Hiba's curmudgeonly musings about books, politics & other trifles.

• Dozens were killed in a car bomb attack on a military base in Mali.
• US air raids on Islamic State camps in Libya killed more than 80 militants.
• Moscow signals interest in Libya.
• The Nigerian air force mistakenly bombed a refugee camp near the border with Cameroon, killing as many as 170 people.
• Senegalese troops entered Gambia yesterday in a bid to force President Yahyah Jammeh to relinquish his rule to the democratically-elected Adama Barrow. Jammeh has been given until midday today (Friday) to cede power.
• The Ivory Coast’s military mutiny is cause for worry in an otherwise bright post-conflict narrative.
• In the wake of war and ebola, Sierra Leoneans need mental health support but have one lone psychiatric hospital and two psychiatrists.
• The Sudanese government says it is ready to sign a peace accord with one of the major rebel groups in the Darfur conflict.
• South Sudan and the limits of American influence.
• In Somalia, Al-Shabaab is making extensive use of child soldiers. The verifying the recruitment of more than 6,000 children between 2010 and 2016 and estimating that half of the group’s forces were child recruits.
• Purges have weakened Turkey’s military.
• Corruption allegations plague Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Despite the ceasefire, aid to besieged Syrian civilians is at its lowest level in a year.
• After reclaiming Palmyra in December, Islamic State militants have destroyed a tetrapylon and part of a Roman theatre.
• The death toll in the war in Yemen is now more than 10,000 people.
• In Iraq, a 650-mile trench “runs from Sinjar, in the north-west, to Khanaqin, near the Iranian border, following the line of Kurdish military control.”
• Marsh Arabs make a return to Iraq’s wetlands 25 years after Saddam Hussein drained them.
• Iraqi forces secure eastern Mosul.
• “This is the Catch-22 facing the world. The more defeats IS suffers in the Middle East, the more it must expand its operations abroad.”
• The Islamic State’s oil fires have destructive consequences.
• Iraq struggles with an overwhelming need for mental health care.
• The Taliban refuses ownership of an attack that killed five Emirati diplomats.
• Kompromat moves from a domestic tool of the Kremlin to an international one.
• Russia extended Edward Snowden’s asylum.
• In her last major speech as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power delivered some severe criticism of Russian aggression.
• Domestic refugees in Ukraine wait out the war.
• In a lawsuit brought in the International Court of Justice, Ukraine has accused Russia of “acts of terrorism and discrimination in the course of its unlawful aggression.”
• Lithuania is building a fence along its border with Russian Kaliningrad.
• Kosovo accused Serbia of wanting to annex part of northern Kosovo following the “Crimea model.”
• NYT journalist Adam Nossiter talks about the reporting and consequences of his piece on French olive farmer and eloquent migrant smuggler Cédric Herrou.
• Analysis: the consequences of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders.
• Among his hundreds of acts of clemency as he left office, President Obama commuted the bulk of Chelsea Manning’s 35-year sentence. She will be released in May. For those who might criticize the choice, here’s an essayfrom Lawfare in September arguing the case for her commutation. Also important to note that her pre-trial imprisonment was investigated by the UN and deemed “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” and she has since faced inter-related struggles with gender dysphoria, suicide, and solitary confinement.
• Obama also commuted the remaining 35 years of Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera’s 55 year sentence for “seditious conspiracy.”
• Obama’s last detainee transfers from Guantánamo leaves the prison population at 41.
• Newly released CIA documents add details about the torture program, including internal concerns over it.
• Human Rights Watch calls Trump’s inauguration the “dawn of a dangerous new era.”

• Morocco banned the production and sale of burqas, for security reasons.
• An interview with Tunisian prime minister Youssef Chahed.
• Germany will deploy helicopters and more soldiers to Mali.
• The US will lift trade sanctions on Sudan.
• The Ivory Coast reached a deal with soldiers who revolted, demanding better pay and living conditions.
• Nigeria’s legislature voted to grant asylum to Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh in hopes he’ll take the offer and relinquish power.
• The Islamic State is suspected in a checkpoint attack in Sinai.
• There are 6 Israeli football clubs operating out of illegal West Bank settlements, and now there are calls for FIFA to take action.
• Gazans only have a few hours of power a day.
• Israel says that Hamas hacked the Facebook accounts and cell phones of Israel soldiers.
• 70 top diplomats will gather in Paris on Sunday in support of the two-state solution, a conference boycotted by Israel.
• Despite saying it’s drawing down, Russia sends 12 more warplanes to Syria.
• The Syrian regime is battling to retake Wadi Barada, and the Damascene water supply, from rebels.
• Syria accused Israel of firing rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus.
• There has been a recent surge in targeted killings of Al Qaeda operatives in Syria.
• The US sanctioned 18 Syrian government officials, Syria’s military, and a tech company over the use of chemical weapons
• Iraqi forces push on toward western Mosul, still under Islamic State control.
