Globe Trot: Gruesome ISIS video marks ‘festival of the sacrifice’

SYRIA: Islamic State militants marked Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday known as the “festival of the sacrifice,” by hanging prisoners upside down from meat hooks and “butchering them like sheep” in a gruesome new execution video. In the video (needless to say, it contains graphic, horrible images and should be watched with extreme discretion), victims in the city of Deir Ezzor are accused of being “U.S. spies.”

A cease-fire in Syria appears mostly to be holding, but the regime is at this moment blocking UN aid trucks from entering eastern Aleppo, and at the Pentagon, military leaders are fuming at the concessions made by Secretary of State John Kerry.

SAUDI ARABIA: A never-sleeping eye is watching over the thousands of hajj pilgrims—5,000 security cameras covering a 6-mile radius around the Grand Mosque—as part of a high-tech effort to prevent something like the stampede that killed 2,300 Muslims during the annual event a year ago.

NIGERIA: Former U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf is calling on President Obama to fully staff the U.S. diplomatic mission in the African nation (incredible) and appoint a special envoy in the wake of Boko Haram atrocities and impending starvation in the north. Wolf’s letter is a poignant read (posted above).

AFRICA: “Tens Of Thousands Dead In Ongoing Africa,” reads a headline from The Onion, a not-so-far-from-the-truth headline showing the “Afropaternalism” feeding too much coverage of the continent.

What’s wrong with Western missionaries? They don’t need the people they serve.

AUSTRALIA: Animal rights activists would like Tasmania’s Eggs and Bacon Bay to change its name.