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.
Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, is calling for the Marxist terror group the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to leave Iraq completely, as civilians have died in Turkish airstrikes targeting the group. Barzani also condemned Turkish forces for killing civilians in his territory.
The Venezuelan military has invaded and seized a food distribution center in Caracas used by national food and beer corporation Polar, as well as American companies Nestle and Pepsi. 12,000 tons of food, six million liters of soft drinks, and 2,000 jobs are now at risk in a nation suffering major food shortages and a collapsed economy.
The government of Sierra Leone has quarantined 624 people in the past week following the death by Ebola of a man in a town that had not experienced any cases of the deadly virus in months. While the outbreak continues with little natural end in sight, however, scientists have announced a breakthrough vaccine development that could eradicate Ebola for good.
One of the world’s most active volcanos is threatening to derail the nascent investigation of debris that may belong to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on remote Reunion Island. Investigators have been forced to flee as Le Piton de la Fournaise begins to erupt, covering the search area in ash.
A Turkish national whistleblower known on Twitter only under the alias Fuat Avni is claiming that the Suruç suicide bombing attributed to the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS) was planned by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to allow for military action against Kurds. While the account is anonymous and provides no corroborating evidence, it has sufficient following to provoke a loud national response.
Philippine Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio announced this week that his court had sufficient evidence to conclude China had destroyed 17 reefs near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and had begun work dredging ten other reefs to build artificial islands in international waters.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is currently in Beijing, where he met with President Xi Jinping on Wednesday and called for the expansion of bilateral trade. While Chinese state media attempted to make trade the center of the meeting, the international community watched for signs of tension between the two nations given Turkey’s support of China’s Uyghur minority.
Cecil, a 13-year-old lion that was, for many Zimbabweans, the sole source of pride in an otherwise hellish dictatorship, is dead. His death at the hands of an American dentist has done what the deaths of tens of thousands of Zimbabwean humans have failed to do since Robert Mugabe’s ascendance to head of state: get Americans to care about Zimbabwe.
The Prime Minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi, took to Twitter on Tuesday to condemn the Turkish government for participating in a “dangerous escalation” of violence against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq, after announcing they would limit their attacks to creating an “anti-ISIS” zone in the Syrian heartland.
The Islamic State-affiliated terrorist group Boko Haram has killed 29 people this week after raiding two Christian villages in northern Borno State. The attacks occurred as Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is in Cameroon to meet with President Paul Biya regarding a strategy to eliminate the terror syndicate.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) issued a statement in “strong solidarity” with Turkey following that nation’s emergency meeting to address a new anti-terrorism campaign against the Islamic State and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has stretched out of Ankara as far as northern Iraq in less than a week.
Venezuela’s socialist government has run the OPEC nation’s economy to the group, prompting shortages of goods as varied as toilet paper, coffin materials, beer, and water. The shortage has now hit pharmacies, with most pharmacies having completely run out of most forms of contraceptives, particularly birth control pills.
A group of Boko Haram fighters has reportedly approached the Nigerian government requesting “peace talks,” hoping to trade in their weapons for some clemency from President Muhammadu Buhari, despite the group’s mass murder of thousands of Nigerians in village raids and suicide bombings.
The Islamist government of Tripoli, one of two competing national governments in Libya, has sentenced Saif al-Gaddafi, son of slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi, to death. Few expect that sentence to be rendered, least of all the rebels that have kept Gaddafi in captivity and fear handing him over to be killed will only result in his escape.
The Turkish government announced at the end of last week that it would begin an airstrike campaign in Syria, in tandem with the United States, to create an “ISIL-free zone” in the war-torn nation, following an Islamic State bombing within Turkish territory. Turkey has rapidly expanded its operations to focus more on its Kurdish enemies than ISIS, with reports that Turkey is far outside the “ISIL-free zone” bombing Kurdish positions in Iraq.
A video of President Barack Obama dancing with one of Kenya’s most famous pop music groups has taken the nation by storm, as the President continues on to Ethiopia in his four-day African tour.
The Syrian Kurdish YPG/YPJ–or People’s Protection Units–issued a statement on Monday condemning Turkish airstrikes on strategic Kurdish posts. The Turkish government announced a new campaign, accompanied by the United States, against the Islamic State in Syria, but the Kurds and anti-Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) Syrian militant claim they are the real targets of the campaign.
The President of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, Masoud Barzani, has appeared to take the side of the Turkish government regarding recently launched airstrikes against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), calling the U.S.-designated terrorist group “arrogant” and praising Turkey for taking a “positive” role in attempting peace talks with the PKK.
As Greece struggles to regain some economic strength at it continues to negotiate a solution to its debt crisis with the European Union, the flood of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and other ravaged areas east of the Hellenic republic has continued unabated, threatening an economy that has for years been on the brink of disaster.
As Kenya gears up for President Barack Obama’s historic speech on Sunday in its capital, Nairobi, victims of the 1998 al-Qaeda bombing of the American embassy in that city are charging “neglect” on the part of both the American and Kenyan governments, and hoping their plights are addressed by the American head of state.
A former Egyptian army officer suspected of masterminding the assassination of a top Egyptian prosecutor has released a propaganda video calling for Islamists to declare holy war on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, calling him a “new pharoah” who has overrun the mostly-Muslim country with “sorcerers” looking to change “our religion.”
The family of Alberto Nisman, a top Argentine prosecutor who was found dead of a bullet wound in his home the day before he was to testify against the President of Argentina before the nation’s legislature, claims there is evidence in the home that the shooter washed his hands in Nisman’s bathroom before leaving.
A long-buried 3.5-ton head of Russian communist icon Vladimir Lenin has been unearthed from its burial place in a Berlin forest to be featured in a new exhibit on German sculptures, decades after Berlin’s residents toppled the statue following the fall of the Cold War.
Speaking at the United States Institute for Peace during his trip to Washington, D.C., this week, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari accused the United States of unintentionally “aiding and abetting” Boko Haram by denying weapons support to the Nigerian military following accusations of human rights violations.