• An (unknown) number of prisoners are on hunger strikein Iran to protest prison conditions.
• The USS Mahan fired warning shots at four Iranian boats near the Strait of Hormuz.
• Former Iranian leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died at 82.
• The Iran nuclear deal may not survive the Trump administration.
• Two Taliban bombers in Kabul and Kandahar killed more than 30 people and wounded many, including the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Afghanistan and Kandahar’s provincial governor.
• United States military investigation concluded that a joint operation between US and Afghan forces in Kunduz in November left 33 civilians dead.
• “Afghanistan is experiencing significant, year-on-year increases in the number of families driven from their homes.”
• A Taliban video shows American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks, both professors abducted in Kabul in August, pleading for a prisoner exchange.
• The Islamic State ramps up recruitment in Pakistan.
• Malnutrition rates among the Rohingya are on the riseamid Myanmar’s military campaign against them.
• More than 65,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape the military crackdown.
• Chinese state media warned that any US attempt to blockade islands in the South China Sea would risk “large-scale war,” after comments made by Rex Tillerson in confirmation hearings.
• Under President Park Geun-Hye, currently facing impeachment proceedings, thousands of artists have been blacklisted.
• Russia is lashing out at the deployment of 4000 US troops to Poland, the largest America deployment in Europe since the end of the Cold War.
• Interactive map: the NATO-Russia missile defense stand-off.
• A deal between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders to end a four decade deadlock could be near.
• Northern Ireland’s power sharing agreement is in jeopardy after the protest resignation of deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.
• El Salvador recorded its first day without any murders in two years.
• The White House ended the long-running “wet foot, dry foot” policy for Cubans arriving on US soil.
• John Kerry apologized for the persecutions of LGBT employees at the State Dept during the 1950s and 1960s.
• Human Rights Watch released its “World Rights 2017″ report, in which it warned about the consequences of increasing “infatuation with strongman rule” evident in the US, Russia, and elsewhere.
• Obama issued an executive order allowing the FBI, CIA, and other agencies more access to raw communications data collected on foreign targets without a warrant.
• FBI Dir. James Comey is under internal review for his actions during the election.
• Sen. McCain passed on to the FBI a dossier compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele alleging ties between Russia and Trump, and that Russia had collected blackmail evidence against the incoming president. The dossier, which circulated Washington for weeks, was published by BuzzFeed with this week with the caveat that it contained “unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations.” The immediate aftermath of the dossier was a public flameout between Trump and the intelligence community and between Trump and the press, as well as mixed messages and accusations about who knew what and who leaked what.
• Background: the art of kompromat in Russia.
• Confirmation hearings for the incoming Trump cabinet, overshadowed by the publication of the dossier, included Rex Tillerson for State (here’s some added background on Exxon’s dealings with Iran, Syria and Sudan, Gen. Mattis for Defense, Sen. Sessions for Attorney General, Rep. Pompeo for CIA, and Gen. Kelly for Homeland.
• Former Indiana Senator Dan Coats is Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence. He’s extremely homophobic, so there’s that.
• At 91, a gay veteran finally has an honorable discharge.
• Chelsea Manning is reportedly on the White House shortlist for clemency.
• The ACLU released a national report on the impact of solitary confinement on prisoners with disabilities.
• Clare Hollingworth, the reporter who broke the news of Hitler’s coming invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, died at 105.

• Egypt freed uprising activist Ahmed Maher after three years in prison.
• Chad closed its border with Libya and deployed forces in an attempt to block the flow of militant fighters.
• The three French judges investigating allegations that French peacekeeping forces raped children in the Central African Republic have not requested any charges.
• Several peacekeepers are reportedly dead in separate instances of violence across the Central African Republic.
• Descendants of the Namibian Herero and Nama people are suing the German government over an early 1900s genocide by German colonial troops that resulted in more than 100,000 deaths.
• Developing now: Gunfire erupted at two military camps in the Ivory Coast after ex-soldiers demanded back pay and the AP is now reporting mutinies in three cities over pay.
• Burundi’s environment minister, Emmanuel Niyonkuru, was assassinated in Bujumbura
• As former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta’s ICC trial threatens to collapse for lack of evidence, Kenyans fear they will never get justice.
• The World Wildlife Foundation is facing a human rights investigation after reports that the anti-poaching guards the organization partially funds and supports destroyed property and made physical threats against the Baka tribe in Cameroon’s rainforests.
• In Gambia, President Jammeh continues to refuse delivery on his election loss and is hiring mercenaries.
• A New Year’s Eve nightclub attack in Istanbul left 39 people dead. The attacker remains at large and is believed to be an ethnic Uighur.
• The attack was the final act of a brutal year for Turkey, a year which not only included a failed coup and intense crackdown, but a series of deadly terror attacks.
