Christian Science Monitor

HANGZHOU, CHINA — There’s nothing secret about Chongyi Church, one of the largest in China. Its lighted steeple and giant cross penetrate the night sky of Hangzhou, the capital of coastal Zhejiang Province.

Nearly everything at the church is conspicuously open: the front gate, the front door, the sanctuary, the people, the clergy. Chinese or not, you are welcome seven days a week. No layers of security guards or police exist. Walk right in. Join up. People are nice; they give you water, chat. Do you have spiritual needs? Visit their offices, 9 to 5.

For China, it is a stunning feeling. Most of the society exists behind closed doors and is tough, driven, material, hierarchical. The country values wealth, power, and secrecy – not to mention that both government and schools officially, at least, promote atheism.

  Security forces fully controlled on Monday Roumieh prison’s block B after storming the overcrowded facility, which contains Islamist prisoners, in search for illegal items. Media reports said that prisoners at block B were all transferred to block D. There are around 190 Fatah al-Islam prisoners at the notorious prison’s block B, which is known […]

  BEIRUT: The Press Federation elected Monday a new board headed by owner and editor in chief of daily Ash-Sharq newspaper, Aouni al-Kaaki, succeeding veteran chief Mohammad Baalbaki who has served in the post over three decades. Kaaki and all members of his list won the vote, defeating a rival list led by Salah Salam, […]

  Security forces said on Monday that they arrested a man suspected of murdering a young woman in the coastal town of Kaslik that lies north of Beirut. H.H. was apprehended in the Bir Hassan neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs on suspicion of killing Elianne al-Safatli near a nightclub in Kaslik, police said. (Link)

By Abigail James (NEWS CONSORTIUM)

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – The "no-go" zones, officially called Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS), or Sensitive Urban Zones range in size and quantity. According to reports, there is hardly a town if France that does not have at least one ZUS.
ZUS formations began in late 1996, and more than 5 million people live in them; that’s 8 percent of France’s population. Area locations include the heavily Muslim parts of Paris, Marseilles, Strasbourg, Lille and Amiens.  Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris is home to an estimated 500,000 Muslims and 36 of the 40 districts in the area are "no-go" zones.
French rulings and law enforcement hold no bar in the no-go zones. They aren’t even allowed in. The host-countries have lost control over the "no-go" zones. Public aid can’t even infiltrate to help when needed.

On Sunday, Paris’s streets brimmed with an estimated 1 million people in a march of national unity.

The moving spectacle comes in the wake of multiple acts of terror this week, including one on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The attacks left 17 dead.

The march, known as the Marche Republicaine, drew countless French citizens, as well as over 40 foreign leaders.

"Today, Paris is the capital of the world," French President Francois Hollande told the Associated Press. "Our entire country will rise up toward something better."

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Alawite mourners carry coffins wrapped by Lebanese flags of those who were killed at a coffee shop where a suicide bombing struck it Saturday night, during their funeral procession in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11,

Alawite mourners carry the coffins of the nine men who were killed at a coffee shop where a suicide bombing struck it Saturday night, during their funeral procession in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015

Two Lebanese men check a coffee shop that was damaged in a suicide bombing Saturday night, in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015

An Alawite woman, center, mourns over the death of her relative who was killed at a coffee shop where a suicide bombing struck it Saturday night, during their funeral procession in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015.

Men carry an Alawite woman after she falls during the funeral procession of her relative who was killed at a coffee shop where a suicide bombing struck it Saturday night, during their funeral procession in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015.

Alawite mourners carry coffins of those who were killed at a coffee shop where a suicide bombing struck it Saturday night, during their funeral procession in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015

By Tom Perry – Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A double suicide attack that killed eight people at a cafe in the Lebanese city of Tripoli was carried out by the Islamic State group, the interior minister said on Sunday, contradicting a claim of responsibility by the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Nohad Machnouk also said he expected more instability linked to the Syrian civil war that has been at the heart of repeated violence in Lebanon over the last four years.

The Nusra Front said on Saturday it was behind the bombing in the Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen – an attack Lebanese leaders said aimed to ignite communal strife in a predominantly Sunni Muslim city where long-standing sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the Syrian conflict.

Machnouk said investigators were questioning men who belonged to the same organization as the two bombers, both of whom have been identified as men from Tripoli.

"The initial information so far says that criminal state of Daesh was the one behind the bombing," Machnouk told journalists in Tripoli, using an pejorative Arabic acronym for the group that has seized wide areas of Syria and Iraq.

  Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq stressed on Saturday that the cabinet would reach a decision on the waste management file by January 17, the deadline for closing the Naameh landfill and the date when the contract with the company, which collects dumps in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, expires. Al-Mashnouq told Ad-Diyar daily published on Saturday […]

BEIRUT—Leaders and politicians throughout the Middle East have roundly condemned the attack in Paris, but in a region facing its own violence and attacks on freedom of expression, the news from France was widely met with a nod and shrug.

“The most minor things here aren’t guaranteed, so people don’t care about other things. Here their concerns are water, electricity and livelihood,” said Rana Idriss, the decorator at Gustav Patisserie, a family-owned bakery where macaroons and fruit tarts serve as reminders for the more than two decades Lebanon spent under French rule. “Maybe because here we have gotten used to these things, no one talks about it anymore.”

On Friday Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said groups like al Qaeda do more to offend the Prophet Muhammad than the cartoons mocking him. But many had other concerns.

  Beirut: Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai lashed out at “privacy invading” media Friday, calling on journalists to abide by standards of objectivity, after a TV program earlier this week reported on alleged corruption inside church courts. “We join the Lebanese people in looking forward to your constructive role and objective event covering,” Rai told […]