Author: Die Denkende Nachteule

• The Islamic State’s Libyan branch is gaining ground in and around Sirte.
• The group is also clashing with some of Libya’s other Islamist militias.
• The UN has presented Libya’s warring factions with a draft proposal for a unity government.
• An Egyptian court sentenced a police officer to fifteen years for the killing of activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh during a January demonstration.
• Ibrahim Halawa, an Irish teenager held in Egypt for two years, is considering a hunger strike.
• A year-long UN human rights investigation into Eritrea says the country is potentially guilty of crimes against humanity, citing torture, sexual slavery and extrajudicial executions.
• Boko Haram burned down six villages in northeastern Nigeria and killed 37 people.
• Nigeria will lead a five-country joint African force to fight Boko Haram.
• Gunmen, suspected to be jihadists, attacked a Malian police base near the Ivory Coast.
• Anna Badkhen on climate change and extremism inMali.
• Read UNICEF’s most recent situation report from Mali.
• Attacks in the Darfur region have caused many thousands, maybe as many as 200,000 civilians, to fleetheir homes.
• High rates of mental illness, addiction and divorce plaguethe men of Somalia, say researchers.
• The UN is supporting the Congolese government with troops and aircraft in the fight against rebels in the northeast
• Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza, who has delayedelections from June 26 to July 15 over unrest, has refusedto reconsider his third-term bid for the office.
• Burundi’s government is claiming there are no more protests over elections, blaming any further demonstrations on journalists. The UN’s mediator in the crisis has also quit.
• We are now in the midst of the worst migration crisis since World War II.
• In a victory celebrated in Kurdish areas across the region, Turkey’s Kurds for the first time won enough support to enter Parliament–a major moment in the country’s politics.
• Keith Broomfield, an American fighting with Kurdish forces against the Islamic State, has been killed.
• The Syrian Druse population have hard choices to make when it comes to their alliances.
• Families of two Yemeni drone strike victims filed suit in US federal court last weekend to have the strike declared unlawful.
• Yemen’s exiled president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has said he will refuse to negotiate with Houthi rebels.
• Al Qaeda is trying its hand at governing inside Yemen.
• The Israeli military has cleared itself of wrongdoing in a missile attack last summer that took the lives of four children playing on a beach in Gaza, calling it a “tragic accident.”
• Palestine will present initial war crimes reports to the Hague at the end of the month.
• Three Lebanese businessmen were sanctioned by the US over their ties to Hezbollah.
• Hezbollah and the Islamic State are clashing heavily along the Syria-Lebanon border.
• A Delta Force raid last month inside Syria has, according to the US, offered up a wealth of information on the Islamic State.
• President Obama has authorized the deployment of up to 450 more troops to Iraq as advisors.
• The US has spent $2.7 billion on the fight against the Islamic State since the air strikes began and spends about $9 million a day.
• Coalition aircraft have had 100 near misses – almost firing on Iraqi troops thinking they were Islamic State fighters.
• The BBC reports on life inside Mosul.
• A multi-byline article at The Guardian examines the ways in which the Islamic State has overshadowed and stunted Al Qaeda.
• Tariq Aziz, the long time second-in-command to Saddam Hussein, died in a hospital last Friday. On Thursday night, gunmen stole his body from Baghdad’s international airport.
• A bomb attack targeted the Jalalabad office of Afghanistan’s Pajhwok News Agency, injuring two.
• The AP gets a tour of Afghanistan’s shiny new “mini-Pentagon.”
• Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber in North Waziristan.
• Pakistan has evicted the Save the Children organization.
• Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, a former member of Al Qaeda’s executive council and emir of the Turkistan Islamist Party, can be seen in a video from May of 2014. Previously thought killed in a US drone strike, it appears he might instead have been injured.
• An Islamic State propaganda film features its Balkan fighters.
• Russia is repeatedly entering Baltic airspace and conducting extensive naval exercises in the Baltic Sea.
• Russian groups are using online crowdfunding, usually under some guise of humanitarianism, to gather funds for the war in Ukraine.
• Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab reports that virus infected its own systems, a virus it classifies as an “advanced persistent threat.” The firm says the virus was used to infect venues used for the Iran nuclear negotiations and blames Israeli intelligence.
• Novaya Gazeta investigative reporter Elena Milashina has been forced to leave Chechnya after threats.
• Stalin makes a comeback.
• A 373-page report examining state surveillance and investigatory practices in the UK was released by an independent investigator with many recommendations and guidelines. Here is some analysis of its content at Just Security.
• A New York Times investigation digs into the history of SEAL Team 6.
• Lawyers for Mohamedou Ould Slahi – Guantánamo prisoner and author of Guantánamo Diary – have filed a motion in the DC district court. They are aiming to obtain an order to show cause why Slahi has not appeared in front of the Periodic Review Boards despite an executive order mandate that all detainees begin review.
• Army Secretary John McHugh will step down by November.
• The head of the US Marshals Service is stepping down.

• The May peace accord in Mali between the government and rebel groups failed in its goal of stabilization. Expert Pierre Boilley says armed groups are reorganizing.
• Two attacks on UN forces in Mali last week have beenclaimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
• The Democratic Republic of Congo may divide its current 11 provinces into 26.
• Gunmen attacked an airport in Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, leaving seven dead.
• MINUSCA – the UN peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic – has opened an investigation into allegations that a peacekeeper abused a young girl.
