Globe Trot: Is Russia coming unglued?

RUSSIA: With everyone blaming Russia for the outcome of last year’s U.S. presidential election, FBI Director James Comey is on Capitol Hill today to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the investigation into Russian hacking. Russia is coming unglued (see an interactive map of protests), and today a Russian court upheld the five-year suspended sentence handed down to opposition leader Alexei Navalny after his organizing recent protests.

Considered a possible presidential candidate and “the man Vladimir Putin fears most,” Navalny was attacked by unknown assailants last week, sprayed with zelyonka, or brilliant green, and lost 80 percent of his sight in one eye from chemical burns.

ISRAEL: As U.S. President Donald Trump meets today with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster appealed to Israelis to find common cause with their Arab neighbors.

Respected military and political leaders in Israel are calling for an end to building settlements in the West Bank.

PAKISTAN: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s daughter tried to say the Panama Papers aren’t about corruption, but was corrected by the journalist who broke the story. Sharif and his children stand accused of holding undisclosed offshore assets revealed in the documents.

Sharif continues to pander to his Islamist supporter base, despite lawmakers’ efforts to revisit blasphemy laws that led to the brutal April murder of university student Mashal Khan.

EGYPT: ISIS is imposing its hardline religious rule in Sinai, an area historically a center of Jewish and Christian learning.

Here’s what’s wrong with NPR’s headline on Sinai’s St. Catherine’s Monastery as a “popular religious tourism site.”

The Sisters of Sinai is a fascinating read on the importance of St. Catherine’s in preserving early Gospel manuscripts.

INDIA: The amazing life of Shobha “Fori” Nehru, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust and Communist takeover in Eastern Europe before marrying into the famous ruling family of India, witnessing there war and three assassinations, and died last week at 108.