By Natasha Bertrand

Al Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, formally
severed ties with the global terror organization Thursday in an
attempt to “unify” as a distinct Islamist brigade with its own
revolutionary goals and vision.

In its mission to rebrand itself, al-Nusra — now identifying
as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — has clearly indicated
that it is not committed to Al Qaeda’s brand of global
jihad, but to the singular goal of a fomenting an Islamic
revolution inside Syria.  The break was made easier by the fact that, since its emergence
in 2012, Nusra has woven itself into the
fabric of Syria’s communities and established military alliances
of convenience with many mainstream rebel groups in the name of
toppling Syrian president Bashar Assad. But it also confirms that Nusra has no intention
of distancing itself from the revolution’s non-jihadist
rebel groups, many of whom are backed by the US and its
allies.

By The Independent — Men in Iran are wearing hijabs in a display of solidarity
with women across the country who are forced to cover their heads
in public.  Wearing a headscarf is strictly enforced by so-called ‘morality
police’ in Iran and has been since the Islamic Revolution in
1979. Women who do not wear a hijab or are deemed to be wearing
‘bad hijab’ by having some of their hair showing face punishments
ranging from fines to imprisonment.  

State-funded adverts appearing on billboards in Iran present
those who do not cover their hair as spoiled and dishonourable.
Women are also told that by not complying, they are putting
themselves at risk of unwanted sexual advances from men.  But women are leading protests against enforced hijab
across the country and some have resorted to shaving their hair in order to
appear in public without wearing a veil. 

by: catholicherald.co.uk

The two men who killed Fr Jacques Hamel in a French church filmed
themselves and gave “a sort of sermon” in Arabic before murdering the
85-year-old, a nun who witnessed the atrocity has said.

Fr Hamel was celebrating Mass for three nuns and two parishioners on
Tuesday morning in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray when the attackers burst in
and forced the priest to his knees before slicing his throat, according
to authorities and the nun who escaped.

Sister Danielle, speaking on BFM television, described seeing the
attackers film themselves and give a sermon in Arabic around the altar
before she fled. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the other
hostages were used as human shields to block police from entering. One
86-year-old parishioner was wounded.“They forced (Fr Hamel) to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that’s when the tragedy happened,” said Sister Danielle.

She added that the attackers filmed themselves and “they did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It’s a horror.”The two attackers were killed by police as they rushed from the
building shouting “Allahu Akbar,” Molins said. One had three knives and a
fake explosives belt; the other carried a kitchen timer wrapped in
aluminum foil and had fake explosives in his backpack.

By Carine El Khazen Hadati : Link newsweekme.com/serving-up/

Article published in Newsweek

Eating disorders can be life threatening. In fact, they are the
deadliest of all mental health disorders: 5 to 20 percent of anorexics
will die from this illness. The causes of eating disorders are numerous
and intertwined; they are usually an interplay of several factors:
biological vulnerability, psychological traits, cultural and social
pressures that usually act as triggers.

Among those triggers, dieting is the number one risk factor for
developing an eating disorder. All eating disorders start with a diet
and 35 percent of occasional dieters progress to pathological dieting
(disordered eating) and as many as 25 percent progress to full-blown
eating disorders.

Who can say that they have never attempted dieting? Perhaps no one!
In our culture, dieting has become the norm. Up to 50 percent of women
are on a diet at any given time. Up to 90 percent of teenagers diet
regularly, and up to 50 percent of younger kids have tried a diet at
some point. Each year, more and more adults are trying to lose weight:
in 2000, 24 percent of American adults were dieting; in 2004, 33 percent
were dieting and in 2015 roughly 50 percent of the American population
is on a diet, with every adult making, in general, four dieting attempts
per year.

By english.ahram.org.eg

Google’s famous doodle on Wednesday celebrates Ounsi el-Hajj, a famed
Lebanese writer, poet and translator who was born in 27 July 1937 and
passed away on 18 February 2014. El-Hajj was one of the most influential Lebanese poets of the second
half of the twentieth century and a key contributor to Lebanon’s
cultural and poetic renaissance.