• Israeli forces killed 32 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in 2016, making it the deadliest year for children in the West Bank in a decade.
• An Israeli soldier, Sgt. Elor Azaria, was convicted of manslaughter for killing a wounded Palestinian attacker in the West Bank in March. The trial centered on a video of the killing taken by the Abu-Shamsiya family, who have decided to document nearby violence as a means of resistance.
• Twice this week, investigators questioned Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu over possible corruption.
• Even since the ceasefire, bombs have rained down on the Wadi Barada valley.
• Fighting north of Damascus has disrupted the city’s water supply, and the UN is warning the government that targeting water sources is a war crime.
• Russia says it is beginning to draw down forces in Syria.
• The State Dept added Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list.
• At least 17 people were killed in two car bomb attacks in Baghdad on Thursday.
• Iraqi paramilitary forces are using weapons sourced from 16 different countries, and have a pattern of systematic human rights abuses.
• According to Iraq’s joint operations commander, 70 percent of Mosul has been retaken from the Islamic State.
• Russia’s plans for Afghanistan in the coming year may include a growing relationship with and support for the Taliban in service of battling the Islamic State.
• The wife of Paul Overby, a Massachusetts man missing in Afghanistan for two years, revealed in a statement that he was kidnapped by the Haqqani network.
• In a gunfight in Dhaka, Bangladesh police killed the prime suspect in the July café attack that left 20 hostages dead.
• A photo of a dead Rohingya toddler named Mohammed Shohayet, who drowned last month trying to escape persecution by government forces in Myanmar, evokes the image of Aylan Kurdi.
• A policeman’s video footage of officers abusing Rohingya villagers has also garnered a lot of attention.
• A commission set up by Myanmar’s government says there is no evidence of genocide against the Rohingya, but the report’s conclusions and methodology were strongly condemned by Human Rights Watch.
• Experts say that North Korea has the capacity to make good on its promise to test an ICBM this year.
• In court, a French olive farmer defended helping dozens of refugees crossing illegally from Italy.
• Greek anarchist leader Panagiota Roupa, called the country’s most-wanted terrorist, was arrested in Athens.
• In 2016,  he United States dropped 26,171 bombs in seven countries (this is probably not the full number).
• Outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended the intelligence community’s assessments of Russian hacking at a Senate Armed Services hearing. This came after Trump continued to question the conclusions of multiple agencies and tweeting approvingly of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
• A new intelligence report presented to President Obama on Thursday identified the go-betweens Russians used to provide WikiLeaks with the stolen emails. Intercepted messages also showed Russian officials celebrating Trump’s victory.
• Longread: Cyberwar for sale.
• Trump’s Twitter account is the most powerful publication in the world and it is very insecure.
• Four Yemeni prisoners were released from Guantánamo and settled in Saudi Arabia.
• The US Army issued updated rules to grant religious accommodations for turbans, beards, and hijabs.
• Another weekly round-up to keep tabs on: The New York Times’ This Week in Hate.

• Abubekar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader, is disputingNigeria’s claims that the group has been routed from Sambisa forest.
• The eugenics-driven attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama ethnic groups in Namibia during German rule is close to being acknowledged by Berlin as the 20th century’s first genocide.
• Dozens were killed in political unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where revenge massacres continue back and forth between Hutu and Nande militias in North Kivu province.
• South Sudan avoided a UN arms embargo but will not escape famine and war.
• French aid worker Sophie Petronin was kidnapped in Mali.
• Truth and dignity in Tunisia.
• A Turkish novelist recounts 132 harrowing days of pre-trial detention because of her links to a pro-Kurdish newspaper.
• A nationwide ceasefire is in effect in Syria.
• Preliminary operations are underway ahead of a potential offensive against the Islamic State’s Raqqa stronghold.
• As the Islamic State shrinks and nears collapse, Al Qaeda rises again.
• Based in Berlin, The Syrian Archive aims to catalog and preserve evidence of atrocities in Syria.
• On Friday, the US abstained from a Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements, allowing it to pass, resulting in Israel’s intense and vocal displeasure.
• Secretary of State Kerry gave a speech in which he roundly criticized Israeli settlement policy as being a roadblock to peace with Palestine.
• The British PM has, in turn, criticized Kerry for his criticism of Israel.
• A corruption probe will open against Israeli PM Netanyahu next week.
• Long read: Life and death in Yemen’s hospitals.
• The war has crushed Yemen’s already small middle class.
• A coalition airstrike on militants in a van in a hospital compound parking lot in Mosul may have killed civilians.
• Dispatch: Tyler Hicks on the front line in Mosul
• December 30th marks a decade since the execution of Saddam Hussein.
• Gunmen kidnapped Iraqi journalist Afrah al-Qaisi from her home.
• In photos: Andrew Quilty’s three years photographingthe war in Afghanistan.
• Long read: “The war in Afghanistan taught him how to kill. Nobody taught him how to come home.”