• A market bomb in the northeastern Nigerian town of Jimeta killed more than thirty people.
• Amnesty International has said that the Nigerian army, in its campaign against Boko Haram, is responsible for the deaths of 8000 prisoners who were varyingly executed, starved, tortured and denied medical attention. President Buhari on Wednesday announced that Nigeria will be taking on an expanded role in the fight against the militants.
• Violence has caused Burundi to postpone planned parliamentary and presidential elections.
• A profile of Egyptian revolutionary singer Ramy Essam, now living in exile in Sweden four years on from the uprising that made him a famous target.
• A court has ordered a retrial for former President Hosni Mubarak, previously acquitted in the deaths of protesters.
• Charles Lister explains Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra’s ongoing internal struggle for identity.
• Syrian rebels waiting to be trained distrust the US and are convinced that the delays betray a lack of seriousness.
• The Islamic State is advancing on the Syrian city of Hasaskeh.
• Gaza and Israel have exchanged some limited rocket fire, with no casualties but some threat to the ceasefire.
• Tensions over Muslim control of Al-Aqsa are steadily growing.
• As the US shifts from containment to engagement on Iran, Saudi Arabia dramatically re-evaluates its foreign policy.
• 20 million Yemenis – virtually 80% of the population – are facing a humanitarian crisis over lack of food, water and medicine.
• The State Department says several Americans are beingheld in Yemen and French authorities have confirmedthe authenticity of a video showing a French hostage.
• Peace talks are planned for June 14 in Geneva.
• Militants from the North Caucasus fighting alongside the Islamic State write  romantic poetry and love letters. They aren’t alone – as The New Yorker notes, groups like IS and Al Qaeda produce huge quantities of poetry.
• The Islamic State has not only captured US Humvees, they have made extensive and successful use of them as car bombs in their campaigns.
• A recent coalition airstrike reportedly took out one of the group’s car bomb factories in Kirkuk.
• Photojournalist Ayman Oghanna talks to NPR about the fall of Ramadi and rejects the claim that it fell because Iraqi forces have no will to fight.
• On Wednesday, the deputy Secretary of State said that the US had killed 10,000 Islamic State fighters – but there are serious caveats to that figure, not the least of which should be caution about body counts as metrics for success.
• In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s newest enemy is the Islamic State, who threatened them in a recent video.
• The International Crisis Group says the Afghan government remains worryingly reliant on the militia called the Afghan Local Police – a force known to have abused local populations through killings, kidnappings, drug trafficking, extortion, and more.
• Pakistan has executed at least 135 (possibly 150) so far in 2015.
• Eight of the ten men jailed for the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai were “secretly acquitted.”
• An analysis by citizen investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat revealed that Russia’s Interior Ministry fakedsatellite imagery in their report on the downing of MH17.
• Ukrainian bloggers are trawling social media for evidence of Russian soldiers active in Ukraine.
• The ceasefire in Ukraine is ever more meaningless as separatists and government forces engaged in a bloody battle this Wednesday outside of Donetsk.
• Ukrainian president Poroshenko’s team of reformers aimto dismantle the old, corrupt system.
• Adrian Chen details the extraordinary story of the Russian government’s paid internet trolls and propagandists, and the hoaxes and harassment they perpetrate.
• Vietnam aims to boost its air defenses, seeking to buydrones, jets and patrol planes from American and European contractors. The purchase would likely complicate the ongoing dispute with Beijing over islands in the South China Sea.
• A massive data breach by Chinese hackers has targeted US government computer networks, compromising workforce data.
• It has been 26 years this week since the Tiananmen crackdown – a occasion of solemnity andcommemoration everywhere but China.
• Myanmar discharged 51 more child soldiers from its ranks.
• Phase one of the inquest into the fatal hostage-taking at the Lindt Café in Sydney in December 2014 has begun – focusing on the perpetrator, Man Haron Monis, and hisbiography.
• Interview notes made by the legal team for Guantánamo Bay detainee Majid Khan have been cleared for release. They detail his experiences of torture – with much more sexual abuse than documented by last year’s Senate report.
• Hollywood has optioned Guantánamo Diary, detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s horrifying memoir of abduction and torture.
• Leaked Snowden documents show that in mid-2012 the Dept of Justice expanded the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet activity. The expansion of power was enacted to allow the agency to hunt for evidence of hackers tied to foreign governments.
• The USA Freedom Act passed the Senate this week – a reform measure that ended NSA authority to collect bulk phone records.
• The AP reports that the FBI has an air force of small surveillance planes that fly low over American cities and are obscured by fake corporate ties.
• The US Air Force took significant steps toward ending the ban on transgender service.

• Nine Malian soldiers were killed on Monday by Tuareg rebels. On Thursday, the rebels initialed a preliminarypeace agreement in “good faith.” Some discussion hereabout the actual prospects of this agreement and the rebels’ commitment.
• An attempted coup has created confusion and further violence in Burundi – a top army official claimed an overthrow of President Nkurunziza, while radio announcements say that forces loyal to the president remain in control. Here’s some background on the coup leader: General Godefroid Niyombare.
• Armed groups in the Central African Republic havesigned a disarmament agreement. As a result, over 350 enslaved children were freed by the militias.
• The UN says credible reports from the Unity State in north South Sudan indicate burning of villages, rape and kidnapping of children and civilian displacement.
• Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo will go ontrial in November for his role in 2010′s election violence.
• Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons were sentenced to three years without parole in a retrial of their corruption case.
• Egypt appears to be buying the Russian S-300 air defense system.
• Abu Alaa al-Afari, the Islamic State’s second-in-command, was killed in a coalition airstrike. Initial reports said he was targeted in a mosque, although the US disputes that claim.
• The group released a recording from their leader, not seen for months amid reports of serious injury, urging mass mobilization.
• Inside Syria, female journalists are risking everything to put out the civil war’s most significant underground paper.
• The Islamic State is at the gates of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, a world heritage site that once stood at a crossroads among a number of civilizations.
• Afghan refugees in Iran are “recruited” by the Revolutionary Guard and sent to boost Bashar al-Assad’s flagging numbers.
• The Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine.
• Netanyahu’s right wing coalition government has beensworn in, with difficulty predicted ahead.
• A large explosion at a Hamas training camp in northern Gaza on Thursday night injured dozens.
• Spiegel interviewed Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud, the former director general of the country’s intelligence agency and someone with no small role in developments in the Middle East and South Asia in the years before 9/11.
• A variety of barriers have impeded on-the-ground reporting from inside Yemen, limiting the available knowledge and coverage of the war.
• A humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen is under serious strain.
• Sharif Mobley, an American imprisoned in Yemen, made another call home on a smuggled cell phone, fearful for his life.
• The story of the exposure of soldiers from the 811th Ordnance Company to abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq in 2003 has one more piece filled in.
• A Bahraini appeals court upheld the verdict against activist Nabeel Rajab for insulting the government on Twitter.
• Esquire republished online a December 1980 dispatch Philip Caputo wrote from inside Afghanistan at the outset of the Soviet invasion.
• The Taliban claimed responsibility for a gunman’s attack on Park Palace Hotel in Kabul – killing 14 civilians, 9 of them foreigners. The American killed in the attack has been identified as Paula Kantor, a development expert.
• The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says that poor military intelligence is a serious threat to the country’s future.
• Friday Pakistan is launching a major air and ground offensive against the Taliban in North Waziristan.
• The wreckage of the Marine helicopter missing in Nepal has been discovered, along with three bodies.
• There is increasing tension between China and the US over manmade islands in the South China Sea.
• Vulnerabilities are starting to show in Kim Jong-un’s rule.
• The report Boris Nemtsov was working on about Russian soldiers in the Ukraine just before his murder has beencompleted and released by other opposition activists and journalists, led by his friend Ilya Yashin. A PayPal account set up by the activists to sell the print copies of the report, titled “Putin. War.”, has been blocked.
• Russia is regularly buzzing Western planes over the North Sea and even further afield, aggressions that ramp up fears in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
• “Over the fifteen years that Putin has ruled Russia, the story of the Great Patriotic War has acquired new meanings and symbols.”
• Russia’s Interior Ministry removed a wanted poster from its website after it was discovered the suspect was the deputy defense minister for the Donetsk People’s Republic.
• Some Russian soldiers are leaving the military because of the war in Ukraine.
• The UK election outcome may have consequences for Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace agreement, specifically the possibility of the repeal of the Human Rights Act.
• The House of Representatives passed the USA Freedom Act, a bill to end the NSA’s bulk phone data collection, by 338 to 88.
• Seymour Hersh provided us with probably the most talked about piece of war news – his 10,000-wordLondon Review of Books piece on the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which alleges that Pakistan knew about the raid and even assisted in it, that the initial intelligence came from a former Pakistani intelligence official and that bin Laden’s body, shredded by rifle fire, was tossed out of a Black Hawk over the Hindu Kush.
• There is… skepticism about this story, and much of that skepticism originates with Hersh’s sourcing methods. Hersh doesn’t care about your skepticism, though, as he made clear in this doozy of an interview.
• Former State Dept official Stephen Kim, jailed for leaking classified information to Fox News reporter James Rosen, has been released after ten months in prison.
• Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, found guilty of espionage charges after leaking classified information toNew York Times reporter James Risen, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
• The Pentagon has decided against punishing a Navy nurse who refused orders to force-feed hunger striking Guantánamo prisoners.

• 275 more women and children were rescued from Boko Haram last weekend.
• Central Nigerian communities have accused government troops of killing civilians
• Two Tanzanian UN peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the government is battling Ugandan rebels.
• There will be a formal investigation of the allegations that French peacekeeping troops abused children in the Central African Republic.
• A tribunal has also ordered the UN to lift the suspension of the whistleblower who disclosed the alleged abuses.
• Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, says the third term that has sparked so much protest would be his last.
• Nearly 40,000 people have fled the crisis in Burundi.
• Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit to Somalia Tuesday – the first secretary of state ever to travel there.
• Somalia has banned the media from using the name Al-Shabaab.
• The Egyptian army freed a group of Ethiopians who had been kidnapped in Libya.
• A weekend protest in Tel Aviv by thousands of Ethiopian-israelis over police harassment turned into a violent confrontation with the police.
• According to an Israeli activist group, the Israeli military operated under a “policy of indiscriminate fire” last summer in Gaza – publishing soldiers’ testimonials about the “permissive” rules of engagement.
• US training of Syrian rebels has started in Jordan.
• With Hezbollah’s help, the Syrian army has retaken areas along the border with Lebanon.
