task but the government needed to put more pressure on those new arrivals unwilling to make an effort to fit in. “A ban on the full body veil – that is the niqab and the burka –

LONDON, July 30 (Reuters) – Three teenagers playing the hit game Pokemon GO have been robbed at gunpoint in a north London park and forced to hand over their mobile phones, British police said on Saturday. Armed robberies are rare in Britain and police said they were hunting three suspects thought to be aged around 16 or 17 in relation to the incident on Tuesday evening. While one suspect demanded that the three teenagers hand over their phones, a second revealed what the police said was a handgun from his waistband. The three teenagers handed over their phones and left the scene unhurt. Nintendo Pokemon GO has become the unexpected and runaway smash hit of the year, with players looking at their mobile screens to find virtual Pokemon characters that are appearing at office spaces, restaurants, museums, parks and other sites via the augmented reality technology. The game has already been blamed for a rash of accidents and a slew of mishaps stemming from distracted players. First rolled out just over three weeks ago, the game has driving up Nintendo’s market value by 50 percent.

PARIS (AP) — A teenager detained following the gruesome killing of an 85-year-old priest by a pair of jihadi attackers in northwest France was released Saturday, a French official said. An official with the Paris prosecutor’s office said investigators questioning the 16-year-old found evidence of regular visits to jihadi sites and of “incitement to terrorism,” but that the minor’s case had been handed over to prosecutors in the nearby city of Rouen who cover the region. She spoke on condition of anonymity as she was not allowed to be named publicly. Judicial authorities in Rouen did not immediately return a message seeking comment. A Syrian refugee and a cousin of one of the two attackers remain in custody following the July 26 attack in the French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray which claimed the life of Rev. Jacques Hamel as he celebrated morning Mass. The violence sent shockwaves around France and deeply touched many among the nation’s 5 million Muslims. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as the July 14 truck attack in Nice, where 84 people were killed by a man who plowed a truck down a seaside promenade. France has seen rising jihadi violence in

U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus plans to name a ship after gay rights leader Harvey Milk.