NBC reports that Russia is telling American authorities that it overheard a wiretapped conversation between the suspected Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother about jihad:
The conversation, NBC reports, occurred in 2011 and apparently is not directly connected to the Boston bombing. The Russians had the wiretap on Tsarnaev.
"The conversation, which the Russians have said was captured electronically via a wiretap, was not presented to U.S. authorities until after the April 15 bombing that killed three people and injured 264 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, according to the source," reports NBC.
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev also mentioned the possibility of a trip to Palestine during the conversation, the source said.
"The phone call does not indicate there was clear intelligence that the now-deceased 26-year-old was plotting an attack at the time, counterrorism experts said."
The small republic of Kosovo, with a population of less than two million—90 percent ethnic Albanians, of whom 80 percent are Muslim—is the Balkan zone offering the greatest resistance to radical Islam. Some vignettes from recent interviews may impart the flavor of the debate over Islamism in the country:
The Washington Post reports that President Obama is running his reelection campaign as a "culture warrior," trying to cast his opponents as extremists on such issues as abortion in the case of rape and requiring religious institutions to pay for contraception. But could Obama's own extremism on abortion come back to bite him?
60 Minutes had a fascinating report last week on what it calls "The Narrative," which "says that the United States is out to destroy Islam," and a man who devotes his life to combating this absurd meme. The man is Maajid Nawaz, who himself was once a radical fundamentalist. It's worth viewing in full:
Last Thursday, July 22, 20-year-old Zachary A. Chesser of Fairfax County, Va., was arrested for providing material support to, and attempting to join, the Somali Islamist militia affiliated with al Qaeda, al-Shabab. Chesser has been ordered to remain in jail until his trial.
Senator John Barrasso, a leading spokesman for congressional Republicans on health care issues, today accused President Barack Obama of "intentionally misleading" the country and Congress by appointing Donald Berwick to run the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. The White House yesterday announced that Berwick would receive a "recess appointment," which allows the president to put a nominee in place without Senate confirmation.
The Kosovo Republic’s official stance against girls wearing the Muslim headscarf (hijab) in state-supported primary and secondary schools, has brought the country’s main Muslim leader, Naim Ternava, out of a pattern of silence about the penetration of radical Islam in that country.