A comic show and a recent pop concert have drawn rebuke from powerful religious figures and social media users in Saudi Arabia this week, highlighting the sensitivity of cultural reforms underway in the conservative kingdom. Thousands of Saudis – including women – decked out in costumes and face paint attended the country’s first-ever Comic Con […]
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A stand-off between security forces and monks at Thailand’s biggest temple has exposed a struggle as much about power as religion in the predominantly Buddhist country, where the junta has shut down dissent since a 2014 coup. For the past week, some 4,000 police and soldiers have surrounded the Dhammakaya temple, which practices a form […]
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A stolen WWII gate bearing the infamous Nazi slogan. Returning after two years to its home in Dachau, a former concentration camp in Germany. It disappeared overnight in 2014 and only resurfaced in Norway in December after police followed an anonymous tip off. The words “work sets you free” cast into this Iron Gate would […]
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Islamic State published a video on Sunday threatening Egyptian Christians and showing the last statement of a man it said was responsible for the deadly bombing in December of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo. The masked man in battle-dress, whom the group identified as Abu Abdallah al-Masri, is seen encouraging militants all over the world […]
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Pakistani security forces killed dozens of suspected militants on Friday, a day after Islamic State claimed a suicide bombing that killed more than 80 worshippers at a Sufi shrine, the biggest in a spate of attacks this week across the country. The bombing at the famed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province was […]
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Western-backed Syrian forces should isolate Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria “by the spring” before an offensive on the city itself, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Saturday. The Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes the powerful Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, launched the campaign on Raqqa in November. It announced this month the start of […]
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For years, violence kept most of Pakistan’s aspiring young musicians from following their dreams, whether the threat of Taliban militant attacks or gang wars in the crowded southern port city of Karachi. Now, as law enforcement crackdowns slowly improve the security situation across the nation, some musicians are getting help from two-year old Pakistani start-up […]
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Poland has put on display over 3,000 artifacts recovered from the site of a former Nazi concentration camp. The items are mostly personal effects that belonged to prisoners in the Sobibor prison. Which killed at least 250,000 Jews during World War Two, although exact numbers are unknown. Eyeglasses, jewellery, and children’s belongings taken from them […]
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German-Israeli satirist Shahak Shapira, who set up a website shaming selfie-takers at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, says he has halted the project for now after a dozen people apologised for their disrespect. His “Yolocaust.de” website had combined selfies, often with the participants grinning or striking poses, taken at the memorial with graphic images from Nazi concentration […]
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A prominent Myanmar Muslim lawyer assassinated in Yangon was being closely watched by intelligence agents, according to friends and colleagues, and had received past threats over his sensitive work as an adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling party. People close to advocate Ko Ni, whose killing has been described by the government as an […]
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