Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Moscow, for their first meeting since 2018, Reuters reports. Putin used the occasion to rebuke the US and Turkey for having troops in Syria without a UN mandate.
The president of Turkey reportedly mulls an alliance with the Taliban or other pro-Sharia groups ruling Afghanistan, a move that could further harm Turkish-U.S. relations.
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday that it would hold naval drills in the Caspian Sea. The drill is scheduled for early September and would include small missile and artillery ships from Iran, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, Reuters reported.
Aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster in northeast Syria as one of the Bible’s most famous rivers is drying up fast. The Euphrates, which is believed to have flown through the Biblical ‘Garden of Eden,’ now barely runs for almost 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles) across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.
Syria on Thursday accused Israel of attacking the country with missiles but said its air defenses had confronted the “Israeli aggression.”
Much of Europe endured record temperatures as soaring heat, dubbed the Lucifer anti-cyclone, moved in amid ongoing wildfires in several countries.
Turkish authorities struggled to save lives as floods at the Black Sea coast killed dozens of people. The death toll from severe floods and mudslides along the Black Sea coast has climbed to at least 51, the country’s emergency and disaster agency said.
Apocalyptic scenes ranging from droughts to massive fires and floods are making life difficult for millions of people worldwide. For example, thousands have fled wildfires in Greece where, after a small break, another heatwave with temperatures of over 40 degrees (104 Fahrenheit) was on its way — with the potential to worsen the situation.
Lyubov Sobol, a prominent ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, has left Russia days, Russian media reported late Sunday.
Greece is among the worst affected countries by deadly wildfires raging through the Balkans, Italy, and the southeastern Mediterranean. Fires rampaged through some of Greece’s last remaining forests for yet another day Saturday, after thousands fled by land and by sea.
Christian evangelist Hatun Tash says she survived a knife attack by a suspected Muslim in London “thanks to God’s grace.”
A report has been submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee about the persecution of Protestant Christians in Turkey, and about restrictions imposed against foreign Christians in the country, International Christian Concern reported Sunday.
A leading human rights group is petitioning that governments of Australia, New Zealand, and Britain recognize the systemic killing of some 1.5 million mainly Christian Armenians systemic by Ottoman Empire forces as “genocide.”
The United States is taking new steps to make it more difficult for the Islamic State terror group to move money, including donations from international supporters, through Syria and Turkey.
The US State Department has published its International Religious Freedom (IRF) Report for 2020, providing an overview of religious freedom and persecution around the world, International Christian Concern reports. This year’s IRF condemned countries including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and China for their abuses of religious freedom, and stated that the US would continue to address the issue.
Egypt and Turkey will hold two days of political consultations in Cairo on Wednesday and Thursday as part of a push to mend ties between the regional rivals, the two countries said.
Plans for a route to peace between the United States and the Afghan Islamist Taliban have become deadlocked amid canceled talks in Turkey, and despite President Joe Biden’s announcement earlier this month that US and NATO troops will unconditionally withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, NPR reports.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) published its 2021 Annual Report earlier this month, redesignating 10 nations as Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) and recommending to the State Department that India, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam now be given that designation as well.
Ursula von der Leyen, the first female president of the European Union’s executive commission, has lashed out at Muslim-majority Turkey for violating women’s rights saying she was “feeling hurt” by a chair snap.
The US decision to finally recognize the Armenian genocide comes after decades in which Turkey and its lobbyists in Washington threatened the US. Their narrative was that if Washington would just use the term “genocide” – for a crime committed 106 years ago by a former government in what is now Turkey – then Ankara would rapidly move to sanction the US, close its bases, threaten its citizens and ally with Iran, China and Russia, or other US enemies.