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The Russian economy contracted steeply in the second quarter as the economic consequences of its war in Ukraine took hold. The economy shrank 4 percent from April through June compared with a year ago, the Russian statistics agency said on Friday. It is the first quarterly gross domestic product report to fully capture the change in the economy since the invasion of Ukraine in February, when Western sanctions shut Russia off from much of the global financial system, and many countries severed trading relationships with Moscow. It was also a sharp reversal from the first quarter, when the economy rose...

Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered the remains of an ancient palace that may have belonged to Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan.The site in eastern Turkey's Van province, in the Caldiran district, is currently being excavated.Hulagu Khan, a Mongol warlord who lived from about 1217 to 1265, achieved military renown for leading several expeditions, including the sack of Baghdad in 1258.After the Mongol Empire splintered in 1259, Hulagu Khan became the ruler of the Mongol Ilkhanid State in the Middle East, which at its height included territory in what is now Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Afghanistan,...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Russia’s Multiple Warnings About Tamerlan TsarnaevPosted By Matthew Vadum On April 25, 2013 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments Russian authorities warned the Obama administration repeatedly — not merely once — that Boston Marathon bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev could be an Islamic terrorist, but those admonitions went unheeded in Washington, D.C.It’s a depressingly familiar tale of intelligence failures, official lies, politically correct posturing, and bureaucratic bungles coming from an administration that has little interest in protecting Americans from the Islamic terrorist threat, a danger President Obama refuses even to acknowledge.Time magazine...

U.S. Links Charity to Chechen RebelsBy Nabi Abdullaev Staff Writer The head of a U.S.-based Islamic charity who is suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden is in jail facing a grand jury investigation after the FBI showed he had lied about his support for Chechen rebels. Federal officials accused Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen, and his Benevolence International Foundation of perjury last month for claiming they did not provide support to "people or organizations known to engage in violence, terrorist activities or military operations of any nature." Arnaout, 39, was arrested April 30. He had been under...

Despite or, in some cases, because of the support it receives from the government and the new “anti-extremism” laws deployed against others, the Russian Orthodox Church is increasingly isolated from Russians in the North Caucasus and is losing many of them to Protestant groups who are also attracting some Muslims as well. Ruslan Gereyev, the director of the Center for Islamic Research on the North Caucasus, says that the major reason for Orthodoxy’s failure and Protestantism’s success is that “unlike Protestant and Muslim preachers, representatives of the Russian Orthodox church do not reach out to the population. Because they are...

A gunman has killed four women and injured three others, including police officers, at a folk festival in the Russian republic of Dagestan, according to local sources. A man armed with a hunting rifle gunned down churchgoers in the city of Kizlyar, according to the Associated Press, and reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he opened fire. Kizlyar’s mayor Alexander Shuvalov told Russian media the gunman opened fire as people were leaving a Sunday evening service at a local Orthodox church. “Four people were killed. The shooter was shot dead. Two police officers and a woman were wounded,” he said.

A man carrying a knife and a hunting rifle opened fire on worshippers on Sunday at an Orthodox church in Kizlyar, in the Dagestan region of Russia, killing at least five people and wounding several others, according to a Russian state news agency. The gunman shouted, “Allahu akbar” and began firing, a priest told local news media. Churchgoers said they had prevented more casualties by closing the door to the church and stopping the attacker from getting inside. The man was later shot and killed by security forces on duty at the time, reports said. The assailant was identified only...

Five women were shot dead in an apparent Islamist attack on an Orthodox church in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday. According to local press reports, an unidentified gunman fired at worshippers in the small town of Kizlyar in the mainly Muslim region. At least five other people, including two Russian police officers, were wounded in the attack, which took place after a service to mark the start of Russian Orthodox Lent ---snip--- The attacker was “eliminated” by police fire, the regional internal affairs ministry added.

Five people were killed and several others were injured after a gunman opened fire with a hunting rifle on people leaving a church service in Russia's Dagestan region on Sunday, Russian media outlets reproted.

Many observers have warned that Putin’s military campaign in Syria may backfire at home. Russia’s 144 million people include about 20 million Muslims; the overwhelming majority are Sunnis. Some analysts believe that these Russian Sunnis will recoil from Russia’s support for Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime and its attacks on Sunni rebels, and from Russia’s effort to lead a coalition of Shiite powers, Iran, Iraq and Syria. If pundits’ predictions were true, Muslims would be more likely to choose the anti-war response and less likely to support Putin’s intervention. But that’s not exactly what we found. ...There wasn’t a consensus among any...

