The increasingly difficult-to-ignore presence of anti-Semitic attitudes in Turkey is forcing Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors were welcomed in the Ottoman Empire after being expelled from their homes due to the Inquisition, to consider returning to Spain.
Rumors and online reports, led by the social media news outlet Libya Observer, claim that the Islamic State has abducted a North Korean doctor and his wife in Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. South Korean outlets have picked up the news, though no mainstream outlet has yet confirmed the identity of the victims or their location.
The rapid and steady decline of Venezuela’s national currency, the Bolívar, is forcing a growing number of businesses to do trade only in American dollars, freezing out Venezuelan citizens from buying cars, renting apartments, or boarding flights offered by businesses that refuse their currency even when they can muster an equivalent amount of retail prices in Bolívars.
A man whose suspicious vehicle triggered a scare on Capitol Hill on Monday has apologized for parking so close to a Memorial Day concert event with a car full of propane gas and a pressure cooker. Israel Shimeles told NBC 4 Washington that the suspicious items were taken from his food truck, and that it was “stupid” of him not to realize that police would be immediately alarmed by a car with those contents parked so close to a large holiday gathering.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the opportunity of speaking to a think tank in Istanbul on Monday to attack The New York Times for sounding the alarm on freedom of the press in Turkey. He suggested that its criticisms of Erdogan’s use of the legal system to intimidate news outlets was “overstepping the limits of freedom,” and told the New York outlet, “Know your place.”
Iranian elite paramilitary force leader Major General Qassem Soleimani accused the United States of having “no will” to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and blasted President Barack Obama as not having “done a damn thing” to quell the terrorist insurgency. The remarks follow news that Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah is planning to increase its presence in Iraq to combat ISIS.
Air France Flight 22 has landed at John F. Kennedy airport in New York after being accompanied overseas by U.S. fighter jets. A phoned-in “chemical weapons” threat has emergency personnel on edge, and the flight is currently being searched for explosives in the “hijack site” of the airport, assigned to planes suspected of carrying a weapon.
The Islamic State’s takeover of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, in addition to endangering a host of priceless ancient Roman artifacts, has heralded in the news of yet another massacre at the hands of the terrorist group, with some estimating up to 400 civilian women and children have been killed for having ties to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Foreign Minister Mohamed al-Ghirani, who represented Tripoli’s Islamist Libyan Dawn government, warned that the lack of communication between European nations and Tripoli would result in an unstoppable deluge of immigrants into Europe.
Islamist terror group Al-Shabaab has once again begun to strike rural villages near the Kenyan town of Garissa, little more than a month after the jihadists stormed Garissa University and killed 147 Christian students after separating them from their Muslim colleagues.
Women and children freed from captivity under the jihadist terror group Boko Haram are being held at an undisclosed location by the Nigerian military after accusing each other of continuing to communicate with and work for the terrorist group. Nigerian officials claim they have been relocated to an undisclosed location for more focused therapy to help them work through their trauma.
Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Court indicted 106 people, including three Muslim clerics believed to have participated in inciting violence in the 2014 murder of a Christian couple after rumors spread that they burnt a Quran.
After an “embarrassing” episode in which a European crowd protested Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine by booing Russia’s 2014 entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, event organizers have installed “sound reducers” designed to remove booing from the broadcast when Russian contestant Polina Gagarina takes the stage on Saturday.
Tensions are rising in the South China Sea as American officials have become increasingly vocal regarding their opposition to China’s development of islands over which Vietnam and the Philippines contend China has no sovereignty. In a scathing opinion piece in state media Friday, China has responded by telling American officials to stay out of Asian affairs.
Harjit Masih, a 25-year-old Indian national, returned from Iraq to his native country this week after he and 39 other Indians working in Iraq were abducted by the Islamic State. He claims he survived by playing dead after being missed in a firing squad lineup, and that his colleagues are all dead, but the Indian government is denying the report, insisting the men are still alive.
A nurse employed by a health NGO who returned from work in Sierra Leone has become the first person to test positive for Ebola in Italy, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
Suspected Boko Haram terrorists stormed barracks in the regional capital of Borno, Maiduguri, on Wednesday night, killing three soldiers and six vigilantes, as well as injuring 12 others who successfully thwarted the attack. It is the most ambitious attempt at storming the city, formerly Boko Haram’s headquarters, since March 14, and has left the city under a 24-hour lockdown.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking in Albania on Wednesday, called for Europe to accept more refugees, particularly those fleeing from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Erdogan called this a “duty” Europe should be held accountable for.
The Associated Press is reporting that a six-hour siege of the Park Palace Guest House hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan has ended, after gunmen stormed the foreigner-friendly locale on a night in which a popular concert had been scheduled. One American citizen is believed dead, the AP reports.
A new Human Rights Watch report accuses China law enforcement authorities of dodging new government measures designed to minimize the use of torture and abuse in the police system. Police still routinely use beatings, sleep deprivation, and hanging prisoners by the walls to force confessions, the organization alleges.
Multiple reports indicate that American military officials are considering sending forces to monitor disputed areas of the South China Sea in an attempt, as Reuters describes it, to “assert freedom of navigation around rapidly growing Chinese-made artificial islands.” The reports arrive less than one week before Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to meet with Chinese leadership in Beijing.
The President of Chad, Idriss Deby, visited the Nigerian capital Abuja today to meet with both outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan and President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on how to best jointly combat the looming threat of Boko Haram. Speaking to reporters, Deby lamented that cooperation with Nigeria could use improvement, and that such coordination has been a problem in the past.
A new study on typhoid fever, an infection spread through unsanitary food and water, and prominent in parts of Asia and Africa, has found that an antibiotic-resistant clone has begun to spread in southern Africa, threatening to reach epidemic levels.
Both the legitimately elected Libyan government in Tobruk and the Islamist faction controlling the nation’s capital, Tripoli, have expressed opposition to a plan by European Union nations to use military force to combat human trafficking across the Mediterranean Sea, which has cost a record number of lives already in 2015.
An unnamed Arab League source tells Gannett’s Defense News that the heads of state of seven Arab countries will meet with Libyan officials on May 18 to discuss possible military intervention in that nation, as the Islamic State continues to expand its influence over large swaths of the country.