• Rustom Ghazeleh, a top intelligence official under Assad, is rumored to be dead, and with him an incalculable load of secrets.
• Human rights observers say a US airstrike in Aleppokilled 52 civilians.
• The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi in Yemen have used American-supplied cluster munitions in their war. (While cluster munitions are banned in most countries around the globe, they are not banned by the US, Saudi Arabia or Yemen.)
• Yemen’s ambassador to the UN has asked for a ground intervention.
• Yemeni fighters trained in the Gulf are said to havejoined local militias in Aden in the fight against the Houthi.
• Yemeni rebels fired rockets and mortars into Saudi Arabia, killing 2.
• Al Qaeda senior operative Nasr bin-Ali al-Ansi was killedin a US drone strike in Yemen last month.
• Oxford researcher Elizabeth Kendall talks about why Al-Qaeda has had so much success in Yemen.
• Zaid Al-Ali describes the devastation of Tikrit after the Islamic State’s occupation of the Iraqi city.
• 2.2 million Iraqis have been displaced by the Islamic State.
• Behind Russia’s missile sales to Iran is a complicateddance with the West and with Israel that mixes the politics of war in Ukraine with the politics of the Iranian nuclear deal.
• Iran has arrested prominent rights activist Narges Mohammadi.Anger turned to violence in the Iranian provincial capital of Mahabad after protests over the death of a chambermaid turned into riots and arson.
• The Taliban says it’s open to peace talks with the Afghan government if the US leaves entirely.
• Commercial flights have been cancelled to the besieged city of Kunduz.
• US military personnel have added to the heavy burden of corruption in Afghanistan – over 100 service members have committed $50 million dollars worth of criminal activity.
• A resolution seems on its way over India and Bangladesh’s long-running border dispute.
• NATO has started anti-submarine exercises in the North Sea.
• Fears over Russia are playing a part in Poland’s electoral politics.
• On Wednesday, five Ukrainian soldiers were killed and twelve wounded in fighting in the east. Separatists appear to be readying a new offensive.
• Meduza interviews Russian dissident-in-exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
• Putin’s plans to modernize the Russian military have to be scaled back due a flagging economy. Also, Russia’s hyped new tank to end all tanks broke down in the middle of parade rehearsal.
• Armenia’s foreign minister has criticized Turkey over its genocide denial.
• Four people were arrested in Germany for founding a right-wing extremist group and plotting to attack mosques and people seeking asylum.
• French Parliament approved a bill which, if passed by the Senate, could grant wide authority for domestic spying.
• Canada is similarly poised to pass new anti-terror legislation that would give CSIS expanded and intrusive authority.
• A Draw Muhammed contest in Texas was targeted by two gunmen who were killed by a police officer.
• A federal appeals court ruled the NSA’s now-infamous bulk telephone metadata collection illegal.
• There’s bad news for privacy advocates, too, though: a circuit court overturned last year’s ruling that it violated the Fourth Amendment for police to track cell phone location data without a warrant.
• Esquire Classics republished Osama bin Laden’s last interview with an American journalist. The story, by John Miller, originally ran in February of 1999.
• Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell says that intelligence agencies completely fumbled their assessments of Al Qaeda after the Arab Spring – misjudging the group’s ability to take advantage of the political situation.
• Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford is the president’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
• American support for drone strikes is sinking after the deaths of two hostages.
• 28-year-old Omar Khadr, who was imprisoned in Guantánamo at age 15, walked free on bail from Canadian prison yesterday.
• The remains of war dead from World War II are still being unearthed across Europe – Der Spiegel profiles a man who reburies Germany’s dead.

• Days of rival government factional fighting havepummeled the Upper Nile region of South Sudan and heavy fighting has ravaged the state capital of Malakal.
• Al-Shabaab shot dead a senior Somali military officer in Mogadishu on Thursday.
• The possibility of a third-term run for Burundi’s president threatens to undermine the peace deal in place since the civil war a decade ago.
• Security forces and anti-government protesters clashedin Guinea, leaving one dead.
• The Islamic State released a new video last weekend showing the beheadings of 21 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.
• The plight of North African and Middle Eastern migrantsrisking their lives to make it to European soil by boat has been highlighted by the fatal capsizing of a boat over the weekend, killing a suspected 750 people. As a result, EU leaders are tripling funding for search and rescue missions and the UN is pleading with wealthy nations to take their share of refugees.
• The UN says the Islamic State has 225,000 Syrians undersiege in Deir Ez Zor.
• Saudi airstrikes resumed in Yemen only hours after Saudi Arabia declared a halt to their campaign.
• Accounts of airstrikes stream into social media from Yemeni survivors.
• A New York Times interactive breaks down the basics of the conflict in Yemen.
• Arms race in the Middle East fuels further and further conflict.
• Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was apparently seriously injured in a March airstrike and continues to recover.
• Baghdadi’s acting replacement is a former physics teacher – an Iraqi named Abu Alaa Afri.
• Der Spiegel published the results of an extensive investigation into the Islamic State’s origin and organization, revealing the heavy hand of ex-Baathists from Saddam Hussein’s government.
• An American drone strike in Pakistan accidentally killedtwo hostages – American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto. The same strike also killed an American member of Al Qaeda – Ahmed Farouq. A separate strike killed another American – Al Qaeda propagandist Adam Gadahn.