• Five humanitarian success stories from 2016, and three innovations in humanitarian aid made this year.
• The Obama administration sanctioned Russia over the election hacks, expelling 35 suspected Russian operatives and sanctioning Russian intelligence agencies. They also shut down two waterfront compounds that had for a long time been retreats for Russian diplomats. Russia is vowing its own retaliations.
• The FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a report on the campaign hacking.
• How Russia recruited hackers.
• Over the past two months, Ukrainian state institutions have been hit by hackers over 6,500 times, leading the country’s president to declare that Russian security services were waging all-out cyberwar on Kiev.
• Serbians are stockpiling more guns than any other European country.
• Interactive: Nuclear weapons arsenals in perspective.
• General Gregorio Alvarez, former Uruguayan dictator, died at 91 while serving a sentence for human rights abuses.
• While Venezuelans suffer from extreme hunger, their military is profiting from trafficking the food supply.
• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid tribute to fallen Americans at Pearl Harbor.
• Sabrina Siddiqui explains what it was like to be a Muslim covering the US election on the ground.
• A US district court judge ordered the White House to deliver a copy of the Senate Torture Report to his court’s Top Secret storage site and to “preserve and maintain all evidence, documents and information, without limitation” regarding detainee abuse since 9/11

• Ongoing news this morning: A hijacked Libyan plane with 111 passengers has landed in Malta.
• An Egyptian court suspended novelist Ahmed Naji’s two-year sentence pending an appeal.
• Tuareg separatists in Mali have withdrawn from the committee implementing the 2015 peace deal.
• Deadly protests erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo after President Joseph Kabila refused to leave office. Politicians have now agreed in principle to a transition deal in which Kabila would leave office next year.
• Six were killed and 150 injured in clashes between the Pygmies and Bantus, a persistent three-year conflict, in southeastern Congo.
• Gambian President Yahya Jammeh is refusing to bow to pressure from other African nations and continues to say he will remain in power despite losing the election.
• South Sudanese refugees face grim conditions in Uganda.
• Over the past year, a new armed group in the Central African Republic called 3R, for “Return, Reclamation, Rehabilitation,” has raped and killed civilians and caused significant displacement.
• The Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinatedwhile speaking at an art exhibit in Ankara.
• Three photojournalists were at the exhibit and continued to take photographs, resulting in some incredible images and witness accounts.
• A new Islamic State propaganda film shows two Turkish soldiers being burned alive (video not in link).
• Under pressure from Israel, and apparently Donald Trump, Egypt postponed a UN Security Council vote on a resolution to condemn illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
• The Obama administration was planning to abstain in the vote, and Trump took to his favorite medium to warn the current administration against doing so.
• The Assad regime has taken complete control of Aleppoand the final evacuees have left.
• The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to set up a panel to gather evidence of war crimes in Syria.
• 19 of the 57 journalists killed doing their job this year died in Syria, most of them local reporters.
• A Syrian refugee recounts his detention by Lebanese authorities, who interrogated, tortured, and raped him because they suspected he was gay. (He has since been resettled in Europe.)
• The death toll from Mediterranean crossings has surpassed 5,000 this year, an awful annual record.
• In Iraq, armed groups associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party are recruiting child soldiers.
• A look at Iraq’s Shi’a militias.
• The Mosul offensive is at a stalemate.
• 23 people were killed in a bombing in the Gogjali district of Mosul, a district liberated from the Islamic State last month.
• Fiction: Matt Gallagher’s futuristic “Know Your Enemy: Celebrating 50 Years of the Forever War” in WIRED
• The Philippine Commission on Human Rights has announced an investigation into President Rodrigo Duterte, after he bragged about having personally killed criminals as mayor of the city of Davao.
• Refugee accounts and satellite imagery from northern Rakhine state show that the Burmese army is conducting a violent campaign of arson, murder, and rape against the Rohingya.
• Infographic: A look at global aid donations in 2016
• The US returned nearly 10,000 acres of land on Okinawa to Japan amid tensions over continued American military presence.
• Tokyo’s turn away from pacifism continues with another defense spending boost.
• Australian police say they have foiled a series of Christmas Day bomb attacks in Melbourne.
• On Monday evening, an attacker drove a truck into crowds at the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. The suspect, a young Tunisian man named Anis Amri, died this morning in a shootoutat a routine checkpoint in Milan.
• The evergreen question about terror attacks: could it have been prevented?
• Analysis: Understanding the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility
• The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike found strong evidencethat a unit of the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency), referred to as Fancy Bear, was behind the hack of the DNC.
• The DNC was targeted by the same unit and with the same code that also targeted Ukrainian artillery forces.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual press conference today. Here it is as it happened.
• In their new report, “Putin’s Undeclared War,” Bellingcat’s open source investigation details Russian artillery attacks against Ukraine in the summer of 2014.