Aina Gamzatova, a 46-year-old woman from Dagestan, has made it official. She wants to run against Russian President Vladimir Putin in the March 2018 election. Some see her campaign - irrespective of its results - as a way to boost the image of Muslim women in Russia and to attract attention to the needs of impoverished, overpopulated and multi-ethnic Dagestan. Her husband, Akhmad Abdulaev, is the Mufti of Dagestan, Russia's troubled province where a confrontation between fighters, clans and federal forces has killed thousands. She belongs to a Sufi order that has tens of thousands of followers and whose leader,...

How Putin is Winning and Losing Syria No one is in Syria because of ISIS. October 8, 2015 Daniel Greenfield    Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. The Russian line is that they’re in Syria to fight ISIS. But the Russians, like the Turks, Iranians and Europeans, don’t care about ISIS. By declaring itself a Caliphate, ISIS made itself non-aligned. The fighting in Syria isn’t about ISIS. It predated the rise of ISIS as a major player. It’s about Syria. ISIS has become a convenient excuse for...

President Vladimir Putin has promised government backing for Islamic religious education in Russia, in a bid to stave extremism and cater to Russia’s large Muslim community. Up to 20 million Muslims make up Russia’s second-largest religious minority. Thousands of young radicalized Russians have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join jihadist fighters in recent years, making the country the largest source of foreign fighters in the war-torn region. At a meeting with Islamic religious figures on Wednesday, Russia’s president pledged “undoubted support” for a "revival of Islamic education in Russia," the state-run TASS news agency reported. “Traditional Islam is an...

Customs seize Berezovsky's videos about explosions in Moscow, Volgodonsk 'We've already convicted the Chechens...let's move on' Interfax. Sunday, Mar. 10, 2002, 1:07 PM Moscow Time MOSCOW. March 10 (Interfax) - State Duma deputy and member of the Liberal Russia movement Yuli Rybakov said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio that the customs department of St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport has confiscated 100 video cassettes about the explosions of apartment buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. The film was demonstrated by businessman Boris Berezovsky at a recent press conference in London, and is evidence of the Russian special services' involvement in...

The Islamic State’s so-called “province” in the Caucasus region has claimed responsibility for its first official attack since its was established earlier this year. In a statement released online (seen above), and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, the group says “the soldiers of the Caliphate were able to mount an attack on barracks of the Russian army in southern Dagestan, in Magharamakint village.” The raid allegedly “led to the killing and wounding of a number of them.” Afterwards, “the soldiers of the Caliphate returned to their positions safely and with spoils, and unto Allah is all praise and gratitude,”...

The existence of a long waiting list for potential suicide bombers was revealed in a recent ISIS guidebook published online telling potential suicide bombers to be patient after their training period, as they’d have to deal with a long waiting list. As a result, militants are forced to spend months waiting for a suicide mission and are getting killed in battle — considered to be a less noble way to die. Kamil Abu Sultan ad-Daghestani, a pro-Islamic State preacher from Dagestan, Russia, made the accusations in a recent post on the Russian language jihadi website Qonah claiming that rich Saudi...

"We will fight until the end," Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's father told ABC News by phone after Tsarnaev was sentenced to death today for the Boston Marathon bombings. "What a parent can feel at such moment? It is hard," Dzhokhar's father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said from Dagestan, Russia. "Hope exists always. We had hope and still do." Anzor Tsarnaev's brother, Saeed Tsarnaev, said they will appeal. Saeed Tsarnaev blamed the lawyers for giving the family hope and said they are all "very worried" about Dzhokhar. He called the decision a "big tragedy" for the family and "insulting to our name." Anzor Tsarnaev's sister,...

Muslims never guilty of 'terrorist massacres,' Turkey's Erdogan insistsTurkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly bizarre rhetoric continued this week when he told reporters Muslims have "never taken part in terrorist massacres" and appeared to blame the West for the recent Islamist attacks in Paris.

Istanbul (AFP)- A teenager from Russia's Muslim region of Dagestan, suspected of a suicide bombing in Istanbul, was said Friday to have been an Islamic State jihadist and the wqidow of an Norwegian extremist...

US officials knew about the potential danger of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, according to a soon-to-be-released Congressional report—but a spelling error led them to miss his frequent flights out to Dagestan for terror training. […] In March 2011, Russian intelligence agency FSB notified the FBI with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Tsarnaev family, which had emigrated to Massachusetts nearly ten years earlier. In the letter, FSB included contact information, with addresses and phone numbers, for many of the members of the Tsarnaev family, including Tamerlan and his mother, and warned that Tamerlan was gaining a reputation for associating...