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The devastating toll of terror attacks is laid bare today with a shocking study revealing the number of people slaughtered worldwide has risen by 80 per cent in a year. A total of 32,658 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2014 - an 80 per cent increase on the previous year, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Researchers said that while Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria bore the brunt of deaths last year, the attacks in Paris on Friday mark a 'watershed within Europe'.

It is Margaret Atwood's 76th birthday, and her 2009 novel 'The Year of the Flood' seems an appropriate way to sum up the crude market this year. We await the weekly EIA inventory report this morning, with oil inventories less than 4 million barrels shy of the record of 490.9 mn bbls seen earlier in the year (...in itself an 80-year high). While a near-2 million barrel build is expected from today's report, last night's API report has put the putty cat among the pigeons by yielding a surprise draw of 0.4 mn bbls. The API report also showed a...

Results of research showing the 2015 index for relations between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, published partially for the first time on Tuesday, show just how far the Arab population supports and identifies with openly pro-terror organizations. The research, conducted by Professor Sami Samucha, reveals that no less than 57% of Arab citizens of Israel say they feel the radical Islamic Movement in Israel faithfully represents them. Significantly, the movement was outlawed on Tuesday for its long history of inciting terrorism, organizing and funding violent riots on the Temple Mount, and its close connections with Hamas. ...

The U.S. more than doubled its imports of oil from Iraq between August and September, according to a Platts analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics. The dramatic increase in Iraqi oil imports is only adding to the already-massive supply glut that has pushed down oil prices. Crude oil prices sank to a four-month low of $40.06 a barrel this week and they're down 12% in November alone. The increase in Iraqi oil imports comes at a time of heightened concerns about security in the volatile Middle East region. France, U.S. and Russia have stepped up airstrikes in Syria aimed...

Egyptian officials reportedly detained 17 airport employees Tuesday, hours after the head of Russia's security service said that the crash of a passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula last month that killed all 224 people on board was an act of terrorism. . . . "There's no statute of limitations for this, we need to know all of their names," Putin said. "We're going to look for them everywhere wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any place on Earth and punish them."

Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan has for the first time detailed its secretive oil exports operations and said it plans to sell more, whether Baghdad likes it or not, as it needs money to survive and fight Islamic State. The region's minister for natural resources, Ashti Hawrami, said that to avoid detection oil was often funneled through Israel, transferred directly between ships off the coast of Malta, and decoy ships used to make it harder for Baghdad to track. Kurdistan says it had been forced to bypass Baghdad and begin exporting oil directly because the latter refused to respect budgets...

The U.S. State Department has approved the sale of $1.29 billion in smart bombs to Saudi Arabia to help replenish supplies used in its battle against insurgents in Yemen and air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, the Pentagon said on Monday. The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which facilitates foreign arms sales, notified lawmakers on Friday that the sales had been approved, it said in a statement. The lawmakers now have 30 days to block the sale, although such action is rare since deals are carefully vetted before any formal notification. The sales reflect President Barack Obama's pledge...

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama said Monday that calls from some quarters for the U.S. to admit only Christian refugees from Syria were “shameful,” yet the reality is that today’s refugee system discriminates, not against Syrian Muslims, but against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities. Critics say this is because the federal government relies on the United Nations in the refugee application process – and since Syrian Christians are often afraid to register with the U.N., they and other non-Muslims in invariably left out. Fleeing persecution at the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other jihadist groups, Syrian...

Following ISIS's November 13, 2015 terror attack in Paris, the executive editor of the Iraqi daily Al-Mada, 'Adnan Hussein, published a harsh article titled "This Is Our Terror, We Are Responsible," in which he stated that all Muslims, Sunnis and Shi'ite, bear direct responsibility for the terror that is sweeping the world. He said that the curricula, the media and the mosques in the Muslim world constitute a platform for inculcating a barbaric kind of Islam that condones beheadings and bloodshed, whereas the voice of the other kind of Islam, which preaches peace and compassion, is barely heard. This religious...

As the world prayed for Paris, more than three thousand miles east another atrocity was being uncovered in Iraq - two mass graves containing the bodies of older Yazidi women. Sophy Ridge explains why we can't ignore them In the desert dust of Sinjar, in north west Iraq, a walking stick lies on the ground. Strewn casually alongside it are a couple of pairs of scissors, some household keys and a shoe. Bank notes flutter in the dirt. But, if you look a little closer, the scene becomes a horror show. Clumps of hair and fragments of bone poke grotesquely...

The Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq, who lost his diocese to the Islamic State last year and is now in exile in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan), warned that the suffering in Iraq was only a prelude of what European and Western Christians will “suffer in the near future,” and stressed that the West is endangering itself by welcoming “an ever-growing number of Muslims.”He also emphasized that while the West says “all men are equal,” Islam “does not say that all men are equal,” and “their values” are not our values."Our sufferings today are the prelude of those that you, Europeans and...

<p>Washington, Nov 16 (AFP) - CIA director John Brennan warned today that the attacks in Paris were likely not a "one off event" and that he expects Islamic State has more operations in the pipeline."</p> <p>Security and intelligence services right now are working feverishly to see what else they can do in terms of uncovering it," he said at a Washington think tank.</p>

Iraqi Intelligence Warned France of ISIS Attack Day Before Paris Assault Iraqi intelligence sent dispatch saying Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had ordered an attack on coalition countries fighting against them in Iraq and Syria, as well as on Iran and Russia. The Associated Press Nov 15, 2015 8:39 PM Senior Iraqi intelligence officials warned coalition countries of imminent assaults by the Islamic State group just one day before last week's deadly attacks in Paris killed 132 people, The Associated Press has learned. Iraqi intelligence sent a dispatch saying the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had ordered an attack on coalition countries...

Two New York mosque leaders charged with conspiring to support terrorists. Amazing how they could have risen to the leadership of a Muslim religious center while so thoroughly misunderstanding Islam. Funny thing: the same thing happened in Lodi, California. And all over the world, as we document here every day, we see Islamic clerics -- people who have dedicated their lives to studying and living out the religion -- at the forefront of terrorist movements. And yet so many people refuse to see what is right in front of their faces: maybe they aren't misunderstanding Islam at all. Aref and...

ALBANY -- The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on...

World 15 Islamist Kurds suspected of planning attacks arrested across Europe 12/11/2015 BARCELONA, Spain - Radical Kurdish cleric "Mullah Krekar" and 14 other Iraqi Kurds were arrested across Europe on Thursday in a coordinated police swoop on Islamist militants planning attacks, Italian media reported. The Corriere della Sera newspaper said the suspects were arrested in countries across Europe in collaboration with police from Italy, the UK, Norway, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. A non-Kurd, a man from Kosovo, was also arrested. Among the suspects picked up for links to the Islamic State group (ISIS), seven were arrested in Italy, four...

A mass grave believed to hold the remains of dozens of Yazidi women executed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group was found Saturday in northern Iraq, officials said. The grave, which has not yet been excavated, is located on the edge of the town of Sinjar, which was captured from ISIS this week in an operation led by Kurdish security forces and backed by US-led air strikes. The area is infamous for a brutal ISIS campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape against Yazidis, a minority group whose faith the jihadists consider heretical. The grave contains the bodies of some 78...

A mass grave believed to contain the remains of more than 70 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority was discovered east of Sinjar town after Kurdish forces claimed victory over Islamic State militants in the area, the mayor and locals have said.The insurgents overran the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar in north-west Iraq in August 2014, systematically killing, capturing and enslaving thousands of its inhabitants in what the United Nations has said may have constituted attempted genocide. The mayor of Sinjar and local Yazidis who visited the site of the mass grave said on Saturday they saw clumps of hair, bones, money...

<p>An Iraqi intelligence dispatch sent to coalition countries warned of imminent assaults by the Islamic State group just one day before last week's deadly attacks in Paris killed 129 people.</p> <p>Iraqi intelligence said the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ordered an attack on coalition countries fighting against them in Iraq and Syria, as well as on Iran and Russia, "through bombings or assassinations or hostage taking in the coming days."</p>

BRITAIN is at risk from the next Islamic State attack, supporters of the evil terror group have warned in unconfirmed tweets. They made the chilling threats on Twitter after at least 160 people were killed by a series of co-ordinated attacks on Paris last night. After gloating about the horror that shocked the world, armchair jihadists tweeted that London could be next. The twisted tweeters also claimed to have two other major capitals in their sights - Washington DC and Rome.