Heh

We have seen less of this in recent years thanks to the destruction of ISIS and pressure on Iran, but this is still a poisonous, violent ideology. I would also point out to the folks in Philly that you can do a lot of damage with a knife.

France has been struck by two terror attacks within hours of each other as three people were killed – two of them beheaded – in an attack in Nice before a gunman was shot dead by police in Avignon.

The first attack began around 9am at the Notre Dame cathedral in Nice where a knifeman beheaded an elderly female parishioner and a male church warden, fatally stabbed a second woman, wounded several others, and was then shot and arrested by police.

Two hours later, a gunman threatened people on the streets of Avignon – 120 miles from Nice – while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ before he was fatally shot by police.

Trump’s fault (or something).

Mr Macron said that under the new measures, starting on Friday, people would only be allowed to leave home for essential work or medical reasons.

Non-essential businesses, such as restaurants and bars, will close, but schools and factories will remain open.

Covid daily deaths in France are at the highest level since April. On Tuesday, 33,000 new cases were confirmed.

Mr Macron said the country risked being “overwhelmed by a second wave that no doubt will be harder than the first”.

Excellent.

Afghan security forces have killed Abu Muhsin al-Masri, a senior al-Qaida leader who was on the FBI’s most-wanted list, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) said in a tweet late on Saturday.

Al-Masri has been charged in the United States with having provided material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation, and conspiracy to kill US nationals.

Al-Masri, believed to be al-Qaida’s second-in-command, was killed during a special operation in Ghazni province, the NDS said.

This is kind of a big deal.

US President Donald Trump has hailed the “dawn of a new Middle East”, amid landmark deals between Israel and Gulf states Bahrain and the UAE.

Mr Trump spoke as the UAE and Bahrain signed agreements fully normalising their relations with Israel.

The three countries hailed the deals as historic, as did Mr Trump, whose administration helped broker them.

The Gulf states are just the third and fourth Arab countries to recognise Israel since its founding in 1948.

The agreements are also likely to usher in new security ties in a region where many of the Gulf Arab states share with the Israelis a common adversary in Iran.

This is a big deal for a couple of reasons.

First, the two big powers in the Middle East are Iran and Saudi Arabia. Both are horrible totalitarian regimes, but of the two, Iran is more of a threat to the U.S. than Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally. Both the UAE and Bahrain are aligned with Saudi Arabia and they would not have normalized relations with Israel, another U.S. ally, without a nod from the Kingdom. This is a significant move in the formation of a regional coalition to balance Iran.

Second, although there are not military alliances between the Arab nations and Israel, the establishment of cultural and commercial relationships help to cement a motive for peace. The threat of an Arab attack on Israel as a catalyst for U.S. involvement has been reduced.

Treaties in the Middle East are traditionally unstable. We have gone through these cycles of hope and disappointment for my entire life. Perhaps this is another short-lived success. Perhaps it is a permanent shift in a positive direction. Time will tell.

In normal times, this would be considered pretty big news.

Awesome.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Telephone calls began ringing Sunday between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, marking the first concrete step of a U.S.-brokered diplomatic deal between the nations that required Israel to halt plans to annex land sought by the Palestinians.

Anger over the deal however continued as well, with protesters in Pakistan criticizing the UAE and Iran making new threats about the accord, which will see the Emirates become only the third Arab nation to currently recognize Israel. The UAE responded by summoning Iran’s chargé d’affairs to criticize earlier comments by Iran’s president it described as threatening.

But for Dubai’s small expatriate Jewish community, which has worshipped for years at an unmarked villa in this city-state, the calls represented so much more than just the convenience of being able to directly dial loved ones in Israel.

“There’s a sense of a miracle upon a miracle upon a miracle, as all of these hurdles fall away and people at last can come together and start talking,” Ross Kriel, the president of the Jewish Council of the Emirates, told The Associated Press.

Direct telephone calls have been blocked in the Emirates, a U.S.-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, since its founding in 1971. That backed the standing position of Arab nations at the time, that Israel must first grant concessions to the Palestinians before being recognized — one of their few points of leverage.