- The Nigerian army has said it has rescued hundreds of women and girls from Boko Haram.
- Hundreds were found dead, killed by Boko Haram, early this week in the northeastern town of Damasak.
- Protests have racked Burundi’s capital after the president’s decision to run for a third term while youth militia reportedly intimidate rural areas. More than 22,000 have fled to Rwanda in the past week.
- Hundreds of students from the closed down University of Burundi have sought refuge outside the US Embassy.
- Libya’s strained and faltering government has shelled out seven figures for a DC lobbying firm to represent its interests in Washington.
- The Islamic State slit the throats of five Libyan television journalists.
- Many migrants travelling across the Mediterranean never planned on a life in Europe.
- A senior UN aid worker has been suspended after leakingan internal report about French peacekeepers sexually abusing children in the Central African Republic to prosecutors.
- Aviation safety has become a huge concern for US pilots at Camp Lemonnier.
- Bashar al-Assad’s army shows the strain of years of fighting.
- On Friday, two Swedish hostages held by the Nusra Front for seventeen months were freed with the assistance of Palestinian intelligence.
- A UN inquiry points the finger at the Israeli military for seven attacks on UN schools being used as shelters in last summer’s war.
- The coalition of countries battling the Islamic State isconfronted with how to deal with other terror groups now calling themselves provinces of IS.
- The Islamic State owes much of its existence to Ba’athist involvement, rooted in Saddam Hussein’s rule.
- C.J. Chivers on where the Islamic State gets its weapons.
- Saudi Arabia’s new king has shaken up the line of succession – replacing the Crown Prince Muqrin (his half-brother) with his nephew, Prince bin Nayef.
- The Islamic State’s Yemen branch released a video showing the beheadings of four Yemeni soldiers and the shooting of ten more.
- Heavy fighting in Aden between Houthi rebels and Popular Resistance Committees forces many to flee.
- A string of car bombings in Baghdad on Monday killed at least 20 civilians.
- Despite statements made last year using words like “conclusion” to refer to the war in Afghanistan, the Department of Justice would like to clarify that none of it is over.
- A Taliban offensive has surrounded Kunduz City. Meanwhile foreign fighters are taking up residence in Kunduz province.
- NPR profiles Afghan commandos.
- The FBI reportedly helped facilitate a ransom payment to Al Qaeda for Warren Weinstein back in 2012. Weinstein was killed in a US drone strike earlier this year.
- After the drone strikes that accidentally killed Western hostages have reinvigorated debate over the targeted killing program, Pakistanis ask why their deaths haven’t warranted outcry.
- In 2013, while publicly tightening rules about drone strikes, President Obama granted a waiver for the CIA’s operations in Pakistan.
- Pakistan has dropped its case against former CIA station chief and a CIA general counsel.
- The US and Qatar began talks on Wednesday about the future of the Taliban swapped for Sgt. Bergdahl.
- Der Spiegel interviews Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic.
- Separatist-controlled Ukraine is run with rough, summary justice.
- The Ukrainian military says that rebels have resumed use of rocket launchers.
- NATO says Russia is repositioning for another offensive.
- In a new documentary, Vladimir Putin refers to the annexation of Crimea as “historical justice.”
- The International Rescue Committee has been forced out of eastern Ukraine after being accused by separatists of espionage.
- The stadium of Ukrainian soccer club Shakhtar Donetsksits empty and damaged by war – the club and much of the population displaced from the region.
- Russia is letting a humanitarian crisis caused by wildfires in Siberia take a backseat to aid convoys going to eastern Ukraine.
- 40 years after the Vietnam war, Agent Orange remains ahealth crisis.
- Kim Jong-Un reportedly executed fifteen top officials so far this year.
- The US and Japan announced a new security agreement.
- The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has put togetherprofiles of all 119 detainees who were put through the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.
- The American Psychological Association collaboratedwith the Bush administration on legal and ethical justifications for torture practices.
- Former Guantánamo detainees are protesting in front of the embassy in Uruguay for better resettlement conditions.
- The 2015 defense bill put forward by the House Armed Services Committee would seek to limit detainee transfers from Guantánamo.
- A judge in the death penalty trial for USS Cole mastermind Abd al Rahim al Nashiri has denied the defense request for a full copy of the Senate report on CIA torture.
- Part of political debate in British elections is the nation’sloss of global reach and its lessened military importance, even in relation to the United States.