A new blockbuster report in Argentine news outlet Infobae claims that Hezbollah generates between $60 to $100 million dollars a year in illegal activities in Latin America, particularly in the Tri-Border area uniting Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. The piece echoes years of reporting warning that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has expanded its influence in the region.
Doctor Tareq Kamleh, who left his native Australia to join the Islamic State in Syria, has written a letter to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency denying that he was “brainwashed” and vowing never to return to Australia.
A statue of an Ottoman prince taking a selfie in the Turkish city of Amasya has become both a major tourist attraction and the victim of multiple vandalizations, as residents and tourists alike differ on whether the artwork is a fun homage to the city’s history or a vulgar commercialization of Turkish culture.
As the Nigerian government struggles to provide sustenance and treatment to the estimated 700 hostages freed from Boko Haram in early May, women who escaped the throes of the terrorist group during its raid of a girls’ school in Chibok are offering their support and empathy, having once been captives themselves.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a jihadist group formally affiliated with the Islamic State, has claimed responsibility for two mortar shells launched at Hamas targets in Gaza. The attack follows a growing war of words triggered by mass arrests of ISIS supporters by the Palestinian terror group.
A British electronica band has teamed up with the archbishop of Iraq to release a song sending a message of hope to persecuted Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities in the crosshairs of the Islamic State–and raising awareness about their suffering and need for support.
CNN is reporting that U.S. military bases raised their threat alert levels on Thursday night in response to increased activity on the part of the Islamic State, and on a message released Wednesday by the jihadist group claiming that they have 71 “trained” jihadists prepared to attack within the United States.
A gunman and suicide bomber believed to be affiliated with the jihadist terror group Boko Haram attacked northern Nigeria’s College of Administrative and Business Studies (CABS) in Potiskum on Friday, injuring several students struggling to escape the blast and bringing into question Nigerian military claims that Boko Haram’s grip on the nation’s north is loosening.
The New York Times is reporting that United Nations Security Council members are seeking authorization to use military force to combat smugglers of illegal migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa into Italy, Greece, and other parts of Europe.
The socialist government of Venezuela has made it increasingly dangerous for political satirists to practice their craft, removing any anti-government humor from airwaves and newspapers and prompting angry mobs to attack stand-up comics.
Multiple law enforcement sources tell The Los Angeles Times that it is unlikely that the Islamic State had a direct hand in organizing the attack on a Draw Muhammad Contest in Garland, Texas, on May 2, instead playing a more “inspirational” role on Twitter.
An April report in Kenya’s The Standard noted that the nation’s officials were preparing to crack down on terror warnings on social media meant to alarm–calling them “themselves terrorism in nature”–and warned that the jihadist group al-Shabaab had taken too strong a foothold on Twitter.
Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia took fifteen minutes out of an address to commemorate the opening of a road to condemn American boxing judges and cry foul over Manny Pacquiao’s defeat at the hands of Floyd Mayweather this past weekend, insisting he would not honor a technically illegal bet he made on the fight because it was rigged.
An unidentified “senior law enforcement official” tells the New York Times that, while the FBI had been aware of Garland, Texas jihadist attacker Elton Simpson for nearly a decade, they did not follow his violent, pro-jihad tweets as closely as they could have because “there are so many like him” that the agency is overwhelmed.
As unidentified individuals online strengthen their claims that the Islamic State had a hand in organizing a failed attack on a Draw Muhammad art contest in Garland, Texas, experts have told various media outlets that, while the group may have inspired the attack, little evidence suggests that ISIS operatives actually funded or planned the attack and are now trying to take credit for work they did not do.
Less than a week after two jihadists attempted to assault a ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest in Garland, Texas and one day after the Islamic State officially took credit for the attack, a statement claiming to come from ISIS leadership in America has appeared online threatening the event’s organizer, Pamela Geller, and asserting that “15 states” have been infiltrated by the terrorist group.
The Chinese government in the Western Muslim province of Xinjiang have issued an ordinance forcing local shops to sell alcohol and cigarettes, which are forbidden by the religion, or have authorities shut down their shops. Locals say the ordinance is meant to “weaken” religion in the area, and in the latest in a series of laws intended to eliminate Islam from China.
The Iranian Barbers Union, a government agency, has decreed that spiky and other unorthodox hairstyles, deemed “Devil worshipping,” are now illegal.
In interviews, girls and women rescued from the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram last week say that the jihadists are desperately trying to sell the girls they have left to fund purchases of new weapons, which they severely lack.
German President Joachim Gauck has stirred his government by remarking in an interview that Germany should at least “consider” demands by leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that the nation pay billions of euros in reparations for the Nazi occupation of Greece.
In a tell-all autobiography to be released in English this year, Fidel Castro’s former bodyguard asserts that, while head of state, the Cuban dictator ran cocaine and marijuana trafficking operations “like a godfather.” The body guard also claims Castro executed some of his top officers to prevent further international attention for bolstering violent drug cartels.
On host David Webb’s eponymous radio show Friday, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino weighed in on the developing face of the War on Terror, blaming President Obama’s failure to enforce a red line on chemical weapons in Syria for growing chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq, and saying of the possibility that the Bush administration could have emphasized Afghanistan more as a warfront, “I don’t know if anything could have been done differently at that particular time.
A Syrian news outlet is reporting that Kobani, the Turkish/Syrian Kurdish border town that became the focal point of the war against the Islamic State before the terror group was ousted in January, is once again being targeted for capture now that the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga have evacuated.
The good news that up to 700 girls and women have been rescued from captivity under the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram has been tempered this week by their stories, including those who lived to tell that the terrorists began stoning women and girls to death when they realized their captives were close to being rescued.
The FBI has confirmed Phoenix native Elton Simpson, a Muslim convert from Phoenix, Arizona, as one of the shooters responsible for attacking a Draw Muhammad Contest in Garland, Texas on Sunday. Simpson had been previously convicted of lying to the FBI about his jihadist intentions in 2010. Simpson made multiple pro-Sharia statements then that led the FBI to request, unsuccessfully, that he be placed on a no-fly list.
