19 February 2015 Last updated at 00:58
Barack Obama says US 'at war with those perverting Islam'
US President Barack Obama says the US is "not at war with Islam - we are at war with the people who have perverted Islam".
He was speaking to representatives from 60 nations attending a three-day event on extremism that follows attacks in Denmark and France.
Mr Obama said the world had to confront the ideologies that radicalise people.
He said those heading groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda were not religious leaders but terrorists.
Mr Obama said associating Islamic State or al-Qaeda with Islam would be buying into the propaganda of those groups, challenging critics who have questioned him for not describing recent attacks as the work of "Islamic radicals".
Mr Obama has asked Congress formally to authorise military force against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The US and its partners have carried out air strikes against the group since last year.Bring in Sunni Arabs to conquer IS
The airstrikes by the US-led "coalition of the willing" have weakened the "Islamic State". But in order to conquer the group, an Arab-Sunni alliance is urgently needed, says DW's Loay Mudhoon.
Without a doubt, the massive US-led coalition air strikes against the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) have greatly contributed to stopping the jihadist would-be caliphate's territorial expansion - for the time being.
The liberation of the northern Syrian border town of Kobani by Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters would also hardly have been thinkable without the aid of US and Arab air strikes. This undeniable success has chipped away at the myth of the IS's invincibility, but that by no means implies an imminent victory over these uninhibited extremists.
The Western-Arab fight against the IS is beginning to falter: after four months of air strikes, the alliance faces a lack of strategically important targets it could bomb. What makes the situation more difficult is that the IS fighters have RESORTED
to guerilla tactics. That makes them even harder to fight from the air.
to guerilla tactics. That makes them even harder to fight from the air.'Guantanamo of the East': Ukraine Locks Up Refugees at EU's Behest
By Maximilian Popp
Brussels is doing all it can to prevent refugees from reaching Fortress Europe, with initiatives like funding the construction of interment centers in Ukraine. Asylum seekers who have spent time there report miserable conditions and abuse.
Hasan Hirsi has been learning German for the last year and a half, and recently even enrolled in a class that meets for five hours a day, from 1 to 6 p.m. Nevertheless, he still has no words to describe what happened to him before his arrival in Germany.
Hirsi, a 21-year-old refugee from Somalia, is huddled on a worn sofa in an apartment in Landau, a small town in southwestern Germany, which he shares with three other Somalian asylum-seekers. He is wearing a gray hoodie and has short, black hair. A retiree from Landau who has volunteered to assist the refugees is sitting next to him. He wants to help Hirsi adjust to his new life in Europe.
Libya asks UN to lift arms embargo to confront ISIL
Foreign minister says the international community has a "legal and moral responsibility" to support his government.
19 Feb 2015 02:24 GMT
Libya's foreign minister has asked the United Nations to end an embargo on weapon sales to the country's internationally recognised government and help support its army as it confronts the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
Mohammed al-Dairi told the UN Security Council in New York on Wednesday that the UN "shouldered a legal responsibility" to help in the rebuilding of Libya's army.
"Libya needs a decisive stance from the international community to help us build our national army's capacity and this would come through a lifting of the embargo on weapons so our army can receive materiel and weapons so as to deal with this rampant terrorism," Dairi told the council.
How is Europe countering radical Islam? (+video)
From mosques to family kitchens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike are trying to stem the tide of young Europeans signing up to fight for the self-declared Islamic State. Leaders from around the world are at the White House today for a summit on battling violent extremism.
AMSTERDAM, PARIS, AND LONDON — On the ground floor of a redbrick walk-up overlooking Amsterdam’s Amstel River, in his inconspicuous mosque, Muslim cleric Said Akhrif delivers a sermon on tolerance. It is the third in a series of talks that the youthful imam has given to the group of faithful, sitting on a red carpet in front of him, since Islamic extremists slaughtered 12 people at the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Mr. Akhrif’s message on this Friday afternoon – delivered in Arabic and then translated into Dutch – is that the prophet Muhammad was a man with a cool head. His purpose, the Moroccan-born cleric explains, is to encourage Muslims “to remain calm” in the face of adversity “and not get frustrated.”
Scientists Map the Epigenome, Our Second Genetic Code
For the first time, scientists have mapped out the molecular "switches" that can turn on or silence individual genes in the DNA in more than 100 types of human cells, an accomplishment that reveals the complexity of genetic information and the challenges of interpreting it.
Researchers unveiled the map of the "epigenome" in the journal Nature on Wednesday, alongside nearly two dozen related papers. The mapping effort is being carried out under a 10-year, $240 million U.S. government research program, the Roadmap Epigenomics Project, which was launched in 2008.
The human genome is the blueprint for building an individual person. The epigenome can be thought of as the cross-outs and underlinings of that blueprint: For example, if someone's genome contains DNA associated with cancer, but that DNA is "crossed out" by molecules in the epigenome, the DNA is unlikely to lead to cancer. As sequencing individuals' genomes to infer the risk of disease becomes more common, it will become all the more important to figure out how the epigenome is influencing that risk.
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