• The White House has since acknowledged that the targets of those strikes were not individuals (a signature strike), but rather Al Qaeda compounds.
• The Taliban announced their spring offensive.
• In an apparent bid to match the Islamic State brutality for brutality, the Taliban is targeting Hazaras in a serious of kidnappings and beheadings.
• A suicide bombing in Jalalabad on Saturday killed 35 people. The Islamic State initially took the credit, but now it appears they were not actually behind it.
• RetroReports’ Anatomy of an Interrogation tells the story of an Afghan farmer and the CIA contractor who served prison time for the torture-related death, the only person associated with the agency ever to do so. (Phenomenal piece of reporting.)
• The Pentagon can’t account for $1.3 billion in Afghan reconstruction aid.
• A new documentary chronicles the late Richard Holbrooke’s frustrations and collisions with the White House and military leadership over how to proceed in Afghanistan.
• Scientists used a secret replica of Iran’s nuclear facility constructed in Tennessee to answer diplomats’ technical queries during nuclear negotiations.
• As we reach the 100 year anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Turkey struggles with the politics of its genocide denial. As do its Western allies.
• Here, The Guardian collected firsthand stories of survival from Armenians.
• The State Department says that Russia is building uptroops on the Ukrainian border as well as building up air defense systems inside eastern Ukraine.
• Shelling is a “constant” occurrence in the city of Mariupol.
• A Texan fights alongside the separatists in Donetsk.
• Court hearings over whether or not to jail Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny have been postponed until May.
• A new exhibition in Moscow recreates tableaus of the war in Ukraine, a potent emotional tool in the information war.
• The European Union charged Russian energy company Gazprom with market abuse, a serious move against the energy giant.
• Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov gave his men shoot-to-kill orders if they see security forces from other parts of the country encroaching on their territory.
• China is sounding the alarm on North Korean nuclear capabilities.
• The US reached a nuclear energy cooperation pact with South Korea.
• Mexican police captured the leader of the Juarez Cartel.
• France says it has foiled five attacks since Charlie Hebdo.
• BuzzFeed has compiled an ongoing list of American citizens charged with trying to join or support the Islamic State.
• The role of FBI informants in the corralling of would-be Islamic State fighters and supporters is questioned.
• New Pentagon cybersecurity strategy lays out for the first time US plans to incorporate cyberwarfare into military planning.
• A new bill in Congress would require the Defense Department to disclose documents related to troop exposures to toxic substances.
• The Pentagon rushes to resettle Guantánamo inmates before Congress can freeze transfers.
• Is silence following the Senate torture report de facto amnesty for those who committed those acts?
• David Petraeus was sentenced to two years probation and a $100,000 fine for leaking classified information to Paula Broadwell.
• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial began its sentencing phase.

• The UN has called for the exhumation of a mass grave in the Congo. Authorities insist the bodies are of the homeless and stillborn babies, but rights groups think that some may be anti-government protesters.
• Kaj Larsen of VICE News embedded with Nigerian army as it battled Boko Haram, filming a documentary.
• At least 2000 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2014.
• Two former presidents of the Central African Republicsigned a peace agreement in Nairobi, although critics are calling the accord “meaningless.”
• Evidence shows that the Sudanese army dropped cluster bombs on civilian populations in South Kordofan.
• Polls have closed in the Sudanese elections, with President Bashir expected to continue his now 25 years in power.
• Human Rights Watch has found evidence that the Syrian regime used toxic chemicals in two March barrel bomb attacks in Idlib.
• NBC’s Richard Engel re-reported the story of his 2012 kidnapping in Syria – concluding that he was not captured by the shabiha, but by a Sunni group of flexible allegiance and that his escape was somehow coordinated for propaganda purposes.
• Lebanese journalist Karma al-Khayat went on trial in The Hague for obstruction of justice and contempt of court for publishing confidential information from the investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
• Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, the top cleric for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has reportedly been killed in a drone strike. There was some ensuing debate about the lawfulness of targeting him.
• AQAP has seized an airport in southern Yemen, in the major port city of Mukalla.
• The UN imposed an arms embargo on Houthi rebels.
• A study of American drone strikes says the administration is setting a dangerous precedent in the use of UAVs by not sticking to its own rules about limiting civilian casualties.
• The Islamic State and Iraqi security forces are clashing at the Beiji oil refinery.
• The Islamic State pushed toward the provincial capital of Ramadi this week, taking three nearby villages.
• Reuters has withdrawn its Baghdad bureau chief, Ned Parker, after he was threatened for his reporting.
• Fighting season is beginning in Afghanistan.
• Five Afghans who worked for the aid group Save the Children abducted last month were found dead.
• Will Pakistan join the war in Yemen?
• The Islamic State might be getting all the press these days, but Al Qaeda – it’s chief competitor – is far from out of the picture. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Bridget Moreng
• Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, imprisoned in Tehran since last summer, has been charged with espionage and been allowed only one brief meeting with his lawyer.
• The next round of nuclear talks with Iran will begin next week.
• Oleg Kalashnikov, an ally of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, was found shot in his apartment Wednesday.
• A well-known Ukrainian journalist with pro-Russian views, Oles Buzina, was killed in Kiev by masked gunmen Thursday.
• In writing off Ukrainian debt, the West would beabsolving the corrupt Ukrainian elite of their crimes, argue Alexander Lebedev and Vladislav Inozemtsev.
