12 January 2015 Last updated at 08:16
Paris attacks: Hollande to hold security meeting
French President Francois Hollande is to chair a crisis meeting with cabinet ministers on national security after last week's deadly attacks.
The meeting comes amid questions over how militants known to the authorities were able to launch the raids in Paris.
The assault on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and separate attacks on police officers and a kosher supermarket killed 17 people.
More than 1.5m people marched in the capital on Sunday in a show of unity.
The French government said the rally turnout was the highest on record. Across France, nearly four million people joined marches, according to an interior ministry estimate.
Sunday 11 January 2015
Far too many Western Muslims speak of freedom as a sin
Muslims who have never known real freedom yearn – and die – for human rights
Ill with flu last week, I watched the events unfolding in Paris with dread, rage and disbelief – feelings that surge every time there is an Islamicist atrocity. To kill so many over line drawings or as an expression of religious zeal? What drives these fanatics? In normal circumstances, I would have been on TV and radio channels providing immediate responses, soundbite explanations. Bedbound, I had time to reflect more deeply on this carnage and the question of freedom: what it means, how precious it is and how fragile. That fundamental human impulse and right has now become one of the most volatile and divisive concepts in the world today.
Yes, we, the fortunate inhabitants of the West, are more free than those who live and die in the South and East, but some of the claims made by our absolutists are hypocritical as well as outlandish. Public discourse is expected to be within the bounds of decency and respect; language matters and the wrong word can incite high emotion.
Nigeria rocked by child suicide bombings
Boko Haram also behind earlier rampage where hundreds were massacred
Monica Mark
After a week of bloodshed unleashed by militant Islamist group Boko Haram left hundreds of civilians dead across northeastern Nigeria, Ibrahim Abu wanted to forget. He and three friends had met for tea in an outdoor bar beside an open-air market in Potiskum, a small town in Nigeria’s Yobe state, when an explosion threw them to the floor.
“I looked up and saw body parts everywhere, then the body of a little girl cut in two,“ he said, his voice still shaking. As traders scrambled around him, he felt paralysed with shock. The body of another child was being pulled out of the rubble. By the end of the afternoon, three other people were dead and 26 wounded.
The bombing by two suspected child suicide bombers in a crowded market on Sunday capped a week of horror and marked an ominous escalation in violence, with elections in Africa’s most populous nation less than five weeks away.
German ministers call on PEGIDA to cancel marches
Members of Germany's anti-Islamization movement PEGIDA have called for another round of nationwide protests. On Sunday, prominent German politicians condemned the group's plan to continue its Monday marches.
Supporters of Germany's anti-Islamization movement PEGIDA have called for marches across the nation on Monday for the first time after last week's deadly terror attacks in Paris, which left 17 dead.
Members of PEGIDA, which stands for "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West," were planning to wear black armbands to commemorate the 12 victims of the attacks on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as well as the four hostages and one policewoman who were killed in related attacks.
Around 18,000 people came out to support the movement in Dresden last week.
Civilian groups were also planning a counter-demonstration to protest the targeting of Muslims and immigrants for crimes committed by Islamic terrorists. Anti-PEGIDA rallies were planned for Hannover, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, according to German press agency dpa.
Charlie Hebdo: total freedom of expression has little chance of survival in an imperfect society
Paul McGeough
Chief foreign correspondent
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the dilemma is we are entwining two debates – how to counter terrorism and how to nurture freedom of expression as a cornerstone of democracy. The first is being argued in obsessive detail, the second is conceded as a given.
Yes, it is utterly inappropriate to go around shooting those who cause offence, but is it appropriate to go around causing offence?
Seemingly not, if we go by the French experience. Even as huge crowds take to city squares, the principle they seek to defend doesn't exist in France – certainly not in the pure sense they'd have us believe in the wake of last week's carnage.
In China, a church-state showdown of biblical proportions
Christianity is booming in China, propelling it toward becoming the world's largest Christian nation. But as religion grows, it spurs a government crackdown.
By Robert Marquand, Staff writer
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.
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