In both Iran and Pakistan, important victories have been won in the conflict between Christian faith and Islamic persecution. In Iran, after three years in prison awaiting execution for the “crime” of converting to Christianity, pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has been freed. In Pakistan, a young girl wrongly accused of burning pages of the Koran has been released from prison and the Muslim cleric who planted false evidence has been arrested.

A story from CNSNews reveals that the U.S. Department of State has once again undertaken the dubious task of trying to reform Islam to fit the department’s international agenda. According to an August 10 report released by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 450 imams were the target of the most recent effort, which aimed to combat “gender-based violence” that has been linked to Islam.

A new study of the methodology and placement of weather monitoring equipment has found that misplacement of such equipment is giving a false estimation of the threat of global warming.

JihadWatch Director Robert Spencer has written a new work on Islam's founder, Muhammad, which calls into question whether he ever existed. The gravest difficulty that the author of Did Muhammad Exist? faces is the intrinsic implausibility of its central thesis: that Muhammad, the purported prophet of Islam and author of the Koran, either never existed or — if there was a "prophet" named Muhammad — he certainly never wrote the Koran. 

If the definition of the word “terrorist” has seemed somewhat flexible to many Americans in recent years, that state of befuddlement is shared by the U.S. government. The difficulties of defining a “terrorist” were on display on Capitol Hill when a high-ranking State Department official declared that the Nigerian Jihadist group Boko Haram — one of the most violent Islamist organizations in Africa — to be a “terrorist” organization, while explaining that it was not a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

The City of San Francisco, outraged at Apple's decision to depart from environmental standards, has announced its boycott of Apple's computers. San Francisco’s ban on the purchase of Apple computers came in the aftermath of the Cupertino-based company’s decision to withdraw from participating in the “Electronics Product Environmental Assessment Tool” (EPEAT) ranking of consumer electronics.

Even as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is instructing U.S. Border Patrol agents to run away from violent criminals, the Lone Star State is preparing to meet force with force. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has announced that it is deploying two gunboats armed with machine guns to patrol the waters of the Rio Grande to stop Mexican cartel thugs from running drugs across the border.

A news article for the KSAT-San Antonio website ("DPS gunboats prepare to patrol border waters") reports that Texas law enforcement has created a new "Tactical Marine Unit" to cope with the strategies of Mexican drug runners.

Newly-elected Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi shocked the Obama administration with a call for the release of the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the terrorist associated with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

While Americans are embroiled in discussions of the various implications of this year’s presidential contest, very few of them are weighing the significance of a presidential election that will take place tomorrow just across the southern border of these United States. The candidates of three major parties are vying for the presidency of Mexico, and no matter which candidate wins, he — or she — will face the task of rebuilding a nation devastated by years of war and economic crisis.

With the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood to power and relinquishing of power by the military, Egypt's military will no longer be able to arrest protesters, but critics wonder whether the Brotherhood can be trusted with its newly acquired power.