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A suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a Manchester pop concert likely had the help of a terror network, U.K. authorities said, and his brother confessed to a Libyan militia that the two of them belonged to Islamic State.

The allegations came as a portrait emerged of how Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old perpetrator of Britain’s deadliest attack since 2005, grew up straddling middle-class Britain and the tumult of Libya, playing street soccer as a schoolboy before heading off as a teenager to fight alongside his father in their homeland.

Once he returned to Manchester, he nursed a strong sense of anger. Twice, for different reasons, he spoke of wanting revenge. “Whether he got that is between him and God,” his sister, Jomana, said.

The suspected bomber’s brother, Hashem Abedi, is in the custody of Radaa, one of several large militias responsible for security in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Ahmed Dagdoug, a militia spokesman, said Hashem Abedi confessed that he was in the U.K. during preparations for Monday’s attack and aware of the plans.

Radaa said the younger Abedi was arrested late Tuesday in the city as he picked up a wire transfer of 4,500 Libyan dinar, or about $3,260, sent by his late brother, Salman.

It was impossible to independently confirm Radaa’s claim or to ascertain how such a confession may have been obtained. Libyan militias routinely resort to harsh tactics to extract information from terrorism suspects.

The group’s spokesman, Mr. Dagdoug, said it was also holding Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi, to aid in the probe of the attack, which killed 22 people outside a concert by American singer Ariana Grande.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the Libyan group was in contact with British investigators, who on Tuesday in Manchester arrested a man one Western official identified as 23-year-old Ismail Abedi, another brother of the suspect.

British intelligence agencies and police made raids on more properties on Wednesday and are piecing together how Salman Abedi came to use a sophisticated bomb to carry out Monday’s attack.

“I think it’s very clear that this is a network that we are investigating,” said Ian Hopkins, chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police. “There’s extensive investigations going on and activity taking place across Greater Manchester as we speak.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Pictures of dictator Kim Jong Un applauding as another North Korean missile ascends into the sky have become routine. But the Hermit Kingdom’s two most recent launches deserve special attention because they show Pyongyang nearing its goal of deploying a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could destroy American cities.

On May 14 the North launched a new intermediate-range missile it calls the Hwasong-12. The missile traveled fewer than 500 miles, but that’s because it was fired at a very steep angle to avoid flying over neighboring countries. If launched at the optimum angle, it could have a range of 2,800 miles, which means it threatens the U.S. island of Guam. That’s the farthest of North Korea’s missiles so far, not counting the rockets it used to launch satellites.

The Hwasong appears to use a new high-performance engine tested in March that it developed from scratch instead of adapting a Russian or Chinese design. The missile appears to be a single-stage, liquid-fueled rocket that could become the first stage of a new ICBM. That would allow the North to abandon the derivative designs it previously cobbled together to achieve the thrust for longer ranges. In its current form the Hwasong is also road mobile, making it more difficult to find and destroy. The North Koreans further claim the Hwasong can carry a “large, heavy nuclear warhead.”

On Sunday the North successfully tested another relatively new missile, the Pukguksong-2. While its range is shorter at about 1,000 miles, it is solid-fueled and can be moved using a domestically produced transporter, both of which improve survivability.

Based on a submarine-launched missile that may be a modified Chinese design, the Pukguksong’s first test in February was also successful. That suggests the missile will prove reliable, and North Korean media are reporting that Kim has ordered mass production.

The North also took advantage of the steep trajectory of both missiles to work on one of the last remaining obstacles to ICBM deployment—a re-entry vehicle capable of withstanding the heat and vibration of the fall through the atmosphere. The North Koreans say the Hwasong “verified the homing feature of the warhead under the worst re-entry situation,” and that may be more than a boast. The U.S. and South Korea have confirmed that the test warhead survived and transmitted data.

The North still has to overcome obstacles to targeting the U.S., not least designing an ICBM re-entry vehicle. While the Kim regime is believed to have partially miniaturized an atomic weapon, it hasn’t tested a hydrogen bomb. But that is little comfort. On Tuesday when Senators asked Lt. Gen. Vince Stewart, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, how long North Korea needs before it can deploy an ICBM, he answered that it “is on a pathway where this capability is inevitable.”

