- Human Rights Watch reports on widespread abuse and torture inside Libyan prisons.
- Fighters of Libyan origin return from Mali.
- Progress was hailed in peace negotiations in Mali after government militias agreed to leave the town of Menaka and several arrest warrants against CMA rebels were lifted.
- Ten officials kidnapped from the Tunisian Consulate in Libya have been releasedafter negotiations.
- A leaked UN report details Morocco’s lobbying efforts, including intercepting communications, to get the UN to ignore humanitarian conditions in Western Sahara.
- An Egyptian court upheld the death sentence for former leader Mohammed Morsi.
- The US claimed an airstrike killed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, but a Saharan militant group is denying the claim.
- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir jetted out of South Africa on Monday, leaving the country hours before a court ruled the government had to arrest him based on a standing ICC arrest warrant.
- The US has faltered in efforts to bring Omar al-Bashir to justice.
- A government offensive in South Sudan last month left 129 children brutallymurdered, many raped.
- A suspected Boko Haram attack on Wednesday night in Niger killed 38 people. Chad carried out airstrikes against Boko Haram inside Nigeria.
- A sack full of homemade bombs found at an abandoned Boko Haram camp exploded, killing 63 people.
- Kenya has issued a reward for the capture of a German national fighting for al-Shabaab.
- An al-Shabaab suicide attack in central Somalia was foiled Thursday.
- The Central African Republic will hold elections in October.
- A new report investigates the “shadow economy” of CAR’s armed groups.
- None of the fewer than 200 Syrian rebels in the US training program havegraduated.
- Rebels in the south in Quneitra have launched an offensive close to Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
- The Islamic State lost control of the crucial Syrian town of Tal Abyad to the Kurds.
- Although the OPCW has touted success in the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons this week, new descriptions are surfacing of government use of chlorine gas in its makeshift bombs.
- The fuel embargo imposed by the Islamic State is harming medical centers, grounding ambulances and shuttering businesses.
- The New York Times maps Islamic State-inspired attacks around the world.
- Hezbollah attacks on a Lebanese border town reportedly killed two Islamic State commanders and a handful of other IS fighters.
- The year-old Palestinian unity government has resigned.
- An American airstrike in Yemen killed the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – Nassir al-Wuhayshi. He has been succeeded by Qassim al-Raymi. The CIA claims not to have had prior knowledge that he was among the militants targeted.
- Following the strike, AQAP executed two men accused of spying for the US.
- An airstrike inside Yemen last Friday hit the Old City of Sana’a – a UNESCO World Heritage site.
- A fistfight broke out at Yemeni peace talks in Geneva.
- Coordinated Islamic State car bombs at mosques and the Houthi headquarters in Sana’a killed and injured 50 this Wednesday.
- The Pentagon transferred six detainees from Guantánamo, where they had each spent 13 years, to Oman.
- An Al Qaeda branch has posted images on Twitter of hostage Warren Weinstein before his death in an airstrike this year (they have not been authenticated yet).
- A cigarette smuggler tells the Associated Press about life under the Islamic State.
- A fake battle, invented online by a London man, fools Islamic State supporters.
- A Marine sergeant was convicted for a second time on retrial for the murder of an Iraqi civilian in 2006.
- The Taliban overran parts of the Musa Qala district of Helmand province in Afghanistan.
- The Afghan Taliban have found common purpose with their former enemy Iran, teaming up to fight the Islamic State.
- The Afghan Ministry of Education may have faked school enrollment numbers to get more funding.
- According to the UN, war, violence and persecution have made one out of every 122 people on the planet a refugee.
- Putin opened a military theme park called Patriot Park. At the opening of the park, he announced the addition of forty new intercontinental ballistic missiles to Russia’s arsenal.
- The US bolsters its defenses of American cities against Russian missiles. It also plans to store heavy artillery in Eastern Europe.
- NATO’s “defense boost” is the largest since the Cold War ended.
- A Russian army officer accused of fighting with the Taliban has come in front of a US court.
- Slovenia detained Kosovo’s former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, saying they acted on a warrant from Serbia.
- Polish prosecutors have asked the US for a full, unredacted copy of the Senate torture report as part of an investigation into detainee abuse at a black site inside Poland. The prosecutors say the US has been ignoring the request.
- An American official has been included on the review panel established to assess the future of the British military.
- The VA has extended benefits for Agent Orange exposure, opening up eligibility to Air Force reservists once denied the benefits