• The Kremlin is saying that the arrival of American paratroopers to train Kiev’s National Guard “could destabilize the situation.”
• Putin answered call-in questions for four hours in an annual television phone-in marathon.
• Putin approved the sale of a Russian air defense missile system to Iran.
• A two-week Russian bike rally through Europe to celebrate the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany has been called a provocation by the Polish prime minister. The rally will include the Night Wolves, a pro-Putin biker gang.
• Conservatism and ultranationalism make gains in Russia.
• April 24th will mark 100 years since the Armenian genocide. Turkey remains unrelenting in its refusal to acknowledge as a genocide the killing of 1.5 million Armenians.
• Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismailova, currently jailed on a variety of charges like embezzlement and tax evasion, has won PEN American’s Freedom to Write award.
• Leaked wiretaps show the Macedonian government’sabuse of power and control over judges, journalists and others.
• Chinese journalist Gao Yu was found guilty of leaking state secrets and sentenced to seven years in prison.
• Cuba will be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• One former Blackwater guard received a life sentence and three others 30 year sentences for their roles in the 2007 Nisour Square shootings.
• Emails show that FBI agents leading the investigation into the Blackwater shooting believed the Justice Department was intentionally undermining the case.
• New redress procedures will allow passengers prevented from boarding planes to know whether or not they are on the no-fly list.

• 147 people, most of them students, have been killed in an Al-Shabaab assault on Garissa University in northeastern Kenya.
• The Guardian profiles Al-Shabaab in Somalia.
• Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan lost his re-election bid to challenger General Muhammadu Buhari (see headline “Goodnight for Goodluck.”)
• An internal inquiry found that UN peacekeepers in Maliused “unauthorized and excessive force” when they fired at and killed three civilians in January outside their base in Gao.
• Tunisia plans to reopen a relationship with Syria in an effort to track the thousands of Tunisian militants fighting for groups like the Islamic State inside Iraq and Syria.
• According to the UN, over 25,000 foreigners have left home to join Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in countries like Iraq and Syria.
• American military aid to Egypt has been unfrozen.
• In 2014, Israel killed the highest number of Palestinianssince 1967: 2,312, roughly two-thirds of whom were civilians.
• The Palestine Marathon, held in Bethlehem, purposefully draws attention to the physical constraints of daily life on the Gaza Strip or in the occupied West Bank.
• Palestine formally joined the International Criminal Court.
• Houthi fighters seized the presidential palace and parts of central Aden, despite Saudi airstrikes. Reports today, though, say they have partially pulled back after fighting with gunmen loyal to the president.
• Yemeni civilians, facing death from airstrikes and street battles, are also facing severe supply shortages.
• Sharif Mobley, an American man in Yemeni prison, made a rare phone call to his lawyers, saying that the base where he is detained is being bombed.
• Al Qaeda militants broke 270 inmates out of prison in coastal Yemen, including senior Al Qaeda member Khaled Batarfi.
• Former Syrian detainees and victims of government torture are having difficulty obtaining visas to come and testify about their experiences in the United States.
• Choose your own escape route: a BBC interactive uses stories from Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe to detail the difficulties of the journey.
• Imams join Shi’ite militiamen on Iraq’s battlefields.
• The Islamic State seized a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.
• The Iraqi city of Tikrit has reportedly been liberated from the Islamic State.
• Negotiators have announced a framework agreement in nuclear talks with Iran, the culmination of 18 months of bargaining.
• Here are the main points of the deal as it stands now.
• Iranians are celebrating in the streets.
• Afghanistan’s well-known war carpets, featuring Russian tanks and Kalashnikov rifles, now use images of drones in their designs.
• Freelance journalist Ahmed Wali Sarhadi was severely beaten by police in Zabul province after reporting on police misbehavior.
• An explosion at a protest in southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday killed at least sixteen people.
• A group of Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan pledgedallegiance to the Islamic State.
• Six men have been sentenced to death on terrorism charges in Pakistan’s new military courts.
• Muhaned Mahmoud al-Farekh, an American thought to be an Al Qaeda operative, was detained in Pakistan and flown to New York to face trial.
• A Bangladeshi blogger, Washiqur Rahman, was stabbed to death in Dhaka – the second such murder of a progressive blogger in Dhaka in a matter of weeks.
• Thailand has lifted martial law only to replace it with “Article 44,” a set of restrictive laws meant to boost the junta’s international image while maintaining its level of control.
• Ukraine rejected Georgia’s request to extradite former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili.
• Crimea’s only Tatar-language TV station, ATR, has beenshut down. The Russian media regulator, Roskomnadzor, rejected four of the station’s applications for a new license and ended its broadcasting on Wednesday.
• A Nagorno-Karabakh soldier was killed this weekend by Azerbaijani gunfire.
• A Human Rights Watch researcher was detained for over 30 hours at the airport by Azerbaijani authorities and then expelled from the country after attempting to enter and attend the trials of two rights activists.
• Russian artists speak about the pressure to self-censor.
• A Russian artist is painting a marathon of portraits of Boris Nemtsov, intending to continue until his killers are brought to justice.
• In Ukraine, Russia shifts to training separatists.
• Norway reverts to Cold War era uncertainties in the face of a more aggressive Russia.
• Russia is about to make 10 billion euro loan to Hungary to finance a nuclear power plant and curry favor with one of its closest EU allies.
