ASIA AFGHANISTAN Attackers stormed a midwife training center in the city of Jalalabad on Saturday, killing at least three of its employees and wounding several other people before themselves being killed during a more than six hour battle with police. ISIS later claimed responsibility. That US meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha a few days … Continue reading World update: July 28-29 2018

ARAB NATO Juan Cole has some thoughts about European NATO-hater Donald Trump's plans to contrive an Arab NATO despite the fact that some of its potential members don't really like one another very much: So here are the problems with this Arab NATO. First, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar won’t be interested in taking a public … Continue reading Middle East update: July 28-29 2018

UNITED NATIONS The UN needs to find a payday lender or something because it's going broke: António Guterres, the UN secretary general, has warned that the organisation is facing an unprecedented shortage of funding for its core budget and will need to make urgent cuts unless member states pay up. The alarm was raised in … Continue reading Europe/Americas update: July 27 2018

ASIA GEORGIA Georgian plutocrat Bidzina Ivanishvili gave what must have been a fascinating interview to Georgia's Channel One earlier this week in which he likened his role as the country's de facto dictator to something akin to that of a newspaper's ombudsman: Ivanishvili, who is widely seen as a behind-the-scenes puppetmaster of Georgian politics, was disarmingly … Continue reading Asia/Africa update: July 27 2018

SYRIA The Syrian Democratic Council, which is the political arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the predominantly YPG-run military group that's been serving as a US proxy in Syria for a couple of years now, has sent a delegation to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The ostensible purpose for the talks … Continue reading Middle East update: July 27 2018

CLIMATE CHANGE Massive heatwaves across the northern hemisphere have led to 90+ degree days in parts of Scandinavia north of the Arctic circle and to dozens of deaths in Japan and South Korea. Part of the culprit is apparently a stalled jet stream, and the reason the jet stream is stalled is that the Arctic … Continue reading Europe/Americas update: July 25-26 2018

ASIA AFGHANISTAN A Taliban suicide bomber attacked an Afghan intelligence convoy in Kabul early Thursday morning. Casualty reports have varied, but at least one report said that four people were killed. Meanwhile, on Tuesday Afghan officials said that the Taliban overran and captured two districts in Paktika province over the weekend. Typically Afghan forces are … Continue reading Asia/Africa update: July 25-26 2018

SYRIA The death toll from Tuesday's series of ISIS attacks in and around the city of Suwayda has risen to 221, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. That includes 127 civilians and 94 pro-government fighters. Suwayda lies in a largely Druze part of Syria and so it's not surprising that many of the … Continue reading Middle East update: July 25-26 2018

We've got some activity at hq today (the electricity remains on, thankfully) so I'm going to need to make this as short and early as possible. MIDDLE EAST SYRIA ISIS militants killed at least 96 people on Wednesday in a combination of suicide bombings and gun battles in the southwestern Syrian city of Suwayda. That figure comes … Continue reading World update: July 25 2018