The flight attendant stated the man’s name and seat number several times, but did not make announcements about other passengers

The man reported the incident to two other staff and was then asked to leave the flight.

by Independent

A Muslim man was removed from an American Airlines flight after a flight attendant publicly announced his name, seat number and said she would be “watching” him.

Mohamed Ahmed Radwan had boarded a plane in Charlotte, North Carolina and the flight attendant went to the tannoy and said: “Mohamed Ahmed, Seat 25-A: I will be watching you.”

The employee made no other announcements about any other passenger.

Mr Radwan asked the employee why she had made the announcements. She reportedly responded that he was being “too sensitive”.

The passenger then reported the incident to two other American Airlines employees.

He was told he must leave the plane as he had made the first air stewardess “uncomfortable”.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a complaint about the incident, which happened in December last year, to the Department of Transportation after failing to resolve the matter directly with the airline.

CAIR’s staff lawyer, Maha Sayed, wrote in the complaint that Mr Radwan was “singled out” and “unjustifiably” removed from the plane due to racial discrimination.

“Given the continuing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes occurring throughout the United States, this type of reckless and harmful conduct should not be tolerated by our nation’s airlines, which are legally charged with safely carrying all individuals who are rightfully present in an equal and nondiscriminatory manner, without regard to their religious affiliation or ethnicity,” the letter read.

“This incident is particularly troubling given the recent wave of incidents in which airline personnel have arbitrarily removed passengers of Muslim and/or Middle Eastern background without an objectively reasonable cause or explanation,” Ms Sayed added.

An American Airlines spokeswoman said in a statement: “American [Airlines] was contacted by CAIR earlier this year. We thoroughly reviewed these allegations and concluded that no discrimination occurred. We serve customers of all backgrounds and faiths and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

In April, a Muslim woman was removed from a Southwest Airlines plane at a Chicago airport after she had asked to switch seats as she was told she had made the flight attendant “uncomfortable”.

A Muslim family of five were also escorted off a United Airlines flight in March for “how they looked”. They said they had asked staff if there were any safety harnesses for their three children. The pilot told them they had to leave as it was “a safety issue”.

New Delhi: BJP leader Navjot Singh Sidhu quit as a member of Parliament on Monday, a move that was instantly seen as a precursor to his exiting the party. “The people of Punjab are looking for a change,” was his telling comment to media just before he put in his papers.

There is a strong buzz that the 52-year-old former cricketer and commentator will join Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is campaigning aggressively in Punjab ahead of elections in the state next year.

Sources close to Mr Sidhu and AAP indicate that he could be the party’s chief ministerial candidate in Punjab.

Mr Sidhu, who is also a popular television personality, was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in April.

He had been upset when he was asked to make way for Arun Jaitley to contest from Amritsar during the 2014 national election and denied the chance to contest.

He had represented the Amritsar constituency for 10 years. Mr Jaitley lost the election.

Mr Sidhu’s wife Navjot Kaur, who is a lawmaker in Punjab and a parliamentary secretary in the state’s Akali Dal-BJP government, is also set to resign, say reports.

She had announced her resignation on Facebook earlier this year but later changed her mind.

(Agencies)

REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

On Saturday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in Nice where a truck rammed into a gathering of people celebrating Bastille day, killing 84 and injuring hundreds, ISIS-run Amaq news agency reports.

Amaq claimed the Nice attacker responded to the call to attack countries of the anti-ISIS coalition, reports Conflict News.

This may mean that he had no accomplices and that it was a lone wolf attack.

The police had reportedly arrested three people after raiding a small apartment at Rue Miollis but were clueless about whether the attacker was affiliated to ISIS.

The arrests concerned the attacker’s “close entourage”, sources said, and were made in two different areas of Nice.

The driver of the truck was earlier reported to be a 31-year-old Franco-Tunisian man.

(Agencies0

At least 84 killed when attacker drives lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in France.

[EPA]

At least 84 people were killed and 100 injured in the French city of Nice when a man deliberately drove a lorry into a crowd celebrating the country’s main national holiday, authorities said.