• The Marshall Islands is persisting in its legal efforts to force action on nuclear disarmament in the United States after a federal judge dismissed the case.
• The FBI says that a raid in the Philippines in January that killed more than 40 police commandos was successful in killing a well-known Malaysian militant known as Marwan.
• Chelsea Manning has joined Twitter. The account, @xychelsea, will be run by her supporters, who will take comments from her via phone.
• A shooting on Monday at the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade left one dead and one injured.
• A new sanctions program is in place that allows for the first time the US to impose sanctions on people overseas who engage in cyber attacks.
• Seymour Hersh talks investigative journalism and My Lai to the Columbia Journalism Review.

• The crashing of the Germanwings Airbus has beenrevealed to be an intentional act of mass murder by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, whose deeper motivations are as yet unknown.
• The UN approved 1000 more peacekeepers for the mission in the Central African Republic.
• As Boko Haram retreats from the advances of coalition forces in the region, it is using hundreds as human shields.
• Nigeria’s two main presidential candidates have signed an agreement to prevent violence ahead of the elections.
• Chad has sentenced seven former policemen to life in prison for acts of torture they committed under the rule of former president Hissene Habre, currently in Senegal awaiting trial for war crimes.
• Hezbollah is preparing a major offensive against the Islamic State.
• The Nusra Front, the branch of Al Qaeda fighting in Syria, has been quietly consolidating its power while the focus remains on its rival, the Islamic State.
• The Pentagon dropped 60,000 anti-Islamic State leaflets over Raqqa – they featured a gory illustration depicting the group putting new recruits into a meat grinder.
• The US is in direct talks with Syria over the whereabouts of missing freelance journalist Austin Tice.
• Amnesty International has leveled accusations of war crimes against Hamas and other armed groups during the summer’s war in Gaza, saying they showed “flagrant disregard” for civilian life. This follows a similar set of claims the organization made about Israel’s actions in the same war back in November.
• Israel denies the reports that it spied on US closed-door negotiations with Iran.
• Saudi Arabia has begun airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, with Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain participating. Countries across the region are prepared to send troops as part of a ground assault.
• The intervention came quickly on the heels of a longPolitico piece by Adam Baron warning that external involvement in Yemen by Saudi Arabia or someone else would be a truly terrible idea.
• Yemen’s president fled on Wednesday, reappearing late on Thursday in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
• Hayes Brown offers some background to what has happened in Yemen this week.
• Iona Craig analyzes Yemen’s regional rivalries.
• A power vacuum in Yemen could be to Al Qaeda’sadvantage.
• A map of Yemen’s ongoing upheaval, from the New York Times.
• The US began a campaign of airstrikes against Tikrit, Iraq. Shi’ite militias fighting the Islamic State for control of Tikrit are put in the awkward position of rejecting US assistance and benefiting from it. Some of the Iranian-backed militias are now boycotting the fight for Tikrit.
• Keeping track of US weapons in Iraq is becoming more and more difficult.
• A woman named Farkhunda, accused by an angry Kabul mob of burning the Koran, was beaten and stoned to death and her body burned. Her brutal murder has become a rallying cry for women’s rights activists, who in a historic move carried her coffin to its final resting place.
• US troop levels will remain at 9800 in Afghanistan through the end of 2015, instead of being cut to 5500. Details of the 2016 troop levels are TBA.
• Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s visit to the United States highlighted his extensive connections with American officials and the national security establishment.
• Pakistani military courts have now been granted the power to try civilians accused of terrorism, a worrisome expansion of their authority following the Taliban school massacre.
• Pakistani forces have begun an offensive for control of Tirah Valley.
• Seymour Hersh returns to My Lai.
• The leader of the new Thai military junta says Thailand is democratic, but also said he would “probably just execute” journalists who did not report the truth.
• Powerful Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskiy hasresigned his post as governor of Dnipropetrovsk after a disagreement with President Poroshenko over the ownership of state oil companies. Kolomoyskiy has financed pro-Kyiv militias fighting the separatists in the east.
• Mikhail Vanin, the Russian ambassador to Denmark,threatened the Scandinavian country’s naval forces with nuclear missiles if they joined NATO’s missile defense system.
• Russia hosted a conference in St. Petersburg for European and American fringe right-wing groups, a move meant to reach out to potential allies. Vladimir Putin has been courting the support of such groups, including bolstering Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
• Scholars suggest that today’s modern dictators (with specific reference to one Vladimir Putin) prefer to minimize their use of repression by force and exert their control with tools of propaganda and censorship.
• Freelance journalist Sergei Ilchenko has been detainedfor a week and charged with extremism in the separatist Transdniester region of Moldova.
• In Mexico, it is six months since 43 teachers college students disappeared, presumed killed by a local drug gang with police involvement.
• Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been charged with desertion.
• An Army National Guardsman was arrested in Illinois on suspicion of attempting to travel to Libya and join the Islamic State. His cousin was arrested on suspicion of plotting an attack on a military base.
• A new report on the FBI’s development in dealing with terrorism after 9/11 details progress made but points out shortcomings in areas like analysis and development of informants.
• The head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, who remains known only as Mike, will be removed from his post after an influential nine year tenure.
• The AP reports that special forces troops deploying overseas have requested to use Palantir’s battlefield intelligence system, but have instead been pressured to use the flawed military system known as the Distributed Common Ground System.