• On the front lines in Ukraine, American-supplied drones are vulnerable to jamming and hacking.
• Lithuania says it found Russian spyware on government computers.
• Infographic: European populism in the age of Trump
• Donald Trump tweeted an alarming call for the expansion of American nuclear capability.
• A partially declassified House Intelligence Committee report accuses Edward Snowden of being in contact with Russian intelligence agencies.
• NSEERS, a registry set up after 9/11 to track Arabs and Muslims in the United States and which lay unused since 2011, is being fully dismantled by the outgoing Obama administration.
• Two of America’s deadliest law enforcement agencies, the Bakersfield Police Department and the Kern County Sheriff’s office, are being investigated by the California Attorney General’s office.

• The Islamic State bombing of a Coptic church in Cairo killed 25 people.
• Egyptian-American Aya Hijazi and her husband, founders of an organization assisting Cairo’s street children, have spent over 900 days in pre-trial detention.
• Traces of explosives were found on the remains of victims who died in the EgyptAir crash in May.
• Tunisians describe the abuses they were subjected to under dictatorship.
• A bombing at a tea shop in Somalia’s capital killed 6 people.
• Long read: Escaping the Islamic State does not meanescaping horror and abuse.
• Impending genocide in South Sudan is fueling a refugee crisis in Uganda.
• Three years ago, the UN supplied a rebel general in South Sudan with weapons. Shortly afterwards, his troops slaughtered hundreds of civilians in Bentiu.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic State “has failed to displace al Qaeda as the continent’s premier jihadi franchise.”
• Can a $2.2 billion five-year rescue plan save the Central African Republic?
• Long read: Climate change is driving West Africans from their homes.
• After losing the election, Gambian president Yahya Jammeh initially conceded defeat, but then pivoted and challenged the election’s legitimacy.
• Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s term ends on December 19th, but he is refusing to relinquish power.
• Anglophone Cameroon wants to secede.
• 38 people were killed and many more injured in an explosion at Turkey’s Besiktas stadium in Istanbul. The attack was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons.
• Borzou Daraghi on the complexities of Turkey’s “Kurdish problem.”
• The Islamic State retook Palmyra and video from the group shows fighters opening up boxes of equipment and arms left behind by Russians.
• Civilians in eastern Aleppo pleaded for help as the remaining rebel hold crumbled against advancing pro-government forces. The UN reported that some civilians were shot on the spot with bodies left lying in the streets.
• After Aleppo’s fall, thousands have already been evacuated from the city under a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia and overseen by the Red Cross. The evacuation has been suspended after a day over what appears to be contention regarding the evacuation of two Shi’a neighborhoods.
• Analysis: What war crimes have occurred in Syria?
• This is what Aleppo looked like before the civil war. Janine di Giovanni: “Twisted narratives won’t spare Aleppo a moment of its agony.”
• Analysis: The Islamic State may be the main beneficiaryof Russia’s campaign in Aleppo.
• Long read: “Despair and Debauchery in Assad’s Capital”
• Photojournalist Giles Duley visited a refugee camp in Lebanon.
• Yemen is on the brink of famine.
• The US will halt planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia over concerns about civilian deaths in airstrikes on Yemen. The UK will continue its sales.
• Trump named David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who represented him over his failed Atlantic City hotels, as the new ambassador to Israel.
• The Mosul offensive enters its third month.
• Afghan Vice President Abdurrashid Dostum faces fresh allegations of brutality.
• Pakistan says that Indian forces opened fire on a school van in Kashmir, killing the driver and wounding children.
• The US halted economic aid to the Philippines over concerns regarding rule of law and the ongoing drug war.
• China appears to have installed weapons on the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
• China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier conducted large-scale military exercises with live fire in the Bohai Sea, seen as an escalation of tension after Trump’s actions call into question continued US support for Beijing’s One China Policy.
• Evan Osnos on autocracy in China: “Tyranny does not begin with violence; it begins with the first gesture of collaboration.”
• China claims to have released human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, but his family has not heard from him.
• The US and its NATO allies are increasing their presence in eastern Europe. Three years after American tanks left Europe, they are returning.
• Meanwhile, Europe is quietly debating the issue of nuclear deterrence as Trump’s election casts doubts over whether America will continue to offer a last line of defense against Russian aggression.
• The European Union reached a deal to enact closer ties with Ukraine.
• How journalists covered the rise of Mussolini and Hitler.
• France renewed its national state of emergency for the fifth time.
• Twitter blocked domestic spy agencies from using a social media monitoring tool to surveil users.
• Yahoo revealed that 1 billion accounts were hacked in 2013, the largest data breach in history.
• Intelligence officials are confident that Putin was himself directly involved in the hack of the US election.
• News of Russian influence on the US election is heightening concerns heading into elections in France and Germany.

• Egyptian authorities arrested leading women’s rights activist and advocate Azza Soliman.