The attacker behind the wheel on Thursday drove at high speed along the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront, careering into spectators who had been watching a Bastille Day firework display.

Police shot and killed the driver, officials said.

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that children were among the dead and 18 people were in a critical condition.

“There’s no denying the terrorist nature of this attack of yet again the most extreme form of violence,” French President Francois Hollande said in an address to the nation in the early hours of Friday.

Hollande said that he would extend a state of emergency – which had been in place since the attacks in Paris last November – for another three months from July 26.

“Nothing will make us yield in our will to fight terrorism. We will further strengthen our actions in Iraq and in Syria. We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil,” he said, in reference to France’s involvement in a coalition of nations carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

The attack happened just as the firework display – which was attended by thousands of people – was ending, at around 11:00pm local time (21:00GMT).

Eric Ciotti, a local MP, said the lorry continuously rammed the crowd over a distance of two kilometres.

Ciotti said on BFM TV that police killed the driver “apparently after an exchange of gunfire”, adding that the truck was loaded with weapons and grenades.

Residents of Nice, a Mediterranean city close to the Italian border, were advised to stay indoors.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. But Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst, told Al Jazeera that it “looks very similar” to some of the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda and ISIL.

“They were inciting their followers to produce this type of violence,” she said.

‘I saw bodies flying’

Writing online, Nice Matin journalist Damien Allemand, who was on the scene, said the firework display had finished and the crowd was about to leave when they heard a noise and screams.

“A fraction of a second later, an enormous white truck came along at a crazy speed, turning the wheel to mow down the maximum number of people,” he said.

“I saw bodies flying like bowling pins along its route. Heard noises, cries that I will never forget.”

Allemand said that he and others took shelter in a nearby restaurant. He continued to hear people shouting for missing family members. He ventured out and saw bodies, blood and body parts all along the road.

“This evening, it was horror,” he said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for “murder, attempted murder in an organised group linked to a terrorist enterprise”. The investigation was being handled by France’s intelligence agency and judicial police.

An eyewitness told the Associated Press news agency he saw the driver emerge from the lorry shooting, after ramming into the crowd.

“There was carnage on the road,” Wassim Bouhlel, a witness, told AP. “Bodies everywhere.”

In a video viewed over 2,500 times on Facebook, a trembling Tarubi Wahid Mosta told of the horror on the promenade, where he took photos of an abandoned doll and pushchair and came home with a victim’s dog.

“I almost stepped on a corpse, it was horrible. It looked like a battlefield,” he said.

In a series of posts he described a sense of helplessness faced with the carnage.

“All these bodies and their families … they spent hours on the ground holding the cold hands of bodies dismembered by the truck. You can’t even speak to them or comfort them.”

Legal team confirms that the 28-year-old US army whistle-blower tried to kill herself in prison.

Manning is serving a 35-year sentence after being convicted of sending classified information to WikiLeaks [US Army via AP]

by Al Jazeera

The lawyers of imprisoned US army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning have confirmed that she attempted to kill herself in jail last week.

Manning, the 28-year-old transgender soldier is serving a 35-year sentence after she was convicted in 2013 of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and US State Department documents to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

The soldier’s legal team released a statement on Monday saying that Manning’s “attempt to take her own life was unsuccessful”.

“She wants everyone to know that she remains under close observation by the prison and expects to remain on this status for the next several weeks,” the statement said.

Manning’s lawyers also accused the US military of violating her privacy by publicly revealing that she had been admitted to hospital.

“The government’s gross breach of confidentiality in disclosing her personal health information to the media has created the very real concern that they may continue their unauthorised release of information about her publicly without warning,” the statement said.

Manning was an intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time that the documents were sent to WikiLeaks.

A tweet posted on Monday on her behalf read:

I am okay. I'm glad to be alive. Thank you all for your love <3 I will get through this. #standwithchelsea

— Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) July 12, 2016

“For us, hearing Chelsea’s voice after learning that she had attempted to take her life last week was incredibly emotional,” her lawyers said.

