The U.S.-Turkey coalition appears already in trouble, even before American F-16s take to the Syrian skies out of Turkey to fly anti-ISIS missions. The Turkish military allegedly only gave Americans ten minutes to leave the site of an imminent airstrike on alleged PKK territory in Iraq.
The U.S Coast Guard announced this week that they have seized more cocaine on the Pacific high seas in the past ten months than in the past three years combined, a total of 32 metric tons of cocaine.
Maria Gabriela Chávez, the most prominent of late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez’s four children, is believed to be the wealthiest person in Venezuela, with a reported net worth nearing $4.2 billion.
The Chinese Ministry of Culture, through state media outlet Xinhua, has published a “blacklist” of 120 songs banned from being played or sold in China for their “obscenity, violence, crime” or potential to “harm social morality.” Anyone caught trafficking in this music will receive “severe punishment,” the government says.
Less than two weeks after imposing a nationwide ban on big game hunting in response to the killing of the famous Cecil the lion, Zimbabwe has already lifted the ban, allowing hunters to continue killing exotic game.
The government of Seoul is promising “pitiless penalty” and “a severe retaliation” against North Korea for the serious injury of two South Korean soldiers at the hands of what appear to be North Korean landmines, which the South Korean government believes were planted by North Koreans infiltrating the other side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
The Turkish government’s anti-terrorism campaign, initially advertised as a campaign to destroy the Islamic State terrorist group, has killed hundreds of members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and left the terror group significantly diminished, as its imprisoned leader calls for peace talks.
A total of over 100 Cuban dissidents were arrested this weekend, with more than 90 being hauled away on a bus by Cuban authorities on Sunday as they marched through Havana wearing masks of President Barack Obama, demanding the White House pressure Cuba to respect human rights and political freedom.
The families of passengers of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stormed the Malaysian embassy in Beijing Friday, objecting to being left out of meetings with Malaysian government officials and demanding Malaysia pay for their flight to Reunion, a remote island in the Indian Ocean where the flaperon part of a Boeing 777 was found this month.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PPK) terrorist group’s leadership has called upon the United States to intervene and encourage the Turkish government to engage in peace talks with the Kurdish group, in the hopes of ending the air campaign Turkey is waging against them while claiming to be fighting the Islamic State (ISIS).
Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government is striving to contain what has grown into a significant drug abuse problem among its population, pushing the limits of both law enforcement and medical care facilities in accommodating criminals and those who need help fighting their addictions.
As Republicans wake up from their first taste of a crowded and extremely accomplished field of 2016 candidates, many will praise the candidates for what will likely be remembered as one of the more substantive and combative debates in recent memory.
The Peruvian Maoist terrorist militia Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”), responsible for the death of 25,000 people in the Peruvian countryside in the 1980s and 1990s, may be on the rise again as government officials warn that hundreds remain enslaved and forced to produce food and child soldiers for the group.
The radical leftist party Podemos (“We Can”) that took Spain by storm last year is suffering major poll losses leading into Spain’s parliamentary elections in November, a new government poll shows, as Spanish observers grow wary of socialism following the decline of the Greek economy.
A new raid on several villages in northern Cameroon by Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram has left at least eight dead and 135 others missing.
The unpopular socialist government of Venezuela has been using an army of thousands of Twitter “bots” to inflate its support network on the social media outlet, the Associated Press reports in an extensive exposé.
The criminal investigation into former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis will involve a cyber-crime law enforcement unit, as Greek officials seek to uncover whether Varoufakis’ “Plan B,” an emergency plan that would have required the government to hack into private taxpayer accounts and switch from the euro to the drachma currency.
The bodies of 13 Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) soldiers will finally be allowed to return to their families after 10 days held up at the Syrian/Turkish border, Turkish media reports. Despite having died fighting the Islamic State, their alliance with the YPG stains them with ties to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)– Turkey’s number one enemy.
Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram– now known as the Islamic State West Africa Province– released a new video this week showing off new weapons and graphically depicting the beheading of a Nigerian policeman. The new Boko Haram video’s production value seems to indicate it was produced with help from ISIS, and leader Abubakar Shekau’s absence once again is raising questions.
China is attempting to strongarm the countries forming the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) not to discuss its aggressive expansion of control in the South China Sea, issuing statements arguing that the venue is “improper” for such a topic. The Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, all who object to China’s expansion, strongly disagree.
Relatives of fallen Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) fighters in Turkey say the Turkish government is denying permission for the bodies to return to Turkish soil to be buried. A group of 12 bodies, including that of a German national fighting in Syria, have been waiting in a refrigerated truck on the Syrian border for more than one week for permission to enter Turkey.
Despite losing a Supreme Court case in which he argued that pornography is “worse than Hitler,” an Indian lawyer has managed to get the nation’s Department of Telecommunications to block 857 pornographic websites nationwide, sparking an uproar from free speech supporters.
The murder of Cecil, a famous Zimbabwean lion, at the hands of an American dentist on an exotic game hunt has become this summer’s national outrage. Liberals are calling for government intervention to prevent Americans from exotic animal hunting and the mainstream media has carved out hours of time to discuss this injustice.
Socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is blaming a United States conspiracy for a supermarket riot over the weekend that left one 21-year-old man dead–a man witnesses say was shot to death by Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard.
The Turkish government has denied that it has targeted civilians in its airstrikes against the Islamic State and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Syria and Iraq. Kurdish officials in bot the PKK and Iraqi Kurdistan have condemned the deaths of civilians in Turkish attacks.
