Isis attacks areas held by Syrian army and Kurdish militia
Car bomb attack launches fresh offensive on Kobani while militants also clashed with soldiers in Hasakah
Islamic State fighters have launched simultaneous attacks against the Syrian army and Kurdish militia overnight, going back on the offensive after losing ground in recent days to Kurdish-led forces in Raqqa province.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Isis had re-entered the border town of Kobani, where it is battling Kurdish militia, and wrested positions from the Syrian army in an assault on the north-eastern city of Hasakah.
Kobani was captured by Kurdish forces from Isis in January after months of fighting. Overnight Isis launched a new offensive on the town, starting with a car bomb explosion near the border crossing, the observatory said.
Smugglers operate freely in Libya as Europe struggles to act on Mediterranean migration
With the EU struggling to take action against risky migration in the Mediterranean, traffickers are using Libya's power vacuum to their advantage. As Marine Olivesi found, while migrants are caught, the smugglers escape.
Compass in his hands, Zubeir, a Libyan smuggler, goes over the road map with Abdullah, the co-captain. It's almost midnight, the boat is set to leave in a couple of hours, and Abdullah hasn't much time to get it right: Zubeir won't be with them on board. Abdullah, a fisherman from Senegal, will have to tell the captain, another migrant from Gambia, which direction to go.
"You see how the needle is on 20 now?," Zubeir shows Abdullah. "The first three hours, it needs to be on the 17 line."
That, roughly, means the boat has to head straight north. Zuara, near the Tunisian border, is Libya's closest point to Lampedusa. It's made the town an attractive departing spot for migrants hoping to reach Europe, and one of Libya's busiest smuggling hubs despite local authorities' insistence that they are actively fighting human trafficking.
Bobby Jindal throws clown wig into US Election ring
June 25, 2015 - 12:32PM
Nick O'Malley
The last Republican primary race in 2012 was meant to be the clown car primary. This time around the Grand Old Party was supposed to have hunted out the transparently self-serving, hopeless cases cluttering its field.
So far at least it has not turned out that way.
The most recent candidate to throw his hat in the ring is Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, who announced his candidacy on Wednesday afternoon. In his own state – one of the most conservative in the union – his approval ranges between a dismal 27 per cent and an embarrassing 32 per cent.
Nationally, Mr Jindal, once considered to be a policy heavyweight who could broaden the base of his party, has captured about 0.8 per cent of Republican supporters. He is polling not only last in the field, but he is trailing "None of the above", which has captured 2 per cent of the Republicans in primary polling.
Editorial: Unconstitutional security bills must not be pushed through Diet
It has been 70 years since the end of World War II, and Japan is once more at a critical crossroads. We speak, of course, about the package of security-related bills to be debated during the current Diet session, which began a three-month extension today. Let us be blunt: This choice will decide, at an elemental level, what kind of country Japan will be.
The Diet has already been discussing the security bills for a month, and during that time an ever-lengthening list of critics has called the legislation "unconstitutional." Despite the sustained barrage, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has yet to give a straight answer on any of its critics' assertions, its replies shifting this way and that. On the vital question of how far Self-Defense Forces (SDF) operations will expand under the proposed security framework, it is absolutely essential that the government both create a sound legal foundation and gain the consent of the Japanese people. It has done neither.
Female genital mutilation: Why Egyptian girls fear the summer
Updated 0732 GMT (1432 HKT) June 25, 2015
Summer days: They're what childhood memories are made of, glorious afternoons of unchecked freedom to frolic with friends in the sun, unshackled from the earthly obligations of a math class that never seemed further away.
But for millions of schoolgirls in Egypt, this time of year represents something much darker: the start of the female genital mutilation (FGM) season.
Mona Mohamed was 10 years old when she underwent what's also known as a female circumcision on a hot summer day in her village in Upper Egypt.
"I was terrified," she said. "They tied me down, my mother on one hand and my grandmother on the other."
As Mona thrashed around, pinned by her loved ones to the living room floor, a doctor injected her with anesthesia.
Love of Germany’s Paternoster elevators trumps worries about safety
McClatchy Foreign Staff
BERLIN — Safety be damned. Germany’s just-imposed restrictions on its controversial but beloved Paternoster elevators seem destined for an early demise.
Germany’s Cabinet ministers decided Wednesday to recommend ending the new limitations, less than a month after they went into effect. The reason: public outcry over rules that require anyone wanting to step onto the elevators to have gone through a training course.
Most buildings, faced with having to post guard on every floor to make sure no untrained person was stepping onto the conveyances, decided just to turn them off.
In the days before the new rules went into effect June 1, Germans flocked to buildings equipped with the Paternosters for a last chance to ride one.
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