Pope Francis starts a trip on Sunday to Bulgaria and North Macedonia where he will have to tread carefully because of sensitive relations with the dominant Eastern Orthodox Church in the two Balkan countries where Catholics are a tiny minority. Bulgaria, a country of 7.1 million people, is home to just 58,000 Catholics, while North […]
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A woman has died and three other people are in hospital after a shooting at a synagogue outside San Diego, California. County sheriff William Gore said a white man opened fire on worshippers at Chabad of Poway with an AR-type assault weapon. San Diego Police chief David Nisleit said the 19-year-old suspect called police to […]
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The Duke of Cambridge delivered an emotional speech during a visit to the Masjid Al Noor in Christchurch, where 42 people were killed last month in one of two attacks on mosques in the city. Here is the text of William’s speech, after he greeted the guests in Maori and Arabic: Good morning. Today we […]
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A Somali man has been jailed for having a stash of Islamic State propaganda. Abdirahman Mohamed, of Shadwell Drive in Northolt, west London, had been found guilty after an Old Bailey trial of eight charges of possessing a document or record for terrorist purposes and cleared of one count of disseminating a terrorist publication. Police […]
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A community of Syrians who converted to Christianity from Islam is growing in Kobani, a town besieged by Islamic State for months, and where the tide turned against the militants four years ago. The converts say the experience of war and the onslaught of a group claiming to fight for Islam pushed them towards their […]
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An Islamic State supporter who called for an attack on Prince George has had his minimum jail term cut on appeal. Husnain Rashid used a chat group to encourage supporters to target the young prince, posting the address of his school with the chilling message “even the Royal family will not be left alone”. The […]
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A teenager charged with terror offences told police that being arrested was “cool” and he would show off about it “forever”, a court has heard. The 16-year-old boy is accused of accessing bomb-making instructions on the internet and making a potential bomb filled with shrapnel, but denies intending to harm anyone. The trial at Leeds […]
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The Foreign Secretary has said giving Shamima Begum access to legal aid to challenge the decision to deprive her of UK citizenship would make him “very uncomfortable”. Jeremy Hunt said Ms Begum, who left the UK at the age of 15 to marry an Islamic State fighter, “knew the choices she was making”, but acknowledged […]
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This information has been obtained from the Rojava Information Centre and is a short transcript of an interview undertaken with female British ISIS recruiter, Tooba Gondal in the Ayn Issa camp. She survived 4 years within Islamic State territory. Interviewer: We actually went there (Baghouz), what was it like? Tooba Gondal: Getting out was like […]
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The social polarisation of a globalised world continues. Toxic discourse around ethnicity, identity, citizenship, belonging and nationhood has led to the fracturing of communities along the lines of skin colour and accents rather than shared values. And although societies are far more conscious today to not tolerate racism, what is clear also is that fear and […]
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