“She is someone who has fought so hard for so many issues we care about and we are honoured to fight for her freedom and medical care.”

Initially arrested as Bradley Manning, the soldier later announced she would start living as a female and filed a transgender prisoner rights lawsuit.

She appealed against her conviction, arguing that her sentence was “grossly unfair” and that her actions were those of a naive, troubled soldier who aimed to reveal the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The appeal contends Manning’s disclosures harmed no one, but prosecutors said the leaked material damaged US security and identified informants who helped US forces.

More than $200m spent on promoting fear and hatred of Muslims in US by various groups between 2008 and 2013.

More than half of Muslims in the US say they have faced some discrimination [EPA]

More than $200m was spent towards promoting “fear and hatred” of Muslims in the United States by various organisations between 2008 and 2013, according to a fresh joint report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the University of California, Berkeley.

Released on Monday, the report identifies 74 groups, including feminist, Christian, Zionist and prominent news organisations, which either funded or fostered Islamophobia.

“It is an entire industry of itself. There are people making millions of dollars per year from promoting Islamophobia. They often present themselves as experts on Islamic affairs when they are not,” Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, a spokesman for CAIR, told Al Jazeera.

“They have fuelled an environment of distrust among the American public by claiming that Muslims do not belong to the American community and that they could never be loyal citizens.”

Ruiz said that Islamophobia has posed two main dangers: a rise in hate crimes and anti-Islamic legislation.

“For example, in the last year alone in Florida, there has been a 500 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims. Mosques have been vandalised and there have been a number of bomb threats towards Islamic groups.

“And Florida’s government is even trying to ban school books from making any references to Islam in history.”

Since 2013, the country has seen a rise in the number of bills or amendments – about 81 – designed to “vilify Islamic religious practices”, 80 of which were introduced to state legislatures by Republicans, the report notes.

It cited Florida Senator Alan Hayes as once distributing literature that said: “Our religious, political, and peaceful way of life is under attack by Islam and Sharia Law. Save my generation from this ideology that is invading our country and masquerading as a ‘religion’. It’s sedition: They are determined to overthrow our State and our Country.”

Meira Neggaz, the executive director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) – a US-based think-tank, told Al Jazeera a poll published in March showed that one out of every five American Muslims had experienced discrimination on a regular basis, while more than half of them had faced some discrimination.

“The other faith group you would think would suffer from some discrimination are Jews. They do, but far lower – only about 5 percent,” she said.

She also noted that the rise in anti-Islamic sentiment was more tied to political rhetoric than terrorist events.

“2008 and 2012 – the years of election campaigns – saw spikes in Islamophobia that had nothing to do with terror. And we are now seeing similar trends in this election cycle.

“It is part of a broader backlash against minorities. Lawmakers who are legislating against Muslims are also against other minority groups.

“At least 32 states have introduced and debated anti-sharia or anti-foreign law bills. And, according to our research, 80 percent of legislators who sponsor this type of legislation also sponsor bills restricting the rights of other minorities and vulnerable groups.”

Neggaz emphasised that Islamophobia is a threat to US democracy and affects all of the country’s residents.

“Religious discrimination is illegal. There has to be legal procedures that can address that.”

Ahmedabad: Ruling out any conspiracy angle in the 2002 Gulberg Society massacre, a special court on Friday said firing by former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, in which one person was killed, provoked and infuriated the mob that led it to the “killing frenzy”, but asserted that the firing cannot condone the acts of the mob.

“It was the private firing by Shri Ehsan Jafri that acted as a catalyst and which infuriated the mob to such an extent that it went out of control, the limited police force available there had no means to control or disperse such mob, which had gathered in large numbers post the incident of private firing,” special SIT court judge P.B. Desai said in his order.

“Shri Ehsan Jafri had perpetrated acts of firing from his weapon from different locations within Gulberg Society upon the mob, causing injuries and the death of one person, which in my opinion was the catalyst, which provoked the mob to such proportions that it went out of control and thus resulted into the killing frenzy, where a large number of innocent persons lost their lives,” the court said.