• The Islamic State has been pushed out of Sirte.
• In Mali, peace “looks increasingly like war by another name.”
• The trial of Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier and former Lord’s Resistance Army commander, began this week in the Hague for 70 charges ranging from murder to forced pregnancy. Ongwen is the first member of Joseph Kony’s LRA to go on trial.
• Long read: Ongwen’s former child soldier status brings up interesting questions of victimhood and culpability, examined in this piece from January.
• Even as Boko Haram loses territory, it remains a threat.
• South Sudan deported an AP journalist.
• Ghaith Abdul-Ahad visits Sa’ada, “ground zero of the 20-month Saudi campaign in Yemen.”
• US-delivered weaponry has been used in unlawful airstrikes on Yemen by the Saudi coalition.
• The border between Syria and Turkey is a “death strip” for refugees.
• Pro-Syrian forces are making serious gains in Aleppo. Russia has claimed that combat has ceased in the city, though residents reject the claim.
• The Syrian White Helmets say that within a short time they expect Syrian and Iranian forces to reach the areas in which they operate and are pleading for protection, saying “our volunteers face torture and execution in the regime’s detention centers. We have good reason to fear for our lives.”
• A doctor in Aleppo offers a dispatch from the misery.
• The Islamic State launched an offensive against pro-government forces near Palmyra.
• New Islamic State propaganda from Mosul featuresBritish captive John Cantlie.
• The first UN distribution of aid inside Mosul was a scene of chaos.
• Long read: Carlotta Gall on the Saudis bankrolling the Taliban.
• The Taliban overran the Ghorak district of Kandahar and seized a cache of US-made weapons.
• The Guardian’s shortlist for agency photographer of the year includes some amazing work from photojournalists from Mosul, Turkey, and the refugee crisis.
• Nguyen Ngoc Luong, an indispensable guide, photographer, and translator for the New York Times during the Vietnam War, died at 79.
• Satellite images show Vietnam beginning dredging work on a reef in the South China Sea also claimed by China and Taiwan.
• Some backstory on US relations with China and Taiwan, at the center of a recent Trump transition incident.
• “Times photographer Daniel Berehulak photographed 41 murder scenes — and 57 bodies — in 35 days in Manila.”
• A cyberattack in Germany stokes fears of election interference.
• Human Rights Watch makes the case for a pre-emptive ban on fully autonomous weapons.
• The Global Magnitsky Act, which authorizes sanctions against non-US citizens who target whistleblowers, passed as part of the 2017 defense bill.
• President Obama gave his last national security speechand directed the publication of a report outlining the framework and parameters for fighting the war on terror, something rights groups have been calling for for a long time.
• In full: The “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations.”
• Trump’s election means concerns for some of the progressmade in the Pentagon on LGBT service, women in combat, and sexual assault reforms.

• New legislation in Egypt gives security agencies more power and control over the financing and activities of NGOs and rights groups.
• Mali’s former coup leader, Amadou Haya Sanogo, began his trial for kidnapping and killing members of the presidential guard, later found in a mass grave.
• Two airports in northern Mali were attacked by militants, but there were no reported victims.
• Amnesty International says that Nigerian forces areguilty of killing 150 peaceful pro-Biafra protesters between August 2015 and August 2016.
• Rwanda is opening a probe into the possible role played by French military officers and other officials in the 1994 genocide.
• A high-profile advisor to Burundi’s president survived an assassination attempt.
• The UN arms embargo on South Sudan, held up by the United States for two years, is likely too little, too late.
• Famine is an increasingly likely consequence of the Boko Haram insurgency, with tens of thousands or more at risk.
• The Obama administration has expanded the legal scopeof the war on Al Qaeda, as set out in the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, to include Al Shabaab in Somalia.
• On Thursday, with the government blocking the Internet and international calls, Gambians went to the polls to determine whether or not President Yahya Jammeh will continue his two decade rule.
• Rapper Killa Ace is watching from afar: his musical criticism of Gambia’s government forced him to flee to Senegal.
• Human Rights Watch is already warning of the consequences of the election and the infringement of Gambian rights that may follow.
• Yemeni families are being forced by awful circumstance to choose which children they save.
• President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority was re-elected as head of Fatah, and is proposing a unity government with Hamas.
• As the battle for Aleppo continues, Syrian forces are detaining hundreds of men and starvation is loomingover rebel-held parts of the city.
• Human Rights Watch says that Russia-Syria coalition committed war crimes during their bombing campaign in Aleppo this fall.
• The Syrian government has taken control of the city of Khan al-Shih, just southwest of Damascus.
• Saudi Arabia’s aviation agency was hit with a cyber attack last month.
• Sectarianism undergirds suspicions as forces move in on Mosul and the ever-growing casualty count of the offensive is calling some strategy into question.
• The Islamic State has dispatched 632 vehicular bombs against advancing Iraqi forces.