This month’s tests mean advances in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs are coming much faster than analysts thought possible. If the U.S. and its allies don’t take steps to stop it now, the world will soon wake up to a nuclear North Korea far more dangerous and disruptive than the one we have today.

The United Nations Human Rights Council is preparing a blacklist of American and other companies doing business with Israel—and U.S. taxpayers are paying a quarter of the bill.

The council’s move embraces the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign, which seeks to accomplish through economic strangulation what Israel’s enemies have been unable to achieve through war and terror. How did the U.S. get on the wrong side of this battle?

When the Human Rights Council was created in 2006 as a “reform” of the original U.N. Human Rights Commission, the Bush administration voted against, because no membership conditions required actually respecting human rights.

But Barack Obama jumped on board and, playing Gulliver at the U.N., allowed the American giant to be tied up by foes contributing a fraction of our moral and financial weight. In 2016 Americans sent the U.N. almost $10 billion.

On Thursday a U.S. Senate subcommittee will meet to “assess” the Human Rights Council. Reconsidering U.S. membership and walking away—now—is the right choice. Successive White Houses have tried and failed to correct the entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias of the council (and commission) for decades Simply put, the Lilliputians have more votes.

The council has condemned Israel more than any of the other 192 U.N. states, notwithstanding 500,000 dead in Syria, starvation and mass torture in North Korea, and systematic, deadly oppression in Iran. Saudi Arabia and China have used their seats on the council to avoid condemnation altogether.

Terror in Brussels – ISIS claims responsibility for “martyrdom” bombers; Belgium’s Jewish schools locked down http://www.jewishledger.com/2016/03/terror-brussels-isis-claims-responsibility-martyrdom-bombers-belgiums-jewish-schools-locked/

(JTA) As the Ledger went to press on Tuesday, news began pouring in regarding three suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Brussels early in the day, killing at least 34 people and injuring as many as 130. It was the worst terror attack to hit Europe since the Islamic State-organized terror attacks in Paris last November.

The Islamic State – commonly referred to as ISIS — claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to Amaq, a news agency affiliated with the terror group.

“Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station,” the Amaq agency said.

“Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.”

Jewish schools and other institutions in Antwerp and Brussels went into lockdown following the attacks, as police advised civilians to remain indoors. Public transportation and flights to and from Zaventem were suspended.

Among the wounded was an Israeli citizen who resides in Antwerp and was in Brussels for a wedding, according to Rabbi Pinchas Kornfeld, a community leader from Antwerp. He sustained injuries to his legs but is not in life-threatening condition, Kornfeld said.

Another Jewish person was moderately wounded, according to Samuel Markowitz, a paramedic for Hatzoloh, a local Jewish emergency services organization. Several dozen Jews were among the hundreds of passengers who were evacuated to a safe area near the airport, he added in an interview with the Joods Actueel Jewish monthly.

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Shortly after the attacks, the Antwerp World Diamond Center canceled a Purim party it planned for tomorrow “out of respect for the victims and their families,” the center’s CEO, Ari Epstein, told Joods Actueel. Another Purim party by the European Jewish Association was canceled in Brussels, the group’s director, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, said.

The airport attack occurred at 8 a.m. near the American Airlines desk, according to the online edition of Joods Actueel. Kornfeld said many Jewish passengers were traveling between Antwerp, which has a large haredi Orthodox community, and New York.

“It was the right time and place to produce many Jewish casualties,” he said.

Recess was canceled at dozens of Jewish schools in Antwerp and children were instructed to stay inside the buildings, Kornfeld said. Community leaders are discussing the possibility of canceling school tomorrow and Purim street festivities planned for Thursday. Shortly thereafter, similar instructions went out from the Belgian government’s crisis center to all of the country’s schools.

University students were instructed to refrain from coming to campus.

“This is yet another shocking, appalling, and deadly attack on innocent Europeans by terrorists. These attacks on an airport, train system, and outside European Union institutions are shots at the heart of Europe. Our prayers and thoughts are with the Belgian people at these difficult times,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, adding, ”we can no longer ignore the fact that radical Islamists are at war with Europe and all Europeans and we call on our governments and law enforcement agencies to act accordingly.”

Witnesses told Joods Actueel that at the airport, they heard shouts in Arabic, gunshots and a massive explosion.