Rejecting the conspiracy angle, the court said it was “unnatural” that things turned “ugly” all of a sudden after 1.30 (on February 28, 2002) pm “as if some tap was turned on, which resulted in a flood of water and the carnage was perpetrated”.

The court, however, added that this fact cannot “in any manner excuse or condone the acts of the mob, which perpetrated the violence needlessly upon innocent men, women and children and hacked them to death and ensured that many others were burned to death in the carnage that followed such private firing.”

“The incidence of Gulberg society is in fact a culmination of a series of incidents, which happened at different time frames. Suddenly transgressing into this grave and heinous carnage which has resulted in the death of such large number of women, children and elderly,” it said while rejecting conspiracy theory.

“The carnage took place on account of a spontaneous gathering of a large mob on accounts of the news having spread that number of persons of the majority community have been injured/killed in a private firing by Shri Ehsan Jafri, which further resulted in the entire carnage taking place,” it said, while rejecting the conspiracy theory.

The court sentenced 11 convicts to life imprisonment in the case of burning alive of 69 people, including Jafri, in the 2002 post-Godhra violence.

The court also awarded 10-year jail term to one of the 13 convicted for lesser offences while 12 others have been given seven-year sentence each.

(Agencies)

Attack on police official and his partner by man who claimed allegiance to ISIL is a “terrorist act”, Hollande says.

The police commander was stabbed to death in front of his home in the suburb of Magnanville [BFMTV/Reuters]

A French assailant has recorded a video of an attack in which two police officials died, authorities said, as France’s leadership reeled from what the president called a new “terrorist attack”.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) Amaq news agency cited an unnamed source as saying an ISIL fighter carried out the late-night attack in the Paris suburb of Magnanville on Monday.

Two police officials, a man and woman who lived together, were killed. The attacker, identified as 25-year-old Larossi Abballa, was also killed, while the couple’s three-year-old child survived.

French President Francois Hollande held an emergency security meeting on Tuesday about what he said was “incontestably a terrorist act”.

He said France was facing a threat “of a very large scale”.

“France is not the only country concerned [by the terrorist threat], as we have seen, again, in the United States, in Orlando,” he said.

France has been on particularly high alert as it hosts Europe’s top sporting event, the month-long European Championship football tournament, and is still under a state of emergency after the November attacks.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, “It’s a global threat, that is why we are fighting terrorism in Syria and Iraq, and on our soil”.

Abballa was from the western Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie and was sentenced in 2013 to three years in prison, including six months suspended, for recruiting fighters for jihad in Pakistan, according to two police officials.

The officials cannot be named as they were not authorised to discuss the ongoing investigations.

‘Video posted online’

Two other security officials said Abballa recorded a video during the knife attack. One official said the assailant posted the video on Facebook Live, the social media site’s live feed.

A Facebook profile bearing the name Larossi Abballa – which vanished from the internet early on Tuesday – showed a photo of smiling man believed to be Abballa.

The last post publicly available was a mock-up of the European Championship logo highlighting the poster’s purported masonic and occult symbols.

“Some will say we see evil everywhere!” Abballa said in a message posted about 18 hours before the attack.

One police official said at one point in the video, the assailant appeared puzzled over what to do with the couple’s child.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said more than 100 people seen as potential threats have been arrested in France this year, including in recent weeks.

Cazeneuve visited the police station where one of the victims, 42-year-old Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, worked.

The knife-wielding attacker stabbed Salvaing on Monday night outside his home in Magnanville, about 55km west of Paris, then went into the house.

Elite police commandos laid siege to the residence, eventually storming it after a three-hour standoff.