• Iraqi parliament gave official status to militias fighting the Islamic State, including the Iranian-backed groups accused of human rights abuses.
• A new “counterterrorist nerve center” for JSOC, various three-letter agencies, and foreign partners is being planned for some unknown place in the Middle East.
• The Islamic State’s mass graves are awful, powerful links back to the country’s Ba’athist past.
• The US is looking to replace Afghanistan’s fleet of aging helicopters of Russian make with new Black Hawks.
• Over the last 48 hours, the Taliban have killed 23 civilians in Kandahar.
• A suicide bombing inside a NATO base in Kabul last month that killed four Americans raises questions about the need to improved intelligence sharing and screening processes for workers.
• In Pakistan, General Qamar Javed Bajwa will be replacing General Raheel Sharif as the country’s army chief.
• An attack on an Indian Army unit in Nagrota militants in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, by militants disguised as police officers, left seven soldiers dead and tensions with Pakistan ratcheted up yet again.
• Fake news, or rather, propaganda, is affecting politics around the globe.
• Three Chinese rights activists have disappeared, presumed detained by the government.
• The UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet on North Korea.
• Australian parliament passed legislation that will allow authorities to keep terrorism convicts in prison after their sentences are complete.
• Europol accidentally released more than 700 pages of information about 54 terrorism investigations.
• Europol warns that the Islamic State is likely to target the EU in the near future.
• Wikileaks released 2,420 German government documents related to surveillance and German intelligence’s cooperation with the NSA.
• Peace talks over Ukraine ended without an agreement.
• Two days of Ukrainian missile testing pushed Russia to deploy warships off Crimea.
• Cypriot leaders agreed to resume reunification talks next month.
• Colombia’s congress approved the new peace deal with FARC.
• What is in store for Cubans after the death of Fidel Castro?
• 2,000 US veterans are prepared to form a human shield around Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.
• Thirteen women became the first female soldiers to graduate from the Army’s Armor Basic Officer Leader Course.
• The next Secretary of Defense will be Gen. James Mattis.

• 100 people are believed drowned off the coast of Libya after they were abandoned by their smugglers, who towed them out to sea and left them without a motor or lifejackets.
• Former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s death sentence was overturned, though he still faces many years in prison.
• Testimonials from victims of abuse under authoritarian rule are airing on television in Tunisia as part of the country’s Truth and Dignity Commission.
• Can $10 billion end Nigeria’s century-long oil war?
• Two were killed by suicide bombings in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri.
• The Kenyan government postponed its closure of the Dadaab refugee camp by six months.
• South Sudan edges toward genocide. The US has shifted its position and now backs an arms embargo against the country.
• A wave of gruesome ethnic killings has hit the South Sudanese town of Yei, on the border with Uganda and Congo.
• America has played a sizable role in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, in which the coalition routinely hits civilian targets and which has “obliterated” the country’s economy rather than defeating the rebels.
• 16 journalists have been abducted from Yemen this year.
• The killing of three US soldiers at a Jordanian air base earlier this month is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism.
• After a few weeks of a kind of calm, pro-Assad forces have resumed a fierce assault on Aleppo. This came the day after Putin’s phone call with Trump. On Wednesday, Assad’s forces bombed the city’s only remaining children’s hospital.
• Following the election of Donald Trump, Turkey and Russia are expected to expand their military operations in Syria. The election has already sparked a turf war inside Syria and left Western-backed Syrian rebels in limbo.
• Syria’s food production is near collapse.
• The U.N. Security Council approved a one-year extension of the international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
• Protests over the terror listing of Al Nusra Front’s Abdallah Muhammad al-Muhaysini show Al Qaeda’s desire to “have ambiguity about their organizational affiliations.”
• In Iraq, the Islamic State found a way to weaponize the drones it uses for spying, arming them with hand grenades.
• Iraq has asked the UK for assistance in getting thermobaric weapons for the fight against the Islamic State.
• As the Mosul offensive continues, waves of civilians fleethe city.
• Iraqi forces recaptured the ancient city of Nimrud from the Islamic State, and found a scene of destruction worse than previously imagined.
• According to Human Rights Watch, the Islamic State murdered 300 former Iraqi policemen three weeks ago and buried them in a mass grave south of Mosul.
• The Islamic State has been weakened and pushed back in Afghanistan, but is not yet gone.
• An ICC prosecutor says she has “reasonable basis to believe” that US troops committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
• In photos: Children attending school in war zones.
• Myanmar’s harsh, violent crackdown on the Rohingya continues.
• Buddhist aid workers who work with agencies helping the Rohingya face a backlash.
• Chinese and US troops staged joint humanitarian relief drills.
• Russia is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court.
• Long read: “Where Even Nightmares Are Classified: Psychiatric Care at Guantánamo.”
