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Author: Vijeta Uniyal

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Vijeta Uniyal

Vijeta Uniyal is a writer based in Germany. He is Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Gatestone Institute and founder of the "Indians For Israel".

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has invited Steve Bannon to speak at the country's parliament next month, the Hamburg-based news weekly Der Spiegel disclosed. "The AfD is planning a meeting for right-wing bloggers and writers at the Bundestag," the magazine reported. "The party has invited U.S. President Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon."

Around 290 people have been killed and 400 injured in a series of suicide bomb attacks in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, government sources say. Three churches were targeted during the Easter mass, including the landmark St. Anthony's Shrine, an 18th century Catholic Church. This is the first terror attack of this magnitude on Christians in Sri Lanka, a war-torn island nation in the Indian Ocean. Christians form the smallest religious minority in the Buddhist-majority country. A large portion of Sri Lanka's seven percent Christians are Catholic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spoken against a trade deal with the United Kingdom if the country fails to solve the "hard border" issue between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland with the European Union before leaving the bloc. Brussels wants the border between Ireland, an EU member state, and Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, to remain open after Brexit. The arrangement, also known as the "the backstop," will allow the EU to dictate immigration and trade policies in Northern Ireland, a move that will erode British sovereignty over the region. Many Brexit supporters see the backstops as a tactic to shackle Britain to EU law and regulations.

Germany's domestic intelligence chief has warned of the threat posed by the resurgence of left-wing extremists in the country. The Left-wing extremists were engaged in violence against police and political opponents in Germany, Thomas Haldenwang, president of country's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent re-election has irked the European mainstream media. Many leading European media outlets decried the Israeli leader's "right-wing" policies that mobilized Israeli voters ahead of Tuesday's vote. German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau described Netanyahu's victory using anti-Semitic terminology with the headline: "The Eternal Netanyahu," a reference to the 1940 anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed former U.S. President Barack Obama in Berlin on Saturday. The meeting was closed to the press. The German government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, declined comment on the content of the talks, calling Obama's visit to the Chancellery in Berlin a "private meeting."

Germany's leading Muslim organization has urged the government to appoint a Federal Commissioner to counter anti-Muslim attitudes in the country. "Such a Commissioner is needed more than ever because we have a latent anti-Muslim sentiment in Germany," president of the country's Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek, said.

An appeals court in Berlin has ordered the deportation of the convicted Palestinian terrorist, Rasmea Odeh. The Higher Regional Court was responding to an appeal filed by Odeh's lawyer, challenging the earlier deportation order issued by Berlin State's Home Affairs Department, or Innensenat, ordering her to leave the country. That deportation was promptly carried out. Odeh is out of Germany.

With the British parliament failing to agree on the strategy to exit the European Union, Brussels has called upon Prime Minister Theresa May to hold the European elections. Referring to the recent pro-EU demonstrations in London, the European Council President, Donald Tusk, accused the UK government of betraying the "increasing majority" of Britons who wish to stay in the union.

Indian intelligence services have warned of Islamist terror attacks on Jewish synagogues and residential apartments in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Goa, local media reports say. Indian authorities are taking the threat very seriously by beefing up security around Israeli diplomatic missions, synagogues, and other Jewish institutions.

German police have arrested ten Islamists on suspicion of planning terror attacks. The suspects were plotting car ramming attacks and mass shootings with the aim to "kill as many 'non-believers' as possible," the prosecutors in the city of Frankfurt said.

Germany won't be meeting its NATO spending target this year, the country's finance ministry disclosed. "Defense spending is projected to fall well short of NATO's 2 percent target," German state broadcaster DW News reported Wednesday.

Last week, Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs hosted a three-day conference, called DigiTell19, aimed at combating the anti-Semitic boycott campaign, or BDS Movement, hosting around 90 pro-Israel social media activists and bloggers from around the world. I had the privilege of representing my grassroots group, Indians For Israel, at the event in Israel.

A London court has sentenced a woman to eleven years in prison for mutilating the genitals of her three-year-old daughter. The 37-year-old Ugandan immigrant became the first person in the UK to be convicted of female genital mutilation (FGM) since the practice was criminalized three decades ago.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has called an emergency knife-crime summit to deal with the stabbing epidemic raging across the country. The announcement comes after 21 people were stabbed to death in London since the beginning of the year. "We will only defeat the scourge of violence if we understand and address its complex root causes," she said.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's successor, has come under fire for make a joke about gender-neutral bathrooms. Her remark was in response to a campaign waged by the left-wing Green Party to introduce gender-neutral bathrooms in official builds in the state of Berlin. She said the third-gender toilets were for "men who cannot decide if they want to sit or stand when they pee" on a carnival-themed TV show.