Canadian Muslim Brotherhood Group Loses Charitable Status Over Terror Funding

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

• The Canada Revenue Agency has revoked the charitable status of an Islamic group after it says it distributed over $280,000 to an agency allegedly linked to a terrorist organization in Pakistan.
• The CRA announced Friday it will strip the Islamic Society of North America Canada's Development Foundation of its charitable status.

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Canadian Muslim Brotherhood Group Loses Charitable Status Over Terror Funding

Gates, Panetta Question Obama's Syria Strategy

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

• President Barack Obama's first two defense secretaries on Tuesday night questioned his Syria strategy and said they would have told him not to seek Congress' approval for a strike on President Bashar Assad's forces.
• Speaking at a forum in Dallas, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta disagreed on whether the United States should ultimately carry out a military strike in retaliation for a chemical attack that the U.S. says killed 1,400 people. But both men said Obama shouldn't have asked Congress to approve a strike, and both were skeptical and sometimes sarcastic about the current Russia-backed negotiations to have Syria turn over its chemical weapons.
• Panetta said he supported a strike because Obama needed to enforce the "red line" he set over Syria's use of chemical weapons.
• "When the president of the United States draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his word," Panetta said.
• But Gates said a strike would be like "throwing gasoline on an extremely complex fire in the Middle East." He brought up past interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as examples of how American military action can lead to unintended consequences.
• He also dismissed attacking Syria to enforce a red line.
• "I believe to blow a bunch of stuff up over a couple of days to underscore or validate a point or principle is not a strategy," he said.

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Gates, Panetta Question Obama's Syria Strategy

Churches, Monasteries Abandoned in Small Syrian Christian Town Following Rebel Fighting

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

• The fate of the small, predominantly Christian town of Maaloula, Syria, remains uncertain after remaining rebel factions continued to clash with the occupying Syrian army over the weekend. Reports from the area indicate that most of the village's cathedrals and worshipping spaces were abandoned Sunday due to the threat of a continued rebel presence linked to al-Qaeda.
• Although Syria's army, loyal to President Bashar Assad, claims to have re-taken control of the small town north of Damascus at the beginning of the weekend, reporters visiting the war-torn region have said that in the past few days, rebel fighters have remained on the fringes of the town, firing at army forces from nearby caves that overlook the small mountain city.
• "There was hardly time to notice the white statue of Christ the Redeemer on the hillside before we were fired on, bullets aimed at our van, blowing our tire and holing the chassis. We screeched to a halt and scrambled clear," Bill Neely, the International Editor for ITV News, wrote in an Op-Ed for The Telegraph.
• "We were caught in the middle of a town the Syrian army had declared liberated from rebel control the day before. But it was not, and for the next four hours, I witnessed a fierce battle as the army tried to dislodge the snipers of, among other groups, Jabhat al-Nusra, the fighters allied to al-Qaeda," Neely added.

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Churches, Monasteries Abandoned in Small Syrian Christian Town Following Rebel Fighting