• Two former child soldiers recruited at 13 to fight in Sierra Leone are suing UK defense firm Aegis, which later recruited them as adults to fight in Iraq, for compoundingthe psychological harm from their childhoods.
• In photos: the Calais migrant camp, before and afterbeing cleared.
• James Clapper has resigned as Director of National Intelligence.
• Michael Flynn will be Trump’s national security adviser. Here’s what we know and don’t know about Flynn’s ties with Turkey.
• Long read: Some important elements of Facebook’s algorithms are having profound global political impact, especially when it comes to the rise of the far-right.
• German newspaper Der Spiegel says that with the election of Trump, the US has “abdicated its leadership of the West” and says it is time for German chancellor Angela Merkel to step forward and fill that role.
• The role of both fake news and Russian meddling are giving Germany’s intelligence community pause ahead of the country’s 2017 elections.
• Defense experts weigh in on the extreme costs of Trump’s defense plans.
• A Service Women’s Action Network survey shows that female troops find themselves under-appreciated and under-acknowledged inside and outside of the armed services.

• At least 239 refugees are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean after two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya this week.
• Fighting between a conglomeration of Islamist militias and the Libyan National Army has trapped civilians in the eastern neighborhoods of Benghazi for months.
• France ended its military mission in the Central African Republic. Renewed fighting there has caused humanitarian agencies to suspend relief efforts in some parts of the country and 20,000 people to seek refuge at a UN base.
• Voters in the Ivory Coast overwhelmingly supported a new constitution.
• Militants attacked an oil pipeline in the Niger delta.
• The US extended sanctions against Sudan.
• The commander of the UN peacekeeping force in South Sudan has been dismissed following reports that the mission failed to protect civilians from attacks this summer.
• Kenya withdrew its troops from the UN’s mission in South Sudan.
• Kenya deported a South Sudanese rebel spokesman over a Facebook post.
• A massive distributed denial of service attack brought Liberia’s entire internet infrastructure to a halt.
• A bombshell 355-page corruption report released this week in South Africa shows that a family of Indian immigrants, the Guptas, are the shadow power behind President Jacob Zuma and some of his cabinet.
• Dozens were wounded and one person killed today after a car bomb went off in Diyarbakir, a major Kurdish city in Turkey. (Video.)
• The two joint-leaders of Kurdish People’s Democratic Party and 10 of the party’s MPs have been arrested, as have Diyarbakir’s two mayors, in Turkey’s relentless crackdown. The purge has now extended far beyond those involved in this summer’s attempted coup.
• Analysis: Why is the conflict between Turkey and the PKK escalating?
• US support for the Saudi coalition in Yemen could be setting US troops up for war crimes prosecution.
• Residents live in constant fear in the Yemeni town of Saada, which is of the most densely bombed cities in this war and has lost critical infrastructure.
• A 10 hour Russian and Syrian government ceasefire is in place today to allow rebels and civilians to leave besieged areas of Aleppo. Russia says this is their last chance to do so. Rebels are defiant of the ultimatum, and have been escalating their attacks against government-held Aleppo.
• The Kremlin has deployed a small private force in Syria, ghost soldiers fighting in the ground offensives.
• Five Syrian journalists, now living in Turkey, tell horror stories from their reporting experiences.
• A makeshift hospital in Madaya is closing after four years, unable to do any more to help.
• The timeline for the battle for Raqqa is unclear.
• The Mosul offensive continues with heavy fighting in the eastern parts of the city. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has reportedly left the city.
• Iraqi Shi’ite forces are working to cut off a supply line to the west of the city.
• Thousands of people fleeing the Islamic State’s caliphate have wound up detained and mistreated by Iraqi forces.
• What’s next for the Yazidi people in Iraq?
• Iran marks the anniversary of the embassy takeover.
• Analysis: The US military’s estimates of Taliban control and influence are flawed, failing to provide explanation for how the group is sustaining multiple offensives across the country.
• 30 Afghan civilians died in an airstrike called in to protect US and Afghan forces after the death of two US troops during heavy fighting in Kunduz.
• A roadside bomb killed an Afghan journalist in Helmand.
• Afghan women face obstacles in the country’s armed forces.
• Pakistan accused India of running a spy ring in Islamabad.
• Young men hiding from India’s broad, harsh crackdown are seeking refuge in Kashmir’s apple orchards.
• Fiona MacGregor, former special investigations editor for the English-language Myanmar Times, says she was fired for writing about allegations of rapes by security forces in Rakhine state.
• Aung San Suu Kyi’s government is coming under international scrutiny for the ongoing crackdown in the north.
• Moscow abruptly sealed off the offices for Amnesty International, blocking the staff from entering.
• Russia lost its bid for a spot on the UN Human Rights Council.
• In Crimea, Russia is rebooting old Soviet bases and building new ones to house its soldiers.
• Human Rights Watch raises concerns over Belgium’s counterterrorism laws and operations in the wake of attacks.