- Three bomb blasts at a mosque and a bus station in Gombe, northern Nigeria on Wednesday killed 37 and injured many more.
- Boko Haram’s devastations in northeastern Nigeria have forced tens of thousands across the border into the Diffa region of Niger, creating a humanitarian crisis.
- The Nigerian president has accused the US of aiding Boko Haram by refusing to arm Nigeria.
- A double suicide bombing by two teenage girls in northern Cameroon killed more than 20.
- The trial in Senegal for crimes against humanity of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habre, a landmark trial representing years of effort by victims and their families, has been adjourned til September.
- Tunisia cracks down on mosques after the Sousse tourist massacre.
- Across North Africa and the Middle East, boundaries and borders are fortifiedagainst the threat of militancy.
- Four Italian construction workers have been kidnapped in Libya.
- Refugees return home to the Central African Republic to face poverty and contaminating drinking water.
- A UN human rights official has resigned over the CAR sexual abuse case.
- Malian troops destroyed two militant camps near the border with the Ivory Coast.
- Somali troops have captured a southern town away from Al Shabaab.
- Human Rights Watch says the South Sudanese government has committedhorrifying war crimes – killing civilians, gang-raping and burning villagers alive and pillaging property – in the military offensive in Unity State.
- A cultural center in the Turkish town of Suruc, near Kobani, was hit by an Islamic State suicide attack. More than thirty left-wing activists were killed.
- Turkey has now agreed to let American warplanes use the Incirlik air base in the country’s south to launch attacks on the Islamic State.
- Turkish jets struck their first Islamic State targets inside Syria early this morning (Friday).
- Al Qaeda member and Khorasan group leader Muhsin al-Fadhli was killed by a US airstrike in Syria earlier this month.
- Three Spanish freelance journalists and one Japanese freelancer are missing in Syria, feared kidnapped.
- Iraqi forces prepare for an offensive against the Islamic State in Ramadi.
- The Iraqi town of Haditha has been an “outpost of resistance” against the Islamic State for a year and a half, but supplies are running low.
- The Islamic State executed Iraqi journalist Jala al-Abadi in Mosul.
- A car bomb last Friday in the Iraqi town of Khan Bani Saad killed over 100 people, one of the country’s deadliest attacks in a decade.
- Aidan Morrison takes apart the US “cockroach approach” to fighting the Islamic State.
- As the Islamic State gains and holds territory and solidifies control, it transformsfurther into a state that uses terror as a means of control.
- Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian has now spent over a year detained in Iran.
- How Iranian state media prepared for the nuclear deal.
- Iran has put 694 people to death this year.
- The second round of talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan government are set for July 30 in China.
- A suicide bomber at a market in northwestern Afghanistan on Wednesday killedover a dozen.
- The US says that senior Al Qaeda commander Abu Khalil al-Sudani was killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan earlier in July.
- Afghan forces are struggling against rising casualty rates to maintain a stalemate. They are launching massive counterterrorism operations across the country.
- Peace talks between the government of Myanmar and rebel leaders ended today (Friday) with no cease-fire agreement.
- A UK privacy advocacy group says that Pakistan is working on a mass surveillance system meant to tap the phones and emails of hundreds of millions worldwide.
- Kyrgyzstan is renouncing a 1993 bilateral agreement with the United States.
- A former prisoner from Donetsk, who was jailed while the region was still under Kiev’s control, talks about how life in prison changed after the separatist takeover.
- A Russian town on Ukraine’s border is abuzz with military buildup (and spiking crime). Life in eastern Ukraine remains on edge despite the ceasefire.
- Chechens fight on both sides in Ukraine.
- The MacArthur Foundation, threatened with being labeled undesirable, isshuttering its Moscow offices.
- The ongoing public inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko resumes today: here’s what we know and don’t know yet.
- Celebrations in China over the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII expose the continued rifts with Japan.
- Nine tourists are being deported from China for watching “terrorist” videos.
- The US has decided against publicly blaming China for the massive breach of sensitive data held by the Office of Personnel Management.
- North Korea may be prepping for an October long-range rocket launch.
- Spiegel interviews Julian Assange.
- How the Chattanooga shooting unfolded.
- Charleston shooter Dylann Roof has been charged with federal hate crimes.
- A Pentagon investigation into those live Anthrax samples blames procedure but won’t admit human error.
- An audit shows that the computer system used by the US Treasury to track foreign threats is vulnerable to hacking.
- A US Navy nurse who refused to participate in force-feeding at Guantánamo has been been given an ethics award by the American Nurses Association.
- Efforts to close the prison are going about as badly as they always have.
- Canada’s new anti-terror legislation is raising concerns in the UN.
Turkish protesters launch fireworks at a demonstration to denounce a suicide bombing in Suruc. AP.
Hiba's curmudgeonly musings about books, politics & other trifles.
Die Denkende Nachteule.