He also wrote columns for Annahar and Al-Akhbar daily newspapers. Ounsi translated several plays by Shakespeare, Ionesco, Camus and Brecht into the Arabic language.His first poetry collection, Lann (Not), was published in 1960 and sparked controversy because of its style.

Naharnet,

Prime Minister Tammam Salam and the Lebanese delegation
attended the Arab League summit in the Mauritanian capital on Monday but
were not expected to spend the night there, the Associated Press
reported on Monday, shortly after Health Minister Wael Abu Faour
questioned the impoverished African nation’s ability to host top
delegations.

The comments by Abu Faour on a local TV show triggered a
spat between Lebanon and Mauritania, where Lebanese officials were
attacked by journalists and on social media.

“They don’t have the infrastructure and it’s miserable,”
said Abu Faour. “The summit will be held inside a tent,” he added,
apparently comparing it to previous summits that were held in five-star
hotels or luxury conference centers.

The minister later clarified on TV that his statements
were not meant against the people of Mauritania and said he got his
information from a Lebanese delegation that went to inspect where the
summit will be held and where the official delegations will be staying.

catholicherald.co.uk

An 85-year-old priest has had his throat cut by an Islamic fanatic while
saying Mass in a church in Normandy. For people in the West, this is a
scene of almost unimaginable horror. Catholics in particular will be
revolted and profoundly disturbed by a bloody killing perpetrated during
the act of holy sacrifice around which our faith is built.

Catholics in the West, that is. For Catholics and other Christians in
the Middle East, the atrocity at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray is far from
unimaginable. They have been living with this sort of terror for years,
while Western politicians and the liberal commentariat looked away.

If I were to mention the Baghdad church massacre of October 31, 2010,
how many of them would know what I was talking about? Come to that, how
many Catholics are familiar with the details? On that Sunday evening, Mass
in the Syrian Catholic church of Our Lady of Salvation was cut short by
Islamist gunmen who took the congregation hostage, screaming: “All of
you are infidels… we will go to paradise if we kill you and you will go
to hell.”

Holding this year’s summit in a tent in the capital Nouakchott,
Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz said it was “a historic
event that the Mauritanian people have long awaited.” But only a handful of leaders turned up, which pundits said pointed to
the pan-Arab organization’s struggles under the strain of various
regional crises – including the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and
Libya.

Egypt’s president Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, along with Saudi King Salman and
his powerful son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were
noticeably absent. Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Palestinian president,
Mahmoud Abbas, and the leaders of Tunisia, Algeria and Tunisia also
failed to turn up.

Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam proposed the establishment of safe
“refugee zones,”

Verizon has bought Yahoo for $4.83 billion. Here are the headlines: Yahoo’s most critical investor says he’s ‘subdued’ by the deal There is some confusion over whether Marissa Mayer is staying at Yahoo Mayer refuses to say the Verizon sale was ‘at all’ a failure Her golden parachute will be worth $54.9 million if she […]

catholicherald.co.uk

Cardinal Burke, the patron of the Order of Malta

Cardinal Raymond Burke has revealed that his mother was advised to abort him. In a new book-length interview with the French journalist Guillaume
d’Alançon, Cardinal Burke says that when his mother was pregnant with
him, she became seriously ill and a doctor advised her to have an
abortion.

According to Cardinal Burke, the doctor said: “You already have five
children, it is important for you to be in good health so as to take
care of them”. “My parents refused,” says the cardinal, who is now chaplain to the
Order of Malta. “My parents told him that they believed in God and that
Christ would give them the necessary help. My mother gave birth to me,
and everything went well.

“I was therefore quite touched by this question of defending human life, because I could very well have been killed.” In the book, entitled Hope for the World, Cardinal Burke argues that
the “ferocious attack against life today” results from “the distortion
of the sexual act by contraception”, and urges Catholics to defend human
life