Globe Trot: Clinton discussed executed Iranian scientist in unsecure email

IRAN: Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, discussed on email accessed via her private server a nuclear scientist Iran confirmed it executed on Saturday. Shahram Amiri was granted safe haven in the United States after providing intelligence but later returned to Iran: “He’s free to go. He was free to come. Those decisions are his alone to make,” Clinton stated in the accessed email.

SYRIA: In the unrelenting siege by Russian and Syrian forces, the boys of Aleppo are burning tires to create a smoke curtain to block their attacks (see the photo above that has been shared widely). It’s been enough to limit air forces from locking in on hospitals, schools, and other targets.

The last time CIA-aided forces came up against Russia’s military was in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and this time Russia is winning the proxy war in Syria.

SUDAN: “Let God protect the UN, give them peace and love so they can support our people,” prayed Rachael Mayik, a displaced South Sudanese who had once translated the Old Testament from English to Shilluk, her tribal language. But when the expected attacks came to the camp, UN peacekeepers fled, and the camp was overrun by fighting factions, and torched.

“What it boils down to,” a senior UN official in Malakal told The Washington Post, “is that no one wants to die for the UN.”

ISRAEL: Germany and Australia have suspended funding for World Vision after Israel accused the U.S. aid group’s director in Gaza of funneling $7.2 million a year to Hamas. Basically, what we’re learning from this story, as we have with other exposés involving the group, is that World Vision operates as a government proxy for aid more than as a Christian humanitarian organization.

VENEZUELA: One consequence of food shortages is that sterilization rates are soaring, with a waiting list of 500 in one state health program.

Here’s how the country with one of the largest oil reserves in the world came to the brink of starvation.