• At Rolling Stone, Janet Reitman asks why three kids from Chicago wanted to join the Islamic State.
• The Intercept profiles Guantánamo prisoner Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, imprisoned since 2002 and on hunger strike since 2013.
• A federal judge ruled that the government must release images of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• A fascinating piece at Boston Magazine explores one FBI agent’s dogged investigation of a woman he suspected of perpetrating war crimes during the Rwandan genocide.

• 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.

• A terror attack at the National Bardo Museum in Tuniskilled 23 people. It has since been claimed by the Islamic State and other terror groups, although there is no conclusive evidence tying the gunmen to one in particular.
• Almost all of the 436 mosques in the Central African Republic have been destroyed in fighting.
• Troop morale appears to be riding high in the fight against Boko Haram.
• At least ten were killed in a Boko Haram attack in northeast Nigeria.
• Erik Prince reportedly pitched a mercenary army to the Nigerian president last year.
• An Al-Shabaab leader reportedly connected to the 2013 Westgate Mall attack was killed in a US drone strike in Somalia.
• This Friday morning two (and possibly more) mosques in Sana’a were targeted by suicide bombers. At least 35 so far are reported killed.
• The Pentagon is unable to track $500 million in weapons and equipment it gave to Yemen as part of military aid.
• Well-known Yemeni journalist Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani was killed by gunmen outside his home on Wednesday.
• A French woman and her Yemeni translator, kidnapped by Yemeni tribesmen last month, have been freed.
• A warplane attacked the Yemeni presidential palace in Aden on Thursday.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will keep his position of power after this week’s elections. His last-minute hardline attempts to rally voters, including a rejection of the two-state solution, are now being walked back.
• BuzzFeed interviewed three Syrians about life in their country as the fifth year of war begins.
• Syria remains the most dangerous country in the world for journalists.
• A Syrian army defector turned Islamic State smugglermay have been on the Canadian intelligence payroll.
• Groups fighting the Islamic State in Iraq face increasing trouble from IEDs, which IS is using on a scale that is “unprecedented.”
• A new video posted by the Islamic State appears to show the beheading of three Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
• UN investigators say the Islamic State is guilty ofgenocide against the Yazidis.
• This past summer, following the liberation of the Iraqi town of Amerli from Islamic State control, Shi’ite militias backed by Iran raided nearby Sunni villages – looting, bombing and burning homes in 30 villages over the next months.
• Demos assesses the ways the Islamic State is using encryption to dodge surveillance efforts.
• A draft nuclear deal with Iran would cut the country’s machinery for nuclear weapon production by forty percent.
• Former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, now Afghanistan’s vice president, is powerful on paper butfeels marginalized. He has since denied the NYT’s report that he cried during a security meeting.
• US bases in Kandahar and Jalalabad will probably stay open beyond 2015.
• Samiullah Afridi, the lawyer representing Shakil Afridi – the doctor involved in the CIA’s fake vaccination campaign targeting Osama bin Laden, was shot and killed in Peshawar on Tuesday. Two groups have both claimed responsibility.
• An Indian police station in Kashmir was stormed by rebels, leading to a four hour gun battle that left six dead.
• Photographer Max Avdeev chronicles civilian life in Donetsk, Ukraine, under the ceasefire.
• Religious intolerance is on the rise in Donetsk.
• Even with the ceasefire in place, fighting between volunteer troops and pro-Russian rebels continues in Mariupol.
• Ukraine has submitted a preliminary request for UN peacekeeping forces.
• The ceasefire is being strained by disagreements over how the peace plan should proceed.
• Human Rights Watch finds that both sides in the Ukrainian conflict used cluster munitions in January and February.
• Putin signed a treaty militarily and economically integrating South Ossetia, a breakaway region from Georgia, into Russia.
• The UN Security Council held an informal meeting on human rights in Crimea, which Russia, China, Venezuela and Angola refused to attend. Russia called the meeting “counterproductive and provocative.”
• Meanwhile in Crimea, since the annexation “detentions, abductions, false accusations, and torture at the hands of local security agencies have become routine.”
• The case of Boris Nemtsov’s killing puts Putin uncomfortably between Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the FSB — the country’s security services. The New York Times asks whether Putin’s “Faustian bargain to gain stability in Chechnya… has backfired.”
• One of the suspects in the 2006 poisoning of Kremlin defector Alexander Litvinenko is thought to be willing to cooperate with the investigation.
• Estonia aims to protect itself against cyberwar.
• Eight suspects in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre have been arrested in Serbia. These are the first arrests of direct participants in the massacre.
• China for the first time admitted its special units tasked with cyberwar.
• US counterterrorism forces reportedly played a role in a fatally botched commando raid in the Philippines in January.
• A senior Chicago PD commander has resigned as part of the fallout from investigations revealing police torture at the Homan Square “black site.”
• In 2014, 80 UN personnel were accused of rape, sexual assault and sex trafficking.
• A Guantánamo parole board cleared Yemeni prisoner Saeed Sarem Jarabh for release. He has been in the prison since February 2002.
• The Brennan Center examines what has gone wrong with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is “no longer serving its constitutional function of providing a check on the executive branch’s ability to obtain Americans’ private communication.”
• The ACLU filed a disclosure lawsuit on Monday to obtain documents about the drone program, including the criteria for being put on the “kill list.”