Faaiz Anwar, who has written hit songs for films like Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin, Saajan, Imtehan, Tum Bin, Jab We Met, Hello Brothers and recently Dabang (“Tere Mast Mast Do Nain”) & Rowdy Rathore (“Chikni Kamar”) known as the Emperor of romantic songs, is now all set to bring a youth oriented romantic comedy called Love Ke Funday as a producer under the banner of FRV Big Business Entertainment Private Limited. Faaiz Anwar & Prem Prakash Gupta are the producers of the film which has been written & directed by Indervesh Yogee. The film is all set for release in July this year. Excerpts from the conversation with the lyricist cum producer Faaiz Anwar.

Q. How did you veer towards production all of a sudden?

A. It isn’t a decision that I took overnight. Earlier too I had made an unsuccessful attempt at production, but this time around, along with my partner Prem Prakash Gupta, I am getting into this in a big way. 4 films are at different stages of production under my banner. Love Ke Funday is the 1st one to release and soon other 3 films will follow. I feel no pressure concentrating on both, writing songs & production of films.

Q. Did you set out to make a rom com just because you are known for your romantic films?

A. Love Ke Funday isn’t just a rom com but a youth oriented film keeping the younger generation of today in mind. It is a musical film full of romance & comedy and the story revolves around the romantic ups & downs of 4 boys & girls. Indervesh Yogee has shown his finesse as a director in his debut film. He is a very focused director who knows his job. It is a beautiful film and I am sure the audiences will like it.

Q. Why did you opt for new faces instead of big stars for your film?

A. The decision to take new faces was driven by my convenience and the requirement of the script. It is easy to make a film with new faces as there is absolutely no date hassles. If you cast stars, you have no other alternative but to run after them for their dates. The biggest strength of my film are its script and its cast. In any case, big stars do not necessarily guarantee the success of any film and films flop or click irrespective of stars or new faces. It is the content of the film that matters. On the contrary, films with new faces have clicked more than star studded films in the recent past.

Q. Do you think like Gulzar & Shailendra, you also would click as a producer in films?

A. Gulzar Shaheb had produced & directed several films of which some were hits. Shailendraji had made only 1 film which did not click. I have now entered the field of film production and it is my attempt to have my own individual identity here too like I have made in the field of writing lyrics & poems. I am confident that I will be bestowed with the same kind of love here too by the people. My aim is to make films on untouched subjects which no one has dared to make. My forthcoming film Love Ke Funday is an out & out commercial film and I hope the public would like it.

Q. Why did you write very few songs in recent times?

A. I was busy trying to float my own production house and establish myself as a producer. I was trying to gauge what kinds of subjects are being made into films. If there was any story which was worth I was ready to write the lyrics or else I used to turn down offers bluntly. I want to concentrate not on quantity and but on quality. I only want to write lyrics which touch one’s heart. These days many lyricists have started mushrooming, who do not even know what a tune is or the head or tail of lyrics writing but they continue to write. The public is also enjoying their songs and what’s more they become hits too but do not last for more than a week.

Q. But haven’t you also written such songs?

A. Yes! You are right. Sometimes I too write lyrics just for fun and to appease the producer & director as I too have to survive in the changing times and have no other alternative. I agree that I had to write “Chikni Kamar Pe Teri Mera Dil Fisal Gaya” & “Chammak Challo Chail Chabeeli” too, since the film Rowdy Rathore was produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. If a film maker like Sanjay Leela Bhansali can make a film like this, why cannot a poet lyricist like me write such stuff? Frankly speaking, such songs do not have a shelf life and lasts for just around 8 days and are like the first rains. They come & they go but looking at the need of the hour, one has to write such song too.

Q. Do you think the music of your 1st film will stand the test of time?

A. 100%. The songs are part of the film. There are 5 songs in my film. There are emotional, romantic, item numbers et al, which people would love. “Naina Shaatir Bade” by Sukhwinder Singh, “Tere Kudi” by Mika, “Yeh Pyar Hai” by Javed Ali, the title track by Jojo and the item song “Amul Maska” by Khushi Thakur.

Q. Which are your forthcoming films as a lyricist as of now?

A. Love Ke Funday, Mumbai Dreams, Mumbai Shuklaji Street and a few untitled films.