Cairo — Four Coptic Christian teenagers face up to five years in prison after an Egyptian court found them guilty of insulting Islam, continuing a trend of blasphemy accusations in a country whose Christian minority lacks many basic social and legal protections.
The charges are "only the latest case in a pattern that can be seen since the Egyptian revolution" according to Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom.
IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — A Palestinian-American member of the Islamic State group gave himself up to Iraqi Kurdish forces in the country's north on Monday, an Iraqi Kurdish general said, a rare instance of a voluntary surrender of a militant fighting with the extremist group in Iraq.
The man had been "lurking near the peshmerga lines" since late Sunday night, according to Maj. Gen. Feisal Helkani of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, which are playing key role — along with the Iraqi military — in battling the extremist IS group.
